Life at Sea

© 2019 Laszlo Endrody. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN 978-1-54398-616-7 eBook 978-1-54398-617-4

Captain Walter Miller

Chapter One

My grandfather owned the shipyard in Portland, Maine where we built schooners. They were three-masted with white oak planked hulls and it took approximately two years to build one. It was a big job, but Grandpa George had been building schooners for the last 40 years. We had finished a ship and put it up for sale, but there were no buyers. So she sat in the water equipped with new sails just waiting to go to work. My Uncle Steve said that we would take the ship to the West Coast to sell for hauling lumber. They were working on another hull of another ship, already laying out the keel in white oak.

Steve had been working on another schooner and was hauling white oak from Miramichi Bay in New Brunswick and Hudson Bay but could only go up there for three months during the summer. There was an ice problem in the Labrador Sea, with icebergs both big and small coming in from Baffin Bay and the coast of Greenland. The ice would come through the Labrador Sea into the Atlantic. It was very dangerous, but we needed the white oak. There was white oak on the West Coast of Canada. Steve figured he would take the schooner around the Americas, down around the horn into the South Pacific and head out to sea away from the current on the West Coast, and then head north.

I got my mates license in 1889, and wanted to go with Steve. It was going to be a four-month voyage to get up north. We had to haul many barrels full of water, smoked pork and vegetables which would not last very long. We also had barrels of sauerkraut and sacks of four different kinds of beans; sacks of onions, cases of apples, a lot of garlic and vinegar, sacks of potatoes, salted pork, bacon and ham. We had fish hooks for fishing and thirty sacks of rice to go with the fish.

We had one schooner in Alaska hauling lumber to Oregon and California and it was making good money. The whole West Coast of Canada was lumber country and they needed ships. There was white oak in Canada, but the problem was trying to get it to the East Coast. The French were talking about building a canal like the canal they built at the Suez which was mostly sand, unlike the Panama Canal, which was mostly rock. But that was France’s problem, not ours.

We loaded the schooner and Steve said I could go along. Steve’s other mate would stay with another schooner as captain. I got my mates license for sailing ships and moved on board the schooner the Eastern Breeze. We loaded sacks of everything, even sacks of firewood for the galley stoves. The biggest problem was water and knowing how long the water would remain fresh in the barrels. Of course, we could sail to the coast and go to a port to fill our empty barrels, but Steve said we would make it. When we cleaned up we used salt water.

We finally left Portland, out into the Atlantic and headed south. Some of the men started fishing right away and one of them caught a bluefin tuna weighing in at around thirty pounds; it sure was good eating. It took us a month to get down to the tip of lower America; then we rounded the horn and sailed to the Pacific Ocean. We had to go wide to get out of the current that was going south, so we went wide and zigzagged to get a breeze to drive us ahead.

Fishing was good. We caught yellowfin and albacore tuna. We also caught dolphins; those were the best fish to eat. The cooks cut the dolphin into steaks and cooked rice and a gravy to go along with it. It was good eating, better than salted pork or pieces of bacon and beans. We were out of eggs on the West Coast, but fresh fish made up for it. The cooks baked bread and we had butter to go with it; we were living well. Luckily we had plenty of coffee. I was usually on deck around coffee time trying to trim the top sails to catch the breeze. I would get a cup before I went aft to check the compass. Sometimes we would be going northwesterly, but we needed to go more northeasterly. We were getting close to the equator.

The next morning it clouded over and started to rain and turned into a storm. Our galley was midships forward of the second mast, and was constructed so the water would drain from the four corners. After the overhead was cleaned up, we lashed an empty barrel at the four corners so that the rainwater could drain into it. This was clear fresh water and we filled our barrels with it. We covered the barrels of water and lashed them to the side of the building, and got four more empty barrels just in case it started to pour again, which it did the next afternoon.

We had to trim the sails and then were finally starting to head northeasterly. This would bring us closer to the coast of Mexico. My uncle, the captain, had gotten a good latitude three days prior. He picked up the North Star with his sextant and it showed that we were already north of the equator. This storm had sure picked up our speed.

It had now been over two months since we left Maine. I got several sun lines on the chart and we knew the proximity of where we were; still too far west, so we continued the northeasterly course. In another month, we were planning on being in the Puget Sound.

I had never been to the West Coast and I was anxious to see Seattle and San Francisco. We had another good rain, enough to fill four more barrels. I filled my cup with the fresh rainwater and it tasted so good. We trimmed the sails again and were going north. Some of the men had their fishing lines in the water and there was an albacore on every line. We must have passed through a school of albacore. We cleaned all the fish and the cook said we would have albacore for both meals for a couple of days. That’s okay with me, I told him. The cooks were doing a great job, nobody ever complained.

We were planning on getting enough crew for a working ship when we got to the Puget Sound. There was another mate in my room, and he had his bed already set up. He would definitely be needed. We had six ABs and would hire three ordinaries and a carpenter, along with two mess-men. I didn’t know if the captain would get a steward or not, since he had already ordered all the stores for this trip. If he didn’t hire a steward, he would get a third cook. Our storeroom was still full of sacks.

We were going to see how our sister ship was managing. My older cousin was the master and he was making a lot of money hauling lumber. He told Grandpa they needed a steam schooner that could travel the shortest route. With a steam schooner, you just feed coal into the boiler and can travel eight knots. With sails, it’s not that easy, especially in tight places. A steam schooner could haul a bigger deck load in the same hull as the schooner.

I had some albacore for dinner and it was very good. The cook said we needed an ice box for the fish.

Who delivers ice out here? I asked the cook. Everybody laughed.

You have to bring the ice with you, he stated.

Wouldn’t the ice melt from crossing the equator twice? I asked.

All you are doing is making up excuses. What kind of captain will you make if you can’t even figure out how to have ice out here when needed, my uncle remarked.

Well, I will have to ask the second cook and he can tell me. I hope he remembers how to bake bread since it’s part of his job.

I went up and got one more sun line with my sextant. After that, I went to trim the top sails so we would be able to make the best time. It was northeasterly again, which was great.

Once we came closer to the coast, we met with a steam ship and they flashed us, What ship?

I flashed back, "Eastern Breeze U.S."

They asked, Do you have any rice?

We flashed back that we had rice. Then they asked, Do you need oranges in trade, we need rice. I sent back that we could give them two sacks, and asked for them to send a boat with the oranges. They stopped and sent a boat that had four big cases of oranges and we traded for the rice. I asked the mate of the boat what nationality they were and he said Chilean. My uncle peeled an orange to make sure it was okay and then had me put a couple of cases out for the crew. They went nuts over the oranges; it was like Christmas for them. I wondered where they got the oranges, probably Guatemala or Costa Rica. But why are they all the way out here, I thought. I figured it was because they didn’t want to go into Columbian waters. Columbia claims 120 miles as Columbian Sea. They have gun boats and they will shoot at ships if they don’t stop when ordered. They are a bunch of bandits.

Later we saw a wooden hull gun boat that had been cut in half by a ship and a bunch of dead men around the boat. My uncle said that we were well past Columbia and that they probably tried to order that ship to stop and it rammed into them to finish them off. We never even slowed down, just kept going. Those bandits got what they asked for, and they weren’t even in Columbian waters. In any case, we kept going and moved right along, probably making six knots. Plus, we had a nice breeze pushing us.

If we came this way again we would need to buy some rifles, which we could buy in Seattle. If we went up to Alaska we would need rifles for bears too. There are some big bears up there and they will attack, plus they’re hard to kill. The locals have ten and eight-gauge shotguns with bear loads that they use to stop them. Polar bears are bad too, but we won’t go up that far. We stay out of the Bering Sea and let the Eskimos have them. There are no lumber yards up that way. There are a lot of lumber yards in British Columbia, north of Vancouver, where there is cash to be made.

How are we going to find Cousin John? I asked.

Easy, we’ll just wait for him in Elliott Bay. That is where he resupplies and gets his food and water. The Seattle agent is a good man, and he gets him everything he wants. We will be doing business with him too, hiring crew members and getting supplies. We need to have real experienced sailing ship people on deck, not the ones from the steam ships. Not too many sailing ships are being built, other than whaling ships, Steve replied.

I don’t want to go whaling, I said as I grimaced.

"You won’t have to. Grandpa is still building schooners. Steam ships are here to stay, but schooners can haul grain and lumber; just about everything, and they can do it cheap. You don’t have to shovel coal into the schooners. Cousin John thinks he needs steam to haul lumber. He’s going home with a full load of white oak, Grandpa’s orders. We don’t have enough oak to finish the hull that was started, and the Northern Breeze needs some re-planking to put her back into shape. She won’t be going north for a while. So, the Western Breeze has to bring in the white oak."

We could see the northern part of Mexico through our glasses. We were trying to go straight north, and didn’t want go get pulled into the southbound current. My uncle, the captain, was getting a good latitude quite often, so we knew exactly where we were. We were going to be in U.S. waters soon. The captain made a list of the vegetables we needed. He said that we might go into the L.A. harbor and resupply for the next two weeks and I was excited about that. We still had onions and garlic and potatoes. Those oranges sure helped us out. We had no other vegetables and needed carrots; we also needed eggs and bacon. All our sauerkraut was gone too. We needed beef, fresh sausage, apple juice, and fresh water. We had twenty empty barrels. John was going to need those barrels when he went east. Hopefully he could get some white oak as well. He could get white oak in Powell River, B.C. which is easy to get to from Elliott Bay.

When we arrived in L.A. we asked for a pilot and he took us in and we anchored. We asked the pilot if he could recommend an agent that could resupply us, and he volunteered to call the biggest agent in L.A. A short time later, an agent’s boat came out and we gave him the report and wrote up all our requirements. Two of our ABs and the second cook asked to be paid off, so we asked the agent to send out replacements. We asked for sailing ship ABs, and the agent replied that he had ABs but none with sailing ship experience. The captain told him to just send out a cook. We waited for two days but still no word from the agent. Finally, the captain told the carpenter to heave home the anchor and we left without getting anything. We didn’t even get any water. We sailed on and the bosun and carpenter had to stand watch. We had very little water, not even enough to make it to Seattle. So, we went to San Pedro and asked for water there and were able to fill ten of our barrels. They wanted to know if we needed any beef, and we got twenty pounds of stew meat and a big bundle of carrots. It took them an hour to bring everything on board. We paid them and sailed out of there.

We started to head north as soon as we were out of the current and we had a nice breeze. Eight days later we got a pilot to take us in to Elliott Bay. As soon as the pilot told us to anchor, we saw a boat coming out. It was the agent that John had used. He welcomed us to the West Coast. He told us that John was loading lumber up in B.C. and he would probably be back by tomorrow. He took our order and rushed off to get it out to us. He had three sailing ship ABs and the captain told him to send out all three. He said that one could be a store keeper if need be. The vegetables, a cook, three ABs and the stores came on three different boats. Everybody helped unload. A case of apples also came. I opened the case and everyone had an apple. The new cook made a cabbage soup that was very tasty, and from that point on everybody wanted to hang on to the new cook. After everything was put away, we all got a nice rest.

The next morning, we had bacon, eggs and toast. One mess-man came out and the captain signed him up as the cook’s helper. We all asked for four eggs and bacon. He cooked all of the eggs scrambled, but it sure did taste good. We also had toast and butter with coffee and apple juice to drink.

When John arrived, the captain and I went over to greet him. We asked him where he was going with the lumber and he told us he was going to L.A. The captain told him to forget about L.A., and then told him all about our terrible service we received there. John told us he would to Martinez. The captain said, I am going with you, I’ve never been to Martinez. John told him that would be fine. The captain told him this was his last load of white oak and then he was going home, but he needed a mate. John told him he could have two, but to go home John only needed one. He knew they had a lot of white oak in Powell River. Coming back, they would go with the Canadian pilot and load first. Then they could load the lumber and go to Elliott Bay and store the ship for the trip home. I told my uncle to make sure John had some rifles just in case they ran through Columbian waters. John said he had two rifles, and my uncle told him they needed four more and a lot of ammunition. That way they could practice with the rifles before they got down there. They also needed a lot of fish hooks to catch fish. They caught some fish in Alaska and gave us some smoked salmon. We gave them ten sacks of rice and five sacks of flour.

The agent was ferrying out all of the stores. The number three tween deck was a place for sacks and big boxes of items, after the tween deck was a place for barrels of water. As soon as the water barge came, we had a pipe going down to the barrels and about twenty barrels were filled with clear water. After that, the barrels were secured so they couldn’t move around. Smoked pork and cases of eggs also went down there. The meat and milk stayed up in the galley. They would stop in San Pedro for fresh meat, milk and eggs.

My uncle suggested that they stop at the Falkland Islands to see if they could buy meat and water if needed. After Brazil, they would head through the Caribbean Sea and go into the Gulf to New Orleans where they could get supplies. The white oak was not to be given to anyone since it was needed at home. I figured when Grandpa saw the big load of white oak on John’s ship he would want us to bring back an even bigger a load since he still had to finish the hull that he started. Once he took that ship out of the dry dock then the Northern Breeze would go in to get re-planked where needed. Then the Northern Breeze could go west, and we could load white oak and go home.

Chapter Two

Back in eastern Maine my Grandpa bought a 120 foot tugboat that needed re-planking badly. It also needed a new boiler. Luckily the engine was fine and the house on the boat was in good shape. He bought it for cheap and figured he could make a profit after fixing it up.

Six months went by and it was still tied up at our dock. He said that the boiler was hopeless and couldn’t be overhauled, so he needed to get a new boiler installed. A new boiler would cost about 4,000 dollars, which was double what he paid for the boat. He knew an engineer that worked for a different shipyard that would survey the whole job for him. The engineer told him that the whole top of the house after the wheelhouse had to be taken off and the boiler needed to be replaced, and then the house would have to be rebuilt. Then the engineer looked at the schooner hull that was being built with the white oak from the West Coast. He told Grandpa that if his crane could lift out the engine and put it in the schooner, the flooring could be reinforced with steel plates all the way across. The new boiler would have a lot of room, or he said that there could also be a boiler on both sides of the engine which would end up making it a steam schooner.

That’s a 1,000-horsepower engine and can be used as is with the same shaft and propeller. When your white oak gets here, finish building the ship. That steam schooner will be worth more than the schooners you’re building.

Grandpa thought things over a bit and asked, What if the crane can’t lift the engine?

Then you need to find a bigger crane. You need a new crane anyway, don’t you? After we lift the engine out we then need to look over the steel supports and figure out how we can build onto them. There is a big difference in the beams.

How about you come work for me. I would pay you a good wage plus give you a percentage of all the steam schooners we sell. You could be our chief engineer, in charge of any steel going into the wooden hulls, Grandpa suggested.

We saw the side door on the tugboat open and woman walked out. She went on the gangway and then up the dock and walked right by us.

Who are you, young lady? Grandpa asked her.

I’m the cook, she replied and continued on her way.

They must have left their cook on board, said the chief.

They went down to the boat and went inside the same door the woman had come out of. It opened up into the galley and on the starboard side there was a table with a bench on one side and four chairs on the other. The stove is warm; she must have been cooking something, said the chief. There was a cup sitting on the table and a door was open to a small room. They looked inside and there was a bed with blankets and some dresses were hanging up.

This is obviously where she lives. You didn’t know she was on here? the chief asked Grandpa.

No Grandpa stated. The crew got off and must have left her behind.

There was another door and they looked inside it too. There were three empty beds and two chairs. There was another room behind the wheelhouse with a bed and that was the captain’s room.

Where do the engineers and firemen sleep?

We can ask the woman.

After they looked around some, they sat down and started discussing the boat.

The engineer said, All of this will have to be cut away to get to the engine. Then we can lift it out and rebuild everything that’s underneath it. There’s going to be a lot of steelwork on the schooner that’s going to have to be done to support the engine.

The woman came in and had a big bag of things that she sat down on the counter behind her. She opened the oven door and took out a pot and put it on the stove. Then she grabbed two bowls from the shelf, as well as two spoons. She filled the bowls with soup and put them on the table in front of Grandpa and the engineer and said, Bon Appetit. Grandpa tried the soup and said it was very tasty. They both ate the soup and the woman asked, Are you part of the new crew?

Yes, I am the engineer, and he is the captain, the engineer replied as he pointed to Grandpa.

We need some stores, Captain. We have very little on here to cook, the woman remarked.

How come you are still on this boat, young lady? Grandpa asked.

I am the cook. I live on here, this is my home, she replied.

How long have you been on here? asked the chief.

Three years.

This is very good soup. Did the last captain pay everyone off? asked Grandpa.

Yes, she said, But I had no place to go, so I figured that maybe I could cook for the new crew.

We were planning on chopping this house up so we can take out the big engine. We’ll move you over to either the schooner behind you or the schooner that’s coming from the West Coast. We’ll get you a nice room on one of them, Grandpa told the girl.

Is there a crew on the schooner? she asked.

Only a captain and a mate, he replied.

How about the second schooner coming?

It has a full crew, but some of the people will be getting off. It will be a lot of work unloading the schooner. It’s bringing white oak planking from the West Coast. There’s going to be a lot of hungry people to feed. I’m sure they’re going to have a lot of store that they need to use up.

But I like my home here, she said.

This ship is going to be cut up so we can lift out the big engine and put a new big boiler inside to drive it, the engineer explained.

I will go where you need me, she agreed.

When the other schooner arrives, both ships will be feeding crews. I will take you over to the schooner and you can work that galley and use up some of the stores. If you need anything you can tell the captain or the mate to get it for you, Grandpa told her.

After Grandpa had breakfast, he took