Loneliness has many forms. It is Selkirk, imprisoned in an island, with nothing but the wash of the surf to break the shocking stillness; it is the mountain-climber missing his way, and passing the long night amid the tremendous silence of towering hills and black valleys; or it is the loneliness described by Byron, that of a man solitary in crowds. But what sense of solitude can equal that felt by shipwrecked men in a small open boat, surrounded by a universe of waters, with no other chance for their lives than such as a passing ship may bring? It is not the first hour, nor yet the first day; the agony of such a trial lies in the slow maddening of the mind by fruitless expectation; the deception of the white shoulders of clouds, which look like ships as they seem to linger a moment upon the horizon before sailing above it; the straining of the aching sight against the pitiless, vacant sea-line; the sense that death is close at hand, though a hundred deaths may have been suffered before the skeleton’s clutch is upon the sufferers.
No kind of human anguish is more terrible, and no stories catch a tighter hold of the imagination than those which relate it. Generations have shuddered, and generations will yet shudder over the grand and soul-moving description in “Don Juan.” The raft of the Medusa is an immortal horror. The narratives which are at once the most fascinating and depressing in the marine records are always those which concern the sufferings of human beings adrift in an open boat in the midst of a great ocean. The deep is unchanging in the misery it works. Our ships are of iron; they are propelled through the calm sea by an irresistible power faster than a gale of wind would drive them; they are of proportions so colossal that many of them could sling the “tall schippes” of our forefathers over their sides, and stow them on skids as they stow their boats; and yet just the same sort of sufferings are endured now by mariners as were experienced by them in the days when a vessel of thirty tons was reckoned big enough not only to seek the North-West Passage but to hunt the unnavigated oceans after continents.
I heard once a story that seemed fitter for the lips of an ancient mariner, like Coleridge’s, than the mouth of a seaman who lives in an age in which the Atlantic is crossed in eight days, and in which the Cape of Good Hope has been pretty nearly extinguished by a narrow water-way across a hundred miles of sand. The hearing it took me back in imagination to the days of the ship Thomas of Liverpool, the Lady Hobart packet, the Yankee ship Peggy, the French East India Company’s Prince, and I know not how many more old craft which ages since became phantom vessels, to be wrecked again and again upon the dark and noiseless oceans of tradition.
“My name,” began my informant, “is William Pearce. I have used the sea for above eight and twenty year, have sailed in all kinds of ships in all sorts of capacities—boy, ordinary seamen, sailmaker, bo’sun’s mate; crossed the Atlantic seventeen times, and been round the world eight; been shipwrecked thrice; likewise overboard during seven hours of darkness, and picked up at daybreak with my head in a lifebuoy; know pretty nigh the best and the worst of the weather that’s to be found at sea; and am, therefore, capable of taking my oath to this, that of all the bad jobs that ever I was in or that ever I heard of any other sailor being in, there’s nothing to beat the sufferings us men of the schooner Richard Warbrick had to endure when the foundering of that vessel obliged us to take to the boat.
“The schooner sailed from Runcorn with a cargo of coals for Plymouth. She was twenty years old, and a trifle over a hundred tons burden. There were five of a crew, and nothing particular happened until we were abreast of the Bristol Channel, when there blew up a heavy gale of wind from the east’ard. There’s no call to describe it; it was of the regular kind, full of wet, and raising a sea a sight too big for a vessel of one hundred tons pretty nigh chock-a-block with coal and with twenty years of hard use in her hull. However, we scraped through the gale and two or three more that followed fast, until one morning we were somewhere betwixt the Scilly Isles and the Cornish coast. It was dark, thick weather, blowing and raining hard, the sea rough, bitter cold—as you may calculate it was, the month being January—and everything invisible that was more than half a mile off. The wind was east and north, and we were ratching along under very small canvas, when, being turned in, as it was my watch below, and the land o’ Nod close aboard, I was roused up by a loud cry on deck and a tremendous crash. I tumbled up as fast as ever I could pelt, and found the schooner going down and the men getting the only boat we carried overboard. It was no time for questions. You could feel the vessel settling under your feet, just like standing on soft mud and sinking in it. The seas were washing over the deck, and growing heavier as her bulwarks sank lower. There was nothing but white water to be seen on the starboard bow—no rocks, nothing showing above the froth; but I didn’t want any one to tell me that we had run foul of the Seven Stones. There was no time to do more than launch the boat and roll into her. Daly was the last man in, and scarce had he jumped when the schooner plumped clean out of sight, going down like a deep-sea lead, so suddenly that it took my breath away.
“There’s no sensation worse than that a man feels when he looks for the ship he’s been forced to abandon and finds her vanished under the sea. The ocean never seems so wide as then. The whole world appears to be made of water. Sailors are a class of men little given to talking, and when they come clear of such jobs as this they say next to nothing about it, and so people think that either they’re men without the capacity of feeling, or else their sufferings were not equal to what might be supposed. Had people who take these views been in that boat along with us, they’d look sharp in altering their opinions. The suddenness of the disaster—our being one moment safe, and the next tossing on the sea in a small boat, with the schooner gone, nothing saved but what we stood in, not a morsel of food nor a drop of drink of any kind, the wind blowing fit to freeze the eyes out of our heads, every mother’s son of us soaked to the skin, and drifting fast away towards the Atlantic—took our senses away for a spell. We sat holding on and staring like daft men. The captain was the first to rally.
“He called out, ‘A bad job; it’s a bad job, lads!’ several times, and then said, ‘No use letting her drive too fast. We mustn’t let her blow away into the ocean;’ and with that we lashed the two oars to the painter and flung ’em overboard.
“This brought her head to wind and slowed her drift; but, for all that, every hour was carrying us further and further towards the open sea, and away from the Scilly Isles and the Cornish coast, which were our best chance, so that all the hope that was left us was being picked up by a passing vessel. Yet there could be no worse month in the year than January for that likelihood. How long were the gales and the frost going to let us last? We were far to the nor’ard of the fairway, in a part of the sea that every vessel was bound to give a wide berth to. The weather, as I have said, was so thick that you couldn’t see half a mile off, and though of course it was sure to clear in time and open out the horizon, so that vessels could have a view around them, the question was where should we be when it came on fine?
“Unlike a good many others who have gone through such dreadful messes as this, our sufferings began the moment we tumbled into the boat. In the lowest latitudes that ever I was in I never felt such cold. Had the water been fresh our clothes would have froze into coverings of ice. The air was full of spray, and squalls of sleet came rolling up. We sat in the bottom of the boat in a lump, to keep her steady, and for the shelter of one another’s bodies, and those who were to windward—that is, in the fore part—would shift from time to time, and others take their place. We had no mast nor sail, nothing but the two oars we rode to. It was a Monday, and all through the daylight we sat lifting our eyes above the gunwales, and trying to pierce the haze for a vessel. It was blowing about half a gale of wind, and it kept steady. Now and then we’d ship a dose of water, and bale it out with our caps; but it kept our feet soaking, and I reckon it was worse than being without boots at all. The boat did well, and the oars were a kind of breakwater, and helped her. After four in the afternoon the night drew on. We never could get used to the darkness. The daytime was bad enough, but the night made our sufferings maddening. The wind, when the sea was black, would take the feel of solid ice; we couldn’t see one another, and that made talking a kind of foolishness, and so we never spoke, which caused every one to feel himself a lonely man upon the sea. Likewise the noise of the water would sound stronger. In the daytime I took no notice, but at night I’d find myself listening to the crying of the wind up in the dark, and the hissing that rose all over the ocean from the breaking of the waves.
“I don’t know what my mates did; but that first night I never closed my eyes, never tried to shut them, never thought of sleep. I saw the dawn come, but the haze was too thick to let the light show on the horizon; it was overhead as well as around, when the morning broke; there was no darkness that you’ll find hanging in the west at daybreak. Indeed, I believe the sun was up above the sea before any light came, so thick it was. All the men were awake, and dreadful they looked, as of course I did. One of them was named Burke. I noticed him at once, and thought he was dying. He lay athwartships with his back against the starboard side of the boat, and there was a strange working in his fingers, like the movement of a woman’s hands opening a skein of thread.
“The captain said, ‘For God’s sake look around, lads, and see if there’s anything in sight.’
“The sea ran high, and made it dangerous for any of us to stand up, for fear of capsizing the boat; so we hung over the gunwale with our chins on a level with it, and stared into the driving smother with all our might: but there was nothing to be seen but the breaking seas when we were hove up, and the water standing like walls on either hand when we dropped into the troughs. All at once Burke sat up and began to sing out for a drink of water. He talked as if he believed we had it and wouldn’t give it, which was the first sign of his insanity. The captain tried to pacify him, speaking very kindly, and seeking to cheer him.
“‘We have outlived a day and a night,’ said he. ‘Keep up your heart, mate; we may have a thousand-ton ship under us before it comes dark again.’
“But Burke kept on crying for water, saying that he was dying for it, and pointing to his throat; and then, falling on all fours, he puts his face to the salt water washing about in the bottom of the boat and sucked up several mouthfuls. Well, it seemed to do him no hurt, and he lay quiet. Soon after this I spied something knocking about in the sea a few fathoms astern, and called the skipper’s attention to it. He said it was one of some kegs of butter that had been aboard the schooner, so we pulled the oars in and dropped down to it and picked it up. We broke it open and ate the butter in fistfuls, being mad with hunger; but it was as salt as brine, and the effect of it was to make our thirst raging. The knife we had used to open the keg lay in the bottom of the boat, and Burke, on a sudden turning over, seized hold of it, jumped up, and fell upon the captain. He hit him once, but the knife didn’t pierce through the thick jacket the skipper had on, and, before he could raise his hand again, we dragged him down and kneeled upon him.
“There was no worse part in all that dreadful time than this. The madman’s face was a terrible sight; almost black it was. He snapped about him with his teeth, and his cries and curses were things it brings the sweat upon my face to talk about. Think of our situation, mad with thirst ourselves and struggling with a madman, a killing north-easter blowing like knives through our frozen bodies, the sea leaping and roaring around us, and nothing between us and the bottom but the little old boat we were in. We were too weak, and in too much suffering ourselves, to remain holding the madman down, and finding him quiet we let go, and squatted one close to another for warmth; but scarcely had we hauled off from the poor wretch when he jumps up and throws himself overboard. ‘Mind!’ shouted the skipper, ‘one’s enough!’ fearing that if we all got to the side Burke had leaped from we should upset the boat. I was the nearest, and as he came up close I leaned over, and got him by the hair, and dragged him into the boat. He was pretty nigh dead, and gave us no more trouble.
“Well, sir, the night came down a second time, finding us living, but without the looks of live men. I made sure I should never see another daybreak. My thirst was not so sharp as it had been; but I don’t know whether the dull throbbing in my throat, the kind of lockjaw feeling in my mouth, the burning in my tongue as though it were a lump of hot iron, was not more torturing than when the craving was fiercer. All night long it blew a strong wind, with now and then a squall of sleet and rain, and hour after hour two of the men, Parsons and Daly, were groaning in the bottom of the boat. When the light came, I looked to see who was alive, and my eyes falling on Burke, I called out, ‘Dead!’ The captain leaned down and felt him, and said, ‘Yes, he’s gone. He’s the first. God have mercy upon us!’ and catching hold of my shoulder he stood up to search the sea, but the haze was as thick as it had been all the time, and he threw himself down with his hands over his face. Presently, looking at the body, he said, ‘We must bury him; but first, my lads, let us say a prayer for him and for ourselves.’ We all knelt while the captain prayed, and when he had done we lifted the body and let it go overboard.
“The madness that thirst creates broke out strong in Daly and Parsons when the body was gone, and down they dropped as Burke had, and lapped up the salt water in the bottom of the boat like dogs would. The captain implored them not to drink, but they never heeded him nor me, who likewise entreated them. However, no harm seemed to come of it. Well, sir, there’s no need for me to describe that Wednesday nor our third night in that open boat. Thursday morning came, making the fourth day, and to our joy the weather cleared, the wind shifted and moderated, and the sea went down. We got the oars in, rigged up one as a mast, and two of us having oilskin coats on, we joined them so as to form a sail, made a yard of the other oar, and putting the boat before the wind, which was blowing a light breeze from the south’ard, headed, as the captain judged, for the Irish coast. All the day long we kept a wild look-out, as you may reckon, for any passing ship; but never once, not in the furthest distance, did such an object heave in sight. We might have been sailing in the middle of the Pacific. Nature in us was almost numbed. We had come to such a pass that we were too faint and exhausted to feel the craving of hunger and thirst. At least I can speak for myself, and it’s in that way I account for my suffering less at the end than I did at the beginning of the dreadful time we went through. It was still cold, but nothing like the bitter cold of the gale and the heavy seas and squalls. We reckoned by the sun that the wind hung steady, and we let the boat slip before it; that was all that could be done. If we were to sail at all we were bound to keep the breeze over our starn, seeing there was nothing to draw but a couple of oilskins secured to the oar.
“But the coming on of Thursday night was like the bitterness of death itself, sir. Indeed it was. All day long we had reckoned upon sighting something before the sun went. Every hour we had hoped and prayed and believed would heave up some sort of vessel to come to our rescue; and therefore, when it drew up black, only a few stars among the slow clouds, and we were brought face to face with another long winter’s night, my heart failed me altogether; I felt that there was a curse upon us, and that we were doomed men, singled out to die of famine, the most cruel of deaths, because the longest. Think of ninety-six hours in an open boat, in January, in the Chops, a north-east gale blowing most of the time, with never a morsel of food except the salt butter, and no drink but the salt water washing in the boat! And yet when the Friday morning came we were still alive, the captain steering, doubled up with faintness and the cold, his knees against his mouth, and his head lolling for want of strength in his neck; Daly and Parsons lying still as dead men under the thwarts, and me in the bows, too weak and broken-hearted even to cast my eyes around the sea to notice if there was a vessel in sight.
“The morning passed; the afternoon passed. Were we to go through another night? The sun was within half of an hour of his setting when Parsons, who was leaning his breast on the gunwale, stood upright and pointed. His mouth was full of froth, and as he tried to speak the foam flew out of his lips, but no words he spoke; it was naught but a kind of death-rattle in his throat. We all looked in the direction he pointed to, and saw a large sailing-vessel heading right down for us. How we watched her! all of us standing up, never speaking, and only moving with the roll and toss of the boat. It took her an hour to approach us, and then she hove us a line; but her people had to sling us aboard. None of us could move. Nothing but the excitement of seeing her had allowed us to stand. The moment the line was in the boat and we were alongside, we all became as helpless as babies.
“The vessel’s name, sir? She was the Austrian barque Grad Karlovak, commanded by so humane a man that I feel fit to cry when I think of him and his kindness to us poor miserable shipwrecked English sailors. That’s the story, sir, or as much of it as there is any call to relate. Five days and four nights in the month of January, in an open boat, most of the time blowing heavily! The tale’s known at Plymouth—it’s known at Runcorn—it’s known to Mr. Hopkins, the agent of the Shipwrecked Mariner’s Society at Plymouth. And I’ll tell you somebody else it’s known to, sir—some one as’ll swear to every word of it; and that’s me.”
