CAPTAIN HALLS FRAGMENTS.
THE Fragments of Voyages and Travels, by Captain BASIL HALL, have been happily continued in a second series ; and we cannot suppose that the public, more especially the naval public, will let them end even at the sixth volume. Captain HALL, as the di- dactic narrator of the scenes he has witnessed, and in the character of a nautical moralist, is both merry and wise : his stories and anecdotes are very lively and pleasant, and their tendency is uni- formly good. No one—not even the most lubberly of landsmen— can read the work without great satisfaction ; but to both man and boy " afloat," it must be a manual of the most precious de- scription. The basis of the whole work is professional life at sea : this may be divided into three parts,—ship-government ; the art of rising, and deserving to rise, in the profession; and next, the relaxations and amusements of a nautical life. Ship-government we will allow Captain HALL to understand ; and it is probably in consequence of his so fully comprehending the virtue of despotism aboard, that he would be so rejoiced to rivet it ashore. His notions on this subject deserve the attention of all those intrusted with com- mand. The division relative to the art of rising, if duly considered by any young man at sea, we devoutly believe would make him both a happier man and better sailor. And Captain HALL is no dry didactician ; he teaches by an amiable mixture of precept and example. His tone is familiar and benevolent, and strongly marked with that earnestness and familiarity with the subject which never fail to make a deep impression on youth. Besides which, there is a great deal of useful scientific discussion, of an elementary and practical kind. The portion dedicated to what is called entertaining knowledge, is composed chiefly of the inci- dents and amusements of a nautical life,—the wonders of the sea, the sports of the ocean, the play of the sky, and the character of the population of far-away shores, together with descriptions of scenery and spots of natural beauty. Captain HALL is calculated to excel especially in this department of Writing : his style is rich and picturesque, he loves nature, and possesses one of those genial dispositions that readily harmonizes with the amiable and the beautiful. There is perhaps no writer who puts either a scene or a character before the reader with more life and truth,—and that without any straining after effect, or with any more effort than is implied by a hearty entering into his subject. The scheme of the work is a kind of history of the author's life and voyages. At_ present he has not got far in either; for the voyage to India—commenced before he became even a Lieutenant —is so often arrested by lectures, descriptions, and suggestions of every sort, that it is scarcely finished with the third volume: and very sure we are, that had the author pursued all the trains of thought started in the course of his retrospections upon this event- ful voyage, it would have led to a series of little duodecimos as long as the Journal des $avanc. We should not have been sorry ; and beg, of him to set sail again on the first convenient occasion ; bargaining only, that he cut politics adrift, and confine himself to the ocean and its shores,—if such a wide range may be called confinement at all. Captain HALL'S only failure, in a literary point of view, has been his North American Travels; which were altogether swamped by what lie calls his practical views in politics. He dived into discussions he was- utterly unqualified for, and con- verted an intelligent traveller's report into a political pamphlet in three volumes. The tour had indeed its desagromens—he was not on the same footing as when he sailed from port to port in his own ship: he speaks of female passengers aboard, and even a baby; and we are not surprised that the most amiable of men made an ill-humoured tour under such circumstances,—to say nothing of the haste and of the express nature of the undertaking, which per- mitted none of the careless charms of his accidental rovings. For the liberal character of his South American'work, he here takes an opportunity of apologizing: so far is he gone, poor man, in the dreams of an expiring but long dominant faction! Because the free states of South America have not yet worked out the peaceful enjoyment of free institutions, he repents that he ever hailed their emanlipation as a blessing ; and professes to doubt whether the - old bad government, as he allows it to have been, was not a much better thing !—But a truce to such remarks : let us forget the Captain HALL the glorifier of the Bourbons, and think only of the amiable visitor of the Leo Choos.
The work is divided into upwards of five-and-twenty chapters; the first of which is entitled " Taking a line in the service. To take a line, is to fix on that particular branch of the service in which a young man has reason to hope he may excel. It contains a very characteristic delineation 'of the different classes of young • officers in the Navy : one class is thus described-
Some young fellows set out in their professional life by making themselves, as they suppose, thorough-bred sailors, merely by aping the broadest external fea- tures in the character of the foremast men. These "kiddy blades," or "tar- paulin men," as they are called in the cockpit slang, have their hands constantly in the tar-bucket--their fingers are cut across with the marks of the ropes they have been pulling and hauling—and their whole soul is wrapped up in the in- tricate science of cutting out sails, and of rigging the masts and yards. Their dreams are of cringles and reef-tackles, of knots, splices, grummets, and dead eyes. They can tell the length, to a fathom, of every rope in the boatswain's warrant, from the flying jib downhaul to the spanker sheet ; and the height of every spar from the maintop-gallant truck to the heel of the lower mast. Their delight is in stowing the hold ; dragging about kentlage is their joy; and to form a good beud in the cable tier, without calling fur a standfitst at the capstan, is their great pride. In harbour they are eternally paddling iu the boats, rowing, or sculling, or sailing about—and are always the first in fishing or bathing par- ties—in short, they are for ever at some sailor-kind of work. At sea, their darling music is the loud whistle of the hardest storm-stay-sail breeze, with an occasional accompaniment of a split maintop-sail. " The harder it blows, and the faster she goes," the merrier are they ; " strong gales and squally " is the item they love best to chalk on the log-board ; and even when the oldest top- men begin to hesitate about lying out on the yard to gather in the flapping.rem- nants of the torn canvas, these gallant: youngsters glory in the opportunity of setting an example of what a gentleman sailor can perform. So at it they go, utterly reckless of consequences ; and by sliding down the lift, or scrambling out, monkey-fashion, to the yard-arm, where they sit laughing—at the risk of their lives—though the spar be more than half sprung through—they accomplish their purpose of shaming the others into greater exertions. It is well:known that one of the ablest, if not the very ablest, of the distinguished men whom the pene- trating sagacity of Nelson discovered and brought forward, owed his first intro- duction to the notice of that wonderful commander, by an exploit of this very description.
The other classes are the star-gazers, or astronomical and sur- veying youths ; and again, the largest class luckily consists of duty- doers, not remarkable for any thing but performing what is laid down for them with alacrity and exactness.
The next chapter is " A Sailor on Shore;" and describes, in conjunction with the following ones—" Tricks upon Travellers," and "The Farmer's Society "—the author's early visits among the warm-hearted and accomplished children of Erin. These chapters contain some very charming sketches of Irish society.
"The Admiralty List" opens the subject of promotion; and commences the author's Indian voyage in the Volage, during the war, at that time convoying a fleet of Chinamen. The progress of it carries us on to the grand subject of " Tropical Regions at Sea, and " The Trade-winds." Of the latter, a long and instruc- tive explanation is given, containing views and remarks founded upon a combination of theory and application in practice, which we should judge might be read with advantage by men who have long been in the habit of leading a nautical life. Respecting the prevalence of westerly winds in the Atlantic,— whichis accounted for by the same theory that expounds the Trade- winds,—a fact is stated, which, though probably known to many of our readers, will be new to others— We are sufficiently. familiar in England with the fact of westerly winds pre- vailing in the Atlantic; but it may be interesting to state a nautical fact, esta- blished by ample experience, showing the degree in which this circumstance operates practically. From a list of the passages made by the New York monthly packets across the Atlantic, during a period of six years, it is shown that the average length of the voyage from Liverpoolto America, that is to- wards the west, is forty days; while the average length of the homeward pas- sage, or that from west to east, is only twenty-three days. And it may fix these facts more strongly on the recollection, to mention, that the passage-money from England to America (against the prevalent wind) is five guineas more than that paid on the return voyage—the outward voyage costing thirty-five, the homeward thirty guineas.
The further progress of the voyage affords the author an oppor- tunity of describing the changes of climate, and the gradual change of habits, on board a ship as it passes through successive degrees of heat and cold. This succession of changes is said by the Captain to afford the class of grumblers or growlers a fine opportunity of working in their vocation. These people, common enough at sea (and not altogether rare on land), are thus happily hit off— The diversity of climate on an Indian voyage furnishes capital nuts for these perturbed spirits. It is first too cold, then too hot ; then there is not wind enough, then it blows too fresh in the squalls ; by and by the nights arc disco- vered to be abominably close and sultry, and in the day the fierce flaming downright heat of the sun is still worse; then the calms are never to be over ; or the lying Trades, as they call them, have got capsized, and blow from the west instead of the east ! After the Line has been crossed, and the south-east wind is met with, the weather soon becomes what these ingenious fellows call too temperate, then it grows too cold again; and next, off the Cape, the latitude is too stormy. In this alone they have some reason ; and I have often regretted that, by a royal ordinance of the King of Portugal, the name of this mighty promontory was changed from Cabo de Tormentos, the headland of storms, to its present spoony title. In short, this grand voyage is merely a peristrephic panorama of miseries, which if they survive, say they, it will be happy for them. Happy ! Not a whit. It is out of their nature to he happy. To find fault, and to fling away the good the gods provide them, to sour every cup of enjoyment by the gall of discontent expressed from their own hearts, and to ag- gravate the pain of every real wound by the impatience of idle complaints, is their diseased. joy. " Evil, be thou my good !" they might well exclaim ; for, instead of heightening the pleasures of life by full participation, or subduing its inevitable evils, or, at all events, softening their asperity by enduring with for- titude and cheerfulness what cannot be helped, these self-tormentors reject what is substantially pleasing, and cling with habitual, but morbid relish, to whatever is disagreeable.
Next occurs a chapter which cannot be read without delight : it is called " Aquatic Sport ;" and tells us of the dolphins, porpoises, sharks, and flying fish—of striking with harpoon or grains, and all the various contrivances of sailors to convert the sea into a marine hunting-field. The description of angling for sharks, is a scene of the most animating kind. But the fish have their own chases ; and man, in preying upon them, only follows their example. In the following anecdote, for instance, we have a regular chase, hi which a dolphin plays the part of Nimrod: the object of his pursuit are the flying fish; whose ranges out of the water, bfiit observed, sometimes equal a flight of two hundred! yards— Shortly after observing the cluster of flying fish rise out of the water, we dis- covered two or three dolphins ranging past the ship, in all their beauty, and watched with some anxiety to see one of those aquatic chases of which our friends the Indiamen had been telling us such wonderful stories. We had not long to wait ; for the ship, in her progress through the water, soon put up an- other shoal of these little things, which, as the others had done, took their flight directly to windward. A large dolphin, which had been keeping company with us abreast of the weather gangway at the depth of two or three fathoms, and, as usual, glistening most beautifully in the sun, no sooner detected our poor dear little friends take wing, than he turned his head towards them, and, darting to the surface, leaped from the water with a velocity little short, as it seemed, cf a cannon-ball. But although the impetus with which he shot himself into the air gave him an initial velocity greatly exceeding that of the flying fish, the start which his fated prey had got enabled them to keep ahead of him for a consider- able time.
The length of the dolphin's first spring could not be less than ten yards ; and after he fell, we could see him gliding like lightning through the water for a mo- ment, when he again rose and shot forwards with considerably greater velocity than at first, and, of course, to a still greater distance. In this manner, the mer- ciless pursuer seemed to stride along the sea with fearful rapidity, while his bril- liant coat sparkled and flashed in the sun quite splendidly. As he fell headlong on the water at the end of each huge leap, a series of circles were sent far over ,the still surface, which lay as smooth as a mirror ; for the breeze, although enough to set the royals and top-gallant studding sails asleep, was hardly as yet felt below.
The group of wretched flying fish, thus hotly pursued, at length dropped into the sea; but we were rejoiced to observe that they merely touched the top of the swell, and scarcely sunk in it, at least they instantly set off again in a fresh and even more vigorous flight. It was particularly interesting to observe, that the direction they now took was quite different from the one in which they Had set out, implying but too obviously that they had detected their fierce enemy, who was following them with giant steps along the waves, and now gainmg rapidly upon them. His terrific pace, indeed, was two or three times as swift as theirs—poor little things ! The greedy dolphin, however, was fully as quick-sighted as the flying fish which were trying to elude him; for whenever they varied their flight in the smallest degree, he lost not the tenth part of a second in shaping a new course, so as to cut off the chase, while they, in a manner really not unlike that of.the hare, doubled more than once upon their pursuer. But it was soon too plainly to be seen that the strength and confidence of the flying fish were fast ebbing. Their flights became shorter and shorter, and their course more fluttering and uncertain, while the enormous leaps of the dolphin appeared to grow only more vigorous at each bound. Eventually, indeed, we could see, or fancied we could see, that this skilful sea-sportsman arranged all his springs with such an as- surance of success, that he contrived to fall, at the end of each, just under the very spot on which the exhausted flying fish were about to drop ! Sometimes this catastrophe took place at too great a distance for us to see from the deck exactly what happened; but on our mounting high into the rigging, we maybe said to have been in at the death ; for then we could discover that the unfor- tunate little creatures, one after another, either popped right into the dolphin's jaws as they lighted on the water, or were snapped up instantly afterwards.
" A Man Overboard" is the title of the next. chapter ;. and gives rise to descriptions of the various means at present used in res- cuing any unhappy person so situated,—such as the life-buoy,— and to numerous suggestions as to regulations that ought to be made to prevent the confusion that occurs on these occasions, and which too frequently defeats its object. The second volume almost entirely relates to the details of the domestic government of a ship, and is very curious and instructive. It has also an amusing chapter on sailors pets. But on the whole, this volume is more useful than entertaining to the ordinary reader.
The third volume dwells almost entirely on India; and has some exceedingly interesting descriptions of scenes and events there. The chapter entitled "A Famine in the Land," may be especially pointed out. What a picture is here of the poor Hin- doos burning their famished dead on the coast by thousands !—a scene which Captain HALL took a melancholy interest in watching. Although the funeral piles of the poor Hindoos possess none of the splendour with which the classical imagination delights to paint such things, they are suffi- ciently interesting, and might furnish many hints for such an artist as Turner, whose grand picture of Rizpali watching the dead bodies, has often recalled to any thoughts the scenes of this famine. For many an hour I have stood looking at the groups of natives as they emerged from the grove, bearing along the re- mains of a friend, or of some unknown countryman of their particular caste, found dead by the roadside, or who had expired in the hospital. While some of the party employed themselves in washing the body in the sea, others erected an oblong pile, between one and two feet high, and five or six long, out of short blocks or billets of fire-wood, on which the famine-stricken form being laid; it was covered over with a few additional pieces of fuel. I have no distinct recol- lection of any ceremonies or religious rites being performed by the Hindoos upon this occasion. As soon as the fire was kindled, the natives squatted on the sand, close to the pile, on the windward side, and they generally preserved the most perfect silence. I never observed in any of their countenances the slightest ap- pearance of what we should call emotion ; indeed, the most characteristic point I recollect about the Hindoos is tranquillity under every degree of suffering. On watching with attention the progress of the flames, I remarked that, after a time, the unctuous parts even of the most wasted of these bodies, as they dropped down piecemeal, assisted materially in their own conflagration. Whenever, by the action of the flames, the several limbs fell asunder, the parts were carefully replaced on the fire by the attendants, with a wonderful degree of indifference or of composure ; I hardly know which to call it. I have frequently threaded my way amongst a hundred of these funeral piles blazing away at once, each attended by a party of the natives, consisting of four or five men, but without bearing a single word spoken. The " Pic Nic Party in the Caves of Elephanta" is a pleasant sketch, and affords an agreeable contrast to the foregoing. The last chapter in this volume is upon the Royal Marines. It is a very able delineation of the character of that service ; and we confess that, previously, we were by no means aware either of its eminent utility or the peculiar and amusing features which distin- guish these troops as contrasted with the seaman. We can afford bid one more short extract; which contains a contrast of the sailor and the marine, or the Johnnies and the Jollies-, as.they are commonly called- It is true, both the marines and the seamen pull and haul at certain ropes leading along the quarterdeck ; both assist in scrubbing and washing the decks; both eat salt junk, drink grog, sleep in hammocks, and keep watch at night ; but in almost every other thing they differ. As far as the marines are con- cerned, the sails would never be let fall, or reefed, or rolled up. There is even 1.1 positive Admiralty order against their being made to go aloft; and, accord- ingly, a marine in the rigging is about as ridiculous and helpless an object as a sailor would prove if thrust into a tight well pipe-clayed pair of pantaloons, and barred round the throat with a stiff stock. No marine that I ever saw (except one, and he was a gipsy) could learn to pull an oar really well, nor any seaman to handle a firdock like a soldier. Yet both these duties are often of the highest importance to the respective parties when employed on service in boats, and ought invariably to be taught as far as possible. If the safety of the ship de- pended upon it, no marine could ever swing round the band-lead, without the risk of breaking his sconce—no sailors were ever yet taught to march even mo- derately well in line. In short, without going further, it may be said, that the colour of their clothing, and the manner in which it is put on, do not differ more from one Another than the duties and habits of the marines and sailors. Jack wears a blue jacket, and the jolly wears a red one. Jack would sooner take a round dozen than be seen with a pair of braces across his shoulders ; while the ma- shie, if deprived of his suspensors, would speedily be left sans culotte. A tho- rough-going, barrack-bred, regular-built marine, in a ship of which the ser- geant-major truly loves his art, has, without any very exaggerated metaphor, been compared- to a man who has swallowed a set of fire-irons; the tongs represent- ing the legs, the poker the back-bone, and the shovel the neck and head :
on the other hand, your sailor-man is to be likened to nothing, except one of those delicious figures in the fantocciui show-boxes, where the legs, arms, and head, are flung loosely about to the right and left, no one bone apparently having the slightest organic connexion with any other; the whole being an affair of -strings, and springs, and universal joints !
The marines live, day and night, in the after part of the ship, close to the apartments of the officers; their arm-chest is placed on the quarter-deck; their duties, even in cases where they are most mixed up with those of the seamen, group them well aft. The marines are exclusively planted as sentries at the cabin-doors of the captain and the officers ; and even the look-out-men on the quarters, at night, are taken from the Royal corps. To 'all this it may be added, that the marines furnish the officers with such small service, in the way of at- tendance, as they may require, and generally wait at table.
We shall not give Captain HALL his Nunc dimittas, until he has at least given us three times three.
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