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One man who got away from it all
By Carl Heintze
These days, as Greta Garbo is reputed to have said, "I want to be alone." (I'm not sure Ms. Garbo actually said this. My recollection is she had a line in "Anna Christie" to the effect of "Leave me alone," but, no matter. The sentiment's the same.)
Or as a poet, I forget who, said, "The world is too much with us."
The events of recent weeks make one want to pack up and shove off for someplace where there's no conflict, no people and lots of peace and quiet.
I'd been thinking that myself until I found myself re-reading Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana. That sort of changed my wind.
Dana was a young man in poor health from New England who thought he'd get away from it all and feel better if he went to sea. So he dropped out of Harvard College in 1837 and signed on a small sailing ship bound for California around Cape Horn (there being no Panama Canal in those days) as an ordinary seaman.
He'd never been to sea before, and he soon wished he hadn't gone. He was dreadfully seasick for a week or so and he discovered that being an ordinary seaman was not what you'd call relaxing. Sailing ships in those days depended entirely on winds to get them anywhere.
Every time the wind shifted, the crew on watch had to be sent aloft to change the sails, either taking them in or letting them out. This meant they clung to the ship's spars, their feet on ropes most of the time and manually pulled or tugged the sails to or from the spars, whether it was sunny, rainy, windy or snowing. And one of these conditions happened most of the time.
The food was terrible. Ordinary seamen subsisted on three things: tea laced with molasses, hard ship's biscuits and salted beef, soaked in brine to preserve it. Ships carried livestock for the table, but only officers got fresh meat, coffee and, more especially, rum.
Watches usually were four hours on, when a watch had to be on deck ready to leap aloft and work the sails and four hours off when they got a sort of sleep in the forecastle, a dark and drippy kind of cabin in the bow of the ship.
Moreover, the vessel on which Dana signed was in the hides trade. California in those days didn't have many people, but it had lots of cattle. The Mexicans sold hides and tallow (the rendered fat of the cattle) to ships from the United States.
But, Dana discovered, they didn't load the hides or tallow. They got them to the shore. There the sailors had to double as longshoremen. They carted the hides, stiff as boards, down to their small boats on their heads (they wore special woolen caps to save their scalps), rowed out to the ship and then reloaded the hides aboard.
They also had to beat the hides to get the dust out of them. In someplaces they hurled the hides down cliffs to the beach, occasionallyhaving to be lowered down the cliff sides to free hides that got stuck.
Dana discovered he was in danger of being a permanent member of the fleet of U.S. boats plying the coast of California. The vessels were so short of seamen they tended to try to keep the crews they had even though Dana had a contract that supposedly only required one voyage. He finally more or less bought his way home by hiring an associate to take his place on a ship remaining in California waters and sailed home around the Horn in terrible weather.
In one horrendous storm, the vessel he was on was all but swamped by a huge wave.
In all this experience, literally two years before the mast, Dana saw almost no one except a few sailors, some Hawaiians who were working in California and to whom he became very attached and a few Californians. Both on the passage out and the passage back--trips that took months--his ships met almost no other sailing vessels. Most of the time they were alone on either the Pacific or the Atlantic.
You'll be happy to know the trip vastly improved Dana's health. His book about the voyage made him famous. He finished Harvard, became a lawyer and enjoyed a distinguished career.
But he never went to sea as a seaman again, and he never really wanted to get away from it all either. Whether that's a lesson to us or not, I'm not sure.
The world is a lot smaller place than it used to be--as the events of the past month or so demonstrate. But the ocean is still vast and empty, and it might be refreshing to take a sea voyage and get away from it all. On the other hand, tea, salt beef and ship's biscuit--well, forget it.
Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Los Gatos Weekly-Times. A collection of earlier essays may be found at http://www.doitright.com/Carl/essays. He can be reached at feodorh@juno.com.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
