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"A Medium in Which I Seek Relief": Manuscripts of American Sailors 1919-1940

"They employ themselves in reading, talking, smoking, and mending their clothes." - Richard Henry Dana, on how sailors use their day off.

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This page is referenced by:

Cecil Northrop "Two Months Before the Mast" pages 12-19
PASSING THROUGH THE CANAL
Nov. 25 1919
I found it very interesting going through the Canal. Just as you enter the Bay of Colon, when coming from the north as we did, the first thing that you see is what at first you take to be some low-lying clouds; but as you get closer you find they are large mountains which reach right into the clouds. They are very rugged, and from a distance a dark green.

As we came up the bay I got my first glimpse of Colon which is the entrance of the Canal. Everything is of the very lightest green, even the water, and all the houses are of white stucco with red roofs, which gives the place the look of a toy village, such as you see in department stores around Christmas. Then, from somewhere, a little train comes along and that completes the idea of the toy town. There is little life or movement around .It is also very hot, and all the sounds (if there were any) were as if stifled by the heat.

We then locked into the white locks, where everything is as white as possible except for the houses which have red roofs. Most if not all the negroes along the canal talked Spanish, and as their voices are soft it blended beautifully with the surroundings (of course they all talked English too).

We went through three locks before we got to the lake. The water comes into the lock so fast that you can feel yourself rising, and there is sure some amount of water needed to fill them. The lake is not very pretty until you near the Pacific side and then there are hundreds of hills, with tropical growth, palm trees and coconuts, all very dense, which from a few hundred feet away gives the mountains, or small hills, the look of a wonderful lawn. From the little I saw of the place, I would very much like to spend a few months there and give it all the "once over.” Of course I had to work like the devil going through, as we were discharging a few boxes at Balboa, and as there was no one except three of us on the day watch, we had to do it; although I believe that this is the last time we will have to, as it is very unusual. Even the First Mate gave us a hand to swing the boxes out. We took some "niggers" aboard at Colon just to take us through the Canal - but even so they have very little brains, and you have to tell them what to do. They broke one line on account of holding on too long, and of course when it went, the Second Mate gave the white men hell, and you could bet that I was glad that I had nothing to do with it, because they would have all passed the buck to the "ordinary." I was on the other side tending to the other rope which I watched carefully and so nothing broke. By the way, these large ropes cost a lot of money, three dollars per foot for rope hawsers, and steel ones even more. We were pulled through the Canal by "electric mules"; electric tractors working on cogs which give them great pulling power. It took eight hours to go through the Canal.

The Second Mate is the nicest of all the crowd amidships; he sometimes talks as if you (or he) were human. He told me that he was three years chief of police at the Canal, and spent a month or so in the mountains after a murderer. Altogether he is very nice, asks for a match or says that it is hot, or some little remark that shows that he knows you are there.

We stopped at Balboa for Oil, and as it was too late to leave, we stayed there all night, which gave me a chance to look at Panama. Balboa is the place where the Spanish navigator, Balboa first saw the Pacific Ocean Sept. 25 1513, quite a while ago, by the way. I got that date from the book I have been reading on the Canal. They gave us no leave, but there being no reason to stay on board, I and nearly all the crew went ashore. I took the bus to Panama City, as Balboa is only the coaling station. All the houses around there have been built by the Government, and look American.

Panama is a real Spanish town, very narrow streets with porches hanging right over the sidewalks which are made of colored tile. Most of the houses are, or were once white, but now very dirty looking. The people (men) look like regular villains, very dark, with a lot of beard, and long side-burns, and snappy eyes. Nearly everybody wore pure white clothes.

In the middle of the town there is an old Catholic church, with coconut trees growing in the square and ferns growing at the corners. The stores are kept mostly by Chinamen, of which there are a great number. There being so many American soldiers there, and the building of the Canal, nearly everybody speaks a little English. All the "niggers" come from the Bahamas Islands. I do not care much for them as they have an English accent, which seems out of place in a negro.

I went into the Metropole Hotel, first class down here, but about as good as the Ebbitt House in Washington. The desk is on one side of the room, and the bar on the other. I saw some officers drinking absinthe, a kind of green looking water. There is a great deal of drinking in Panama. Bar rooms on every corner, although I never saw anyone drunk about the streets. Many houses of ill fame, and lots of women walking about the streets. You have no trouble with anyone if you just say the word "broke". All the women are very ugly, look a cross between a nigger and a squaw. Of course - I cannot judge a Spanish town by Panama, because there are hundreds of Americans there, a regular summer resort.

When leaving Balboa in the morning, we were called at four forty five A.M. (all hands). Of course, getting up at this time in the morning we got an hour's overtime. But it seems to me with the eighteen "niggers" that we had taken on the night before, to work the cargo, and paint, going down the West Coast, that it was not necessary to call out everybody, even the watch below.

Just outside the harbor of Balboa on our starboard as we left, is one of the most beautiful islands: It is one big mountain, in the shape of a horse-shoe facing south, and right in the middle is a little village, with colored houses, a nice cute little harbor and a beautiful beach. In some places along the edge of the island it is very rocky, and the sea is always sending up spray about a hundred feet high. It is only about two miles from the mainland and I was surprised because I should think it being that close, it would have been much better to have the town in Panama. It might have been a wealthy summer resort. Anyway it was very beautiful.
One day out from Balboa, Nov. 27.
As you see, I am now on the Pacific, and there is sure some differences between the Atlantic and this one. There is no swell, even when the wind is blowing, as there always is on the Atlantic. It reminds me of the Great Lakes, just as smooth as glass. When the wind does blow, as it is doing now, it just makes the sea choppy, but does not make the waves run high, as it would on the Atlantic if the wind had been blowing for the same length of time.

Also the water is a different color, a kind of green. I do not consider it beautiful. There seem to be more fish and queer things on this side. Yesterday we saw a school of porpoises jumping right out of the water and going around the ship as if it were standing still. They look like they are having a bully time. There are also a lot of flying fish. The sailors say there are quite a few sharks, but as we go down the coast, they get less and less, as the water is much cooler.

We are now headed for Payta, Peru, about nine hundred miles from Panama and expect to get there Friday morning; that is, if the weather holds. They say, on the Pacific, headwinds, and storms come up very suddenly. All ships going down the West Coast with cargo for Peru have to call at Payta to be fumigated to prevent the carrying of plague. They say plague comes from rats. Fleas from rats give the disease to men. The fumigating is done with sulphur, by passing large pipes into the hold and the forecastle, and every place on the ship. This takes about two hours. From there we go back to Talara, distance about forty miles, to discharge a cargo of tin plate, and get a deckload of oil in cans, from Talara oil wells.

I find the work heavy, and am very tired by the end of the day. The Bos'n says that he has never seen a ship in this disorderly condition. Everything that you want is either at the bottom of a coil of wire rope or behind a pile of boxes. The trouble is that the Company has taken every nook and corner for cargo and left nothing for storing ships gear. We have had to replace all the runners and nearly all the ropes. So you can imagine the work there is. If these things are not done the cargo could not be taken out. As I said before, I have little or no time to study. But of course all the time I am learning something new in the line of my work, which makes things easier as I go along. If this ship were in good trim, the work would not be half so heavy, but as it is, it keeps me on the job all the time. There are only four men, myself and the three ABs who do all this work, when there is enough work for twenty. Most of the officers have been in the Navy, and there, of course, they have but to say "take down the masts" and they put two hundred men on the job which makes it a cinch. But you can't get four men to do fifteen men’s work in the same time, although that seems to be the idea. So, I take my cue from the other men and don't break my neck over anything. The captain complains of the heat, but don't mind sending a man to paint the bolts on the engine room skylight. So far I have not minded the heat, though most of the men suffer a good deal even when not working. I just glory in it as long as I am not working.

I keep looking at the log, and reading the thousands of miles that I am from home and it sometimes scares me. It is very hard to realize the distance I am away, until I go ashore and then I sure do feel as if I am at the ends of the earth. I sure have one thing to be thankful for - and is that I am not on a sailing ship. The men say that the forecastle on a sailing ship is nearly always full of water, and that all hands are sometimes called out in the middle of the night to shorten sail, and by the time you are through it is your watch again, and after that you go to bed in wet clothes with no means of drying them. Also it is watch and watch. That is, four hours on and four off. The food nearly always is terrible, being unable to get fresh meat, on account of the time it takes to get to port. All the hardest work is in the worst weather.

While the training is very good, sailing ships are fast going out of commission, and the stuff you learn is mostly useless on board steamers. But, of course, a sailing ship is a tender spot in the heart of a sailor and it is very seldom that they will admit anything discrediting them.

“Turned to,” this morning at six thirty which gives us a half hour to dress and get a sip of coffee, then wash down which takes fully an hour, after which we breakfast. Then turn to again at nine. We are painting the old tub from one end to the other. We have finished all the washing and so from now on it will not be so disagreeable. The eighteen "niggers" that we took on at Balboa will help a lot and we will only have the hard parts such as the bow and the quarter, masts and booms, and the sampson posts. I painted the ball of the mainmast black. I tell you it was some job! if you are not used to it. You have to sit on a very small block and to get to it I had to go up some ropes which held the wireless, I held even on to everything I could and hated to let go anything even to take the paint brush, but the Bos'n was up there with me to hand the paint up when I was seated and he said “remember that when aloft one hand belongs to the company and the other to you” - so grab ahold of this brush and “slap it on”, which, of course I did, but felt that I would be more likely smearing up the deck by falling off. Every time a piece of cargo is taken out I could feel the terrible shaking. I thought the mast would come down. It was a very dirty job as the smoke makes the mainmast as black as tar. So you can imagine the condition I was in after hugging it for about an hour.

The Bos'n is a mighty nice old fellow; has a lot of funny sayings, and when I had once gone aloft he said “now if you fall down, leave your paint up there for the next man, and try not to fall, as I want to paint the decks tomorrow and they are all nice and clean." But you can bet there is no chance of my falling. I hold on so tight that my hands ache.

I nearly got into trouble the other day through a black cat. Being in the hot weather down here, we, of course, all sleep out in hammocks. For the last three nights I have hardly had any sleep on account of this cat that yelled the night through. So when I could not stand it any longer I found a piece of winch handle, made it fast around its neck and quietly threw it overboard for a swim. I never heard anything about it until the next day, when the men began to ask what had become of the cat. I was afraid that it was going to get "hot" for me, as I found out the cat had been a mascot. I was not sure whether I had been seen, as you know the saying that "murder will out". Then the big fellow spoke up and said: "You can throw any kind of cat over-board" so I thought I had at least one supporter, when he spoke again and finished "but you must never throw a Black cat over. If you do, you are sure to have bad luck!” I’m still alive however.

So far I have had no trouble with the crew. I am a little surprised at the type of men we have here. I expected to find the very lowest of the low, but in spite of their being thrown on the world from the time they were mere boys, they were a fine lot all things considered. Raised with the very dregs of humanity from their earliest days, on the streets, knocking about in various countries, biffed around as professional "bums" (some of them told me that they lived whole winters by not doing a bit of work, just panhandling, and cleaning up about three dollars a day out of it) flat broke in strange lands without a nickel, making their living by every hook and crook--- and yet there were a lot of things about them you could not help liking. They are all big men, none of them weighing less than one hundred and eighty pounds, a lot over that. And I find them with very good manners, wonderfully clean as to their bodies, very gentle to every kind of animal, and the very best of friends when sober. I would rather have them friends than enemies for when they once make up their minds to do anything, nothing will stop them. They will stand by you to the very last in any kind of trouble. Of course their language is terrible, according to us, but they don't mean half of what they say, it being just a form of speech.

There are a lot of “beachcombers” in these towns down here, and as soon as the crew strike the town they are waiting for them, looking for their own country-men, finding in these the easiest "touch". For there is nothing more welcome to see in a foreign country where you do not speak the "lingo" than a real human. They do not ask for money but steer them to the bar for which they are working, get them "stewed to the gills" and then leave first taking anything of value the man may have. I have met a few of these men, and every time found them most interesting. Sometimes they are college men, civil engineers, and men from every walk of life. I have met them where there could be no reason to lie. They ask questions about anything which I did not think they knew anything about. I have talked to them for hours and enjoyed every minute of it. When I leave them I do it with regret and sorrow; for, after all, they are human derelicts cast upon the lonesome beach, and I always feel that it is some fault in the launching which accounts for these people being wrecks upon the world. I feel sorry as they are very miserable.

It is getting late now so I will go below and play cards for a while before going to bed. It is peculiar that not once have these men played for money. Their recreation usually takes the form of reading or sometimes trying to beat each other at tying knots, at which of course, I am in on as I can pick up all kinds of information which helps through the day. They take the greatest pains to show me how they are made.