FullReads

The Yarn of a Yankee Skipper

The Daily Straits Times on the desk before me contained a vivid word picture of the capture of the British steamship Namoa by three hundred Chinese pirates, the guns of Hong Kong almost within sight, and the year of our Lord 1890 just drawing to a close. The report seemed incredible.

I pushed the paper across the table to the grizzled old captain of the Bunker Hill and continued my examination of the accounts of a half-dozen sailors of whom he was intent on getting rid. By the time I had signed the last discharge and affixed the consular seal he had finished the article and put it aside with a contemptuous “Humph!” expressive of his opinion of the valor of the crew and officers. I could see that he was anxious for me to give him my attention while he related one of those long-drawn-out stories of perhaps a like personal experience. I knew the symptoms and sometimes took occasion to escape, if business or inclination made me forego the pleasure. To-day I was in a mood to humor him.

There is always something deliciously refreshing in a sailor’s yarn. I have listened to hundreds in the course of my consular career, and have yet to find one that is dull or prosy. They all bear the imprint of truth, perhaps a trifle overdrawn, but nevertheless sparkling with the salt of the sea and redolent of the romance of strange people and distant lands. In listening, one becomes almost dizzy at the rapidity with which the scene and personnel change. The icebergs and the aurora borealis of the Arctic give place to the torrid waters and the Southern Cross of the South Pacific. A volcanic island, an Arabian desert, a tropical jungle, and the breadth and width of the ocean serve as the theatre, while a Fiji Islander, an Eskimo, and a turbaned Arab are actors in a half-hour’s tale. In interest they rival Verne, Kingston, or Marryat. All they lack is skilled hands to dress them in proper language.

I

THE CAPTAIN’S YARN

The captain helped himself to one of my manilas and began:–

I’ve nothing to say about the fate of the poor fellows on the Namoa, seeing the captain was killed at the first fire, but it looks to me like a case of carelessness which was almost criminal. The idea of allowing three hundred Chinese to come aboard as passengers without searching them for arms. Why! it is an open bid to pirates. Goes to show pretty plain that these seas are not cleared of pirates. Sailing ships nowadays think they can go anywhere without a pound of powder or an old cutlass aboard, just because there is an English or Dutch man-of-war within a hundred miles. I don’t know what we’d have done when I first traded among these islands without a good brass swivel and a stock of percussion-cap muskets.

Let me see; it was in ’58, I was cabin boy on the ship Bangor. Captain Howe, hale old fellow from Maine, had his two little boys aboard. They are merchants now in Boston. I’ve been sailing for them on the Elmira ever since. We were trading along the coast of Borneo. Those were great days for trading in spite of the pirates. That was long before iron steamers sent our good oaken ships to rot in the dockyards of Maine. Why, in those days you could see a half-dozen of our snug little crafts in any port of the world, and I’ve seen more American flags in this very harbor of Singapore than of any other nation. We had come into Singapore with a shipload of ice (no scientific ice factories then), and had gone along the coast of Java and Borneo to load with coffee, rubber, and spices, for a return voyage. We were just off Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, and about loaded, when the captain heard that gold had been discovered somewhere up near the head of the Rejang. The captain was an adventurous old salt, and decided to test the truth of the story; so, taking the long-boat and ten men, he pulled up the Sarawak River to Kuching and got permission of Rajah Brooke to go up the Rejang on a hunting expedition. The Rajah was courteous, but tried to dissuade us from the undertaking by relating that several bands of Dyaks had been out on head-hunting expeditions of late, and that the mouth of the Rejang was infested by Illanum pirates. The captain only laughed, and jokingly told Sir James that if the game proved scarce he might come back and claim the prize money on a boat-load of pirate heads.