Read Ebook: Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature Science and Art Fifth Series No. 107 Vol. III January 16 1886 by Various

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SIGNALLING AT SEA.

The wonderful improvements which have been effected in modes of communication during the latter part of the present century have resulted in bridging over space, and bringing the dwellers on this planet into closer and more constant intercommunion. Submarine cables, telegraphs, and telephones have each contributed their aid towards the realisation of Puck's idea of putting 'a girdle round the earth;' and, as might have been expected, the inventive faculty has been directed, in some measure at least, towards enabling those 'who go down to the sea in ships' to communicate with each other on the ocean highways with such facility as might be found practicable under the ever-varying conditions which obtain at sea.

At no very remote date, the appliances at the command of a shipmaster who might desire to convey a request to a passing vessel consisted mainly of a pair of strong lungs and a speaking-trumpet. A variation was occasionally attempted by the introduction of a plank and a lump of chalk. The writer remembers having seen an English brig in the South Atlantic, during a strong gale, attempting to convey to a stately frigate an intimation that the brig's chronometer was broken, and that, in consequence, her worthy captain was at sea, in more senses than one. The brig, which had been running before the wind, braced up on the port tack, and ran as close under the frigate's stern as was deemed prudent under the circumstances. The captain, clinging to the weather main rigging with one hand, and using the other as a speaking-trumpet, yelled forth a sentence or two which met the fate of most utterances under similar conditions. 'I'--'of'--and 'the' were faithfully re-echoed from the hollow of the frigate's mainsail, but the vital words of the message were borne away on the wings of the gale. A similar attempt failed; and finally it occurred to the skipper to write with chalk upon a tarpaulin hatch-cover the words, 'Chronometer smashed, bound Table Bay.' The tarpaulin with the foregoing legend was exhibited over the side for a few brief seconds, till a fiercer blast than usual whirled it high in air, and then bore it away to leeward. Fortunately, the purport of the writing had been understood on board the frigate, and no time was lost in displaying a black board with the latitude, longitude, and magnetic course for Table Bay inscribed thereon. Now, if the brig had been provided with the International Code of Signals, the trouble and delay involved in the attempts to communicate by hailing or by written signs, would have been obviated; and whilst holding on her course, the hoisting of a few flags would have completed the entire business in less than five minutes. The Code was certainly in existence at the date referred to, but its use was neither general nor compulsory.

Before putting to sea, a 'fleet number' is assigned to each ship, the admiral's ship being No. 1, the remaining numbers being distributed according to the seniority of the respective captains. If the commander-in-chief wishes his squadron to sail in one line, he makes the signal, 'Single column in line ahead,' by means of three 'numeral' flags. This signal, like every other evolutionary signal, is kept flying at the mast-head until the signal officer reports, 'All answered, sir.' The fact that the admiral's signal is seen and understood is signified, in the case of tactical orders, by each ship repeating the flags. When the proper moment arrives for executing the movement, the flagship's signal is swiftly hauled down, the helms are put 'hard over,' the ships swing round in the admiral's wake, and the evolution is complete.

Communication between the vessels of the fleet is effected at night by means of the flashing light worked on the short and long flash principle, invented by Captain Colomb, R.N. There are few sights more suggestive of the advance in modes of communication and the development of the inventive faculty than that of the admiral 'talking' to his captains by means of the flashing lamp in the darkness of the night and far out on the trackless ocean. It may be necessary during the night to alter the course of the squadron. If the course indicated at sunset be due north, and it be required to alter the direction to west, all lights on board the flagship, except the flashing light, are carefully obscured, and the brilliant rays of a solitary lamp leap through the darkness conveying the order, 'Alter course to west.'

Strenuous efforts have been made by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, the Board of Trade, and the Committee of Lloyd's Registry to instruct the officers of the mercantile marine in the use of the International Code. The Admiralty has ordered that all men belonging to the Royal Naval Reserve shall receive instruction in its use; and all candidates for officers' certificates of competency are required by the Board of Trade to pass a satisfactory examination in signalling. Notwithstanding these regulations, there is good reason for believing that many officers in the merchant service are not so well acquainted with the working of the Code as they ought to be. Blunders are frequently committed, either in selecting the wrong signal or confusing the flags, which lead to serious inconvenience, not to say danger. A very superficial acquaintance with the Signal Book led the captain of an English steamer to neglect the 'vocabulary' part of the Code, and have recourse to the singular expedient of using the flags as a medium for spelling his communication. As read on board the New York liner to which the signal was directed, it took the cabalistic form of 'MCHDRGDWNTW.' As no flags denoting the vowels are contained in the Code, the difficulties of spelling were obviously increased; and it was only by the ingenuity of a passenger on board the liner that a translation was effected in the shape of, 'Machinery deranged; want tow.' On another occasion, the master of a timber-laden ship bound from Quebec to Liverpool had been prevented by foggy weather from taking solar observations for the purpose of verifying his position, and having sighted a steamer bound to the westward, he hoisted the prescribed signal, asking the steamer to indicate the latitude and longitude at the time of meeting. Either through carelessness in manipulating the flags or from an imperfect acquaintance with the Code, a position was signalled which located the ship in the immediate vicinity of Mont Blanc!

Upwards of thirty signal stations have been established at various points on the coasts of the British Isles, where messages may be transmitted from passing vessels by means of the International Code; and there are twenty stations in various parts of the world, as widely apart as Aden, Ascension, Malta, St Helena, the Cape of Good Hope, and Skagen in Denmark, where communication may be effected by the same means. Many of these stations have direct telegraphic connection with London, so that shipowners may be kept acquainted with the movements of their vessels, and may also transmit instructions for the guidance of their captains. It is matter for wonder and regret, notwithstanding the existence of a carefully elaborated system of signals and a world-wide network of shore stations, that the use of the Signal Code is not in any sense compulsory on the part of shipowners. Considering the innumerable advantages which a speedy means of communication must afford to all concerned, it is with surprise that one learns, from a note prefixed to the official Maritime Directory for the past year, that 'cases have been reported in which officers at the signal stations have hoisted the International Code Signals warning ships of danger, and the ships have been afterwards lost, from the inability of the masters to read the signals.' This is a state of affairs which ought not to be permitted to continue in the interests of the men whose lives are at stake. Another and still more serious defect in a system which is admirable in many respects, is the total absence from the Code of any method of signalling at night. As we have seen, Her Majesty's ships are provided with appliances for this purpose which are skilfully adapted to the end in view; but merchant vessels are absolutely without the power of communicating after darkness sets in. It is true that by private arrangement with the shore stations on several parts of the coast, the steamers belonging to the great Companies may by the use of certain lights indicate their names and the Company to which they belong; but this cannot, save in the most elementary sense, be regarded as a satisfactory method of communication. It is probable that the night signals in use in the Royal Navy are too complicated in character to permit of their being learned and worked efficiently without much more study and practice than can reasonably be expected from the master of a merchant vessel. Still, it ought to be within the power of science to suggest some plan for enabling a vessel to signal to ship or shore during the hours when the perils of the sea are rendered more terrible by darkness.

In these days, when our ocean highways and harbours are crowded with shipping, a collision between two of our large iron or steel vessels, which might happen at any time, would send one of them to the bottom in a few minutes. Two vessels, each going at a speed of twenty miles an hour, and sighting one another at two miles off, with this joint speed of forty miles an hour, would meet in about three minutes. Hence the importance of a ready and efficient method of signalling.

In foggy weather, when the light would be ineffective, two steam whistles can be shunted into action by the reflector handle, one giving off a succession of short shrill notes, the other a succession of deep long notes, according as the helm is to starboard or port. This invention has been awarded a medal at three Exhibitions, including the Inventories; while Admiral Bedford Pim, one of the nautical jurors, has styled it an 'excellent course indicator.'

IN ALL SHADES.

It was a brilliant, cloudless, tropical day at Agualta Estate, Trinidad; and the cocoa-nut palms in front of the pretty, picturesque, low-roofed bungalow were waving gracefully in the light sea-breeze that blew fresh across the open cane-pieces from the distant horizon of the broad Atlantic. Most days, indeed, except during the rainy season, were brilliant enough in all conscience at beautiful Agualta: the sun blazed all day long in a uniform hazy-white sky, not blue, to be sure, as in a northern climate, but bluish and cloudless; and the sea shone below hazy-white, in the dim background, beyond the waving palm-trees, and the broad-leaved bananas, and the long stretch of bright-green cane-pieces that sloped down in endless succession towards the beach and the breakers. Agualta House itself was perched, West India fashion, on the topmost summit of a tall and lonely rocky peak, a projecting spur or shoulder from the main mass of the Trinidad mountains. They chose the very highest and most beautiful situations they could find for their houses, those old matter-of-fact West Indian planters, not so much out of a taste for scenery--for their mental horizon was for the most part bounded by rum and sugar--but because a hilltop was coolest and breeziest, and coolness is the one great practical desideratum in a West Indian residence. Still, the houses that they built on these airy heights incidentally enjoyed the most exquisite prospects; and Agualta itself was no exception to the general rule in this matter. From the front piazza you looked down upon a green ravine, crowded with tree-ferns and other graceful tropical vegetation; on either side, rocky peaks broke the middle distance with their jagged tors and precipitous needles; while far away beyond the cane-grown plain that nestled snugly in the hollow below, the sky-line of the Atlantic bounded the view, with a dozen sun-smit rocky islets basking like great floating whales upon the gray horizon. No lovelier view in the whole of luxuriant beautiful Trinidad than that from the creeper-covered front piazza of the white bungalow of old Agualta.

Through the midst of the ravine, the little river from which the estate took its Spanish name--curiously corrupted upon negro lips into the form of Wagwater--tumbled in white sheets of dashing foam between the green foliage 'in cataract after cataract to the sea.' Here and there, the overarching clumps of feathery bamboo hid its course for a hundred yards or so, as seen from the piazza; but every now and again it gleamed forth, white and conspicuous once more, as it tumbled headlong down its steep course over some rocky barrier. You could trace it throughout like a long line of light among all the tangled, glossy, dark-green foliage of that wild and overgrown tropical gully.

The Honourable James Hawthorn, owner of Agualta, was sitting out in a cane armchair, under the broad shadow of the great mango-tree on the grassy terrace in front of the piazza. A venerable gray-haired, gray-bearded man, with a calm, clear-cut, resolute face, the very counterpart of his son Edward's, only grown some thirty years older, and sterner too, and more unbending.

'Mr Dupuy's coming round this morning, Mary,' Mr Hawthorn said to the placid, gentle, old lady in the companion-chair beside him. 'He wants to look at some oxen I'm going to get rid of, and he thinks, perhaps, he'd like to buy them.'

'Mr Dupuy!' Mrs Hawthorn answered, with a slight shudder of displeasure as she spoke. 'I really wish he wasn't coming. I can't bear that man, somehow. He always seems to me the worst embodiment of the bad old days that are dead and gone, Jamie.'

The old gentleman hummed an air to himself reflectively. 'We mustn't be too hard upon him, my dear,' he said after a moment's pause, in a tone of perfect resignation. 'They were brought up in a terrible school, those old-time slavery Trinidad folk, and they can't help bearing the impress of a bad system upon them to the very last moment of their existence. I think so meanly of them for their pride and intolerance, that I take care not to imitate it. You remember what Shelley says: "Let scorn be not repaid with scorn." That's how I always feel, Mary, towards Mr Dupuy and all his fellows.'

Mrs Hawthorn bit her lip as she answered slowly: 'All the same, Jamie, I wish he wasn't coming here this morning; and this the English mail-day too! We shall get our letter from Edward by-and-by, you know, dear. I hate to have these people coming breaking in upon us the very day we want to be at home by ourselves, to have a quiet hour alone with our dear boy over in England.'

'Here they come, at anyrate, Mary,' the old gentleman said, pointing with his hand down the steep ravine to where a couple of men on mountain ponies were slowly toiling up the long zigzag path that climbed the shoulder. 'Here they come, Theodore Dupuy himself, and that young Tom Dupuy as well, behind him. There's one comfort, at anyrate, in the position of Agualta--you can never possibly be taken by surprise; you can always see your visitors coming half an hour before they get here.--Run in, dear, and see about having enough for lunch, will you, for Tom Dupuy's sure to stop until he's had a glass of our old Madeira.'

'I dislike Tom Dupuy, I think, even worse than his old uncle, Jamie,' the bland old lady answered softly in her pleasant voice, exactly as if she was saying that she loved him dearly. 'He's a horrid young man, so selfish and narrow-minded; and I hope you won't ever ask him again to come to Agualta. I can hardly even manage to be decently polite to him.'

The two strangers slowly wound their way up the interminable zigzags that led along the steep shoulders of the Agualta peak, and emerged at last from under the shadow of the green mango grove close beside the grassy terrace in front of the piazza. The elder of the two, Nora's father, was a jovial, round-faced, close-shaven man, with a copious growth of flowing white hair, that fell in long patriarchal locks around his heavy neck and shoulders; a full-blooded, easy-going, proud face to look at, yet not without a certain touch of gentlemanly culture and old-fashioned courtesy. The younger man, Tom Dupuy, his nephew, looked exactly what he was--a born boor, awkward in gait and lubberly in feature, with a heavy hanging lower jaw, and a pair of sleepy boiled fish eyes, that stared vacantly out in sheepish wonder upon a hopelessly dull and blank creation.

Mr Hawthorn moved courteously to the gate to meet them. 'It's a long pull and a steep pull up the hill, Mr Dupuy,' he said as he shook hands with him. 'Let me take your pony round to the stables.--Here, Jo!' to a negro boy who stood showing his white teeth beside the gateway; 'put up Mr Dupuy's horse, do you hear, my lad, and Mr Tom's too, will you?--How are you, Mr Tom? So you've come over with your uncle as well, to see this stock I want to sell, have you?'

The elder Dupuy bowed politely as Mr Hawthorn held out his hand, and took it with something of the dignified old West Indian courtesy; he had been to school at Winchester forty years before, and the remote result of that half-forgotten old English training was still plainly visible even now in a certain outer urbanity and suavity of demeanour. But young Tom held out his hand awkwardly like a born boor, and dropped it again snappishly as soon as Mr Hawthorn had taken it, merely answering, in a slow drawling West Indian voice, partly caught from his own negro servants: 'Yes, I've come over to see the stock; we want some oxen. Cane's good this season; we shall have a capital cutting.'

'Is the English mail in?' Mr Hawthorn asked anxiously, as they took their seats in the piazza to rest themselves for a while after their ride, before proceeding to active business. That one solitary fortnightly channel of communication with the outer world assumes an importance in the eyes of remote colonists which can hardly even be comprehended by our bustling, stay-at-home English people.

'It is,' Mr Dupuy replied, taking the proffered glass of Madeira from his host as he answered. Old-fashioned wine-drinking hospitality still prevails largely in the West Indies. 'I got my letters just as I was starting. Yours will be here before long, I don't doubt, Mr Hawthorn. I had news, important news in my budget this morning. My daughter, sir, my daughter Nora, who has been completing her education in England, is coming out to Trinidad by the next steamer.'

'You must be delighted at the prospect of seeing her,' Mr Hawthorn answered with a slight sigh. 'I only wish I were going as soon to see my dear boy Edward.'

Mr Dupuy's lip curled faintly as he replied in a careless manner: 'Ah, yes, to be sure. Your boy's in England, Mr Hawthorn, isn't he? If I recollect right, you sent him to Cambridge.--Ah, yes, I thought so, to Cambridge. A very excellent thing for you to do with him. If you take my advice, my dear sir, you'll let him stop in the old country--a much better place for him in every way, than this island.'

'I mean to,' Mr Hawthorn answered in a low voice. 'God forbid that I should ever be a party to bringing him out here to Trinidad.'

'Oh, certainly not--certainly not. I quite agree with you. Far better for him to stop where he is, and take his chance of making a living for himself in England. Not that he can be at any loss in that matter either. You must be in a position to make him very comfortable too, Mr Hawthorn! Fine estate, Agualta, and turns out a capital brand of rum and sugar.'

'Best vacuum-pan and centrifugal in the whole island,' Tom Dupuy put in parenthetically. 'Turned out four hundred and thirty-four hogsheads of sugar and three hundred and ninety puncheons of rum last season--largest yield of any estate in the Windward Islands except Mount Arlington. You don't catch me out of it in any matter where sugar's in question, I can tell you.'

'But my daughter, Mr Hawthorn,' the elder Dupuy went on, smiling, and sipping his Madeira in a leisurely fashion--'my daughter means to come out to join me by the next steamer; and my nephew Tom and I are naturally looking forward to her approaching arrival with the greatest anxiety. A young lady in Miss Dupuy's position, I need hardly say to you, who has been finishing her education at a good school in England, comes out to Trinidad under exceptionally favourable circumstances. She will have much here to interest her in society, and we hope she will enjoy herself and make herself happy.'

'For my part,' Tom Dupuy put in brusquely, 'I don't hold at all with this sending young women from Trinidad across the water to get educated in England--not a bit of it. What's the good of it?--that's what I always want to know--what's the good of it? What do they pick up there, I should like to hear, except a lot of trumpery fal-lal, that turns their heads, and fills them brimful of all sorts of romantic topsy-turvy notions? I've never been to England myself, thank goodness, and what's more, I don't ever want to go, that's certain. But I've known lots of fellows that have been, and have spent no end of a heap of money over their education too, at one place or another--I don't even know the names of 'em--and when they've come back, so far as I could see, they've never known a bit more about rum or sugar than other fellows that had never set foot for a single minute outside the island--no, nor for that matter, not so much either. Of course, it's all very well for a person in your son's position, Mr Hawthorn; that's quite another matter. He's gone to England, and he's going to stay there. If I were he, I should do as he does. But what on earth can be the use of sending a girl in my cousin Nora's station in life over to England, just on purpose to set her against her own flesh and blood and her own people? Why, it really passes my comprehension.'

Mr Dupuy's forehead puckered slightly as Tom spoke, and the corners of his mouth twitched ominously; but he answered in a tone of affected nonchalance: 'It's a pity, Mr Hawthorn, that my nephew Tom should take this unfavourable view of an English education, because, you see, it's our intention, as soon as my daughter Miss Dupuy arrives from England, to arrange a marriage at a very early date between himself and his cousin Nora. Pimento Valley, as you know, is entailed in the male line to my nephew Tom; and Orange Grove is in my own disposal, to leave, of course, to my only daughter. But Mr Tom Dupuy and I both think it would be a great pity that the family estates should be divided, and should in part pass out of the family; so we've arranged between us that Mr Tom is to marry my daughter Nora, and that Orange Grove and Pimento Valley are to pass together to them and to their children's children.'

'An excellent arrangement,' Mr Hawthorn put in, with a slight smile. 'But suppose--just for argument's sake--that Miss Dupuy were not to fall in with it?'

Mr Dupuy's brow clouded over still more evidently. 'Not to fall in with it!' he cried excitedly, tossing off the remainder of his Madeira--'not to fall in with it!--Why, Mr Hawthorn, what do you mean, sir? Of course, if her father bids her, she'll fall in with it immediately. If she doesn't--why, then, sir, I'll just simply have to make her. She shall marry Tom Dupuy the minute I order her to. She should marry a one-eyed man with a wooden leg if her father commanded it. She shall do whatever I tell her. I'll stand no refusing and shilly-shallying. Let me tell you, sir, if there's a vice that I hate and detest, it's the vice of obstinacy. But I'll stand no obstinacy.'

'No obstinacy in those about you,' Mr Hawthorn put in suggestively.

'No, sir, no--not in those about me. Other people, of course, I can't be answerable for, though I'd like to flog every obstinate fellow I come across, just to cure him of his confounded temper. O no, sir; I can't endure obstinacy--in man or beast, I can't endure it.'

'So it would seem,' Mr Hawthorn replied drily. 'I hope sincerely, Miss Dupuy will find the choice you have made for her a suitable and satisfactory one.'

'Suitable, sir! Why, of course it's suitable; and as to satisfactory, well, if I say she's got to take him, she'll have to be satisfied with him, willy-nilly.'

'But she won't!' Tom Dupuy interrupted sullenly, flicking his boot with his short riding-whip in a vicious fashion. 'She won't, you may take my word for it, Uncle Theodore. I can't imagine why it is; but these young women who've been educated in England, they'll never be satisfied with a planter for a husband. They think a gentleman and a son of gentlemen for fifty generations isn't a good enough match for such fine ladies as themselves; and they go running off after some of these red-coated military fellows down in the garrison over yonder, many of whom, to my certain knowledge, Mr Hawthorn, are nothing more than the sons of tradesmen across there in England. I'll bet you a sovereign, Uncle Theodore, that Nora'll refuse to so much as look at the heir of Pimento Valley, the minute she sees him.'

'But why do you think so, Mr Tom,' their host put in, 'before the young lady has even landed on the island?'

'Indeed,' Mr Hawthorn answered innocently--no other alternative phrase committing him, as he thought, to so small an opinion on the merits of the question.--'But do you know, Mr Tom, I don't believe any person of the Dupuy blood is very likely to take up with these strange modern English heresies that so much surprise you.'

'Quite true, sir,' Mr Dupuy the elder answered with prompt self-satisfaction, mistaking his host's delicate tone of covert satire for the voice of hearty concurrence and full approval. 'You're quite right there, Mr Hawthorn, I'm certain. No born Dupuy of Orange Grove would ever be taken in by any of that silly clap-trap humanitarian rubbish. No foolish Exeter Hall nonsense pertains to the fighting Dupuys, sir, I can assure you--root and branch, not a single ounce of it. It isn't in them, Mr Hawthorn--it isn't in them.'

'So I think,' Mr Hawthorn answered quietly. 'I quite agree with you--it isn't in them.'

As he spoke, a negro servant, neatly dressed in a cool white linen livery, entered the piazza with a small budget of letters on an old-fashioned Spanish silver salver. Mr Hawthorn took them up eagerly. 'The English mail!' he said with an apologetic look towards his two guests. 'You'll excuse my just glancing through them, Mr Dupuy, won't you? I can never rest, the moment the mail's in, until I know that my dear boy in England is still really well and happy.'

Mr Dupuy nodded assent with a condescending smile; and the master of Agualta broke open his son's envelope with a little eager hasty flutter. He ran his eye hurriedly down the first page; and then, with a sudden cry, he laid down the letter rapidly on the table, and called out aloud: 'Mary, Mary!'

Mrs Hawthorn came out at once from the little boudoir behind the piazza, whose cool Venetian blinds gave directly upon the part where they were sitting.

'Mary, Mary!' Mr Hawthorn cried, utterly regardless of his two visitors' presence, 'what on earth do you think has happened? Edward's coming out to us--coming out immediately. Oh, my poor boy, my poor boy, this is too unexpected! He's coming out to us at once, at once, without a single moment's warning!'

Mrs Hawthorn took up the letter and read it through hastily with a woman's quickness; then she laid it down again, and looked blankly at her trembling husband in evident distress; but neither of them said a single word to one another.

The elder Dupuy was the first to break the ominous silence. 'Not by the next steamer, I suppose?' he inquired curiously.

Mr Hawthorn nodded in reply. 'Yes, yes; by the next steamer.'

As he spoke, Tom Dupuy glanced at his uncle with a meaning glance, and then went on stolidly as ever: 'How about these cattle, though, Mr Hawthorn?'

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