Evening Star Newspaper, October 26, 1930, Page 94

12 SCUM OF THE SEA —The Story ¢ They Were a Miserable Lot, the Crew of the Ocean Queen, but Even Scum May Rise to the Heights of Glory—In Them Was the Spark of Heroism Brought to Light in the Thick of a Lashing Storm When Death Rode at the Helm and the Wind and Sea T hundered Doom. HE Ocean Queen was an unlucky ship from the start. At her launching the daughter of the president of the company that had built her swung at her stem the bottle of champagne suspended from a wide blue ribbon and it went in a jerking arc that sent the stout bottom of the container glancing against the prow. It failed to break. The girl was obliged to take the bottle by its neck and smash it. More of the sparkling wine splashed upon her new gown —ruining it—than on the Ocean Queen, and tears of mortification ran over her lashes. The Ocean Queen had been christened with tears and, kin to brine though they might be, they made the wiseacres shake their heads when they talked it over later. On her initial trip, narrowly missing the bulk of an iceberg in the “blink,” she smashed her rudder on a submerged buttress of the mass and came limping into port. Next she ran down a Gloucester fishing schooner. There were men lost, a dispute about fog signals and an official inquiry. The third trip she crossed the path of a hurricane off Cuba, sprung her foresail yard and the mizzenmast shifted in its step. By this time she was known as the Hoodoo. She was sold to a concern on the Pacific Coast. Fog and current set her ashore not far from Point Conception, Calif. When the tug got her off at high tide she was strained so badly that she had to go int> dry dock. TWEN'I‘Y miles out from Iquique, Chile, the lookout, blinded with horizontal spume on a dark and dirty night, failed to sece a nearly sub- merged mass of wreckage until she smashed into it. Salvaged, repaired and once more out- fitled, the Ocean Queen set out for Sydney with & mixed cargo, prepared to bring back another in exchange, Submarine quakes had raised an uncharted reef on the line west of the Galapagos, and she put back to a South American port. There was plague in the port, though the authorities had not officially recognized that fact. ‘There were seven men down, besides the first mate, when they crossed the path of the typhoon—and the cargo shifted. The Ocean Queen went into quarantine at Sydney with her skipper dying, the second mate trying to carry on with the terror-stricken remnant of the crew. The sick were taken to hospitals, the dead buried. Back in Seattle the owners were jammed in a shipping slump, and she lay at the Sydney mooring with a watchman aboard who took out his unpaid wages in hope and the meager credit he could obtain at the store. The Ocean Queen was brought in as a doubtful asset of the bank- rupt company, her record against her. The acquiring concern was prosperous, well capital- ized, well managed. They sent over Capt. Hol- liday—“Four Bells” Holliday, nicknamed be- cause of his habit of turning out all hands at untimely hours whenever he thought he could get an extra half knot out of his vessel by bracing yards. He had instructions to hire a crew and bring :: Ocean Queen back to the port of San Pran- 0. The old hands had been sent home—those who survived—by consular charity, and Holliday had a hard time of it getting officers and men. ‘The name, the Hoodoo, had been revived and was not forgotten. He was more fortunate with his mates. Sullivan was a good man, an effi- clent navigator. The second, Brookes, held a masler's papers, and his one fault was rum. ;hlel:: would be little chance of tippling aboard. olliday would see to that, sterm, disciplinarian that he was. g The crew was riffraf, whart sweepings and dock scourings, most of them; rapscallions who bore the earmarks of prison lodgment; drunkards; men worn out and diseased; tht‘e sorry best the boarding-house keepers could supply, shipped drunken on the “Hoodoo” ship they would have avoided: American, British, Scandinavian, Slavic, Finnish, Negro, Malayan, hybrids of two hemispheres, hoboes of the sea. * Holliday and Sullivan surveyed them critically as t;'x;y picked watches. “That man Wilson, he's an A. B. all ri it. Been sick ashore with the flu, but he's fit n“tf': Got a wife an’ kids in the States. New kid 1y this time, he says. Crazy to git back.” “I'll take him,” said the skipper. “I'll take the Negro.” Husky, and he's L chantcy man. The one with the gray whiskel} Andrews )e's been shle in Bis Any. The lasefyn next to him is a bad egg. I'll lay half of ’‘em are wanted this minute.” “I'll take Andrews, as long as he knows the Topes.” “Mixed pickles, the rest of ’em,” said the mate. “Jest as lief choose 'em in the dark.” Holliday gave terse opinion. “Scum! Scum of the sea! There ain't any more sailors nowadays, mister. But we'll do our best to teach ’em.” “Aye,” said Sullivan, “we’ll do our best.” He put his tongue in his leathery cheek and winked at Brookes, who had just come on deck. “No violence, mind,” said Holliday. “No com- plaints when we reach Frisco. This ship has a bad name. I'm goin’ to give her a good one. She’s a sweet sailor, or I don't know one. We're goin’ to drive the hoodoo out of her an’ make a record trip. I look to the two of you to assist me. But no violence. No belayin’ pins.” Tm had both heard this sort of talk before and knew what it implied. Sullivan was s compact as if he had been made of steel and rubber. He knew when and where and how to strike and kick without crippling. Brookes had a bulb of leather on the end of a thong in his hip pocket, the bulb filled with lead shot, a markless blackjack, Their faces were stolid as they listened, watching the line of sea scum—frowsy, unshaven, shuffling, half defiant—save for Wilson, A. B., erect and neat and vigilant—and the smiling Negro, willing and competent, showing his white teeth in his good-natured black face. “I'll take the chap with the red singlet,” said Sullivan. “Step out, you! Get over there alongside Jamaica Joe.” The two lines slowly formed. It was the first watch below. The pitching fo'c’s’le reeked with the blended odors of the untrimmed lamp, rank tobacco, clothes too long worn. The Slav, Balta, had brought a bottle aboard, by some miracle untouched. He called it vodka, but it was crude alcohol, slightly diluted, flavored with prune juice. It went the rounds, shared by all but Wilson. The others were still half drunk from their shore debauchery. Andrews, old and stiff, worn out by seagoing. his skin shaggy as bark and the color of tobacco leaves, crooned in a senile pipe: “A ro-o-vin’, a ro-o-vin’; Rovin’ has bin my ruin. I'll go no more a ro-o-vin’ With thee fair maid.” The face of the larrikin, vicious, rat-eyed, the frontal line of his cresting, greasy hair ir- regular, his teeth scalloped, wide apart and stained, appeared over the edge of his bunk. “Stow the yap!” he cried. He hurled a boot. It struck Andrews on his faltering lips. The old man was slow but he had spirit. He bent, picked up the boot and flung it back, hitting the larrkin on his elbow. He leaped out of his bunk, landing like a cat, a knife in his hand. “I'll 'ave yore 'eart fer that!” he yelled. Wilson caught his wrist, twisting the bones until the knife fell to the deck, where he set his foot on it, picked up the struggling hood- lum and flung him bodily into his bunk. “We'll have none of that, Harris,” he said slowly. “No knife play, matey. I'll take care of this.” “Give me back my knife!” “Termorrer, mebbe, if you're sober.” “Yah, you lady lover! Spoony over & blarsted gal, he is, mateys, Got ’er picture nailed in ’is bunk. Yah!” The retort had no bones in it. Few went to sea without the photograph of a woman to brag about. The door opened, and the second mate ap- peared. “Inspection!” he said sharply. Wilson and Andrews stood up, the latter with a touch of his wispy forelock. The others followed their example. It was a swift, incisive look that Holliday gave as he stood in the companionway, thick- set, red-haired and red of clipped beard. He kicked the empty bottle. “No more of that,” he said. “If there’s any more aboard, it goes overside. You’'ll see to it, Mr. Brookes.” “A rotten lot,” Brookes said to the first mate later, relieving him. “Don’t know a brace from a halyard or a clew from a capstan.” “Skipper’'ll teach 'em,” said Sullivan. *“You THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHIN Up and over the crest, down into the troubled trough where the jobbling water, an’ me an’ ‘Four Bells’ Holliday'll teach ’em.” “Oh, we'll teach ’em,” said Brookes wearily and spat over the side. “But I'm sick of eachin’ ‘scum,’ as the Old Man called 'em.” Harris ran athwart Brookes’ hawse that night. “When I say lively, my lad, I mean it,” said the mate. “Next time you'll get more.” The larrikin, savage with the jarring pain of the well delivered powerful kick as he ma- lingered over a rope, turned a snarling face, and Brookes grinned. His hand dropped to his hip. “Something you wanted to say to me?” he asked softly. “No.” “No sir.” The rat eyes shone like green spangles re- flecting the starboard side light. The black- jack came out, thie thong about the mate's wrist as he swung the weapon. e “That's much better, my lad. You'll learn Now git tor'’ard. Lively!” He was not a bully, not actually a bucko, nor was Sullivan. But the ship was theirs to rule. The ship had to be handled. When Wilson turned in he looked at the picture thumbtacked to the side of his bunk. The photograph of a woman, fond and true, a lass who loved a sailor, who was waiting for him to return, He was going to quit the sea— for sure this time. They would take up a little ranch for the kiddies, garden truck and chick-- ens, a cow for the youngest, whom he had never seen. A sailor's dream! He had written her that he had landed this berth and was coming home with his wages intact and some savings. She would be watching for the Ocean Quezn to be sighted, looking for her from the shack on Telegraph Hill where she lived; on the wharf to greet him. 'THE ocean, being an instrument of Fate, is capricious. It may have felt that it had buf- feted the Ocean Queen sufficiently; now it cradled her in liquid sapphire and bore her along beneath skies of sapphire and of pearl as the trade winds blew from cloudy battle- ments—14 knots—15—16! Rlowly, soddenly but surely the crew learned ihe right names and places and uses of hal- yards and downhauls, of braces and sheets and the sails. Led always by Wilson and Jamaica Joe, they learned to go aloft, to lie out on the yards, to clew and reef. They were stupid and inefficient, a poor lot at the best, but they learned. Even the hardest and dullest among them began to take a certain pride in her, even in themselves, as responsible, when she tossed bowsprit like a lance in rest, her prow champ- struggled up the next wave . . . whirled an| ing, cleaving through the brine while the sun flashed from her shining sides. They were making a record for those days. She traveled on curves of speed and beauty that rivaled those of the best of the tea-trade clippers. Joe boom:d his chanteys, and the men gathered about him with their pipes. With every league Wilson dreamed of his wife and children, of the little ranch, the babe he had never seen. With the exception of Andrews, possibly Joe, he was the only man forward who had the sea in his blood. It had come down to him from some primeval, protoplasmic urge. It was a leaven fermenting within him; it was a call, at times alluring, at times commanding. Love of woman had not been able to offs:t it. The thought of wife and children, the dream of fruitful trees and flowering garden, of home and fireside, could not fight against the charm of the fenceless s2a meadows, green and gray, with their challenge to his adventurous spirit. Yet he had sworn this was his last voyage— not the first time that he had made the promise. Now he had taken oath, that he re- newed to the photograph on his bunk board. The weather changed. Holliday came on deck one morning with a brow that still held the frown from his observation of the barom- eter. They were heading nor'-nor'west, the trade wind a little abaft the beam, reaching for home. Ahead the weather was hazy, the horizon vague. The breeze grew faulty, suc- cessive flaws hauling north until she was close- hauled under sail that Holliday gradually re- duced. The sea had lost its deep blueness and ran dull-green and heavy. By noon the wind was just west of north, blowing more and more gustily. The barometer was pumping. They were now under topsails, and the Ocean Queen seemed to have lost buoyancy. At sunset they were under two lower topsails and a rag of jib, laboring in a welter of liquid pyramids that rose and dissolved in increasing confusion. The seas struck tremendous blows as the laden hull strove through them. The wind was beginning to flatten their tops, to drive forward horizontal masses of spume-like snow flurries. She began to take it over the bows, and the scupper gates swung to let the seething mass escape. The storm voiced itself in roaring blasts. There were flickers of livid levin in the northeast; mutterings of thunder came from the wall of angry vapor toward which they were heading. By midnight there were no stars, nothing but lowering masses of cloud, felt rather than seen, broken ranks of raging billows touched with sea fire on their blunted crests, hills up which the Ocean Queen staggered, poised as she met the full fury of the howling gale, and then lurched down into gulfs that seemed to widen for her destruction. ed