To Cuba and Back

Saturday, the twelfth day of February, 1859, is a dull, dark day in New York, with visitations of snow squalls, as the United States Mail Steamer Cahawba swings at her pier, at the foot of Robinson Street⁠—a pier crowded with drays and drivers, and a street of mud, snow and ice, and poor habitations. The steamer is to sail at one p.m.; and, by half-past twelve, her decks are full, and the mud and snow of the pier are well trodden by men and horses. Coaches drive down furiously, and nervous passengers put their heads out to see if the steamer is off before her time; and on the decks, and in the gangways, inexperienced passengers run against everybody, and mistake the engineer for the steward, and come up the same stairs they go down, without knowing it. In the dreary snow, the newspaper vendors cry the papers, and the book vendors thrust yellow covers into your face⁠—“Reading for the voyage, sir⁠—five hundred pages, close print!” And that being rejected, they reverse the process of the Sibyl⁠—with “Here’s another, sir, one thousand pages, double columns.” The great beam of the engine moves slowly up and down, and the black hull sways at its fasts. A motley group are the passengers. Shivering Cubans, exotics that have taken slight root in the hothouses of the Fifth Avenue, are to brave a few days of sleet and cold at sea, for the palm trees and mangoes, the cocoas and orange trees, they will be sitting under in six days, at farthest. There are Yankee shipmasters going out to join their “cotton wagons” at New Orleans and Mobile, merchants pursuing a commerce that knows no rest and no locality: confirmed invalids advised to go to Cuba to die under mosquito nets and be buried in a Potter’s Field; and other invalids wisely enough avoiding our March winds; and here and there a mere vacation-maker, like myself.

Captain Bullock is sure to sail at the hour; and at the hour he is on the paddle box, the fasts are loosed, the warp run out, the crew pull in on the warp on the port quarter, and the head swings off. No word is spoken, but all is done by signs; or, if a word is necessary, a low clear tone carries it to the listener. There is no tearing and rending escape of steam, deafening and distracting all, and giving a kind of terror to a peaceful scene; but our ship swings off, gathers way, and enters upon her voyage, in a quiet like that of a bank or counting room, almost under a spell of silence.

The housetops and piers and hilltops are lined with snow, the masts and decks are white with it, a dreary cold haze lies over the water, and we work down the bay, where few sails venture out, and but few are coming in; and only a strong monster of a Cunard screw-steamer, the Kangaroo, comes down by our side.

We leave city and suburbs Brooklyn Heights, and the foggy outline of Staten Island, far behind us, and hurry through the Narrows, for the open sea. The Kangaroo crossed our hawse in a strange way. Is she steering wild, or what is it? Seeing two old unmistakable Yankee shipmasters, sitting confidentially together on two chairs, in affectionate proximity to the binnacle, I address myself to them, and my question, being put in proper nautical phrase, secures a respectful attention. I find they agree with me that the Kangaroo is a little wilful, and crosses our hawse on purpose, in some manoeuvre to discharge her pilot before we do ours; and so thinks the quartermaster, who comes aft to right the colors. This manoeuvering of the steamer and pilot vessel makes an incident for a few minutes’ talk, and an opening for several acquaintances which will be voyage-long. The pilots are dropped into their little cockboats, and their boats drop astern, and go bobbing over the seas, to the pilot schooner that lies to for them. The Kangaroo, with her mysterious submarine art of swimming without fins, stands due east for Liverpool, and we stand down the coast, southerly, for the regions of the Sun.

The Heights of Neversink are passed. The night closes in upon the sea, dreary, cold, and snowing; our signal lanterns, the red, the white, and the green, gleam out into the mist; the furnace fires throw a lurid light from the doors below, cheerful or fearful as may be the temper of mind of the looker-on; the long swell lifts and drops the bow and stern, and rolls the ship from side to side; the sea-bells begin to strike their strange reckoning of the half-hours; the wet and the darkness drive all below but the experts and the desperate, and our first night at sea has begun.

At six bells, tea is announced; and the bright lights of the long cabin table, shining on plates and cups and gleaming knives and hurrying waiters, make a cheerful and lively contrast with the dark, cold, deserted deck.

By night, I walk deck for a couple of hours with the young captain. After due inquiries about his family in Georgia, and due remembrance of those of his mother’s line whom we loved, and the public honored, before the grave or the sea closed over them, the fascinating topic of the navy, the frigates and the line-of-battle ships and little sloops, the storms, the wrecks, and the sea fights, fill up the time. He loves the navy still, and has left it with regret; but the navy does not love her sons as they love her. On the quarterdeck at fifteen, the first in rank of his year, favored by his commanders, with service in the best vessels, making the great fleet cruise under Morris, taking part in the actions of the Naval Brigade on shore in California, serving on the Coast Survey, a man of science as well as a sailor⁠—yet what is there before him, or those like him, in our navy? The best must continue a subaltern, a lieutenant, until he is gray. At fifty, he may be entitled to his first command, and that of a class below a frigate; and if he survives the African fevers and the Isthmus fevers, and the perils of the sea, he may totter on the quarterdeck of a line-of-battle ship when his skill is out of date and his capacity for further command problematical. And whatever may be the gallantry or the merit of his service, though he may cut off his right hand or pluck out his eye for the country’s honor, the navy can give him no promotion, not even a barren title of brevet, nor a badge of recognition of merit, though it be but a star, or a half yard of blue ribbon. The most meritorious officers receive large offers from civil life; and then, it is home, family, society, education of children, and pecuniary competency on the one side, and on the other, only the navy, less and less attractive as middle life draws on.

The staterooms of the Cahawba, like those of most American seagoing steamers, are built so high above the water that the windows may be open in all but the worst of weather, and good ventilation be ensured. I have a very nice fellow for my roommate, in the berth under me; but, in a stateroom, no roommate is better than the best; so I change my quarters to a stateroom further forward, nearer “the eyes of her,” which the passengers generally shun, and get one to myself, free from the rattle of the steering gear, while the delightful rise and fall of the bows, and leisurely weather roll and lee roll, cradle and nurse one to sleep.