Chapter 1

HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN'S TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND BRED IN

HIM

"Wellingborough, as you are going to sea, suppose you take this

shooting-jacket of mine along; it's just the thing--take it, it will

save the expense of another. You see, it's quite warm; fine long skirts,

stout horn buttons, and plenty of pockets."

Out of the goodness and simplicity of his heart, thus spoke my elder

brother to me, upon the eve of my departure for the seaport.

"And, Wellingborough," he added, "since we are both short of money, and

you want an outfit, and I Have none to give, you may as well take my

fowling-piece along, and sell it in New York for what you can get.--Nay,

take it; it's of no use to me now; I can't find it in powder any more."

I was then but a boy. Some time previous my mother had removed from New

York to a pleasant village on the Hudson River, where we lived in a

small house, in a quiet way. Sad disappointments in several plans which

I had sketched for my future life; the necessity of doing something for

myself, united to a naturally roving disposition, had now conspired

within me, to send me to sea as a sailor.

For months previous I had been poring over old New York papers,

delightedly perusing the long columns of ship advertisements, all of

which possessed a strange, romantic charm to me. Over and over again I

devoured such announcements as the following:

"FOR BREMEN.

"The coppered and copper-fastened brig Leda, having nearly completed her

cargo, will sail for the above port on Tuesday the twentieth of May.

For freight or passage apply on board at Coenties Slip."

To my young inland imagination every word in an advertisement like this,

suggested volumes of thought.

A brig! The very word summoned up the idea of a black, sea-worn craft,

with high, cozy bulwarks, and rakish masts and yards.

Coppered and copper-fastened! That fairly smelt of the salt water! How

different such vessels must be from the wooden, one-masted, green-and-

white-painted sloops, that glided up and down the river before our

house on the bank.

Nearly completed her cargo! How momentous the announcement; suggesting

ideas, too, of musty bales, and cases of silks and satins, and filling

me with contempt for the vile deck-loads of hay and lumber, with which

my river experience was familiar.

"Will sail on Tuesday the 20th of May"--and the newspaper bore date the

fifth of the month! Fifteen whole days beforehand; think of that; what

an important voyage it must be, that the time of sailing was fixed upon

so long beforehand; the river sloops were not used to make such

prospective announcements.

"For freight or passage apply on board!"

Think of going on board a coppered and copper-fastened brig, and taking

passage for Bremen! And who could be going to Bremen? No one but

foreigners, doubtless; men of dark complexions and jet-black whiskers,

who talked French.

"Coenties Slip."

Plenty more brigs and any quantity of ships must be lying there.

Coenties Slip must be somewhere near ranges of grim-looking warehouses,

with rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled roofs; and old anchors and

chain-cable piled on the walk. Old-fashioned coffeehouses, also, much

abound in that neighborhood, with sunburnt sea-captains going in and

out, smoking cigars, and talking about Havanna, London, and Calcutta.

All these my imaginations were wonderfully assisted by certain shadowy

reminiscences of wharves, and warehouses, and shipping, with which a

residence in a seaport during early childhood had supplied me.

Particularly, I remembered standing with my father on the wharf when a

large ship was getting under way, and rounding the head of the pier. I

remembered the yo heave ho! of the sailors, as they just showed their

woolen caps above the high bulwarks. I remembered how I thought of their

crossing the great ocean; and that that very ship, and those very

sailors, so near to me then, would after a time be actually in Europe.

Added to these reminiscences my father, now dead, had several times

crossed the Atlantic on business affairs, for he had been an importer in

Broad-street. And of winter evenings in New York, by the well-remembered

sea-coal fire in old Greenwich-street, he used to tell my brother and me

of the monstrous waves at sea, mountain high; of the masts bending like

twigs; and all about Havre, and Liverpool, and about going up into the

ball of St. Paul's in London. Indeed, during my early life, most of my

thoughts of the sea were connected with the land; but with fine old

lands, full of mossy cathedrals and churches, and long, narrow, crooked

streets without sidewalks, and lined with strange houses. And especially

I tried hard to think how such places must look of rainy days and

Saturday afternoons; and whether indeed they did have rainy days and

Saturdays there, just as we did here; and whether the boys went to

school there, and studied geography, and wore their shirt collars turned

over, and tied with a black ribbon; and whether their papas allowed them

to wear boots, instead of shoes, which I so much disliked, for boots

looked so manly.

As I grew older my thoughts took a larger flight, and I frequently fell

into long reveries about distant voyages and travels, and thought how

fine it would be, to be able to talk about remote and barbarous

countries; with what reverence and wonder people would regard me, if I

had just returned from the coast of Africa or New Zealand; how dark and

romantic my sunburnt cheeks would look; how I would bring home with me

foreign clothes of a rich fabric and princely make, and wear them up and

down the streets, and how grocers' boys would turn back their heads to

look at me, as I went by. For I very well remembered staring at a man

myself, who was pointed out to me by my aunt one Sunday in Church, as

the person who had been in Stony Arabia, and passed through strange

adventures there, all of which with my own eyes I had read in the book

which he wrote, an arid-looking book in a pale yellow cover.

"See what big eyes he has," whispered my aunt, "they got so big, because

when he was almost dead with famishing in the desert, he all at once

caught sight of a date tree, with the ripe fruit hanging on it."

Upon this, I stared at him till I thought his eyes were really of an

uncommon size, and stuck out from his head like those of a lobster. I am

sure my own eyes must have magnified as I stared. When church was out, I

wanted my aunt to take me along and follow the traveler home. But she

said the constables would take us up, if we did; and so I never saw this

wonderful Arabian traveler again. But he long haunted me; and several

times I dreamt of him, and thought his great eyes were grown still

larger and rounder; and once I had a vision of the date tree.

In course of time, my thoughts became more and more prone to dwell upon

foreign things; and in a thousand ways I sought to gratify my tastes. We

had several pieces of furniture in the house, which had been brought

from Europe. These I examined again and again, wondering where the wood

grew; whether the workmen who made them still survived, and what they

could be doing with themselves now.

Then we had several oil-paintings and rare old engravings of my

father's, which he himself had bought in Paris, hanging up in the

dining-room.

Two of these were sea-pieces. One represented a fat-looking, smoky

fishing-boat, with three whiskerandoes in red caps, and their browsers

legs rolled up, hauling in a seine. There was high French-like land in

one corner, and a tumble-down gray lighthouse surmounting it. The waves

were toasted brown, and the whole picture looked mellow and old. I used

to think a piece of it might taste good.

The other represented three old-fashioned French men-of-war with high

castles, like pagodas, on the bow and stern, such as you see in

Froissart; and snug little turrets on top of the mast, full of little

men, with something undefinable in their hands. All three were sailing

through a bright-blue sea, blue as Sicily skies; and they were leaning

over on their sides at a fearful angle; and they must have been going

very fast, for the white spray was about the bows like a snow-storm.

Then, we had two large green French portfolios of colored prints, more

than I could lift at that age. Every Saturday my brothers and sisters

used to get them out of the corner where they were kept, and spreading

them on the floor, gaze at them with never-failing delight.

They were of all sorts. Some were pictures of Versailles, its

masquerades, its drawing-rooms, its fountains, and courts, and gardens,

with long lines of thick foliage cut into fantastic doors and windows,

and towers and pinnacles. Others were rural scenes, full of fine skies,

pensive cows standing up to the knees in water, and shepherd-boys and

cottages in the distance, half concealed in vineyards and vines.

And others were pictures of natural history, representing rhinoceroses

and elephants and spotted tigers; and above all there was a picture of a

great whale, as big as a ship, stuck full of harpoons, and three boats

sailing after it as fast as they could fly.

Then, too, we had a large library-case, that stood in the hall; an old

brown library-case, tall as a small house; it had a sort of basement,

with large doors, and a lock and key; and higher up, there were glass

doors, through which might be seen long rows of old books, that had been

printed in Paris, and London, and Leipsic. There was a fine library

edition of the Spectator, in six large volumes with gilded backs; and

many a time I gazed at the word "London" on the title-page. And there

was a copy of D'Alembert in French, and I wondered what a great man I

would be, if by foreign travel I should ever be able to read straight

along without stopping, out of that book, which now was a riddle to

every one in the house but my father, whom I so much liked to hear talk

French, as he sometimes did to a servant we had.

That servant, too, I used to gaze at with wonder; for in answer to my

incredulous cross-questions, he had over and over again assured me, that

he had really been born in Paris. But this I never entirely believed;

for it seemed so hard to comprehend, how a man who had been born in a

foreign country, could be dwelling with me in our house in America.

As years passed on, this continual dwelling upon foreign associations,

bred in me a vague prophetic thought, that I was fated, one day or

other, to be a great voyager; and that just as my father used to

entertain strange gentlemen over their wine after dinner, I would

hereafter be telling my own adventures to an eager auditory. And I have

no doubt that this presentiment had something to do with bringing about

my subsequent rovings.

But that which perhaps more than any thing else, converted my vague

dreamings and longings into a definite purpose of seeking my fortune on

the sea, was an old-fashioned glass ship, about eighteen inches long,

and of French manufacture, which my father, some thirty years before,

had brought home from Hamburg as a present to a great-uncle of mine:

Senator Wellingborough, who had died a member of Congress in the days of

the old Constitution, and after whom I had the honor of being named.

Upon the decease of the Senator, the ship was returned to the donor.

It was kept in a square glass case, which was regularly dusted by one of

my sisters every morning, and stood on a little claw-footed Dutch

tea-table in one corner of the sitting-room. This ship, after being the

admiration of my father's visitors in the capital, became the wonder and

delight of all the people of the village where we now resided, many of

whom used to call upon my mother, for no other purpose than to see the

ship. And well did it repay the long and curious examinations which they

were accustomed to give it.

In the first place, every bit of it was glass, and that was a great

wonder of itself; because the masts, yards, and ropes were made to

resemble exactly the corresponding parts of a real vessel that could go

to sea. She carried two tiers of black guns all along her two decks; and

often I used to try to peep in at the portholes, to see what else was

inside; but the holes were so small, and it looked so very dark indoors,

that I could discover little or nothing; though, when I was very little,

I made no doubt, that if I could but once pry open the hull, and break

the glass all to pieces, I would infallibly light upon something

wonderful, perhaps some gold guineas, of which I have always been in

want, ever since I could remember. And often I used to feel a sort of

insane desire to be the death of the glass ship, case, and all, in order

to come at the plunder; and one day, throwing out some hint of the kind

to my sisters, they ran to my mother in a great clamor; and after that,

the ship was placed on the mantel-piece for a time, beyond my reach, and

until I should recover my reason.

I do not know how to account for this temporary madness of mine, unless

it was, that I had been reading in a story-book about Captain Kidd's

ship, that lay somewhere at the bottom of the Hudson near the Highlands,

full of gold as it could be; and that a company of men were trying to

dive down and get the treasure out of the hold, which no one had ever

thought of doing before, though there she had lain for almost a hundred

years.

Not to speak of the tall masts, and yards, and rigging of this famous

ship, among whose mazes of spun-glass I used to rove in imagination,

till I grew dizzy at the main-truck, I will only make mention of the

people on board of her. They, too, were all of glass, as beautiful

little glass sailors as any body ever saw, with hats and shoes on, just

like living men, and curious blue jackets with a sort of ruffle round

the bottom. Four or five of these sailors were very nimble little chaps,

and were mounting up the rigging with very long strides; but for all

that, they never gained a single inch in the year, as I can take my

oath.

Another sailor was sitting astride of the spanker-boom, with his arms

over his head, but I never could find out what that was for; a second

was in the fore-top, with a coil of glass rigging over his shoulder; the

cook, with a glass ax, was splitting wood near the fore-hatch; the

steward, in a glass apron, was hurrying toward the cabin with a plate of

glass pudding; and a glass dog, with a red mouth, was barking at him;

while the captain in a glass cap was smoking a glass cigar on the

quarterdeck. He was leaning against the bulwark, with one hand to his

head; perhaps he was unwell, for he looked very glassy out of the eyes.

The name of this curious ship was La Reine, or The Queen, which was

painted on her stern where any one might read it, among a crowd of glass

dolphins and sea-horses carved there in a sort of semicircle.

And this Queen rode undisputed mistress of a green glassy sea, some of

whose waves were breaking over her bow in a wild way, I can tell you,

and I used to be giving her up for lost and foundered every moment, till

I grew older, and perceived that she was not in the slightest danger in

the world.

A good deal of dust, and fuzzy stuff like down, had in the course of

many years worked through the joints of the case, in which the ship was

kept, so as to cover all the sea with a light dash of white, which if

any thing improved the general effect, for it looked like the foam and

froth raised by the terrible gale the good Queen was battling against.

So much for La Reine. We have her yet in the house, but many of her

glass spars and ropes are now sadly shattered and broken,--but I will not

have her mended; and her figurehead, a gallant warrior in a c****d-hat,

lies pitching headforemost down into the trough of a calamitous sea

under the bows--but I will not have him put on his legs again, till I get

on my own; for between him and me there is a secret sympathy; and my

sisters tell me, even yet, that he fell from his perch the very day I

left home to go to sea on this my first voyage.