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mmVV/GLOBE - OCTOBER 31, 1920SIBLEYWISHES HE WERE A “Y0-H0-H0WRITERCOULD SLING SEA SLANGGlobe Reporter, Down East With Gloucester Fishermen, Learns Something Every MinuteEspecially How to Keep From Having Trouble With Rubber BootsFRANK(Globe Correspondent Aboard the Esperanto)HALIFAX, N S. Oct 2S—I wish I were a yo-ho-ho writer, and could sling sea slang, and show a reader how little he knows oncehe has left the wharf.But the fact is that a schooner is no more romantic nor sentimental to a coast-life boy than a pair of rubber boots. Yellow oilskins are just as waterproof as black ones, and no more picturesque. What’s more important, they are worn on fishermen because they are waterproof and warm, and not because they show how hardy the wearer is when he goes on watch on the heel of the bowsprit.Incidentally, this trip down on the Esperanto, I learned that most difficult thing-—how to dry a suit of oilskins that has gonesticky.“You give ’em to me, and I’ll show you,” said Hoy Patten.“You want to soak ’em in salt water.”He took the sticky things and tossed them over the lee rail. “There,” he said, watching them disappear behind a wave, you’ll never have any more trouble getting them dry.”Go Back to Sol Jacobsgets going, with stories of tradingYou have seen schooners come in to the Boston wharves “iced up,for bait in forbidden waters. Maybe some of the stories sound a bit ten-their rigging and decks coated thick, j nous, and somebody in the circleIj They were wonderful, but few people 'challenges him.just a little break forward of the main mast, and lots of room for a nest of dories on each. side.Two hatches open into her roomy hold, and the little companionway to her forecastle and the equally narrow one into her very roomy cabin are the only other openings in the deck. The wheel is well up to the after house.You drop down into a cabin that runs the width of her, with six fine bunks and an efficient round stove. This trip she has a supplementary cabin for reporters, built into the hold. The bunks are rough boards, with excelsior mattresses, but very comfortable nevertheless.As she drops her tow and breaststhe easy swell of the open bay, youdiscover that a fisherman has amighty easy motion. The breezefreshens, she heels down a bit, then some more—and the further she heels, the faster she goes and the steadier she travels.blocks, they haul tip the heavy lino and drop it other side of the stay. The waiting men below haul taut, the captain calls “Hard a leet,” and there is a scramble in the growing dusk for the jib sheets.A plain ordinary dinner bell rings, and the “first gang squeezes down the forecastle companion way. land at the foot of thefigure what it meant to stay on those decks and work at that rigging day“Are you talking for publication, ‘Love’? he asks.Don’t Know Who Is MateNew rigging cracks and groans as it stretches, and now and then one ofThey foremast.which almost blocks the view into the long, triangular space in the nose of the vessel.From the mast to the foot of the windlass which comes right down through her runs a long, heavily laden table. The lockers form the bench, and this backed by a double tier of bunks. A lamp in gimbals is going forward.You might not expect fishermen to eat fish. But they do, and they know good fish cakes when they get them. The cakes are in great dishes, 50 or 60 in a dish. Cold meats, bread, crackers, pickles, the never failing and never neglected baked beans, potatoes in some form or other—all these comestibles, in gargantuan dishes, crowd the table.You half rise from your locker seat, and spear what you fancy. And how you do eat!Easier to Liston to Than to DoThere isn’t much evening, though you are fed before dark. Along about 8 o’clock, you are likely to sneak down the forecastle steps again, help yourself to some tea or coffee from the kettle on the galley stove, raid the “shack locker” for meat ordoughnuts, and mug up.Then, being a passenger with no watch to keep, you turn in.Most fishermen don’t undress—andCAPT MARTY WELCH OF ESPERANTO (ON LEFT) AND FRANK P. SIBLEY, WHO WILL REPORTINTERNATIONAL RACES FOR THE BOSTON GLOBEmost passengers don’t understand, next morning, that fresh water at sea is too precious to use for washing. Good sticky salt water, if you like, but no fresh.On a trip like this, one day is like another—and even the tales on deck are similar. It was Jim or Bill, in this or that schooner, who with hold and cabin and forecastle full of barreled herring, and 150 barrels more strapped down on deck, came across the bay—meaning from Newfoundland—in a hard breeze and never lost a rope yarn though he got toEastern Point in some incredible time.They all sound easier to listen to than to do.and night, in zero weather, with a gale blowing.As you get acquainted with the fishermen, it is stories of fighting the cold—and the Canadian customs— that you are most likely to hear in the master mariners' club.All their stories, by the way, seem to start with Sol Jacobs, and the tradition that when he first came toGloucester and saw a doughnut, he pulled it before he ate it.And he didn’t forget the man who told of it, either,” nays the narrator of the moment. “Good many years later, in a thick of snow, he came along this Nova Scotia coast one night, an’ came across the feller. Near ran him down, he did. The feller was hove to, waiting for daylight. Lunenburg, I guess it was he was trying to get into—anyway, it was a mean place.No,’ says the rubicund Down-Easter, stoutly, 'I’m telling the truth.’44Not Talking for Publication“‘What ye doin’ here?’ says Sol. ‘Afraid to go to? I c’n go in; I’ll show you the way, and I’ll hang a riding light over my stern for you to follow.’“Seems that about half way in there’s a bad ledge, and when Sol got about abreast of it, he kicked the hell out of the riding light.“The feller went on bad, with 1400 barrels of herring. Next morning Sol came down to have a look at him, hung up there.“ ‘I got the feelin’s of that doughnut in my pocket yet,’ he says, as he goesby.Perhaps it is ‘Love’ Hines thatWould Be a Sturdy YachtThere is beauty in the schooners, for the eye that can see it. There is odor in a fisherman, for anybody at all. And there is good companionship, hard work, good food and the eternal puzzle that men will lead such arduous lives for so little pay.There is hardly a well-known fisherman in the fleet who isn’t capable of making much more money ashore with infinitely greater comfort, less responsibility and less danger. But you have to go to sea yourself to find out why they stick to their vessels.The modern fisherman is a schooner, likely 120 feet long. The most modern boats carry explosion engines, or “kickers,” and have no topmasts. For speed to a fisherman isn’t a matter of sport, but of dollars and cents. When his hold is full of fish, the fastest man to market is likely to get the best priqe.The Esperanto, with two topmasts, is a fine specimen of the fishing schooner without an engine. As she was cleaned and painted for the trip to Nova Scotia, there was little left outside the hold itself to remind one that she had been a banker. The ancient and fish-like smell still clings to her, below, but except for that she might be a yacht.She would be a very sturdy yacht; your whole impression is that she is built to stand a banging.She has a great clear deck withthe crew may say, Want to get a haul of that peak halyard jib,Marty?”For Gloucester discipline doesn’t call for a touched cap nor an address by title.The crew begins to put on oilers and rubber boots as the evening grows cool.The watchers are set, apparently by agreement. For there is no mate, i ‘‘I might have somebody to ’tend the j sheet,” says Marty. “I can’t stand to i the wheel and tend to that, too. But I don’t know who is the mate. We don’t carry one.”The wind hauls and comes over the quarter and finally dead aft. Boom tackles are rigged and the great mainsail is jibed over, to make her travel easier.Helpless from Rheumatism,Not a Pain or Ache TodayProofCONQUIftlRHEUMATISMMr. Buss writes:W- A. Varney, Lynn, Mass.“For over 40 years I suffered more or less with rheumatism. About two years ago I was completely overcome. For eight months was helpless. I couldn’t even holdThe men, all workj finished for the present, stand round the deck in little groups. You can’t pick out the captain from among them.a newspaper. Yar-ne-sis saved my life. After the first bottle I began1 • . if mi • • • r sto feel relief. The pain in my joints subsided. My stomach which waseatlvcould eat. Var-ne-sis step by stepgrew better, andThe surest way to find him is tolook in the forward bunk in the cabin —at the proper time, else you may find Jack Mattheson in it—or in the aftermost starboard seat on the forecastle locker at meal times—unless it is rough weather.Capt Marty Welch missed only one meal from Gloucester to Halifax, andthat one because he wasn’t hungry. We’ll go about,” says the captain,and two men scamper up the riggingto put the foot of the foretopsail over ife stay. Clinging to the mast, stand-brought me back to life in this way. With each bottle I grew better and better until at last I was a well man and from that time have not had a twinge of rheumatism.”A brother G.A.R. veteran, FrankM. Alley of Lynn, said: “No one can appreciate the marvelous recovery of Mr. Buss better than I. I was in touch with him all through his sickness. I never saw a sicker man, and to see him regain his health after he had started to take Var-ne-sis was wonderful.”There Is no excuse for you to suffer with rheumatism. What Var-ne*sis lias done for others, it can do for you. You ought to read u The Bust of Human It’s Free. Send for it today to Varney, Lynn, Mass.Ming on the foresail peak halyardVAR-NE-SIS RIB-051 EASES PAIS
Newspaper Details
Boston Sunday Globe
Boston, Massachusetts, US
Sun, Oct 17, 1920
Page 98
Full Page
Clipped by
Boston P.
NA, USA 24 Mar 2023
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