CHAPTER I TRAVEL BY SEA AND LAND The Transatlantic Packet-Land and Landing—Inns, I When the horrifying thought of crossing the ocean in a sailing vessel occurs by chance to the modern mind, the picture which, in all probability, is conjured up is that of a small vessel of the size and excellence of the Nina, the Pinta, or the Santa Maria. By the middle of the eighteenth century, of course, marked improvement had been made over these old vessels, but the progress had been chiefly in matters of size and proportion. The old square stern and the high fore and aft-relics of the old fighting towerswere still common features, while, especially in tramps, the question of capacity was more important than that of speed, with a resultant clumsiness of contour. The revolutionary era, with its demands for speed in running blockades and escaping privateersmen and pirates, tended to give vessels a greater harmony and grace of line. Their size and carrying capacity were increased until, in 1833, the largest American merchant ship, the Mississippi, had a capacity of 750 tons. The early nineteenth century witnessed an epidemic of reform in many things, but in none was the tendency so strikingly apparent as in the means and methods of travel on the sea and in England. The tangle of warfare from which western civilization had for so long been struggling 3 to free itself was finally cut, the seas were at last comparatively safe at least from the hostile hand of man—and the great stimulus to travel and to industry which was given by the subsequent era of peace brought about phenomenal progress in matters of transportation. The great day of coaches and of sailing packets was of short duration, because, no sooner were political conditions such as to encourage maximum development, than the invention of steam turned activity in another direction. Yet the supremacy of the old-fashioned methods of travel, however short-lived, was none the less remarkable. It was not until after the War of 1812 that regular packet service was established between the New World and the Old. The custom of the traveler who wished to cross the ocean prior to that time was to apply to the captain of a merchantman to be carried in lieu of cargo. Sailings were therefore exceedingly uncertain, and, as many merchantmen were also privateersmen-virtually ships of war, the dangers were great and the comforts correspondingly small. Benjamin Franklin1 gives an interesting list of precautions for the prospective voyager. His first thought, if he be wise, says Franklin, will be the choice of a good captain. Even with the best, however, the food is often meager and the cook usually the worst and dirtiest sailor, having been chosen for that office chiefly because of his inability to perform any other. It is therefore safest to carry with one a private store of good water in bottles, good tea, ground coffee, chocolate, wine of a favorite sort, cider, dried raisins, almonds, sugar, capillaire (a form of honey), citrons, rum, eggs dipped in oil, portable soup, and twice-baked bread. Live poultry is inadvisable unless one may care to keep it in his own stateroom and feed it himself; but a portable stove 1 Jared Sparks, Works of Benjamin Franklin, Boston, 1844, II, 106 ff. is often a valuable accessory. Thus provided one may anticipate a comparatively pleasant voyage. Franklin was wiser in this, however, as in other matters, than the average human being. The dangers and privations to which a passenger might be subjected on a very ordinary trip of this sort will be seen in the journal which Dr. Hutchinson kept in 1777, when he and Dr. Williamson were returning together from Edinburgh. The first mate, who had been entrusted with the task of provisioning the vessel, seems to have been a stupid sort of man, and he laid in an insufficient stock of food for the voyage. The details of the suffering of the crew and passengers are recorded in Dr. Hutchinson's manuscript diary, in which he makes, on April 28th, the following entry: "Bread becomes scarcer and we are obliged to lessen our allowance. . . . At present we are under the necessity of decreasing the allowance to four ounces of bread per day, old and worm-eaten; our good beef is all expended, we have a little remaining, but this is much tainted, very offensive, and full of worms; two days out of the seven we have pork, a little being still left, the other five days beef, but the quantity of this is so small, that the sailors always eat it raw, lest it should be diminished by boiling. I had, however, instead of bread, made use of some prunes which were when bought designed for my Uncle Pemberton as I knew him to be fond of this fruit. I distributed a few to my fellow passengers and they proved of important service to us." Dr. Hutchinson's hardships were not over for many days, and his account is so vivid that it is hard to forbear quoting more of it. A few days later he records: "At nine o'clock this morning we saw a brig at a considerable dis2 In the possession of the American Philosophical Society. tance from us; we wished to approach her, but it being calm, that was impossible. Two men were the most .. Therefore about half an we could spare from the ship. hour after one o'clock he [Dr. Williamson] went into the yawl, took with him the first mate and one of the best sailors, and left us, steering towards the brig; they rowed on with great spirit, as long as I could see them from the maintop masthead. It is impossible to describe our anxiety for them as we knew, should a stiff breeze spring up, they could never reach either vessel, and must in all probability perish. About four o'clock we received a signal from the brig, by which we knew they got safe on board." As they did not return until after seven that evening, lights were hung on the mastheads to show them the location of the vessel, and a gun was shot off every five minutes. When they did finally return, they brought news that the other vessel was in as bad a plight as they, and could spare them only "a few bottles of spirits and two pounds of cheese." The existence of a constant state of war or of something akin to it, during these earlier years, also contributed to the hazards of the voyage. Mordecai Noah was captured by the English in 1813, and Warren describes a voyage in 1799 when France and America were warring on each other's shipping. "Our employments on board ship," he says, "were principally of a warlike nature; and we became so expert in the exercise of the great guns, that the oldest seaman in the ship could not outdo us. One night, the captain, determined to try our alacrity and presence of mind, ordered the mate and boatswain to call all hands to quarters at midnight when we were buried in profound sleep. In five minutes we were all at our stations, and had every gun prepared for action. We cried to the captain to point out the enemy, that we might fire; and were not unpleasantly disappointed at hearing it was merely an experiment. So, after all hands had a drink of grog, we retired quietly to our berths. In the British Channel we were often alarmed, and were obliged every night to sleep in our clothes. A terrible fog caused us to run close upon the French coast; for nothing could be seen till within pistol shot. After chasing a privateer, quarreling furiously with one British cruiser, and receiving polite treatment from some others, we landed at Deal on 10th July." The records of passage during these days are unfortunately scant among American travelers, as the formal travel book was a later development and we must rely on chance passages in letters and journals. Of the life on board the regular packet vessels, however, we know a great deal more, for, in 1816, when the first regular passenger line between New York and Liverpool was established, books of travel in England were just beginning to be published by Americans. The degree of luxury to which these boats attained during the last days of their supremacy was sufficient to make the passage almost one of pleasure for the frailest of invalids. There are many descriptions of such voyages in contemporary letters, journals, and travel books, and instead of being engrossed in vivid details of storms, hardships, and dangers, the traveler in most cases finds only the humble daily routine and the people about him as subject matter for his impatient pencil. Of time he has plenty, and he sits out on the deck or lies in his cabin and scribbles page after page of description of the boat, its passengers, the weather, and the birds and fish seen during the day, or of narration of his own physical discomforts and those of his fellow passengers, of minor incidents of life on ship |