Charles H. Lightoller
TITANIC AND OTHER SHIPS
Title: Titanic and Other Ships
Author: Charles Herbert Lightoller
Published by:
Benediction Classics 2010
First published: 1935
Charles H. Lightoller
TITANIC AND OTHER SHIPS
Dedicated to
MY PERSISTENT WIFE
WHO MADE ME DO IT
Table of Contents
Chapter 01. OFF TO SEA
Chapter 02. 65 DEGREES SOUTH
Chapter 03. ‘FRISCO IN THE ‘EIGHTIES
Chapter 04. FLYING FISH WEATHER
Chapter 05. THE “HOLT HILL”
Chapter 06. RIO AND REVOLUTIONS
Chapter 07. SMALLPOX
Chapter 08. WRECKED ON ST. PAUL’S
Chapter 09. A DESERT ISLAND
Chapter 10. A FIGHT WITH ALBATROSSES
Chapter 11. A TIMELY RESCUE
Chapter 12. HOME IN A TEA CLIPPER
Chapter 13. SEA FIGHTS AND CYCLONES
Chapter 14. “SHARKS”
Chapter 15. I GET MY “TICKET”
Chapter 16. FIRE AT SEA
Chapter 17. THE NITRATE COAST
Chapter 18. DERELICTS
Chapter 19. “BULLY” WATERS
Chapter 20. A SURFBOAT TRAGEDY
Chapter 21. TRAIL OF '98
Chapter 22. CROSSING THE ATHABASKA
Chapter 23. NO GAME... NO GOLD
Chapter 24. THE RETURN TRAIL
Chapter 25. BACK TO SEA
Chapter 26. SHANGHAIED
Chapter 27. WHITE STAR LINE
Chapter 28. ALMOST A PENALTY
Chapter 29. GREYHOUNDS OF THE ATLANTIC
Chapter 30. LOSS OF THE “TITANIC”
Chapter 31. LEAVING SOUTHAMPTON
Chapter 32. COLLISION WITH AN ICEBERG
Chapter 33. WOMEN AND CHILDREN — ONLY
Chapter 34. SHE FOUNDERS
Chapter 35. THE RESCUE
Chapter 36. THE WAR
Chapter 37. SEAPLANES AND GRASS LINES
Chapter 38. DOVER PATROL
Chapter 39. THOSE DAMNED “R” WORDS
Chapter 40. BLUNDERING THROUGH A MINEFIELD
Chapter 41. SCROUNGING LEAVE
Chapter 42. LOSS OF H.M.S. “FALCON”
Chapter 43. NORTH SEA CONVOYS
Chapter 44. DESTROYER v. SUBMARINE
Chapter 45. I “BURY THE ANCHOR”
CHAPTER ONE
OFF TO SEA
I don't think my relatives ever knew how amazed I was when I obtained their consent to go to sea. I chuckled at my good luck, as they no doubt chuckled at their good riddance.
I had long since made up my mind (or what, at the mature age of thirteen, I was pleased to call my mind) that I would go to sea. And to sea I went, knowing little and caring less about those prospective first few years of hellish servitude, during which experience must be gained — experience that, like a corn, had to grow, become hardened, and most damnably hurt.
My Dad didn't enter into it, as he was settled in New Zealand, having seen the best days in cotton. In fact we had been "in cotton" for generations, and I had fully expected that I should have to "follow in father's footsteps."
For my part the "going to sea" was just a bluff, but it worked. I hear some say, to my sorrow. Not a bit of it. The sea is a hard, unrelenting mistress, always ready to whip up the fools (as I was soon to discover). She tried to drown me several times, yet I beat her; she nearly broke my neck on more than one occasion, but we still remain the best of friends, and I never regret that my bluff was called.
I had a distant relative, a one hundred per cent sailor to the tips of his stub-ended fingers, so I suppose it was only natural that my near relatives should start me off in his footsteps. The fact remains that I found myself a brass bound apprentice on board the famous Primrose Hill, a four-masted barque and three skysail-yarder.
It was not long before I learned exactly how to throw out my chest as I described my ship as a "three skysail-yarder." There weren't many of them about as most owners considered skysails more ornamental than useful.
If you had been near the half-deck door when one of the Mates sang out, "Now one of you youngsters, up and stop the main skysail buntlines," then you would have known just what we boys thought of them! The sole reason for their existence, in our opinion, lay in the fact that they formed a ready to hand punishment for first voyagers. But skysails undoubtedly did give that finishing touch to a ship with her towering piles of canvas rising, tier on tier, a full two hundred feet above the deck. Courses — as the three big lower sails were called — lower and upper topsails, lower and upper t'gallant sails, royals, and finally, the boys' pet objection, those skysails. These were exactly forty-five feet from yard-arm to yard-arm, just half the length of the main yard; a perfect pocket handkerchief, but making for perfect symmetry, and taking away that chopped off look that either stump t'gallant masts, or even royals alone are apt to give. Our great objection to these sails was there was no way of getting up the final fifteen feet to this yard except by shinning up the back stays ( the mast being greased). As far as the royal yard the going was not so bad; one had the rigging and Jacob's Ladder. But swinging around on a wire backstay half way to heaven, may have some attraction, but also has its drawbacks, particularly when she was rolling heavily.
Having arrived at the summit of one's present ambition and standing there on the footrope of the skysailyard, looking down two hundred odd feet, always carried a thrill. To a first voyager it seemed inconceivable that such an almighty spread of canvas, as then lay below one, should not put that slight strip of deck on its beam ends.
In addition to the square sails, the Primrose Hill carried fifteen fore and aft sails, in the way of jibs, staysails, spanker and gaff topsail, each with the definite set purpose of passing its drive to that long, narrow hull. She was a great ship, and even in the days when a forest of masts was a common sight in dockland, the tapering spars of the old Primrose Hill always stood out like one of the tea clippers of old.
I know the skipper was a mighty proud man, and we boys almost reverenced him, pacing his lonely beat up and down that poop, lord of all he surveyed. His slightest word was law absolute and immutable. We thought that even such as we, might with luck, some day walk the poop with that deep sea roll. But that was too far in the dim distant future for boys of our age to consider seriously.
Fourteen years of age found me beating down the channel in the teeth of a Westerly gale. My first voyage, horribly seasick — and sick of the sea. That seemingly objectless and eternal beat from side to side of the Channel, driving along with every stitch she would stand, trying to make to the westward. Once in the fog, we almost succeeded in running down the Royal Sovereign Lightship, and then on the other side, we got into a jam with the notorious Race of Alderney.
At long last, clear of the Chops of the Channel, we squared away to a fine Nor'-Nor'West breeze, and tore down through the Roaring Forties towards good old "flying fish" weather. Shirt and pants the order of the day, the ship heeling over with a bone in her teeth, ropes fore and aft cracking like a machine gun as they surged round the green-heart belaying pins. Day after day, and week after week, snoring along without touching halyard or sheet; bending fine weather sails, holystoning decks, scrubbing bright work and painting ship. Never a lazy moment aboard any sailing ship in fine weather, and the man with the forenoon or afternoon Trick at the wheel, is the man to be envied. At night it is the other way about, as the watch on deck can always find the soft side of a deck plank, for an hour's "caulk."