We made our way once again round the Horn and up to Iquiqui, where tier on tier of ships were loading nitrate for Home and the Continent. The nitrate is brought off in lighters, loaded with sacks, each weighing exactly two hundredweight. These are hoisted on board by a dolly-winch manned by half a dozen men, or, if the ship sports the luxury, a steam winch. A platform is built down below, and the whole of the ship is loaded by a single native Chilean, from this platform, which must be adjusted to this man’s height to an inch. These huge sacks, after being hove up and landed on the platform are placed on this man’s back and dropped by him in tiers in the hold, and once dropped, never touched again. Of course, nitrate is a terrific weight, and a ship cannot be anything like filled with it. In fact, both in the lower hold, and ‘tween decks, there are just a couple of pyramids. It is terribly hard on the ship, and causes the sides to buckle in, with the result that all rigging has to be taken up when loading, and eased out when discharging. The man’s back that carries these sacks is like a piece of leather, and after handling that dolly-winch for a couple of months, one’s hands become likewise.
One meets every type and description of ship, and of all nationalities, loading nitrate, and one notorious Yankee hard-case ship, the Frederick K. Billings, lay next to us. They lived like fighting cocks, as far as food goes, and made our British ships resemble second rate soup kitchens, but oh! they did have to work for their living. It was a common rumour that many of her crew had definitely decided they would not sail in her, but to the ordinary mind, it seemed as though they had no alternative. The inhospitable bleak cliffs of that nitrate coast could afford little shelter to a goat, let alone a ship’s crew. However, they solved the problem and in a pretty drastic manner.
On gala nights the custom is to set fire to a 2 cwt. bag of saltpetre on the beach, and the light from this will illuminate the whole harbour, the heat generated being simply terrific. Imagine then the Frederick K. Billings when, after making all preparations to take to the boats, one of the crew dropped a paraffin lamp down the fore hatch. The ensuing blaze beggars description. In precisely sixteen minutes, that ship was burnt to the water’s edge (decks, masts, yards, sails and rigging) and had sunk to the bottom; but not before she had burnt every vestige of paint off that side of the ships immediately adjacent to her, ruined all their running gear, and reduced them to a piebald wreck. The crew of the burning ship had just time to leap overboard and swim for it. Most of them were picked up, and in the ordinary run of things, handed over to the authorities — a proceeding they considered infinitely preferable to sailing under their bucko Yankee mates.
This happened in Iquiqui, which also has the distinction of having produced an island from the sea in one night, and in consequence is named Iquiqui Island. Unfortunately it rose under a ship at anchor, and her remains are still visible, and will remain visible for many years to come.
A little further up the coast, at the Port of Pisagua, the operation was reversed, and one can now sail in a small boat over the houses of the old town, which quietly subsided into the sea one night, also as the result of one of the frequent earthquakes.
Although we had to work like niggers all the week, Sunday, as often as not would see us away in one of the ship’s boats fishing and shooting, in fact it had to be a busman’s holiday for there was little or nothing else to do, certainly not in the town, and less outside of it. It is a bleak barren coast all right; where trees don’t grow, and the rain never rains — in fact it is a common saying that a good tropical shower would do more damage than a fire.
Anyhow, a good boat and a good crew, complete with harpoon, grains and rifles was more in our line. Bar seals, all was fish that came to our nets, whether herrings, rock cod, sharks or the occasional sword fish — and he is a fighter of the first water.
Half a stick of dynamite was the best negotiator for rock cod. Herrings often come in in shoals so thick that the top layers are pushed completely out of the water. Then you bale ‘em up with a bucket. If they are running deep, then you send a charge of dynamite well down. If they are only a couple of fathoms down, a good method is to tie a piece of stick on to one end of, say three fathoms of twine (and don’t forget for a moment that a fathom is six good feet), then tie the stick of dynamite on to the other end.
To prepare the charge, you push a hole down the stick of dynamite with a pencil. Then take a detonator, and insert the end of the fuze. Carefully nip the sides of the detonator with your teeth, at the same time bearing in mind that if the detonator does go off it will blow the top of your head off. Then with the fuze, push the detonator into the dynamite, and hope for the best. Light the fuze, throw it overboard and stand by, but don’t do like the mate of the Thistle, stand with your foot on the twine, or, as in his case, the charge will naturally jerk back on board. Like a sportsman, he grabbed the dynamite again, despite the spluttering fuze, and tried another shot, but this time he had got a complete turn round his ankle, and when he got that clear he was only just able to put the skylight between him and the charge, before there was a neat hole blown clean through the deck, and every scrap of crockery and glass in the pantry underneath was shattered to fragments. What the steward had to say when he realised that the top of his head might have been just where the hole appeared, is not printable. When this occurred the Thistle was lying in the next tier to us.
So much for herrings
This Sunday in particular, we were after bigger fry, and hooked a tartar. We’d sailed well clear of what goes by the name of the harbour (only really there isn’t any) when we saw a fin above the water, and at once jumped to the conclusion that it was our old enemy John Shark. Everyone laid back to their oars, and we rapidly closed on the fin, which my subconscious mind already told me, was attached to no shark.
However, it was a fin, and a big one, and that was good enough. As we drew closer I gave the order “Way enough; lay in the bow oar.” The bow oarsman then took his stand in the eyes of the boat, with the harpoon in his hand, and the rest laid on their oars. With the way we had on the boat, she ran close up, and then the bow oarsman let fly making an excellent shot, burying the harpoon just abaft the fin. We knew instantly that we had tackled something tough, for although a shark at times will put up a pretty good fight, it was nothing compared with the fuss this chap made. Out flew the line and down he went, in fact it was some time before we could snub up enough and make him tow us. He made straight out to sea, at the rate of knots. After ten minutes or so he eased up, and came to the surface. Then we could see it was no shark indeed, but a fifteen foot swordfish. Carefully hauling on the line we managed to get a rifle shot in, and away he went for another stretch, but it was soon evident that the bullet, by luck, had done the trick.
Now a sword fish, in its last throes, has a nasty habit of coming up right under a boat. We were aware of this, and a couple of us were peering over the side down into the water. We saw him coming but couldn’t stop him, and he drove his sword right through the bottom of the boat, actually grazing the back of the stroke oarsman. We were then in a nice mess, some ten miles away from the ship, and a 15 ft. swordfish securely attached to the bottom of the boat.