The run to the Cape of Good Hope was accomplished in favourable weather, and before this latitude was reached the youngest apprentice had fallen into his place on board the ship and was fast becoming seasoned in and by this environment. The only distasteful dish on life's otherwise delightful menu was the atrocious food served alike to the apprentices and the crew. They lived on hard salt junk one day, odoriferous pork and watery pea soup another day, and rice on Saturdays. They never saw fresh meat and vegetables, and instead of bread they received brick-hard biscuits made of bran and meal - often weevilly. There was water to drink, of course, but limited to three quarts, and an occasional tot of rum and more frequent issues of limejuice to defeat scurvy; hence the nickname of the sailing ships - hungry limejuicers.
The midship dock house was devoted to the cook's galley, aft of which on the port side were the cabins occupied by the sub-officers. The apprentices occupied two cabins on the starboard side - three to each cabin - and here the boys slept, ate and lived when off watch. At the head of each bunk hung the occupant's hook pot which was taken to the galley at meal times with a plate and brought back containing the same food served to the sailors, who took theirs away in a kid - a wooden tub.
For a while, the boys did fare better than the crew with the addition of the contents of hampers provided for them by knowing parents, but when the hampers gave out nimble minds sought other avenues of supply - and there was one in the lazarette.
The leading or senior apprentice was a young fellow named Bob and, although he'd never hesitate to fire the bullets he himself made, he was considered by authority to be too sophisticated to carry out a certain duty better suited for the youngest apprentices.
Every day, one of them had to visit the lazarette and there fill the bread barge for the crew - in other words, to fill a wooden box with the weevilly biscuits kept in several iron tanks. To reach the lazarette, the boy first had to enter the saloon at the break of the poop deck, pass through it to reach an alleyway on to which opened the cabins occupied by the officers and the Chief Steward. He then continued to the hatch which gave entry down into the lazarette at the stern of the ship. The lazarette did not contain only weevilly biscuits.
The layout and the nature of the stores were well known to the observant Bob. To the guileless apprentice appointed to visit the lazarette, he quickly described the opportunities waiting there for any sensible person.
"You will find yourself among cases and boxes of all description and of great variety," he was always careful to explain. "The cases are all marked 'For the Crew' and 'For the Passengers'. Those marked 'For the Crew' are, of course meant for us and, as the Chief Steward has a bad memory and often forgets to serve out the food contained in those cases, we are entitled to repair the omissions. You delve into some of them, and then the Chief Steward, who is really a decent old sort, will never experience poignant regret."
Young Cobbold set off on his first visit to the lazarette, a slight youth carrying the empty bread barge through the gauntlet of the passengers in the saloon, then slipping by the officers' cabins keyed up with excitement. Arriving in the lazarette, with haste and trembling he carried out Bob's careful instructions, delving into this case and that until a layer of 'luxuries' - tinned milk and jam, raisins and currants and bottled fruit - covered the bottom of the bread barge, and were then hidden beneath the quantity of biscuits.
The return journey was even more thrilling, and no gun or whiskey runner ever enjoyed the game of running contraband as the youngest apprentice on the Ann Duthie enjoyed bringing the bread barge from the lazarette, having to pass the open door of the Chief Steward's cabin, perhaps an officer, and then the passengers in the saloon.
Every crewman knew what was underneath the ration biscuits, and on the way to the forecastle the bread barge had to be halted at the dock house for removal of part of the contraband for the apprentices, the remainder going to the seamen. To their credit there was not one among them to give away the show. All honour to them, although it was honour among thieves.
Perhaps the Chief Steward was not so blind after all - he must have known the leakage at the end of every voyage when he checked the stores. Doubtless he chuckled every time a white- faced boy slipped by his open door with the laden bread barge, and possibly he was torn between the economy laid down by the owners and his naturally generous heart. Anyway, he never placed any restrictions or obstacle in the way of this 'luxury' running which, after all, could not be regarded as theft because the 'luxuries' rightly belonged to the crew.
Despite the unwholesome food, life at sea had a beneficial effect on the youngest apprentice. The winds and the sun, allied to the constant physical occupations, began to harden and toughen his body and, when the ship had passed the Cape of Good Hope and began its run down the Easting, his nerve and his courage were tested.
Though heavy following seas, raised by a succession of gales, assisted the ship on her way across the Southern Ocean, they made her steering more difficult than normal against the wind blowing from a few points ahead of either beam. The helmsman's task was therefore made more laborious, so young Cobbold was sent to assist him. Because of the experience gained on his father's yachts, he quickly became proficient at steering, or assisting to steer, an ocean-going ship, taking two-hour shifts at the lee wheel.
Day after day and all through the long nights, the high seas raced after the heavily-laden ship, hovering threateningly above the stern, then bending down to shoulder her forward on the surge as though impatient of her slow speed. Her decks were constantly boarded by tons of white water necessitating the rigging of a safety gangway from the break of the poop to the after end of the deck houses to which life lines were secured, and from the foreward end of the deck houses to the forecastle head. As much as possible of the running gear was removed from the often-submerged deck to the gangways fore and aft of the deck houses, as well as to the higher elevated poop and forecastle head, and thus the crew were saved many a sousing as well as the hazard of being washed overboard. The doors of the cook's galley were battened fast and a square hatch cut in the roof, the cook having to climb a ladder to reach this unusual ingress.
This was not an easy school for any boy to attend.
It was the practice among the apprentices for those who spent the watch below to lend any article of apparel to a member of the watch on deck. Early one dirty night it began to blow harder than ever. Those boys and members of the crew taking the deck watch huddled into whatever shelter they might find, then were ordered aloft to reduce even further the canvas carried above the top gallant sails. Young Cobbold was directed to the foremast.
As has been stated, the Ann Duthie was a full rigged ship. Beside the usual square sails on each mast - the courses, the double topsails, topgallant sails and royals - she carried skysails above each of the royals, and hence she was known as a 'flash ship'. Whether or not the skysails were of any material assistance in driving her is problematical, but they certainly gave her a smart appearance and revealed in her captain what in modern parlance would be termed 'swank'.
Given a new ship, where the gear was not only new but stiff, and given a skipper anxious to show what he could do with her, every stitch of canvas she could carry was piled on, even up to the royals. About midnight on one pitch-dark night, when the violence of the gale was continually increasing, the Chief Officer warned the skipper, who reluctantly consented to allow the royals and the topgallant sails all to come in together. The order then was to let go the topgallant sails and royal halyards, get on to the clew lines, and go aloft; apprentices to the royals, able seamen to the topgallants, one man or boy to each sail. Away went young Cobbold up to the fore royal, Brown to the main royal, and Fraser to the mizzen. The boys were followed by the able seamen of the watch, who would stow the topgallant sails.
In the teeth of the hurricane wind, Cobbold was lying alone across the fore royal yard, maintaining the folds there by the weight of his body and the strength of his bleeding hands, and at times having to let go the canvas in order not to be pulled bodily across the yard. Suddenly, above the shrieking gale came the dreaded cry "Man overboard!"
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