This latest addition to the famous Australian wool clippers weighed about 750 tons and, beside the captain and his three officers, it carried a bosun, a sailmaker and a carpenter, six apprentices, the fourteen seamen, two second-class passengers and about a dozen saloon passengers. She had been built by and was owned by Messrs Duthie of Aberdeen, Scotland - a well- reputed shipping firm who owned, among other ships, the well- known William Duthie, the John Duthie, the Abergeldie and the Cairnbulg.
Mr Cobbold and his son entered the maelstrom of activity and the cacophony of shouted orders on the deck of the Ann Duthie, and eventually reached Captain Birnie, who was engaged in the feverish business of getting his ship to sea and anxious to catch the tide.
"He is small and thin, but you will find him active," Mr Cobbold said to the captain when presenting his son.
Birnie was a man of light stature, with a straggling light- brown beard and cold penetrating grey eyes. He was quiet and efficient, cynical and sarcastic, and he eyed the boy up and down as a man might look over the points of a horse. Since he appeared to show no great interest in Francis Cobbold, father and son went forward on the deck among the crowd of riggers, the maze of ropes and tackle, and the seeming general confusion. During the short period of time at his disposal, the elder Cobbold earnestly talked with this son whom he had wished to keep at home and who had maintained a steady determination to go to sea.
Perhaps the boy did not hear all that his father had to say, for the first mate was addressing the riggers in lurid language, and someone troubled himself to apologise by saying: "That's only 'Dafty' Donaldson's gentle method of urging the workers to greater efforts."
As the old saying had it, Francis Cobbold had long insisted on making the bed on which he was to lie.
2.
A tug took the ship in tow till well beyond Dover and by this time a sufficient number of the hands had been sobered up to enable the mates to get some canvas on her.
The passage down the Channel was made in squally and cold weather, the crew grumbling and fumbling in their bemused mental condition and, after a short and sharp attack of seasickness, the youngest apprentice engaged in the general labour of working the ship. In the morning, after a deck watch spent during a wild and wet night, the muster of men called to the poop for a tot of rum included him. Looking down and observing the thin, shivering boy, the cynical captain shouted: "Rum! I think a coffin would fit you better!"
Not a very kindly man, he probably practised the use of sarcasm without finesse to hide an inferiority complex - he may well have been an embittered man, and certainly his judgement of the material placed in his hands was poor.
What youth, having gained his sea legs, would not delight in every hour of the beginning of such a voyage, experiencing the glow of ambition realised! The whine of the cold wind through the rigging, and the wash of water crashing against the clipper's dainty bows would be music in his ears, while the manner in which order and discipline evolved from chaos in just a few hours would be a revelation and a never-to-be-forgotten lesson.
Within the space of a few days three significant facts were impressed on the mind of this boy thrust into a rough, albeit new and romantic, world. The first was the quick acceptance of and obedience to every order; the second, that the officers and the crew were kindly men beneath their rough exterior; and the third was the terrible quality of the food served to both the apprentices and the men and the manner in which the food was eaten. And in those days, no ship could be sailed without orders expressed in fluent and excessively adjectival language.
'Dafty' Donaldson was then in the prime of life, with an erect posture and fine physique. A full black beard and bold brilliant eyes gave him the appearance of ferocity which went no deeper than his skin - or further down than his tongue. Appalled at first, young Cobbold quickly came to see that he was a dog who delighted to bark and seldom bit, and that the manner in which Donaldson carried out his job was entirely divorced from his natural disposition. Bred and reared in a hard school, the First Mate merely applied his experience to his trade of driving men and assisting to sail a ship. Though master of his trade, he was not mastered by it.
The second officer had learned his trade in a harder school. By sheer strength of mind and tenacity of purpose he had, as it were, crawled through the hawser pipe of a collier to reach the poop of a clipper. His junior was quite a young man, having but recently gained his second mate's ticket. He, too, was a sailor of the Second Mate's stamp.
Here then were young Cobbold's sea-going school masters: the Captain maintaining aloof isolation - an unknown ogre in a secluded cave, ruling the destinies of all on board the Ann Duthie through his officers. The three mates were like the school form masters, in much closer contact with the 'young varmints' who had to be kept subdued and made to learn their sea lessons.
The sailmaker and the carpenter had a much more familiar relationship with the six apprentices. Hard-bitten, yet kindly seamen, these two sub-officers were always ready with advice and encouragement; it is possible to imagine their benevolence, their patience, and their secret admiration of the 'young gentlemen', who in the future might well command their ships. Both were excellent specimens of the seafaring types existing in those days. 'Chips' was an Aberdonian, dour, deliberate and efficient, while 'Sails' hailed from Sweden, gloried in his trade, and was seldom seen on deck without his palm and needle and hardwood fid. He appears to have been a man possessed of common sense, for the first piece of advice offered to the youngest apprentice was: "The finest equipment a sailor can have is a sharp knife and a clear conscience."
The working conditions of the seamen of today do not bare comparison with those operating in the late 1860s other than for the purpose of contrast. Modern steamer sailors on the Australian coast in the 1920s have much to thank progress for: fourteen pounds a month and overtime; duty shifts of four hours on and eight off; no possibility of being summoned from their warm bunks to go aloft in the middle of icy and wind-tormented nights to spend hours reefing or stowing sails; and a menu which contains fresh meat and vegetables and even bacon and eggs for breakfast.
Among the crew of the Ann Duthie were men of a fine type. Some were studious and ambitious to become officers, and they had with them sextants and books on navigation. Not a few were hoary old salts whose life experience was bounded by long voyages, alternating with short and lurid periods spent in a mental haze of women and alcohol. Their meagre pay having been spent at the millionaire rate, it was then the cry of the boardinghouse keeper: "Get out Jack and let John come in, for I see you're outward bound!"
There was a small minority of the crew, half-starved wretches who spent most of the voyage malingering in their bunks. They could hardly be blamed for this, since on the outward run they were between the regular sailors and the passengers in that they were merely working their passages and received only one shilling a month. Their purpose was to reach Sydney, where they would be taken in charge by the boardinghouse keepers until a berth was obtained for them on a homeward bound wool ship on which their wages would be four pounds a month. When the chits had been paid to the boardinghouse keepers from this low wage, there was nothing much for them to draw on arrival at an English port.
Soon after clearing the Channel, one of these unfortunates seems to have made up his mind that he had reached the end of life's tether - or it may be that he had been shanghaied and could not contemplate the months of absence from England. Whatever the reason, he rushed suddenly out of the forecastle, looked round wildly, and then dashed to the bulwark over which he sprang into the sea.
The ship was hove to, but the man was indeed homeward bound.
3.
With the crew reduced to thirteen able seamen, some of whom in practice were distinctly unable, the Ann Duthie proceeded south to the Azores and into finer weather, her cargo of rails for the New South Wales railways keeping her well trimmed.
Young Cobbold quickly became accustomed to going aloft with his fellow apprentices to handle any one of three skysails or to assist the sailors working in