University of Virginia Library

1. REDBURN.

1. CHAPTER I.

“Wellingborough, as you are going to sea, suppose you
take this shooting-jacket of mine along; it's just the thing
—take it, it will save the expense of another. You see,
it's quite warm; fine long skirts, stout horn buttons, and
plenty of pockets.”

Out of the goodness and simplicity of his heart, thus
spoke my elder brother to me, upon the eve of my departure
for the seaport.

“And, Wellingborough,” he added, “since we are both
short of money, and you want an outfit, and I have none to
give, you may as well take my fowling-piece along, and sell
it in New York for what you can get.—Nay, take it; it's
of no use to me now; I can't find it in powder any more.”

I was then but a boy. Some time previous my mother
had removed from New York to a pleasant village on the
Hudson River, where we lived in a small house, in a quiet
way. Sad disappointments in several plans which I had
sketched for my future life; the necessity of doing something
for myself, united to a naturally roving disposition,
had now conspired within me, to send me to sea as a sailor.

For months previous I had been poring over old New
York papers, delightedly perusing the long columns of ship
advertisements, all of which possessed a strange, romantic

charm to me. Over and over again I devoured such announcements
as the following:

To my young inland imagination every word in an advertisement
like this, suggested volumes of thought.

A brig! The very word summoned up the idea of a
black, sea-worn craft, with high, cozy bulwarks, and rakish
masts and yards.

Coppered and copper-fastened! That fairly smelt of
the salt water! How different such vessels must be from
the wooden, one-masted, green-and-white-painted sloops, that
glided up and down the river before our house on the bank.

Nearly completed her cargo! How momentous the announcement;
suggesting ideas, too, of musty bales, and cases
of silks and satins, and filling me with contempt for the vile
deck-loads of hay and lumber, with which my river experience
was familiar.

Will sail on Tuesday the 20th of May—and the newspaper
bore date the fifth of the month! Fifteen whole
days beforehand; think of that; what an important voyage
it must be, that the time of sailing was fixed upon so long
beforehand; the river sloops were not used to make such
prospective announcements.

For freight or passage apply on board! Think of
going on board a coppered and copper-fastened brig, and
taking passage for Bremen! And who could be going to
Bremen? No one but foreigners, doubtless; men of dark
complexions and jet-black whiskers, who talked French.

Coenties Slip. Plenty more brigs and any quantity of
ships must be lying there. Coenties Slip must be somewhere
near ranges of grim-looking warehouses, with rusty

iron doors and shutters, and tiled roofs; and old anchors
and chain-cable piled on the walk. Old-fashioned coffee-houses,
also, much abound in that neighborhood, with sunburnt
sea-captains going in and out, smoking cigars, and
talking about Havanna, London, and Calcutta.

All these my imaginations were wonderfully assisted by
certain shadowy reminiscences of wharves, and warehouses,
and shipping, with which a residence in a seaport during
early childhood had supplied me.

Particularly, I remembered standing with my father on
the wharf when a large ship was getting under way, and
rounding the head of the pier. I remembered the yo heave
ho! of the sailors, as they just showed their woolen caps
above the high bulwarks. I remembered how I thought
of their crossing the great ocean; and that that very ship,
and those very sailors, so near to me then, would after a
time be actually in Europe.

Added to these reminiscences my father, now dead, had
several times crossed the Atlantic on business affairs, for he
had been an importer in Broad-street. And of winter evenings
in New York, by the well-remembered sea-coal fire in
old Greenwich-street, he used to tell my brother and me of
the monstrous waves at sea, mountain high; of the masts
bending like twigs; and all about Havre, and Liverpool,
and about going up into the ball of St. Paul's in London.
Indeed, during my early life, most of my thoughts of the
sea were connected with the land; but with fine old lands,
full of mossy cathedrals and churches, and long, narrow,
crooked streets without side-walks, and lined with strange
houses. And especially I tried hard to think how such
places must look of rainy days and Saturday afternoons;
and whether indeed they did have rainy days and Saturdays
there, just as we did here; and whether the boys went to
school there, and studied geography, and wore their shirt
collars turned over, and tied with a black ribbon; and
whether their papas allowed them to wear boots, instead

of shoes, which I so much disliked, for boots looked so
manly.

As I grew older my thoughts took a larger flight, and I
frequently fell into long reveries about distant voyages and
travels, and thought how fine it would be, to be able to
talk about remote and barbarous countries; with what reverence
and wonder people would regard me, if I had just
returned from the coast of Africa or New Zealand; how
dark and romantic my sunburnt cheeks would look; how I
would bring home with me foreign clothes of a rich fabric
and princely make, and wear them up and down the streets,
and how grocers' boys would turn back their heads to look
at me, as I went by. For I very well remembered staring
at a man myself, who was pointed out to me by my aunt
one Sunday in Church, as the person who had been in
Stony Arabia, and passed through strange adventures there,
all of which with my own eyes I had read in the book
which he wrote, an arid-looking book in a pale yellow cover.

“See what big eyes he has,” whispered my aunt, “they
got so big, because when he was almost dead with famishing
in the desert, he all at once caught sight of a date tree,
with the ripe fruit hanging on it.”

Upon this, I stared at him till I thought his eyes were
really of an uncommon size, and stuck out from his head
like those of a lobster. I am sure my own eyes must have
magnified as I stared. When church was out, I wanted
my aunt to take me along and follow the traveler home.
But she said the constables would take us up, if we did;
and so I never saw this wonderful Arabian traveler again.
But he long haunted me; and several times I dreamt of
him, and thought his great eyes were grown still larger and
rounder; and once I had a vision of the date tree.

In course of time, my thoughts became more and more
prone to dwell upon foreign things; and in a thousand ways
I sought to gratify my tastes. We had several pieces of
furniture in the house, which had been brought from Europe.

These I examined again and again, wondering where the
wood grew; whether the workmen who made them still
survived, and what they could be doing with themselves
now.

Then we had several oil-paintings and rare old engravings
of my father's, which he himself had bought in Paris,
hanging up in the dining-room.

Two of these were sea-pieces. One represented a fat-looking,
smoky fishing-boat, with three whiskerandoes in red
caps, and their trowsers legs rolled up, hauling in a seine.
There was high French-like land in one corner, and a tumble-down
gray lighthouse surmounting it. The waves were
toasted brown, and the whole picture looked mellow and old.
I used to think a piece of it might taste good.

The other represented three old-fashioned French men-of-war
with high castles, like pagodas, on the bow and stern,
such as you see in Froissart; and snug little turrets on top
of the mast, full of little men, with something undefinable
in their hands. All three were sailing through a bright-blue
sea, blue as Sicily skies; and they were leaning over
on their sides at a fearful angle; and they must have been
going very fast, for the white spray was about the bows like
a snow-storm.

Then, we had two large green French portfolios of colored
prints, more than I could lift at that age. Every Saturday
my brothers and sisters used to get them out of the
corner where they were kept, and spreading them on the
floor, gaze at them with never-failing delight.

They were of all sorts. Some were pictures of Versailles,
its masquerades, its drawing-rooms, its fountains, and courts,
and gardens, with long lines of thick foliage cut into fantastic
doors and windows, and towers and pinnacles. Others
were rural scenes, full of fine skies, pensive cows standing
up to the knees in water, and shepherd-boys and cottages
in the distance, half concealed in vineyards and vines.

And others were pictures of natural history, representing

rhinoceroses and elephants and spotted tigers; and above
all there was a picture of a great whale, as big as a ship,
stuck full of harpoons, and three boats sailing after it as fast
as they could fly.

Then, too, we had a large library-case, that stood in the
hall; an old brown library-case, tall as a small house; it
had a sort of basement, with large doors, and a lock and
key; and higher up, there were glass doors, through which
might be seen long rows of old books, that had been printed
in Paris, and London, and Leipsic. There was a fine library
edition of the Spectator, in six large volumes with
gilded backs; and many a time I gazed at the word “London”
on the title-page. And there was a copy of D'Alembert
in French, and I wondered what a great man I would
be, if by foreign travel I should ever be able to read straight
along without stopping, out of that book, which now was a
riddle to every one in the house but my father, whom I so
much liked to hear talk French, as he sometimes did to a
servant we had.

That servant, too, I used to gaze at with wonder; for in
answer to my incredulous cross-questions, he had over and
over again assured me, that he had really been born in
Paris. But this I never entirely believed; for it seemed so
hard to comprehend, how a man who had been born in a
foreign country, could be dwelling with me in our house in
America.

As years passed on, this continual dwelling upon foreign
associations, bred in me a vague prophetic thought, that I
was fated, one day or other, to be a great voyager; and
that just as my father used to entertain strange gentlemen
over their wine after dinner, I would hereafter be telling
my own adventures to an eager auditory. And I have no
doubt that this presentiment had something to do with bringing
about my subsequent rovings.

But that which perhaps more than any thing else, converted
my vague dreamings and longings into a definite

purpose of seeking my fortune on the sea, was an old-fashioned
glass ship, about eighteen inches long, and of French
manufacture, which my father, some thirty years before,
had brought home from Hamburgh as a present to a great-uncle
of mine: Senator Wellingborough, who had died a
member of Congress in the days of the old Constitution,
and after whom I had the honor of being named. Upon
the decease of the Senator, the ship was returned to the
donor.

It was kept in a square glass case, which was regularly
dusted by one of my sisters every morning, and stood on a
little claw-footed Dutch tea-table in one corner of the sitting-room.
This ship, after being the admiration of my
father's visitors in the capital, became the wonder and delight
of all the people of the village where we now resided,
many of whom used to call upon my mother, for no other
purpose than to see the ship. And well did it repay the
long and curious examinations which they were accustomed
to give it.

In the first place, every bit of it was glass, and that was
a great wonder of itself; because the masts, yards, and
ropes were made to resemble exactly the corresponding parts
of a real vessel that could go to sea. She carried two tiers
of black guns all along her two decks; and often I used to
try to peep in at the portholes, to see what else was inside;
but the holes were so small, and it looked so very dark indoors,
that I could discover little or nothing; though, when
I was very little, I made no doubt, that if I could but once
pry open the hull, and break the glass all to pieces, I would
infallibly light upon something wonderful, perhaps some gold
guineas, of which I have always been in want, ever since I
could remember. And often I used to feel a sort of insane
desire to be the death of the glass ship, case, and all, in
order to come at the plunder; and one day, throwing out
some hint of the kind to my sisters, they ran to my mother
in a great clamor; and after that, the ship was placed on

the mantle-piece for a time, beyond my reach, and until I
should recover my reason.

I do not know how to account for this temporary madness
of mine, unless it was, that I had been reading in a
story-book about Captain Kidd's ship, that lay somewhere
at the bottom of the Hudson near the Highlands, full of
gold as it could be; and that a company of men were trying
to dive down and get the treasure out of the hold, which
no one had ever thought of doing before, though there she
had lain for almost a hundred years.

Not to speak of the tall masts, and yards, and rigging of
this famous ship, among whose mazes of spun-glass I used
to rove in imagination, till I grew dizzy at the main-truck,
I will only make mention of the people on board of her.
They, too, were all of glass, as beautiful little glass sailors
as any body ever saw, with hats and shoes on, just like living
men, and curious blue jackets with a sort of ruffle round
the bottom. Four or five of these sailors were very nimble
little chaps, and were mounting up the rigging with very
long strides; but for all that, they never gained a single
inch in the year, as I can take my oath.

Another sailor was sitting astride of the spanker-boom,
with his arms over his head, but I never could find out
what that was for; a second was in the fore-top, with a coil
of glass rigging over his shoulder; the cook, with a glass
ax, was splitting wood near the fore-hatch; the steward, in
a glass apron, was hurrying toward the cabin with a plate
of glass pudding; and a glass dog, with a red mouth, was
barking at him; while the captain in a glass cap was smoking
a glass cigar on the quarter-deck. He was leaning
against the bulwark, with one hand to his head; perhaps
he was unwell, for he looked very glassy out of the eyes.

The name of this curious ship was La Reine, or The
Queen, which was painted on her stern where any one
might read it, among a crowd of glass dolphins and sea-horses
carved there in a sort of semicircle.

And this Queen rode undisputed mistress of a green
glassy sea, some of whose waves were breaking over her
bow in a wild way, I can tell you, and I used to be giving
her up for lost and foundered every moment, till I grew
older, and perceived that she was not in the slightest danger
in the world.

A good deal of dust, and fuzzy stuff like down, had in the
course of many years worked through the joints of the case,
in which the ship was kept, so as to cover all the sea with
a light dash of white, which if any thing improved the
general effect, for it looked like the foam and froth raised by
the terrible gale the good Queen was battling against.

So much for La Reine. We have her yet in the house,
but many of her glass spars and ropes are now sadly shattered
and broken,—but I will not have her mended; and
her figure-head, a gallant warrior in a cocked-hat, lies
pitching head-foremost down into the trough of a calamitous
sea under the bows—but I will not have him put on his
legs again, till I get on my own; for between him and me
there is a secret sympathy; and my sisters tell me, even
yet, that he fell from his perch the very day I left home to
go to sea on this my first voyage.