Some of the old times sea captains were decided originals in their way, Captain “Bully” Hall, for example. He had a mania for queer punishments, used to compel his officers and crew to do all sorts of funny things. Once an officer offended him. “Bully” Hall, who was strong and tough, thereupon seized that officer, and after a tremendous tussle with him, fastened him down in the hold in a huge chicken coop along with some chickens. There cooped up, the poor officer was made all sorts of fun of by his superior, and finally was fed with corn at the captain’s order, precisely as if he were a chicken. Of course, the officer complained of the captain when he got on shore, but with all his personal faults Bully Hall was such a “bully” captain that his superiors let the complaint slide, and continued him in his command. Once, however, Bully Hall got his match, and that without the aid of any “complaint.” He met a boy on the dock who, bein’ hungry, had undertaken to boil some potatoes in the open air, gypsy-like, and had taken a pitch pot to cook ‘em in.
Bully Hall, who thought he had a patent right to bully everybody, whether under his command or not, undertook to brow beat and interfere with this boy, windin’ up by throwing out of spite a huge mop in the pot, and tellin’ the boy with a sneer to “boil that.” The boy never said a word, but, quick as lightnin’, took the mop, now soaked in grease, out of the pot, and applied it vigorously over Hall’s clothes. Hall, who was quite a dandy, this day happened to have on a brand new overcoat. Of course it was completely ruined, and made Hall look very ridiculous besides. It so chanced also that a number of the officers and men of his ship were around the dock at the time, and although these either pretended not to notice anythin’ or to pursue the boy, who, after his assault on the captain, ran away, it was plain to see that they hugely enjoyed the captain’s tribulations, and that their pretendin’ to catch the boy was only a blind. They didn’t catch him at any rate.
Captain “Bob” Waterman was even more of a tyrant than “Bully” Hall. Captain Bob considered himself as a sort of an Almighty on shipboard, and did just what he pleased. One mornin’ a couple of sailors failed to do exactly as he told ‘em, whereupon he quietly walked down to his cabin, got a pistol, and then, just as it as if the poor sailors were seagulls, shot ‘em down, seriously woundin’ one of ‘em.
He was always in trouble with his men, and expected to be arrested as a regular thing, on some charge of cruelty as soon as he reached New York. This expectation was so often realized that at last he got into the way of slipping off his ship when it reached Sandy Hook, and remainin’ in Jersey till the very day the ship sailed again.
But Captain Waterman, like Captain Hall, met his match at last. He was one day in a very bad humor, and after havin’ had a few men flogged, to gratify his spleen, he began to call one of his officers names and to curse him in the presence of the crew. The insulted officer took no heed before the crew, but the moment the captain went down to his cabin, he followed him and enterin’ the cabin locked the door on the captain. “Now,” said the officer to Waterman, “we are on equal terms in this cabin at least, and you either die or you apologize.”
Captain “Bob” Waterman was one of the few men who, though tyrants to the weak, are not cowards to the strong, and who was a brave man all the time.
He never winced this time. He looked the officer and his pistol full in the face, and barrel. “D–n you,” he cried, “I never apologize,” and then he stood stock still, too proud to make any resistance, which he saw would be unavailin’ or to call for aid, which he knew would be useless. The officer was about to pull the trigger and blow the captain into eternity, when something in his companion’s bravery touched his admiration and changed his purpose. He laid down his pistol and stretched out his hand. “It is a thousand pities such a man should be such a devil,” he said.
The captain seem to understand and to agree with him, for the two men shook hands, were friends ever afterward, and from that time on Bob Waterman was much kinder, and got along much better with his men.
But the most celebrated of all the New York captains of the good old times was Captain Samuel Samuels, who years later sailed the Henrietta in its famous ocean race with the Fleetwing and Vesta. He was then commander of the clipper Dreadnought, the swiftest sailin’ ship afloat. On more than one occasion, in a high wind, this clipper has passed a steamer. At another time she made the voyage across the Atlantic in one day less than a Cunard steamer. This is an actual and indisputable fact. It was just thirty years ago, and the steamer the Dreadnought beat by twenty-two hours was the Canada. As for Captain Samuels, he was every inch a sailor and a hero. On one of his voyages on the Dreadnought he showed an amount of fortitude and pluck which has never been–which can never be–excelled.
In a storm he saw a tremendous big wave comin’. He shouted to the sailors to save ‘emselves and then put himself under the bulwarks with one of his legs around a spar. The wave came, gashed his head and broke his leg, twistin’ it and him around. The pain was so great that he fainted and would have fallen into the sea had not his sailors, who were very fond of him, risked their lives to save him. He was rescued with difficulty and was carried down to a wet sofa in the cabin with his fore-leg fractured and the bone protrudin’, sufferin’ excruciatin’ agony.
There was no surgeon on board that ship, so Samuels coolly proposed, between his groans, to turn surgeon himself and amputate his own leg then and there. But the men wouldn’t hear of their captain losin’ his leg, and finally the whole crew got pullin’ at the leg and tugged it into place, the captain bearin’ his terrible sufferin’s without a murmur. So interested did the crew get about the leg that they forgot all about the ship and the rudder for a moment. Then the tiller got loose and the rudder broke. But the broken rudder seemed to act as a temporary cure for the broken leg, for Samuels immediately forgot all about his own condition in the condition of the ship, and devoted all his energies to gettin’ a new rudder constructed. Then another storm came up, and although every roll of the ship gave his leg excruciatin’ torture, the heroic sufferer for two days and two nights never groaned or thought of himself, but only thought how to save the ship, which he saved at last.
For two weeks he lay on that wet sofa ,in that cabin, half full of water, with that broken and unhealin’ leg, bearing the tortures of the martyrs with the uncomplainin’ courage of a man.
At last he brought the Dreadnought into port and was carried off his ship by bein’ hoisted overboard on a box to which his crew had lashed him on a mattress. Then he put both his ship and himself into repair, and in fifty-one days both the clipper and the captain’s leg were all right. Of such stuff where the clipper captains of old New York made.
[Editor’s notes: The above column is an abridged version of “The Old Packet and Clipper Service,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, v. LXVIII, Dec. 1883-May,1884, pp. 217-237.]
