Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 359
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[Page 359]
177
crew didn't get much sleep, particularly as during daylight hours, the watch off duty had its parts of the ship to clean, paint or polish, and had to holystone the wooden decks on Sundays - hence the appropriate name for the big cubes of sandstone on the end of a long handle that were used for this task. The more intelligent members of the crew had to do a bout of gun drill on the three six-pounder guns used to stop smugglers or Japanese seal poachers: I was a Number Two (loader) on one of these weapons.
We were beating up the coast past Oregon when the wind intensity increased suddenly and the square topgallant sail on the foremast tore away at the leeches (lower corners). All available hands, including myself, were ordered up on deck just before dawn to help the watch on duty to gather it in. I had been previously warned that if I did have to go aloft, to try and be the first up the ratlines and out along the yard to its extreme end - the yard arm - where other sailors would not be crushing dangerously past me. So there I was, in the wind, rain and the dark, lying across the yard with the soles of my rubber boots jammed down on the jerking foot rope, grabbing manfully at the coarse wet canvas and helping to drag it up, fold by fold, on to the top of the yard and securely lashing it there. The little ship was rolling tremendously, and one moment I thought that the end of the yard with me on it would be doused in the foaming waves, just dimly discernable in the dark, and the next one I was being hurled skyward: a really hair-raising experience. At the end of half an hour all was secure and we climbed down to the galley for hot coffee, and thence to our bunks for what little was left of our few hours off duty. At sunrise the storm abated and we had a comparatively calm passage, in pleasant sunny weather, partly under sail and partly under power, until we arrived at Seattle on the south end of Puget Sound two days later. A short stay there to take in some extra stores, and we then steamed up the east coast of Vancouver Island to the small mining town and coaling station of Ladysmith.