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Updated: June 9, 2025
She had a large crew, abnormally large hawse-pipes, and a bad reputation the last attribute born of the first. Registered as the Rosebud, this innocent name was painted on her stern and on her sixteen dories; but she was known among the fishing-fleet as the Ishmaelite, and the name fitted her.
Like an avalanche, she shot forward and down as the sea astern struck her with the force of a thousand battering rams, burying her bow to the cat-heads in the milky foam at the bottom that came on deck in all directions forward, astern, to right and left, through the hawse-pipes and over the rail. The wind began to drop, and by ten o'clock we were talking of heaving her to.
Of the seven war-ships, the seaworthiness of two was questionable: the Trenton's, from an original defect in her construction, often reported, never remedied her hawse-pipes leading in on the berth-deck; the Eber's, from an injury to her screw in the blow of February 14th.
Her round bows bruised the sea, and when it entered her head to take to her heels, she would wash through it like a "gallied whale," all smothered to the hawse-pipes, and a big round polished hump of brine on either quarter. We ambled, and wallowed, and blew, and in divers fashions drove along till we were deep in the heart of the North Atlantic.
Then, one after another, we filed past the Admiral, who shook hands with each of us as we passed out of the cabin; and ten minutes later the harbour was resounding with the clank of chain cables being hove in through a fleet's hawse-pipes and stowed away below.
But they must speedily have recognised the impossibility of escape, for now, with carefully-cleaned furnace fires and a full head of steam, our ships were racing along through the fast-rising sea at a speed which would enable us to rapidly overhaul the chase, notwithstanding that they were plunging until they were buried to the hawse-pipes, and their fore-decks were smothered with spray.
As poets and sailors believe that ships have souls, it may be that she gloried in her shame, like other fallen creatures; for her large, slanting oval hawse-pipes and boot-top stripe gave a fine, Oriental sneer to her face-like bow, and there was slur and insult to respectable craft in the lazy dignity with which she would swash through the fleet on the port tack, compelling vessels on the starboard tack to give up their right of way or be rammed; for she was a large craft, and there was menace in her solid, one-piece jib-boom, thick as an ordinary mainmast.
The fine old seaman doffs his cap and makes them a grand, manly bow. He glances at the reef and then mutters quietly to himself, "She will never clear it, and God forgive me!" Then, wheeling round, he gives a command. "Let go both anchors; it is our only chance!" Many hearts sink at the order, but in as few moments as possible the cables are smoking through the hawse-pipes.
As the ship, in the solid floe, set to the north-west, the cables rattled and tore at the hawse-pipes; luckily the anchors, lying as they were on a strip-sloping bottom, came away easily, without damage to windlass or hawse-pipes. Slowly as we disappeared into Sound, the light in the hut died away. At 11.30 p.m. the ice around us started to break up, the floes playing tattoo on the ship's sides.
Moreover, they could form but a very vague idea of the dangers by which they were surrounded, the chart showing nothing but a clear sea; and, to further increase their anxiety, there was a heavy ground-swell rolling in from the westward, which caused the ship to bury herself to her hawse-pipes.
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