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Updated: May 25, 2025
There were sailing-ships, with stewards and mahogany and maple saloons, trading to Australia, taking cargoes of consumptives and hopeless drunkards for whom a sea-voyage was recommended; there were frowzy little West African boats, full of rats and cockroaches, where men died anywhere but in their bunks; there were Brazilian boats whose cabins could be hired for merchandise, that went out loaded nearly awash; there were Zanzibar and Mauritius steamers and wonderful reconstructed boats that plied to the other tide of Borneo.
By what arrangement or influence she made the deckhands considerately blind to this repetition of the journey without money and without price, I neither knew nor cared, being altogether engaged with playing about the deck and admiring the wonders of the vasty deep. The other boats were wonderful, especially the big sailing-ships, which were far more numerous then than they are now.
By her pale light the sailing-ships in all directions could be seen loosing their canvas, while from numberless funnels wreaths of smoke were ascending, showing that the steamers were preparing to move. All the officers were quickly assembled on deck; many an eye was cast eastward to watch for the first signs of coming day. The men were ordered to their stations.
Perhaps one must have sailed in the Fram to be able fully to understand what a blessing it was to feel ourselves altogether clear of the surrounding land and the many sailing-ships in the Channel to say nothing of constantly working the ship with a deck swarming with dogs.
If you are extremely lucky, it may happen that one trade-wind will practically take you over into the other; but, as a rule, this region will cause quite a serious delay to sailing-ships; either there are frequent calms, or shifting and unsteady winds. We arrived there at an unfavourable time of the year and lost the north-east trade as early as ten degrees north of the line.
But over-confidence, I believe, was the cause of the disaster to the liner Atlantic, and many more like her. The captain knew too well where he was. There were no porpoises at all skipping along with the Olympia! Porpoises always prefer sailing-ships. The captain was a young man, I observed, and had before him, I hope, a good record. Land ho!
She had been hoping against hope for months, because some who have gone adrift in dories have been miraculously picked up by deep-sea sailing-ships. Now she had her certainty, and Harvey could see the policeman on the sidewalk hailing a hack for her. "It's fifty cents to the depot" the driver began, but the policeman held up his hand "but I'm goin' there anyway. Jump right in.
A large circular building was erected close to the sea-beach as a reservoir for the imported ice, which sailing-ships brought in huge blocks from the western world; and for a number of years the scheme was a commercial success. The ice was sold at four annas a pound, and many people in Madras remember the time when it was the only ice that was to be had, and large quantities of it were sold.
Farming is a comparatively recent innovation, for the Alanders are born men of the sea, and were once reckoned the finest sailors in Finland. Less than a century ago Aland harboured a fine fleet of sailing-ships owned by syndicates formed amongst the peasantry, and engaged in a profitable trade with Great Britain and Denmark.
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