Our captain,
who was a very good and experienced seaman, having been above thirty years the
master of a vessel, part of which he had served, so he phrased it, as commander
of a privateer, and had discharged himself with great courage and conduct, and
with as great success, discovered the utmost aversion to the sending his boat
ashore whenever we lay wind-bound in any of our harbours. This aversion did not
arise from any fear of wearing out his boat by using it, but was, in truth, the
result of experience, that it was easier to send his men on shore than to
recall them. They acknowledged him as their master while they remained on shipboard,
but did not allow his power to extend to the shores, where they had no sooner
set their foot than every man became his own master, and thought himself at
full liberty to return when he pleased. Now it is not any delight that these
fellows have in the fresh air or verdant fields on the land. Everyone of them
would prefer his ship and his hammock to all the sweets of Arabia the Happy;
but, unluckily for them, there are in every seaport in England certain houses
,whose chief livelihood depends oil providing entertainment for the gentlemen
of the jacket. For this purpose they are always well furnished with those
cordial liquors which do immediately inspire the heart with gladness,
banishing all careful thoughts, and indeed all others, from the mind, and
opening the mouth with songs of cheerfulness and thanksgiving for the many
wonderful blessings with which a seafaring life overflows.
For my own part, however whimsical it may appear, I
confess I have thought the strange story of Circe in the" Odyssey"
no other than an ingenious allegory, in which Homer intended to convey to his
countrymen the same kind of instruction which we intend to communicate to our
own in this digression. As teaching the art of war to the Greeks was the plain
design of the" Iliad," so was teaching them the art of navigation the
no less manifest intention of the" Odyssey."
For
the improvement of this their situation was most excellently adapted; and
accordingly we find Thucydides, in the beginning of his history, considers the
Greeks as a set of pirates or privateers, plundering each other by sea. This
being probably the first institution of commerce before the Ars'Cauponaria was
invented, and merchants, instead of robbing, began to cheat and outwit each
other, and by degrees changed the Metabletic, the only kind of traffic allowed
by Aristotle in his" Politics," into the Chrematistic.
By
this allegory, then, I suppose Ulysses. to have been the captain of a
merchant-ship, and Circe some good ale-wife, who made his crew drunk with the
spirituous liquors of those days. With this the transformation into swine, as
well as all other incidents of the fable, will notably agree; and thus a key
will be found out for unlocking the whole mystery, and forging at least some
meaning to a story which, at present, appears very strange and absurd.
Hence, moreover, will appear the very near
resemblance between the seafaring men of all ages and nations; and here,
perhaps, may be established the truth and justice of that observation, which
will occur oftener than once in this voyage, that all human flesh is not the
same flesh, but that there is one kind of flesh of landmen and another of
seamen.
Philosophers, divines, and others, who have treated
the gratification of human appetites with contempt, have, among other instances,
insisted very strongly on that satiety which IS so apt to overtake them even in
the very act of enjoyment. And here they more particularly deserve our
attention, as most of them may be supposed to speak from their own experience,
and very probably gave us their lessons with a full stomach. Thus hunger and
thirst, whatever delight they may afford while we are eating and drinking, pass
both away from us with the plate and the cup. A second haunch of venison, or a
second dose of turtle, would hardly allure a city glutton with its smell. Even
the celebrated Jew himself, when well filled with calipash and calipee, goes
contentedly home to tell his money, and expects no more pleasure from his
throat during the next twenty-four hours. Hence I suppose Dr. South took that
elegant comparison of the joys of a speculative man to the solemn silence of an
Archimedes over a problem, and those of a glutton to the stillness of a sow at
her wash-a simile which, if it became the pulpit at all, could only become it
in the afternoon.
Whereas in those potations which the mind seems to
enjoy, rather than the bodily appetite, there is happily no such satiety; but
the more a man drinks, the more he desires; as if, like Mark Antony in Dryden,
his appetite increased with feeding, and this to a filthily immoderate degree,
without any exhibition of shame. Hence, as with the gang of Captain Ulysses,
ensues so total a transformation that the man no more continues what he was.
Perhaps he ceases for a time to be at all; or, though he may retain the same
outward form and figure he had .before, yet is his nobler part, as we are
taught to call it, so changed, that, instead of being the same man, he scarce
remembers what he was a few hours before. And this transformation, being once
obtained, is so easily preserved by the same potations, which induced no
satiety, that the captain in vain sends or goes in quest of his crew. They know
him no longer, or, if they do, they acknowledge not his power, having, indeed,
as entirely forgotten themselves as if they had taken a large draught of the
river of Lethe.
Nor is the captain always sure of even finding out
the place to which Circe hath conveyed them. There are many of those houses in
every port-town. Nay, there are some where the sorceress doth not trust only to
her drugs, but hath instruments of a different kind to execute her purposes, by
whose means the tar is effectually secreted from the knowledge and pursuit of
his captain. This would, indeed, be very fatal, were it not for one
circumstance, that the sailor is seldom provided with the proper bait for these
harpies. However, the contrary sometimes happens, as these harpies will bite at
almost anything, and will snap at a pair of silver buttons, or buckles, as
surely as at the specie itself. Nay, sometimes they are so voracious that the
very naked hook will go down, and the jolly young sailor is sacrificed for his
own sake.
In vain, at such a season as this, would the vows of
a pious heathen have prevailed over Neptune, Aeolus, or any other marine deity.
In vain would the prayers of a Christian captain be attended with the like
success. The wind may change how it pleases while all hands are on shore; the
anchor would remain firm in the ground, and the ship would continue in durance,
unless, like other forcible prison-breakers, it forcibly got loose for no good
purpose.
Now, as the favour of winds and courts, and
such like, is always to be laid hold on at the very first motion, for within twenty-four
hours all may be changed again; so, in the
former case, the
loss of a day may be the loss of a voyage; for though it may appear to persons
not well skilled in navigation, who see ships meet and sail by each other,
that the wind blows sometimes east and west, north and south, backward and
forward, at the same instant, yet, certain it is that the land is so contrived
that even the same wind will not, like the same horse, always bring a man to
the end of his journey, but that the gale which the mariner prayed heartily for
yesterday he may as heartily deprecate tomorrow; while all use and benefit
which would have arisen to him from the westerly wind of to-morrow may be
totally lost and thrown away by neglecting the offer of the easterly blast
which blows to-day.
Hence ensues grief and disreputation to the innocent
captain, loss' and disappointment to the worthy merchant, and not seldom great
prejudice to the trade of a nation whose ma1J.ufactures are thus liable to lie
unsold in a foreign warehouse, the market being forestalled by some rival whose
sailors are under a better discipline. To guard against these inconveniences,
the prudent captain takes every precaution in his power; he makes the strongest
contracts with his crew, and thereby binds them so firmly that none but the
greatest or least of men can break through them with impunity; but for one of
these two reasons, which I will not determine, the sailor, like his brother
fish, the eel, is too slippery to be held, and plunges into his element with
perfect impunity.
To speak a plain truth, there is no trusting to any
contract with one whom the wise citizens of London call a bad man; for, with
such a one, though your bond be ever so strong, it will prove in the end good
for nothing.
What, then, is to be done in this case? What, indeed,
but to call in the assistance of that tremendous magistrate, the justice of
peace, who can, and often doth, lay good and bad men in equal durance; and
though he seldom cares to stretch his bonds to what is great, never finds
anything too minute for their detention, but will hold the smallest reptile
alive so fast in his noose that he can never get out till he is let drop
through it.
Why, therefore, upon the breach of those contracts,
should not an immediate application be made to the nearest magistrate of this
order, who should be empowered to convey the delinquent either to ship or to
prison, at the election of the captain, to be fettered by the leg in either
place.
But, as the
case now stands, the condition of this poor captain without any commission, and
of this absolute commander without any power, is much worse than we have
hitherto shown it to be; for, notwithstanding all the aforesaid contracts to
sail in the good ship the Elizabeth, if the sailor should, for better
wages, find it more his interest to go on board the better ship the Mary, either
before their setting out or on their speedy meeting in some port, he may prefer
the latter without any other danger than that of " doing what he ought not
to have done," contrary to a rule which he is seldom Christian enough to
have much at heart, while the captain is generally too good a Christian to
punish a man out of revenge only, when he is to be at a considerable expense
for so doing. There are many other deficiencies in our laws relating to
maritime affairs, and which would probably have been long since corrected, had
we any seamen in the House of Commons. Not that I would insinuate that the
Legislature wants a supply of many gentlemen in the seaservice; but as these
gentlemen are by their attendance in the House unfortunately prevented from
ever going to sea, and there learning what they might communicate to their
landed brethren, these latter remain as ignorant in that branch of knowledge as
they would be if none but courtiers and foxhunters had been elected into Parliament,
without a single fish among them.-" A Voyage to Lisbon
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