The first page I have of him is not the first page he wrote. Somewhere between San Francisco in February and Chile at the end of April there were other pages, and they are gone. What survives opens in a harbor on the coast of Chile, mid-voyage, with a man already at work.
He is twenty-four. He has been at sea for two and a half months. He is a ship’s steward on the Serapis, a two-year-old Kosmos Line freighter under Captain Ahrens, and he is very good at his job in a way he never once states outright and never stops demonstrating.
This is the act where nothing much goes wrong.
Eight cruisers and a funeral
Talcahuano harbor is the best so far on this voyage. It has two entrances, with an island in the mouth of the bay. This is the stronghold of the Chilean navy — its navy yard and all. There are now within sight eight cruisers and four or five torpedo boats. For the warships there are piers and docks, of course, but otherwise this port, like all the rest on this coast, lags well behind on modern wharves and the like.
Our cargo today is mostly flour and oats — must be a productive country. Many wild horses are said to roam the hills. Talcahuano has a bad name for lawlessness; the town seems to be a regular nest of refugees from the law who still stick to their trade. There was an incident at a funeral today, when a passenger was relieved of his belongings.
Note what he is actually doing here. He counts the warships. He assesses the wharves and finds them behind the times. He reads the cargo manifest as evidence about the country’s agriculture. He passes along the local reputation, and then reports a robbery at a funeral in the same flat tone he used for the flour and oats.
This is a man taking inventory of a place. He does it in every port, all voyage, without ever explaining that he is doing it.
Primitive facilities
This is a great coal-mining district, the mines sitting right near the shore, and the coal is said to be of superior grade. Coronel is the only coaling station of any importance on the west coast, and yet the loading facilities are very primitive: lighters are pulled alongside the ship and the coal is shoveled into the bunkers by hand. The day is a fine one, and there’s no reason up-to-date bunkers couldn’t be installed here.
Noticed a football game onshore today. Lucky to be the only ship in harbor, or we wouldn’t be coaled for a good while yet.
“There’s no reason up-to-date bunkers couldn’t be installed here.” He is a mess steward. Nobody has asked him about the coaling infrastructure of the Chilean coast. He has an opinion about it anyway, and it is a specific, actionable, faintly impatient opinion.
Not a deckhand and not an officer. The stewards ran the hotel side of a working freighter: the officers’ mess, the pantry, the linen, the passengers when there were any. Carl served a mess of fifteen men, then eight, then twenty-four across three sittings when the chef vanished.
It was service work, and it was relentless, and it put a young man in a room with the captain, the mates, the purser and the engineers three times a day. Which is how a twenty-four-year-old ends up with opinions about coal bunkers.
On his own ship one day
The entry for Corral picks up mid-sentence. The page before it is gone, and what remains starts in the middle of a thought about a whaling port on the Chilean coast.
…a whaling port at that — an attractive spot, and it’s my intention to return here someday, after a stint in Australia, which is now a settled plan.
Every morning the “whaler,” a small steam launch, goes out on the hunt. To think one could live in such a beautiful spot and enjoy all the pleasures of hunting and fishing is a strong draw indeed. I’ll surely come back here, on my own ship one day. An old-fashioned port, with weathered gables along its streets.
Three plans in one paragraph. Australia, which is a settled plan. A return to Corral. And his own ship.
He does not get to Australia. Two months from this page he will be sleeping on a bench in Hamburg with his watch in a pawnshop, and by August he will be telling his old chief mate, in what I suspect was a fairly level voice, that he hadn’t been able to get a ship to Australia and had signed on with another steamer for the time being.
He also does not get his own ship. He gets ninety-six years, a house in Berkeley, and a great-grandson who finds the notebook.
Pride said otherwise
They leave Corral at nine at night on the eighth. The sea gets worse immediately and keeps getting worse for four days.
Ran into a rough sea that has been building ever since. Still not seasick, while all around me the other stewards are pale as ghosts and unable to eat. Can’t imagine why I should be so immune. My bunkmate said he’d expected it to be the other way around — that I’d be the one laid up. Pride said otherwise.
Brackets had to be fitted to the tables to hold the dishes. The decks are stripped for heavy seas. We’re now nearing the roughest water of the whole trip — Cape Horn.
Pride said otherwise.
He is not claiming an iron stomach. He is saying his bunkmate predicted he’d be the one flat on his back, and that being told so was sufficient to prevent it. That is a whole personality in four words.
All day a very rough sea, with waves breaking over the deck. Fiddles on the dishes weren’t enough to keep them on the table.
Then the tenth, which is the entry the whole act has been walking toward. They are still in open ocean here, working south along the Chilean coast toward the mouth of the strait.
For storms and heavy seas, last night takes the record. Waves broke over the lifeboats on the hurricane deck. Sleep was impossible — one moment standing on one’s head, the next hanging on for dear life. Chairs, stoves, and dishes went smashing through the night. A novel experience at sea, taking coffee on the bridge at midnight. The waves, wind-blown white caps and all, looked like young mountains with snowy tops. Water rushed into our cabin and things washed about like a merry-go-round.
No thought of danger ever crossed my mind — I rather enjoyed the rough weather.
Waves breaking over the lifeboats. The lifeboats are on the hurricane deck, which is high up, which is the point of putting them there. The stove has come loose. There is seawater in the cabin.
And he went up to the bridge at midnight for coffee, because it was novel, and he thought the waves looked like mountains with snow on top.
In May 1908 the Panama Canal was a construction site, six years from opening. Every ton of cargo moving between the Pacific coast of South America and Europe had to get around the bottom of the continent, and there were two ways to do it.
Outside, through the Drake Passage, standing well south of Cape Horn — open ocean, no shelter, the worst reliable seas on the planet. Or inside, threading the Strait of Magellan: some three hundred and fifty miles of channel between the mainland and Tierra del Fuego, sheltered but narrow, with adverse winds and currents and a four-mile-wide Pacific mouth to find in bad weather.
Steamers took the inside route when they could. Sail could not, reliably, which is why the Horn has the reputation and the Strait does not.
A note on Cape Horn, and what I got wrong
I wrote the first draft of this collection saying Carl rounded Cape Horn in a gale. That is the family version, and it is what his own entry of 8 May seems to promise: we’re now nearing the roughest water of the whole trip — Cape Horn.
Then I plotted the route in QGIS, and it would not close. Three days later he writes that they entered the Strait of Magellan and specifies the Pacific entrance. You only meet the Pacific entrance coming down the Chilean coast. A ship that had rounded the Horn would already be in the Atlantic. On the 14th he confirms it from the other end — out of Punta Arenas, and at half past five that evening they left the strait for the Atlantic.
So he did not round Cape Horn. He took the inside passage, and the storm of the 9th and 10th caught him in open water on the approach.
The map is the thing that caught it. I had read those entries several times without noticing, because I already knew what the story was.
At four o’clock this morning we entered the smooth waters of the Strait of Magellan. After being tossed about as we were for the last four days, it felt almost as if we were on land, it was so quiet. The Pacific entrance must be some three or four miles across, but it’s still a dangerous place on account of adverse winds and currents.
The strait varies in width, with both shores lined by snow-covered hills and mountains. Glaciers and icebergs are numerous. We’re very fortunate to have clear weather, which gives us the full benefit of the beautiful scenery.
Four days of the worst weather on the planet, resolved in a sentence about how quiet it got, followed immediately by an appreciation of the view.
The flying Dutchman
They are stuck in port an extra day. A keg of beer arrives at the officers’ mess. What follows is the single funniest entry in the journal, and he tells it completely deadpan.
A Jonah day — didn’t get away today, but a twenty-gallon keg of beer arrived at the officers’ mess, and everyone celebrated. Three other stewards and I set up an excellent little bottling operation, filling bottles at intervals through the meal and storing them away — meant to make it last, but ended up drinking the whole works instead.
Naturally felt pretty strong and nimble afterward. Just my luck to be called on unusually often; had to carry mattresses, and where ordinarily I’d manage a bunch at a time, I found I could carry all six at once. Then, twice, when the empty beer keg had to be returned to the hull we’d taken our cargo from, I had to jump from our ship to the deck of the other. Made the leap like a flying Dutchman, to everyone’s surprise, and climbed back aboard in good shape besides.
The structure of that is perfect and I don’t think it’s an accident. Set up a bottling operation to make the beer last. Drink all of it instead. Report the resulting athletic achievements in the tone of a man filing a work log.
Made the leap like a flying Dutchman, to everyone’s surprise. Including, I suspect, his own.
No letters
Last night was a real stem-winder. The weather was so bad the ship had to be stopped four or five times through the night to take soundings. Not wanting to risk being driven ashore, the captain headed out to open sea. Double watch, day and night, on account of the treacherous shore. A tornado passed within half a mile of us; the water churned into a furious sea.
A tornado passed within half a mile. That is the entire mention of the tornado.
The next day they make Montevideo, and something actually does bother him.
Montevideo, Uruguay. A modern-looking city, with fine buildings and very clean streets. It covers an immense stretch of territory, and judging by its many tall chimneys must be a considerable manufacturing center.
Very disappointed not to find letters from home waiting, though I suppose scarcely enough time has passed since the last post from Corinto. A small dust-up with the second cook results in a full-blown feud between us.
The worst seas of the voyage: I rather enjoyed the rough weather. A tornado at half a mile: one clause. No mail from home: very disappointed, and then he immediately picks a fight with the second cook.
That is the only sentence in the whole of Act I where he tells you he feels bad. He is three weeks from Europe, five thousand miles from anyone who knows him, and he walked down to the mail and there was nothing.
He rationalizes it in the same breath — not enough time has passed since Corinto, the post can’t have caught up. He is talking himself out of it on the page.
The toilet complete
It’s scrub day, so in nothing but white trousers rolled to the knee, I set to work. Once the decks are scrubbed I dress up, which means adding a pair of found — but washed and laundered — twenty-five-cent canvas slippers to my scrubbing costume, rolling my trousers back down, and calling the toilet complete. Ready then to attend to the officers’ wants in the mess room.
He found the slippers. He washed them. He considers this getting dressed.
And then he goes and waits on the officers, and by August the officers of a different ship will be telling the chief steward that it is plainly not this man’s first voyage, judging by how he carries out his duties.
The sweet potato
At 3 a.m. we crossed the equator for the second time on this voyage. Almost at the exact moment of crossing the line, we were greeted with a downpour that nearly amounted to a cloudburst. A beautiful daybreak followed.
Four days later, in the middle of the Atlantic, between a note about the Cape Verde Islands and a note about a scrap breaking out in honor of the ladies aboard:
Have a sweet potato growing in a glass jar of water — its growth is marvelous to watch.
I have read that sentence a number of times now.
He is a month past the strait, mid-ocean, in the tropics, on a working freighter, and he has a sweet potato in a jar of water on a shelf somewhere, and he is watching it grow.
Then Pentecost, and the best writing in the journal.
Such a glorious day — the world-wide German holiday could never be better honored by the weather. The ocean was just calm enough to be beautiful, not glassy, but touched here and there with color, simply lovely, a sight I’ve never seen equaled. The sunset held me spellbound, the clouds taking on the look of a fleet of vessels passing before old Sol, now an immense red fireball.
The first mate handed out gifts to mark the day. Took Adolph Sutro’s picture today.
Somewhere, possibly, there is a photograph of Adolph Sutro taken by my great-grandfather on the seventh of June 1908, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, on the first day of Pentecost. I have not found it. I would like to.
At Tenerife, vendors came aboard and covered every free foot of deck with goods — shirtwaists, doilies, handkerchiefs, underwear. And canaries, the islands’ namesake export.
Carl’s warning, verbatim: you think you hear the bird singing, but if you look and listen closely you’ll find it’s the seller doing the singing, not the bird.
A hundred and eighteen years later that is still, as far as I can tell, the standard method.
At Tenerife the mail finally catches up with him — forwarded the long way round via San José, Guatemala. Not quite what I was expecting, but welcome all the same. Nineteen days after Montevideo.
Magic Yeast
This is a small entry about bread and it is the first time the real theme of the second half of this journal shows its face.
The cook and I have been going back and forth — the bake oven hasn’t been much of a success, and he’s put the blame on the yeast, “Magic Yeast,” claiming, as is the habit of all Germans, that American products are no good. I told him he just didn’t know how to use it properly, and sure enough that turned out to be the case. Once I read him the directions, we had the finest bread and cakes you could ask for, and no small credit to the chef besides.
Carl was born in the United States to German-speaking parents who, by his own account, held him to the language with the rod until he had a good foundation in it. He is fluent enough to argue in German and to translate the San Francisco earthquake into it for a purser’s fiancée.
And on a German ship, in German, he is defending American yeast.
And no small credit to the chef besides. He wins the argument and then hands the cook the credit for the bread. He does that repeatedly, all the way through, and I don’t think he ever noticed he was doing it.
Rowed themselves home
The Serapis is stuck at anchor in the Thames because her arrival wasn’t announced in advance and there’s no berth. Four days of unloading by lighter. So Carl and Adolph Sutro run a signal flag up to ask for a boat ashore, and go to London for the day.
We reached the city and made for the terminus, then walked a block or two and crossed the famous London Bridge. We checked our guidebook, got our bearings, and pressed on. The streets were jammed with people and every kind of vehicle, the double-decker buses the main mode of getting around, with large advertisements and signs practically hiding whatever paint lay beneath.
At the major crossings there are subways for pedestrians; at one junction where seven streets meet, we tried the underground way and got so turned around in the maze of passages that we came up well off course.
Two young men with a guidebook, getting lost in a pedestrian subway at Seven Dials, coming up in the wrong place.
They make the Franco-British Exhibition at Shepherd’s Bush with barely time to walk around it — he notes the flip-flap and the roller coaster as the popular attractions — and start back at half past ten. Then the part I like.
On the train I couldn’t help a little flirting. It was close to one o’clock by the time we reached Greenhithe. At the pier we found the rowboat but no boatman to take us across — a look around and a whistle brought no sign of life.
Adolph can row, and so can I, so we left a note in the other boat telling the boatman he could collect his own in the morning, and made the hard pull back to our steamer, arriving right side up. Then another scramble across the launches and up the rope ladder, and we were safe aboard.
One in the morning, no boatman, so they take a boat, leave a note explaining where the man can find his other boat, row themselves out to the ship in the dark, and climb a rope ladder in their Sunday best.
Arriving right side up.
Six weeks later, in Hamburg, he will do the same thing again except that this time he will strip off and swim it, and the ships in the harbor will talk about it for days.
Handkerchiefs, twenty miles of them
The last day of the voyage. Thirty-six hours from the Thames, up the Elbe on a Sunday afternoon in June, and the whole city has come out to the riverbank — not for the Serapis, but for the Kaiser’s flotilla, which happens to be passing.
The trip upstream from Schulau on was one long round of handkerchief-waving — the port bank thick with people out promenading, a promenade that must run twenty miles long, since it took us more than five hours to cover the distance.
Being out in the stream ourselves, we passed within a few yards of His Majesty’s ship, with His Excellency himself on the bridge, escorted by a cruiser and a torpedo boat.
He passes within a few yards of Wilhelm II, standing on his own bridge, six years before that man takes Europe into the war that will eventually swallow both of the ships in this journal.
Carl gives him one sentence and moves on to the port facilities.
The scale of Hamburg as a shipping port is something marvelous. I’d always thought San Francisco a great port, but it takes a back seat once you consider the size of the vessels here.
They moor at the American Quay at nine at night, still daylight. Nearly everyone goes ashore. Carl, being the only steward aboard, stays with the ship.
He has crossed the Atlantic twice, run the Strait of Magellan end to end, taken the worst weather of the year on the approach, and worked every day of it. Tomorrow morning he will be paid off, and by the end of the week he will have a room at No. 12 Schaarsteinweg for four marks a week, coffee and rolls included.
Six weeks after that he will be sleeping outdoors.