The Master of the "Rockingham"

by H. M. TOMLINSON

1

WHEN I look back past two long wars, with all their dramatic events revealing the heroic, much of it pure gold, the master of the forgotten steamship Rockingham still seems to me to be emblematic. He still lives, in my experience, as the figure signifying better than most to what human nature can rise in a prolonged test, and hope not there. I never knew him. I never saw him till all was over, and Lloyd’s underwriters were giving him a welcome home, and then he surprised me. After that ceremony, which was not public, he put on his bowler hat and went back into the multitude, all distinction lost. He was once more a nobody; his ship’s bright news-value was extinguished.

Our age, so we are told by those who know, is that of the common man. Well, who is he? They don’t tell us that. We don’t know him. Is he any good? But they cannot tell us what he is. II he isn’t better than a joke, if he isn’t more than a myth, not worth a second thought, then he must be the Mob; and as the Mob we don’t like the look of him at all. Anyhow, we never happen to come across him. After all, from San Francisco to London, what do we know of our neighbors, and of their worth? Especially of their worth. I don’t mean what they are insured for, but their value as men. You can rarely tell those fellows apart. They dress alike. They live where homes arc straight lines converging in vistas of drab infinity.

There was Oriental Street, of Dockland. You would not have given it another glance, for it was like the rest of the streets of its parish. I knew the street well, because daily I had to pass through it when going elsewhere. There was just one little thing about it known to me, but not, I guess, to the dwellers in it: that street got its name about the time when a famous American clipper, the Oriental, was the first to arrive in London with the new season’s tea, and became an object of admiration and deep technical interest to local shipwrights. But that is no matter now. Those craftsmen, and the very ships they built, have been gone a century. It is engines now, not sail, and the great days over. Wonder had lapsed from Oriental Street when I used to pass through it, and pass hurriedly, without looking at any of its numerous doors; doors all of the same color, painted and grained in imitation of oak, with brass knockers. Imitation of the real thing does not please. Besides, it no longer exists. Bombs blotted it out.

Its people were anonymous to all except the tax collector. Nothing distinguished them. You seldom saw one of its women at a door. There might be a cat on a window sill. It was a silent street without a shop, residential, respectable, and dull. Its muslin curtains were drawn close, giving a sight of nothing within but a geranium or a pot of musk — this was in the days when musk was fragrant, which also is a fact forgotten; though here and there in a window was a very nice piece of pottery from the Far East. Its tenants, for the most part, were the families of seamen, of shipmasters and officers, marine engineers and pursers. So its men were there but briefly, and almost as strangers. Of course, if you lived in the neighborhood, you would have known why rather too many blinds were drawn there, and elsewhere about, after the foundering of the liner Durham Castle in the Bay of Biscay. Even in that tragic week you would have noticed no difference in it, its sole activity confined as usual to the hour when the tradesmen were on their rounds.

It was December, and one evening I happened to notice in the news of the movements of ships — locally, you must know, we miss not a paragraph in “Lloyd’s Shipping List" —that the S.S. Rockingham, Philadelphia to London, was considered to be overdue. When in that newspaper a ship is thus considered, the news is not intended to be sensational; it is a simple statement of the truth. It was a winter of continuous gales. Her underwriters would be uneasy, because that winter had already proved serious for them. The steamers then called “tramps,” of about 4000 tons deadweight capacity, in heavy Atlantic weather, were a bit of a risk. Only a winter or t wo before, in just such weather, nine of them were posted as missing on North Atlantic voyages. In those days only the big liners were equipped with the new wireless, and so you never heard a word of what had happened to the lesser ships; they were overwhelmed, that is all. A steamer named the Rockingham was overdue.

Well, I knew nothing of her, except that her house flag was a good one; she would be seaworthy and well-found. At first, my concern with her resided in no more than the irrelevant fact that, not long before, a steamer in which I was one of the crew had been caught in the Western Ocean, and had all but foundered while facing terrifying ranges moving down on us before unending gales. A respect for that dark and turbulent waste was in my bones. My sympathy for the unknown men on the overdue Rockingham was natural. Unless from the scant freeboard of a small ship, heavy with her burden, and doing all she can, but not enough, you have looked up at the tumbling white crests of immense hills as somber as doom coming your way fast, then you don’t know what the sea is. They accelerate, when near.

2

A WEEK passed. No more news; so I forgot about the Rockingham. She had been but one of many in trouble. The weather reports did not improve. Then again she came into the news, and one could but surmise that that was probably the last we should ever hear of her. The S.S. Torridon put into Falmouth, and reported that a thousand miles to the westward she had sighted the Rockingham out of control, her boats gone, her bridge structure wrecked, rolling her bridge ends under, with a gale from northwest increasing to squalls of hail and sleet of hurricane violence. The Rockingham had requested a tow, but the Torridon, it seems, had not the power for it in such weather, which threatened to grow worse. She had therefore signaled the impossibility to the Rockingham, and added, “You had better abandon.” The master of the steamer in distress answered, “Decline. Will remain till end.” The Torridon therefore resumed her voyage.

It seems the Rockingham was quickly hidden by mountainous seas, and in one long spell the watchers thought she had gone. The master of the Torrid on said he was waiting for an opportunity to put about, a dangerous maneuver as things were, but then the ship in distress was sighted again, si ill there; so he held on. He was evidently dubious. He did not say so, but it could be inferred, from an interview he gave at Falmouth, that he thought the captain of the Rockingham would have been better advised to abandon his ship. Her rudder had gone, she was in a bad way, and he had never seen the Atlantic in a worse mood.

I he next Sunday I was passing Trinity Church as its congregation was leaving after the evening service, and the crowd impeded the sidewalk! That was why, edging through the throng — in those strange days the churches were always full — I came against my pious friend Meredith, who held me as if he wanted me. He was what I think is called a sidesman of that church.

“Don’t, go,” he said. “You are the very man I want.” He continued to hold my arm while peering here and there, as if waiting for someone to enter the brief expansion into the dark of the light from the church’s opened doors.

“Yes, there she is,” he muttered. “I see her.” He kept his eye fixed on her, whoever she was, and his grasp on me.

“You know something of ships,” he added irrelevantly, “and you must talk to her.”

“Talk to her? Who is she? What am I to talk about?”

Hold on. Keep cool. You must have heard of the overdue Rockingham. Mrs. Dyson is the captain’s wife. She must be worried, poor woman. Here she comes.”

Well, what could any man say to put that right? It is useless to explain to a sailor’s wife, when her man s ship is overdue, and for a reason known and sufficient, that there is nothing to worry about. If she is old enough, she would know the effects of heavy weather on a ship low in the water. There are the ship’s hatches. These come adrift, under continued assaults, and when they do there is nothing more to say.

It was plain that Mrs. Dyson, though not old, would have had experience enough and was of an intelligence to see through t he best words of false encouragement. She showed no sign of anxiety. Her pallor was natural to her temperament. She was dark, full, and matronly, and gave the impression of having been through ibis sort of thing before. Her smile, when she was greeted, was that of ease, while patient for what would come next. We saw her to her home in Oriental Street. She did not ask us in. She knew, I suppose, we were being kind to her, but did not resent it. Ships were not mentioned. No chance came to talk of the sea. She was anxious to enlist aid for some charitable project of the church, and Meredith’s kindly interest was therefore wasted, and so was my time. An overdue ship, I had to assume, was entirely a private matter, and only for those concerned. Meredith, however, was indiscreet before we left her at her door. He was hasty. Someone of experience had advised him, it seemed, and he glanced at me, that the next time the Rockingham was sighted would be time enough to leave her.

Mrs. Hyson hesitated. I could see she regretted this. She did not want to talk about it because there was nothing useful to say. She had had all the comfort she wanted, and it did not go far. “Abandon?” she whispered. “Jack won’t do that. He won’t do it.” She held out her hand to Meredith. We were dismissed. She was in no haste to be alone, but she preferred to go, and turned to her house, which was unlighted.

Leaving that street, its chief feature at night the lamp-shine on wet pavements, at least my glimpse of the captain’s wife, and her casual words of faith in her man’s resolution, left me with a romantic notion of the master of this overdue steamer. I saw him in the only way I was ever likely to see him, a figure suitable to the seafarer we read about in the great stories. If you had heard his wife s voice as she briefly referred to him you would know what I mean. Whether in a longboat of the A ikings, or on the quarter-deck of a ship-of-the-line keeping watch on the designs of Napoleon, you could fancy the cut of him; nothing like that of the common man we hear so much about; rather it was that of the dim legendary shape able to do what is beyond the strength of ordinary mortals.

But the Rockingham did reach port. She was already written off, uninsurable, when she surprised everybody by appearing off Ireland. The gales were still hard at it, and a pilot could not get out to her. A tugboat put into Queenstown to report the ship helpless, dragging her anchors, and sure to strike the rocks. Yet without a rudder, without a pilot, with only searchlights to show her the breakers on either side of the passage in, broadside on most of the time, and carried along by the wind and tide, she kept off the reefs by going ahead and astern, and miraculously arrived, with a few minor casualties, hull and engines sound, and her 4000 tons of cargo intact except for grain burned as fuel because coal had given out.

There were no interviews; her master was at one e invisible. But a little later I was privileged to see extracts from her log. It seems that soon alter leaving Philadelphia her wheelhouse was stove in. Later, with a hurricane at WSW, the rudder couplings went, and she fell oil into the trough of the seas. Her lifeboats were damaged. Mhen the weather moderated a boat was launched to make connections with the rudder so that the ship could be controlled. Connections were made, but the wires snapped; and attempts at jury rudders, labored over for three weeks in weal her of the worst, all failed. The ship was often submerged by immense seas, except for the island of the bridge. Torrents of rain, and hail and blinding snow, mercifully hid approaching calamity till it burst aboard.

The engines were used to keep the ship’s head to the weather as near as possible, for the heavy waters that fell over her were dreaded. The hatches had been doubly secured; had one been stove the story would have ended forthwith. Her master tried to get his rest on the engine-room grating. All the cabins were flooded.

After a fortnight when every hour of remaining on the surface was thought to be wonderful luck, a steamer’s lights were sighted. That was the Torridon, and we know what happened. The Rockingham was left to it. Her coal ran out, and she began to burn grain. Some progress was made by the use of the engines, steaming in circles and semicircles. They were in darkness at night; no lamps were possible except navigation lights, to save oil. In the seventh week another steamer, the Berwick Law, was sighted, and attempted a tow, floating a line down on a barrel. The weather worsened again. At times the Rockingham vanished. The Berwick Law signaled, after one frightening interval, that Dyson had better abandon. The answer was No. There were times when the upheavals kept the ships out of sight of each other. The towing hawser parted. It was made fast again, and more than once, till on the last occasion the Berwick Law, fearing the Rockingham would be cast away on the Irish coast, then near, again appealed to Dyson to abandon.

lie would not. He anchored. The Berwick Law went into Queenstown to report. The anchor dragged, despite the lengthening of the cable and the use of the engines. The crew could plainly hear the breakers on a hideous coast above the uproar of the seas bursting aboard their ship, which was rolling so heavily they could not stand. No shore lights could be seen; the rain was a deluge. This was the end of their voyage, and of their labor and endurance.

but not quite. After waiting an hour for an abrupt conclusion, searchlights were turned on the entrance to the harbor, and the master of the Rockingham began to maneuver in his crippled ship without tug or pilot and at long last was home. He then went into hiding.

Somewhat later, in London, I waited with a company of underwriters, curious to see what manner of man this seaman was. Presently he entered the room. This the man? Yes, it was; of ordinary stature, as though the common man had been summoned to appear, he didn’t know why; an ordinary passer-by in the street, middle-aged and nondescript, wondering why he was wanted here; shy and embarrassed; nervously turning his hat about. The sight of his lean face, showing no emotion, his eyes at first straight!y questioning a company that had risen and was cheering him without pause, eyes then lowered to look at his shoes, was one of the severest rebukes to the stupidity of pride and self-importance I have ever met.