Either watch is so weak and worthless that any severe task
requires the assistance of the other watch. As an instance, we
finally managed a reef in the fore-sail in the thick of a gale. It
took both watches two hours, yet Mr. Pike tells me that under similar
circumstances, with an average crew of the old days, he has seen a
single watch reef the foresail in twenty minutes.
I have learned one of the prime virtues of a steel sailing-ship.
Such a craft, heavily laden, does not strain her seams open in bad
weather and big seas. Except for a tiny leak down in the fore-peak,
with which we sailed from Baltimore and which is bailed out with a
pail once in several weeks, the Elsinore is bone-dry. Mr. Pike tells
me that had a wooden ship of her size and cargo gone through the
buffeting we have endured, she would be leaking like a sieve.
And Mr. Mellaire, out of his own experience, has added to my respect
for the Horn. When he was a young man he was once eight weeks in
making around from 50 in the Atlantic to 50 in the Pacific.
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