Sea Fever

by Sam Jefferson

  Although Roderick Random was not solely devoted to nautical adventure, it was to have a profound effect on the genre, not just because Smollett was able to bring the sea to life in a manner other authors could not, but also because it introduced into the canon of English literature that much loved character, the feckless old sea dog, stumping along on a wooden leg and, at least on land, cutting an utterly helpless figure. This character would pop up again and again in Smollett’s novels, and later in the works of Charles Dickens and, most famously, in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. In Roderick Random it is Tom Bowling, kindly uncle of Roderick, who supplies us with our archetype and he is succeeded by Commander Trunnion in his second novel, Peregrine Pickle, and Captain Crowe in his fourth novel, Launcelot Greaves. An example of Smollett’s description of the old sea dog, marooned and helpless ashore can be seen in this picturesque piece of narrative from Commodore Trunnion, delayed on his way to a wedding:

  Hark ye, brother, don’t you see we make all possible speed? go back and tell those who sent you, that the wind has shifted since we weighed anchor, and that we are obliged to make very short trips in tacking, by reason of the narrowness of the channel; and that as we lie within six points of the wind they must make allowance for variation and leeway.

  As Sir Walter Scott later observed admiringly,

  … the term of Smollett’s service in the navy was chiefly remarkable from his having acquired, in that brief space, such intimate knowledge of our nautical world, as enabled him to describe sailors with such truth and spirit of delineation, that from that time whoever has undertaken the same task has seemed to copy more from Smollett than from nature.

  Understandably, Smollett was not eager to repeat his seafaring experiences aboard HMS Chichester and his life thereafter is singularly devoid of nautical exploits. After the success of Roderick Random, he was able to retire from the evident misery of being a surgeon and settled down to becoming a fulltime writer, he even managed to get Regicide shown, although he had to pay for it out of his own pocket. His first book was to prove his most successful and many more received critical acclaim, but others have not survived the test of time. The Royal Navy continued to haunt Smollett and in 1857 he was actually imprisoned after describing Admiral Knowles, one of his contemporaries of the siege of Cartagena, as: ‘An admiral without conduct, an engineer without knowledge, an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity.’ Knowles had been one of the few officers to serve with distinction at Cartagena – there is even a possibility that Smollett served under him – but had subsequently landed himself in hot water over the bungled siege of Rochefort in France, and Smollett had written a suitably scalding rebuke of his conduct. This had led to him being sued by Knowles, subsequently fined £100 and sentenced to three months imprisonment. Given incidents such as these, along with overwork as a writer trying to pay off hefty debts, it is perhaps understandable that, over the years, Smollett’s somewhat fiery, irritable nature and savage satirism were further enhanced by a sort of irascible curmudgeonliness. This was used to best effect in his astoundingly xenophobic Travels through France and Italy. It was while he was gathering material for this work in Italy that he was himself lampooned by a fellow writer, Laurence Sterne as ‘Smellfungus’, a kind of ultimate personification of the irritable, intolerant Brit abroad. Given this, it is ironic that he eventually died in Livorno, Italy, where he and his wife had settled in later years, partly for health reasons.

  Although Smollett didn’t write much about the sea, his influence was profound and he played an important part in shaping the way in which later novelists dealt with the subject. None could ever say that his was a particularly positive view of a sailor’s life, and indeed, a contemporary of Smollett’s observed that he seemed to have, ‘dipped his pen in gall and bilge-water.’ Nevertheless, he was able to bring sailors and the sea to life in a manner that none had done before. Prior to this, a sea passage was often summed up in a couple of bare sentences. Smollett was able to conjure up its hidden depths, its vagaries and also the joy and tedium of serving aboard a ship. If one could never exactly say that he was at one with the sea, his writing certainly showed that he was at one with the sailors; united with them against clueless captains and cruel mates, just as he had been on HMS Chichester. This understanding and love of the poor beaten-down tars, so ill used in both the merchant and Royal navies, ‘at the mercy of every whim of a despotic leader,’ allowed him to portray them on the page as none had done before and few have done since.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Home is the sailor – the final voyage

  To write about Robert Louis Stevenson’s seafaring adventures is to embark on a voyage full of contradictions. Here is a man who wrote one of the all-time classics of nautical literature, Treasure Island, yet at the time professed to know very little of the sea and ships. A man who wrote about swashbuckling action yet was himself so frail, weak and wracked with consumption that he spent much of his life laid up at death’s door. This is a man who was a ‘lighthouse’ Stevenson, a member of the famous family of lighthouse builders who did more than any other to safeguard the lives of British sailors throughout the nineteenth century. This last attribute sounds like an excellent foundation for a seafaring adventurer, but it would be Robert Louis who broke the Stevenson family’s proud tradition, turning his back on engineering to live the life of a louche bohemian, sponging off his father and gallivanting across Europe courting scandal at every turn.

  With all this against him, it is easy to conclude that he was no sailor, for much of his life was spent miles from the rugged cliffs and towering seas upon which his forefathers had carved their reputations. Yet the final contradiction is that Stevenson would ultimately enjoy a seafaring adventure that almost matched that of his fictional characters in Treasure Island or Kidnapped. He left it late in life, but in 1888, Stevenson set out from San Francisco aboard the yacht Casco, bound for the South Sea Islands and the unknown. This was his only major sailing trip, yet it provided a fitting adventure for a man who wrote stories so rich in action and romance. This voyage and subsequent ramblings also provided him with fresh impetus to put together a number of stories such as The Wrecker and The Ebb Tide, not to mention In the South Seas, a diary of his journey. All are as awash with the languor, beauty and savagery of these islands as anything written before or since.

  Before the yarn of this voyage can start, however, it is important to fully understand how Stevenson came to first set foot on the deck of the Casco as she headed through the Golden Gate. To comprehend that, we must get to know a little more about the man himself. Born in Edinburgh in 1850 to Margaret and Thomas Stevenson, Robert was an only child and a sickly one, inheriting a weak chest from his mother. He spent much of his youth convalescing from one illness or another. His parents had a tendency to mollycoddle this sensitive youth and despite his father’s terrifying blood and thunder Scots-Calvinist veneer, both indulged their son dreadfully.

  Growing up in Edinburgh was a misery for the youngster, who only later learned to love his hometown. Reminiscing on the place as a young author, he wrote of the ‘gloom and depression of Edinburgh winter’ and of something almost ‘physically disgusting in the bleak ugliness of the easterly weather.’ At home, the domineering figure of Thomas Stevenson was to loom large over Robert. As mentioned previously, Thomas had achieved fame as the foremost lighthouse builder in Britain, just as his father, also named Robert, had done before him. Between them, the pair had designed and overseen the construction of around 50 lighthouses up and down the country and had plenty of tales to tell of their adventures doing so. Writing of his grandfather’s exploits, Louis recalled with admiration and a tinge of envy:

  The seas into which his labours carried the new engineer were still scarce charted, the coasts still dark; his way on shore was often far beyond the convenience of any road, the isles in which he must sojourn partly savage. He must toss much in boats; he must adventure on horseback by the dubious
bridle track through unfrequented wildernesses; he must sometimes plant his lighthouse in the very camp of wreckers; and he was continually enforced to the vicissitudes of outdoor life. The joy my grandfather took in this career was as strong as the love of a woman.

  From the first, he was expected to go into lighthouse design and construction and sorely disappointed his father by rejecting it after a short attempt by the family to train him up. After a bit of dabbling with a law degree, Stevenson, reluctantly bankrolled by his family, determined to pursue a literary career. His parents did not approve in the least, and there is little doubt that the decision also bothered Stevenson. He was always well aware of how he had turned his back on the family tradition in order to ‘sling ink’, and reconciled himself to this in one of his poems:

  Say not that weakly I declined

  The labours of my sires, and fled the sea,

  The towers we founded and the lamps we lit,

  To play at home with paper like a child.

  But rather say: In the afternoon of time

  A strenuous family dusted from its hands

  The sand of granite, and beholding far

  Along the sounding coast its pyramids

  And tall memorials catch the dying sun

  Smiled well content, and to this childish task

  Around the fire addressed its evening hours.

  In all honesty, the decision to avoid the rigours of lighthouse building was a wise one, for Stevenson had developed from a frail youth into a physically feeble man, and his tall gangling frame was slender to the point of being puny. He was naturally dreamy and extremely sensitive, prone to fits of hysterics and bursting into tears at the drop of the hat. He was unashamedly bohemian and slightly camp, with flowing locks and an unwieldy frame almost permanently clad in a tatty velvet jacket. There were times in his youth when he strode the streets of Edinburgh pursued by a crowd of urchins jeering at his freakish appearance, yet, although Stevenson was frail and sensitive, he was far from shy, and took the untoward attention in his gangling stride. He was extrovert in other ways too and despite being a stout defender of feminist causes, Stevenson seems to have had a preponderance for prostitutes in his youth and was a man who greatly appreciated female company. At times he took this appreciation too far and more than once teetered on the edge of causing a family scandal, much to the horror of his parents. However, in 1878, his days as Jack-the-lad came very abruptly to an end, when he met the love of his life, an American lady ten years his senior named Fanny Osbourne. With her bolshy nature, bulldog jaw and pistol secreted within her petticoats, Stevenson had more than met his match with a redoubtable lady who was often incorrectly identified as his mother on first acquaintance. Given his love of the dramatic at the time, it was perhaps inevitable that this larger-than-life woman should already be married, and also have two children, but once extricated from this encouplement the pair remained more or less inseparable for the rest of Stevenson’s life.

  Romance aside, up until the day Stevenson departed aboard the Casco, his life seems to have been one long round of illness and recovery. No one knows exactly what was wrong with him, but he evidently suffered from some kind of chronic weakness of the lungs that often led to severe haemorrhages and horrific episodes where he coughed up great gobbets of blood. Not only was this very awkward at dinner parties, it also meant that he would spend most of his life travelling around Europe trying to find a suitable climate in which he could convalesce. Switzerland, France, Scotland, England, he tried them all and settled in none. Yet while his health failed, he succeeded in churning out classic literary works such as Treasure Island, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Kidnapped to name but a few.

  Despite writing a good deal of literature with a nautical flavour, there is precious little evidence that Stevenson was much of a sailor. In fairness, there is little doubt that he knew the ropes, for in his youth he had engaged in a number of sailing expeditions connected with his father’s lighthouse inspections accompanied by his friend, Walter Simpson, who taught him the basics. Nevertheless, up until the Casco arrived on the scene, the closest he had been to a full-blown waterborne adventure was a rather drizzly and dispiriting canoeing trip through the European inland waterways, an account of which was published as An Inland Voyage, his first ever book.

  By 1885 even these modest adventures seemed to be behind him. He had settled in Bournemouth and lived very comfortably there for a number of years, to all intents and purpose an invalid. Outwardly he appeared settled and the course of his life set. His somewhat strained relationship with his father, who was often pained by his lifestyle choices, was on solid ground and the redoubtable man had even come to acknowledge there was at least some value in his writing career, his wife enjoyed Bournemouth, and he had a good circle of friends. The stage was set for a prosaic finale to his life.

  Suddenly, everything changed; the writer packed his bags and uprooted his family, heading to America, leaving Bournemouth with barely a backward glance, and never saw England again. The excuse was, as ever, his health, which suffered in the damp British climate, but there is little doubt that the real reason for this hasty departure was that his father had died. Finally, he was free from the shackles of his domineering patriarch. There is no doubt his father loved him, but he also interfered terribly and could do so with impunity, having bankrolled his son his whole life. Now he was gone, Stevenson was free to do as he wished. Not only that, but his own literary successes were starting to pay dividends, allowing him even greater liberty. Taking his beloved mother with him, his first stop was the crystal clear fresh air of the mountains of Colorado, where his health flourished. Soon, however, Stevenson’s restless soul was agitating for more adventure. There were murmurs of travelling further afield, and mutterings of the South Seas. Stevenson had long had a fascination with this part of the world, having read Melville’s Ty-Pee in 1878, and even met the author himself while he was in the US. Melville’s preoccupation with the South Seas may have fired his literary imagination, but you can trace his obsession with the area as far back as 1875, when he had written to a friend about how he was:

  … sick with desire to go there; beautiful places, green forever; perfect climate; perfect shapes of men and women with red flowers in their hair; and nothing to do but study oratory and etiquette, sit in the sun and pick up the fruits as they fall. Navigator’s Island [Samoa] is the place; absolute balm for the weary.

  Thirteen years later and the dream looked like it might come to fruition. Fanny was sent ahead to San Francisco to scout out a potential yacht for their use, and by May 1888 she had secured the schooner Casco for a charter of several months in duration. It was the beginning of Stevenson’s final chapter and he clearly sensed it, for he explained his reasoning behind the voyage in his journal of the trip, In the South Seas:

  For nearly ten years my health had been declining; and for some while before I set forth upon my voyage, I believed I was come to the afterpiece of life, and had only the nurse and undertaker to expect. It was suggested that I should try the South Seas; and I was not unwilling to visit like a ghost, and be carried like a bale, among scenes that had attracted me in youth and health. I chartered accordingly Dr. Merrit’s schooner yacht, the Casco, seventy-four tons register; and sailed from San Francisco towards the end of June 1888.

  In selecting the Casco for the voyage, the Stevensons had chosen very well, for she was a very beautiful 95-foot schooner built for Dr Samuel Merritt in 1878. Merritt, who had previously served as Mayor of Oakland, is worthy of a chapter himself, for he had headed out to California in 1849 at the peak of the gold rush. Being a shrewd man, he had purchased a ship in New York to get him to California and loaded her with essentials before heading off on the epic voyage around Cape Horn. On arrival in San Francisco, he had sold his cargo at boomtown prices and made a killing. By the time Stevenson met him he was a millionaire and the Casco appears to have been a retirement present to himself; his justification for this extravagance being that he was
getting too fat and she would keep him trim. The schooner was the absolute apple of his eye. She was built of teak, which made her very solid, but she was also a very fast vessel, boasting tall spars and a big spread of sail. Like almost all yachts of this era, she had no engine, which would make the intricate navigation of the South Seas all the more testing. It was therefore a bonus that the Casco possessed a shallow draft and differed from many traditional designs because she was fitted with a centreboard, essentially a keel that could be raised and lowered. This was to prove invaluable in the maze of corals and shallows of the South Seas. Some months later, when the Casco was in Nuku Hiva, Captain Dewar, a Scotsman cruising in his own vessel, the Nyanza, visited her. He gives this rather scornful assessment of her:

  I found her a vessel of the regular American type; great beam and little depth provide with a cockpit and a coach roof extending her whole length in order to give greater headroom below. Her accommodation was very limited, and she appeared to me more adapted for sailing around San Francisco Bay, than for a cruise across the ocean.

  This truly damning evaluation betrays many of the European prejudices toward the American school of design. Dewar’s Nyanza was a traditional deep, narrow vessel; doubtless also very seaworthy, but it is perhaps telling that she was later wrecked in the China Seas after grounding on a shallow reef, bringing into question which boat was the more suitable for cruising. That said, a single glance at the Casco’s tall, raking masts would underline how heavily rigged the schooner was and there is little doubt she would have been a ticklish ship to handle. Technicalities of design aside, the Casco was far roomier than Dewar makes out. She was going to need to be, for in addition to Stevenson, the crew would consist of his wife, Fanny, her ne’er do well son from her first marriage, Lloyd Osbourne, Stevenson’s mother, Margaret, their maid, Valentine, and a crew of six, led by the somewhat sardonic Captain Otis. Thus with 11 aboard all told, there would not be a great deal of room, but there were no recorded complaints from any aboard and it probably helped that the vessel was immaculate and sumptuously furnished throughout. Her interior is described thus by Margaret Stevenson: