Captain Gray, Captain Wittman, Captain Perkins

© Laszlo Endrody 2018

Print ISBN: 978-1-54394-260-6

eBook ISBN: 978-1-54394-261-3

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

CAPTAIN JOHN GRAY

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Captain John Wittman

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Captain Wes Perkins

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

CAPTAIN

JOHN GRAY

Chapter One

We finally arrived in San Francisco after 24 days out of Hong Kong with continuous boiler problems. The S.S. Santa Fe was 10 years old and the two big boilers were giving us a lot of problems. The number two boiler was so bad that the escaping steam kept putting out the fire. We came in with only one boiler operating, making only five knots. The ship would unload and then go to the shipyard for repairs. The captain was going home to Las Vegas, Nevada and I had to stay on the ship to relieve him.

I got my masters license in 1887 and they would use me as a master when a captain would go home. Of course, it was more money, but I didn’t want to deal with all of the problems in the shipyard. Most of my time sailing had been on sailing ships, but steamships were here to stay.

This was 1890 and the sailing ships were used less and less. As a matter of fact, no new sailing ships had been built in the last eight years, only some for the whaling industry, but who wants to go whaling, certainly not me.

I had a girlfriend in Sausalito and she would come onboard sometimes, but when which did I was stuck on the ship. The mates all wanted some time off and the second mate quit. He had had enough of the tubs. Actually, half of the crew was gone and I didn’t replace them. I only replaced two cooks. The bosun had four able bodied seamen and he would work with them. There were too many repair men on the ship that were just in the way and he could not accomplish much. The chief engineer tried to get everything fixed while we were just sitting there. He was a big problem too. The whole engine room gang was replaced while we sat there. Nobody wanted to work in port. Some oilers and firemen came on board and quit after only four or five days. I had to pay them off.

When I had both third mates on board, I would go ashore for the night. I took the ferry to Sausalito and then back the next morning. My girlfriend told me that there was a schooner for sale in Sausalito and she urged me to good and look at it.

The two of us went to check it out. It was hauling lumber from British Columbia to Oakland and had some men on board.

I said, I don’t have money to buy a ship. Even if it is a sailing ship, it is still a lot of money.

She said, I have some money. I can go partners with you. I trust you.

Okay, next Sunday we will go and look at it, I agreed.

So that Saturday night I went to see her. The following morning after breakfast we walked down the dock and saw that the gangway was down, so we went up and looked around. At first there was no one around, so I looked everything over. She was a three-masted topsail schooner and was in fair shape. The topsails were square rigged.

My girl asked, What do you think?

It’s an easy ship to work with no engine room and no chief engineer. All we would need is a deck gang and a steward department consisting of a chief cook, a cook and baker, a third cook, four mess men and one steward, I replied.

She then I will take the steward job. And I laughed.

Then a man came out and asked me if I was interested in buying the vessel.

I told him, It seems to be in good shape.

The hull was scraped before the captain tied her up. All the sails are in good shape and the sail locker is full with new sails. We have enough deck stores for a year and steward stores in the number three upper tween deck, he stated.

I asked, What kind of price are you asking for her?

He said, I am asking 22,000 thousand, about half of what she is worth. She has cargo waiting for her up north. You can make that back in four trips to Oakland. Lumber is easy to haul.

Do you have a room where I can sit down and talk this over with my chief steward? I am a captain and this lady with me is my chief steward.

You can use one of our passenger rooms, he stated.

Okay, thank you, I told him.

I then stood up and motioned to Teresa and said, Come on steward, we have to talk.

We went into a room that had two easy chairs and I told Teresa, I only have 8,000 dollars, so you’d need to come up with the remaining 14,000. Do you have that kind of money?

I do, she assured me.

We can haul lumber and make back that money the first year. Do you have operating money?

She said, I have another 10,000 dollars if needed, but like you said, I want to make it back.

I told her, Well, you are going to be the steward so you can keep track of all of the money and make back your investment. I am the captain and I work for free until everybody’s money is back in the bank. Since you’re going to be the steward, the cooks work for you. You’ll be the one running the entire steward department. I will help you if needed. I have to hire the deck gang, able bodied seamen and ordinary seamen, a bosun and a bosun mate, a storekeeper, a carpenter, two mates. Once we’re fully staffed, we sail this ship north and pick up lumber. You have to feed the crew and store the ship and tell them what to cook. I will have to sell my place and move onboard. I will sell my buggy and horses too. We will form a corporation and you will be the president. You will make all the important decisions and you will handle the money. You will buy and sell the lumber and do all of the banking north and south. I will help you handle all of the hiring and firing on the ship. So what do you say to that?

Let’s buy the ship, Captain. Let’s get a full crew, sail north, pick up a load of lumber, and then sail for Oakland or wherever we can get paid, she stated.

After we had finished talking things over, we went back out and told the gentleman that we would buy the ship.

He said, The cooks told me that they will not work for a woman steward.

Then tell them to get off the ship. She will hire her own crew, I replied.

He looked at me in shock and said, But the chief cook has been on here for 10 years.

If he is a good chief cook, he can easily find another job. I then went on to say, The banks are closed today so we will come by tomorrow afternoon and pay you for the ship. The crew will have to be paid in full and then we will sign on the ones that we want. We won’t be signing any that we don’t want on with us.

We went to Teresa’s apartment and she told me that she owned the building. It was worth a little more than the ship. It had 14 apartments. She said that she inherited it all.

I told her, Now you are going to earn your living on that ship and start making some money. You’ll have your own crew and operation to run. The only boss you’ll have is the captain. I went back to the ship and worked out my pay so that I could pay myself off. I told my bosun and ABS that I was leaving and I had some jobs open on a topsail schooner that I bought. They wanted to be paid off too and get a job on The Teresa; that would be her new name. I paid them off and told the office that we were getting off. I let them know that Sunday would be my last day. I promised the bosun and the ABS a job.

The port captain came out to the ship on Sunday and I turned everything over to him.

I told him, I found me a ship with no boilers. I have had it on here with the whole engine room and the engineers.

He said, Fine.

He told me that he had a young mate that could come over and play master and I told him, That’s fine, but today is my last day. I want to turn over the money in the safe to you can do you feel is right.

So I got all the bills added up and all of the pay that I paid out, along with the value of the slop chest, and then we counted the cash. Everything was right.

I then got off the ship with my suitcase and my sextant box. The bosun and the ABS were waiting for me and we went out to my girlfriend’s place.

When we got there I told her, These three men are going to work for us.

She put them in an empty apartment and gave them three blankets. She told them that she would call them when dinner was ready. She fixed a nice dinner and the men really enjoyed it. They thanked her over and over again. I told them that she would be our new steward and they thought that was great.

The next morning we got the money and paid for the ship in full. We asked that he pay the crew so we could start with today’s date signing on a new crew. Teresa told me that she had two cooks all ready to sign on. I then went to register the ship in our name.

When we got back to the ship, the chief cook told me that the crew decided that he should be the steward and there should be no women in the crew. He handed me a paper signed by four men, including the old bosun. I just laughed and walked away.

We started the new crew list; I was the master and Teresa was the steward. Two ladies came onboard and Teresa gave them a passenger room until the others were off the ship, same with the bosun and the ABS. We put them on the crew list so my bosun was back being bosun on the new ship. He had some sailing ship experience, not very much, but he would learn.

I then asked that everyone not on the crew list get off the ship because we were going to anchor. The shore people came onboard and told me that I owed two months of dock time.

I told the man, That’s not on me, that’s on the previous owner. I just took over ownership of the ship today, and I can prove it. We are leaving as soon as some of the old crew gets off the ship. The previous owners will be getting off too.

No one was moving so I told the bosun, Get these people off the ship, we are going to anchor.

The so called chief cook said, You are not going anywhere.

The bosun and two ABS grabbed him and took him off the ship. I said, After you get back on the ship, run up number one’s topsails.

They did and there was a breeze and the ship felt it. I told the bosun to bring home the anchor and they did. One of the previous ABS asked if he could work for us. I asked him if he had signed anything for the previous chief cook. He said that he signed nothing. So I told him, Tell Teresa, the new steward, to put you on the crew list and go to work the for bosun.

Some of the men started to get their suitcases and get off the ship. I did not see the old owners do anything. We got the anchor home and I told the bosun to run up the number two 2 topsails and to take in the gangway. As soon as the gangway was home, I told the bosun to take in all of the lines and he did. The ship started to come off the dock. I then told the bosun to run up the number two mainsail. He did and we started to move. We had to zigzag out of there, but we finally worked past Alcatraz and into San Francisco anchorage.

I told Teresa to check all of the food we had onboard and order some smoked pork and some fresh stew meat and have it brought out to the ship. I saw that they had salt pork in two barrels and it was not real old stuff, so it could be used, but for beans I preferred smoked pork. I added six slabs of bacon to the order.

I talked to my agent friend and asked him to represent us. I then told him that we needed a storekeeper, three ABS, three ordinary seamen, and a carpenter. Then I let Teresa talk to him. She wanted two more women cooks and four women mess men. I told her to get two BR men too. I told her that she could use the two men to bring up supplies from the number three upper tween deck. I also ordered two sailing shipmates. I was hoping that I could get some experienced men. After that, we waited.

The butcher came out and gave the stew meat to the cooks and I paid him for everything.

I told him, Tomorrow morning I want four pork loins in chops and four smoked hams.

Fine, I will have it out here, he replied.

He asked if we needed ground meat and I told him to check with the steward and told him that she was in the galley. The next day, I saw that she had added 30 pounds of ground meat to the order.

She said, They can make spaghetti with meat sauce.

Okay, sounds good, I stated.

I saw the old owner and told him he needed to try to get off the ship while we were still here; otherwise, I would take him to Alaska and dump him off up there.

He said, You cannot sail from here. We don’t want to go to Alaska.

As soon as I have my crew, we are sailing and I am going up north. If you don’t want to go to Alaska, you’d better get off the ship here. I need my room.

We got four mess girls and two BRs. The next day, Teresa worked the BRs in the storage tween deck. She wanted to know what we had there and how much. We got the pork chips and ground meat and hams. I ordered some smoked sausage and cooking lard.

The butcher asked me, How much smoked sausage?

I told him, Sixty pounds.

Teresa ordered some sausage patties for breakfast. When the agent came onboard, I told I pointed to the previous owner and said, Get this freeloader off the ship. He tried but he was refused to leave.

The next day the agent brought three sailing mates out, and I told all three they could stay. That way I did not have to stand a watch. After Teresa checked everything, she said that she needed 10 sacks of flour and two sacks of cornmeal, so that was coming. When the butcher came back out, I ordered 20 smoked loins. Teresa ordered a bunch of lunch meats, canned and smoked, and 10 slabs of bacon. We got two more lady cooks and three big cases of eggs. She ordered two barrels of sauerkraut and four cases of apples. We still needed a storekeeper on deck. The agent said that he would send one out. After that, I told everybody that we would sail.

The ex-owner’s wife was on deck and I told the agent to take her ashore. The bosun carried her off the ship and didn’t let her get back on. The agent then took her ashore. The ex-owner was looking for her, and I told him that she went ashore with our agent. The next morning when the agent came out with the storekeeper; he was an old sailing ship bosun. The ex-owner went ashore with the agent, but he left all of his junk in his cabin. I got the two BRs to sack all of his things up and we gave it to the agent.

We shortened up the anchor cable and were ready for the pilot to take us out. When he came, we heaved the anchor home. There was a nice breeze, so we turned and headed out of San Francisco.

Once out to sea, we turned north and sailed nice and easy with a fresh breeze off the port quarter.

Teresa said, Our first cook is sick.

I told her, She’s probably sea sick.

No, it’s something else. She cannot keep anything down. She needs to see a doctor, she insisted.

We can go to Seattle and pick up lumber in the Puget Sound. We may get a full load and then turn around. It is a day in and a day out if we get a full load it is worth it. What is the cook’s name?

She said, It is Betty Bailey.

If she feels better tomorrow morning let me know, otherwise we can try to load if we can.

Betty needed a doctor so we turned in and picked up a pilot and docked in Seattle. The doctor came onboard and examined her. He said that she needed to go to the hospital because she had kidney stones.

The agent said that he could get us the lumber and I told him to get the pilot and we would go load. We loaded number two and number four with 2 x 6’s, 2 x 4’s, 2 x 8’s and 2 x 10’s. We loaded number two and number four full and then started to load the number three lower tween deck. We got it half full and that was all that they had, so we went to another yard and finished loading number three. Then we loaded number one.

The hospital operated on Betty. Teresa stayed with her. After the surgery she felt better and Teresa had her brought back to the ship. We put her in a passenger room and that is where she stayed. Everybody went to see her and everyone tried to help.

We loaded some deck cargo in number four. We had the chains so it went easy. We left Seattle with a full load heading south for San Francisco and Oakland. They were very happy to get the wood and they wanted more. We took stores while unloading, so when we finished we went straight to sea and headed north.

In Seattle, we went straight to the lumberyard. We loaded number two and number four and opened the number three lower hold. We went from there over to another yard and loaded number one and finished the number three lower hold, and then we closed the hatches. We loaded the number four deck to bring up the bow some when we had the right trim. We sailed for San Francisco and Oakland.

Again, we went into Oakland with the first pilot and unloaded the whole load. They were very happy with us. From Oakland, we went straight out to sea and headed north.

Teresa said, If we keep this up we are going to get rich quick.

The agent told us, I have 30 tons of canned fish for San Francisco.

We loaded all 30 tons in number four and then we went to load lumber. We left again with a full load.

We went out in the bay and dropped anchor. We ordered a lot of stores we waited for it. I told the crew that we would sail early the next morning. Most of them went to town and came back later. The doctor came out to the ship to check on Betty. He found her in good shape. She told the doctor that she had someone with her all day and they checked on her at night too.

She also told him, The captain brought me some flowers and they were beautiful.

Well, you can go back and help in the kitchen, but no lifting. And take a rest in the afternoon, he told her.

He also told Teresa, Betty is not to lift anything, and she needs to take a nice rest in the afternoons. She has her orders.

We got the bill from the hospital and paid it. It was a big bill. Betty was now a part of this family. The mates usually came by and checked on her and they were very nice to her. She really liked being on the ship and she liked the crew. She felt like they liked her and she liked them. Even the ship’s bosun that ran the deck gang working the sails came by and he asked if there was anything he could bring her. Teresa would stay with her while she made out her orders for the day.

When Betty was well enough to go back to work, she went back in the galley she made a real nice soup. When the men came in for coffee break, she asked the bosun to taste the soup to see what it needed. He told her it was perfect the way it was and she thanked him. She asked the BR to get something for her from below and during his break the bosun would go down and get it. The BR thanked the bosun and the bosun told him, Don’t forget to clean my room.

When we got to San Francisco, the pilot came aboard and took us into Oakland to the dock to unload the lumber. After that, we shifted over to San Francisco and unloaded the canned fish and then went to anchor. Stores were coming and one AB was still ashore. Finally, the stores came aboard and so did the AB.

I then said, Shorten the cable the pilot boat is coming. As soon as the pilot was on board, the agent’s boat left. The ABS worked with the topsails trying to catch the breeze and get her underway. As soon as they could, the mainsails went up and she picked up some way. One mate was on the steering station with me and the pilot, and the other two mates were on deck, one starboard and the other on the port side, directing the work setting the sails. The bosun was forward with the carpenter standing by the anchor. The storekeeper got the pilot ladder ready so the pilot could get off into his boat.

The pilot asked the mate, Are you the chief mate?

The chief mate answered, Yes sir, I am one of them.

The pilot looked at him and asked, How many chief mates do you have on this ship?

Only three mates, he replied.

Then the pilot asked, How many second mates do you have?

Only three sir.

I take it you only have three third mates? the pilot asked.

That’s right, sir.

He then asked, Does the captain get to do anything on this ship?

The captain makes coffee at 5:00 a.m. in the morning and then he is busy with the steward the rest of the day.

The steward came out from below and asked, Can I get you a cup of coffee, Mr. Pilot?

You can, he replied.

She asked, How do you like your coffee, sir?

Black, he replied. What job do you have young lady?

I am the chief steward. She then asked me, How about you, John?

I could use a cup too, I acknowledged.

She brought the coffee and told me, Betty is back in the galley making the soup.

That’s great. She knows how to make a great tasting soup.

Betty is very happy with everything. She said she would stay with this ship forever. She can’t get over the fact that you bought her flowers, she stated.

Just tell her that I like her soup.

The pilot said, Well, it is time that I get off and you can put her on full ahead and sea speed.

Okay, we will put her on sea speed, I agreed.

The pilot got off and we turned north and adjusted the sails. Then I went down and had a bowl of soup. Betty served me herself. She gave me some crackers with it. I reminded Betty to take her nap that afternoon.

I said, Doctor’s orders.

Yes, sir captain, she replied.

That’s what I like to hear, that yes sir captain.

We went by the Farallon Islands and kept heading north. We got on our northbound course, adjusted the sails, and were moving right along. I wished that we had cargo going north, but you can’t win them all.

It took eight days to get up to Seattle. The pilot took us in and anchored us out. The agent came out and wanted to talk. We went in my room and he told me that he had a full load of canned fish going south to Costa Rica and Columbia and a cargo of coffee coming back to San Francisco and Seattle.

I told him, "Going down is easy, coming back we have to go out west quite a ways to be able to make it back to the states. We will go but it better pay for all the time at sea. It