How to Travel. Thomas Wallace Knox
matter, and the young and pretty are worse than the older and plainer. If you have a stony heart you will turn an intruder out of your chair without ceremony, whatever the age or sex, but if you cannot muster the courage to do so your best plan is to send the deck steward to bring the chair, and while he is getting it you can remain quietly out of sight. When you buy the chair have it marked with your name or initials, so that it can be easily distinguished from others of the same shape and color.
You are expected to come to the dinner-table in a black coat on most of the steamship lines. The rule is not imperative, however, but it is well to comply with it, as you will encounter many people whose notions about dressing for dinner are rigid, and, besides, the half hour spent in arranging the toilet before the bell calls you to the table is a variation of the monotony of the voyage.
Everything needed for the voyage may be contained in a valise or "steamer trunk," with a toilet satchel, and all heavy luggage should be sent below at the dock. A steamer trunk is designed to be stowed under the berth out of the way; its proper dimensions are 30 inches long, 15 or 16 wide, and 12 high. Its length or width may be greater, but its height should not exceed 12 or at most 13 inches, or it will be often found too large for the space where it is intended to go.
An old valise or sack should be taken along for containing the rough sea-clothing which may be left with the steamer-chair at the company's office in Liverpool or whatever port the passenger may land at. There they remain till his return, in a storeroom specially provided for them. They should be properly marked, so that the storekeeper will have no difficulty in selecting them when wanted.
The servants who wait upon you will expect a reward for their attentions, and you will be flying in the face of a long-established custom if you fail to give it. On the English steamers half a sovereign (ten shillings English) is the proper fee for the room-steward on the voyage either way, and the same to the table-steward. You will not diminish the attention upon you if you say to these men at starting that you will remember each of them with a ten-shilling piece, provided you are satisfied with them; they know what to expect and will act accordingly. On the French and German steamers a ten-franc piece is the usual fee to each of the servants above mentioned. The "boots" expects a five-shilling or a five-franc piece, according as the steamer is English or French, provided he polishes your boots during the voyage, and the man in charge of the bath comes along for a similar amount if you make regular use of his services. If you frequent the smoking-room the steward in charge of it expects to be remembered with a half crown, and a similar coin will not be refused by the deck-steward who looks after your chair. None of these fees should be paid until the last day of the voyage and the service of the men has ended. It often happens that the room-steward is very attentive through the voyage and in every way satisfactory; he answers your bell promptly and you consider him a model servant, but if you give him his fee before he has carried your impedimenta on deck it is quite possible that you will carry them yourself or hire another man to do it. His interest in you has ceased and he is looking after somebody who hasn't yet rewarded him. The same thing may happen with the table-steward, and he cannot hear your summons after he has been paid off, though before that event he was the very beau ideal of all you could wish.
It is always well to provide yourself with the money of the country you are going to, or with that of the nationality of the steamer. On an English ship, take ten pounds or so of English money, to cover all your fees and extras, and to have a supply on landing until a visit can be made to the banker. On the French steamers, take a proportionate amount in francs, and on the German steamers, a supply of marks will be quite in order. You can get this cash at a money-changer's without as much trouble as you will have in case you find no one on the steamer to make change for you, and the discount will be less.
The perils of the transatlantic voyage are now practically reduced to the dangers resulting from fog on and near the banks of Newfoundland. The ships performing the service of the best of the lines are built so strong that no wind to which the North Atlantic is accustomed can injure them, and the captains are men of experience and ability. But the fog is an evil which will not disappear at our bidding; the most intelligent commander is helpless in the fog, and he cannot be sure at any moment that he is not rushing to destruction upon a pitiless iceberg, or dashing forward to collide with another ship, in which one or both of the unlucky vessels may be lost. The ice is probably the greater of the dangers, as the steamers give warning of their presence to each other by the sound of whistles or fog-horns, and of late years there has been an attempt to establish steam lanes across the Atlantic, so that steamers going eastward should be several miles from the track of those that are westward-bound. The iceberg hangs out no lights and blows no whistle, and the first warning the captain can have of its presence is when its white outline looms through the fog less than a ship's length ahead. Many a steamer has had a narrow escape from destruction, and not a few have been lost by encounters with the ice. Of those that have never been heard from it is conjectured that the majority were lost by collisions with the ice, as in most instances it was abundant at the time of their disappearance.
The ingenuity of man has been taxed to avert the dangers from the ice and fog, but thus far comparatively little has been accomplished. At times the density of the fog is so great that the eye cannot penetrate it more than twenty yards; experiments have been made with the electric light, but the result has not been favorable to its general adoption. A careful observation of the thermometer will sometimes show the proximity of a berg, as the melting ice causes a fall in the temperature of the water, frequently amounting to ten or twelve degrees, and sometimes there will be a chilly blast of air, that says very plainly there is ice in the vicinity. The early summer months are the most dangerous on the score of ice, but the bergs abound till late in autumn; they come from the west coast of Greenland, where they are broken off from the immense glaciers that flow down from the interior and push out into the sea. The great polar current carries them southward, past Labrador and Newfoundland, till they are thrown into the warm waters of the Gulf-stream and there melted away. They rarely go further south than to the fortieth parallel, but are sometimes drifted as far east as the Azores.
By taking a course that will carry them to the south of the Grand Banks the steamers might avoid the fog and its consequent dangers; some of them do so, and others advertise that they will. After they get at sea the mind of the captain sometimes undergoes a change, and the ship is headed so that she passes near Cape Race. The more to the south a ship is kept the longer will be her course, and in these days of keen competition to make the shortest passages the temptation is great to run away to the northward as far as possible. The author was once a passenger on a steamer that laid her course within fifty miles of Cape Race, although he had been assured at the office of the company that she would "take an extreme southerly course," and the promise to do so had been inserted in the advertisements. A passenger ventured to say as much to one of the officers and to ask if the managers of the company had not ordered the southerly route. "The captain commands here," was the reply, "and the managers have nothing to do with his course; he can run wherever he pleases, and trust to Providence for the result."
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