Recollections of Europe. James Fenimore Cooper
of a fast ship, while the Hudson was merely a pretty fair sailer. We had probably got the best of the winds. But a hard and close trial of three days had shown that neither the Hudson nor the London Packet, in their present trims, could go ahead of the other in any wind. And yet here, after a separation of ten days, during which time our ship had tacked and wore fifty times, had calms, foul winds and fair, and had run fully a thousand miles, there was not a league's difference between the two vessels!
I have related these circumstances, because I think they are connected with causes that have a great influence on the success of American navigation. On passing several of the British ships to-day, I observed that their officers were below, or at least out of sight; and in one instance, a vessel of a very fair mould, and with every appearance of a good sailer, actually lay with some of her light sails aback, long enough to permit us to come up with and pass her. The Hudson probably went with this wind some fifteen or twenty miles farther than this loiterer; while I much question if she could have gone as far, had the latter been well attended to. The secret is to be found in the fact, that so large a portion of American ship-masters are also ship-owners, as to have erected a standard of activity and vigilance, below which few are permitted to fall. These men work for themselves, and, like all their countrymen, are looking out for something more than a mere support.
About noon we got a Cowes pilot. He brought no news, but told us the English vessel I have just named was sixty days from Leghorn, and that she had been once a privateer. We were just thirty from New York.
We had distant glimpses of the land all day, and several of the passengers determined to make their way to the shore in the pilot-boat. These Channel craft are sloops of about thirty or forty tons, and are rather picturesque and pretty boats, more especially when under low sail. They are usually fitted to take passengers, frequently earning more in this way than by their pilotage. They have the long sliding bowsprit, a short lower mast, very long cross-trees, with a taunt topmast, and, though not so "wicked" to the eye, I think them prettier objects at sea than our own schooners. The party from the Hudson had scarcely got on board their new vessel when it fell calm, and the master and myself paid them a visit. They looked like a set of smugglers waiting for the darkness to run in. On our return we rowed round the ship. One cannot approach a vessel at sea, in this manner, without being struck with the boldness of the experiment which launched such massive and complicated fabrics on the ocean. The pure water is a medium almost as transparent as the atmosphere, and the very keel is seen, usually so near the surface, in consequence of refraction, as to give us but a very indifferent opinion of the security of the whole machine. I do not remember ever looking at my own vessel, when at sea, from a boat, without wondering at my own folly in seeking such a home.
In the afternoon the breeze sprang up again, and we soon lost sight of our friends, who were hauling in for the still distant land. All that afternoon and night we had a fresh and a favourable wind. The next day I went on deck, while the people were washing the ship. It was Sunday, and there was a flat calm. The entire scene admirably suited a day of rest. The Channel was like a mirror, unruffled by a breath of air, and some twenty or thirty vessels lay scattered about the view, with their sails festooned and drooping, thrown into as many picturesque positions by the eddying waters. Our own ship had got close in with the land; so near, indeed, as to render a horse or a man on the shore distinctly visible. We were on the coast of Dorsetshire. A range of low cliffs lay directly abeam of us, and, as the land rose to a ridge behind them, we had a distinct view of a fair expanse of nearly houseless fields. We had left America verdant and smiling, but we found England brown and parched, there having been a long continuance of dry easterly winds.
The cliffs terminated suddenly, a little way ahead of the ship, and the land retired inward, with a wide sweep, forming a large, though not a very deep bay, that was bounded by rather low shores. It was under these very cliffs, on which we were looking with so much pleasure and security, and at so short a distance, that the well-known and terrible wreck of an Indiaman occurred, when the master, with his two daughters, and hundreds of other lives, were lost. The pilot pointed out the precise spot where that ill-fated vessel went to pieces. But the sea in its anger, and the sea at rest, are very different powers. The place had no terrors for us.
Ahead of us, near twenty miles distant, lay a high hazy bluff, that was just visible. This was the western extremity of the Isle of Wight, and the end of our passage in the Hudson. A sloop of war was pointing her head in towards this bluff, and all the vessels in sight now began to take new forms, varying and increasing the picturesque character of the view. We soon got a light air ourselves, and succeeded in laying the ship's head off shore, towards which we had been gradually drifting nearer than was desirable. The wind came fresh and fair about ten, when we directed our course towards the distant bluff. Everything was again in motion. The cliffs behind us gradually sunk, as those before us rose, and lost their indistinctness; the blue of the latter soon became grey, and, ere long, white as chalk, this being the material of which they are, in truth, composed.
We saw a small whale (it might have been a large grampus) floundering ahead of us, and acting as an extra pilot, for he appeared to be steering, like ourselves, for the Needles. These Needles are fragments of the chalk cliffs, that have been pointed and rendered picturesque by the action of the weather, and our course lay directly past them. They form a line from the extremity of the Isle of Wight, and are awkwardly placed for vessels that come this way in thick weather, or in the dark. The sloop of war got round them first, and we were not far behind her. When fairly within the Needles the ship was embayed, our course now lying between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, through a channel of no great width. The country was not particularly beautiful, and still looked parched; though we got a distant view of one pretty town, Lymington, in Hampshire. This place, in the distance, appeared not unlike a large New England village, though there was less glare to the houses. The cliffs, however, were very fine, without being of any extraordinary elevation. Though much inferior to the shores of the Mediterranean, they as much surpass anything I remember to have seen on our own coast, between Cape Anne and Cape Florida; which, for its extent, a part of India, perhaps, excepted, is, I take it, just the flattest, and tamest, and least interesting coast in the entire world.
The master pointed out a mass of dark herbage on a distant height, which resembled a copse of wood that had been studiously clipped into square forms at its different angles. It was visible only for a few moments, through a vista in the hills. This was Carisbrooke Castle, buried in ivy.
There was another little castle, on a low point of land, which was erected by Henry VIII. as a part of a system of marine defence. It would scarcely serve to scale the guns of a modern twenty-four-pounder frigate, judging of its means of resistance and annoyance by the eye. These things are by-gones for England, a country that has little need of marine batteries.
About three, we reached a broad basin, the land retiring on each side of us. The estuary to the northward is called Southampton Water, the town of that name being seated on its margin. The opening in the Isle of Wight is little more than a very wide mouth to a very diminutive river or creek, and Cowes, divided into East and West, lines its shores. The anchorage in the arm of the sea off this little haven was well filled with vessels, chiefly the yachts of amateur seamen, and the port itself contained little more than pilot-boats and crafts of a smaller size. The Hudson brought up among the former. Hauling up the forecourse of a merchant-ship is like lifting the curtain again on the drama of the land. These vessels rarely furl this sail; and they who have not experienced it, cannot imagine what a change it produces on those who have lived a month or six weeks beneath its shadow. The sound of the chain running out was very grateful, and I believe, though well satisfied with the ship as such, that everybody was glad to get a nearer view of our great mother earth.
It was Sunday, but we were soon visited by boats from the town. Some came to carry us ashore, others to see that we carried nothing off with us. At first, the officer of the customs manifested a desire to make us all go without the smallest article of dress, or anything belonging to our most ordinary comforts; but he listened to remonstrances, and we were eventually allowed to depart with our night-bags. As the Hudson was to sail immediately for London, all our effects were sent within the hour to the custom-house. At 3 P.m. July 2nd, 1826, we put foot in Europe, after a passage of thirty-one days from the quarantine ground.
LETTER