Seafurrers, Page 2

  One 12-ounce (350-gram) adult black rat eats about 4 ounces (115 grams) of food a day and spoils five to ten times more through its droppings and urine, adding up to a grand total of 1.5 to 2.75 pounds (690 to 1,265 grams) of spoiled grain a day. In a year one rat can potentially damage more than 1,000 pounds (462 kilograms) of food. It’s no wonder shipping rules insisted a seafurrer be part of a ship’s complement.

  Incidentally . . .

  We don’t know when our first wildcat forebear was given a name, but it’s likely it was soon after it stepped indoors and made itself at home on the farm as the resident pest controller and family pet. As for what names, it’s reasonable to assume sapiens generally took the easy option with “Tabby” and “Ginger.” There were certainly numerous pest controllers, shipmates, mascots, and pets on board called Tabby and Ginger, along with more imaginatively named seafurrers—Cleopatra, Queen Lil, Thomas Whiskers, Stowaway Jim, and Red Lead; and of course Simon, Trim, and Mrs. Chippy, who became celebs.

  In the early years of the twentieth century, sailors sometimes bestowed the N-word—one of the most offensive racial slurs in the English language today—as a name on their intrepid seafurring shipmates. And, in fact, outrageous as it is today, sapiens often bestowed that name on any hapless pet or farm animal with black fur (or feathers) back then. That being said, there’s no need to perpetuate past prejudices, and I have redacted instances of the name in my book (Incidents 18, 29, and 35).

  MOUSERS AND MORE

  “Tiger came aboard in Djibouti, French Somaliland. He was not invited, but just walked over the gangway of the cable-ship, of which I was Third Officer at the time, as if it belonged to him. He paid no attention to anyone in the way of greeting, but just got to work catching rats and eating them. No ‘cat and mouse games’ but serious business. We had rats—he wanted them, and he caught them and ate them. That suited us all right, so we allowed him to stay.”

  —“Conquering Cat,” Times (London), March 9, 1960

  mouser: an animal that catches mice,

  especially a cat

  Cats have had a solid reputation as hunters in general and mousers in particular for thousands of years, long before the word mouser made its appearance in English as a definition in the fifteenth century in the first English-to-Latin dictionary, Promptorium parvulorum, or “storehouse for children”: “Mowsare as a catte, musceps”—musceps meaning “mouser” in Latin.

  Of course, cats weren’t the only mousers. Any person whose day job was catching vermin might well be called Mouser, a respectable surname and sensible way to advertise expertise and promote services—Gerlacus Mus of Worms, 1257; Godwinus Mauser of Sangerhausen, 1268; and Robert Mouser of the Church of St. Andrew Holborn, London, 1575.

  And then there were other animals. “Owls . . . are counted very good mousers,” wrote Samuel Foote in his play The Maid of Bath (circa 1771), and the prowess of the long black snake really impressed John Lawson when he was exploring the American colonies: “He is the best Mouser that can be; for he leaves not one of that Vermine alive, where he comes,” he reported in A New Voyage to Carolina (1709).

  But owls and snakes aren’t like cats. Nor are ferrets. Or the mongoose. While they may dispose of vermin effectively, they can’t be house trained, and you may not want them around the house at all, which is why cats win the “mouser” crown hands down. “Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office” is the title of the official resident cat at 10 Downing Street, the UK prime minister’s HQ, a paid position from June 3, 1929, when A. E. Banham at the treasury authorized the office keeper “to spend 1d [1 penny] a day from petty cash towards the maintenance of an efficient cat.” The cat performed so well that they upped its allowance to 1s 6d (1 shilling and 6 pence) a week in April 1932.

  INCIDENT 1: Don't Forget the Cat

  Il Consolato del Mare

  (A Manual of Maritime Law: Consisting of a Treatise

  on Ships and Freight and a Treatise on Insurance)

  “

  NOTE LVIII

  If goods laden on board of a ship are devoured by rats, and the owners consequently suffer considerable damage, the master must repair the injury sustained by the owners, for he is considered in fault. But if the master kept cats on board, he is excused from that liability.

  ”

  ACCORDING TO BART

  Roccus didn’t write the manual of maritime law. Francis Celelles pulled it all together. An imaginative fifteenth-century early adopter, he was quick off the mark to spot an opportunity. He certainly wasn’t afraid to roll up his sleeves and set to work to do a job that needed to be done. We know this for a fact because it’s reported that “Through charity alone, with much labour, frequent conferences, and advice with skillful aged persons, and recurrence to many authorities,” Celelles took advantage of Johannes Gutenberg’s movable type and printing press and published Les costums marítimes de Barcelona universalment conegudes per Llibre del Consolat de mar in Barcelona in 1494. (Consolat is Catalan for the Italian consolato, meaning consulate or consular court, the term for their maritime courts.)

  Celelles didn’t “write” the rules. He revised and updated a vast collection of existing rules from over the centuries that the judges in the maritime cities of the Mediterranean used to settle disputes at sea, of which there were many. It’s not surprising the 1494 edition sold out, nor that numerous translations (including Roccus’) followed.

  Over time the rules were fine-tuned. It’s not entirely fair to lumber the master with liability if he hadn’t forgotten the ship’s cat at all and had in fact signed on a top-notch pest-controlling seafurrer who sadly was washed overboard in a horrific storm at sea while stalking a rat. So, Note LVIII version two adds:

  If the ship has had cats on board in the place where she was loaded, and after she has sailed away the said cats have died, and the rats have damaged the goods, if the managing owner of the ship shall buy cats and put them on board as soon as they arrive at a place where they can find them, he is not bound to make good the said losses, for they have not happened through his default.

  Most shipmasters didn’t need a rules book to tell them what to do. It was common sense to add a seafurrer or two to the crew to handle pest control, and common practice on merchant ships. The charter party of the Anne of Hull carried “a doge and a cat with all other necessaryes” on her voyage to the Isle of Man in 1532, according to English Admiralty records.

  Incidentally . . .

  Good mousers bring to their work what Robert Pirsig called “self-reliance and old-fashioned gumption” in his bestselling Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. They also enhance their hit rate with seven highly effective habits.

  Good mousers:

  • Practice: They hone their skills.

  • Persevere: If at first they don’t succeed, they try again.

  • Are patient: They know it’s a waiting game, not a race.

  • Plan: They study moves and become familiar with the lay of the land.

  • Are flexible: They keep fit and on top of their game.

  • Maintain life balance: They avoid burnout. They don’t overdo it.

  • Keep a healthy sense of proportion: They don’t dwell on the ones that got away.

  INCIDENT 2: South Sea Adventures

  “

  The Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins, Knt,

  in His Voyage into the South Sea in the Year 1593

  Heere we made also a survay of our victuals; and opening certaine barrels of oaten meale, wee found a great part of some of them, as also of our pipes and fatts [vats] of bread, eaten and consumed by the ratts; doubtlesse, a fift [fifth] part of my company did not eate so much these devoured, as wee found dayly in comming to spend any of our provisions.

  When I came to the sea, it was not suspected that I had a ratt in my shippe; but with the bread in caske, which we transported out of the Hawke, and the going to and againe of our boates unto our prise, though wee had divers catts and used other preventions, in a
small time they multiplyed in such a maner as is incredible. It is one of the generall calamities of all long voyages, and would bee carefully prevented as much as may bee. For besides that which they consume of the best victuals, they eate the sayles; and neither packe nor chest is free from their surprises. I have knowne them to make a hole in a pipe of water, and saying the pumpe, have put all in feare, doubting least some leake had beene sprung upon the ship.

  Moreover, I have heard credible persons report, that shippes have beene put in danger by them to be sunke, by a hole made in the bulge.

  ”

  ACCORDING TO BART

  What with scurvy’s scourge, shipwreck, and piracy, long-distance voyaging took a fair bit of courage and optimism. But not suspecting “a ratt in my shippe” was more than optimism—it was the triumph of hope over experience. There were always rats on ships, and they always got into the provisions and more besides. However, having a “hole made in the bulge” is possibly a bit of a stretch. If there’s any truth in the rumor that rats leave a sinking ship, why would they hole the hull to prove the point?

  Hawkins was a seafaring man with a grand plan. Coming from a renowned family of “sea dogs,” he may well have felt he had something to prove when he decided to make a voyage by way of the Strait of Magellan and the South Sea

  to make a perfect discovery of all those parts where I should arrive, as well knowne as unknowne, with their longitudes, and latitudes; the lying of their coasts; their head-lands; their ports, and bayes; their cities, townes, and peoplings; their manner of government; with the commodities which the countries yeelded, and of which they have want, and are in necessitie.

  Which all sounds very worthy (and wordy), but was code for plundering treasure-laden Spanish galleons plying the Pacific. It was a family thing. His dad, Admiral Sir John Hawkins, had dabbled in privateering (and a bit of slave trading), as had his globe-

  circumnavigating cousin Sir Francis Drake.

  Setting sail in June 1593, Hawkins made his way through the straits into the South Sea and headed north, taking a number of prizes before being overpowered by the Spanish and taken prisoner. He never set foot in the East. But he did eventually get home. He was ransomed in 1602 for the £3,000 (around £345,000, or $454,584, in today’s money) left him by his dad and reluctantly paid out by his stepmother.

  Ferdinand Magellan had pushed south for a westward passage to the East and paved the way for such South Sea adventures. He was convinced that by sailing down the Patagonian coast farther than anyone had been before he would find the mystery passage around the Americas to the “South Sea” (Pacific Ocean), which Vasco Núñez de Balboa had seen on September 25, 1513, when he crossed the Isthmus of Panama. And he was right, reported Antonio Pigafetta:

  After going and taking the course to the fifty-second degree of the said Antarctic sky, on the day of the Eleven Thousand Virgins [October 21], we found, by a miracle, a strait which we called the Cape of the Eleven Thousand Virgins [now Cabo Virgenes], this strait is a hundred and ten leagues long, which are four hundred and forty miles, and almost as wide as less than half a league, and it issues in another sea, which is called the peaceful sea.

  Magellan took thirty-eight days to find his way through the narrow passage “surrounded by very great and high mountains covered with snow,” including a tasty stopover at the River of Sardines. He headed north and by good fortune found the trade winds that blew him to the Philippines. But he never got home to enjoy the rewards of his initiative to push south for a westward passage to the East—he was killed in a skirmish on Cebu.

  He may be the one with his name in the history books, but Magellan wasn’t the first South Sea explorer—not by a long shot. The forebears of the people he ran into in the Philippines knew all about trade winds and navigating by the stars. They packed their canoes with their pigs, dogs, and chickens and began a great migration about four thousand years ago and settled, traded, and planted gardens island by island. Rattus exulans (the Polynesian rat) joined them for the ride and the cooking pot. But there were no seafurrers on board, making Magellan’s able-bodied sea cats likely the first to cross the Pacific.

  Long before Magellan rounded Cabo Deseado, Polynesian voyagers had made their way to South America and discovered the delights of the sweet potato. They loved this orange-fleshed veg so much, they pretty much worshipped it. When the Maori packed their canoes for the Great Migration to Aotearoa (New Zealand), they took their sweet potatoes with them and planted them in their gardens, and that’s where Captain James Cook spotted them growing in 1769:

  The Sweet potatoes are set out in distinct little molehills. . . . The Arum [taro] is planted in little circular concaves, exactly in the manner our Gard’ners plant melons. . . . The Yams are planted in like manner with the sweet potatoes: these Cultivated spots are enclosed with a perfectly close pailing of reeds about twenty inches high.

  Incidentally . . .

  Good Queen Bess (Elizabeth I) was very fond of boosting her coffers with a bit of bounty. That’s why she granted Hawkins a commission (as she had with other Elizabethan sea dogs such as his dad and his cousin) “to attempt, with a ship, bark, and pinnace, an expedition against Philip II of Spain.” The deal gave Hawkins Junior and his backers the right to whatever they looted from the Spanish (of course, they also had to divvy it up with the crew), reserving one fifth of the treasure, jewels, and pearls for the queen.

  Think of privateers as government contractors licensed to attack enemy ships. If caught, they were generally imprisoned and ransomed by family or friends or their government. The Spanish found ransoming a handy way to boost the coffers and recover dungeon accommodation costs—the dead can’t pay up, after all. However, without a commission or letter of marque, captured privateers would be considered to be pirates (it was a fine line at times) and strung up on a handy headland.

  INCIDENT 3: Survivor

  “

  A Cruising Voyage Round the World

  Captain Woodes Rogers, 1712

  He [Alexander Selkirk] had with him his Clothes and Bedding, with a Firelock, some Powder, Bullets, and Tobacco, a Hatchet, a Knife, a Kettle, a Bible, some practical Pieces, and his Mathematical Instruments and Books. He diverted and provided for himself as well as he could; but for the first eight months had much ado to bear up against Melancholy, and The terror of being left alone in such a desolate place. He built two Hutts with Piemento Trees, cover’d them with long Grass, and lin’d them with the Skins of Goats, which he kill’d with his own Gun as he wanted, so long as his Powder lasted, which was but a pound; and that being near spent, he got Fire by rubbing two sticks of Piemento Wood together on his knee. . . .

  After he had conquer’d his Melancholy, he diverted himself sometimes by cutting his Name on the Trees, and of the Time of his being left and Continuance there. He was at first much pester’d with Cats and Rats, that had bred in great numbers from some of each Species which had got ashore from Ships that put in there to wood and water. The Rats gnaw’d his Feet and Clothes while asleep, which oblig’d him to cherish the Cats with his Goats-flesh; by which many of them became so tame, that they would lie about him in hundreds, and soon deliver’d him from the Rats. He likewise tam’d some Kids, and to divert himself would now and then sing and dance with them and his Cats: so that by the Care of Providence and Vigour of his Youth, being now but about 30 years old, he came at last to conquer all the Inconveniences of his Solitude, and to be very easy.

  ”

  ACCORDING TO BART

  Captain Woodes Rogers wasn’t just passing by. Since its discovery in 1574, the Juan Fernández archipelago (just off the coast of Chile) was a regular pit stop for ships plying the Pacific to stock up with wood, water, greens, goat meat, and fish. It had also been home to a couple of abandoned attempts at settlement by the Spanish (they brought goats and pigs, and later dogs to keep the goats down) and numerous castaways and deserters. Selkirk had taken shore leave to escape, he told journalist Richard Steele when back
in London, “from a leaky Vessel, with the Captain of which he had had an irreconcilable difference; and he chose rather to take his Fate in this place, than in a crazy Vessel, under a disagreeable Commander.” He didn’t expect to be stuck there for four years and four months. He could possibly have left earlier, but with a background in privateering, he thought discretion the better part of valor and made himself scarce when Spanish ships dropped anchor in the bay.

  As for the cats that “deliver’d him from the Rats,” they were likely descendants of Spanish seafurrers who had stepped ashore to stretch their legs and missed the boat. Or perhaps, like Selkirk, they had decided jumping ship was preferable to going down with it. Selkirk was not only savvy; he was possibly psychic. The ship he jumped, the Cinque Ports, leaked so heavily that the crew took to the rafts after leaving Juan Fernández and headed for the coast of South America. The eighteen survivors (including the captain) were picked up by the Spanish and put in prison—the Spanish and English were at war again, this time the War of the Spanish Succession, 1701–14.

  The cats on the island, in any case, certainly had a full-time job with the robust rat population. From all accounts, everyone seemed to dine rather better living off the fat of the land on the island than they ever did on board. Numerous dietary delights were on the menu because the nine men that buccaneer Edward Davis left behind in 1687 had planted corn and vegetables and hunted goats, seals, and mutton birds before being rescued.

  In addition, “Fish, particularly Snappers and Rock-fish, are so plentiful, that two Men in an hours time will take with Hook and Line, as many as will serve 100 Men,” wrote William Dampier. Selkirk was a fussy eater, but even he discovered the delights of “Crawfish.” Woodes Rogers wrote: