INCIDENT 21: Able-Bodied Seafaring Cat Wanted
“A Feline A.B. Cat Sails Round the World: Captain’s Interesting Story”
Daily News (Perth, Western Australia), February 8, 1923
“
Purring softly in a cosy arm-chair in the skipper’s cabin was a huge black tomcat. Edwin Dyason, captain of the freighter Woodfield, which is lying at the North Wharf, patted the animal’s head, and turning to ‘The Daily News’ reporter standing alongside, expatiated earnestly on the virtues of seafaring cats. Captain Dyason is a firm believer in the feline species, or at least those cats that
go down to the sea in ships. He is of the opinion that
the complement of his ship is not in order if a cat is not on the pay-roll. Having for the last 27 years been a ship’s master, his ideas on the subject should carry weight,
and he brought all his maritime experience to bear
when he discussed seafaring cats with our representative
yesterday.
‘We were at Fremantle about 12 months ago,’ said he, ‘and the day we left a lean grey she-cat leaped from the wharf on to the deck. We called her Cleopatra, and like Cleopatra of ancient history, she was mistress of all she surveyed. She strode the deck in the roughest weather, had free access to the scullery, slept in the cosiest spots, and woe betide the individual who attempted to disturb her. From Fremantle we went to the United Kingdom, then to Bombay, and back to England again, and Cleopatra was still queen of the ship. Our next port was New York, but, alas, the gleaming bright Iights of Broadway gave Cleo a far away glimpse of a gay life, and she left us flat.
‘We picked up general cargo at New York for Manila and China, and from other instructions I knew that our cruise would take us round the world, starting at, and returning to, Fremantle. But we had no cat. I was at my wits’ end. During the last day in port I ordered two sailors to scour the wharfside for an able bodied seafaring cat, but landlubbers were all that they could locate, and it really looked as if we would have to sail without a dumb shipmate. A friend offered me a fine Angora kitten, but I declined the gift, only seagoing cats were of any use. We cleared New York the following morning, but as we took up the gangway a black Tom sauntered nonchalantly up and on to the deck. Since then we have been in Manila, Japan, China, Nauru, and Newcastle, and the cat has stuck to us all the way.’
The captain again stroked the sleek fur of the reclining cat, and as the animal purred appreciatively, he tackled the question of seafaring cats from the angle of personal experience.
‘Sea cats are a race in themselves. A landlubber cat would not know how to take care of itself in a rough sea, but a sailor cat knows just what pile of ropes to hide under. It stays there and waits for fair weather before it reappears to demand rations. The seafaring cat is no joke. What is more, plenty of them have never been on shore, at all. They are born at sea, live on ships, and when they die they go down to Davy Jones’ locker. Almost every time we start on a voyage we find one or more strange cats on board. They often change ships, but seldom give up the sea for the land. Indeed I have never heard of a sailor cat doing so. Sometimes when several cats are aboard they assign parts of the ship to themselves, and will not allow others within their particular precincts. One old boy we had kept every cat aft but himself, and proud he was of his power to do so.
‘I know where the term “jealous cat” originated. I once had a cat—my favorite of all—named Margaret. She became so attached to me that she would not allow the other cats aboard to go into my cabin. She was even jealous of her kittens. No, Sir, ship’s cats and the ordinary domestic variety appear to be of two distinct species. I was certain that a cat would replace the capricious Cleopatra before we left the New York dock, but must confess to feeling a little uneasiness towards the end. But sure enough “Tommy” here bobbed up of his own free will, having decided in his clever feline mind that he would like to join for the voyage.’
”
ACCORDING TO BART
While the gleaming, bright lights of Broadway may well have appealed to Dyason and his crew, it’s doubtful they ever beckoned Cleopatra. It’s more likely she simply yearned for fresh horizons and voyages on other ships involving fewer rats and more flying fish. She wasn’t capricious. She was just exercising free will and a natural inclination to explore. When you think of the size of a feline’s natural home range, it’s not too surprising that seafurrers sometimes balk at the restrictions of shipboard life with all its barriers, bulwarks, doors, and hatches.
Some readers may be taken aback at Dyason’s “dumb” reference. In this day and age, it seems an insensitive way to describe a shipmate. But Dyason doesn’t mean to offend—he’s simply using the word in the “lack of spoken language” sense that was common at the time. It does, however, highlight his anthropocentric orientation.
Incidentally . . .
Konrad Lorenz (another ethologist) perceptively pointed out that “there are few animals in whose faces an observer can so clearly read a prevailing mood and predict what actions—friendly or hostile—are likely to follow” as in a cat’s. It’s very true—felines find it hard to dissemble, to hide their feelings. Their human companions, of course, have to be open to learning how to read them.
“Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?” is the real question to ask, according to one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2007, ethologist Frans de Waal, in the title of his 2016 bestselling book.
MISADVENTURES
“An extraordinary thing happened during the night. The tabby cat—Mrs. Chippy—jumped overboard through one of the cabin portholes and the officer on watch, Lt. Hudson, heard her screams and turned the ship smartly round and picked her up [with biologist Robert Clarke’s net]. She must have been in the water 10 minutes or more.”
—Thomas Orde Lee’s diary, September 13, 1914
misadventure: an unfortunate incident;
a mishap
Cats are hunters, and hunters venture forth and have adventures, or “that which happens by chance, fortune, luck.” Of course there’s a fair bit of planning and good management with successful hunting.
William the Conqueror was a hunter of sorts. He was country hunting when he crossed the channel with his Norman knights to take on King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The arrow that took out Harold square in the head could be called “death by misadventure.” Or what happens when things turn out badly in battle.
William not only brought Norman law and order to England, he brought French words that found their way into English. Adventure (aventure) was one; misadventure (mesaventure) another. But the English, who like to put their own stamp on things, went back to the Latin and added the d the French had dropped.
“All under the Sunne are subject to worldly miseries and misadventures,” said Sir Walter Raleigh. He should have added that it’s much more likely at sea where worse things regularly happen. As Samuel Johnson pointed out: “No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.”
There was certainly much misadventure and death by misadventure. On the bright side, there was also rescue, from an Old French word, rescourre, meaning to free, deliver, or save (re + escourre; “to pull away, shake, drive out, remove”).
INCIDENT 22: Wreck Rights
Statute of Westminster, 1275
“
Concerning wreck of the sea, it is agreed, that where a man, a dog, or a cat escape quick [alive] out of a ship, that such ship nor barge, nor anything within them, shall be ajudged wreck; but the goods
shall be saved and kept by view of the sheriff, coroner, or king’s bailiff, and delivered into the hands of such as are of the town where the goods were found; so that if any sue for these goods, and after prove that they were his, or perished in his keeping, within a year and a day, they shall be restored to him without delay; and if not they shall remain to the king.
”
ACCORDING TO BART
A cat or dog equal to “a man”! If not the first, it must be one of the earliest pieces of animal rights legislation. Though of course this isn’t about animal rights; it’s about “finders, keepers” and who gets what after a shipwreck, if there’s anything left to get.
So, what was left to get? On just one day, December 5, 1388, fishermen from the tiny village of Sizewell in Suffolk, England, reported their findings and their values in the local “wreck book.”
An oar 14 pence
A barrel 3 pence
Trestles and poor-quality wood 6 pence
60 pieces firewood 4 pence
While spats about divvying up the spoils of “wreck” have filled law books over the years, there’s been remarkably little comment on why surviving cats and dogs were included in this legislation. Cats were part of the ship’s crew and ran the pest-control department, so no surprises there, though how they would claim a share of “wreck” as survivors is a bit of a mystery. Dogs were often passengers or pets on merchant ships, probably the master’s. While they didn’t help run the ship, they were very useful in keeping things running smoothly by providing a bit of companionship and keeping spirits up on long absences from home. Even short distances in the days of sail could mean long absences due to inclement weather and winds. And all too often the men never did get home but were shipwrecked.
In the British navy, dogs were a fixture for several hundred years until the 1974 Rabies (Importation of Dogs, Cats and Other Mammals) Order put an end to a way of life. Matthew Flinders in his tribute to his cat Trim reported in 1809 that they had several dogs on board, but
Trim was undisputed master of them all. When they were at play upon the deck, he would go in amongst them with his stately air; and giving a blow at the eyes of one, and a scratch on the nose to another, oblige them to stand out of his way. He was capable of being animated against a dog, as dogs usually may be against a cat; and I have more than once sent him from the quarter deck to drive a dog off the forecastle. He would run half the way briskly, crouching like a lion which has prey in view; but then assuming a majestic deportment, and without being deterred by the menacing attitude of his opponent, he would march straight up to him, and give him a blow on the nose, accompanied with a threatening mew! If the dog did not immediately retreat, he flew at him with his warcry of Yow! If resistance was still made, he leaped up on the rail over his head and so bespattered him about the eyes that he was glad to run off howling. Trim pursued him till he took refuge below; and then returned smiling to his master to receive his caresses.
Why so many dogs? “A dog is the most obvious and natural pet for a gentleman,” according to naval officer, traveler, and author Basil Hall. Officers would embark with a dog or two in tow or acquire one or more at sea, sometimes as the spoils of war, sometimes as a souvenir of a tour of duty. When HMS Salisbury was stationed at St. John’s in Newfoundland in 1785, Newfoundlands were the “dog du jour.” The admiral gave permission for any person that pleased to take home a dog but was possibly surprised to see seventy-five march up the gangplank. Midshipman James Gardner was on the spot.
I messed in the main hatchway berth on the lower deck, with four midshipmen and a scribe. We had eight of those dogs billeted on us. One of them had the name of Thunder. At dinner I once gave him a piece of beef with plenty of mustard rolled up in it. The moment he tasted it, he flew at me and I was obliged to run for it. He never forgot it, and whenever I offered him victuals he would snap at me directly. Another of those dogs used to sleep at the foot of Charley Bisset’s cot, and when the quartermaster would call the watch this dog would fly at him if he came near Bisset, who would often plead ignorance of being called, and by that means escape going on deck for the first hour of the watch.
Incidentally . . .
Shipwreck jargon:
• Wreck: goods that end up on the shore
• Flotsam: property still awash at sea
• Jetsam: sunken goods thrown overboard to save the ship
• Ligan: sunken goods tied to a buoy or cork to facilitate recovery.
INCIDENT 23: Swings and Roundabouts
“The Voyage of M. John Locke to Jerusalem”
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation
Richard Hakluyt, 1598–1600
“
I John Locke, accompanied with Maister Anthony Rastwold, and divers other, Hollanders, Zelanders, Almaines and French pilgrimes entered the good shippe called Fila Cavena of Venice, the 16 of July 1553. and the 17 in the morning we weighed our anker and sayled towardes the coast of Istria, to the port of Rovigno, and the said day there came aboard of our ship the Percevena of the shippe named Tamisari, for to receive the rest of all the pilgrimes money, which was in all after the rate of 55. Crownes for every man for that voyage, after the rate of five shillings starling [sterling] to the crowne: This done, he returned to Venice. . . .
[August] The 18. Day. . . . It chanced by fortune that the shippes Cat lept into the Sea, which being downe, kept her selfe very valiauntly above water, notwithstanding the great waves, still swimming, the which the master knowing, he caused the Skiffe with halfe a dosen men to goe towards her and fetch her againe, when she was almost halfe a mile from the shippe, and all this while the ship lay on staies. I hardly beleeve they would have made such haste and meanes if one of the company had bene in the like perill. They made the more haste because it was the patrons cat. This I have written onely to note the estimation that cats are in, among the Italians, for generally they esteeme their cattes, as in England we esteeme a good Spaniell. The same night about tenne of the clocke the winde calmed, and because none of the shippe knewe where we were, we let fall an anker about 6 mile from the place we were at before, and there wee had muddie ground at twelve fathome.
”
ACCORDING TO BART
Don’t bank on staying esteemed. Today’s A-lister, tomorrow’s has-been—it’s all part and parcel of fortune’s swings and roundabouts. Take spaniels. They may have been highly esteemed lap dogs in John Locke’s England, but where are they now? Not ruling the internet. That’s for cats. For now. Tomorrow? Who knows?
“Cat-friendly” is not how you would describe Locke’s Europe. He was plum in the middle of grim times when, as Donald Engels puts it in Classical Cats, “millions of cats and hundreds of thousands of their female owners were brutally tortured and slain throughout western Europe during the Great Cat Massacre and the associated witchcraft hysteria.” No wonder Locke was surprised they stopped the boat.
Venice was different. Always. A busy, cosmopolitan port built on trade with East and West had little time for witch-hunting, which never really caught on in the sophisticated intellectual and cultural world that grew from Renaissance Italy. Seafaring Venetians continued to buck the trend and esteem their cats for their pest-control prowess, signing on seafurrers to ensure their cargoes were delivered fit for sale and everyone got paid.
Doge of Venice Generalissimo Francesco Morosini was inordinately fond of his cat, a valiant seafurrer who took part in his campaigns against the Ottoman Empire, standing shoulder to shoulder on the poop deck to reconquer Athens and the Peloponnese. What Morosini is mostly remembered for today, however, is destroying the Parthenon (1687). The Turks were using it as a gunpowder store, and he shelled it. You could say his reputation took a hit with this.
Esteem has stuck to scholar and priest Richard Hakluyt, who brings us Locke’s story. While no seafarer and never voyaging farther than Paris, his publications tell tales of adventure and courage on the high seas and have insp
ired generations of explorers, sailors, and armchair travelers. His travel-writing career began with a teenage light bulb moment. An older cousin sparked his lifelong passion for geography, telling him about recent discoveries and new opportunities for trade and showing him “certeine bookes of Cosmographie, with an universall Mappe.”
That did it. He resolved from then on to “prosecute that knowledge and kinde of literature” at university. He entered Christ Church, Oxford, in 1570, carried out his intended course of reading and, by degrees, covered all the printed or written voyages and discoveries he could find, as well as taking his BA in 1574 and MA in 1577. At some stage he gave public lectures in geography that “shewed both the olde imperfectly composed, and the new lately reformed Mappes, Globes, Spheares, and other instruments of this Art.” He was an early adopter.
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, first printed in one volume in 1589 and then as a greatly expanded three-volume edition in 1598–1600, was a compendium of voyages from ancient times. Prodigious is the only word to describe his achievement in compiling and editing hundreds of documents, from accounts of diplomatic and trade missions to translations of foreign works, letters patent, and travelers’ tales such as John Locke’s, within its pages.
Incidentally . . .
On the occasion of his traveler’s tale, John Locke (also spelled Lok) was on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, something likely to hold him in high esteem in Mary I’s England, where she was busily stoking the pyres to turn back the Protestant clock.