The Wreck of the “Catapult”

"The Wreck of the “Catapult”" by Charles Battell Loomis is a thrilling adventure novel centered around a naval shipwreck. The story unfolds as the crew of the Catapult navigates treacherous waters and faces the challenges of survival after their vessel meets with disaster. Loomis combines elements of humor and human resilience, exploring themes of camaraderie, bravery, and the struggles against nature's unpredictability. The novel captivates readers with its vivid descriptions and engaging character dynamics, making it a compelling tale of adventure and perseverance at sea.

• Short story

								
BY CL-RK R-SS-LL

      The sea, the sea, the open sea,
      The blue, the fresh, the ever free.
                       BARRY CORNWALL.

If there be those who love not the sea, with its storms, its seaweed,
its sharks and shrimps and ships, this is not the story for them,
and they would best weigh anchor and steer for some tale written by
a landlubber and full of green meadows and trees and such tommy-rot,
for this is to be chock-a-block with nautical phrases.

And who am I, you ask? I am Joseph Inland, the tenth of that name.
We have always lived and died here in Birmingham, and followed the
trade of cutlers; but when I was a babe of one year father told
mother ’twas time one member of the family followed the sea, wherever
it went, and that he intended to make a sailor of me.

So before I was six I had heard of sloops and ferry-boats and
belaying-pins and admirals and salt-junk, and longed to hear the wind
whistling through the maintopgallantmast, and could say “boat-swain”
as glibly as any sailor afloat. But father was in moderate
circumstances; and so, much as he would have liked to, he could
not afford to send me to sea when I was a boy, and that is why my
one-and-twentieth birthday came and went and I had never been farther
from Birmingham than my legs could carry me in a day; but you may be
sure that I subscribed to the “Seaman’s Daily,” and through a friend
who knew a sailor I had picked up such terms as “amidships,” “deck,”
“boom,” “bilge-water,” “forecastle,” and the like, so that I was a
seaman in everything save actual experience.

And in the amateur dramatic society of which I was a member I always
played sailors’ parts, and did them so well that when we played
“Hamlet” they changed the part of the grave-digger to that of a
sailor for me, and I made a great hit in it. The one who played
Hamlet didn’t like the change, as it interfered with his lines and
his business with a skull, and he refused to come on at all in that
act; but I sang a sea-song instead, and the newspaper came out and
said that my singing was no worse than his acting would have been,
which I thought pretty neat.

But enough of that. I was always fond of joking, and had nigh unto
a score of comical sayings that I used to repeat to my friends when
they would come to our house of an evening; but they didn’t often
come. My father said I was as comical a lad as he ever knew, and
would slap me on the back and roar that it was the funniest thing
he had heard in a twelvemonth when I made one particular joke, the
tenor of which I forget now. But all the jokes dealt with the sea.

Well, so much for my life up to my one-and-twentieth birthday. You
have learned that if ever a body was fitted for a sea life, that body
was mine.

By the time I was six-and-twenty I don’t believe there was a sea term
that I did not have at my tongue’s end, and I always wore my trousers
wide at the lower end, and kept a chew of tobacco in my mouth day and
night, although after a time I failed to notice any taste in it.

It was a gladsome sight to see me go rolling to my work in the
cutler’s shop (for I still followed the old trade), with a hearty
“Ho, landsman! good mornin’ to ye!” to all I met, in true sailor
fashion.

Our fare at home consisted of loblolly, ship’s-biscuit, salt-junk,
and plum-duff, with water drawn from casks. My dear old mother used
sometimes to wish for home-made bread and fresh meat and vegetables
and pump water; and I remember, one winter, brother died of the
scurvy; but I was better content than if he had died of some
landsman’s complaint, and mother was glad to put up with anything,
she was so proud that I was to be a seaman.

I had a carpenter construct my parents’ bedroom so that the whole
floor could be rocked; and on stormy nights I would stay up and by
a simple mechanism keep it a-rocking until poor old mother would be
as sick as if she were in the Channel. But I never heard her murmur.
She was fit for a sailor’s wife.

On such nights father never went to bed, but stayed down-stairs.
There was little of the seaman’s spirit in the old man.

When I was one-and-thirty I had a rare chance to ship before the mast
on a whaler sailing from Liverpool; but as business was pretty brisk
at the shop, I decided to wait, and the offer was not renewed when
she returned, three years later.

When I was forty dear mother entered her last port. The doctor, a
blundering landlubber, fond of landsmen’s phrases, said she died
of insufficient nutriment. Be that as it may or what it may, in
her I lost one whose heart was always on my going to sea. Douse my
top-lights if ever there was a craft that carried a stancher heart
from barnacle to binnacle than did the old lady, and I had her
buried in shrouds, with a cannon-ball at the foot of the coffin, as
befitted the mother of one who was going to be a seaman.

After she died I became even more impatient to be off to sea, for
there’s no air so pure as the sea air, no hearts so true as seamen’s
hearts, no weed like seaweed, and no water that’s fit to drink save
sea water; but business was pretty good, so, for the present, I
decided to stay ashore; but I always read the shipping news with as
much keenness as any sailor afloat.

       *       *       *       *       *

And now I’ve come to the end of my yarn. I named it “The Wreck of
the ‘Catapult’” because it had a salty savor. It was the name of one
of my favorite Sunday-school books when I was a lad. Now I am an old
man, threescore and ten, and have been alone in the world a score
of years. Heaven denied me the blessing of children, but I have a
grandson who is as hot for the sea as I was.

Ah, me! Next week I am going to apply for admission to the Sailors’
Home; for although circumstances have prevented my ever seeing the
ocean or scenting its salty breezes, I have always been, and always
shall be, at heart a British seaman.

Shiver my timbers!
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