Hen Frigates by Joan Druett

Author:Joan Druett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A Touchstone Book

CHAPTER SEVEN

Occupational Therapy

It is quite still now above and below, except when the great mainsail gives itself a shake, as if impatient for a gentle breeze, now it is held in confinement by a reef or two. But I say, keep quiet mainsail a little while, have patience, these black clouds will disappear e’er long,

Then Jack and Bill with Tom and Harry,

Will loose and hoist you with a song right merry,

But you must wait, so pray be still,

Let tired sailors sleep that will.

—Mary Rowland, January 5, l857

“D ay after day goes by, and nothing in sight. How must poor shipwrecked sailors feel, watching in vain for a ship?” sighed Maria Murphy in May 1883. It was a malaise that soon spread to them all. “It has been perfectly calm during the last 24 hours—not even one squall has visited us to break this dull monotonous life,” wrote Bethia Sears. “It seems to take all one’s life, ambition and courage away.” Bethia, like many wives, worried that the superstitious sailors—including the captain—would blame it on her being on board. “Elisha says we are having hard luck,” she wrote earlier in the voyage; “hope it is not because I am here.”

“This afternoon we have been fishing,” wrote Mary Rowland in the midst of an Atlantic calm, in October 1856.

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