MY LIFE AT SEA [Illustration: _Frontispiece_ CAPE HORN, DISTANT ONE MILE (_From a photograph taken from the “Ruapehu”_)] MY LIFE AT SEA BEING A “YARN” LOOSELY SPUN FOR THE PURPOSE OF HOLDING TOGETHER CERTAIN REMINISCENCES OF THE TRANSITION PERIOD FROM SAIL TO STEAM IN THE BRITISH MERCANTILE MARINE (1863-1894) BY COMMANDER W. CAIUS CRUTCHLEY R.D., R.N.R., F.R.G.S. A YOUNGER BROTHER OF TRINITY HOUSE, LATE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY LEAGUE WITH A PREFACE BY EARL BRASSEY, G.C.B. _WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS_ LONDON CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. 1912 RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO EARL BRASSEY, G.C.B., LORD WARDEN OF THE CINQUE PORTS; ALSO A MASTER MARINER AND CIRCUMNAVIGATOR. FOREWORD My good sailor friend Captain Crutchley has asked me to write a foreword to his autobiography. It is a pleasure to comply. The author began his life at sea in sailing-ships, in the age of the Black Ball liners, the Baltimore clipper-ships, and those perfect specimens of naval architecture built in Aberdeen for the China tea trade. Captain Crutchley tells of the hardships of the sea. He gives stirring descriptions of the performances of the ships in which he sailed. His narrative may perhaps be briefly supplemented. Sir George Holmes, in his book on ancient and modern ships, quotes many examples of record passages. In 1851, the _Nightingale_, in a race from Shanghai to Deal, ran on one occasion 336 knots in twenty-four hours. In the same year the _Flying Cloud_, in a voyage from New York to San Francisco, ran 427 knots in one day. The _Thermopylæ_, 886 tons register, built by Messrs. Steel, of Greenock, sailed 354 knots in twenty-four hours. The Aberdeen clippers of the ’sixties did marvellous work. Under sail, the _Ariel_, _Taeping_ and _Serica_ started together from Foochow on May 30, 1866. They met off the Lizard on September 6; and on the same day the _Taeping_ arrived in the East India Dock at 9.45 p.m., and the _Ariel_ at 10.15 p.m.--a difference of half-an-hour after racing for over three months on end. The present writer recalls a like personal experience of more recent date. In 1905 a race was sailed from Sandy Hook to the Lizard for a cup offered by the German Emperor. On that occasion the _Valhalla_, a full-rigged ship, _Hildegarde_ and _Endymion_, two-masted fore-and-aft schooners, and the _Sunbeam_, a three-masted topsail-yard schooner, anchored off Cowes on the same tide, the distance of more than 3300 miles from Sandy Hook having been covered in fourteen days.