The San Francisco call., 1896-03-22
TWO OLD-TIME PACKET SHIPS.
ny DENIS KEARNEY.

E% HIS little sea sketch that l write
to-day will be read by at least two
hundred thousand people in this
CITY. most OF whom at some time
or another have stroi;ed down to
the city front to look at the ships that lay
moored to the wharyes and anchored In
bay. Nearly all of them must have seen
the barks Columbia and Germania, but
few knew anything OF their history. Ii
thew had they would have bestowed on
them more than a passing glance. 1t IS
the modern sky-scraping clippers tied to
the other side of the dock that command
the attention of the onooker, while the
two old sea rovers whose pictures are
given on this page of The CALL are passed
by unnoticed.
The Columbia was launched at New
York City in 1916 and four years later the
Germania slid off the ways at Portsmouth,
n. H. They were built for the "Black-
ball line, though for a time the latter
was a crack Havre packet. They were
full-rigged ships then, carrying great big
single topsails, but nothing higher than
ROYALS. On their foretop sails was
painted black ball so large that it reached
from the footrope to the iackstay, nd the
tips of their royal masts were crowned
with gilded trucks upon which the m orn-
ing sunbeams played. They had high
bluff bows, square sterns and very large
painted ports that were always kept clean
and shiny.
Up to this time building had not at
tained a very high standard of excellence,
for when these two ships were ready to sail
on their maiden voyage men who were COM
petent to Judge pronounced them "1oat-
ing palaces" but to keep up the reputa-
tions already gained the officers brought
their brass knuckles along, and the sailors
on both sides of the Atlantic soon began
to denounce them as floating hells."
They could not be anything else and
hy from their main royal truck the
house flag of Charlie Marshall, for the
"Black- bail line" was Marshalrs line of
packet ships. They were of the same ton
mage, spread the same amount OF canvas
and each could carry more than 600 pas
sengers at time. Their courses, topsails
and lower staysails, were made OF No.
cotton canvas that was as white as the
crest that curls on top of an Atlantic
wave.
What was most needed at the time was
speed as we'll as strength, and it was to
meet these requirements that both were
constructed and their successful lives on
this and other oceans speak well for the
carpenters who worked upon their ribs,
knees and joints from their backbone to
the sheer plank. Last winter they were at
sea and safely weathered the gale and
waves which swamped and sent TO the
bottom the steamers keweenaw and Mont
serrat and the sailing ship Spartan and
others. They were accustomed to riding
out gales and climbing TO the top of
mountainous waves. These two old vet
erans rode out many bowling wIntry
gale on the stormy Atlantic half a century
ago, and the waves that kissed their knight
heads off Cape Mendocino when so many
precious lives found watery graves were as
ripples thrown up against the side OF a
Whitehall skiff from the splashing of the
paddle of q ferry-boat in the bay, when
compared TO the roaring white-maned
monsters that thundered against their
bows and battered at their sides in the
North Atlantic with force that made
every knee and joint creak and groan.
They were the ocean racers OF the forties
and every time they left Liverpool west
ward bound their cabins and tween decks
were crowded with the best blood of the
Old World anxious to reach the New.
Slowed away in their tween decks, packed
like sardines in box, could be found youth
and beauty, mirth,. innocence and virtue,
whose capital were their brawny arms |
splendid constitutions and iron Will, with |
no outfit, all mixed up together every one
being content with his or her quarters, and |
there was no growing as to who should |
have the lower or the upper bunk, for some
were there who had no bunks at all, and |
many others had neither mattresses nor
pillows. They had to content them selves |
with the soft side of board, while their |
heads rested on their hard hob-nailed |
shoes, beside which the yellowcovered |
footgear of Joe Gassman, the young as
tronomer, is as a soft bed of down. Oh, /
my, if these two old sea warriors could !
only talk, how bewildering the stories they
would tell
The decks of these Blackball liners were
the scenes of many bloody rows between
the quarterback and the forecastle, and the
Columbia was no exception to the rule. |
The sailors were the best that ever ree'ed |
a topsail or mast-headed yard, and at
the same time the toughest. The officers
were just as tough as the sailors. They |
were made up of men who would rather |
fight than eat Mrs. Reilly's boarding |
house. on Dennison street, in Liverpool, |
was the headquarters for most of the |
packet ships sailors, and she shipped them |