The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1911-07-20
schooner swings up to meet the next sea
and is off

This job, the captain will admit, re-
quired certain amount of care; but it
was punt on canal compared to days
in February. Wind clipped billow top
and flung the foam in our faces. He
adds, as if to explain, "You can guess
how it is: in winter that's all frozen by
the time it hits us. -
Fog has lifted bit, and the ugly
shapeless hull of the lightship is seen,
baaing with jets of her whistle making
winter steam in the mist. The schoon-
er's bow is set for point halfway be-
tween Allerton Beacon and Boston Light,
the main sheet is run out, and next she
is repeating the performance of the fish
erman. The green hills, laced with
white, come up kissing behind, spring her
to race along their submits, and she
bounds like a clean-limbed runner, tax
ing the hurdles on the home stretch of
thing buoy; abreast, astern. 1t is mo-
ton to make mortals wriggle their shout
der-blades under an illusion of wings.
Dead ahead, the mist rises, revealing
a stormy shore line, Shag Rocks to star
board now, black crags ripping white;
Point Allerton across, large, dim and
black; the bowsprit, be it noted, fixed
for halfway between. A rain squall is
sweeping up the harbor; everything be-
You'd Boston Light is a ieaden blot. Splits
of rain make gray mist along the water.
Its likely to clear" observes the cap
tain, with an eye upward. The schooner
wings past the white tower; seas drop to
swells, wind abates, fog lifts, and the
schooner swings lightly past Stony Beach,
WATCHING for another njlOt
Winter and summer the pilot boats
beat up and down Massachusetts Bay.
In all weathers their numbered sails go
leaning across the horizon, apparently at
random, but actually governed by a rigid
system. Five schooners compose the
fleet, No. l, the America; No. 2, the
Louise; No. 3, the Liberty; No. 4, the
Varuna, and No. 5, the Adams. Three
stations are occupied by these schooners
in rotation: The Outer, or Cape Station,
a cruising ground from Cape Cod to a
point some twelve miles north; the
Ligbtship Station, on which the pilot
boat keeps within some three miles of
the light vessel; and the Inner, or Bos-
ton Light Station, for the territory be-
tween the lightship and harbor entrance
and north to Nahant. This picketing Of
the bay furnishes pilot for vessel ap-
preaching the harbor from any quarter,
but it is understood that the two schoon-
ers which happen to be keeping the
outer stations furnish most of the pilots
| The vessel on the inner station takes
| pilots back to their boats as fast as they
come back from guiding ships up the
harbor. They get back down to Hull by
various routes-on outgoing vessels, on
the Government steamer which plies
among the harbor forts, on the harbor
police boat, i'll summer on the Nantasket
steamers, in winter often on the trains
to Hull. A signal flies at Stony Beach
and the canoe comes off from the schoon-
er to take them aboard. There are in all
thirty pilots, and the system of rotation
in turn keeps the roster from ever being
exhausted. An incoming vessel always
finds pilot ready to take her, but some
times on short notice of his arrival back
aboard his schooner. A pilot who was
ION turn" as the phrase is. on the Light
Ship Station, was set aboard by the
schooner keeping the inner station, at l |
a. m. AS customary for the pilot next
in order for duty, he took the wheel of
the schooner, and twenty minutes later
was aboard the battleship Vermont COM
ing for the harbor.
Apprenticeship for the rank of pilot is
acknowledged to be thorny-or an icy
road. Ii is hereditary not so much by
statute, as by blood. Pilots run by
families, just~as diplomats and iurists.
This does not mean to say that the group
is a close corporation, but that every
fr1,r
The apprentices have been chiefly boys
who have been to sea and had their
training, if possible. on the square rig
gers. They go to the pilot schooners
first as boat-keepers, rising by grade
from fourth to first-the officer left in
charge of the vessel when the last pilot
has left her; their term of probation may
last anywhere from five to ten years, be
fore receiving their warrants.
The pilots still descend from father to
son in many families, and it is curious to
note how the history of the port glides
down through the decades with echoes of
past events sounding in later names.
With Captain William V. Abbott and
Captain James Dolliver sailed Cap
tain Jonathan Bruce. He was a son
of the same Jonathan Bruce who kept
Boston Light in 1912 and saw from his
station the disasters and the triumphs at
the harbor mouth. And Captain Dolli-
yer, from all accounts one of the most
remarkable men and skilful navigators
in the history of Boston pilotage, cruis-
ed to eastward one summer day with a
cargo Of half the literature and state
craft of the middle century Longfellow,
Holmes, Webster, Agassiz and Lowell.
And Webster did the cooking. If any
thing had happened to that expedition,
the literature Of the country would have
been the poorer. We have, in sense,
Captain Dolliver to thank for the later
poems of Longfellow, Lowell and
Holmes, and the further contributions of
Agassiz and Webster.
The first warrant authorizes a pilot
to bring in vessels of 16-foot draft. At
the end of six months he receives war;
rant for vessels drawing Is feet. His
third warrant is for vessels of 2O-foot
draught, after which he becomes a ''full
branch pilot" competent to take any
vessel that comes. He is, in Sc Sc, an
officer of the Commonwealth. The two
pilot commissioners, necessarily expert
nautical men, are recommended for the
office to the governor and council by the
trustees Of the Boston Marine Society.
They carry on the tradition, too, for the
present commissioners, CAPTAIN John C.
Ross and Captain Frank L. Cakes, are
both old deep-water shipmasters of the
China and Fast Indian frado opd +bo