be
master in both professions, and in a small way, in time, I
accomplished my desire. From the decks of stout ships in the worst
gales I had made calculations as to the size and sort of ship safest
for all weather and all seas. Thus the voyage which I am now to
narrate was a natural outcome not only of my love of adventure, but of
my lifelong experience.

One midwinter day of 1892, in Boston, where I had been cast up from
old ocean, so to speak, a year or two before, I was cogitating whether
I should apply for a command, and again eat my bread and butter on the
sea, or go to work at the shipyard, when I met an old acquaintance, a
whaling-captain, who said: "Come to Fairhaven and I'll give you a
ship. But," he added, "she wants some repairs." The captain's terms,
when fully explained, were more than satisfactory to me. They included
all the assistance I would require to fit the craft for sea. I was
only too glad to accept, for I had already found that I could not
obtain work in the shipyard without first paying fifty dollars to a
society, and as for a ship to command--there were not enough ships to
go round. Nearly all our tall vessels had been cut down for
coal-barges, and were being ignominiously towed by the nose from port
to port, while many worthy captains addressed themselves to Sailors'
Snug Harbor.

The next day I landed at Fairhaven, opposite New Bedford, and found
that my friend had something of a joke on me. For seven years the joke
had been on him. The "ship" proved to be a very antiquated sloop
called the _Spray,_ which the neighbors declared had been built in the
year 1. She was affectionately propped up in a field, some distance
from salt water, and was covered with canvas. The people of Fairhaven,
I hardly need say, are thrifty and observant. For seven years they had
asked, "I wonder what Captain Eben Pierce is going to do with the old
_Spray?"_ The day I appeared there was a buzz at the gossip exchange:
at last some one had come and was actually at work on the old _Spray._
"Breaking her up, I s'pose?" "No; going to rebuild her." Great was the
amazement. "Will it pay?" was the question which for a year or more I
answered by declaring that I would make it pay.

My ax felled a stout oak-tree near by for a keel, and Farmer Howard,
for a small sum of money, hauled in this and enough timbers for the
frame of the new vessel. I rigged a steam-box and a pot for a boiler.
The timbers for ribs, being straight saplings, were dressed and
steamed till supple, and then bent over a log, where they were secured
till set. Something tangible appeared every day to show for my labor,
and the neighbors made the work sociable. It was a great day in the
_Spray_ shipyard when her new stem was set up and fastened to the new
keel. Whaling-captains came from far to survey it. With one voice they
pronounced it "A 1," and in their opinion "fit to smash ice." The
oldest captain shook my hand warmly when the breast-hooks were put in,
declaring that he could see no reason why the _Spray_ should not "cut
in bow-head" yet off the coast of Greenland. The much-esteemed
stem-piece was from the butt of the smartest kind of a pasture oak. It
afterward split a coral patch in two at the Keeling Islands, and did
not receive a blemish. Better timber for a ship than pasture white oak
never grew. The breast-hooks, as well as all the ribs, were of this
wood, and were steamed and bent into shape as required. It was hard
upon March when I began work in earnest; the weather was cold; still,
there were plenty of inspectors to back me with advice. When a
whaling-captain hove in sight I just rested on my adz awhile and
"gammed" with him.

New Bedford, the home of whaling-captains, is connected with Fairhaven
by a bridge, and the walking is good. They never "worked along up" to
the shipyard too often for me. It was the charming tales about arctic
whaling that inspired me to put a double set of breast-hooks in the
_Spray_, that she might shunt ice.

The seasons came quickly while I worked. Hardly were the ribs of the
sloop up before apple-trees were in bloom. Then the daisies and the
cherries came soon after. Close by the place where the old _Spray_ had
now dissolved rested the ashes of John Cook, a revered Pilgrim father.
So the new _Spray_ rose from hallowed ground. From the deck of the new
craft I could put out my hand and pick cherries that grew over the
little grave. The planks for the new vessel, which I soon came to put
on, were of Georgia pine an inch and a half thick. The operation of
putting them on was tedious, but, when on, the calking was easy. The
outward edges stood slightly open to receive the calking, but the
inner edges were so close that I could not see daylight between them.
All the butts were fastened by through bolts, with screw-nuts
tightening them to the timbers, so that there would be no complaint
from them. Many bolts with screw-nuts were used in other parts of the
construction, in all about a thousand. It was my purpose to make my
vessel stout and strong.

[Illustration: Cross-section of the _Spray_.]

Now, it is a law in Lloyd's that the _Jane_ repaired all out of the
old until she is entirely new is still the _Jane_. The _Spray_ changed
her being so gradually that it was hard to say at what point the old
died or the new took birth, and it was no matter. The bulwarks I built
up of white-oak stanchions fourteen inches high, and covered with
seven-eighth-inch white pine. These stanchions, mortised through a
two-inch covering-board, I calked with thin cedar wedges. They have
remained perfectly tight ever since. The deck I made of
one-and-a-half-inch by three-inch white pine spiked to beams, six by
six inches, of yellow or Georgia pine, placed three feet apart. The
deck-inclosures were one over the aperture of the main hatch, six feet
by six, for a cooking-galley, and a trunk farther aft, about ten feet
by twelve, for a cabin. Both of these rose about three feet above the
deck, and were sunk sufficiently into the hold to afford head-room. In
the spaces along the sides of the cabin, under the deck, I arranged a
berth to sleep in, and shelves for small storage, not forgetting a
place for the medicine-chest. In the midship hold, that is, the space
between cabin and galley, under the deck, was room for provision of
water, salt beef, etc., ample for many months.

The hull of my vessel being now put together as strongly as wood and
iron could make her, and the various rooms partitioned off, I set
about "calking ship." Grave fears were entertained by some that at
this point I should fail. I myself gave some thought to the
advisability of a "professional calker." The very first blow I struck
on the cotton with the calking-iron, which I thought was right, many
others thought wrong. "It'll crawl!" cried a man from Marion, passing
with a basket of clams on his back. "It'll crawl!" cried another from
West Island, when he saw me driving cotton into the seams. Bruno
simply wagged his tail. Even Mr. Ben J----, a noted authority on
whaling-ships, whose mind, however, was said to totter, asked rather
confidently if I did not think "it would crawl." "How fast will it
crawl?" cried my old captain friend, who had been towed by many a
lively sperm-whale. "Tell us how fast," cried he, "that we may get
into port in time."

[Illustration: "'It'll crawl'"]

However, I drove a thread of oakum on top of the cotton, as from the
first I had intended to do. And Bruno again wagged his tail. The
cotton never "crawled." When the calking was finished, two coats of
copper paint were slapped on the bottom, two of white lead on the
topsides and bulwarks. The rudder was then shipped and painted, and on
the following day the _Spray_ was launched. As she rode at her
ancient, rust-eaten anchor, she sat on the water like a swan.

The _Spray's_ dimensions were, when finished, thirty-six feet nine
inches long, over all, fourteen feet two inches wide, and four feet
two inches deep in the hold, her tonnage being nine tons net and
twelve and seventy-one hundredths tons gross.

Then the mast, a smart New Hampshire spruce, was fitted, and likewise
all the small appurtenances necessary for a short cruise. Sails were
bent, and away she flew with my friend Captain Pierce and me, across
Buzzard's Bay on a trial-trip--all right. The only thing that

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