The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo

  Our great transatlantic steamers of the present day are as far removed from Denis Papin's steam paddleboat on the Fulda in 1707 as is the three-decker Montebello103--200 feet long by 50 wide, with a main yard 115 feet long and a burden of three thousand tons, carrying eleven hundred men, 120 guns, ten thousand cannonballs, and 160 rounds of grapeshot, when in action belching out thirty-three hundred pounds of iron at every broadside and when under way spreading to the wind fifty-six hundred square meters of canvas--from the Danish dromond of the second century, discovered, laden with stone axes, bows, and clubs, in the mud of the sea bottom at Wester Satrup and now preserved in the town hall of Flensburg.

  A space of a hundred years, from 1707 to 1807, separates Papin's first boat from Fulton's. "Lethierry's galliot" was undoubtedly an improvement on these two primitive models, but it was still primitive. For all that it was a masterpiece. Every embryo conceived by science has a double aspect: as a fetus it is a monster, as the germ of something more it is a marvel.

  V

  THE DEVIL BOAT

  "Lethierry's galliot" was not masted to make the best use of the wind. This was not a fault peculiar to her, but in accordance with the laws of naval architecture; in any event, since the vessel was driven by steam, the sails were only accessory. Besides, it makes almost no difference to a paddleboat what sails she carries. The new vessel was too short, too round, too tubby; she was too bluff and had too much beam; for shipbuilders were not yet bold enough to construct their vessels light. She had some of the disadvantages and some of the qualities of the paunch. She did not pitch much, but rolled a lot. The paddle boxes were too high. She had too much breadth of quarter for her length. The massive engines took up a lot of room, and to enable her to carry a large cargo it had been necessary to give her unusually high bulwarks, so that she had something of the same defect as the old seventy-fours, a bastard type of vessel, which had to be cut down to make it properly seaworthy and capable of fighting. Being short, she should have been able to veer quickly, since the time taken in carrying out a maneuver is related to the length of the vessel, but her weight canceled out the advantage of her shortness. Her midship frame was too broad, and this slowed her down, the resistance of the water being proportional to the greatest width below the waterline and to the square of the vessel's speed. She had a vertical prow, which would not be a fault nowadays; but in those days the invariable practice was to set the prow at an angle of forty-five degrees. All the curves of the hull were well adjusted to one another, but they were not long enough for oblique sailing, still less for lying parallel with the water displaced, which must always be thrown off to the side. In heavy weather she drew too much water, sometimes fore and sometimes aft, which showed that her center of gravity was not in the right place. The cargo not being where it ought to be because of the weight of the engines, the center of gravity often moved aft of the mainmast, and then it was necessary to depend on steam power and beware of the mainsail, for in these circumstances its effect was to cause the vessel to fall off instead of keeping her head to the wind. The best thing to do, when the ship was close to the wind, was to loose the mainsheet immediately; the wind was thus held ahead by the tack and the mainsail no longer acted as an after sail. This was a difficult maneuver. The rudder was the old-fashioned type, not the wheel-controlled rudder of our day but a bar rudder, turning on hinges fixed to the sternpost and controlled by a horizontal bar passing above the transom. Two dinghies hung from davits. The ship had four anchors-- the sheet anchor, a second anchor (the working anchor), and two bower anchors. These four anchors, slung on chains, were worked, as occasion required, by the main capstan at the stern and the small capstan in the bow. At that period the pump windlass had not yet superseded the intermittent use of the handspike. Having only two bower anchors, one to starboard and one to port, she lacked the greater security of a third anchor between the two and might have some difficulty in certain winds, though she could get help in such cases from the working anchor. The buoys were of the usual type, so constructed as to carry the weight of the buoy ropes without dipping. The longboat was of serviceable size, a useful safety precaution for the vessel; it was strong enough to raise the sheet anchor. A novel feature of the ship was that she was partly rigged with chains; but this did not reduce either the ease of movement of the running rigging or the tension on the standing rigging. The masts and yards, although of secondary importance, were perfectly adequate; the top rigging, drawn taut, looked light. The ribs were solid but roughly shaped, since a steamship does not require the same delicate molding as a sailing ship. The Durande had a speed of two leagues an hour.104 When lying to she rode well. Such as she was, "Lethierry's galliot" was a good sea boat; but she lacked the sharpness of bow to cut her way through the waves, and she could not be said to be a graceful sailer. There was a feeling that in a situation of danger, faced with a reef or a cloudburst, she would be difficult to handle. She creaked like something that had been clumsily put together. When rolling in the waves she squeaked like a new shoe.

  She was mainly a freighter, and, like all ships built for commerce rather than war, was designed mainly for the stowage of cargo. She had little room for passengers. The transport of livestock made stowage difficult and awkward. In those days cattle were carried in the hold, which complicated the loading of the ship. Nowadays they are carried on the foredeck. The devil boat's paddle boxes were painted white, the hull down to the waterline red and the rest of the vessel black, in accordance with the rather ugly fashion of this century. Empty, she had a draft of seven feet; laden, of fourteen.

  The engines were powerful, delivering one horsepower per three tons burden--almost the power of a tug. The paddle wheels were well placed, a little forward of the vessel's center of gravity. The engines had a maximum pressure of two atmospheres. They consumed a great deal of coal, in spite of the fact that they used the method of condensation and expansion. They had no flywheel because of the instability of their mounting, but they made up for this lack, as is still the practice in our day, by having two alternating cranks at the ends of the driving shaft, so arranged that one was always at its thrusting point when the other was at its dead point. The engines rested on a single cast-iron plate, so that even in a serious accident no battering by the waves could upset their balance and even in the event of damage to the hull the engines themselves would not be affected. To make the engines still stronger, the main connecting-rod had been set close to the cylinder, thus transferring the center of oscillation of the beam from the middle to the end. Since then oscillating cylinders have been invented that make it possible to do without connecting rods; but in those days setting the connecting rod near the cylinder was regarded as the last word in technology. The boiler was divided by partitions and had a brine pump. The paddle wheels were very large, which reduced the loss of power, and the funnel was very tall, giving a better draft; but the size of the wheels exposed them to the force of the waves and the height of the funnel exposed it to the violence of the wind. The wheels were well made, with wooden blades, iron clamps, and cast-iron hubs, and, remarkably, could be taken to pieces. There were always three paddle blades under water. The speed at the center of the blades was only a sixth greater than that of the vessel: this was the main defect of the paddle wheels. Moreover, the end of the cranks was too long, and the slide valve caused too much friction in admitting steam into the cylinder. By the standards of that time, however, the engines seemed, and indeed were, admirable.

  The engines had been made in France, at the Bercy ironworks. Mess Lethierry had more or less designed them himself; the engineer who had built them according to his plans was now dead, so that they were unique and could not be replaced. The designer was still there, but the constructor had gone.

  The engines had cost forty thousand francs.

  Lethierry had built his ship himself on the large covered stocks beside the first Martello tower between St. Peter Port and St. Sampson. He had gone to Bremen to buy the timber for it. He had
used all his skill as a shipwright in its construction, and his talent was demonstrated by the planking, with straight and even seams covered with sarangousti, an Indian mastic that is better than pitch. The sheathing had been well beaten. Lethierry had painted the lower part of the hull with a protective coat of galgal,105 and to compensate for the roundness of the hull he had fitted a jibboom on the bowsprit, enabling him to add a false spritsail to the regular one. On the day the ship was launched he cried, "Now I'm afloat!" 106 And indeed the ship proved to be a success, as we have seen.

  Either by chance or by design, the ship had been launched on the fourteenth of July, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille. On that day Lethierry stood on the deck between the paddle wheels, gazed at the sea, and shouted to it: "It's your turn now! The people of Paris took the Bastille: now we are taking you!"

  Lethierry's galliot sailed once a week from Guernsey to Saint-Malo, leaving on Tuesday morning and returning on Friday evening, in time for the Saturday market. She had stouter timbers than the largest sloops engaged in the coastal trade in the archipelago, and, with a cargo-carrying capacity proportionate to her size, carried as much in one voyage as the ordinary local boats did in four. As a result she brought in large profits. The reputation of a ship depends on the stowage of the cargo, and Lethierry was a skilled stevedore. When he could no longer work at sea himself, he trained up a seaman to replace him. At the end of two years the steamship was bringing in a clear 750 pounds sterling a year, or eighteen thousand francs. The Guernsey pound sterling is worth twenty-four francs, the English pound twenty-five and the Jersey pound twenty-six. These little differences are not so unimportant as they seem: the banks, at any rate, do well out of them.

  VI

  LETHIERRY'S TRIUMPH

  Lethierry's galliot prospered, and Mess Lethierry saw the moment approaching when he would be called Monsieur. On Guernsey men do not automatically become Monsieur: there is a whole ladder to be climbed first. The first rung is the name by itself, let us say Pierre; then, on the second rung, Neighbor Pierre; on the third rung, Father Pierre; on the fourth, Sieur Pierre; on the fifth, Mess Pierre; then, at the top of the ladder, Monsieur Pierre.

  This ladder, starting from the ground, continues into the empyrean. The whole of hierarchical England comes into it at their appropriate levels. These are the various rungs, increasingly glorious as they go up: above the gentleman (the equivalent of Monsieur) is the esquire, above the esquire the knight (with the title Sir for life); then, still higher up, the baronet (with the hereditary title Sir), then the lord (laird in Scotland), then the baron, then the viscount, then the earl (count in France, jail in Norway), then the marquis, then the duke, then the peer, then the prince of the blood royal, then the king. The ladder ascends from the common people to the middle classes, from the middle classes to the baronetage, from the baronetage to the peerage, from the peerage to royalty.

  Thanks to his successful enterprise, thanks to steam, thanks to his engines, thanks to the devil boat, Mess Lethierry had become someone. In order to build his boat he had had to borrow; he had incurred debts in Bremen, he had incurred debts in Saint-Malo; but every year he paid off some of the money he owed.

  He had also bought on credit a pretty stone-built house, entirely new, just at the entrance to St. Sampson harbor, with the sea in front and a garden behind. At one corner of the house was its name, Les Bravees. The house, whose front formed part of the harbor wall, was notable for a double range of windows: one on the north side, looking into a flower-filled garden, and one on the south, looking onto the ocean. The house thus had two fronts, one facing onto storms, the other onto roses.

  These two fronts seemed made for the two occupants of the house, Mess Lethierry and Miss Deruchette.

  The house was popular in St. Sampson, for Mess Lethierry had at length become popular. This popularity was due partly to his good nature, his tenacity, and his courage, partly to the number of men he had rescued, a great deal to his success, and also because he had given St. Sampson the privilege of being the port of departure and arrival of the steamship. St. Peter Port, the capital, had wanted that honor for itself, but Lethierry had held to St. Sampson. It was his native town. "That was where I was pitched into the water," he used to say. This brought him great local popularity. His position as a house owner paying land tax made him what is called on Guernsey an habitant. He had been appointed douzenier. This poor seaman had risen to the fifth of the six levels in the Guernsey social scale; he was Mess Lethierry; he was within reach of the dignity of Monsieur; and who could say that he might not rise even further? Who could say that they might not one day find in the Guernsey almanac, in the section headed "Gentry and Nobility," the proud and unheard-of entry "Lethierry, Esq."?

  But Mess Lethierry disdained, or rather never thought of, the vanity of such distinctions. He felt he was useful, and that gave him pleasure. Being popular meant less to him than being necessary. He had, as we have said, only two objects of affection, and consequently had only two ambitions--Durande and Deruchette.

  At any rate he had taken a ticket in the lottery of the sea, and he had won the first prize.

  The first prize was the Durande steaming to and fro.

  VII

  THE SAME GODFATHER AND THE SAME PATRON SAINT

  After creating his steamship Lethierry had christened it. He had called it the Durande. Henceforth we shall call it by no other name. We may be permitted also, in spite of typographical practice, not to italicize the name Durande, in line with the notions of Mess Lethierry, for whom the Durande was almost a living person.

  Durande and Deruchette are the same name. Deruchette is the diminutive--a diminutive that is very common in the west of France.

  In country areas the saints frequently bear names with all their diminutives and all their augmentatives. You might think there were several different persons when in fact there is only one. These multiple identities of patron saints under different names are by no means rare. Lise, Lisette, Lisa, Elisa, Isabelle, Lisbeth, Betsy are all Elizabeth. It is probable that Mahout, Maclou, Malo, and Magloire are the same saint: this, however, we are less sure about.

  Saint Durande is a saint of the Angoumois and Charente. Is she an authentic saint? We leave that to the Bollandists. Whether authentic or not, she has chapels dedicated to her.

  When he was a young seaman at Rochefort, in Charente, Lethierry had made the acquaintance of this saint, probably in the person of some pretty local girl, perhaps the grisette with the fine nails. He remembered it sufficiently well to give this name to the two things he loved--Durande to the ship, Deruchette to the girl.

  He was father of one and uncle of the other.

  Deruchette was the daughter of a brother of his. She had lost her father and mother, and he had adopted her, replacing both the father and the mother.

  Deruchette was not only his niece: she was his goddaughter. It was he who had held her in his arms at her christening and he who had chosen her patron saint, Durande, and her name, Deruchette.

  Deruchette, as we have said, had been born in St. Peter Port. Her name was entered in the parish register under the date of her birth.

  While the niece was small and the uncle poor, no one paid any particular attention to the name Deruchette; but when the child became a young lady and the seaman a gentleman, the name struck people as odd. They were astonished at Lethierry's choice. They asked him: "Why Deruchette?" He replied: "It's a name like any other." Several attempts were made to change her name. He would have none of it. One day a fine lady of St. Sampson's high society, the wife of a well-to-do blacksmith who no longer worked, said to Mess Lethierry: "In the future I shall call your girl Nancy." "Why not Lons-le-Saulnier?" he retorted.107 The fine lady did not give up, and on the following day returned to the attack, saying: "We really cannot have Deruchette. I have found a pretty name for her--Marianne." "Certainly it is a pretty name," rejoined Mess Lethierry, "but it is made up of two ugly creatures, a husband and a donkey."108
So he held to the name Deruchette. It would be wrong to conclude from this last remark that he did not want to see his niece married. He wanted to have her married, but in the way he wanted. He wanted her to have a husband like himself, a hard worker whose wife would have little to do. He liked black hands in a man and white hands in a woman. To prevent Deruchette from spoiling her pretty hands, he had brought her up to be a young lady. He had given her a music teacher, a piano, a small library, and a work-basket with needles and thread. She liked reading better than sewing, and playing the piano better than reading. This was what Mess Lethierry wanted. To be charming was all that he expected of her. He had brought her up to be a flower rather than a woman. Anyone who is familiar with seamen will understand this. Rough characters like delicate ones. For the niece to realize the uncle's ideal, she had to be rich. This was Mess Lethierry's firm intention. His great maritime machine was working toward that end. He had made it Durande's mission to provide a dowry for Deruchette.

  VIII

  "BONNY DUNDEE"

  Deruchette had the prettiest room in Les Bravees, with two windows, figured mahogany furniture, a bed with curtains in a white-and-green-check pattern, and a view of the garden and the high hill on which stands Vale Castle. On the far side of the hill was the Bu de la Rue.

  In her room Deruchette had her music and her piano. She accompanied herself on the piano when she sang her favorite song, the melancholy Scottish air "Bonny Dundee." All the gloom of evening is in the song, all the brightness of dawn was in her voice, making a pleasantly surprising contrast. People said: "Miss Deruchette is at her piano," and as they passed by at the foot of the hill they would sometimes stop outside the garden wall to listen to this voice of such freshness singing a song of such sadness.

  Deruchette was gaiety itself as she flitted about the house, creating a perpetual spring. She was beautiful, but more pretty than beautiful, and more sweet than pretty. She reminded the good old pilots who were Mess Lethierry's friends of the princess in a soldiers' and sailors' song--