Chateaubriand's memoirs, VI, 2

London, April to September 1822.

The previous book ended with my embarkation at Saint-Malo. Soon we left the Channel, and immense waves from the west proclaimed the Atlantic to us.

It is hard for those who have never voyaged to gain an idea of the feelings one experiences on board ship, seeing nothing on every side but the solemn face of the deep. In the perilous life of a sailor there is an independence which is absent on land; one leaves the passions of men behind on shore; between the world one leaves and that which one seeks, one has for friendship and country only the element that supports one: mo more duties to fulfil, mo more visits to make, no more newspapers, no more politics. Even the language of sailors is no ordinary language: it is a language that speaks of oceans and skies, calms and storms. You inhabit a universe of water among creatures whose clothes, tastes, manners, faces resemble no earth-dwelling people: they possess the hardness of sea wolves and the lightness of birds; there is no trace of the worries of society on their brows; the wrinkles that traverse them resemble the pleats in a furled sail, and are less hollowed out by age than by the wind, as the waves are. The skin of these creatures, impregnated with salt, is reddened, rough as the surface of a reef lashed by the tide.

The sailors have a passion for their vessel; they cry with regret on leaving her, with tenderness on re-embarking. They are unable to remain with their families; after having sworn a hundred times not to expose themselves to the sea, it is impossible for them to ignore it, as a young man cannot tear himself from the arms of a faithless and volatile mistress.

On the dockside in London or Plymouth, it is not unusual to find sailors born on board ship: from infancy to old age, they never go on shore; they never see the land except from their floating cradle, spectators of a world they never enter. In that life reduced to small a space, under the clouds and above the depths, everything is alive to a mariner: an anchor, a sail, a mast, a canon are living things one has affection for and each of which has its history.

The sail was split on the coast of Labrador; the sail-maker added the patch you can see.

The anchor saved the vessel when it had dragged its other anchors, among the coral reefs of the Sandwich Isles.

The mast was broken in a squall off the Cape of Good Hope; it is not a single spar; it is much stronger since it was fashioned from two sections.

The canon is the only one not dismounted at the battle of the Chesapeake.

The news on board is most interesting: the lead has been cast; the ship is making ten knots.

The sky is clear at midday; the sun’s elevation has been taken; one is at such and such latitude.

Our position has been established: so many leagues have been gained along our ideal route.

The needle’s declination is so many degrees: we are reaching northwards.

The sand in the hourglass flows poorly: we will have rain.

Procellaria, stormy petrels, have been seen behind the vessel’s wake: we can expect a sharp gust.

Flying fish have appeared to the south: the weather will be calmer.

A break in the clouds has formed towards the west: it is the source of the wind; tomorrow the wind will blow from that quarter.

The water has changed hue; wood and sea-wrack can be seen floating; sea-gulls and ducks are visible; a little bird came and perched on a yard: the headland must be left behind, since we are nearing shore, and it is a bad idea to berth at night.

In the chicken-coop, there is a favourite cockerel that is sacred, so to speak, and has survived all others; he is famous for having crowed during battle, as if in the farmyard amongst his hens. Below deck a cat lives: its fur streaked with green, with a mangy tail, hairy whiskers, firm on its feet, countering the pitch and roll with its balancing act; it has been round the world twice, and was saved from shipwreck riding on a barrel. The ships’-boys give the cockerel biscuits soaked in wine, and Tomcat has the privilege of sleeping, when it pleases him, on the second captain’s fur mantle.

Old sailors resemble old ploughmen. The fruits of their labour are different, it is true; the sailor has led a wandering life, the ploughman has never left his fields; but they both know the stars and predict the future while cutting their furrow. To the one belongs the skylark, the red-breast, the nightingale; to the other the petrel, the curlew, the halcyon – their prophets. They retire for the night, one to his cabin, the other to his cottage; frail habitations, where the hurricane that shakes them has no effect on tranquil consciences.

‘If the wind tempestuous is blowing,

Still no danger they descry;

The guileless heart its boon bestowing,

Soothes them with its Lullaby…’

The sailor knows not where death will surprise him, on which shore he will lose his life: perhaps, when he has given his last sigh to the breeze, he will be thrown into the heart of the waves, attached to two oars, to continue his voyage, perhaps he will be cast on some desert island that no one will never find again, just as he has slumbered alone in his hammock, in the midst of the ocean.

The lone vessel is a fine sight: responding to the lightest touch of the tiller, a hippogriff or winged courser, obedient to the pilot’s hand, like a horse under the hand of a rider. The elegance of the masts and rigging, the agility of the sailors as they scramble along the yards, the different aspects in which the ship presents itself, leaning into a hostile southerly, or fleeing swiftly before a favourable northerly, make this sentient structure one of the wonders of human ingenuity. Now the foaming wave strikes and spurts against the hull; now the peaceful waters divide, without resistance, before the prow. Flags, flames, sails complete the beauty of this palace of Neptune: the lowest sails, deployed to their full width, swell like vast cylinders; the topsails, reefed in the middle, resemble the breasts of a Siren. Animated by an impetuous breeze, the ship with its keel, as with the blade of a plough, cuts with a loud noise through the fields of the sea.

On this pathway through the ocean, along whose length one sees neither tree nor village, town nor turret, spire nor tomb; on this road without signposts or milestones, which has only the waves for markers, only the winds for intermediaries, only the stars for lanterns, the finest of events, when one is not in search of unknown lands and seas, is the meeting of two vessels. Each discovers the other far-off on the horizon; they steer towards each other. The passengers and crew rush to the bridge. The two boats draw near, hoist their flags, and furl their sails to lie parallel. When all is quiet, the two captains, standing on the poop, hail each other with a megaphone: ‘What name? Out of what Port? Your captain’s name? Where from? How many days crossing? Latitude and longitude? Adieu, away!’ They let go a reef; the sail unfurls. The sailors and passengers from the two vessels watch each other depart, without saying a word: these go to seek the sun of Asia; those, the sun of Europe, which will equally oversee their death. Time carries off and separates voyagers on land, still more swiftly than the wind carries them away and separates them on the ocean; they make a sign from afar: Adieu, away! The common harbour is Eternity.

And what if the vessel met with was that of Cook or La Pérouse?

The boatswain of our vessel was an old supercargo named Pierre Villeneuve, whose name itself pleased me because of my own kindly nurse Villeneuve. He had served in India under Bailli de Suffren, and in America under the Comte d’Estaing; he had been involved in countless engagements. Leaning against the bows of the ship, near the bowsprit, like an army veteran sitting beneath a garden trellis in the moat of the Invalides, Pierre, chewing a plug of tobacco that swelled his cheek like a gumboil, described the moment when the decks are cleared, the effect of gunfire below-deck, and the havoc caused by cannonballs ricocheting against the gun-carriages, guns and timber-work. I made him tell me of the Indians, Negroes and planters. I asked him how the people were dressed, about the nature of the trees, the colour of earth and sky, the taste of the fruit; whether pineapples were superior to peaches, palm-trees finer than oaks. He explained all this to me by means of comparisons with things I knew: the palm-tree was a giant cabbage, an Indian woman’s dress like my grandmother’s; camels looked like hunch-backed donkeys; all the peoples of the Orient, especially the Chinese, were cowards and thieves. Villeneuve was a Breton, and we never failed to end by praising the incomparable beauty of our native land.

The bell would interrupt our conversations; it struck the watches, and the hours for dressing, roll-call and meals. In the morning, at a signal, the crew lined up on deck, stripped off their blue shirts, and donned others drying in the shrouds. The discarded shirts were immediately washed in tubs, in which this school of seals also soaped their sunburnt faces and tarry paws.

At the midday and evening meals, the sailors, sitting in a circle round the mess-can, dipped their spoons, one after the other and without cheating, into the soup which splashed about to the rolling of the ship. Those who were not hungry sold their share of biscuit and salt meat to their mates, for a plug of tobacco or a glass of brandy. The passengers ate in the captain’s cabin. When it was fine, a sail was spread above the stern, and we ate with a view of the blue sea, flecked here and there with white marks where it was stirred by the breeze.

Wrapped in my cloak, I stretched out at night on deck. My eyes contemplated the stars above. The swollen sail conveyed the coolness of the breeze to me, which rocked me beneath the celestial dome: half-asleep and driven onwards by the wind, the sky changed with my changing dreams.

The passengers on board ship offer an alternative society to that of the crew: they belong to another element; their destinies are earthbound. Some hasten to seek their fortunes, others rest; those return to their homeland, these leave theirs behind; still others voyage to research the ways of other peoples, to study the sciences and the arts. One has the leisure to learn in this floating hotel that travels with the traveller, to hear of many things, to conceive antipathies, and contract friendships. When those young women come and go, born of English and Indian blood, who combine the beauty of Clarissa and the delicacy of Sakuntala, then those necklaces are formed which knot and un-knot the perfumed breezes of Ceylon, as light and gentle as they are themselves.