Solomon had, among the many qualities of mind which have secured his high as the wisest man of the world, an attribute which does not always accompany abundant knowledge. He was prompt to admit his limitations, as far as he knew them, and . And among them he confesses an inability to understand “the way of a ship in the midst of the sea.” It may be urged that there was little to wonder at in this, since the of his position must have his gaining more than the slightest actual experience of seafaring. Yet it is marvellous that he should have mentioned this thing, seemingly simple to a shore-dweller, which is to all a mystery past finding out. No matter how long a sailor may have sailed the seas in one ship, or how deeply he may have studied the ways of that ship under all combinations of wind and sea, he will never be found to assert thoughtfully that he knows her altogether. Much more, then, are the idiosyncrasies of all ships unknowable. Kipling has done more, perhaps, than any other living writer to point out how certain of man’s construction become invested with individuality of an unmistakable kind, and of course so acute an observer could not fail to notice how pre-eminently is this the case with ships.  
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Now, in what follows I seek as best I may to show, by a handful of instances in my own experience, how the “personality” of ships expresses itself, and how incomprehensible these are to the men whose business it is to study them. Even before the ship has quitted the place of her birth, yea, while she is yet a-building, something of this may be . One man will study deepest mathematical problems, will apply his formulæ, and see them in steel or timber, so that by all ordinary laws of cause and effect the resultant should be a of speed, stability, and strength. And yet she is a failure. She has all the that the sailor knows and : crank, slow, leewardly, hanging in stays, impossible to satisfactorily. Every man who ever sails in her carries in his sea-memory, to the day of his death, vengeful recollections of her perversities, and often in the dog-watch holds to his shipmates in denunciation of her manifold long after one would have thought her very name would be forgotten. Another shipbuilder, innocent of a of mathematics, impatient of diagrams, will begin apparently without preparation, adding timber to timber, and breast-hook to stem, until out of the dumb of his mind a ship is evolved, his inexpressible idea manifested in yet massive shape. And that ship will be all that the other is not. As if the spirit of her builder had somehow been into her frame, she behaves with intelligence, and becomes the delight, the pride, of those fortunate enough to sail in her.
 
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Such a vessel it was once my good fortune to join in London for a winter passage across to Nova Scotia. Up to that time my experience had been confined to large and long voyages, and it was not without the stern compulsion of want that I shipped in the Wanderer. She was a brigantine of two hundred and forty tons register, built in some little out-of-the-way harbour in Nova Scotia by one of the amphibious sailor-farmers of that ungenerous coast, in just such a rule-of-thumb manner as I have spoken of. When I got on board I pitied myself greatly. I felt for room; I the waves of the Atlantic at that stormy winter season, in what I considered to be a weakly built craft fit only for creeping closely along-shore. We worked down the river, also a new departure to me, always accustomed hitherto to be towed down to Beachy Head by a . The delicate way in which she responded to all the calls we made on her astonished our pilot, who was loud in his praises of her “handiness,” one of the most praiseworthy qualities a ship can have in a seaman’s eyes. Nevertheless, I still looked anxiously forward to our meeting with the Atlantic, although day by day, as we down Channel, I felt more and more amazed at the sympathy she showed with her crew. At last we emerged upon the wide, open ocean, clear of even the idea of shelter from any land; and as if to show how groundless were my fears, it blew a bitter north-west . Never have I known such keen delight in watching a vessel’s behaviour as I knew then. As if she were one of the sea-people,[172] such as the foam-like or wheeling petrels, next of to the waves themselves, she sported with the tumultuous elements, her motion as easy as the sway of the seaweed and as light as a bubble. And even when the strength of the storm-wind forbade us to show more than the tiniest square of canvas, she answered the touch of her helm, as sensitive to its gentle suasion as Hiawatha’s Cheemaun to the voice of her master. Never a wave broke on deck, although she had so little free-board that a bucket of water could almost be dipped without the aid of a lanyard. That gale taught me a lesson I have never been able to forget. It was, never to judge of the seaworthy qualities of a ship by her appearance at anchor, but to wait until she had an opportunity of telling me in her own language what she could do.
 
Then came a spell of weather—for the season, that is—when we could carry plenty of sail and make good use of our time. Another characteristic now revealed itself in her—her steerability. Once steady on her course under all canvas, one turn of a , or at most of two , of the wheel was sufficient to keep her so; and for an hour I have walked back and forth before the wheel, with both hands in my pockets, while she sped along at ten knots an hour, as straight as an arrow in its flight. But when any sail was taken off her, no matter which, she would no longer steer herself, as if the just and perfect balance of her sail area had been disturbed; but[173] she was easier to steer then than any vessel I have ever known. Lastly, a strong gale tested her powers of running before it, the last touch of in any ship being that she shall run safely dead before a gale. During its height we passed the Anchor liner California, a huge some twenty times our bulk. From end to end of that mighty ship the waves leaped and tumbled; from every scupper and swinging-port a flood. Every sea, meeting her mass in its way, just climbed on board and spread itself, so that she looked, as sailors say, like a half-tide rock. From her towering hurricane-deck our little craft must have appeared a forlorn little object—just a waif of the sea, existing only by a succession of miracles. Yet even her muffled-up passengers, gazing down upon the white dryness of our decks, looked as if they could dimly understand that the comfort which was unmistakably absent from their own wallowing monster was present with us.
 
Another vessel, built on the same coast, but three times the size of the Wanderer, was the Sea , in which I had an extended experience. Under an old sea-dog of a captain who commanded her the first part of the voyage, she played more than a jibbing with a new driver. None of the ordinary manœuvres necessary to a sailing-ship would she perform without the strangest antics and refusals. She seemed of a stubborn of contrariness. Sometimes at night, when, at the change of the watch, all hands were kept on deck[174] to ship, more than an hour would be wasted in attempts to get her about in a way. She would up into the wind enough, as if about to turn in her own length, and then at the crucial moment fall off again against the hard-down helm, while all hands cursed her vigorously for the most , clumsy vessel ever calked. Or she would come up far enough for the order of “mainsail haul,” and there she would stick, like a wall-eyed sow in a muddy lane, hard and fast in irons. With her mainyards a-port and her foreyards a-starboard, she reminded all hands of nothing so much as the old sea-yarn of the Yankee -skipper who for the first time found himself in command of a bark. Quite scared of those big square sails, he lay in port until, by some lucky chance, he got hold of a mate who had long sailed in square-rigged vessels. Then he boldly put to sea. But by some evil the poor mate fell overboard and was drowned when they had been several days out; and one morning a homeward-bounder spied a bark in irons making rapid signals of , although the weather was fine, and the vessel appeared staunch and seaworthy enough. Rounding to under the sufferer’s stern, the homeward-bound skipper hailed, “What’s the matter?” “Oh!” roared the almost Yankee, “for God’s sake send somebody aboard that knows somethin’ about this kind er ship. I’ve lost my square-rigged mate overboard, an’ I cain’t git a move on her nohow!” He’d been trying to sail her “winged out,” schooner fashion. So disgusted was our skipper with the Sea[175] Gem that he left her in Mobile, saying that he was going to retire from the sea altogether. But we all believed he was scared to death that she would run away with him some fine day. Another skipper took command, a Yankee Welshman by the name of Jones. The first day out I heard the second mate say to him , “She’s rather ugly in stays, sir.” “Is she?” the old man, with an astonished air. “Wall, I should hev she was ez nimble ez a kitten. don’t say!” Shortly after it became necessary to tack, and, to our utter , the Sea Gem came about in almost her own length, with never a suggestion that she had ever been otherwise than as handy as a St. Ives . Nor did she ever after betray any signs of to behave with the same cheerful . Had her trim been different we could have understood it, because some ships handy in ballast are veritable cows when loaded, and versâ. But that reasoning had here no weight, since her draft was the same.
 
Not without a do I recall a passage in one of the handsomest composite barks I ever saw. Her name I shall not give, as she was owned in London, and may be running still, for all I know. My eye lingered lovingly over her graceful lines as she lay in dock, and I thought gleefully that a passage to New Zealand in her would be like a yachting-trip. An additional satisfaction was some patent -gear which I had always longed to handle, having been told that it was a dream of delight to take a trick with it. I admit that she was right down to[176] her Plimsoll, and I will put it to her credit that she w............