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 EURASIA’S

MARITIME

RISE AND

GLOBAL

SECURITY
From the Indian Ocean to
Pacific Asia and the Arctic

ED I T ED B Y G EO F F REY F. G RESH
With a foreword by ADM James Stavridis (Ret.)
Eurasia’s Maritime Rise and Global Security
 Geoffrey F. Gresh
Editor

Eurasia’s Maritime
Rise and Global
Security
From the Indian Ocean to Pacific Asia
and the Arctic
Editor
Geoffrey F. Gresh
National Defense University
Washington, DC, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-71805-7    ISBN 978-3-319-71806-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71806-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017962970

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
­institutional affiliations.

Cover image © Adam Excell / Unsplash

Cover design by Emma J. Hardy

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For John Curtis Perry
 Foreword

In collaboration with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and in

celebration of the Maritime Studies director emeritus, John Curtis Perry,
Geoffrey F. Gresh has compiled a cutting-edge volume of internationally
renowned scholars and practitioners writing about Eurasia’s essential
waterways, maritime affairs, and the continent’s important relationship to
the future of the world’s oceans. As a now retired Admiral in the US Navy
with command tenures in Europe and the Americas, I greatly embrace this
much needed analysis on the increasingly interconnected nature of
Eurasia’s maritime affairs, which is home to the world’s most important
sea-lanes of communication and strategic maritime choke points. This fan-
tastic effort to examine Eurasia from a maritime perspective, a view often
overlooked in the traditional literature, will be an essential reading for
scholars, practitioners, and the general reader alike due to its comprehen-
sive and easily accessible articles. Under the superb leadership of Geoffrey
Gresh, this volume is a first of its kind and brings together both a global
and regional picture that is essential for understanding the critical mari-
time regions of Eurasia from the Arctic to Pacific Asia and the Indian
Ocean. Tackling the maritime domain of the world’s largest landmass, a
daunting task, is still a fitting one for this book’s editor.
An understanding of Eurasia as a distinct and unified geographical space
takes just a glance at the map. The massive swath of terrain unites the
supercontinent diverse in its features, climates, and populations. And it
will only become more central to world politics with an increased melting
of the Arctic and the opening of new and sustained shipping lanes. A con-
stant coast traced from Kamchatka to Malacca, from the peninsulas of

vii
viii FOREWORD

Europe to those of South Asia, encases the supercontinent in blue borders.

The maritime space around the world’s largest contiguous stretch of land
is indeed a much welcomed focus of this book. These maritime borders
stand at the threshold of an ancient avenue, sea-lanes guiding admirals and
merchants of today and yesterday. The water’s depths source the quantities
that fed populations, the fuels that power fleets, and an endless and hum-
bling expanse that sparks innovation and artistry. The societies of the
shoreline frequently came into contact with fellow seafaring peoples; they
often traded peacefully, but other times fought for access to markets, a
share of the spoils, or dominion of the sea and the hinterlands beyond.
This book assesses this ancient continent’s maritime habits in the
twenty-first century. In the past decades, the rise of telecommunications
and the sprawling of fiber-optic cables have brought societies closer than
ever before, unleashing new opportunities for prosperity but also new are-
nas of conflict. The blue borders marked by the tides do not shift with the
speed of those borders created by states. However, new technologies cre-
ate new means for states and corporations to compete for access or domin-
ion of profitable sea lanes or undersea resource deposits. A changing
climate also opens new routes as yet untraveled by a seafaring mankind.
Shifting geopolitics creates new alliances, proliferates new threats in
ungoverned spaces, and challenges the basis of world order.
The facts that underlie the arguments and scenarios set forth in this
volume seem daunting and pessimistic. However, within each potential
conflict lies the possibility of diplomacy, each new technology inherently
solves a problem, and implicit in each challenge is a unified and firm
response to counter it. Upholding order and stability requires intelligent
and reasoned application of the elements of international and state power
suited to the job. This book takes us another step closer to the thoughtful
and holistic debate necessary to address the modern challenges to Eurasia’s
vast maritime space and ever-changing tides.

The Fletcher School Dean James Stavridis (USN ADM-Ret.)

of Law and Diplomacy
Tufts University
 Acknowledgments

This volume emerged from a workshop on the future of the world’s oceans
hosted at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, in
the spring of 2015 to honor the legacy and groundbreaking work of John
Curtis Perry, director emeritus and founder of the Fletcher Maritime
Studies Program and the Henry Willard Denison Professor of History at
the Fletcher School. John has been a vital mentor, scholar, and friend to
countless students during several decades of service. Through his teach-
ings and writings, he inspired a future generation of scholars and practitio-
ners, many represented in this volume, dedicated to the importance of
rigorous historical and interdisciplinary research from a saltwater perspec-
tive. We are forever grateful and eternally indebted for all that he has done
to inspire and unpack our profound fascination of the sea. Additionally, I
would like to thank the Dean of the Fletcher School, ADM. James Stavridis
(Ret.), who was a strong supporter of this project from the beginning. In
a similar vein, I would like to thank all of the authors in the volume for
their support and insightful contributions. Certainly, it is important to
note that the views expressed here are those of the authors alone. They do
not represent official policy, nor do they represent any government entity.
At National Defense University (NDU) and the College of International
Security Affairs (CISA), I would like to thank the Chancellor, Michael
S. Bell, and the Academic Dean/Interim Chancellor Charles B. Cushman,
Jr., for their continued support of my research endeavors and for this proj-
ect in particular. I would also like to thank colleagues and mentors from
NDU and elsewhere, including Hassan Abbas, George Packard, Erik
Dahl, Alexis Dudden, David Ucko, and Andrea Ghiselli, who provided

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

valuable insights, comments, and critiques throughout the compilation of

this volume. I am similarly grateful to the handful of CISA interns and
other support staff, including John Van Oudenaren, Lauren Kirby, Cole
Speidel, Logan Cunningham, William Chim, and Srijoni Banerjee who
assisted with varying elements of research, logistics, and copy editing. I am
also grateful for the fantastic editorial team at Palgrave, including senior
commissioning editor Anca Pusca. In addition, I would like to thank
Foreign Affairs for the copyright permission to reproduce Scott
G. Borgerson’s seminal article on the Arctic.
Last, I am forever grateful to my family for their continued encourage-
ment and love, including my daughters Audrey and Joan. Most impor-
tantly, I would like to thank my wife, Leigh E. Nolan, for her steadfast
patience, love, and invaluable editorial support. Leigh shared a similar
excitement for this project from its inception and equally values the loving
friendship we have developed with John Curtis Perry over the past decade.
 Contents

1 Introduction: Why Maritime Eurasia?   1

Geoffrey F. Gresh

Part I The Indian Ocean  15

2 Strategic Maritime Chokepoints: Perspectives

from the Global Shipping and Port Sectors  17
Rockford Weitz

3 Chokepoints of the Western Indian Ocean, China’s

Maritime Silk Route, and the Future of Regional Security  31
Geoffrey F. Gresh

4 The Economics of Somali Counterpiracy: Assessing

Counterpiracy Measures for International Shipping
Companies  49
Jelmer D. Ikink

5 The Rise of an Indo-Japanese Maritime Partnership  67

Sea Sovereign Thomas

xi
xii Contents

6 The Fastest Way Across the Seas: Cyberspace Operations

and Cybersecurity in the Indo-Pacific  83
Jonathan Reiber

Part II Pacific Asia  95

7 Forgotten Borders: Japan’s Maritime Operations

in the Korean War and Implications for North Korea  97
Sung-Yoon Lee

8 Blurred Lines: Twenty-First Century Maritime

Security in the South China Sea 113
Joseph A. Gagliano

9 Sea Level Rise in the Pearl River Delta 129

Zachary White

10 The Great Convergence: Maritime Supremacy,

Energy Primacy, and the Oceanic Coalition in Asia 147
Stephen A. Lambo

Part III The Arctic & the Future of the World’s Oceans 181

11 The Coming Arctic Boom: As the Ice Melts,

the Region Heats Up 183
Scott G. Borgerson

12 Public and National Imagination of the Arctic 197

Derek Kane O’Leary

13 Arctic Fisheries Management in the

Twenty-­First Century 215
Elliot Creem
 Contents 
   xiii

14 Security Competition Rising: Renewed

Militarization of the High North 235
Ethan Corbin

15 Tackling Greenhouse Gas Emissions

from the International Maritime Industry 259
Aaron L. Strong

Index 275
 Notes on Editors and Contributors

Editor
Geoffrey F. Gresh is the Department Chair and Associate Professor of
International Security Studies at the College of International Security
Affairs, National Defense University in Washington, DC. He served previ-
ously as the college’s Director of the South and Central Asia Security Studies
Program. Prior to NDU, he was a Visiting Fellow at Sciences Po in Paris and
was the recipient of a Dwight D. Eisenhower/Clifford Roberts Fellowship.
He also received a US Fulbright-Hays Grant to teach international relations
at Salahaddin University in Erbil, Iraq. He has been awarded a Rotary
Ambassadorial Scholarship to Istanbul, Turkey, and a Presidential Scholarship
at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. Most recently, he was named as
a US-Japan Foundation Leadership Fellow, an Associate Member of the
Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies at King’s College in London,
and as a term member to the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author
of Gulf Security and the U.S. Military: Regime Survival and the Politics of
Basing (Stanford University Press, http://goo.gl/hf7jJI). His research has
also appeared in such scholarly or peer-reviewed publications as World
Affairs Journal, Gulf Affairs, Sociology of Islam, Caucasian Review of
International Affairs, Iran and the Caucasus, The Fletcher Forum of World
Affairs, Turkish Policy Quarterly, Central Asia and the Caucasus, Insight
Turkey, Al-Nakhlah, War on the Rocks, and Foreign Policy. He received a
PhD in International Relations and MALD from the Fletcher School of Law
and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

xv
xvi Notes on Editors and Contributors

Contributors
Scott G. Borgerson is the CEO of CargoMetrics, a technology-driven
investment manager with a global macro and quantitative investment
focus. CargoMetrics’ investment platform incorporates big data and scal-
able computing technologies. Dr. Borgerson is also an expert on the
Arctic. He has published numerous landmark articles on the subject; he
advises national and international leaders on emerging Arctic issues; and
he is a co-founder of The Arctic Circle, a global NGO. Prior to co-found-
ing CargoMetrics, Dr. Borgerson was an International Affairs Fellow and
then the Visiting Fellow for Ocean Governance at the Council on Foreign
Relations. He also served as a Senior Research Scholar at the School of
International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. A former coast
guard officer with a decade of military service, he has held positions as a
ship navigator, a patrol boat captain, an assistant professor at the US Coast
Guard Academy, and the founding managing director of the Academy’s
Institute for Leadership. He earned the Achievement, Commendation,
and Meritorious Service Medals as well as numerous unit awards while on
active duty. He has testified before a number of congressional committees,
contributed to White House strategic policymaking, and his op-eds and
articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The
Atlantic and Foreign Affairs, among other publications. Dr. Borgerson
earned a BS from the US Coast Guard Academy as well as MALD and
PhD degrees in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law
and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He has earned a US Merchant Marine
Officers License and holds a Series 3 Commodities Futures License. He
serves on the boards of The Arctic Circle, the Kostas Homeland Security
Institute, Catalyst Maritime, and the Institute for Global Maritime Studies.
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Ethan Corbin is currently the Director of the Defence and Security
Committee at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. He completed his doc-
torate in international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy at Tufts University. Prior to joining the NATO Parliamentary
Assembly, Dr. Corbin was a Lecturer in international relations at Tufts
University teaching courses on US foreign policy and international secu-
rity studies. His research interests include US foreign policy, international
security, international organizations, and Middle Eastern politics. From
2011–2013, he was a Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and
 Notes on Editors and Contributors 
   xvii

International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He

received his AB from Bowdoin College, a Master in Middle Eastern his-
tory from Université de Paris-IV (La Sorbonne), and a MALD from The
Fletcher School. Corbin has published on topics ranging from Syrian for-
eign policy, peacekeeping operations, and insurgency and counterinsur-
gency warfare. Ethan has also worked for the State Department and the
Department of Defense.
Elliot Creem is a regulatory analyst at Comverge, a clean energy technol-
ogy firm, working on demand-side management solutions for utility com-
panies in the company’s regulatory strategy team. He previously worked
at ClimateStore, Inc. He is a recent graduate from the Fletcher School of
Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University where he concentrated on security
studies, maritime affairs, and energy policy. Before Fletcher, he received a
Bachelor in History and Italian and worked in New York City in market
research and recruitment positions. Creem is originally from Connecticut
and remains very interested in developments in Arctic energy and environ-
mental security. He currently resides in Washington, DC.
Joseph A. Gagliano previously served as the Director for Defense Policy
and Strategy in the Asia-Pacific at the US National Security Council. He
has also served as the Hudson Visiting Fellow at St. Antony’s College of
Oxford University. He is currently a US Navy Captain who specializes in
Sino-US relations, politico-military affairs, and naval strategic planning.
With a research focus on policymaking toward China in the complex polit-
ical environment of the Asia-Pacific, his politico-military work has focused
on the evolving nature of the US-China relationship, with postings as a
strategic planner on the Navy Staff in Deep Blue, the Quadrennial Defense
Review, and the Naval Warfare Integration Group. His active duty assign-
ments have included service on several ships, most recently commanding
USS Independence. Gagliano holds a PhD and MALD in International
Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts
University, an MA in National Security and Strategic Studies from the US
Naval War College, and a BS from the US Naval Academy. He is the
author of Congressional Policymaking in Sino-U.S. Relations during the
Post-Cold War Era (Routledge 2014), and he has been awarded research
fellowships with St. Antony’s College and Pembroke College at Oxford
University, as well as a visiting fellowship with the First Sea Lord’s Staff at
the UK Ministry of Defense.
xviii Notes on Editors and Contributors

Jelmer D. Ikink is a Partner at Liger Capital Management and COO of

Philippines Urban Living Solutions, the first affordable housing developer
dedicated to young professionals in the Philippines. Prior to this he worked
for Lehman Brothers as an M&A Analyst and for McKinsey & Company
as a Consultant in its private equity practice, among other things. Jelmer
was an Investment Manager at China-based private equity fund
Development Principles Group, where he was responsible for investment
analysis, structuring, execution, and monitoring. He taught principled
negotiation at the Harvard Law School and graduated with a Master of
Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy at Tufts University in the USA. He has a BSc in International
Business from the Erasmus University in the Netherlands.
Stephen A. Lambo is the President of the American Strategic Group and
Vista Natural Gas. Previously, he was Assistant Professor of Northeast
Asian International Affairs in the Department of International Affairs at
Lewis and Clark College. He received his MALD and PhD from the
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He was also a William Henry
Seward Fellow in North Pacific International History and coordinator for
the Fletcher North Pacific Program.
Sung-Yoon Lee is Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professorship of Korean
Studies and Assistant Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy, Tufts University. Lee is Associate in Research at the Korea
Institute, Harvard University, and a former Research Fellow of the inau-
gural National Asia Research Program, a joint initiative by the National
Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars. Lee’s essays on the international politics of the Korean pen-
insula and Northeast Asia have been published multiple times in The
New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, LA Times,
Foreign Policy, Christian Science Monitor, CNN.com, Asia Times, The
Weekly Standard, and so on. Recent publications include “The Seoul-­
Beijing-­Tokyo Triangle: Terra-Centric Nordpolitik vs. Oceanic Realpolitik”
(Korea Economic Institute of America Press, 2014); “North Korean
Exceptionalism and South Korean Conventionalism: Prospects for a
Reverse Formulation?” Asia Policy 15 (January 2013); “Don’t Engage
Kim Jong Un – Bankrupt Him,” Foreign Policy (January 2013); and “The
Pyongyang Playbook,” Foreign Affairs (August 2010). Lee has been a
visiting professor at Bowdoin College, Sogang University, Seoul National
University, the Republic of Korea Ministry of Unification, and the
 Notes on Editors and Contributors 
   xix

Northeast Asian History Foundation. He has testified as an expert witness

before the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs
Hearing on North Korea policy and has advised senior officials and elected
leaders in the USA and the ROK.
Derek Kane O’Leary is a PhD candidate in UC Berkeley’s History
Department, where he works on US and global history and is currently
writing a dissertation on historical memory in the early republic and ante-
bellum USA. Meanwhile, he acts as Assistant Director of the BENELUX
Program at Berkeley’s Institute for European Studies and manages
Berkeley’s Interdisciplinary Working Group on the Early USA. Before
that, he completed an MA in international relations at Tufts University’s
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, with a thesis on the history of
popular conceptions and the international relations of the Arctic. He has a
BA, summa cum laude, in Political Science and French from Amherst
College. At points in between, he was a lecturer at the University of
Burgundy in Dijon, France; a trainee at the European Parliament in
Brussels and Washington, DC; and a research fellow at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Jonathan Reiber is a Senior Fellow at the University of California at
Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity. He focuses his research
and writing on resilience, national contingency planning, and cybersecu-
rity in the Asia-Pacific region. Prior to his appointment at Berkeley, Mr.
Reiber held a number of positions in the Obama Administration within
the US Department of Defense. In his last position, he served as Chief
Strategy Officer for Cyber Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
As Chief Strategy Officer, he advised the Pentagon leadership and led stra-
tegic initiatives across the cyber policy portfolio to include strategic plan-
ning; key international, interagency, and industry partnerships; and
strategic communications. He was the principal author of the Department
of Defense Cyber Strategy (2015). In addition to serving as Chief Strategy
Officer, he was also the Executive Secretary of the Defense Science Board
Task Force on Cyber Deterrence. Earlier in the Obama Administration,
Mr. Reiber served as Special Assistant and Speechwriter to the US’ Deputy
Secretary of Defense, Dr. Ashton B. Carter, and previously as Special
Assistant to the US’ Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for
Policy, Dr. James N. Miller. In both positions he focused on cyber policy,
Middle East security, Asia-Pacific security, strategy, and public communi-
cations. From 2007 to 2009, Mr. Reiber was Research Manager at Ergo,
xx Notes on Editors and Contributors

a consulting and intelligence firm focusing on emerging markets. At Ergo

he coordinated scenario planning exercises and deep-dive geopolitical
analysis, advising Fortune 500 companies and other organizations on the
political and social affairs of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Earlier in his career, he served with the United Nations Peacekeeping
Mission in Sudan, as a policy advisor to the Episcopal Church of the USA
and as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow in South Africa, Italy, India, Turkey,
and Cyprus, where he studied the role of religion in political and social
change. Mr. Reiber is a graduate of Middlebury College, where he studied
religion, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he focused
his studies on international security and US diplomatic history and served
as Editor-in-Chief of The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs.
James Stavridis attended the US Naval Academy at Annapolis and spent
over 30 years in the Navy, rising to the rank of four-star Admiral. Among
his many commands were four years as the 16th Supreme Allied
Commander at NATO, where he oversaw operations in Afghanistan,
Libya, Syria, the Balkans, and piracy off the coast of Africa. He also com-
manded US Southern Command in Miami, charged with military opera-
tions through Latin America for nearly three years. He was the longest
serving Combatant Commander in recent US history. In the course of his
career in the Navy, he served as senior military assistant to the Secretary of
the Navy and the Secretary of Defense. He led the Navy’s premier opera-
tional think tank for innovation, Deep Blue, immediately after the 9/11
attacks. He won the Battenberg Cup for commanding the top ship in the
Atlantic Fleet and the Navy League John Paul Jones Award for Inspirational
Leadership, along more than 50 US and international medals and decora-
tions, including 28 from foreign nations. He also commanded a Destroyer
Squadron and a carrier strike group, both in combat. He earned a PhD
from the Fletcher School at Tufts, winning the Gullion prize as outstand-
ing student in his class in 1983, as well as academic honors from the
National and Naval War Colleges as a distinguished student. He speaks
Spanish and French. Jim has published six books on leadership, Latin
America, ship handling, and innovation, as well as over a hundred articles
in leading journals. An active user of social networks, he has thousands of
followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook. His TED talk on twenty-­
first century security in 2012 has had over 700,000 views. He tweeted the
end of combat operations in the Libyan NATO intervention. His memoir
 Notes on Editors and Contributors 
   xxi

of the NATO years, The Accidental Admiral, was released in October

2014. Admiral Stavridis is also the Chair of the Board of the US Naval
Institute, the professional association of the Nation’s sea services: Navy,
Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marine. He is a monthly col-
umnist for TIME Magazine and Chief International Security Analyst for
NBC News. Jim is the 12th Dean at the Fletcher School, a post he assumed
in the summer of 2013. He is happily married to Laura, and they have two
daughters—one working at Google and the other a Lieutenant in the US
Navy.
Aaron L. Strong is dually appointed as Assistant Professor of Marine
Policy and as cooperating assistant professor at the Climate Change
Institute at the University of Maine, Orono. He also serves as a faculty
fellow at the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability
Solutions at the university. His research focuses on global to local climate
change policy development, water quality management, and the devel-
opment of coastal and marine sustainability solutions. He is a member of
the Northeast Coastal Acidification Network Policy Working Group and
the Maine Ocean and Coastal Acidification Partnership. Trained as an
interdisciplinary sustainability scientist, Strong holds a PhD in
Environment and Resources from Stanford University. He also holds a
Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts
University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Biology and Political Science from
Swarthmore College.
Sea Sovereign Thomas is a US Marine Corps intelligence officer and
Regional Area Officer for Northeast Asia who currently serves as the
Director of the Commander’s Action Group at US Marine Corps Forces,
Pacific. Born and raised in Hawaii, Sea has spent the majority of his career
in the Pacific, serving tours with the III Marine Expeditionary Force and
US Pacific Command. He also served as the Speechwriter to the
Commandant of the Marine Corps and as a Naval ROTC instructor at the
College of the Holy Cross, where he taught leadership and military his-
tory. A distinguished graduate of the US Naval Academy, Sea holds mas-
ter’s degrees from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, the US Naval
War College, and Marine Corps University. He serves on the Board of
Directors of two nonprofits, the Institute for Global Maritime Studies and
Blue Water Metrics. Sea is a delegate to the US-Japan Leadership Program
(2017–2018).
xxii Notes on Editors and Contributors

Rockford Weitz is Entrepreneur Coach and Director of Maritime Studies

at Tufts University’s Fletcher School. He also serves as President of the
Institute for Global Maritime Studies Inc. and President and CEO at
Rhumb Line International LLC. He served as founding Executive Director
at FinTech Sandbox in 2014 and as founding CEO of CargoMetrics from
2008 to 2013. Before co-founding CargoMetrics, he was a team leader of
the Fletcher Abu Dhabi Project, a senior fellow at the Institute for Global
Maritime Studies, a fellow at Fletcher’s Maritime Studies Program, and a
counterterrorism fellow at Fletcher’s Jebsen Center for Counter-Terrorism
Studies. He has also taught courses in jurisprudence, maritime security,
and global maritime affairs at the Fletcher School and published op-eds in
The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Straits Times
(Singapore), among others. Before co-founding Rhumb Line in 2005, he
served as international counsel at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories
Inc., leading the effort to open 12 international subsidiaries and streamline
global operations. He also worked at the US Trade Representative and co-
founded and served as Program Director of the Borgenicht Peace Initiative,
a social entrepreneurship venture in Bethlehem. Rockford earned a JD
from Harvard Law School, MALD and PhD degrees from the Fletcher
School, and a BA in International Relations: Political Economy from the
College of William and Mary. He is a fellow in the US-Japan Leadership
Program, a member of the Fletcher School’s Advancement Council, and a
member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Zachary White is an independent researcher. He is a graduate of the
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he focused his studies on
Asia-Pacific affairs. Mr. White was also named a John Curtis Perry Fellow
for his work researching the Northeast Asian space. Prior to the Fletcher
School, he spent three years on the JET Program teaching elementary and
junior high school English in rural Japan. During this time, Mr. White also
had the privilege of being the first non-Japanese citizen to become a fire-
fighter in Japan. He also spent two years studying and working in both
Southern and Northern China. Mr. White completed his Bachelor’s
degree in Political Science at St. John’s University, in his home state of
Minnesota. He is proficient in Chinese and Japanese.
 List of Figures and Maps

Fig. 4.1 Ship rerouting options 53

Fig. 4.2 Ship speeding costs 54
Fig. 4.3 Ship hardening measures 56
Fig. 4.4 Different counterpiracy measures 60
Fig. 4.5 Counterpiracy decision-making tree 60

Map 1.1 Indian Ocean region 16

Map 2.1 East Asia 96
Map 3.1 Arctic region 182

xxiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Why Maritime Eurasia?

Geoffrey F. Gresh

A geopolitical and economic shift is upon us, emerging across Eurasia’s

diverse maritime regions. Eurasian powers, including Russia, China, and
India, have increasingly embraced their maritime geography as they seek
to expand and strengthen their burgeoning economies, enhance their mil-
itary power projection capabilities to protect strategic national interests,
and magnify their global influence. At the same time, this increased eco-
nomic and military competition and power projection at sea has been
exacerbated by climate change and the melting of the Arctic. During the
upcoming century, the melting of the Arctic will transform Eurasia’s
importance and likely speed up political, economic, and military competi-
tion across Eurasia’s main maritime regions—from the Indian Ocean and
Pacific Asia to the Arctic—for the first time in modern history. This shift-
ing dynamic has already begun to alter maritime trade and investment
patterns and thus the global political economy. It also creates a rising
threat to the current status quo of world order that has long been domi-
nated by the Atlantic World and the United States specifically. This volume
examines Eurasia from a saltwater perspective, analyzing its main maritime

G. F. Gresh (*)
College of International Security Affairs, National Defense University,
Washington, DC, USA

© The Author(s) 2018 1

G. F. Gresh (ed.), Eurasia’s Maritime Rise and Global Security,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71806-4_1
2 G. F. GRESH

spaces in a threefold manner—as avenue, as arena, as source—to show the

significance of this geostrategic shift and Eurasia’s enhanced embrace of
the sea.1
Maritime Eurasia stretches from the Strait of Gibraltar and the
Mediterranean in the west to the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and
the Sea of Japan/East Sea in the east. It also stretches from the northerly
reaches of the Arctic to the southern portions of the Indian Ocean. With
more than 90 percent of the world’s goods arriving via the sea, the maritime
space remains prominent in an increasingly interconnected era. As Sir Walter
Raleigh noted, “Whosoever commands the sea, commands the trade.
Whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the
World, and consequently the world itself.”2 The control and security of the
maritime trading routes or sea lanes of communication are therefore essen-
tial and will continue as such for India, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea,
and others as they more actively expand into Eurasia’s blue water spaces.
Eurasia’s vast maritime regions also include some of the world’s most
important strategic maritime chokepoints—the Danish Straits, the Suez
Canal, the Bab el-Mandeb, the Strait of Hormuz, the Straits of Malacca,
and the Bosphorus Straits. Eurasia’s maritime domain also possesses 27 of
30 of the world’s largest container ports.3 Trade between Asia and either
Northern Europe, the Mediterranean, or the Middle East amounted to an
estimated 25.5 million TEUs on an annual basis in recent years, making
the East-West and West-East trade routes some of the largest and busiest
in the world.4 China in particular was recently named as the world’s largest
trading partner, surpassing the United States with about $4 billion in
annual trade volume. Some estimates also predict that China will domi-
nate 17 of the world’s top 25 bilateral trade avenues.5
These trends in trade align with eastern Eurasia’s growing popula-
tion—estimated at 60 percent of the world’s population, with China and
India accounting for 40 percent of it—and quest to secure more economic
or natural resources.6 Furthermore, since the 1990s 42 percent of the
world’s expanding energy consumption is directly linked to India and
China. On the supply side, Eurasia—mainly the Middle East and Central
Asia—accounts for 66 percent of proven oil reserves and an estimated 71
percent of proven natural gas.7 Of the world’s proven natural gas reserves,
Russia possesses 17 percent of it and will gain an even larger market share
when the Arctic opens up due to its vast and untapped natural resources.8
The continued challenge for the continent’s growing economies—and
even those of the status quo powers such as South Korea and Japan—is
that most of these resources must traverse the sea and travel via some of
 INTRODUCTION: WHY MARITIME EURASIA? 3

the world’s most dangerous maritime chokepoints. More than 50 percent

of the world’s oil is shipped via the sea, for example, while the Strait of
Hormuz alone handles more than 20 percent of it or an estimated 17 mil-
lion barrels of oil per day.9 In a similar manner, approximately 85 percent
of China’s oil imports transit the Strait of Malacca. Anything that threat-
ens the closure of such a vital and narrow waterway could have devastating
world economic and political consequences.10

Analytical Framework
Throughout this volume, three main argument strands are asserted by all
of the authors regarding how Eurasia’s maritime space has grown in sig-
nificance. Specifically, it looks at how Eurasia’s maritime space is used:
–– As avenue
–– As arena
–– As source
To quote maritime historian John Curtis Perry:

[The Ocean] is an avenue for the flow of goods and resources, traditionally
for people as well as ideas, and an arena for struggle and combat.
Furthermore, the sea provides a source of foodstuffs and minerals, and will
offer perhaps much else in the future. Now a frontier of opportunity, it is
also a frontier of challenge. How we can exploit these resources without
severely damaging the natural environment or inflaming national passions is
a daunting task, especially in Pacific Asia where tensions are already high.11

During the upcoming century, Eurasia’s maritime avenues, arenas, and

vital resources will grow in importance if current political, economic, envi-
ronmental, and military trends continue apace at their present levels. At
the same time, the changing nature of the ocean and rising sea levels will
act as a devastating source and force that threatens the livelihood and
economies of Eurasia’s coastal nations.
In an age of complex interdependence, some believe that rising global-
ization and growing international commercial ties have contributed to the
relative peace that we see today, especially on the high seas.12 Moreover,
some of the threats faced at sea such as piracy, for example, can be addressed
through collective security or multilateral cooperation such as the
Combined Task Force 150 counter-piracy operations in the western
Indian Ocean. But there is also a competing school of thought that refers
4 G. F. GRESH

in part to the classic work of the naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan. In
his famous The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, Mahan
writes about how a nation’s wealth is tied to both sea power and maritime
trade. A nation cannot have domestic prosperity without maritime domi-
nance.13 Mahan believed that commercial rivalry did not necessarily result
in greater stability or peace but rather that it could transform into a more
competitive or adversarial relationship with a potential for escalating into
conflict.14 If tensions escalate further in line with Mahan’s sea power the-
ory, it could have devastating repercussions for both the global political
economy and Eurasian powers who increasingly rely upon the sea, includ-
ing established regional powers such as South Korea and Japan. The
United States will also likely be implicated and immersed into any conflict
to defend its security treaty allies such as Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan.
Though other works have applied either a neoliberal or Mahanian-like
thinking to specific cases or specific oceans such as the Indian Ocean,
South China Sea, or Pacific Asia, no book has yet to tackle Eurasia’s mari-
time space as a whole and from an interdisciplinary perspective.15 Some
prior works have attempted to analyze the Indo-Pacific as a collective
region, but they still fall short in providing a more comprehensive analysis
that integrates both climate change and/or military, economic, and secu-
rity challenges associated with the growing rivalries of the continent.16
With this volume’s unique maritime perspective, the contributors por-
tray a complex dynamic across Eurasia’s maritime regions that will con-
tinue to evolve and grow more accentuated with a warming planet over the
next century. Though the contributors might differ in what they believe as
Eurasia’s top maritime priority or concerns for the future, this volume
provides keen insights into how Eurasia’s maritime space has transformed
in recent years, in addition to how it will affect many of the current dynam-
ics and alliances that we often take for granted in the current international
system. Whether one believes it or not, Eurasia’s maritime rise has begun
with significant implications for the future of global security.

Volume Overview
For the organization of this volume, the authors have been divided among
the three main oceanic regions associated with Eurasia’s maritime spaces:
the Indian Ocean, Pacific Asia, and the Arctic. With any good maritime
study, however, it is important to note that some of the chapters have
 INTRODUCTION: WHY MARITIME EURASIA? 5

regional overlap or address topics that apply to the larger Eurasian conti-
nent. Climate change, energy security, and the shipping industry, for
example, are not always bound by a specific region. That said, most of the
chapters do fit well into one or more of the three specific oceanic regions
highlighted above, and the last section takes on a more future leaning
approach related to the future of Eurasia and the world’s oceans. As a
volume that is interdisciplinary in nature, it represents vital perspectives
from the private and public sector, as well as regional maritime trends,
linked to the great importance of the past, present, and future of a mari-
time Eurasia. Additionally, for each regional ocean, the authors either
touch upon one or all three of the maritime themes of ocean as avenue,
arena, or source, thus making an important contribution to our larger
understanding about Eurasia’s growing maritime significance.

The Indian Ocean

In Chap. 2, Rockford Weitz begins by examining ocean as avenue and the
debates over the importance of some of Eurasia’s essential southern mari-
time chokepoints from a shipping and private sector perspective. Strategic
chokepoints are geographic constraints shaping sea routes and the global
shipping industry and, therefore, create numerous business opportunities
for those industries that support global shipping, including port opera-
tions, ship repair, bunkering, and ship brokering and chartering. As Weitz
discusses, global shipping companies do not view maritime chokepoints as
strategically important but rather as simply a geographic reality. In con-
trast, global port operators, bunkerers, ship repairers, and ship brokers and
charterers view having a physical presence at maritime chokepoints as a
competitive advantage because such waterways create a geographic con-
centration of global shipping. Through an examination of the three vital
cases that stretch from the Far East of Eurasia to the far west—the Strait
of Malacca, the Suez Canal, the Strait of Gibraltar—this chapter concludes
with an analysis of why strategic chokepoints are important to certain mar-
itime industries but not others and what implications that has for global
shipping and security.
In Chap. 3, Geoffrey Gresh examines Eurasia’s other key southern
chokepoints: the Bab el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz. Here, he
looks at ocean as both avenue and arena through a case study on the rise
of China in the western Indian Ocean and the implications that China’s
rise has for regional security. China’s growing and more proactive ­presence
6 G. F. GRESH

has led to greater competition with India and thus the United States
throughout the Indian Ocean Region. In 2013, Chinese President Xi
Jinping announced the proposal of a “New Maritime Silk Road” in con-
junction with China’s “Silk Road Economic Belt” project or “One Belt,
One Road” initiative to support China’s growing economy and to expand
the PRC’s economic influence and network across Eurasia on land and at
sea. As Gresh argues, the Maritime Silk Road initiative specifically aligns
with a larger Chinese maritime strategy to expand China’s maritime pres-
ence in the Indian Ocean and Arabian/Persian Gulf for economic, politi-
cal, and security reasons. It also looks at how China might soon be well
positioned to act as an additional stabilizing force for Persian Gulf and
Arabian Sea security. For many Gulf Arab monarchies, they welcome an
increase in China’s political, economic, and other maritime regional activi-
ties, but the choice of security or economic partner is made more compli-
cated today by the domestic and regional instability stemming in part from
Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Iran, factors that threaten to alter totally the
broader Middle East’s security dynamic.
In Chap. 4, Jelmer Ikink looks at one of the Indian Ocean’s greatest
dilemmas: Somali piracy and successful counter-piracy measures. In this
chapter, he touches upon the ocean as source and avenue. The motives for
and means to eradicate Somali piracy have been thoroughly discussed by
academics, practitioners, policymakers, and research institutions. And for
good reason, pirates have the ability to endanger and seriously disrupt the
shipping industry. Anti-piracy solutions offered are frequently based on pro-
grams seeking to eradicate piracy through onshore programs that raise the
standard of living and opportunities for the average Somali, so that piracy
will not be regarded as their alternative to a life in destitution. In the mean-
time, the presence of pirates creates a real challenge to maritime trade and
other maritime economic opportunities today. During a period when ship-
pers are already facing financial volatility, international shipping has increas-
ingly become exposed to the threat of piracy. Unlike centuries ago, when the
height of the monsoon was the worst shipping season with its strong winds
and high waves, today sailors dread the off-monsoon season because the
pirates then board their skiffs. This chapter offers important insights into
how to protect lives and cargo of the shipping industry by providing a cost-
benefit analysis of each of the most often used counter-­piracy measures.
Sea Sovereign Thomas in Chap. 5 addresses the theme of ocean as
arena through an examination of the rising Indo-Japanese maritime
­partnership and growing, albeit overlapping, security concerns between
 INTRODUCTION: WHY MARITIME EURASIA? 7

the Indian Ocean Region and Pacific Asia. In large part influenced by
China’s rise, India and Japan have created one of the fastest-growing bilat-
eral security relationships in Asia. Over the past decade or more, Tokyo
and New Delhi have wholly transformed the nature and scope of their
association, moving from negligible engagement to a full-blown “global
and strategic partnership.” Today, their security dialogue is routine and
substantive. Since 2005, successive prime ministers, for example, have
committed to an annual summit, and foreign and defense ministers now
meet frequently in a “two-plus-two” format, the same mechanism Japan
enjoys with the United States and Australia, and a format that India only
shares with Japan. Naval and coast guard exercises have grown in fre-
quency and substance, and India is buying the capable Japanese US-2
amphibious aircraft in Tokyo’s first overseas military sale since 1967. What
explains the extraordinary speed of this development? China’s rise and
America’s relative decline have provided the real sense of urgency. As
Beijing flexes its military and diplomatic muscles, Tokyo and New Delhi’s
shared interests have come into sharper relief. At the same time, America’s
position as unilateral guarantor of Asian maritime security has become
increasingly tenuous thus pushing at the importance of Eurasia’s maritime
rise. India and Japan’s vigorous response to these twin developments has
been informed by a common view of the saltwater domain, and the most
prominent manifestations of their strategic partnership have been nautical
in nature. As asserted in this chapter, India and Japan’s maritime relation-
ship is built on strong foundations, is likely to endure, and will have a posi-
tive effect on Indo-Pacific maritime security, particularly as a check against
Chinese naval activity.
To round out this section, Chap. 6 examines the interconnected nature
of cybersecurity and the Indo-Pacific’s maritime security or the theme of
ocean as avenue and arena. Certainly, the Internet has helped drive Asia’s
economic emergence. Major telecommunications investments in China,
India, and Southeast Asia over the last three decades integrated these
economies into the global system, allowing Asian companies to bring
goods and services to domestic and international markets in new and inno-
vative ways. Today China has the largest population of Internet users on
earth at 720 million, and in a sign of Asia’s continued rise, India recently
jumped past the United States for second place with over 460 million
users. Yet there is a dark side to all this connectivity. Asia’s current and
projected reliance on cyberspace for its business operations and ­economic
growth stands in stark contrast to the inadequacy of its cybersecurity.
While arguing that Asia by and large lacks a robust regional cybersecurity
8 G. F. GRESH

architecture, Jonathan Reiber analyzes the important maritime security

angle as well. He argues that nowhere is this nexus more important than
in the development of secure power projection capabilities—especially in
naval power, which will play such a key part in the region’s strategic future
and in the successful implementation of the United States and its allies’
strategic investments. India, South Korea, Japan, and the United States
must harden their naval systems in anticipation of any contingency with
China, not to mention the continent of Eurasia as a whole. As a result,
they must prepare for any potential contingency whereby they may lose
assured access; in short, they must prepare to fight blind. States across the
Indo-Pacific region have made a modicum of progress in this regard but
more must be done to secure the communications infrastructure that
underpins the region’s naval, shipping, and other maritime infrastructure
investments.

Pacific Asia
To begin this section, Sung-Yoon Lee in Chap. 7 provides a more histori-
cal perspective on the ocean as avenue and arena through his examina-
tion of Japan’s maritime relationship with the Korean peninsula. Lee
argues that if the United States fought in the Korean War primarily to
repel the North Korean invading forces, a deeper primal reason was to
prevent Japan from falling into hostile hands of China and the Soviet
Union. Moreover, by taking the initiative to go to war in Korea under
the rubric of “police action,” the United States gave credence to the
concept of collective security implemented under the banner of the
United Nations. Hence, an all-important precedent had been set in
Korea. That the Republic of Korea was saved by this campaign was an
almost tangential, although entirely necessary, condition to achieving
bigger national objectives and establishing far-reaching international
principles. In this ambitious campaign, the United States sought assis-
tance not only from the 15 other nations that came to South Korea under
the UN imprimatur but also America’s most natural source of men and
materiel in the region, Japan. The United States employed thousands of
Japanese nationals, to a limited extent, in combat duties in and around
the Korean peninsula, including dozens of Japanese vessels in the Korean
waters and harbors of Wonsan, Kunsan, Inchon, Haeju, and Chinnampo.
In any future c­ ontingency operations in the Korean peninsula, Japan’s
military experience in Korea—especially that of its maritime forces—will
be a strategic asset not forgotten. Chief among the humanitarian and
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unsettled and uncomfortable. The ship would not keep still. New
complications of ropes and hauling-gear were developed. The capstan in the
waist was manned, and round and round went the sailors, while the deck
they trod was inclined in all manner of uncomfortable angles. Tackle and
great blocks were hooked to ringbolts, and a vast amount of what seemed to
me fruitless hauling went on. Barrels of water swashed over the bulwarks,
knocking us down and drenching us. Wet and shivering we clung to
belaying pins or anything within reach, of no earthly use to anybody,
thinking of the cheerfully lit, well-warmed rooms and comfortable tea-
tables even then set but so few miles away on the shores of Long Island.
When the order came to reef, and I saw the men clambering up the fore and
main rigging, I added myself to their number, though I felt I should never
come down again—at least in one piece. It was my debut aloft off
soundings. Many a time had I clambered about the rigging of the old
whalers as they lay at the village wharf, but they were not roaring, kicking,
and plunging like this vessel. Heavy seamen’s boots kicked me in the face
as I followed their wearers up this awful ascent; other heavy boots trod on
my fingers; they shook the ratlines, too, in a most uncomfortable manner.
The mast strained and groaned fearfully. Somehow, after climbing over
some awful chasms, I got on the yard with the men. I dared not go out far.
The foot rope wobbled, jerked, and gave way under me at times with the
weight and notion of the men upon it. The great sail seemed in no humor to
be furled. It hauled away from us, bellied, puffed, and kept up a gigantic
series of thundering flaps. Laying over on the yard the men would gather in
as much of the hard, wet, wire-like canvas as possible and then together
haul back on it.
This I objected to. It was risky enough to lay out on an enormous stick
sixty feet in the air, while the wind tore our voices from us and seemed to
hurl the words far away ere they had well got out of our mouths, and the
white-topped waves, dimly seen below, seemed leaping up and snatching at
us. But at that height, and amid all that motion, to balance one’s body on the
stomach, grasp with outstretched arms a hard roll of struggling, wet canvas,
while the legs were as far extended the other way and the feet resting only
against a rope working and wobbling and giving way here and there from
the weight of fifteen hundred pounds of men unequally distributed over it,
was a task and seeming risk too great for my courage. I dared do nothing
but hold on. The conduct of the maintopsail was desperate and outrageous.
It seemed straining every nerve—supposing, for the sake of forcible
expression, that it had nerves—to pull us off the yard and “into the great
deep.” I found myself between two old sailors, who lost no time in
convincing me of my complete and utter worthlessness aloft. I concurred.
They bade me clear out and get down on deck. I was glad to do so. Reefing
topsails in reality was very different from reefing them in books or in
imagination. On reaching the deck I concluded to lie down. All through the
evening I had experienced an uneasy sensation in the stomach. I argued
with myself it was not seasickness—something did not agree with me. But
when I lay down in the scuppers I admitted being seasick. Then I only cared
to lie there. Life was too miserable even to hope in. The tumult went on as
ever. The sailors trampled over me. Being in the way, they dragged me
aside. I cared not. Finally some one bawled in my ear, “Sick! go below.” I
went. The five other boys, all similarly affected, all caring naught for life or
living, lay in their bunks.
The boys’ house was about the size of a respectable pig pen—a single
pig pen. There was room in it for two boys to turn at once, providing they
turned slowly and carefully. On going on board we had bestowed such of
our outfit as could be brought into this pen in the manner in which boys of
sixteen bestow things generally on first commencing to “keep house.”
Everything was arranged on a terra firma basis. We made no calculation for
the ship’s deviating from an even keel. When she did commence to pitch
everything fell down. Clothing fell on the floor; plates, knives, forks, cups
and bottles rolled from shelf and bunk; bread, meat, and the molasses kegs
fell; plum and sponge cake, pie and sweetmeats fell; for each boy had a
space in his sea-chest filled with these articles, placed there by kind, dear
relatives at home. It was intended that we should not refer to them until the
ship was far advanced on her voyage. But we never had such large supplies
of cake and sweetmeats at hand before; so we went for these things
immediately. The house abounded with them the first night out. The roof
leaked. We left our sliding-door carelessly open, and a few barrels of the
ocean slopped over the bulwarks into the apartment. At midnight our
combined clothing, plates, mugs, knives, forks, bottles, water-kegs, combs,
hair-brushes, hats, pants, coats, meat, bread, pie, cake, sweetmeats,
molasses, salt water, and an occasional seasick and despairing boy, united to
form a wet, sodden mass on the floor two feet in depth. Above the storm
howled and swept through the rigging, with little sail to interrupt it. Six sick
and wretched boys in their berths lay “heads and pints,” as they pack
herring; that is, the toe of one rested on the pillow of the other, for it was
not possible to lie otherwise in those narrow receptacles for the living. But
the horrors of that second night are not to be related.
No solicitous stewards with basins and tenders of broth and champagne
attended us. We were not cabin passengers on an ocean steamer. Barely had
the next morning’s dawn appeared when our door was flung open. In it
stood that dreadful second mate of the greenish eyes, hard, brick-red
complexion, horny fists and raspy voice—a hard, rough, rude, unfeeling
man, who cried: “Come out of that! Oh, you’re young bears—your troubles
ain’t commenced yet!” Then his long, bony arm gripped us one after the
other and tore us from our bunks. How unlike getting up at home on a cold
winter’s morning, as, snuggling in our warm feather beds, we heard our
mothers call time after time at the foot of the stairs: “Come now, get up!
Breakfast is ready!” And with the delay prone to over-indulged youth, we
still lay abed until the aroma of buckwheat cakes and coffee stealing to our
bedrooms developed an appetite and induced us to rise. Out, this dreadful
morning, we tumbled, in the wet clothes wherein we had lain all night,
weak, sick, staggering, giddy. A long iron hook was put in my hand and I
was desired to go forward and assist in hauling along length after length of
the cable preparatory to stowing it away. Sky and sea were all of dull,
monotonous gray; the ship was still clambering one great wave after an
another with tiresome and laborious monotony. All the canvas of the
preceding day had disappeared, save a much-diminished foretop-sail and
storm staysail. The mates on duty were alert and swearing. The men, not all
fully recovered from their last shore debauch, were grumbling and swearing
also. The cook, a dark-hued tropical mongrel, with glittering eyes, was
swearing at something amiss in his department. It was a miserable time. But
a cure was quickly effected. In thirty-six hours all seasickness had departed.
With the delicate petting process in vogue with wealthy cabin-passengers it
would have required a week. But we had no time in which to be seasick.
Life for us on board this ship was commenced on a new basis. We were
obliged to learn “manners.” Manners among modern youth have become
almost obsolete. The etiquette and formality required from the younger to
the elder, and common to the time of perukes and knee-breeches, has now
little place save on shipboard, where such traditions and customs linger. We
were surprised to find it our duty to say “Sir” to an officer, and also to find
it imperative to recognize every order addressed us by the remark; “Aye,
aye, sir!” The sullen, shambling fashion of receiving words addressed us in
silence, so that the speaker was left in doubt as to whether he was heard or
not, had no place off soundings. In short, we were obliged to practice what
is not common now to many boys on shore—that is, an outward show of
respect for superiors. If business called us to the “West End” of a ship, the
quarter-deck, our place was to walk on the lee side of that deck and leave
the weather side the moment the duty was done. If sent for any article by an
officer, it was our business to find it without further recourse to him.
Petted boys have little patience for hunting for things. At home two
minutes is about the limit of time spent in looking for a mislaid poker, and
then “Ma!” “Pa!” or “Aunt!” is called on to turn to and do this disagreeable
work. The second mate once ordered me to find a certain iron hook,
wherewith to draw the pump boxes, and when, after a short search, I
returned and asked him where it might be I was horrified by the expression
of astonished indignation spreading over his face as he yelled: “Great Scott,
he expects me to help him find it!” I saw the point and all it involved, and
never so wounded an officer’s dignity again. It is a sailor’s, and especially a
boy’s business on shipboard, to find whatever he is ordered to. It must be
produced—no matter whether it’s in the ship or not. At all events that’s the
sentiment regarding the matter. But it is good discipline for boys over-
nursed at home and only physically weaned. The “cold, cold world” would
not, in some cases, be so cold to the newly-fledged youth first trying his
feeble wings outside the family nest, did parents judiciously establish a
little of this maritime usage at home.
We soon learned on the Wizard how well we had lived at home. Our sea
fare of hard tack and salt junk taught us how to appreciate at their true value
the broiled streaks, hot cakes, and buttered toast of home tables. The quart
of very common molasses served out to us weekly soon became a luxury,
and when the steward occasionally brought us “Benavlins” (the nautical
term for the broken fragments from the cabin table), we regarded it as very
luxurious living, though a month previous we should have deemed such
food fit only for the swill-tub.
In about two weeks we had settled down into the routine of life at sea.
Sailors are apt to term theirs a “dog’s life.” I never did. It was a peculiar
life, and in some respects an unpleasant one—like many others on land. But
it was not a “dog’s life.” There was plenty to eat, and we relished our
“lobscouse,” hard tack, salt junk, beans, codfish, potatoes and Sunday’s and
Thursday’s duff. The hours for labor were not exhausting. It was “watch
and watch, four hours off and four hours on.” Many a New York retail
grocer’s clerk, who turns to at 5 in the morning and never leaves off until 11
at night, would revel on such regulation of time and labor. So would many a
sewing-girl. We had plenty of time for sleep. If called up at 4 every
alternate morning, and obliged to stand watch until 8 A.M., we could “turn
in” at that hour after breakfast and sleep till noon. Apart from the alternate
watches the work or “jobs” occupied about six hours per day. True, there
was at times some heavy work, but it was only occasional. Sailor-work is
not heavy as compared with the incessant fagging, wearing, never-ending
character of some occupations on shore. Skill, agility, and quickness are in
greater demand than mere brute strength.
Lobscouse is a preparation of hard bread, first soaked and then stewed
with shredded salt beef. It looks somewhat like rations for a delicate bear
when served out by the panful. But it is very good. Salt beef is wonderfully
improved by streaks of fat through it. These serve the foremast hands in
place of butter. I know of no better relish than good pilot bread and sliced
salt junk, with plenty of clean white fat. On shore that quart of boiling hot
liquid, sweetened with molasses and called tea, would have been pitched
into the gutter. At sea, after an afternoon’s work, it was good. With similar
content and resignation, not to say happiness, we drank in the morning the
hot quart of black fluid similarly sweetened and called coffee. It was not
real coffee. I don’t know what it was. I cared not to know. Of course we
grumbled at it. But we drank it. It was “filling,” and was far better than the
cold, brackish water, impregnated thickly with iron rust, a gallon of which
was served out daily. For the fresh water was kept below in an iron tank,
and, as the deck leaked, a small portion of the Atlantic had somehow gained
admission to it and slightly salted it. It resembled chocolate to the eye, but
not to the palate.
 CHAPTER IV.

MUCH WATER AND MUTINY.

On the fourth day out the Wizard was found to have four feet of water in
her hold. The ship was pumped dry in about four hours, when she
proceeded to fill up again. The Captain seemed a man of many minds for
the next two or three days. First the ship was put back for New York. This
course was altered and her bows pointed for Africa. Then the foremast
hands became worried, and going aft one morning in a body, asked Captain
S—— what he meant to do and where he meant to go, because they had
shipped for San Francisco and they did not intend going anywhere else. The
Captain answered, that his own safety and that of the vessel were as dear to
him as their lives were to them, and that he intended doing the best for the
general good. This answer was not very satisfactory to the crew, who went
grumbling back to their quarters. Ultimately it turned out that we were to
take the leak with us to San Francisco. At the rate the water was running in
it was judged that the bone, muscle, and sinews of the crew could manage
to keep it down. So we pumped all the way round Cape Horn. We pumped
during our respective watches every two hours. In good weather and on an
even keel it took half an hour to “suck the pumps.” If the vessel was heeled
to larboard or starboard, it took much longer. In very rough weather we
pumped all the time that could be spared from other duties. There were two
pumps at the foot of the mainmast worked by levers, and these were
furnished with “bell ropes” to pull on. Half the watch worked at each lever,
and these were located exactly where on stormy nights the wild waves were
in the habit of flinging over the bulwarks a hogshead or two of water to
drench us and wash us off our feet.
The Wizard was a very “wet ship.” She loved giving us moist surprises.
Sometimes on a fine day she would gracefully, but suddenly, poke her nose
under, and come up and out of the Atlantic or Pacific ocean with fifteen or
twenty tons of pea-green sea water foaming over the t’gallant forecastle,
cascading thence on the spar deck and washing everything movable slam
bang up and sometimes into the cabin. This took place once on a washday.
Sailors’ washday is often regulated by the supply of water caught from the
clouds. On this particular occasion the fore deck was full of old salts up to
their bared elbows in suds, vigorously discoursing washtub and washboard.
Then the flood came, and in a moment the deck was filled with a great
surge bearing on its crest all these old salts struggling among their tubs,
their washboards, their soap and partly-washed garments. The cabin
bulkhead partly stopped some, but the door being open others were borne
partly inside, and their woollen shirts were afterward found stranded on the
carpeted cabin floor. One “duff day” we had gathered about our extra repast
in the boys’ house. The duff and New Orleans molasses had just
commenced to disappear. Then a shining, greenish, translucent cataract
filled the doorway from top to bottom. It struck boys, beef, bread, duff, and
dishes. It scattered them. It tumbled them in various heaps. It was a brief
season of terror, spitting, and sputtering salt water, and a scrambling for life,
as we thought. It washed under bunks and in remote corners duff, bread,
beef, plates, knives, forks, cups, spoons and molasses-bottles. The dinner
was lost. Going on deck we found a couple of feet of water swashing from
bulwark to bulwark with every roll, bearing with it heavy blocks and
everything movable which had been loosened by the shock, to the great risk
of legs and bodies. But these were trifles. At least we call them trifles when
they are over. I have noticed, however, that a man may swear as hard at a
jammed finger as a broken leg, and the most efficacious means in the world
to quickly develop a furious temper is to lose one’s dinner when hungry, get
wet through, then abused by a Dutch mate for not stirring around quicker,
and finally work all the afternoon setting things to rights on an empty
stomach, robbed and disappointed of its duff. This is no trifle.
Learning the ropes isn’t all a boy’s first lessons at sea. He must learn
also to wash and mend his own clothes. At least he must try to learn and go
through the forms. I never could wash a flannel shirt, and how the
extraneous matter called dirt, which the washing process is intended to
disperse, is gotten rid of by soap and muscle at an equal average over the
entire surface of the garment is for me to-day one of earth’s mysteries. I
could wash a shirt in spots. When I tried to convince myself that I had
finished it I could still see where I had washed clean and where I had not.
There is a certain system in the proper manipulation of a garment in a
washtub which to me is incomprehensible. An old sailor is usually a good
washer. It’s part of his trade. Those on the Wizard would reprove the boys
for their slipshod work. “Such a slovenly washed shirt as that,” said Conner,
an old man-of-war’s man, “hung in the rigging is a disgrace to the ship.” He
alluded to one of mine. The failure was not from any lack of labor put on it.
The trouble lay in that I didn’t know where to put the labor on. It was easier
to tie a shirt to a line, fling it overboard and let it tow. This will wash
clothes—wash all the warp out of them in time. The practice was at last
forbidden the boys on the Wizard. It’s a lazy boy’s wash. The adage “It’s
never too late to mend” is not applicable on shipboard. It should there read
“It’s never too early to mend.” Of course a boy of sixteen, whose mother
has always stitched for him, will allow his clothes to go until they fall off
his body before using his needle. As I did. And I sewed myself up only to
rip asunder immediately. I went about decks a thing of flaps, rips, rags, and
abortive patches, until they called me the ship’s scarecrow. And so would
many another spruce young man under similar discipline. It’s good once in
one’s life to be brought thus low.
It was particularly disagreeable at midnight as we assembled at the bell
ropes to give her the last “shake-up,” and more asleep than awake pulled
wearily with monotonous clank. Sometimes at that hour, when our labors
were half through, the valves would get out of order. It was then necessary
to call the carpenter and have them repaired. This would keep us on deck
half an hour or more, for by mutual compact each watch was obliged to
“suck its own pumps.” Such delays made the men very angry. They stopped
singing at their work—always a bad sign—and became silent, morose, and
sullen. For the first six weeks all the “shanti songs” known on the sea had
been sung. Regularly at each pumping exercise we had “Santy Anna,”
“Bully in the Alley,” “Miranda Lee,” “Storm Along, John,” and other
operatic maritime gems, some of which might have a place in our modern
operas of The Pinafore school. There’s a good deal of rough melody when
these airs are rolled out by twenty or thirty strong lungs to the
accompaniment of a windlass’ clank and the wild, shrill sweep of the winds
in the rigging above. But the men would no longer sing. The fact was
reported to the Captain. He put on his spectacles, walked out on the quarter-
deck and gazed at them mournfully and reprovingly. The mates tried to
incite them to renewed melody. But the shipping articles did not compel
them to sing unless they felt like it. The pumps clanked gloomily without
any enlivening chorus. The Captain went sadly back to his cabin and
renewed his novel.
 One night the pumps broke down five minutes before 12 o’clock. Our
watch was at work on them. The carpenter was called as usual, and after the
usual bungling and fishing in the well for the broken valves, they were put
in order again. It was then nearly 1 A.M. Meanwhile all the able seamen in
our watch had at eight bells walked below. The watch newly come on deck
refused to pump the ship clear, alleging it was the business of the others.
The watch below were bidden to come on deck and perform their neglected
duty. They refused. This was mutiny. The four mates got their pistols,
entered the forecastle and stormed, ordered, and threatened. It was of no
avail. The fifteen able seamen who refused constituted the main strength
and effectiveness of that watch. They were threatened with being put in
irons. They preferred irons to pumping out of their turn. They were put in
irons, fifteen stout men, by the four mates, who then returned and reported
proceedings to the Captain. The men remained shackled until the next
morning. It was then discovered that it was impossible to work the ship
without their aid. Of course they couldn’t handle the vessel in irons. In
reality double the number of able men were needed in both watches. The
Wizard rated over 3,000 tons, and many a frigate of her size would have
been deemed poorly off with less than one hundred men for handling the
ship alone. We rarely secured the lower sails properly in heavy weather,
from the mere lack of physical strength to handle them. So Captain S——
pored sadly at his breakfast through his gold-bowed spectacles, and when
the meal was over issued orders for the release of the fifteen men in irons.
In this little affair the boys and ordinary seamen belonging to the mutinous
watch took no part. They were strictly neutral and waited to see which side
would win. I felt rather unpleasant and alarmed. Though not a full-fledged
mutiny and a conversion of a peaceful merchantman into a pirate, it did
look at one time as if the initiatory steps to such end were being taken.
One of the great aims of existence at sea is that of keeping the decks
clean. The scrubbing, swishing, and swashing is performed by each watch
on alternate mornings, and commences at daylight. It was the one ordeal
which I regarded with horror and contempt. You are called up at four in the
morning, when the sleep of a growing youth is soundest. The maniacal
wretch of the other watch, who does the calling, does it with the glee and
screech of a fiend. He will not stop his “All Ha-a-a-nds!” until he hears
some responsive echo from the sleepers. He is noisy and joyous because it
is so near the time he can turn in. And these four hours of sleep at sea are
such luxuries as may rarely be realized on shore. But the mate’s watch is
calling us, screeching, howling, thumping on the forecastle door, and
making himself extremely pleasant. The old sailors being called gradually
rise to sitting postures in their berths with yawns, oaths, and grumblings. If
the hideous caller is seen, a boot or other missile may be shied in that
direction. Otherwise the prejudice and disgust for his clamor on the part of
those called expresses itself in irritable sarcasms such as, “Oh, why don’t
you make a little more noise?” “Think yourself smart, don’t you?” “Say,
don’t you s’pose we can hear?” To-morrow morning at 12 or 4 these
personalities and conditions of mind will be reversed. The awakened
irritable grumbler will be the joyous caller, and the joyous caller of this
early morn will be searching about his bunk for some offensive implement
to hurl at the biped who thus performs the matutinal office of the early
village cock.
We are called and on deck, and stumbling about, maybe with one boot
half on, and more asleep than awake and more dead than alive. We are in
the warm, enervating latitude of the tropics, with every sinew relaxed from
the steaming heat. Perhaps there is a light wind aft. We are carrying
studding-sails. Studding-sails are beautiful to look at from a distance. But
when once you have sailed in a ship carrying them from the royals down
and know something of the labor of rigging them out all on one side, fore,
main, and mizzen-masts, and then, if the breeze alters a couple of points,
taking the starboard sails all down and rigging out the larboard, or perhaps
on both sides—and this on a Sunday afternoon, when there are no jobs and
you’ve been expecting plenty of leisure to eat your duff and molasses; or if
you have ever helped carry those heavy yards about the deck when the ship
was rolling violently in a heavy ground swell, and every time she brought
up, sails, blocks, and everything movable was bringing up also with a series
of pistol-like reports; or if you have ever laid out on a royal yard trying to
pass a heavy rope through the “jewel block,” at the extreme end thereof,
while the mast and yard were oscillating to and fro with you through the air
in a rapidly recurring series of gigantic arcs caused by the lazy swell, in the
trough of which your ship is rolling—and at the end of each roll you find
yourself holding on for dear life, lest at the termination of each oscillation
you be shot like an arrow into the sea from your insecure perch—why in all
these cases the beauty and picturesqueness of a ship under studding-sails
will be tempered by some sober realities.
 It is 5:30 or 6 o’clock. The morning light has come. The cry of “Turn
to!” is heard. That is, “turn to” to wash down decks, an operation which will
tax the already exhausted resources of an empty stomach until breakfast
time at 8 o’clock. The mates have their fragrant “cabin coffee” and biscuit
served them on the brass capstan aft; we can smell its aroma, but nothing
warm can get into our stomachs for over two long hours of work. The basic
idea in this regular washing down decks at sea seems to be that of keeping
men busy for the sake of keeping them busy. The top of every deck plank
must be scrubbed with a care and scrutiny befitting the labors of a diamond
polisher on his gems, while the under side may be dripping with foulness,
as it sometimes is. I had the post of honor in scrubbing the quarter-deck.
That was the drawing of water in a canvas bucket from the mizzen chains to
wash over that deck. The remaining five boys would push wearily about
with their brooms, hand-brushes, squabs, and squilgees, superintended by
our extraordinary fourth mate (always to me an object of interest, from the
fact of the secret carefully hoarded in my breast that I had pulled him into
the New York dock), who, with a microscopic eye inspected each crack and
seam after the boys’ labors, in search of atomic particles of dirt, and called
them back with all the dignity of command, and a small amount of
commanding personality behind it, whenever he deemed he had discovered
any. When this labor was finished I was generally so exhausted as to have
no appetite for breakfast. But a sailor’s stomach is not presumed to be at all
sensitive under any conditions. And above all a “boy”—a boy belonging to
a squad of boys who about once a day were encouraged and enthused to
exertion and maritime ambition by the assurance conveyed them by one of
the mates that they weren’t “worth their salt”—what business had a boy’s
stomach to put on airs at sea? Most landsmen if called up at 4 o’clock on a
muggy morning and worked like mules for a couple of hours on a digestive
vacuum, would probably at the breakfast hour feel more the need of food
than the appetite to partake of it.
Though I followed the sea nearly two years, I am no sailor. The net
result of my maritime experience is a capacity for tying a bow-line or a
square knot and a positive knowledge and conviction concerning which end
of the ship goes first. I also know enough not throw hot ashes to windward.
But on a yard I could never do much else but hold on. The foolhardy
men about me would lie out flat on their stomachs amid the darkness and
storm, and expose themselves to the risk of pitching headlong into the sea
in the most reckless manner while trying to “spill the wind” out of a
t’gallant sail. But I never emulated them. I never lived up to the maritime
maxim of “one hand for yourself and the other for the owners.” I kept both
hands for myself, and that kept me from going overboard. What would the
owners have cared had I gone overboard? Nothing. Such an occurrence
twenty-five odd years ago would, weeks afterward, have been reported in
the marine news this way: “Common sailor, very common sailor, fell from
t’gallant yard off Cape Horn and lost.” The owner would have secretly
rejoiced, as he bought his Christmas toys for his children, that the t’gallant
yard had not gone with the sailor. No; on a yard in a storm I believed and
lived up to the maxim: “Hold fast to that which is good.” The yard was
good. Yet I was ambitious when a boy before the mast on the clipper which
brought me to California. I was quick to get into the rigging when there was
anything to do aloft. But once in the rigging I was of little utility.
The first time I went up at night to loose one of the royals, I thought I
should never stop climbing. The deck soon vanished in the darkness of a
very black tropical night, the mastheads were likewise lost in a Cimmerian
obscurity—whatever that is. At last I found the yard. I wasn’t quite sure
whether it was the right one or not. I didn’t know exactly what to do. I knew
I had to untie something somewhere. But where? Meantime the savage
Scotch second mate was bellowing, as it then seemed, a mile below me. I
knew the bellow was for me. I had to do something and I commenced
doing. I did know, or rather guessed, enough to cast off the lee and weather
gaskets, or lines which bind the sail when furled to the yard, and then I
made them up into a most slovenly knot. But the bunt-gasket (the line
binding the middle and most bulky portion of the sail), bothered me. I
couldn’t untie it. I picked away at it desperately, tore my nails and skinning
my knuckles. The bellowing from below continued as fiercely as ever,
which, though not intelligible as to words, was certainly exhorting me, and
me only, to vigilance. Then the watch got tired waiting for me. Thinking the
sail loosed, they began hoisting. They hoisted the yard to its proper place
and me with it. I clung on and went up higher. That, by the way, always
comes of holding fast to that which is good. Then a man’s head came
bobbing up out of the darkness. It was that of a good-natured Nantucket
boy, whose name of course was Coffin. He asked me the trouble. I went
into a lengthy explanation about the unmanageable knot. “Oh—the knot!”
said he. “Cut it!” and he cut it. I would never have cut it. In my then and
even present nautical ignorance I should have expected the mast or yard to
have fallen from cutting anything aloft. Only a few days previous I had seen
the Captain on the quarter-deck jumping up and down in his tracks with
rage because a common seamen had, by mistake, cut a mizzen brace, and
the second mate, as usual, had jumped up and down on the seaman when he
reached the deck. I feared to set a similar jumping process in operation.
Coming on deck after my lengthy and blundering sojourn loosing a royal, I
expected to be mauled to a pulp for my stupidity. But both watch and
bellowing mate had gone below and I heard no more of it.
 CHAPTER V.

SAN FRANCISCO IN 1856.

The Wizard sailed through a great bank of fog one August morning and
all at once the headlands of the Golden Gate came in sight. It was the first
land we had seen for four months. We sailed into the harbor, anchored, and
the San Francisco of 1856 lay before us.
The ship was tied up to the wharf. All but the officers and “boys” left
her. She seemed deserted, almost dead. We missed the ocean life of the set
sails, the ship bowing to the waves and all the stir of the elements in the
open ocean.
The captain called me one day into the cabin, paid me my scanty wages
and told me he did not think I “was cut out for a sailor,” I was not handy
enough about decks.
Considering that for two months I had been crippled by a felon on the
middle finger of my right hand, which on healing had left that finger curved
inward, with no power to straighten it, I thought the charge of awkwardness
somewhat unjust.
However, I accepted the Captain’s opinion regarding my maritime
capacities, as well as the hint that I was a superfluity on board.
I left the Wizard—left her for sixteen years of varied life in California.
I had no plans, nor aims, nor purpose, save to exist from day to day and
take what the day might give me.
Let me say here never accept any person’s opinion of your qualifications
or capacities for any calling. If you feel that you are “cut out” for any
calling or that you desire to follow it, abide by that feeling, and trust to it. It
will carry you through in time.
I believe that thousands on thousands of lives have been blasted and
crippled through the discouragement thrown on them by relation, friend,
parent, or employer’s saying continually (or if not saying it verbally,
thinking it) “You are a dunce. You are stupid. You can’t do this or that. It’s
ridiculous for you to think of becoming this or that.”
 The boy or girl goes off with this thought thrown on them by others. It
remains with them, becomes a part of them and chokes off aspiration and
effort.
Years afterward, I determined to find out for myself whether I was “cut
out for a sailor” or not. As a result I made myself master of a small craft in
all winds and weathers and proved to myself that if occasion required, I
could manage a bigger one.
San Francisco seemed to me then mostly fog in the morning, dust and
wind in the afternoon, and Vigilance Committee the remainder of the time.
San Francisco was then in the throes of the great “Vigilanteeism” of
1856. Companies of armed men were drilling in the streets at night. In the
city’s commercial centre stood “Fort Gunnybags”—the strong hold of the
Vigilantes—made, as its name implied, of sand-filled gunny sacks.
Carronades protruded from its port holes, sentinels paced the ramparts.
There was constant surging of men in and out of the building behind the
fort,—the headquarters and barracks of the Vigilantes. From its windows a
few days before our arrival they had hung Casey for the killing of James
King—one of the editors of the Bulletin. I saw two others hung there on the
sixth of August. Vigilanteeism was then the business and talk of the town.
The jail had just been captured from the “Law and Order” men, who were
not “orderly” at all, but who had captured the city’s entire governmental and
legal machinery and ran it to suit their own purposes.
The local Munchausens of that era were busy; one day the U. S. ship of
war, St. Mary’s, was to open fire on Fort Gunnybags; the next, Governor
Johnson, backed by twenty thousand stalwart men, was to fall upon the city
and crush out the insurrection.
The up-country counties were arming or thought of arming to put down
this “rebellion.” The “Rebellion” was conducted by the respectability and
solidity of San Francisco, which had for a few years been so busily engaged
in money making as to allow their city government to drift into rather
irresponsible hands; many of the streets were unbridged, many not lighted
at night. Cause—lack of money to bridge and light. The money in the hands
of the city officials had gone more for private pleasure than public good.
I speak of the streets being unbridged because at that time a large portion
of the streets were virtually bridges. One-fourth of the city at least, was
built over the water. You could row a boat far under the town, and for miles
in some directions. This amphibious part of the city “bilged” like a ship’s
hold, and white paint put on one day would be lead colored the next, from
the action on it of the gases let loose from the ooze at low tide.
There were frequent holes in these bridges into which men frequently
tumbled, and occasionally a team and wagon. They were large enough for
either, and their only use was to show what the city officials had not done
with the city’s money.
Then Commercial street between Leidesdorff and Battery was full of
Cheap John auction stores, with all their clamor and attendant crowds at
night. Then the old Railroad Restaurant was in its prime, and the St.
Nicholas, on Sansome, was the crack hotel. Then, one saw sand-hills at the
further end of Montgomery street. To go to Long Bridge was a weary, body-
exhausting tramp. The Mission was reached by omnibus. Rows of old hulks
were moored off Market street wharf, maritime relics of “ ’49.” That was
“Rotten Row.” One by one they fell victims to Hare. Hare purchased them,
set Chinamen to picking their bones, broke them up, put the shattered
timbers in one pile, the iron bolts in another, the copper in another, the
cordage in another, and so in a short all time that remained of these bluff-
bowed, old-fashioned ships and brigs, that had so often doubled the stormy
corner of Cape Horn or smoked their try-pots in the Arctic ocean was so
many ghastly heaps of marine débris.
I had seen the Niantic, now entombed just below Clay street, leave my
native seaport, bound for the South Pacific to cruise for whale, years ere the
bars and gulches of California were turned up by pick and shovel. The
Cadmus, the vessel which brought Lafayette over in 1824, was another of
our “blubber hunters,” and afterward made her last voyage with the rest to
San Francisco.
Manners and customs still retained much of the old “ ’49” flavor.
Women were still scarce. Every river boat brought a shoal of miners in gray
shirts from “up country.” “Steamer Day,” twice a month, was an event. A
great crowd assembled on the wharf to witness the departure of those
“going East” and a lively orange bombardment from wharf to boat and vice
versa was an inevitable feature of these occasions.
The Plaza was a bare, barren, unfenced spot. They fired salutes there on
Independence Day, and occasionally Chief Burke exhibited on its area
gangs of sneak thieves, tied two and two by their wrists to a rope—like a
string of onions.
There was a long low garret in my Commercial street lodgings. It was
filled with dust-covered sea-chests, trunks, valises, boxes, packages, and
bundles, many of which had been there unclaimed for years and whose
owners were quite forgotten. They were the belongings of lost and strayed
Long Islanders, ex-whaling captains, mates and others. For the “Market”
was the chief rendezvous. Every Long Islander coming from the “States”
made first for the “Market.” Storage then was very expensive. It would
soon “eat a trunk’s head off.” So on the score of old acquaintance all this
baggage accumulated in the Market loft and the owners wandered off to the
mines, to Oregon, to Arizona, to Nevada—to all parts of the great territory
lying east, north and south, both in and out of California, and many never
came back and some were never heard of more. This baggage had been
accumulating for years.
I used occasionally to go and wander about that garret alone. It was like
groping around your family vault. The shades of the forgotten dead came
there in the evening twilight and sat each one on his chest, his trunk, his
valise, his roll of blankets. In those dusty packages were some of the closest
ties, binding them to earth, Bibles, mother’s gifts, tiny baby shoes, bits of
blue ribbon, which years by-gone fluttered in the tresses of some Long
Island girl.
It was a sad, yet not a gloomy place. I could feel that the presence of
one, whose soul in sad memory met theirs, one who then and there recalled
familiar scenes, events and faces, one who again in memory lived over their
busy preparations for departure, their last adieux and their bright
anticipations of fortune, I could feel that even my presence in that lone,
seldom-visited garret, was for them a solace, a comfort. Imagination? Yes,
if you will. Even imagination, dreamy, unprofitable imagination, may be a
tangible and valuable something to those who dwell in a world of thought.
One night—or, rather, one morning—I came home very late—or, rather,
very early. The doors of the Long Island House were locked. I wanted rest.
One of the window-panes in front, and a large window-pane at that, was
broken out. All the belated Long Islanders stopping at the place, when
locked out at night, used to crawl through that window-pane. So, I crawled
through it. Now, the sentinel on the ramparts of Fort Gunnybags, having
nothing better to do, had been watching me, and putting me up as a
suspicious midnight loiterer. And so, as he looked, he saw me by degrees
lose my physical identity, and vanish into the front of that building; first,
head, then shoulders, then chest, then diaphragm, then legs, until naught but
a pair of boot-soles were for a moment upturned to his gaze, and they
vanished, and darkness reigned supreme. The sentinel deemed that the time
for action had come. I had just got into bed, congratulating myself on
having thus entered that house without disturbing the inmates, when there
came loud and peremptory rappings at the lower door. Luther and John, the
proprietors, put their heads out of the chamber windows. There was a squad
of armed Vigilantes on the sidewalk below; and, cried out one of them,
“There’s a man just entered your house!” Now I heard this, and said to
myself, “Thou art the man!” but it was so annoying to have to announce
myself as the cause of all this disturbance, that I concluded to wait and see
how things would turn out. John and Luther jumped from their beds, lit
each a candle and seized each a pistol; down-stairs they went and let the
Vigilantes in. All the Long Island captains, mates, coopers, cooks, and
stewards then resident in the house also turned out, lit each his candle,
seized each a pistol or a butcher-knife, of which there were plenty on the
meat-blocks below. John came rushing into my room where I lay,
pretending to be asleep. He shook me and exclaimed, “Get up! get up!
there’s a robber in the house secreted somewhere!” Then I arose, lit a
candle, seized a butcher-knife, and so all the Vigilantes with muskets, and
all the Long Island butchers, captains, mates, cooks, coopers, and stewards
went poking around, without any trousers on, and thrusting their candles
and knives and pistols into dark corners, and under beds and behind beef
barrels, after the robber. So did I; for the disturbance had now assumed such
immense proportions that I would not have revealed myself for a hundred
dollars. I never hunted for myself so long before, and I did wish they would
give up the search. I saw no use in it; and besides, the night air felt raw and
chill in our slim attire. They kept it up for two hours.
Fort Gunnybags was on Sacramento Street; I slept directly opposite
under the deserted baggage referred to. The block between us and the fort
was vacant. About every fourth night a report would be circulated through
that house that an attack on Fort Gunnybags would be made by the Law and
Order men. Now, the guns of Fort Gunnybags bore directly on us, and as
they were loaded with hard iron balls, and as these balls, notwithstanding
whatever human Law and Order impediments they might meet with while
crossing the vacant block in front, were ultimately certain to smash into our
house, as well as into whatever stray Long Island captains, mates, boat-
steerers, cooks, and coopers might be lying in their path, these reports
resulted in great uneasiness to us, and both watches used frequently to
remain up all night, playing seven-up and drinking rum and gum in Jo.
Holland’s saloon below.
I became tired at last of assisting in this hunt for myself. I gave myself
up. I said, “I am the man, I am the bogus burglar, I did it.” Then the crowd
put up their knives and pistols, blew out their candles, drew their tongues
and fired reproaches at me. I felt that I deserved them; I replied to none of
their taunts, conducted myself like a Christian, and went to bed weighted
down with their reproof and invective. The sentinel went back to his post
and possibly slept. So did I.
 CHAPTER VI.

AS A SEA COOK.

I drifted around San Francisco for several months and finally shipped
as cook and steward of the schooner Henry, bound from San Francisco for a
whaling, sealing, abalone curing, and general “pick up” voyage along the
Lower Californian coast. My acceptance as cook was based on the
production of an Irish stew which I cooked for the captain and mate while
the Henry was “hove down” on the beach at North point and undergoing the
process of cleaning her bottom of barnacles. I can’t recollect at this lapse of
time where I learned to cook an Irish stew. I will add that it was all I could
cook—positively all, and with this astounding capital of culinary ignorance
I ventured down upon the great deep to do the maritime housework for
twenty men.
When we were fairly afloat and the Farallones were out of sight my
fearful incapacity for the duties of the position became apparent. Besides, I
was dreadfully seasick, and so remained for two weeks. Yet I cooked. It was
purgatory, not only for myself but all hands. There was a general howl of
execration forward and aft at my bread, my lobscouse, my tea, my coffee,
my beef, my beans, my cake, my pies. Why the captain continued me in the
position, why they didn’t throw me overboard, why I was not beaten to a
jelly for my continued culinary failures, is for me to this day one of the
great mysteries of my existence. We were away nearly ten months. I was
three months learning my trade. The sufferings of the crew during those
three months were fearful. They had to eat my failures or starve. Several
times it was intimated to me by the under officers that I had better resign
and go “for’ard” as one of the crew. I would not. I persevered at the
expense of many a pound of good flour. I conquered and returned a second-
class sea cook.
The Henry was a small vessel—the deck was a clutter of whaling gear.
Where my galley or sea-kitchen should have been, stood the try-works for
boiling blubber. They shoved me around anywhere. Sometimes I was
moved to the starboard side, sometimes to the larboard, sometimes when