Charles Beresford - The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford

Admiral Penrose Fitzgerald, in his Memories of the Sea , relating his experience as a midshipman in the Falkland Islands, says, "Everybody has heard of the Falkland Island geese, and they may be seen to-day in St. James's Park. The upland geese – as they are generally called – are excellent eating; but there are also immense numbers and different varieties of other geese and these are known as 'kelp geese.' Alas! our ornithological education had been so sadly neglected that we did not know the difference with the feathers on, though we soon found it out, when we came to cook and eat them. All the birds we shot were kelp geese, about as fishy as cormorants; but they were not wasted, for we gave them to our Marine servants, who ate them all and declared them to be excellent. 'Some flavour about them,' as they said."

While we lay at the Falkland Islands a merchant ship came in whose whole company was down with scurvy. When I joined the Navy, lime-juice, the prophylactic, was served out under the regulation; but in the mercantile marine scurvy was still prevalent. It is a most repulsive disease. The sufferer rots into putrid decay while he is yet alive. If you pressed a finger upon his flesh the dent would remain. He is so sunk in lethargy that if he were told the ship was sinking he would decline to move. His teeth drop out and his hair falls off. It is worthy of remembrance that the use of lime-juice as a prophylactic was discovered, or at least largely introduced, by Captain James Cook the navigator; whose statue, erected at Whitby, I had the privilege of unveiling in 1912. Historically, I believe that Captain Lancaster, commanding the Dragon , in the service of the Honourable East India Company in the time of James I, was the first to cure scurvy by administering three spoonfuls of lemon to each patient, with his breakfast.

From the Falkland Islands we proceeded to the Straits of Magellan, where the natives of Terra del Fuego came off to us in boats. They were totally naked, and were smeared all over with grease. It was snowing, and they had made a fire in the boats; and when the sea splashed upon the fire and put it out, they beat the sea in anger with their paddles.

At the convict settlement there used to be a box to hold mails fixed on the top of a pole. The letters were taken on board the next ship passing homeward bound. I posted a letter addressed to my mother, who received it in due time.

We dropped anchor off Port Mercy. It came on to blow a hurricane. We had two anchors down ahead, struck lower yards and topmast, and kept the screw moving to ease the cables. Without the aid of steam, we should have been blown away. Even so, the captain became anxious and decided to put out to sea. We battened down and went out under trysails and forestaysail. Instantly we were plunged into a mountainous sea, and the wind whipped the canvas out of us. We set close-reefed foretopsail. A tremendous squall struck us, we shipped water and were blown upon our beam ends. So strong was the wind that each successive blast listed the ship right over. The captain then determined to run back to Port Mercy. The master set the course, as he thought, to clear the headland; and we steamed at full speed. I was standing half-way up the bridge ladder holding on to the man-rope in a violent squall of hail and snow, the hail cutting my cheeks open, when I saw land right ahead. The fact was that the master had mistaken his course, and the ship was driving straight on shore, where every man would have perished. I reported my observation to the first lieutenant, who merely remarked that it was probable that the master knew better than I did. But presently he too saw the high rocks looming ahead through the smother of snow and spray, and the course was altered just in time. The wind was on the port beam; we edged into it out to sea; and so were able to clear the headland and get under the lee of the land. The first lieutenant afterwards handsomely admitted that it was a good job I was standing where I was "with my eyes open" at the critical moment. It was in the height of this emergency, that I first heard the pipe go "Save ship."

We proceeded to Valparaiso, where the ship put in to refit. At Valparaiso, we were able to get horses, and we organised paper-chases.

It was about this time that the incident of the Impresario occurred. He was conducting the orchestra from the stage itself, being seated in a hole cut in the stage, so that his legs rested upon a little platform below. The refreshment room was underneath the stage, and the Impresario's legs projected downwards from the ceiling into the room, where were two or three midshipmen and myself. The temptation was irresistible. We grasped the legs; hauled on them; and down came the Impresario. Overhead, the music faltered and died away.

From Valparaiso we proceeded to the Sandwich Islands, whence we were ordered to take Queen Emma to Panama, on her way to England to see Queen Victoria. Queen Emma was born Miss Emma Booker. She married Kamehameha IV in 1856. We took the Queen on board with one native lady as her attendant. The natives were devoted to their queen, and they insisted on loading the ship with presents for her. They brought pigs, masses of yams, sweet potatoes, water-melons and other fruit. The pigs were housed forward on the main deck, and the other offerings were piled on the rigging and hammock nettings and about the davit guys, so that the ship looked like an agricultural show when we sailed for Panama.

We sighted a schooner flying signals of distress. The life-boat was called away to go to her assistance. I was in charge of the life-boat. When a boat is called away at sea, the crew of course take their places in her before she is lowered. The whole operation, from the sound of the pipe to the moment the boat touches the water, occupies no more than a few seconds in a smart ship. There was a little sea-way on, and the movement of the boat caused a jerk to the falls, unhooking the safety catch, and dislodging an enormous water-melon, which fell through about eighteen feet upon the top of my head. I was knocked nearly senseless. It was the melon that split upon the impact, deluging me with red pulp; but I thought that it was my skull which had cracked, and that they were my brains which were spoiling my uniform, and I remember wondering that my brains should be so queerly and vividly coloured.

But I recovered from the shock in a few minutes. Boarding the schooner, I found she was short of water. But the remarkable thing about that schooner was that although she carried a cargo of six thousand pounds in Mexican dollars, they had only four men on board, all told – an easy prize for a pirate.

After touching at Acapulco, which was all heat and flies, we landed the Queen of the Sandwich Islands at Panama.

Some years afterwards, I went to call upon her Majesty. In all my voyages, I carried with me a set of tandem harness; and on this occasion, I hired a light cart and a couple of ponies, and drove them tandem. Approaching the royal residence, I took a corner too sharply, the cart capsized, I was flung out, and found myself sitting on the ground in the Queen's presence.

But before we quitted the Sandwich Islands, an event occurred (of which I was the humble and unwitting instrument) which nearly brought about what are called international complications. I should explain that feeling ran pretty high between the English and the Americans in the Sandwich Islands with regard to the American Civil War, which was then waging. It was none of our business, but we of the Clio chose to sympathise with the South. Now that these unhappy differences have been so long composed, there can be no harm in referring to them. But it was not resentment against the North which inspired my indiscretion. It was the natural desire to win a bet. A certain lady – her name does not matter – bet me that I would not ride down a steep pass in the hills, down which no horse had yet been ridden. I took the bet and I won it. Then the same fair lady bet me – it was at a ball – that I would not pull down the American flag. That emblem was painted on wood upon an escutcheon fixed over the entrance to the garden of the Consulate. I took that bet, too, and won it.