The Snark was forty-three feet on the water-line and fifty-five over all, with fifteen feet beam (tumble-home sides) and seven feet eight inches draught.She was ketch-rigged, carrying flying-jib, jib, fore-staysail, main-sail, mizzen, and spinnaker.There were six feet of head-room below, and she was crown-decked and flush-decked.
There were four alleged WATER-TIGHT compartments.A seventy-horse power auxiliary gas-engine sporadically furnished locomotion at an approximate cost of twenty dollars per mile.A five-horse power engine ran the pumps when it was in order, and on two occasions proved capable of furnishing juice for the search-light.The storage batteries worked four or five times in the course of two years.The fourteen-foot launch was rumoured to work at times, but it invariably broke down whenever I stepped on board.
But the Snark sailed.It was the only way she could get anywhere.
She sailed for two years, and never touched rock, reef, nor shoal.
She had no inside ballast, her iron keel weighed five tons, but her deep draught and high freeboard made her very stiff.Caught under full sail in tropic squalls, she buried her rail and deck many times, but stubbornly refused to turn turtle.She steered easily, and she could run day and night, without steering, close-by, full-and-by, and with the wind abeam.With the wind on her quarter and the sails properly trimmed, she steered herself within two points, and with the wind almost astern she required scarcely three points for self-steering.
The Snark was partly built in San Francisco.The morning her iron keel was to be cast was the morning of the great earthquake.Then came anarchy.Six months overdue in the building, I sailed the shell of her to Hawaii to be finished, the engine lashed to the bottom, building materials lashed on deck.Had I remained in San Francisco for completion, I'd still be there.As it was, partly built, she cost four times what she ought to have cost.
The Snark was born unfortunately.She was libelled in San Francisco, had her cheques protested as fraudulent in Hawaii, and was fined for breach of quarantine in the Solomons.To save themselves, the newspapers could not tell the truth about her.When I discharged an incompetent captain, they said I had beaten him to a pulp.When one young man returned home to continue at college, it was reported that I was a regular Wolf Larsen, and that my whole crew had deserted because I had beaten it to a pulp.In fact the only blow struck on the Snark was when the cook was manhandled by a captain who had shipped with me under false pretences, and whom Idischarged in Fiji.Also, Charmian and I boxed for exercise; but neither of us was seriously maimed.
The voyage was our idea of a good time.I built the Snark and paid for it, and for all expenses.I contracted to write thirty-five thousand words descriptive of the trip for a magazine which was to pay me the same rate I received for stories written at home.