Tuesday, November 19, 1929
Painted all day, when I wasn’t at the wheel. No sense in this weather. The farther south we go, the cooler becomes the breeze. Wonder if this tub would make snappier time if it were to turn around and run backwards. Today at noon—5¼ days—we had come 1,102 miles and in site of decent weather seem to make a worse average every day.
Neil and the cork-leg fellow were comparing notes this afternoon while painting the midships house. Imagine the cops would be interested in both, judging form their little escapades stealing gasoline, etc. Have a hunch several others could tell more than they care to. It’s probably a good thing they spend lots of time at sea, because once ashore for any time they could quickly become very excellent bums, thugs, thieves, and robbers. Not a bad lot on the ship when sober, in fact there are two or three here that don’t belong here.
The bos’n is a good example of a tough, hell-raisin’ son-of-a-gun. Comes from Norway and is just a little sour by nature though he doesn’t always show it. An old character in my cabin used to be bos’n but he evidently got too drunk too often so the mate told this guy that the next time the bos’n got tight this job would go to him. Whereupon this bird got some alcohol from the store room and proceeded to get Scotty good and tight. Result—a new bos’n in the person of the Norwegian.
Horace, alias Slim, has some tea so we drank some in the mess and gabbed around till eleven when I got out my bucket for a bath, having been down in the coal bunker getting coal for the galley.