rest of us. As each succeeding wave knocked Johanne’s head
further off the solid wall of the wind, he waded forward until he
stood by the windlass with the flare at arm’s length, framed in
white flame and smoke. The effect was startling. After only the
briefest hesitation the ship began to swing round our stern. As we
swept under her lee, the wind suddenly shut down and we breathed
the homely smell of ship. Up on the bridge wing, our private Pains
Wessex benefit lit up an incredulous face like a ghoul in a
fairground ghost train, then the storm came back and the face and
the vessel were gone, the stern light dipping into the turmoil of the
waves. The mate tossed the remains of his flare to leeward and the
three of us hove in the mainsheet.
‘While we’re at it,’ he grunted, ‘we may as well heave her to so
you guys can give us a hand to save ourselves in the hold.’
We weathered the staysail, lashed the helm hard a’lee and
clambered into the gloom wondering what we might find. Down
there out of the wind, conditions were far from ideal. Having
avoided a terminal running-down by a mere boat’s length, we were
now confronted with a one-way ticket to Davey Jones’ Locker. It
was hard to be specific about the mean water level because Johanne
was rolling her rails under while standing alternately on her bow
and her shapely transom, but many tons of the saltiest were
slopping around with enough force to knock you off your feet. The
scene was illuminated by two crazily swinging hurricane lamps
and, as I clung to the ladder, the dog came swimming by, its little
black eyes glowing miserably in the lamplight. The hold was filling
steadily with bilge water slopping around between planking and
ceiling, hitting the deckhead hard and washing through where the
top ceiling board would have been if we hadn’t removed it to help
the ship breathe. This was proving a bad idea and, since water was
clearly arriving from somewhere else unspecified, our second
mistake had been not to provide some sort of drain-hole in the
ballast. The water that was rising inside the hold was being kept
from the bilge and its powerful pumps by the cement we had
laid so efficiently.
As the rest of the crew came wading aft from their bunks in the
focsle, the mate handed me a pick-axe and grabbed a sledge
hammer. ‘We’ll have to smash through the cement,’ he shouted
above the roar of the storm and the surge of the water. ‘The rest of
you keep pumping even if nothing comes out.’
Attacking the bottom of a boat with a pickaxe in a mid-Biscay
howler seemed extreme. ‘That’s all fine,’ I retorted, ‘but what if the
pick smashes through the garboard as well?’
‘If we just sit here and watch, we’re going to drown.’ he pointed
out reasonably. ‘If we give it our best shot, we’ve got two
chances – small chance and no chance. What’s your choice?’
I grabbed the pick and laid into the job as if I meant it, which I
did. The surging, oily, scummy water didn’t help, it was freezing
cold and it kept rising, but we bashed on with a will, grateful we’d
used plenty of sand in the mix. Just when all seemed lost, we broke
through. The planking survived and the big
pumps on the main engine slowly sucked us dry.
As a footnote to this account, readers might
be relieved to learn that the dog William
made it to the West Indies, which is
more than I did. The boat limped into
Corunna with a fair bit of damage and
finally arrived in Madeira, where, for
reasons amorous, financial and highly
personal, I slung my hook. And thereby
hangs another tale.