Even in the electronic era, there’s nothing wrong
with a good old-fashioned lookout
ILLUSTRATION CLAUDIA MYATTLOSING THE PLOT
TOM CUNLIFFE
M
any years ago I found myself down on my luck in
Mystic, Connecticut. The boat was laid up in the
Seaport Museum and I was running low on funds.
Just along the way was a hefty gaff schooner
working as a ‘head boat’, which meant she returned to her berth
every night with customers who’d paid their dollars for a day trip.
It wasn’t glamorous, but she was making an honest living. Word
was she was short of a hand, so I hopped aboard one evening full
of hope. The mate greeted me kindly but was obliged to give me
the no-go. Some dockside loafer had been handed the job that
morning, but I was a strong lad in those days and would have
looked like handy peak halyard fodder. It was only as I slumped off
up the gangway that he had a brainwave.
“Can you sing?”
This brought me up short. We’re talking Yankee schooner
here, not the local Glee Club, but I was desperate for work.
What he didn’t know was that I’d spent three years in the
Liverpool Philharmonic Choir under Sir Charles Groves. If
nothing else, this had taught me a lot about voice projection and
many a night had found me in the waterfront pubs roaring out
‘Hanging Johnny’ and ‘Maggie May’ with the best of them. I
said yes, and was signed on as shantyman.We were a merry crew, hoisting the great mainsail after a
hearty breakfast to ‘Boney was a Warrior’. The clients always
cracked up when we got to the bit about King Louis of France
having his head cut off, and many a tear was shed as we ghosted
home in the sunset to Gordon Bok’s Maine classic, ‘Isle au Haut’
with its immortal line: ‘You’re a damn fool if you stay here/But
there’s no better place to go’. It summed up our lives during that
long, hot New England summer.
The deckhands were young, fit and willing, and the cook was a
big man in every sense. His speciality was what he described as
‘whale burgers’ which, in today’s ecologically enlightened
atmosphere, spells out how long ago this was. Our skipper was a
pilot of the old school. A man of transits, a well-swung compass
and Mark One Eyeball. This was no bad thing because the local
sound was amply stocked with rocks. Early satnav was available,
but he chose not to use it, and I never saw him turn on the Loran C
as he jinked among the reefs. With nothing more than what he
could physically see and an echo sounder to take care of what he
couldn’t, he kept us in deep water with no fuss whatever. In the
not-infrequent fog, he appeared literally to sniff his way into port.
I’ve often thought of this effortless traditional navigator as
electronics have eroded the demand for his ancient skills. All of us
21st century sailors know we must run a backup plan to cover the