T
here’s much to be learned from people who predate the
world of electronics. I’ve met sailors whose senses are so
acute it seems as though they can see through fog. After
growing up in a time without universal radio
communication, they couldn’t care less if a boat isn’t bristling with
aerials, yet they often understand matters which would baffle most
of us. They are nearly all gone now, but plenty of people living
back in the 1960s when I was a nipper recalled World War II as
clearly as I remember the opening of the M1 motorway. One of
these was a Norwegian lady who had kept grenades in her bicycle
basket during the Nazi occupation and whose life at sea was a
story in itself. A singular piece of advice she was fond of dishing up
was that a glass of seawater before breakfast does wonders for the
constitution. Her own vitality was so extraordinary that it was
hard to argue with this, but I confess to lacking the stomach for it.
Her greatest gift to me was to initiate me into the realm of the
Klabautermann.I swear my pilot cutter’s first skipper
was looking over us...
ILLUSTRATION CLAUDIA MYATTTHE UNSEEN HAND
TOM CUNLIFFE
According to German legend, the Klabautermann is a spirit
who hangs around the Northern Seas waiting to assist suffering
sailors. Spring a plank off Helgoland and, when all seems lost,
he’ll pitch up from nowhere with a mouthful of galvanised
boat nails and a beefy maul.
Spew your garboard caulking running down to Swinoujscie in
a gale of wind and he’ll clamber over the side ready for action
with his chinking iron and a wad of oakum. All of us who put
out towards the midnight sun in craft held together by faith,
rather than cheque books, will have need of him in the end.
The Norwegian Klabautermann favoured by my lady friend
ran along the same sort of lines, with one essential difference. The
Nordic version wasn’t a single benevolent individual always
looking for custom. Instead, there were many, and they attached
themselves on a semi-permanent basis to boats of their choice.
Any vessel that had knocked about long enough to have a history,
she pointed out, had probably picked up a Klabautermann
somewhere along the way. He might have been a crewman
who decided to stick around after he had slipped his cable.
He could be an outsider along for the ride on a boat to which
he’d taken a shine, but whatever his background, the prudent
Scandinavian mariner understood that, although the
Klabautermann might not be seen, no sane mariner would
sideline the possibility that one day he might save the ship.
I used to own a Bristol Channel pilot cutter that worked
when people still went to church on Sundays. She hadn’t been
restored since Pilot Morrice of Barry handed her over to the
Pilotage Board around the time of the Great War to throw his
hat into the ring with the amalgamated pilots and their steamer.