I
don’t know who was more concerned about finding knee-deep
water sloshing around in the hold in a mid-Biscay gale, me or
the ship’s dog.
It all began with the question of how to ballast a 90-ton
ex-trading ketch. Concrete seemed the best answer, beefed up with
iron pigs, fire bars and any other kentledge we could lay our cold
hands on for free. I say, ‘cold’, because these events took place in
the dead of winter 1969/70, which anyone who lived through it
will tell you was a shocker. The cargo hold still had an intact lining,
or ceiling. Its planking ran fore and aft; it was fastened to the inside
of the frames and caulked, leaving the iron-clad keelson poking up
along the centreline.
The ballast was duly installed, the old ketch settled onto her
new marks and away we went into the early February night, bound
for Madeira. Johanne had been purchased straight out of trading in
the Baltic and was, to all intents and purposes, unconverted. The
management had a vague idea of chartering her in the West Indies,
but she was a long way short of any luxuries at that time.
Me and the crew had spent the last few months re-rigging her from
the deck up with spars adzed on the dockside, plough-steel
standing rigging and running gear spliced from a huge coil of
dodgy manila which showed its true colours by parting whenever
we needed it most.
February turned out to be a breezy sort of month and the
passage down into Biscay was not without incident, but it was only
when Finisterre lay 200 miles to the southwest that things really
livened up. It had been blowing like the crack of doom for
24 hours, the seas were houses-high and the night was as black as
the inside of a butler’s bowler. Halfway through the middle watch
we were slugging along, full and by, under staysail and a main
reefed almost to the gaff jaws. The mizzen had been stowed after
shredding its sheet to the four winds. Spray was driving aft likeYou know things are serious when the
mate hands you a pick-axe
ILLUSTRATION CLAUDIA MYATTHACKING FOR OUR LIVES
TOM CUNLIFFE
hailstones and every so often a wave flooded the deck and
washed across the tarps battened down over the hatch boards.
The storm had long since snuffed out our oil navigation lamps
and a democratic decision had been reached that struggling
forward to retrieve them from the shrouds would be more
dangerous than running unlit. The logic held until a pair of
steaming lights and a red suddenly loomed up out of the scud
from behind a giant swell. From the helm I tried sighting them on
what I could make out of a mizzen shroud to judge whether the
ship was coming our way. The motion was so extreme that this
proved hopeless, so my watchmate groped inside the binnacle,
wound up the wick on the lamp and we tried our luck with the
wildly swinging compass card. Another waste of time. The
steamer’s lights were close enough to show how deeply she was
pitching and a faint hint of green to the left of the red added a
sinister note. Bearing away didn’t appeal because we’d have to
ease sheets and hauling them in again after it was over would
mean rousing out all hands. Tacking would also have earned us a
round of abuse from the watch below, so we waited, irresolute,
for the aspect to start altering. It didn’t, but just then the mate
appeared out of the companionway. He gave the impression of
having a different agenda to us, but whatever had been bothering
him, he took one look at the lights and prioritised.
‘Helm up!’ he ordered calmly, surging out the mainsheet as we
peeled off to starboard slowly. He waited less than a second to
make sure we did as we were told, then he dived below.
‘Nice’, observed my oppo, peering up at the steamer’s red light
in the howling gloom. ‘I suppose he’s gone to pack his suitcase.’
But he hadn’t. In no time he was back on deck firing the white
flare our financially prudent skipper had kept hidden from the