Dougal Robertson
THE BLACK VOLCANIC MOUNTAIN OF FERNANDINA, THE MOST WESTERLY of the Galapagos Islands, towered high above the tall masts of the schooner Lucette as she lay at anchor, rolling gently in the remnants of the long Pacific swell which surged round the rocky headland of Cape Espinosa, and sent searching fingers of white surf curling into the sheltered waters of the anchorage.
We were on the eve of our departure for the Marquesas Islands, three thousand miles to the west, and now, as the wind swung to the east under a grey mantle of rain cloud, I felt anxious to be gone, for if we left now we would be out from under the lee of the island by morning. Lyn protested vehemently at the thought of starting our journey on June the thirteenth, even when I pointed out that the most superstitious of seafarers didn’t mind so long as it wasn’t a Friday as well, but Douglas and Robin both now joined with my feelings of anxiety to be gone, and after a short spell of intense activity, we stowed and lashed the dinghy and secured all movables on deck and below.
By five o’clock in the afternoon we were ready for sea, and with mainsail and jibs set we heaved the anchor home, reached past the headland into the strait, then altering course to the west ran free towards the Pacific, a thousand square feet of sail billowing above Lucette as she moved easily along the ragged black coastline of Fernandina towards the largest stretch of ocean in the world.
By the morning of the fourteenth, the Galapagos Islands were receding into the distance astern, merging with the clouds of the overcast sky above as Lucette, now rolling and pitching in the heavy swell and rough seas of the Pacific trades, made steady progress west by south towards the Marquesas Islands.
In spite of the fact that we had been sailing for over a year, our stomachs still took a little time to adjust from the quietness of sheltered waters to the lively movement of the yacht in the open sea and so throughout the day those of us not actively engaged in steering and sailing Lucette rested as best we could in the bunks below, supplied at intervals with hot soup or coffee from Lyn’s indomitable labours at the stove. Unused to the sea, Robin had been sick most of the way from Panama to the Galapagos, but he now seemed better adjusted to the physical discomfort of the constant heave of the hull. He was able to steer a fairly accurate course by compass, and although the principles of sailing were still something of a closed book to him, he could help Douglas and me with the night watches whilst Lyn and the twins helped with the watches during the day.
The wind moderated a little during the following night and breaks in the cloud enabled us to catch glimpses of stars in the predawn sky; on the morning of the fifteenth we had our first glimpse of the sun since leaving the Galapagos and with the slackening of wind and speed Lucette settled to a more comfortable movement in the diminishing seas.
The morning sun shone fitfully from the thinning cloud, and as I balanced myself against the surge of Lucette’s deck, sextant glued to my eye, I watched for the right moment when the image of the sun’s rim would tip the true horizon, no easy combination when both deck and horizon are in constant motion. Douglas and Sandy were in the cockpit, one steering and the other tending the fishing line, while Robin, finding it difficult to sleep in his own bunk on the port side of the main cabin, had nipped quietly into Sandy’s bunk on the starboard side of the fo’c’stle to rest after his spell on the four to eight morning watch. Neil was reading a book in his own bunk on the port side of the fo’c’stle, and Lyn had just started to clean up the usual chaos which results from a rough stretch of sailing. At last the sun, the horizon and the deck cooperated to give me a fairly accurate reading, and noting the local time by my watch at 09h 54m 45s, I collected my logarithm tables and Nautical Almanac from the chart table and retired below to the relative comfort of the after cabin to work out our longitude; it was my first position sight since leaving the islands.
With my sextant carefully replaced in its box I had turned to my books to work up a reasonably accurate dead-reckoning position when sledgehammer blows of incredible force struck the hull beneath my feet, hurling me against the bunk, the noise of the impact almost deafening my ears to the roar of inrushing water. I heard Lyn call out, and almost at the same time heard the cry of ‘Whales!’ from the cockpit. My senses still reeled as I dropped to my knees and tore up the floorboards to gaze in horror at the blue Pacific through the large splintered hole punched up through the hull planking between two of the grown oak frames. Water was pouring up through the hole with torrential force and although Lyn called out that it was no use, that the water was pouring in from another hole under the WC flooring as well, I jammed my foot on the broken strakes and shouted to her to give me large cloths, anything to stem the flood. She threw me a pillow and I jammed it down on top of the broken planking, rammed the floorboard on top and stood on it; the roar of the incoming water scarcely diminished, it was already above the level of the floorboards as I heard Douglas cry from the deck ‘Are we sinking, Dad?’ ‘Yes! Abandon ship!’; my voice felt remote as numbly I watched the water rise rapidly up the engine casing; it was lapping my knees as I turned to follow Lyn, already urging Neil and Robin on deck. Wading past the galley stove, my eye glimpsed the sharp vegetable knife, and grabbing it in passing I leapt for the companionway; the water, now up to my thighs, was already lapping the top of the batteries in the engine room; it was my last glimpse of Lucette’s interior, our home for nearly eighteen months. Lyn was tying the twins’ lifejackets on with rapid efficiency as I slashed at the lashings holding the bow of the dinghy to the mainmast; Douglas struggled to free the self-inflatable raft from under the dinghy and I ran forward to cut the remaining lashings holding the stern of the dinghy to the foremast, lifting the dinghy and freeing the raft at the same time. Lyn shouted for the knife to free the water containers and I threw it towards her; Douglas again shouted to me if he should throw the raft over, disbelieving that we were really sinking. ‘Yes, get on with it!’ I yelled, indicating to Robin, who now had his lifejacket on, to help him. Grasping the handles at the stern of the dinghy, I twisted it over from its inverted stowed position and slid it towards the rail, noting that the water was now nearly level with Lucette’s deck as she wallowed sluggishly in the seaway.
Douglas ran from the after deck with the oars and thrust them under the thwarts as I slid the dinghy seawards across the coach roof, then he took hold of the stern from me and slid the dinghy the rest of the way into the sea, Robin holding on to the painter to keep it from floating away. The raft, to our relief, our great and lasting relief, had gone off with a bang and was already half inflated, and Lyn, having severed the lashings on the water containers and flares, was carrying them to the dinghy. I caught up the knife and again shouted ‘Abandon ship!’ for I feared Lucette’s rigging might catch one of us as she went down, then cut the lashings on a bag of onions, which I gave to Sandy, instructing him to make for the raft, a bag of oranges which I threw into the dinghy and a small bag of lemons to follow. It was now too dangerous to stay aboard, and noting that Douglas, Robin and Sandy had already gone and that Neil was still sitting in the dinghy which was three-quarters full of water, I shouted that he also should make for the raft. He jumped back on Lucette, clutching his teddy bears, then plunged into the sea, swimming strongly for the raft. Lyn struggled through the rails into the water, still without a lifejacket, and I walked into the sea, first throwing the knife into the dinghy, the waters closing over Lucette’s scuppers as we left her.
I feared that the whales would now attack us and urged everyone into the raft, which was fully inflated and exhausting surplus gas noisily. After helping Lyn into the raft I swam back to the dinghy, now completely swamped, with oranges floating around it from the bag which had burst, and standing inside it to protect myself from attack, threw all the oranges and lemons within reach into the raft. The water containers had already floated away or had sunk, as had the box of flares, and since the dinghy was now three feet under the water, having only enough flotation to support itself, I made my way back to the raft again, grabbing a floating tin of petrol as I went. On leaving the dinghy I caught a last glimpse of Lucette, the water level with her spreaders and only the tops of her sails showing. Slowly she curtsied below the waves, a lady to the last; she was gone when I looked again.
I climbed wearily into the yellow inflatable, a sense of unreality flooding through me, feeling sure that soon I would waken and find the dream gone. I looked at my watch; it was one minute to ten. ‘Killer whales,’ said Douglas. ‘All sizes, about twenty of them. Sandy saw one with a big V in its head. I think three of them hit us at once.’ My mind refused to take in the implications of the attack; I gazed at the huge genoa sail lying on the raft floor where Lyn was sitting with the twins. ‘How the hell did that get there?’ I asked stupidly. Douglas grinned. ‘I saw the fishing line spool floating on the surface unwinding itself,’ he said, ‘so I grabbed it and pulled it in, the sail was hooked in the other end!’
Three killer whales; I remembered the one in captivity in Miami Seaquarium weighed three tons and that they swam at about thirty knots into an attack; no wonder the holes in Lucette! The others had probably eaten the injured one with the V in its head, which must have split its skull when it hit Lucette’s three-ton lead keel. She had served us well to the very end, and now she was gone.
Lyn gazed numbly at me, quietly reassuring the twins who had started crying, and, apart from the noise of the sea round us, we gazed in silent disbelief at our strange surroundings.
Castaways
We sat on the salvaged pieces of flotsam lying on the raft floor, our faces a pale bilious colour under the bright yellow canopy, and stared at each other, the shock of the last few minutes gradually seeping through to our consciousness. Neil, his teddy bears gone, sobbed in accompaniment to Sandy’s hiccup cry, while Lyn repeated the Lord’s Prayer, then, comforting them, sang the hymn ‘For those in peril on the Sea.’ Douglas and Robin watched at the doors of the canopy to retrieve any useful pieces of debris which might float within reach and gazed with dumb longing at the distant five-gallon water container, bobbing its polystyrene lightness ever farther away from us in the steady trade wind.
The dinghy Ednamair wallowed, swamped, nearby with a line attached to it from the raft and our eyes travelled over and beyond to the heaving undulations of the horizon, already searching for a rescue ship even while knowing there would not be one. Our eyes travelled fruitlessly across the limitless waste of sea and sky, then once more ranged over the scattering debris. Of the killer whales which had so recently shattered our very existence, there was no sign. Lyn’s sewing basket floated close and it was brought aboard followed by a couple of empty boxes, the canvas raft cover, and a plastic cup. I leaned across to Neil and put my arm round him, ‘It’s alright now, son, we’re safe and the whales have gone.’ He looked at me reproachfully. ‘We’re not crying ’cos we’re frightened,’ he sobbed, ‘we’re crying ’cos Lucy’s gone.’ Lyn gazed at me over their heads, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Me too,’ she said, and after a moment added, ‘I suppose we’d better find out how we stand.’
I looked at Douglas, he had grown to manhood in our eighteen months at sea together; the twins, previously shy, introspective farm lads, had become interested in the different peoples we had met and their various ways of life, and were now keen to learn more; I tried to ease my conscience with the thought that they had derived much benefit from their voyage and that our sinking was as unforeseeable as an earthquake, or an aeroplane crash, or anything to ease my conscience.
We cleared a space on the floor and opened the survival kit, which was part of the raft’s equipment, and was contained in a three-foot-long polythene cylinder; slowly we took stock: Vitamin-fortified bread and glucose for ten men for two days. Eighteen pints of water, eight flares. One bailer, two large fishhooks, two small, one spinner and trace and a twenty-five-pound breaking strain fishing line. A patent knife which would not puncture the raft (or anything else for that matter), a signal mirror, torch [flashlight], first-aid box, two sea anchors, instruction book, bellows, and three paddles.
In addition to this there was the bag of a dozen onions which I had given to Sandy, to which Lyn had added a one-pound tin of biscuits and a bottle containing about half a pound of glucose sweets, ten oranges and six lemons. How long would this have to last us? As I looked round our meagre stores my heart sank and it must have shown on my face for Lyn put her hand on mine; ‘We must get these boys to land,’ she said quietly. ‘If we do nothing else with our lives, we must get them to land!’ I looked at her and nodded, ‘Of course, we’ll make it!’ The answer came from my heart but my head was telling me a different story.
We were over two hundred miles down wind and current from the Galapagos Islands. To try to row the small dinghy into two hundred miles of rough ocean weather was an impossible journey even if it was tried by only two of us in an attempt to seek help for the others left behind in the raft. The fact that the current was against us as well only put the seal of hopelessness on the idea. There was no way back.
The Marquesas Islands lay two thousand eight hundred miles to the west but we had no compass or means of finding our position; if, by some miraculous feat of endurance, one of us made the distance the chances of striking an island were remote. The coast of Central America, more than a thousand miles to the northeast, lay on the other side of the windless Doldrums, that dread area of calms and squalls which had inspired Coleridge’s
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
I was a Master Mariner, I thought ruefully, not an ancient one, and could count on no ghostly crew to get me out of this dilemma!
What were our chances if we followed the textbook answer, ‘Stay put and wait for rescue’? In the first place we wouldn’t be missed for at least five weeks and if a search was made, where would they start looking in three thousand miles of ocean? In the second place the chance of seeing a passing vessel in this area was extremely remote and could be discounted completely, for of the two possible shipping routes from Panama to Tahiti and New Zealand, one lay four hundred miles to the south and the other three hundred miles to the north.
Looking at the food, I estimated that six of us might live for ten days and since we could expect no rain in this area for at least six months, apart from an odd shower, our chances of survival beyond ten days were doubtful indeed.
My struggle to reach a decision, gloomy whichever way I looked at it, showed on my face, and Lyn leaned forward. ‘Tell us how we stand,’ she said, looking round, ‘we want to know the truth.’ They all nodded, ‘What chance have we?’ I could not tell them I thought they were going to die so I slowly spelled out the alternatives, and then suddenly I knew there was only one course open to us; we must sail with the trade winds to the Doldrums four hundred miles to the north. We stood a thin chance of reaching land but the only possible shipping route lay in that direction, our only possible chance of rainwater in any quantity lay in that direction even if it was four hundred miles away, and our only possible chance of reaching land lay in that direction, however small that chance might be.
We would work and fight for our lives at least; better than dying in idleness! ‘We must get these boys to land,’ Lyn had said. I felt the reality of the decision lifting the hopelessness from my shoulders and looked around; five pairs of eyes watched me as I spoke, Lyn once again with her arms round the twins, Douglas and Robin each at their lookout posts watching for any useful debris that might come within reach. ‘We have no alternative,’ I said, ‘we’ll stay here for twenty-four hours to see if any other wreckage appears, then we must head north and hope to find rain in the Doldrums.’
* * *
I peeped round the canopy of the raft at the dinghy; the Ednamair lay disconsolately awash at the end of her painter, her white gunwale just visible above the surface of the water. She was helping the sea anchor, I supposed, but we’d have to bail her out first thing in the morning, for the wooden thwarts, which contained the polystyrene flotation reserve, would loosen and come adrift if they became waterlogged.
The water exploded as a thirty-pound dorado leapt high in the air after a flying fish, landing with a slap on its side in a shower of luminescence. I glanced down to where several large fish swam under the raft, constantly rising to skim the underside of the raft’s edge, sometimes hitting it a heavy blow with their high jutting foreheads.
I looked across at Lyn, rubbing the cramp out of the twins’ legs. ‘We’ll see to the Ednamair after breakfast’; I looked hopefully at the water jar, but it was nearly empty. We had emptied the glucose sweets out of their glass jar so that it could be used to hold drinking water as it was decanted from the tin, for although we had discussed the issue of equal rations of water (there wasn’t enough to do that) we had decided simply to pass the jar round, each person limiting him or herself to the minimum needed to carry on; at the same time, the visible water level in the jar enabled everyone to see there was no cheating. Breakfast consisted of one quarter ounce biscuit, a piece of onion and a sip of water, except for Robin and Neil who could not eat and were with difficulty persuaded to take some extra water with a seasick pill. We had used two pints of water in one day between six, hardly a maintenance ration under a tropic sun, which I remembered had been placed as high as two pints per person per day! We ate slowly, savouring each taste of onion and biscuit with a new appreciation and, although we hardly felt as if we had breakfasted on bacon and eggs, we were still sufficiently shocked at our altered circumstances not to feel hunger.
Breakfast over, Lyn, with Sandy helping, sorted out the various pieces of sail which were to be used for bedding, chatting quietly all the while to Neil and Robin. Douglas and I went to the door of the raft and, pulling the dinghy alongside, first attempted to bail it out as it lay swamped, but the waves filled it as fast as we bailed. We turned its stern towards us and, lifting slowly, allowed the bow to submerge, then when we could lift it no higher, I called ‘Let go!’ The dinghy flopped back in the water with three inches of freeboard, we bailed desperately with small bailers, then Douglas took one of the wooden boxes and with massive scoops bailed enough water out to allow him to board the dinghy and bail it dry. We were all cheered by the sight of little Ednamair afloat again, and with a cry of delight Douglas held up his Timex watch; it had been lying in the bottom of the dinghy all this time and was still going! He also found what was to prove our most valuable possession, the stainless steel kitchen knife which I had thrown in after the fruit.
After a segment of orange each for elevenses we loaded the oars, a paddle, the empty boxes, the petrol can, the hundred-foot raft painter, and the piece of the genoa designated for the dinghy sail, then climbing into the dinghy started work on the jury rig that was to turn the Ednamair into a tugboat for our first stage of the journey north. Douglas, in the meantime, helped Lyn to reorganise the inside of the raft now that there was much more room, and topped up the flotation chambers with air.
I rigged one oar in the mast step with appropriate fore and back stays, then cutting notches in the raft paddle, bent the head of the sail onto it to form a square sail. The paddle was made fast to the top of the oar, and the sail foot secured to the two ends of the other oar, placed athwartships across the rowlock sockets. A violent jerk sent me sprawling into the bottom of the boat and I realised that we were operational.
I climbed back aboard the raft for a lunch of a small piece of fortified bread, of which there was about a pound and a half in the emergency rations, along with eight ounces of glucose and a mouthful of water; I felt very thirsty after my exertions in the raft. Ednamair was now straining at the leash so I called to Douglas to trip the sea anchor and haul it aboard; the time was two o’clock in the afternoon and we had started our voyage to the Doldrums, and, I shuddered at the thought of the alternative, rain. I estimated our position at Latitude 1° South and Longitude 94°40' West or, more accurately, two hundred miles west of Cape Espinosa.
The white plastic-covered luff wire was now snapping taut with considerable force as Ednamair yawed at the end of her towrope, so having little use for the petrol I lashed the can to the centre of the towing wire to act as a tension buffer which it did quite effectively. We now turned our attention to the flotation chambers of the raft to see if we could find any leaks. The double canopy alone was worth a gallon of water a day to us in keeping out the heat of the sun, and its emergency rations were available to us now only because they were already stowed inside the raft.
We examined the raft’s flotation chambers as well as we could, pouring water over all the exposed surface areas, but could find no leaks, although there were one or two repair patches, and finally put down the loss of air to seepage through the treated fabric of the raft. We arranged a regular routine of topping up on each watch to keep the raft as rigid as possible, for the continuous flexing of the softened chambers by the waves was bound to cause wear.
I lay down to think in the long hours of the night of how long it would take us to reach the Doldrums and of our chances of finding rain there; an exercise that was to occupy my nights with increasing urgency as our meagre store of water cans gradually dwindled. Robin had puffed rather ineffectually at the inflating tube before he went off watch, but the raft was still pretty soft, so I stuck the end in my mouth and gave it a good blow at both ends; Robin would get better at it as he got used to the idea.
Day Three
My watch, in the dawn hours of the morning, started with a clear sky, but, as the sun tinted the clouds, the wind freshened again from the south and the tall flowery cumulus, pink peaked with grey bases, seemed heavy enough to give rain. As soon it was light I pulled in the dinghy and climbed aboard to inspect the sail fastenings and stays, one of which had worked loose in the night. While I was securing the stay I caught sight of a small black shape under the wooden box by the thwart; I stooped and lifted our first contribution from the sea, a flying fish of about eight inches. I gutted and descaled it, then passed it over to Lyn, now awake, for her to marinate it in a squeeze of lemon juice, which acted as a cooking agent. We breakfasted at seven, an hour later, each savouring our tiny piece of fish done to a turn in the lemon juice, followed by a crunchy piece of onion and a mouthful of water. The raft had begun pitching heavily again, surging on the crests of the breaking sea and dropping steeply into the troughs. To our disappointment, both Neil and Robin started being seasick again and though we offered them seasick pills they decided to do without and try to get used to the motion of the raft instead.
The waves began to break over the stern of the raft, and with swells of up to twenty feet high, it looked as if we were in for a bad day. Ednamair yawed violently as the wind gusted in her sail and she pulled hard on the towrope, lifting it clear of the water at times. I decided to take a reef in the sail to ease the strain on the towing straps of the raft, so Douglas hauled the dinghy alongside the raft and held her while I balanced precariously on the seat. To reef her, I simply tied a rope around the belly of the sail, giving it an hourglass effect and reducing its effective pulling power by half. I had just completed the operation and was standing up again to return when a large breaker surged round the raft and caught the dinghy broadside. As she tilted, I lost balance and fell, grabbing at the mast to prevent myself falling into the sea; Ednamair tilted sharply with the increased leverage and the sea rushed in over the gunwale in a wave. Before I could let go the mast and drop to the floor of the dinghy, it was swamped. Luckily we retained about three inches of freeboard and before the next wave could complete the damage, I dived through the door of the canopy into the raft, and the dinghy, relieved of my weight, floated a little higher. We bailed desperately for several minutes from the raft and then, gaining on the influx of water slopping over the gunwale, we finally got enough freeboard to allow me to return to the Ednamair and bail it dry again. In the night, I had thought of the possibility of us taking to the dinghy altogether and leaving the raft, but this incident served to highlight the difficulty of any such move; the subject of trim with a very small freeboard would be of paramount importance and now I doubted if the dinghy could take the six of us and remain afloat in the open sea.
After our exhausting morning, we rested awhile, lunching on a mouthful of water and a few ‘crumbs’ of a type of fortified bread which, although made up in tablet form, disintegrated at the first touch and made the conveyance of the crumbs from container to mouth an operation that required great care to avoid spilling and usually resulted in some waste, even when we licked the stray crumbs off our clothes. This was followed by a piece of orange.
The clouds thickened as the day advanced and the high cumulus began to drop rain in isolated showers. The wind freshened still further and with the surf of breaking waves slopping through the canopy door at the rear of the raft, we closed the drawstrings on the flaps as much as was possible without cutting off all ventilation. With the large blanket pin I punched bigger holes in the empty water cans and made plugs to fit them in case a shower should cross us and give us water, while Douglas blew lustily into the pipe to make the raft as rigid as possible in the heavy seas. Ednamair bounced around at the end of her towrope like a pup on a leash and I was considering taking the sail down altogether when the patter of raindrops on the canopy warned us that we were about to get rain. A pipe led down from the centre of the rain catchment area on the roof and, pulling this to form a depression in the roof, we prepared to gather our first rainwater. With fascinated eyes we gazed at the mouth of the pipe, at the liquid that dribbled from the end, bright yellow, and saltier than the sea. As soon as the salt had been washed off the roof, we managed to collect half a pint of yellowish rubbery-tasting liquid before the shower passed over. I looked at the jar of fluid (one could hardly call it water) sadly; we would need to do a lot better than that if we were to survive.
The raft, now pitching heavily, required blowing up every hour to keep it rigid, and the undulations and jerks did nothing to ease the spasms of seasickness which Neil and Robin were suffering; they both looked drawn and pale, refusing even water in spite of Lyn’s pleading. As the raft slid up the twenty-foot swells to the breaking combers at the top, Lyn prayed desperately for calm weather and for rain, urging that the rest of us should join her in prayer with such insistence that I had to remind her that freedom of thought and religion was a matter of individual choice and no one should be coerced.
I passed the water jar around for ‘sippers’ before our meagre ration of biscuit, reminding everyone that our supplies were now very low and that only minimal amounts should be taken. ‘We must try to drink less than two pints per day between us,’ I said. ‘We have only twelve tins left and we still have over three hundred miles to go.’ A quart of water each for the next three hundred miles, it didn’t sound much.
As darkness closed in and the first watchkeeper settled to his two-hour vigil, I could feel the bump and bite of the dorado fish through the bottom of the raft and resolved to try to catch one in the morning. Neil and Sandy were sleeping soundly after helping to blow up the raft and mop up the water which was now coming through the floor at a greater rate than before. They looked so vulnerable that my heart turned over at the prospect of what lay ahead for them; death by thirst, or starvation, or just a slow deterioration into exhaustion. I heard Lyn’s voice many times that night, in my mind: ‘We must get these boys to land,’ and sleep would not come to ease the burden of my conscience.
As soon as daylight had faded the stars from the clearing skies, we tripped and housed the sea anchor, shook the reef out of the sail and continued on our way to the Doldrums. We had paid lip service to the standard practices of rescue by remaining in the shipping lane for as long as we could, but I felt that our present circumstances called for more than standard practice and was anxious that no more time should be wasted, for we were still some distance from the rain area and our stocks of water were dwindling once more.
As soon as we were moving again I dumped the offal and bailed the blood out of the dinghy; dozens of scavenger fish appeared from nowhere, the sea swirling as they fought to devour the scraps of coagulated turtle blood. In a few minutes, the now familiar fins of four sharks were seen as they cruised around looking for the source of the blood. The sea boiled as one of them attacked a dorado, the shark leaping its full ten-foot length clear of the water in a tremendous strike. Although they were our constant reminders of what lay in store for us if we failed, we could not help admiring the beautiful streamlined shape of these white-tipped sharks as they cruised in smooth unhurried serenity with their attendant bevies of pilot fish close to the raft. Our admiration did not deter me from thumping one of them with a paddle when it came too close (it beat a hasty retreat) and as if they had taken the hint we weren’t troubled by any of the others, but from then onwards we were never without at least one shark in attendance.
At 3°30' North and 250 miles west of Cape Espinosa, our noon position confirmed that the Doldrums, a mere ninety miles now, were well within striking distance and that our first leg of the journey was nearly over. High cirrus clouds moved contrary to the trade winds, their unsubstantial vapours conveying little to the searcher for weather signs, and I turned my attention to the dinghy, scraping out the turtle shell and collecting all the pieces of bone from the flippers. The half-cured meat had turned a deep brown colour under the heat of the sun and I took a little of it back to the raft, to spin out our luncheon of flipper bones and eggs.
During the afternoon the plug in the bottom of the raft was dislodged and water flooded into the forward compartment through a now much enlarged hole. We plugged it eventually by ramming an aircraft dinghy instruction book, made of waterproof material, into the hole, a creditable use for it, and while Robin bailed the compartment dry again, I wondered how long it would be before the raft became untenable altogether and we became dependent on Ednamair for our lives. There was no doubt in my mind that we should have to do this eventually, but the prospect of the six of us fitting into, and living in, the confined limits of the nine-foot-six-inch boat along with our food and water supplies and other items of equipment appalled me, for the slightest imbalance would bring the sea flooding in over the small freeboard.
The life belts, which were filled with kapok, had been used as pillows, and for keeping our bodies from lying in the pools of water which collected in the raft during the night, but now they had become so saturated that I took them over to the dinghy and placed them between the thwarts to dry out. In the meanwhile, we again searched for leaks, for there was one, as yet unlocated, in the after section which was causing us much bodily discomfort. I decided we would have to rip the side screens out of the raft to find the leak which was coming from under them and set about doing this before darkness fell, using the blunt-nosed raft knife for the purpose to avoid cutting into any of the flotation chambers.
The continuous contact with the salt water had aggravated our skin eruptions and we all suffered from an increasing number of saltwater boils on our arms and legs, shoulders and buttocks; they were extremely painful when brought in contact with the terylene sail and other rough objects, and would soon present an additional health hazard unless we could keep out of the seawater and stop the eruptions spreading.
We were still examining the raft inch by inch when daylight faded and we settled down to another comfortless night, the constant plying of the bailing cup broken only when the watchkeeper stopped to blow up the flotation chambers.
Day Eighteen
A new arrival in the way of bird life came on this, our first morning in the dinghy; a blue-footed booby circled us curiously and landed in the sea not far away. It preened its feathers and surveyed us with the rather comical expression peculiar to these birds. I caught my breath, then shouted as I saw a shark nosing upwards towards the bird; the booby looked at me curiously, then sensing the presence of danger, stuck its head under the water. The shark, now only a few feet away, moved swiftly towards it, but to my surprise the booby, instead of taking off, pecked at that shark’s nose three or four times, then as the shark turned away, spread its wings and flew off. The shark was young and perhaps just curious, but I wondered how the booby would have fared if it had been an older and hungrier shark.
It had been cold in the night without the shelter from the canopy and we were grateful for the warming sun. After sorting out the meat, discarding the slimy pieces (even the scavenger fish were not interested in them!), we pulled the sea anchor aboard and set the sail, sheeted to the bow. The light southerly breeze allowed us to steer northeast, using the steering oar to hold the dinghy on course; we were on our way again, and with six hundred miles to go, we were nearly halfway to the coast!
Douglas and I had changed places with Lyn and Robin, a precarious business involving much bad language on my part and fearful reaction on theirs, the tiny dinghy tipping dangerously as frantic yells of ‘Trim!’ rent the Pacific air. The change was necessary to allow Douglas and me to steer, for neither Lyn nor Robin could use the steering oar or find the direction in which to steer, and although Douglas could scull expertly this was the first time he had used the oar as a rudder.
As we settled down again, the dinghy only making half a knot in the slight breeze, we talked of the North Staffordshire countryside where Lyn and the children had been born, of rolling hills and valleys in the Peak district. It was at this time that we started talking of the thing that was eventually to become our main topic of conversation: a kitchen-type restaurant in the North Staffordshire town of Leek, to be called Dougal’s Kitchen. It was a wonderful opportunity to talk about food.
Our estimated noon position was 5°30' North, 245 miles west of Cape Espinosa; we had made our first easting since Lucette had sunk and I felt that we were now far enough north to allow some set and drift for the countercurrent which runs east through the Doldrums; we really were on our way home! The sores and boils on our limbs had already begun to dry and while they were still badly inflamed and septic, the surrounding skin felt much better and there was no further extension of the infected areas. Our clothes had begun to disintegrate rapidly now, and our principal concern was to avoid being sunburned on hitherto unexposed parts of our bodies (my contortions to avoid putting pressure on my blistered posterior were sufficient warning to the others); it was the warmth these clothes afforded us at night that concerned us, far more than any moral aspect. Indeed our absence of clothing was never discussed in terms of morality and while the capes that had been cut from the doors of the raft saved us many a night of misery by containing a little of our body warmth, we never wore them during the day unless it rained, our singlets or shirts affording adequate cover from the sun while we exposed the various parts of our distressed anatomy to the dry fresh air. We steered a steady northeasterly course all day and then towards evening the wind freshened a little, building the waves big enough to slop in over the square stern of the dinghy, so with much manoeuvring to maintain an even keel, the steering oar was lashed across the stern, the sail brought aft and sheeted to the two ends of the oar.
This move allowed the dinghy to ride bow onto the waves again and we proceeded more slowly, stern first, but the danger of being swamped by a wave was much lessened. Steering in this position was done by means of pulling the sail down on the side the stern was required to move towards, and we were able to angle the dinghy across the wind by as much as forty-five degrees, if the sea was not too rough, by this method. The fore and aft trim was of much importance now, for if the bow was too light it tended to fall away from the wind, bringing the dinghy broadside to the waves, a most vulnerable position; so I streamed the sea anchor from the bow and left it half-tripped so that it would not hinder our progress too much while keeping the bow pointed to the waves. We also moved the two persons from the back seat into the bottom of the dinghy to give it more forward trim.
With the sea anchor streamed we found we could lash the sail in position, making Ednamair self-steering and allowing us to continue watches as before, but now Lyn insisted that I be spared the necessity of taking a watch at all, for I was liable to be called out at all times and the heavy work of tending rigging and turtle dressing was most onerous in my exhausted condition. (Douglas was quite eager to take his share in dressing turtles but he is heavy handed and I dared not risk breaking the knife again.)
The night closed in on Ednamair, a lonely speck in the vast reaches of the ocean, and as we arranged and rearranged our comfortless limbs we felt that we had conquered a major obstacle to our survival. We could manage to live in the dinghy.
Day Thirty
The gentle breeze fell calm during the night and at dawn the promise of another dry day was reflected in the sunrise. The limpid blue of the sea flashed as the dorado sped under and around Ednamair, then the cry of ‘Turtle!’ from Sandy made us move hastily to our positions, clearing the dinghy for action.
A large stag turtle nosed curiously at a trailing rope, and with a swift grab we secured first one then both back flippers. A wild struggle ensued, for this was a tough one and with painful lacerations to our hands, we finally landed him, lashing out wildly with clawed flippers in the bottom of the dinghy. We secured him, Douglas holding one flipper and snapping beak, Neil and Robin a back flipper each, and myself a front flipper under my knee to have both hands free for the coup de grâce. The tough hide made difficult work of it and we all sustained bruises and cuts to our legs before the deed was done and the turtle lay quiet.
It was well past noon by the time the meat was hanging and the shells and offal dumped. It had been tough work, but the meat was a good deep red and tastier than usual. Neil had helped to collect the fat and Douglas had done his stuff on the flipper bones. Robin had finally been persuaded to help Neil collect the fat but he didn’t seem to have much liking for the job. We nursed our wounds and cut the meat into small pieces for drying in the hot sunshine. The shark was still occupying the rigging, so since there was no wind, the sail was taken down and the small pieces of meat spread out across the stern seat and the centre thwart while we all crouched in the bottom of the dinghy, limbs overlapping in the cramped space.
We lunched well on shark and fresh turtle meat, nibbling at turtle fat afterwards and crunching the bones to extract the rich marrow from the centre. We were all blessed with fairly strong teeth and although the rest of our anatomy suffered in many degrees from the privations we had undergone, our teeth remained clean and unfurred without any external assistance from brushes. The diet obviously suited them!
The sun shone all day, but we suffered it gladly for the drying meat and fish needed every minute of it. The quicker it dried the better it cured so we poured cups of salt water over each other to keep cool and turned the meat over at regular intervals.
It was only when I was making up the log for the day and was about to enter up the small change in our position since noon the day before, that Neil leaned across to me and whispered, ‘Hey, Dad, put this in your log. On the thirtieth day Neil had a shit.’ I looked to see if he was serious; he grinned an impish smile and said, ‘It’s right,’ so I put it in. It was, after all, a fairly remarkable incident and that’s what logs are for, as well as the routine remarks.
While our skin problems were generally improving in a slow sort of way, my hands had become a mass of hacks and cuts. Every time we caught a turtle I usually collected one or two cuts to mark the occasion and this, aggravated with sticking fishhooks into myself, brought the combination of cuts and old boil scars to a pitch where I looked like the victim of some ancient torture. Yet after the initial hurt of these cuts they gave me very little pain and I wondered if the salt water anaesthetised them in some way.
Evening threw quiet shadows over the sea as we packed the drying food under cover for the night. The small pieces of turtle were placed in one section of Lyn’s bamboo sewing basket, while the shark strips, now smelling pretty strongly, were placed in a separate piece of sail. The sea was almost mirror calm and loud splashes broke the unaccustomed silence as dorado leapt after flying fish. A louder splash made the sea foam, as a larger predator, probably a shark, attacked a dorado which leapt desperately to escape. The fins of the larger sharks were never far away but we ignored them now as long as they left us alone.
Slowly the wind rose from the south. At first it was a fine gentle breeze, then blew with increasing force until the breaking tips of the waves gleamed in the darkness.
As Ednamair pitched and yawed, shipping more and more water over the midships section, I set Douglas steering her into the waves while I opened the sea anchor out and adjusted the trim of the dinghy to keep a high, weather side. The squalls strengthened and Douglas and I stood watch on watch, helping the tiny boat through the violence of the rising seas. Lyn and Robin were still unable to steer so that they took over the bailing when necessary. I felt uncomfortable without the assurance of the flotation collar and prepared a strangle cord on the water sleeve to enable me to make it into an airtight float very swiftly if an emergency arose.
The squalls brought rain, intermittent and of moderate precipitation, to make the night cold and uncomfortable. We bailed and sang songs to keep warm, the memory of drought too recent for us to feel churlish with the weather. Collecting rainwater became difficult in the strong wind but we managed to gather enough to rinse the salt out of the sleeve and put a half gallon of good fresh water into it before the rain finally tailed off into a drizzle. The wind eased with the rain, and dawn found us shivering and huddled together, eating dried turtle and shark to comfort our sodden skins. The turtle of yesterday was forgotten in the discomfort of the new day.
Each day had now acquired a built-in objective in that we had to try to gain as much as possible over our reserves of stores and water until there would be enough in stock to get us to the coast. I looked upon each turtle as the last, each fish as the one before I lost the hook, by an error in strike. It only needed a six-inch mistake to make the difference between a dynamic pull of about eighty pounds and one of a hundred and eighty with the consequent breaking of the unevenly tensioned lines, and I knew that sooner or later it had to happen.
Lyn washed and mended our clothes, which now had the appearance of some aboriginal garb. Douglas had only his shirt left (Lyn was trying to sew his shredded undershorts together in some attempt to make him presentable when we reached land); Lyn’s housecoat, now in ribbons, was more ornament than use, and my tattered underpants and vest were stiff with turtle blood and fat. Robin and the twins were in rather better garb, for their labours made less demands on their clothing. I suppose we would have been thought a most indecent lot in civilised society. (On second thoughts, I’ve seen some weird products of modern society whose appearance was rather similar so that perhaps we would merely have been thought a little avant-garde.) Robin and I had beards with unkempt moustaches which hung over our upper lips; saltwater boils and scars covered our arms, legs and buttocks and were scattered on other parts of our anatomy, intermingled with clawmarks from turtles, as well as cuts and scratches from other sources. The adults were not desperately thin but the twins, Neil in particular, had become very emaciated.
Knee cramps troubled us from time to time, but generally speaking, apart from Sandy who had a slight bronchial cough which Lyn’s expert ear had detected the day previously (for she had a constant fear of a static pneumonia developing in our cramped situation), we were in better physical condition than when we had abandoned the raft. Many of our sores had healed and our bodies were functioning again. We were eating and drinking more, and our ability to gnaw bones and suck nutrition from them increased with our knowledge of the easiest ways to attack them.
We were no longer just surviving, but were improving in our physical condition. As I looked around at our little company, only Neil gave me cause for worry, for his thin physique made it difficult to determine whether he was improving or not, and though he was a most imaginative child, he seldom complained unless in real physical pain. Lyn was careful to see that his supplementary diet was kept as high as possible, and I scraped bone marrow to add to the twins’ turtle ‘soup’ (a mixture of pieces of dried turtle, meat juice, water, eggs when available, and fresh or dried fish).
Our thirty-sixth day ended much as it had started; wet, cold and windy, seas slopping into Ednamair as she bounced in the steep short waves, the bailer’s familiar scrape and splash, and the helmsman hunched on the stern and peering at each wave to determine its potential danger to our craft. Robin, trying to snatch forty winks in his ‘off’ time, suddenly sat up with a cry of distress. ‘There’s no meat on my bone!’ he shouted. Then looking at his thumb (which he had been sucking) with a puzzled expression on his face, he lay down to sleep again.
The twins chortled in the bows for an hour afterwards. Late that evening Sandy said he thought he must have ‘done it’ accidentally for there was diarrhoea all over his clothes. I passed Sandy over to Lyn while I cleaned up the sheets, moving Neil around to get the muck cleaned off the dinghy, when Lyn said ‘You’d better send Neil along when I’ve finished with this one, Sandy hasn’t done anything at all!’ Neil’s voice full of injured innocence came from the bow, ‘Well, how was I to know?’ We chortled for half an hour over that one!
Day Thirty-Eight
After breakfast of some raw steak and the flesh of a scavenger fish (which I speared on the end of the knife) marinated in the meat juice collected overnight, we felt more able to see through the day. It hadn’t rained much, and I had a good-sized lump on my head where the shark had left its mark.
A small shower, followed by some drizzle, had increased our water reserves by a pint and the overcast sky gave little prospect of a good drying day, but we hung out the meat in small strips to make the most of it. A large white-tipped shark cruised nearby, reminding me of my lump, and the escort of eight pilot fish in perfect formation across its back lent it the appearance of an underwater aeroplane.
I prepared the gaff while Lyn and Robin sorted out the turtle meat for drying and the twins readjusted the canopy and handed out some strips of dried dorado which needed airing for an hour. We now checked over our considerable amount of dry stores every morning to ensure that it kept in good condition. The fish strips quickly went damp and soggy in the humid atmosphere and the small pieces of turtle meat, if they were allowed to become compacted, warmed up as if affected by spontaneous combustion.
The dorado were reluctant to come near the Ednamair with the shark still cruising around, but after we had made one or two swipes at it with the paddle, it went away. I planned to land another two dorado that morning, one for eating immediately, to save the turtle steak for drying, and the other to increase our already good stocks of dried fish. I angled the gaff towards two likely bull dorado of rather a large size, then a large female shot close above the hook; I struck swiftly and missed, but at that instant a small bull of about fifteen pounds followed the female’s track and my hook sank into it in a perfect strike! The fish flew into the dinghy with unerring precision and it was secured and killed in the space of seconds.
Feeling very pleased with ourselves, we admired the high forehead of the bull while I made some adjustments to the nylon lines which weren’t taking the strain evenly, then I told Douglas to gut it and keep the offal. I had noticed that although the dorado didn’t eat the offal, they gathered round curiously as the scavenger fish fought over it. I had the idea a good fish could be taken unawares at this time, so I had Robin throw some offal over just ahead of the gaff. The scavenger fish rushed in, a boil of foam as they fought over the scraps, while the dorado swooped close by. I chose a twenty-five-pound female dorado and struck.
The hook gave, then with a ripping sound the lines snapped one after the other, and the gaff went light. I looked swiftly at Douglas but he was pulling in the reserve line slowly. ‘Didn’t feel a thing,’ he said. My initial reaction was one of extreme dejection; that fish had gone with our last big hook, no more fresh dorado. The nylon must have been cracked and I failed to notice; the tensions of the lines had been different too or they would have broken together; the disturbed water had probably distorted my aim, but it was no use being wise now, there wasn’t another hook to be wise with. My spirits picked up a little as I realised that our stocks of dorado exceeded those of turtle meat and we had enough of both now to get us to the coast, even if we caught no more fresh turtle to supplement our rations. I still had another small hook to use for inshore fishing if that should be necessary, and if we felt like a taste of fresh fish I could always try a stab at another scavenger fish; we had been fattening them up for a while now, with our regular dumpings of turtle and fish offal.
Noon position 8°21' North and 85 miles west of Espinosa, twelve miles nearer land, was not a great boost to our morale but I pointed out that throughout all the time we had been adrift we had either been becalmed or the wind had been favourable. There hadn’t been a day yet when I had had to record an adverse run. The calming seas also indicated that we might soon be able to row although the heavy cross swell would have to diminish a little too before that would be possible.
Lyn bathed the twins that afternoon and after their daily exercises and a half hour apiece on the centre thwart to move around a bit, they retreated under the canopy again as a heavy shower threatened. The dorado, caught in the morning, now hung in wet strips from the forestay while the drying turtle meat festooned the stays and cross lines which had been rigged to carry the extra load of meat from two turtles. We worked a little on the thole pins, binding canvas on them to save wear on the rope, then realising that we were neglecting the most important job of making a flotation piece, took the unused piece of sleeve and started to bind one end with fishing line. The clouds grew thicker as the afternoon advanced; it was going to be a wet night again and perhaps we would be able to fill the water sleeve. Seven gallons of water seemed like wealth beyond measure in our altered sense of values.
I chopped up some dried turtle meat for tea, and Lyn put it with a little wet fish to soak in meat juice. She spread the dry sheets for the twins under the canopy, then prepared their little supper as we started to talk of Dougal’s Kitchen and if it should have a wine license. As we pondered the delights of Gaelic coffee, my eye, looking past the sail, caught sight of something that wasn’t sea. I stopped talking and stared; the others all looked at me. ‘A ship,’ I said. ‘There’s a ship and it’s coming towards us!’ I could hardly believe it but it seemed solid enough. ‘Keep still now!’ In the sudden surge of excitement, everyone wanted to see. ‘Trim her! We mustn’t capsize now!’ All sank back to their places.
I felt my voice tremble as I told them that I was going to stand on the thwart and hold a flare above the sail. They trimmed the dinghy as I stood on the thwart. ‘Right, hand me a flare, and remember what happened with the last ship we saw!’ They suddenly fell silent in memory of that terrible despondency when our signals had been unnoticed. ‘Oh God!’ prayed Lyn. ‘Please let them see us.’
I could see the ship quite clearly now, a Japanese tunny fisher. Her grey and white paint stood out clearly against the dark cross swell. ‘Like a great white bird,’ Lyn said to the twins, and she would pass within about a mile of us at her nearest approach. I relayed the information as they listened excitedly, the tension of not knowing, of imminent rescue, building like a tangible, touchable, unbearable unreality around me. My eye caught the outlines of two large sharks, a hundred yards to starboard. ‘Watch the trim,’ I warned. ‘We have two man-eating sharks waiting if we capsize!’ Then, ‘I’m going to light the flare now, have the torch ready in case it doesn’t work.’
I ripped the caps off, pulled out the striker and struck the primer. The flare smoked then sparked into life, the red glare illuminating Ednamair and the sea around us in the twilight. I could feel my index finger roasting under the heat of the flare and waved it to and fro to escape the searing heat radiating outwards in the calm air, then unable to bear the heat any longer, I dropped my arm, nearly scorching Lyn’s face, and threw the flare high in the air. It curved in a brilliant arc and dropped into the sea. ‘Hand me another, I think she’s altered course!’ My voice was hoarse with pain and excitement and I felt sick with apprehension that it might only be the ship corkscrewing in the swell, for she had made no signal that she had seen us. The second flare didn’t work. I cursed it in frustrated anguish as the priming substance chipped off instead of lighting. ‘The torch!’ I shouted, but it wasn’t needed, she had seen us, and was coming towards us.
I flopped down on the thwart. ‘Our ordeal is over,’ I said quietly. Lyn and the twins were crying with happiness; Douglas, with tears of joy in his eyes, hugged his mother. Robin laughed and cried at the same time, slapped me on the back and shouted, ‘Wonderful! We’ve done it. Oh! Wonderful!’ I put my arms about Lyn, feeling the tears stinging my own eyes: ‘We’ll get these boys to land after all.’ As we shared our happiness and watched the fishing boat close with us, death could have taken me quite easily just then, for I knew that I would never experience another such pinnacle of contentment.