CHAPTER THREE

Mentors

FROM JANUARY THROUGH APRIL 1935, STERLING HAYDEN WENT TO sea aboard the fishing schooner Gertrude L. Thebaud out of Gloucester. The 132-foot ship carried six dories on either side of her deck. Each dory was sixteen-feet long and manned by two fishermen. In the dead of the freezing winter and amidst the most treacherous sea states, twelve dories would be put in the water. Rowing the dories about a mile from the schooner to the likeliest fishing spot, the sailors would toss overboard the barrel buoy and feed out about a mile of fishing line.¹ Two thousand hooks spaced at intervals of six feet were attached to the line of the trawl. One end was anchored, the other made fast to the dory. In his autobiography, Hayden would describe the terror he felt with such experiences. He tried to make light of it, stating: “Well, he thought, here I am; all my life I’ll be able to say: When I was a kid hauling trawl in a dory down on the Banks in the dead of wintertime …”² The life of a dorytrawler fisherman was succinctly summarized by his fellow dory-mate, a sailor named Jack Hackett. As Hackett told his young colleague: “Boy, lemme tell you, this is a poor fuckin’ way to get rich.”³

He persevered. By April, he had achieved his goal and had $500 deposited in a savings account at the bank. Withdrawing the money, he rented a bicycle and began pedaling up to Maine, a distance of 185 miles. When he finally reached Camden, he scoured the waterfront in search of a boat—what would be his boat. It didn’t take long before a thirty-foot sloop caught his eye. In the ships rigging was a sign announcing: FOR SALE—$450. Renting a small skiff, he paddled around the boat several times, inspecting the hull with a critical eye. Satisfied with what he saw on the outside, he went aboard to inspect the inside. After giving the boat the “third degree,” he liked what he saw. The next day he bought it boat for $400.

At age nineteen, Sterling Hayden owned his very own boat. The sloop was a start, a step in the right direction as he tried to pursue his dream. The boat featured two bunks, a rusty engine, a small wood-burning stove, and new sails. As he had envisioned while sitting at the waterfront on his lunch break from Filene’s the previous Christmas, he named his boat Horizon. Living aboard his new castle, he did what refurbishing he could in preparation for sailing Horizon to her new home—Gloucester. Getting underway in late spring, he headed south for Massachusetts.

About a week later, he approached the port of Gloucester, navigating for the wharves at Rocky Neck. As he pulled into a berth, he noted two schooners docked near him. One was familiar to him—it was the Wander Bird. The other was named Yankee. He would spend the summer sailing, doing more rehab on his boat, and making money by taking tourists on sailing parties. By the end of the summer, however, reality had set in. He was questioning the wisdom of attempting to sail around the world in his little sloop. In addition, he was having problems with the Horizon. He had known that her many of her frames were rotten when he bought the boat, and she leaked like a sieve. It would be insanity to try a long voyage at sea.

• • •

Shortly after he returned to Gloucester, Hayden was working aboard the Horizon when he heard a young man inquire, “How are you?” Looking up, he saw fourteen-year-old Norman Hatch smiling at him. “I’m OK,” he replied. They immediately struck up a conversation. Although Hayden was five years older than Hatch, they had an instant rapport, and their friendship would last their entire lifetimes. Hayden usually stayed aboard the boat at night, and he often invited Norm to stay with him. They would often take groups of women out for cruises.

Impressed with the man who became like a brother to him, Hatch would later describe Sterling Hayden as “the somewhat bashful, restrained and nice guy that I sailed with out of Gloucester for two years.”⁴ Despite his later status as a Hollywood leading man, he would always retain a certain degree of decorum around women, never being vulgar or boastful around them.⁵ Hatch laughed as he recalled that when Hayden’s mother would come looking for him, she would stand on the pier next to the Horizon and yell out, “Steeerrrllinng!” bringing peals of laughter to all of the sailors within earshot and much embarrassment to her son.⁶

Hayden and Hatch would remain close friends until Hatch enlisted in the United States Marine Corps when he was eighteen years old. As the years went by, Sterling would often contact his friend, seeking his counsel at times of crisis. Their high regard for each other would never diminish.

• • •

One afternoon in September, Hayden was asleep in his bunk when he was awakened by the approach of a squall. Leaping up and running on deck, he saw that the anchored Horizon was being driven by the storm directly into the side of the schooner Yankee. He worked feverishly to get his boat’s engine to come alive, but it was to no avail. He worked his mainsail as a group of spectators watched from the dock in the driving rain. The collision appeared imminent when suddenly, “the schooner’s master, stripped to the waist, came flying over the rail to land like a cat on my deck.”⁷ Without speaking a word, the two men worked together to bring Horizon out of danger and into the open water of the harbor. Then, almost as a bonding ritual, the two sailed for about an hour. After the storm had passed, they brought the sloop back to its mooring. Climbing back aboard his schooner, the master turned to Hayden and invited the young man to have dinner with him and his wife aboard their ship. Hayden gladly accepted the invitation.

Hayden was about to meet another key influence in his life. The master of the Yankee was Irving Johnson. As Hayden described Johnson in Wanderer, “They broke the mold when they made him … He was commonly regarded as the finest all-around schooner master on the face of the earth.”⁸ He was a former merchant seaman, author, filmmaker, and adventurer. He had met his wife Electra, known as Exy, aboard the Wander Bird in 1932 when he sailed as mate under Capt. Warwick Tompkins, and the couple married shortly after that. They became inseparable. They had already sailed around the world, and during their life together, he and Exy would circumnavigate the globe multiple times, often taking well-to-do students with them on the eighteen-month voyages. Each student paid the going rate of nearly $5,000. In 1957, at Pitcairn Island, one of their favorite ports of call, they recovered the anchor of the legendary HMS Bounty from its watery grave, where it had rested for nearly two hundred years.⁹

Young Hayden was mesmerized by the Johnsons. Irving was a physically fit specimen of a man, and neither smoked nor drank, making him quite an anomaly among the seamen that Hayden had known. He and Exy were gracious hosts, taking their guest on a tour of their ship. Yankee had been built in 1896 in Holland and the Johnsons bought it in 1933. It was immaculately maintained. The schooner’s main cabin had fourteen bunks and was painted in ivory colors and trimmed with varnished teak. One side of the berthing area contained a wall of solid books. To Hayden, “my eyes were full of a ship that was really a ship.”¹⁰ After the tour, the trio sat down to dinner. The Johnsons were impressed not only with the handsome teenager’s knowledge of sailing but with his manners. As the evening progressed, Johnson started to sense the young man’s potential to be an outstanding sailor.

The conversation continued after dinner and Johnson told his wife about Hayden’s plans to sail solo around the world. Eventually, Johnson leaned forward and made a proposition to his young guest. “A year from now,” he explained, “we start on our second voyage around the world. I’ll be needing a mate … to join the ship in the spring … I can’t pay much; maybe a hundred a month during the summer cruises along the coast … nothing at all on the voyage around the world.

“Now,” Johnson continued, “this isn’t a promise—only a thought, or maybe a hunch. But if you worked for the winter down in the West Indies … picked up some more schooner experience; then you might come on board here in March, and if things worked out all around … you could mate around the world.”¹¹

Hayden could only stammer in response. He had just been offered an opportunity of a lifetime, from the premier schooner master in the world. How could he not pursue this offer, even if it was not a guaranteed job offer? He was so euphoric at the prospect that Johnson had dangled in front of him that he forgot to thank his hosts for the wonderful dinner when he departed the Yankee. Returning to his world aboard his little sloop, Hayden looked around the dismal cabin and compared it to the world he had left minutes before. He had just spent an evening aboard a real sailing ship with a real sailor who was also a real gentleman and whose wife was another fine sailor and a real lady. He knew what he had to do. The next morning, he put up a “For Sale” sign on the mast of the Horizon.

He was heading south.

• • •

His odyssey began immediately and he never took his eye off of the prize. He wanted to sail with Irving Johnson and, as his mentor instructed, he was going to attain the requisite experience that he needed to measure up in Johnson’s eyes. He promptly signed on as a crewmember of the fishing schooner Blue Lagoon, which was departing from Gloucester and heading to Palm Beach, Florida, where her new owner awaited delivery. He arrived in Palm Beach in mid-November, after a storm-wracked passage, and left the ship fifty dollars richer for his efforts. Hitchhiking down to Miami, he settled at Biscayne Park, which had been transformed largely into a vagrant’s camp, crowded with unemployed men, all seeking jobs in the midst of the Depression.

He haunted the riverfront in Miami, seeking a job aboard anything that sailed, but there were almost none to be had. After working various odd jobs, he was able to get a series of short-lived jobs on various ships sailing out of Miami. His skills as a seaman having been noted, he was hired as the captain of a sixty-foot schooner sailing from Miami. On the last day of February, one of the owners approached him, clutching a piece of paper in his hand. It was a telegram from the United States. It read: “LOOKING FORWARD YOUR ARRIVAL SCHOONER YANKEE AS MATE VESSEL LAID UP AT RUDDOCK’S SHIPYARD GREENWICH REGARDS JOHNSON.”¹² It was the moment that he had worked so hard for all of the previous months. He was going to go around the world in a first-class schooner, captained by a world-class sailor. He was going to be first mate. The dream was coming true.

The next day Sterling Hayden was once again riding the rails, heading north.

• • •

He arrived at the pier, sea bag slung over his shoulder, on March 26, 1936—his twentieth birthday. At the end of the pier, the Yankee was moored, looking all the more majestic to its new mate. He described his excitement in his autobiography: “An idyll was in the making. For thirty months I dwelled in a land so bathed in golden sunshine, so placid, so laden with charms and new sensations, that I was all but entranced.”¹³ He promptly reported aboard to the captain, Irving Johnson, a man for whom his admiration knew no bounds.

As mate, he was second in command and ran the ship for the captain, carrying out his orders and policies. It was a daunting responsibility for a twenty-year-old, yet Hayden chose to downplay his role to a degree, noting that Johnson supplied the driving force, the crew supplied the cash and whatever muscle was needed, and he was a go-between, an interpreter in the ways of the sea for the assortment of “well-heeled vagabonds.”¹⁴ The vagabonds—the wealthy young people who actually comprised the paying crew—consisted of twelve young men and two young women, each of whom had paid several thousand dollars to be part of the adventure. Other than a paid cook, Johnson’s only other crewmembers were his wife Exy and their baby son.

One of the “well-heeled vagabonds” that comprised the crew was a young man who was a year younger than Hayden. His name was David Donovan and he was listed on the crew roster as the engineer.¹⁵ The friendship that developed between Hayden and Donovan would have a significant impact on Sterling Hayden’s life over the next few years. Donovan was the son of legendary World War I hero and Medal of Honor recipient William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan. William Donovan was now a highly successful Wall Street lawyer and international traveler, and a troubleshooter for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He had run unsuccessfully for the governorship of New York in 1932 and, despite the fact he was a Republican, he and Roosevelt were kindred spirits. David Donovan had dropped out of Harvard after two years and was scheduled to enroll in Cornell University for the 1939 fall semester after returning from Yankee’s voyage.¹⁶

Throughout the summer, they trained aboard the Yankee. Taking charter crews all along the New England coast, they would return to Gloucester, their base of operations, for restocking provisions and refueling. By the fall, they were ready. Johnson had decided that they would get underway for Yankee’s second around-the-world voyage on November 1, 1936.

Yankee departed on schedule and headed south. It was a new experience for Hayden, his first time at sea that he would describe as tranquil. Traversing the Panama Canal, they explored the Galapagos Islands and, by February 1937, they arrived at Easter Island, the remote island famous for its mysterious statues, called moai. From there they sailed westward 1,300 a to Pitcairn Island, the famous final destination of the HMS Bounty mutineers. By the time they arrived at Tahiti, Hayden was already envisioning the perfect ship for his own purposes, one that would be very much like Yankee.

In spite of the success that the expedition was having and his fine performance as mate, the self-doubt that would plague Sterling Hayden for the rest of his life had already begun to set in. Was he more suited to be a mate than a ship’s master? he wondered. Was it the inspiring leadership of Irving Johnson that was actually responsible for any success that the expedition was enjoying? Johnson’s skillset differed greatly from his own. Johnson was knowledgeable about matters of finance, organization, and interpersonal skills—all qualities Hayden knew he lacked. In contrast to the pragmatic Johnson, Hayden was a free spirit, a romantic, a man who couldn’t even balance a checkbook. Johnson was a disciplined teetotaler who avoided tobacco and alcohol, two vices that Hayden vowed that he, too, would try to resist. He also saw that Johnson was tolerant of others, even people he didn’t respect. In contrast, Hayden lacked this quality. He became determined to try and emulate his mentor as much as he could, and he decided to pursue his dream to become the master of a schooner.¹⁷

When the Yankee moored at Bali, Indonesia, on September 1, 1937, it picked up two additional crewmembers for the final leg back to the United States and Gloucester. David Donovan’s mother Ruth and sister Patricia joined the crew, with Ruth officially listed as “blacksmith” and Patricia listed as “cooper.”¹⁸

Yankee completed its successful circumnavigation of the globe on May 1, 1938, when it arrived back at its homeport of Gloucester. During the eighteen-month voyage, Hayden had only spent one night ashore, when the ship was anchored at Pitcairn Island. He knew he had performed creditably as mate and had tremendously burnished his seagoing resume. The highest praise of Hayden’s performance was offered by Irving Johnson himself. Writing about his voyage in his 1939 book Sailing to See: Picture Cruise in the Schooner Yankee, Johnson described his mate thusly: “Sterling Hayden of Gloucester, the first mate, was that rare find, a born sailor, a ‘natural.’ This is the greatest quality a man can hope to find in a man to whom he will at times have to entrust the command of his ship. In addition, he had the ability to assume authority, and apparently that too was innate. He gave orders easily and they were followed unquestioningly, though most of those under him were older than this twenty-year-old mate.”¹⁹

• • •

After their return, Hayden stayed on as mate aboard the Yankee. The schooner would continue to work the New England coast throughout the spring and summer. It was on a trip from Penobscot Bay in Maine in July that a very special passenger came aboard. Hayden saw the launch approaching the schooner with a dozen Girl Scouts aboard, and also one distinctive looking passenger. The launch pulled alongside and the passengers boarded the schooner. At that moment, Sterling Hayden got the first close look at another man who would have a great impact on his life. He was a rugged, handsome man who looked like he belonged on a ship. His name was Lincoln Colcord, and the Yankee would be taking him to his hometown of Searsport, Maine.

Just as Irving Johnson was a superb sailor with a multitude of talents, Lincoln Colcord was another Renaissance man. He had literally been born at sea on August 14, 1883, aboard the sailing ship Charlotte A. Littlefield in the midst of a raging storm as the ship rounded Cape Horn in the middle of winter. His father was the ship’s captain and his mother had already given birth to Lincoln’s sister at sea during a previous voyage. At the age of twenty-six, the journey aboard the Charlotte A. Littlefield from Valparaiso to New York City was his father’s first command.

Colcord attended the University of Maine, majoring in civil engineering. He first achieved fame in 1904 when he wrote the lyrics to the university’s fight song, entitled “The Stein Song.”²⁰ In 1930, crooner Rudy Vallee would record a version of the song that stayed at the number one hit spot in the United States for eight weeks.²¹ After graduation, he worked for a while on the railroad, but shortly after that began publishing short stories and poems, most of which had a nautical theme. In 1912, he published his first major novel, The Drifting Diamond, and he followed it up in 1915 with a book-length poem in free verse entitled Vision of War. Both were literary successes. For a while, he worked as a newspaper correspondent and for a year served as associate editor of the leftist journal The Nation.²²

In 1927, Colcord convinced Norwegian writer Ole Rolvaag to translate his classic book Giants in the Earth from Norwegian into English. Colcord took the crude translation and rewrote the book into a cogent version of the novel for English-speaking audiences. During the 1930s, he continued to dedicate his efforts to two endeavors: going to sea in sailing ships, and writing about the sea.

Once aboard Yankee, Johnson offered his distinguished guest the opportunity to take the helm for a while. Colcord declined, instead requesting a tankard of rum. Johnson informed him that his was a dry ship, explaining that it was better that way, considering the long distance voyaging that was their routine. The astonished Colcord blurted out, “No! You don’t say. A dry ship. Well, I’ll be goddamned!”²³ This was Sterling Hayden’s first exposure to the famous Lincoln Colcord. Both Johnson and Colcord were superb sea captains, but they represented the opposite ends of the spectrum as far as personal discipline and temperament were concerned. Hayden now had two role models to emulate, but he would be unable to follow the example of the self-disciplined Johnson. Instead, in many ways his life would mirror that of the free-spirited Lincoln Colcord.

During the short trip to Searsport, Colcord took a liking to the ship’s young mate despite their thirty-three-year age difference. After docking, he invited Hayden to stroll with him through the streets of the town. Detecting real potential in his new young friend, he invited him home to have dinner with him and his wife Frances. Hayden gratefully accepted. Upon entering the famous man’s house, he was immediately struck with its maritime beauty. Gazing at the multiple paintings of ships and exotic ports of call on the walls, and the huge collection of books that were located all over the house, he was, in his own words, awed. “This is a home,” he recalled. “This is what people mean when they talk about home, not the houses in the suburbs like we used to have, not the hotels and the fancy apartments and all that—just an old white house by the water—feeling its way into the life of the village.”²⁴

As they relaxed, Colcord offered his young guest a glass of rum. To his surprise, Hayden told him that he did not drink. When asked why, Hayden replied that he thought he just didn’t care for it. “Nonsense,” shot back his new mentor. “You don’t drink because you’ve been taught it was wrong.” Taking a swipe at Irving Johnson, he continued: “You don’t drink because that goddamn Boy Scout of a skipper—he’s a good seaman, understand—he doesn’t drink, right?” Upon further questioning, Hayden also admitted to Colcord that he didn’t smoke. Throughout the conversation, Hayden always addressed the Colcords as “sir” or “ma’am.”

“Don’t call me Mister and don’t call me sir, … you and I are going to have a talk,” lectured Colcord. “I’ve had my eye on you all afternoon. Johnson tells me you’re the best mate he ever had. That may be. But you’re all tensed up. That’s bad.”²⁵

As his new mentor continued on, Hayden began to reflect on this lifestyle. He had just spent two and a half years aboard the Yankee, reading journals and books, not smoking or drinking. In his own words, he was skimming the world, looking at it from a distance. He suddenly made a decision right then and there—he asked his host for some of the rum. It was his first taste of alcohol and he enjoyed it.

Colcord pressed on. What did the crew do when they reached Tahiti? Did they all get stinking drunk? No, Hayden replied, they had all gone ashore for ice cream and milk. The astonished host exploded. “Ice cream and milk! Frances! Did you hear that? Hayden here says when they were in Tahiti there wasn’t any drinking. Instead they went for ice cream. Good God!”²⁶

The topic shifted to politics, with Colcord asking what he thought of President Roosevelt. Hayden was ignorant about the politics of the time, but Colcord vented on the evils of FDR and railed that he was leading the country to war. Hayden shifted the conversation to ships, asking for advice about which type of sailing ship would be the best with which to circumnavigate the globe. Colcord then expressed his disgust at Irving Johnson’s business of “farting around the world with a group of spoiled kids fresh from school in search of pleasure. Gawd!” Be your own man, he advised Hayden. “You say you’d like to write. Well, damn it, son, go ahead. Write.”²⁷

Towards the end of the evening, Colcord inquired about Hayden’s sexual experience, much to the embarrassment of his wife who tried to caution him about such talk. “Well, I’m worried about our young friend here,” Colcord explained. “I’m very much afraid he’s a hell of a good mate but he’s long overdue when it comes to discovering life. Wouldn’t you say?” Frances countered by asking what Colcord was doing when he was Hayden’s age other than going to the university. Colcord replied in detail. “Sure I was,” he agreed. “Writing songs and making socialist speeches and screwing girls and getting drunk and laughing like hell and getting mad. That’s good. That’s life. This boy has been working his ass off since he was fifteen and he’s still just a child inside.”²⁸

The hour grew late and it was time for Hayden to leave. As they traveled through the village toward the wharf, Colcord told Hayden that he hoped he hadn’t made him feel bad about anything that had been discussed. An intoxicated Hayden assured him that he was fine. Good, the older man replied. Paying Hayden the ultimate compliment, Colcord declared, he was “a damn good sailorman.”

As he lay in his bunk aboard the Yankee that night, Colcord’s words no doubt reverberated in his thoughts. Here, almost simultaneously, he had been exposed to two highly different influences, both of whom were examples of the sailor he hoped to become. They had totally opposite approaches to life, but shared a passion for sailing. Johnson was the disciplined, pragmatic man who lived life on his own terms, wrote several books, and would ultimately make nine around-the-world voyages. Colcord, too, was a master sailor, and his life at sea was combined with his passion for writing as well. But whereas Johnson, the teetotaler, was pristine in his personal habits, Colcord’s life was intertwined with alcohol, tobacco, whoring, and a hedonistic approach to life. It’s unlikely that twenty-two-year-old Sterling Hayden made a conscious decision that night, but as his life progressed, when it came to smoking and alcohol, it would in many ways mirror the life of his latest mentor—Lincoln Colcord.