We who adventure upon the sea, however humbly, cannot feel but we are more fortunate than ordinary people.
CLAUD WORTH, YACHT CRUISING
‘I don’t care,’ Peter said, ‘whether we go to Alaska or New Zealand. I just want a good sail.’
I liked it. Straightforward. No hint of a secret agenda. Here, I thought, was someone to whom I could relate and get along with over an extended ocean passage, and more importantly there was a suggestion that he might even get along with me. The setting for this conversation was in an officers’ club in London’s Cromwell Road and it was Easter 1953. This ‘constructive dialogue’ was one of several held with a variety of people over that weekend, the objective being to find someone prepared to throw their lot in with me on a small boat passage from England to New Zealand via the South Seas. I was not certain, though, how successful this quest for a crew would work out. It might be a tall order to find individuals prepared to give up their present settled existence and sail off with a complete stranger to the other side of the globe to a totally new life. It could be assumed that if there were any such souls, they would be thinking in terms of a one-way passage. In those days, the protracted time as well as the cost involved in overseas travel by ship severely restricted people’s ability to travel. Here, however, in the form of Peter, I had someone who was relaxed about all this: he just wanted ‘a good sail’. Great!
The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.
R WALDO EMERSON
I had hoped that a ‘crew wanted’ advertisement in the appropriate media might perhaps unearth what potential there was – expected, at best, to be small. If any correspondence ensued it would be followed up by a face-to-face meeting with the brave hearts who responded. As it was to a turn out, the problem was not in getting a response but in dealing with the numbers who did respond. One difficulty was my own position in the scheme of things. As an engineer officer with specific flight deck responsibilities in the new aircraft carrier HMS Eagle, my time was not my own. The Eagle’s role was to facilitate the changeover in the navy’s air arm from propeller propulsion to jet power. As this involved a considerable amount of sea time, face-to-face interviews with potential crew were difficult to arrange.
The quest for a crew was another step on the road to achieving a long-held ambition to experience the joys or otherwise of long-distance cruising under sail, and more especially in my own boat. Since a young age I had read most of the books of small-boat voyages, commencing with the pioneering Captain Joshua Slocum, whose entertaining account of a remarkable, and at the time unique, circumnavigation (published by Adlard Coles Nautical in 2003), had set the pattern for an elite group of adventurers: Voss, Robinson, Gerbault and the like. Independently minded and self-reliant, they achieved their ‘groundbreaking’ goals unaided and unsupported. They were a world apart from their modern equivalents who are armed with unbelievably clever navigation and communication aids, coupled, moreover, with constant contact with outside assistance the moment something goes wrong. Reading those historic accounts, the essential difference between then and now jumps. The early sailors were at one with the sea and the elements around them. Their world was what they could see, hear and feel on a flat disc surrounding them of three miles radius. They were completely alone in that world. Not any more. Technology has put paid to that oneness with the elemental world. It was to be my good fortune and happy fate to participate in and enjoy small-boat cruising the way it was, before the explosion in scientific development was to sweep away that simple empathy with the sea.
I had joined Eagle in Belfast when she was still in the hands of her builders, Harland and Wolff, during the ‘troubles’. The ensuing commission in her had been a rewarding and eventful experience, but that was now coming to an end, with my presence being required back in New Zealand to join another ship. What better way to make that journey than in my own boat? That would satisfy that long-dormant desire for an ocean passage under sail. The rather tortuous path to fulfilment now got under way.
Before anything could happen I needed approval from my overlord, the navy. The normal mode of travel in those days was by passenger liner, long-haul flying being still in its infancy. As an ocean liner passage from Southampton via the Cape of Good Hope to Auckland was, in any event, going to take many weeks, I harboured the thought that the naval authorities in New Zealand might be sympathetic to my alternative transport proposal. They were. The Admiralty was also co-operative, in that I was loaned the two essential tools for ocean voyaging; an Admiralty-pattern micrometer sextant and a chronometer watch. The choice of timepieces lay between a deck watch and the more accurate chronometer watch. The former was frequently used in ships to take the time of the astronomical observation out on deck and relate that to the more precise time kept by the main chronometer down below. The deck watch would have done the job if fairly frequent radio time signals could have been procured, but as I could not be too sure about this I asked for and received the more accurate and correspondingly more expensive chronometer watch. Their Lordships were most obliging. Would the MOD be so today?
Approval had not been a foregone conclusion by any means, as ‘human resource management’ to foster personal development through adventure activity was not then the fashionable concept that it is today. A condition of approval, however, was that for the duration of the trip I would not enjoy receiving any pay. Also I was not to dawdle on the way, indulging myself on a supposedly carefree jaunt whilst my fellow officers were sweating it out on the job. However, there was an upside, in that I would be given a lump sum of cash, the equivalent of what my fare would have cost in a passenger ship. This was most welcome, as the expected outlay on the venture could raise the distinct possibility of an invitation for a chat, probably unsatisfactory to both parties, with the bank manager. The no-pay ruling was presumably based on the principle that whilst out of the mainstream of naval service, gratifying a personal whim, I was contributing nothing to the defence of the realm. However, the same could be said for the period I was out of the front line whilst enjoying shipboard romances and equally not in circulation in an ocean liner, unable to respond to a call to arms. Accordingly it might have been arguable that I could reasonably have expected to have been paid for the anticipated time such a passage would have taken. However, not wanting to push my luck, I did not advance this proposition.
Armed with the necessary approbation, I could now proceed with the twin basic tasks of finding a crew and a boat.
The start point for the crew search would seem logically to be the yachting press. Sure enough, as soon as the advertisement ‘Crew wanted by young naval officer for small-boat passage to New Zealand’ appeared on the shelves, it brought a response: not the trickle I expected but a veritable flood. The letters just kept rolling in. All ages, working people, retired, both sexes and a surprising range of backgrounds. What I was looking for, of course, were those whose principal motivation lay in sailing, and although those individuals were naturally well represented, the correspondence began to reveal there were wider issues at stake. It became apparent that there were many ‘out there’ within the public at large who wanted badly to emigrate to the New World, particularly the Commonwealth, and this was a way to do it within reach of their pockets. In the context of post-war Britain, the urge to get away, if it could be afforded, was so understandable. The state had not yet stepped in with subsidised travel and assisted overseas settlement – ‘the ‘£10 Poms’.
The quest for a crew was to put me in touch with a wide section of everyday existence. Widespread dissatisfaction with the aftermath of the war, pessimism about the future, ongoing food and commodity shortages and an overall lack of faith in the country’s governance were very evident. Disillusionment with what their political leaders had brought about was dominant in the mood of many. Two world wars had been fought. Why? The origins of the 1914–18 Great War had never been clear, but what was clear was that it should not have been fought.
It was easy to apply the same scepticism to its successor, World War II. At its end, Great Britain had seemingly been victorious, but in terms of people’s daily lives the perception was different. The country was bankrupt, vast numbers had lost their lives and the ranks of the young were decimated.
The population as a whole had made tremendous sacrifices, all in the cause of achieving security. So where was the security?
The international tensions that had been building up between the two world wars were now re-emerging yet again, albeit with different principal actors, but deepening in a form far more sinister and threatening. So much for the security that the British people had been assured twice during the century would be their reward for going to war. They had been told that defeating Hitler was necessary to save them from death and destruction. The policy makers brushed aside the fact that Hitler had made it clear enough that he did not want a fight with Great Britain, stating repeatedly in speeches and writings that his objective was to defeat Communism and expand Germany eastward by taking land from Russia. The Russians, the real enemy, were in his sights, not the British. On this premise there was a body of opinion that claimed Britain would have been better advised not to have declared war on Germany in 1939, but instead to have stood aside and left Germany and Russia to fight each other to a standstill and complete exhaustion. Britain, Europe and much of the world would then have been spared the horrors of total war.
The post-war threat now looming on the horizon was infinitely worse than the pre-World War II threat: total nuclear annihilation. So what had the blood, sweat and tears been all about? No wonder disillusionment with the ‘Establishment’ had become the popular attitude. Churchill, far from being appreciated as the nation’s wartime saviour, was thrown out in the 1945 end-of-war general election. It was he who had been a dominant proclaimer of doom in the 1930s, leading the non-appeasement lobby with an aggressive, hostile policy towards Nazi Germany – an attitude not universally adopted by the British population. Included in the dissenting ranks, it would seem, was Aneurin Bevan, the father of the NHS.
‘Winston Churchill does not talk the language of the 20th century but that of the 18th. He is still fighting Blenheim all over again. His only answer to a difficult situation is to send a gunboat’.
There was, in the immediate aftermath of the war, a view that Churchill had resolved a conflict which he had played a major role in starting in the first place – all, it could be argued, in his pursuit of personal ambition for power and influence at a time when his political fortunes were at a low ebb. The returned servicemen and women, coupled with those who had taken the strain at home, had had enough. They had been asked by the politicians to endure the dangers and hardships:
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.
But what they had been promised had not happened. It was not surprising that I had received such a positive response to my advertisement.
However, I was not setting myself up to resolve these social problems by supplying an emigration facility. I was primarily seeking to make contact with those who had an overriding interest in ocean voyaging. If this offered an opening to a new life, that would be all to the good. A bonus.
To sort out the motivation behind the applications, a shortlist was compiled which entailed a not inconsiderable volume of correspondence; so much so that ‘postie’, the ship’s postman, was overheard to make an expressive comment when delivering the wardroom mail about my personal responsibility for the unwanted addition to his workload. But then he always seemed to convey the impression that having to handle mail was an unfair imposition on him.
The respondents had included in their number several females. I pondered long and hard on this. In the 50s, attitudes to mixed crews in the confines of a small boat, particularly on an extended voyage, were very different to what they are today. Although the war had removed many of the taboos, there was still a degree of conservatism in society’s feelings about such questions. There being a certain ambivalence on my part, I decided to play safe and have an all-male crew.
Nubile young women would not necessarily be out of place, but if I needed any further reassurance about my decision, a prescient philosopher added a timely warning:
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.
RAYMOND CHANDLER
With the list of possible candidates having been compiled, the next step was to interview them. I was quite well known in that London officers’ club, and having secured the secretary’s interest, a phased programme of meetings was set up with the candidates over the Easter weekend, Eagle being in harbour for this event. To put some consistency into the interviews and provide a basis for subsequent analysis of the responses, the methodology was to draw up a list of set questions to be asked of all interviewees. One such question, bearing in mind Dr Johnson’s observation that ‘being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of drowning’, was ‘Why do you want to set off on a long ocean cruise with all the discomfort, risk and restriction of being stuck in a small boat, miles from any land and no means of escape?’ I must admit this was a question to which I personally had no ready answer. The last question on the list, and probably the most important, comprised: ‘After our chat, how do you feel about having to live with me, with no respite, for a month or more way out at sea?’ Unsurprisingly everyone was most tactful when answering this one.
Peter Fox came out clearly the front runner. I felt happy about him and I sensed he harboured the same sentiment in return. He was employed as a quantity surveyor with Portsmouth City Council, was single and hence had no family commitments.
One of the stock questions put to all concerned their state of health. In Peter’s case he was all clear, apart from the occasional bout of asthma. We had both heard it said that a complete change of environment was beneficial. What could be more of a change than exchanging urban life for one on the ocean wave? We decided that his unfortunate complaint would not be a problem. In fact, although not occurring all that often, it was to cause difficulties.
Following the weekend’s interview I had the task of breaking the news to the unsuccessful ones. I did not enjoy this. There had been so much hope. I had not been relaxed during the interviewing sessions, which had left me with the uncomfortable feeling I was some sort of jumped-up Lord Muck, holding ordinary people’s future in my hands. I sought consolation in the thought that for many of them the likelihood was that escaping from home would not in reality have fulfilled their hopes.
The crew question resolved, it was a matter of settling on the boat. By now, this was in fact well under way.
‘Don’t mind if I do, sir. Mine’s a mild and bitter. A pint. Me mates ’ere will have the same, thanking yer kindly.’ Alf and his friends were helping me cope with a raw winter’s evening huddled in the near warmth of a public house in Woodbridge on England’s east coast. It was mid December and it was cold. Very cold. That part of the country has a special brand of bleakness. The all-too-frequent wind comes off the North Sea, cutting into one’s bones, as Masefield would say, ‘like a whetted knife’. The flat countryside offers no protection to the strong onshore winds from the North Sea that mercilessly sweep over the mud flats, up the rivers and across the low contoured land.
Tern II had recently become mine and was lying in a mud berth in Robertsons Boatyard, up the Deben River and near to Woodbridge town centre. I had a week’s leave in the run-up to Christmas and had a plan to spend it in the boat, getting to know her. To this end, I had acquired a paraffin heater and some bedding, and after laying in basic food stocks, I moved in. Night comes early in midwinter, particularly in those parts, and by late afternoon the yard was immersed in darkness and deserted. I suddenly felt very alone. The only sound was a low whining, the wind playing amongst the masts and threading through the rigging of the boats laid up in the yard. The steady inhuman note emphasised that aloneness. Despite the heater giving its utmost, the boat was cold and so was I. I retired to the pub. This was to become the pattern for the rest of the week.
Alf and company were pleased to see me. Strangers were always welcome, particularly when they had the chance to assist with the flow of beer. I also provided them with the lucrative opportunity to impart their pearls of public bar wisdom on a captive receiver.
Alf and his mates were good company, and the outlay on all that beer was well worth it, saving me from the cold, lonely nights in that dismal, dark boatyard. They were practised tellers of entertaining salty yarns of doubtful veracity, or perhaps one should say brackish yarns, as Woodbridge and its pub are some way up the Deben.
The search for the boat had turned out to be quite easy. Snatching weekends away from the ship, I had looked at several, principally through another advertisement I had placed in Yachting Monthly. Post-war England was a buyers’ market. Up came a boat further along the coast. She was called Petula, and I liked her but decided against. As it happened I was to meet with her again. That was to be in Lisbon and again in the Canaries.
Tern II then came up on offer and it was love at first sight. She had an air about her and I liked that air. She looked strong, with beautiful, classic lines. Moreover, closer inspection indicated she was in good condition and her gear sound. She had obviously been well looked after and cared for throughout her life. To do ‘the right thing’, I called in the local boat surveyor. He was young and relaxed, joining me for a beer and a chat. After a stroll through the boat and opening a few cupboards he pronounced her ‘fit for the purpose’. She had, he said, ‘a good smell about her’. After presenting his bill and being paid, he departed, leaving me wondering if I was in the wrong profession.
Tern II was the second of the well-known series of boats of ever increasing size owned by the legendary Claud Worth, author and doyen of cruising sailors in the first part of the 20th century. Tern III was to be lost at sea, but Tern IV and Tern II, at the time of writing, are mercifully still with us. My Tern, a gaff yawl, 39 foot on deck and built in 1899, was straight of stem, with a long graceful counter and long straight keel, deep enough to allow a flush deck with skylights. Although born in the ‘plank-on-edge era’, narrow and deep in section, she had more beam than others of her kind; consequently there was more space down below without, moreover, the same proclivity as others of the type to go ‘on her ear’ when sailing on the wind. Now well into middle age, she was little changed from Claud’s days. The galley was forward in the bows, which also contained a fold-up pipe cot which would have allowed for a paid hand to get on with the cooking without intruding on life in the saloon.
Crew and the owner’s ensemble, of course, did not mix. The saloon was a delight: two settees with brocaded squabs. The backrests formed the base of pull-down bunks, which remained discreetly out of sight when not in use, putting on display the beautifully grained, polished, wooden joinery of Spanish timber. The boat’s interior, although faded and darkened with age, was still elegant, with a warm intimacy, particularly at night under the brass oil lamps. Between the saloon and the forepeak was the heads compartment, closed off by doors on its forward and after ends, fitted out with a hanging wardrobe with mirrored panelled doors, and drawers in a sideboard. A tip-up washbasin emptied into the toilet bowl. This was a space which enabled the owner, owner’s wife and guests to change their attire in privacy, considered essential in those days. The compartment was referred to by Claud Worth in his writings about the boat as ‘a commodious dressingroom with a separate skylight’.
The bringing of Tern round to Plymouth from Woodbridge was an educational experience, involving a study of human performance, whilst engaged at the same time with the practice of coastal navigation and getting to know how the old lady liked to be treated.
For this exercise I could not complain about being undermanned. As Peter could not sail with me, he sent along a close friend, another dinghy sailor, Harry. He was to prove a real asset. In addition, there were two serving naval officers who were to prove decidedly non-assets, at least during the early part of the ensuing passage. They tended to reinforce the old maxim about the three most useless objects in a small boat being a naval officer, a wheelbarrow and an umbrella. I am not sure where this leaves me, though.
The Deben has its fair share of shallow patches and we found them in the most positive way. We stuck on them.
We emerged, however, into the North Sea relatively unscathed, apart from a little emotional wear and tear, and turned south to negotiate the Dover Strait, with its sandbanks and the perils of shipping congestion. It was getting dark, damp and raw with, of course, that penetrating east wind. In other words, a typical east coast night was drawing on. I can defend that statement on the basis of previous experience sailing those waters. I had been there before as a voluntarily unpaid mate of a trading Thames barge, Clara. One of the last of her kind, a true ‘spritty’ as the bargemen would say, earning her living carrying cargo, frequently wheat, in and out of London Docks, engineless and with the bare minimum of crew. Built in 1896, of 60 tons and carrying more than twice that in cargo, she had remained largely unchanged over the years. In her and under her skipper/ owner, the incomparable Captain Banyard, I learned about real sailorising. I also learned something about the shifting sands in those parts.
In a night similar to the one we were about to experience in Tern, we put our deeply laden barge firmly on to the seaward end of a sandspit and there we stuck; the prospects, at least as they seemed to me, were not promising. Aground on a lee shore, a hefty wind blowing us further on, dismal, drizzly rain, and the night as dark as ‘the inside of a cow’. No engine and no radio to seek help, as we would do in present times. Our fate lay in the hands of my captain, who turned not a hair. ‘Nothing more to do now, lad, until the tide makes again and we sail off. Time we had a mug of tea down below.’ Sail off she did. The Magic of the Swatchways may have immortalised that sailing area but there was little evidence of any ‘magic’ during our dismal night. In the times I sailed with him, not once did he ever raise his voice, no matter how adverse the circumstances. Like the rest of his breed, he was ‘imperturbable and solid’.
The London River, and particularly the dock systems then, were unbelievably different to the nothingness of what they are today. In the ’50s Britain was still a major maritime nation, and London Docks the centre of the shipping world. The congestion of craft was bewildering in variety – passenger liners, cargo ships, tugs, lighters, barges, and coastal vessels of all sizes and shapes in the Thames waterways. Through this lot in the river and the docks themselves, filled with ships, bow to stern, the humble barge under sail alone had to find her way, relying solely on the skill of master and crew. It seemed there was a permanent war between the different denizens of the river. Lightermen, in particular, seemed to go out of their way to make life difficult for the bargemen.
I had my first encounter with the docks way of life when I joined Clara on a damp, unpromising evening as she was finishing loading a cargo of wheat. On my way down to where she had been loading, I had noticed one or two little groups of men engaged in earnest discussion, the reason for which was explained to me later. They were concerned about a particular instance of docks thievery and corruption, not with a view of finding a way to correct an undesirable situation, but rather what damage limitation exercise should be mounted. Bulk cargoes, such as wheat, were loaded into barges and lighters via a chute fed from an elevated hopper, each installation being under the control of a loading master. There was no independent monitoring of what he actually loaded and what he said he had loaded. Systematic abuse, in sophisticated ways, of the loading regime had been standard practice for a long time but beneficiaries of it had suddenly become worried. One loading master had recently ‘got religion’ and now felt it was his God-driven mission to spill the beans, hence the groups of concerned men.
We put the hatch covers on and sailed at midnight. With the tide under us we breasted the broken waters of the river with the wind fully in our teeth. It was uncomfortable going, the night raw and miserable in the persistent drizzle. When going about, the mate’s task was to tend the foresail, and to do so he had to get forward. With the head sea we were taking solid water on board, filling the decks and sluicing over the hatch. Waiting for the barge to lift and throw off the load of water, it was a question of judgement when to make a dash for the mast, running along the top of the hatch cover. Meanwhile, the master was putting the wheel over to bring the bows through the wind. As the barge came head-to-wind the foresail would come aback, held by a bowline, blowing the bows over onto the other tack. The mate then released the bowline, the foresail crashing over to fill on the new tack. Its sheet was a bight of chain running on a massive wooden beam across the foredeck. It was a big, heavy sail and one had to be careful to keep well out of its way when it came hurtling across, otherwise there could be an unwelcome outcome.
In the early hours, the tide turned against us and it was a case of anchoring to hold our ground. This was again an operation not without its risks. The mate was also central to this somewhat cumbersome procedure. The main bower anchor, a big fisherman type, was permanently over the side, close up to the bow, held there by the anchor chain. This had three turns round the horizontal wooden drum of the windlass which could only turn in one direction: to heave in. To let the anchor go, the turns were lifted off with one’s fingers, whereupon the cable rushed out. The mate’s part in the working of a barge was exacting and at times downright dangerous.
Compare the scene with today. The waters of the docks are dead, apart from brave attempts at yacht berths. The soul has gone, replaced with graceless high-rise buildings, an ill-conceived dome, a glitzy exhibition building and not much else.
At the beginning of the 1950s, when I became involved with Thames barges, there were 50 or more, mainly wooden, still trading under sail alone, with the first built in 1889 and the last, in steel, in 1925. It was sad that these graceful craft were vanishing, taking with them the sea lore and the skills needed to sail them. It is of some consolation that quite a few have survived in the form of auxiliary yachts, but it has to be accepted that the essential spirit of the time-venerated Thames spritsail barge, the spritty, has gone.
I was so privileged, albeit in a small peripheral way, to have experienced, in the form of barging life, commercial sail before it vanished for ever. When I had a couple of weeks’ leave coming up I would contact Captain Banyard, who always seemed happy for me to join him. At the time, true sailing barges were giving way to motorised versions, hybrids which retained the main gear but had the mizzen mast removed, a wheelhouse erected in its place and a diesel engine installed. I was to sail once in one and life was certainly much easier on the mate, but the barge had lost its heart. This transition saw a change in the character of the young man contemplating a career in barges. Progressively, those offering themselves for this vocation were disinclined to take up the life of third hand or mate in a sailing barge with all that that entailed in hard living and hard work. Motor barges were vastly easier, the work less demanding and less skilled, as well as better paid. This was the situation facing my captain, who remained true to the profession in which he had been brought up. Clara was continuing to make a profit and he saw no reason to change. He was not afraid of hard work. He was, however, experiencing the increasing problem of getting a mate and, if he got one, keeping him. The problem became so acute that over one winter he sailed Clara single-handed. How one man managed to get a heavily loaded barge in and out of London Docks under sail alone and then handle her on the coast in all weathers was quite beyond me. This, however, did lead to an intriguing situation in which, in due course, I was to become involved.
With some leave once again coming up, I was in touch with the captain, who advised he would be loading in Rochester for London and I would be most welcome.
‘And where’s ee goin’ ter sleep?’ enquired the stevedore of his mates at large as I walked off. I had just been directed to where Clara was lying, wondering at the rather curious question but giving it no further thought. She was unchanged since I had last been on board, or so I thought. There was no one around as I went down into the little cabin to await the master’s return. The interior was as before, but there was something different which became apparent as I looked more closely around me. Bright curtains were up, on the table was a gaily patterned table cloth and most strange of all, there were vases of freshly picked flowers. What had happened to the man I thought I had known? The basic, no-frills, very utilitarian cuddy had been transformed into a HOME! I was pondering on this mystery when I heard voices topside. One was the captain’s and the other decidedly female. The owners of these voices then appeared down below. The female voice belonged to a strong-looking young woman, most pleasant and personable. This was Marion. It was evident that she was very much a member of the barge’s complement. Enlightenment began to dawn. The significance of the stevedore’s query was now becoming clear.
Over tea, with cups and saucers in place of the more familiar mugs that had become stained through long use, and with little cakes laid out, the captain explained it all. I must say I was now relaxed, knowing that he had not undergone some metamorphosis of personality. The need for a full-time mate becoming pressing, it being too much to ask anyone to keep on sailing a barge single-handed indefinitely, he had placed a simple advertisement in the London papers, but one which said it all: ‘Mate required for working Thames sailing barge’. Several replies were received, most being transparently inappropriate, but one did catch his eye. It was so different to what he had expected. The applicant was a London typist who had become disenchanted with the tedium and parochialism of City office life, banging away all day on a typewriter. She badly needed a change in lifestyle. What greater change could there be than a barge, actually being on the river rather than just catching the odd glimpse of it? An interview was set up at which she and the captain experienced an immediate empathy. The subsequent arrangement had worked out well. In addition to introducing the benefits of a warm ‘woman’s’ touch to the barge’s routine, she had proved most competent on deck, providing that extra pair of hands that was so needed. There were many occasions when her presence made all the difference, such as taking the wheel when some particularly heavy task had to be undertaken.
That night we went ashore to the wharfside pub for a drink. There was the slightly bizarre scene of Clara’s crew sitting in a row on a bench, the captain and the third hand, myself, drinking pints of bitter, and between us the mate drinking Pimm’s No1 and reading Vogue magazine. ‘The mate of the Clara’ was the talk of the London River, a situation unheard of in recent memory. That night I put my head down in the tiny accommodation, hitherto unused, right up forward. I was not, unfortunately, to have the occasion to put the stevedore’s mind at rest.
It is interesting to compare yachtsmen’s attitudes now with those prevailing in earlier eras. It may be satisfying to the older generation of yachtsmen to maintain that sailors of today ‘ain’t what they used to be’, but if ‘seamanship’ is defined as an integral part of the safe conduct of a vessel, then ‘starter button seamanship’ can be considered good seamanship.
Frank Carr’s monumental work, Sailing Barges, had featured so prominently in my early reading programme to learn about sailing, and had been the successor to a quite marvellous book entitled Cruising and Ocean Racing, published on behalf of the Lonsdale Library and which included contributions from the likes of EG Martin and John Irving, the predecessors of Eric Hiscock. The latter book was in the library of my school and I studied every word from cover to cover. Viewed through modern eyes it was unbelievably traditional, all about ‘housing topmasts’ and ‘reefing bowsprits’. Those two books hooked me and provided me with a sound basic grounding, if that is the right word, to launch me into sailing.
In Tern, as we rushed south in the brisk onshore wind, the memories of earlier occasions in a barge in those selfsame waters were vividly before me. Now I was reliving the conditions in my own boat. The deteriorating weather was starting to take its toll on my crew. The professional duo of David and John, almost as one man, took to their bunks and there they stayed throughout the night. It was not until breakfast time next morning, after we had passed down through the Dover Strait and were well into the Channel off Eastbourne, that two wan faces appeared. The sea by then had gone down, the sun was peeping through and the misery of the night forgotten. They had given up completely at a time when their help would have been useful, but such is the crippling effect of that universal killer, seasickness. Not so, Harry. He and I had shared that damp, dreary and vigorous night, across the Thames Estuary and through the strait with their sands and ships. I had felt a great sympathy for our two sufferers and had tried to give them comfort in the midst of their woes, but in reality that had been the wrong approach. If they had been forced onto their feet and made to play an active role in the handling of the boat and participated in her pilotage, it would have been so much better for them. This was a lesson I had yet to learn.
Later in the forenoon we made a pit stop, welcome to all hands, in the Solent, anchoring off Cowes. By prior arrangement, the previous owner – a retired army officer, Lieutenant Colonel Brodie – came on board to meet up with me first-hand to pass on tips and advice based on his experience with Tern. With wife and child he had spent a happy time living on board in the Mediterranean, the cruise earning him the Royal Cruising Club’s cup. He had a great affection for the old boat, and his words of encouragement on the forthcoming adventure were very well received. It had been a worthwhile stop, with smiling faces all round on board once again, the acute discomfort of the night completely forgotten.
With the crew now fully recovered, we arrived in good order in Plymouth Sound to go on to pick up a pre-booked mooring off Mashford’s Boatyard at Cremyll and started on the programme to prepare for the passage ahead. That delivery trip had confirmed I had a good boat, and furthermore, judging by the performance of his close friend, the indications were I was going to have a good crew in Peter. The portents for the passage ahead were promising.