25
Jacomina
The broad inlet of the shallow North Sea passes gradually into the contracted shape of the river; but for a long time the feeling of the open water remains with the ship steering to the westward through one of the lighted and buoyed passage-ways of the Thames, such as Queen’s Channel, Prince’s Channel, Four-Fathom Channel; or else coming down the Swin from the north. The rush of the yellow flood-tide hurries her up as if into the unknown between the two fading lines of the coast. There are no features to this land, no conspicuous, far-famed landmarks for the eye; there is nothing so far down to tell you of the greatest agglomeration of mankind on earth dwelling no more than five and twenty miles away …
– The Mirror of the Sea, Joseph Conrad, 1906
Some years had passed since our trip on Ideaal when I received an invitation from the musician John Eacott to take part in another five-day expedition on the Estuary. The idea was to explore the outer reaches, then travel upriver towards London from the North Sea in an ocean-going cruising yacht called Jacomina belonging to John and his wife, Lena. The boat was on her way home after a five-month-long sea voyage around Europe and the British Isles, where John had been performing Floodtide at various locations with different local musicians and picking up passengers en route. He wanted the original members of the Ideaal residency to be the last crew on Jacomina’s epic journey, but only the filmmaker James Price and myself were available to come. We were joined by photographer Simon Fowler.
Simon and I got on the boat at Brighton Marina; John and James met us at the gates of the West Pier. It was great to see them both again but, as we walked along the pontoon, the nerves I had tried to suppress all day about getting back on a sailing boat resurfaced. My anxiety increased when I realized that the crew consisted of just John, myself, James and Simon. Lena had gone home; John was the only experienced sailor amongst us.
We made our way towards Jacomina, which was moored up in the marina, bobbing up and down gently in the water. John explained that she is a Swan 46, one of the best-designed racing cruisers ever produced. She has a standard fin keel, a tall rig and a white fibreglass hull with blue stripes. We climbed on to her beautifully crafted teak deck, which was covered in a complex-looking array of ropes and winches. Her aluminium mast with the mainsail furled up under its cover stood some way in front of the cockpit, which housed a single stainless-steel wheel wrapped in a material that looked like soft green suede but was in fact elk hide. John showed us the many cabinets built into the seating around the cockpit housing ropes, fenders, winches, torches and buckets, as well as the small hatch at the bow where the anchor lay hidden.
We followed him down the companionway and entered the spacious interior, which included a full galley with a gas oven on a gimbal, a working fridge and freezer, two separate cabins (both with bathrooms) and teak-faced cabinets, tables and seats. Being the only woman on the crew, I was offered the guest cabin in the fo’c’sle. Our skipper’s cabin was aft and the two others would sleep in berths in the main quarters. John led us over to the multifunctional navigation station beside the companionway and explained the purposes of the different displays on the screen before running through the drill for a mayday situation. He lifted up the floorboards to show us how to operate the main bilge pump before taking us back up on deck to learn how to use the life raft. We ran through what to do in a man-overboard situation and the main hazards on the boat, including getting caught in the ropes or hit on the head with the boom – a common and sometimes lethal sailing accident that occurs particularly whilst gybing. I felt like leaving there and then but managed to control my rising panic and focus on the rest of the evening’s training, which involved being taught to trim the main sheet and the genoa, to make fast the mooring ropes, rig the boat and tie up the fenders.
As darkness fell, we went back below deck. Together, we plotted a route which would take us from Brighton, along the south coast past Dover to North Foreland, then across the mouth of the Estuary to Harwich via Kentish Knock and Sealand before heading upriver to London.
John examined the nautical almanac to work out how to use favourable tides, and planned our route on the charts with straight pencil lines, a plotter and dividers, making corrections for tidal flow and allowing for variation differences between magnetic and true north. He told us that sailors have used these techniques for thousands of years to establish the legs of the route. He enjoys working with paper charts and practising traditional navigational methods, which he was taught by his father, who was a pilot and a sailor.
The sextant on board was a gift from John’s father: an antique brass instrument made for the American navy in 1943, it still worked perfectly. John explained how to take a sight by looking at the horizon through one of the two mirrors. Light from the sun reflects off the mirror and can be seen through the eyepiece, creating the illusion of the sun being superimposed on the horizon; then the angle between the sun and the horizon can be measured. John used this sextant to sail across Biscay recently. He bemoaned the fact that these techniques were now being lost to GPS.
I slept fitfully that night, anxious about the coming days. After an early start next morning, we slipped our mooring and motored towards the marina entrance. There was a moderate breeze and an uncomfortable chop near the harbour mouth, caused by the waves bouncing off the large concrete caissons there, which made the boat pitch violently back and forth. Because we were such an inexperienced crew, it took us a long time to hoist the mainsail. In the meantime the boom banged wildly across the deck, which I found extremely alarming, but when the sail was up the boat steadied herself somewhat and, slowly, I began to calm down and find my footing. Straight away, John put me on the helm, which helped me focus, and I surprised myself by managing to steer us out of the marina into the English Channel.
We sailed for sixty-five nautical miles that day, along the south coast, past Newhaven, Eastbourne and Hastings, with a good tide behind us and a north-westerly breeze. It took me some time to get used to the movements of the boat; I was constantly afraid at first that she would tip right into the water when she heeled over, but as the afternoon wore on I began to enjoy the experience immensely.
The tide set against us as we reached Dungeness, so we went inshore to catch a favourable counter-current and watched the fishermen on the shingle beach casting their lines into the water against the backdrop of the nuclear power station; Derek Jarman’s weatherboard house and garden lay in the far distance.
We saw the White Cliffs of Dover long before we entered the marina. John radioed ahead to get permission to enter and we berthed in the tidal basin for the night. I slept well. By the time we sailed out of the harbour to a glorious day the following morning, I was really starting to find my sea legs.
I took over from John and helmed the boat for a while as we sailed close-hauled, heeling on port tack, along the Dover Straits, past Deal and Sandwich towards North Foreland, the officially recognized south-eastern entrance point to the Thames Estuary. The coast there is formed of nearly perpendicular chalk cliffs, which look spectacular from the water. A single lighthouse stands on rising ground close to the headland, warning shipping away from the rocky shoreline. An orange-and-blue pilot cutter sped past close to shore to intercept a big ship. A fishing boat passed on our starboard side, followed by a flock of seagulls.
The traffic on the water increased as we sailed with a fair tide past the headland of North Foreland and out into the wide-open mouth of the Estuary: the place on the nautical map where the tidal waters of the North Sea flow into the mouth of England’s longest river. Goods and people from all over the world have arrived in Britain via this well-used sea route, from as far back as Roman times, when vast quantities of luxury commodities, including pottery, marble, wine, olive oil and silver, would travel upriver to Londinium from the furthest reaches of the Roman empire. In the Anglo-Saxon era Viking longboats swept across the North Sea and into the Estuary to invade Sheppey, then Benfleet, before moving further along the riverside towards the monasteries of London.
The water was a light olive-green. I could see a wind farm in the distance, tankers and other big ships on the horizon far out in the North Sea, along with four cargo ships waiting at a designated anchorage to the side of the main shipping routes. John told me there were two zones: one for hazardous, and another for non-hazardous cargoes.
Spray from a rogue wave splashed over the bow as we picked up speed, sailing on our bearing towards Kentish Knock buoy – the central point of the outer reaches of the Estuary. The yacht cut easily through the water, which turned a lead-grey colour towards the Kent coast, where heavy, dark clouds hung above the cliffs near Margate. Flickers of bright white light glinted along the coastline as the sun reflected off the windows of buildings near the shore.
We sailed north, then north-west, towards Harwich, pitching forward and rocking aft. Ahead of us, we saw the London Array wind farm and a vast expanse of grey-green water. The coastline of Margate became a thick line in the distance. As we moved further offshore through a slight sea state, the water turned a deep jade-green, threaded through with flashes of silver when the sun managed to break through the gloomy sky above. There was not another vessel in sight. A line of cumulus clouds hung over the Suffolk coast, which was not visible at that point, being hidden behind the curvature of the Earth. We were sailing along an arc where the edges of the North Sea and the outer reaches of the Estuary merge, being careful to avoid the many sandbanks in the area on our way.
By the time we sailed past London Array on our port side, the sun was shining brightly. The great turbines turned slowly in the wind. Kent became a fine black slither then gradually disappeared altogether. The sea was a perfect mirror, reflecting the sky above. It was incredibly peaceful out there on the edge. We sailed in silence for some time, listening to the hypnotic sounds of the boat gently parting the waves, the halyards tapping against the mast in the wind and water sloshing in and out of the cockpit drains, bubbling up rhythmically before dropping down again.
I found the constant rocking movement of the boat and the ever-changing sea- and sky-scape all around us, with its constantly shifting colours and patterns, extremely meditative and recuperative. Sailing across the great breadth of the Estuary during that long, elastic afternoon, I felt a sense of peace I had not experienced for a long time.
I helmed again for a while, close-hauled on starboard tack, following the wind as it changed, constantly adjusting the wheel to try to achieve an apparent wind angle of forty-five degrees, watching with glee as the telltales on the genoa flew horizontally in the wind. We were heeling gently in a light breeze, travelling at five and a half knots. A container ship headed towards Jacomina, then altered its course, possibly to give way to us. John was standing beside me at the wheel; James and Simon were both positioned near the bow, cameras permanently attached to one eye, shooting the magnificent scene all around us.
We tacked out towards the east, away from the wind farm, laying towards Kentish Knock. There was a clear horizon and good visibility. The sea temporarily turned white-gold ahead, reflecting the bright sky above. Another wind farm loomed in front of us. The radio briefly crackled into life, a French voice came on air for a few seconds then disappeared. A large oil tanker headed south-east into the North Sea, probably going to Rotterdam.
We had been sailing for some hours across the Estuary, over a watery expanse featureless apart from the wind farms, which were ever present. Our skipper checked the charts constantly, relying on them for accurate locations of the long sandbanks stretching out like fingers in all directions. The wind picked up, and we increased our speed to six and a half knots.
In the early evening, just as the sun was beginning to set, we reached a large buoy bobbing on the waves, striped in black and yellow and with a diamond-shaped head topped by a triangular hat with the words ‘Kentish Knock’ in white-and-black letters on the side. John told us that each buoy has its own unique characteristics – some of them have bells, whilst others emit low, mournful sounds created by air being driven through a horn by the waves.
The Kentish Knock buoy was silent as we came alongside, giving no audible warning of the dangers lying beneath: the buoy marks the site of an extremely shallow area of the North Sea bed, where multiple vessels have met their fate over time. During the First Anglo-Dutch War, the English launched a surprise attack on a Dutch fleet of over sixty warships moored there, with devastating consequences. Remnants of this great sea battle probably still lie buried in the Kentish Knock mud, along with the remains of many other vessels, including a German U-boat and a 400-ton nineteenth-century merchant ship called Juliana East Indiaman.
Many merchant ships – hulls creaking, sails billowing – came into the Estuary at this point from the Mediterranean, carrying exotic goods from Europe and beyond. They helped establish sea power in the East Indies, which eventually led to the foundation of the East India Company and the beginning of Britain’s colonization of India. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the Golden Age of the Thames Estuary, when this stretch of water was the major highway of the British Empire. Tea, silks, opium, salt, cotton and indigo dye flooded into the Port of London via the Estuary from all over the world.
On Christmas Eve 1822, Juliana East Indiaman was travelling back to London from Bengal filled with cargo when she ran aground on Kentish Knock and lost her rudder. She immediately began to take on water. The crew worked desperately throughout the night, under the command of Captain Ogilvie, who gave the order to abandon ship on Christmas Day. They ‘hoisted out the longboat’, and all thirty-seven crew members and passengers got safely on board, but Ogilvie then ordered his exhausted crew to return to the sinking ship to attempt to recover her precious cargo. During that dreadful night, ‘the sea ran mountains high’ and, as they stood on the deck hauling boxes out of the hold, ‘a most violent sea broke upon them, and shivered the boat into pieces’. Shortly after, the longboat sank as well. There were only two survivors, picked up by a fishing boat the following morning.
After this disaster, a buoy was placed on the Kentish Knock shoal to warn approaching shipping of the low water there. A light vessel replaced this buoy in 1840, followed by numerous lightships for the next 170 years. John remembered seeing the Trinity House light vessel, which was painted red to make it visible in the day. It used to be manned by a small crew. Lightships do not have engines; they have to be towed out to their locations. As we sailed past, I imagined what a dangerous and lonely job it must have been for those crews, stranded out there on the edge of the North Sea and the outer reaches of the Thames Estuary with no means of escape if they ran into difficulty.
We continued sailing north-west towards Harwich. There was no land visible at this point. The sea seemed to fall away from the horizon in every direction, creating the illusion that we were in the middle of a giant, circular infinity pool constantly overflowing with water.
We were sailing over Doggerland, a sunken, lost landscape which was once a vast land mass connecting Britain to mainland Europe during and after the last Ice Age. The outer edges of Dogger Bank sit somewhere near the southern part of Harwich, off the Essex coast, and Norfolk, and stretch further north into the North Sea. This prehistoric landscape was gradually flooded by rising sea levels and has now completely disappeared far beneath the sea. Fishermen trawling in the area have recovered remnants of this submerged world, dredging up fossil bones, rhino teeth, mammoth tusks and flint, evidence of great beasts which once roamed that forgotten place.
A single plume of black diesel smoke rose from a tanker in the distance on our starboard quarter. A line of deep crimson sat above the horizon, with great, grey, painterly clouds hanging above. John pointed out a squall to port, a solid, dark streak in the sky stretching down to the sea which indicated rain. He could read the landscape around us in ways we could not. He constantly made calculations and adjustments to our route, depending on sea state, water depth, weather, tide and wind.
As the light began to fade from the sky, he prepared us for the night sail ahead, showing us where the torches and the harnesses were and how to tether ourselves to the jack stays that ran along the length of the boat if we needed to move to the bow. I had imagined we would be enveloped in total darkness when the sun finally set, but it happened gently; it was a gradual process. The seascape around us slowly darkened, then faded to black.
A small white light on the mast illuminated the boat just enough for us to be able to see on deck. When the clouds parted, the sky was filled with stars, which were reflected in the water. In the darkness of the night I became acutely aware of the sound of the sea and the continuous rolling of the boat. Sound seemed to take on a different texture; it was sharper, richer and more intense somehow. I stood beside John at the helm, watching the wake of Jacomina in the murky sea behind, which occasionally became luminescent in the water. In the far distance, out in the North Sea, the water merged with the horizon, and there was only blackness. The space we were in lost its edges and became indefinable. Lights flickered in the water all around us. John told me that the red lights behind us denoted the tops of wind turbines on a wind farm; non-flashing lights indicated other vessels – green on starboard, red on port, white on stern; flashing lights were marks or buoys; pillars of light were lighthouses or lightships.
A vessel passed by on our starboard side as we entered the Long Sand Head two-way route. As we passed the mark in the darkness, a deep, low moan escaped from the horn of the buoy – the sound of the North Sea at night.
John went below deck for a while to prepare the pilotage plan for our night entry to Harwich, leaving me at the helm. Simon and James were sitting near the bow, watching out for any debris, obstacles or vessels in the water.
In the far distance, I thought I saw the distinctive table-shaped outline of Sealand. Faint lights glittered on the horizon from the port of Felixstowe as we headed towards the Suffolk coast. A dredger moved into the shipping channel, her stern lights gradually fading into the blackness as she motored out into the North Sea.
As we moved further towards the coast, Sealand came into sharp focus, even though the fort was unlit, just a large black silhouette against the dark night. Simultaneous firework displays onshore at Walton-on-the-Naze and Harwich temporarily lit up the sky. Another big ship passed on our starboard side; the swell rocked the boat. The clouds lifted and the sky looked full of stars.
As we eventually came alongside the former naval fort, a single light went on in one of the rooms on the platform, causing the deck of the boat to be momentarily illuminated. I wondered if Prince Michael was at home but expected it was the guard, Mike Barrington. The dreaded winch and that tiny swing seat on the end was barely visible as we drifted past in the darkness, but I knew it was there and shuddered at the thought – or it might have been the cold. I pushed my hands deeper into the fleecy, lined pockets of the sailing jacket Jonny had lent me before I left as we sailed on into the night.
John switched the radio to Harwich VTS as we entered the deep-water channel into Harwich. We headed towards Cliff Foot, a red buoy which had been strategically placed there to help navigate shipping into the busy port. As we sailed into the mouth of the port, we heard the cranking noise of the quay cranes, six in total, all in action, loading into or offloading from giant container ships moored alongside. The port was brightly lit and full of activity, in sharp contrast to the empty black seascape behind. A ferry passed by on our port side in front of one of the container ships; its dark silhouette was partly illuminated by lights from the cabin portholes. Steam poured out of a funnel on deck, merging with the smoke from the heavy industrial dockside.
Simon got the halyard ready to run by taking it off the winch. We headed up into the wind hard right, then dropped the mainsail, which fell heavily on to the boom. James and I managed to tie up the sail loosely as we motored leisurely into the middle of the circular harbour.
After a few moments trying to get our bearings, we made our way in the darkness towards a pontoon on our starboard side. A large banner on a building behind the pontoon read ‘Welcome to historic Harwich’. We tied the fenders on to moor up alongside another boat and made fast. It was midnight by then, and we were all exhausted. After ensuring the boat was secure for the night, we went straight to sleep, to the sounds of the screeching and banging of the working port on the other side of the harbour.