The same day that Aino read the letter from home, August 29, 1905, Aksel Långström, fourteen, was sick with fear. The Elna, a 215-foot iron square-rigger filled with 1,360 tons of manufactured goods and machinery, bound for San Francisco but still several thousand miles away, was smashing through towering waves just south of Cape Horn. Thirty-five feet at the beam, the Elna was barely making headway against the prevailing winds that hit the Drake Passage unimpeded after moving across thousands of miles of the empty South Pacific. In the southern hemisphere, August was a month of deadly winter storms.
Years of fishing gave Aksel sure sea legs, but he never in his wildest imagination envisioned the rolling foam-topped swells that virtually stood the beautifully built Swedish ship on her stern and then sent her pitching down the back of the swell as if diving straight to hell. With a huge groan, she shuddered to shake free of the tons of seawater crashing across her forward deck, threatening to tear the sailors from their precarious handholds on sheets or rails and wash them hurtling into the sea, as ephemeral and weak as smoke against a mighty wind. Then, like a seaborne Sisyphus, the ship clawed to the top of the next towering wave, as the sailors fought gravity and slippery decks to maintain their balance and their lives.
Clinging to a shroud, trying to keep from being washed overboard, Aksel watched a small sail set low on the mizzenmast suddenly tear loose from the yardarm and, clinging by a single sheet, stream to the stern like a wailing ghost. Aksel felt the sudden change in the motion of the ship and heard the helmsman cursing as he tried to control the bucking helm. Without the sail, the ship stopped making headway and was in peril of being swept sideways at the mercy of the seas. The captain, who’d made more than thirty voyages around the Horn, shouted orders through a speaking trumpet, and the first mate went past Aksel, clinging to whatever he could reach, shouting the names of two sailors. Two men struggled their way to the base of the mast, one of them holding another sail. After a brief hesitation as they looked at the shredded sail and then at each other, they began climbing.
Aksel clung tenaciously to the fife rail as he looked up with wonder, fear, and admiration for the two men, both of whom he’d gotten to know well on the long but relatively smooth-sailing voyage through the tropics. Then he was hit with a wall of icy water that wrenched him free of the rope he was clinging to. Gasping for air, clawing at the wood on the deck, he was picked up, turned upside down, and bounced toward the stern. He raised his arm and it hooked one of the shrouds, wrenching his shoulder, but he hung on, his other hand grasping his wrist. The wave passed, leaving him gasping. The mate shouted at him to get his ass forward to help a man wrestling with a sheet and he stumbled toward the bow.
He obtained the job because his father’s cousin knew someone at the firm that owned the ship and had lied about his age. When he was shown to the forepeak where he would sleep, he was appalled by the narrow bunks above and below him, with only about six inches of headroom. If the sailor above him farted, the one below him felt the wind. He spent the first few days in a ragged haze literally learning the ropes. He’d crawl into his bunk still wet and fall asleep instantly. At first, the food was fresh and good. Then it started to rot. The meals turned to canned vegetables and meat and an obnoxious combination of lye-cured fish and oatmeal. He would shit the liquid remains of the rotten food, hanging his buttocks over the bow, wipe himself clean with cold seawater in the nearby bucket, and go back to work. But now, they faced this green-gray hell of howling wind and numbing water.
The small sail was set and immediately the ship came back to a more controlled heaving. One man started down just as a freakish blast of wind hit the ship from the side. The man above him lost his footing. The ship heeled over, forcing his body out away from the mast and he clung there, his feet flailing in the air. Then, like a piece of paper whisked from the window of a moving train, he was gone.
Two days later they headed north, the coast of Chile to their starboard, the winter seas, if not friendly, at least not totally hostile. Aksel was reeving storm-damaged rigging when the mate sat next to where he was working. He lit a pipe, puffing at it vigorously. The smoke whipped astern and shredded to invisibility before it even reached the wheel.
“I’ve been watching you,” the mate said. “You’re quick and you’ve got good sea legs for someone so young. How come?”
“I fished with my father ever since I can remember. Over by Karleby in Finland.” He gave the Swedish name for Kokkola.
“How old are you, anyway?”
Aksel thought quickly. What had his father’s cousin said? What could he get away with? He was big for his age, but the still-downy hair on his face might betray him. “Just turned seventeen, sir.”
The man grunted and puffed on his pipe, watching Aksel work. “I don’t believe you, nor do I care. I’m short a top man.”
Aksel took a deep breath and looked at the distant shoreline. “I know, sir. Bergerson.”
The mate nodded. “Bergerson. He was a good sailor.” He was silent for some time. Aksel continued working.
“You’d get a raise and move aft to the top man’s berth area.”
Aksel looked up at the mast swinging against the gray sky and gulped.
“Do I get the raise as soon as I start?”
The mate laughed. “Hell no. We pay you for what you can do not what you can learn. I’d guess you’ll be earning your keep soon enough, though.”
Aksel licked his lips, looking up again at the swinging mast, remembering how easily Bergerson had been swept away. Then he looked at the mate and said, “I’ll do it. Thank you.”