11

Brown’s Cut

The Florida Straits

Off the Great Bahama Bank

Wednesday, 11 July 1888

It took us five days to go the distance habitually covered in two. After drifting north with the current for days along the fanged wall of coral that guards the western edge of the Great Bahama Bank, the wind finally arrived.

As stated before, the weather was out of the norm for that time of year, when gentle breezes would be interrupted by brief afternoon thunderstorms. The disturbed aspect of the atmosphere made everyone increasingly edgy, the seasoned sailors among us worried that it portended a major storm lurking about somewhere to our east.

Shouts of joy rang out among the novices when a wind did come out of the northwest quadrant, at first a wonderful assistance to us. It turned up at dawn on the eleventh, soft in the beginning but steadily rising until the tops’l and jib were brought in.

Dunbarton, who knew his weather, looked at me warily and said, “Northwest at this time of year?” He shook his head and growled, “I expect things to get worse, much worse. Would have been better if we’d been over to the west when this came up, instead of this far east, with a reef to our leeward.”

The clear implication was that I had put us in the situation. I let it go, judging the topic and man not worth furthering the acrimony aboard by addressing his borderline insubordination. Delilah was, after all, but a small island trading vessel and not sailing under naval discipline. Besides, the man was right.

Within two hours we were surging along at seven knots under easy sail on a broad reach to the northeast. I was steering for Gun Cay. It was just south of the Bimini Islands on the edge of the Bahama Banks, where I wanted to inquire after Condor, before heading east toward Nassau.

But the conditions changed. Rapidly. By noon, I knew for certain what Dunbarton had implied and I had feared—we were on the fringes of an approaching tropical storm. Squall lines, dark and full of brutal energy, appeared on the northwestern horizon, being borne down upon us by an increasing Force 6 wind. Using the old Florida sailors’ trick, I faced the wind and held my right arm out perpendicular to it. My hand pointed northeast. I guessed the center of the storm was somewhere north and east of Grand Bahama Island, heading west to the Florida mainland. I hoped very much that I was right, and that the center of the tempest was not heading our way.

All of this meant that time was of the essence. A strong westerly wind kicks up frightening seas on the reef in those parts, seas that take over command of your vessel, lifting it high and smashing it down into the gaping maws of coral. The Bahamians say the reef is in a “rage.” Quite an appropriate description.

We had to get to Gun Cay and anchor behind the island before the storm closed the entrance channel and we became trapped on a lee shore, unable to claw to windward, away from our destruction. If we tacked and headed out into the Stream away from the Bahamas, we would run into monstrous and unpredictable seas, created by the opposing current and rising wind. That was not an option.

The weather got worse. The squalls joined together within the next hour, making a solid indigo-colored wall of cloud completely across the western horizon. The front edge was thousands of feet high, clouds cascading down like a waterfall before turning into rain that flayed the sea below. In front of that malevolent wall, the seas were pushed up in ridges topped with white foam, blowing off in streaks horizontally through the air.

I estimated the velocity of the storm’s approach to be at least forty knots. The wind inside the storm would be at least Force 9, gusting much higher. It would be a race to safety, balanced with the need to reduce the area of our canvas so that we would not be blown down and capsized. The wind shifted from nor’west to westerly, right on our beam. We doused all sail except the fores’l and triple reefed that. Even then, Delilah raced through the water, heeled hard over, lee deck under water, bound north to Gun Cay. Only nine miles to go. An hour and a half at the most. But it was too late.

Fifteen minutes later that wall of wind hit us.

***

The outer forestay parted with a crack, the ends streaming off to leeward from the masthead and the end of the bowsprit. Seconds later, the wind whipped the foretopmast right off at the trestle where the upper windward shrouds broke. That cast loose the peak halyard of the reefed fores’l, allowing it to rattle like a Gatling gun as the gaff swung down and off to leeward. Then the fores’l sheet somehow got loose.

Dunbarton was standing near the starboard foreshrouds when that gaff went amok and the fores’l boom began sweeping the deck looking for victims. He yelled for Ab, who was clinging to the butt of the bowsprit, to come aft and help gain control of that vicious boom, but it was too late. The boom slammed into Dunbarton’s head, turning his face into mush and launching his body like a rag doll out over the water to leeward. His body instantly disappeared in the froth.

Rork leaped forward with a bight of line and lassoed the end of the boom, binding it down to a ringbolt, just as the sail ripped along a seam across its width. I don’t know how he did it on that leaping deck. We were without much sail at that point and being driven quickly downwind to the east. There I saw giant waves already smashing into the coral two miles away, a line of watery explosions erupting all up and down the reefs like a warship’s broadside. It was a horrifying scene. To the west, visibility was swallowed by the wall of rainwater. To the east, death awaited, plainly seen.

Any thought of making Gun Cay ended, for we weren’t heading north anymore. Delilah was heading east on her own, a piece of storm-tossed flotsam, determined to commit suicide. Dan and I struggled at the wheel, but we couldn’t turn her away, for she wasn’t answering her helm without enough canvas to assist.

The rigging howled up and down the sound scale, shrieking above a background of roaring wind and growling seas, making an onslaught of noise too great to shout orders over. The rain, flung at gale speed, pelted our bodies like birdshot. You could not look anywhere close to the west without being blinded by that damned rain.

Thank the Almighty that Rork was a veteran seaman and knew what to do up forward. He and Ab, their arms battered by the thrashing canvas, managed to hoist a reefed forestays’l—just enough sail to give steerageway to the rudder. I felt Delilah respond to my efforts at the wheel. All our eyes were on the windward lower foreshrouds, now under immense pressure. They held. A miracle.

Rork and Ab made their way aft, where Ab put his mouth to my ear and screamed, “Let me take her through Brown’s Cut! It’s our only hope!”

I’d never heard of such an entrance through the reef, but these were his native waters. Rork yelled something, vigorously nodding the affirmative. I grabbed Ab and put his hands on the wheel. Seconds later I wished I hadn’t.

He turned her away to the southeast, wearing the schooner around downwind to the east. The forestays’l thundered in protest but held together as it banged over to the port side and filled. In mid-turn a wave washed over Delilah’s stern, plunging us knee deep in water. We then collided with a wave in front, stopping us abruptly and enabling the next large following wave to completely inundate our main deck. The water was fully four feet deep where we stood at the wheel, as Delilah sank under the horrendous weight of that moving mountain of water that fell down on us. We’d broached, a deadly mistake.

Cynda, Corny, and Blackstone were below, the hatch secured, but not watertight. I knew it must be chaos down there, everything that had been stowed in shelves and lockers coming loose, water flooding down the hatchways, lanterns extinguishing, the whole effect surely panicking them in the dark as they worked the pumps in a desperate effort to keep the ship afloat.

Somehow, against all logic, that schooner rose back out of the sea and came around, shedding tons of water overboard. We were no more than half a mile from the chaos along the reef now. Ab stood up higher, trying to see through the rain, his eyes stark white against glistening black skin. I saw him bob his head in confirmation—he’d seen the cut, though I could see nothing. Rork pointed ahead. Then I understood.

There was a gap, an impossibly tiny space, in the line of surf explosions. Delilah slewed and surged down the waves. We all helped Ab steer for the gap—four men putting their muscles into it and barely keeping her from rounding up. Then another mountain of water lifted us up and we slid off to leeward, far short of our course to the gap.

Straining at the wheel, we sailed with the wind abeam, every wave raising us up and washing us closer to leeward and that razor-sharp coral. We franticly forced the helm back to windward, trying to get southing enough to make that gap.

I felt the sea bottom rising up under us, making the seas crest into surf. We were seconds from losing control. The reef was less than a hundred yards away—mere seconds in that maelstrom. Spray from the exploding surf filled the air, the deck vibrating with the power of those breaking seas.

Ab shouted, “Now!” and we put our weight on the spokes to turn her to port.

There was no time to think, to communicate, to do anything but instinctually steer Delilah down those twenty-foot waves washing through a corridor perhaps a hundred feet wide, crashing with thundering detonations against the coral on either side. Delilah hit bottom just once, a momentary thud during the trough of one of those monster waves, the resultant shudder shaking the masts and almost knocking us off our feet.

And then we were in calm water. I say calm, but the seas were still five or six feet and the wind was the same. But at least it was an easier task to man the helm. Rork got the leadline out and reported from the foreshrouds by hand signals that we had two fathoms showing. I ordered the anchor to be cast. It bit hard and swung us with a lurch bow-first into the wind as Rork paid out the rode off the Sampson post. We laid back on three hundred fifty feet of chain and line, our anchorage half a mile to leeward of that rumbling line of death. The reef sounded angry that we’d made it through, as if it would cross that half mile and grind us into pieces for our temerity.

Dan and Ab collapsed on the foredeck. Rork limped around the deck inspecting the rigging. I went below to check the hull. When I opened the hatch and looked down into the main cabin, three haggard faces looked up at me, water sloshing around their ankles. I descended, asking Blackstone if the pump still worked. He mumbled that it did, then fell down onto the bench seat at the table.

Corny looked bad. A gash was open from his right eyebrow to his hairline, and his hands were trembling. Cynda didn’t look like the same woman. A grim visage lined her face as she said in a thin voice, “We’ve been pumping nonstop, Peter. We thought we’d die down here.”

Finding a match in the waterproof oilskin pouch by the companionway, I lit the table lamp. “All right everyone, listen to me. We are safely anchored, well past the reef. We just need to keep the pumps working until the storm goes by. Rork and I are going to fother a sail around the hull and that should help stem the worst of the leaks in the seams.” I turned to the cook. “Now, do you know if it’s a hole, or is it the seams?”

“No hole . . . I think . . . her seams have . . . opened,” gasped Blackstone.

I’d rather it’d been a hole or two, as that would have been easier to plug. Opened seams meant the entire hull was leaking. The pumping would have to continue, and my crew was exhausted.

“I’ll send some men down to the pump. You all rest now.”