1636: Seas of Fortune (42 page)

Still, Lord Matsudaira had come too far to just give up. He ordered the captain to trust to the up-time map, and the captain’s latitude calculations, and take the ship closer to shore. The fog vanished, but it was not until they were perhaps six miles from the Golden Gate that they could see the water between the headlands.

“That’s it?” asked Lord Matsudaira.

“It must be,” said the captain.

“I thought it was a bay large enough to hold all the ships in the world. I can barely see any water at all.”

“It’s like the gate of a castle, my lord,” said Daidoji Shigehisa, Lord Matsudaira’s lieutenant. He had been masterless, a ronin, during Lord Matsudaira’s exile, but had returned to his service when Lord Matsudaira accepted Iemitsu’s offer and was given permission to recruit warriors. “We can only see a bit of the courtyard now.”

The captain inclined his head. “If you’re in doubt, Lord Matsudaira, we can zigzag a bit, so you can see more of the bay.”

Lord Matsudaira thought about this for a moment, then shook his head. “No, take us straight in, before the damned fog returns.”

The captain ordered the
Sado Maru
forward, but under courses, its lower sails, only. The Japanese sailors, accustomed to the battened sail of the Asian junk, had taken several weeks to learn how to set and unset the European style sails of the Dutch-designed
Sado Maru
, but after crossing the Pacific with them, it had become second nature.

Leadsmen called out the soundings as they inched forward. Almost immediately, they reported that the water was rapidly getting shallower. They were clearly coming over some kind of shoal.

“Can’t we go faster, Captain?”

“We can, but we don’t know this harbor at all. If we go too fast, we could find ourselves run aground on rocks. We have to go slowly enough so that if the bottom reaches up for us, we can steer clear.”

“I suppose you know your own business,” said Lord Matsudaira. His tone suggested that he was still reserving judgment, even though the captain had gotten them across the Pacific.

The shallowest parts of the shoal were revealed by the breaking of the waves, and the ship picked out a safe path. It was slow-going, however, and Lord Matsudaira was practically dancing with impatience by the time they made it into deeper water beyond.

The ship was now feeling the beginning of the ebb tide. Under gravitational orders from the moon and sun, over half a trillion gallons of water were streaming out of San Francisco Bay, and on the double. Their only way out was through the Golden Gate, barely a mile wide.

As the
Sado Maru
approached the Golden Gate, the wind continued to fall off, while the ebb tide became even more energetic, running perhaps five knots. Whereas before the
Sado Maru
was deliberately creeping forward, so it could avoid any dangerous rocks, now it was fighting for every yard made good, even though it had raised its topsails to capture more wind.

“Is it my imagination or are we fucking moving backward?” snapped Lord Matsudaira.

“I am sorry, my lord, the outgoing current is very strong. But I am sure it will abate in an hour or two.”

“Do you notice how low the sun is in the sky? By that time it will have set.”

The captain quickly glanced west. “Yes, you’re right, my lord. We need the light in order to see our way clear of hazard, so I recommend we turn around now, and try again tomorrow.”

Lord Matsudaira glared at him. “Turn back now? After we have waited a week—a week—for the fog to lift? And with the Golden Gate almost in our grasp? I’ll have your head.” The hilt of his katana, visible above the line of his shoulder, reminded the captain that this was not an idle threat. “Can you guarantee that the fog won’t be back tomorrow?”

“It’s a pity, I’m really very sorry—”

Lord Matsudaira pressed him further. “Can this tub go any faster? So we can get into the bay before sunset?”

“We can add bonnet and drabbler to the courses, to catch more wind.” This was European terminology; courses were the lowest sails, and bonnets and drabblers were extra pieces of canvas that were laced onto them. “But the ship will be harder to control, and the channel looks dangerous. . . . Rocks on either side of us . . .”

Lord Matsudaira interrupted the captain’s warnings: “Those who cling to life, die, and those who defy death, live.” He was quoting the daimyo Uesugi Kenshin, the “Dragon of Echigo,” who had died, in bed, almost half a century earlier. “Full speed ahead, and damn the rocks! Keep your eyes forward!”

The captain ordered that the extra canvas be added. And added a quick prayer, barely audible, to Kwannon the Merciful. The
Sado Maru
picked up a little speed, and Lord Matsudaira noted this with a smile of approval. The Golden Gate proper, the narrowest part of the strait, was getting ever nearer.

Offshore, the swells, like the wind, had come from the northwest. However, as they passed Point Boneta, the inshore edge was slowed by the shallows, causing the waves to sweep around and approach the Golden Gate from the west.

As the tide swept outward, it collided with the wind-driven waves heading eastward, the two crashing together like great armies meeting on some battlefield. The incoming waves were squeezed together and steepened. The
Sado Maru
bucked, like a horse trying to unseat its rider.

The helmsman of the
Sado Maru
stood on the quarterdeck, his hands on the whipstaff and his eyes on the compass. The whipstaff, a European innovation, was a long lever, hitched belowdecks to the tiller, so that the helmsman on a large ship could steer and also see where the ship was going. Or at least see the feet of the sails. The whipstaff could only move the tiller a little bit and some steering had to be done by appropriately setting the sails.

The whipstaff vibrated violently. “Someone, help me!” cried the helmsman. Another sailor ran over, and grabbed the whipstaff from the other side. Together, they brought the rudder under control. But only for a time.

The seas were at their most vigorous and confused in the narrow throat of the Gate, between Lime Point and Fort Point. It was there that the first disaster struck. They were heading east-northeast, and they buried their bow into the wave before them. The sails were braced to take best advantage of the northwest wind, and that meant that the wind not only pushed the ship forward, it also tried to force it leeward. This side force was normally resisted by the keel. With the bow buried, the resistance was greater forward than aft, and the stern surfed, pivoting the ship around to face northeast. The wind was now striking the sails more obliquely, enough to shiver the sails but not fill them. The ship was rapidly losing headway, and that in turn was making it more difficult to steer.

“All hands to braces!” the captain yelled. The braces were the lines that turned the yards, the horizontal spars that carried the sails. “Slack Windward Brace and Sheet! Haul Lee Brace and Sheet! Make All!” The captain was trying to regain control of the ship, by turning the yards to face the wind more directly.

But the Sea Hag of the Golden Gate still had the
Sado Maru
in its talons. Like a cat batting a mouse to-and-fro for its amusement, the waves buffeted the ship, which the swerve had left at a forty-five-degree angle to the waves. When the bow was on a crest and the stern in a trough, the ship turned to port. When the crest came amidships, it turned back to starboard. The first movement was stronger, so the ship progressively turned more and more counterclockwise. This brought the bow closer and closer to the wind.

Like a piece of driftwood, the ship gradually turned until its keel was parallel to the incoming waves. With its bow pointed northward, it was too close to the wind for the sails, even with the yards turned as far as the standing rigging would allow, to be effectual.

* * *

The waves were now violently rocking the
Sado Maru
. Belowdecks, Iroha-hime’s maid, Koya, was whimpering in terror.

Iroha-hime wrapped her arms around her. “Easy, Koya. Don’t be afraid. Join me, we will pray to Deusu.” Koya nodded, tears streaking her face. “Repeat after me. Eternal and Almighty God, creator of the heavens, the earth and the sea, have mercy upon us. Be our Pilot in this, our time of need. Subdue the waves and the winds . . .”

They finished the prayer that Iroha-hime had composed. “Feel better, Koya?”

She nodded. At that moment they were thrown by a sudden movement against the side of their cabin.

When they recovered their footing. Iroha pointed upward. “Come with me.” She didn’t explain, but she had decided that if she were to die, she would rather be flung off the deck, than drowned like a rat in the darkness below.

When they came above, the second mate saw them. He hurried over, cursing, and quickly had them sit down on the deck. “It will be wetter, but you are less likely to be washed away.” He lashed them to a deck projection, but left their hands free so they could hold on as well. “Do you have knives?” he asked.

Iroha nodded.

“Good. Then you can cut yourself free if you must. I must get back to my men.”

The next big wave broke over the
Sado Maru
’s beam, and tilted the ship to port until its deck was nearly vertical. The men on deck screamed and grabbed for whatever hold they could.

With an awful cracking sound, much of the port bulwark was carried away by the weight of the water. And several sailors, who had grabbed it for safety, were carried away with it, howling in terror as they tumbled into the churning sea.

However, the loss of the bulwark allowed the water on deck to escape, and the ship ever so slowly righted itself. But not back to an upright position; it had a pronounced list to port. The helmsman fought to bring the ship back to a safer heading, without success; the tilt kept the rudder from biting properly, and the loss of forward movement meant that the rudder, even if fully immersed, couldn’t turn the ship.

“Why are we still leaning?” Lord Matsudaira yelled to whoever could and would answer.

“Cargo or ballast shifted,” one of the sailors called out. “Need to throw the deck cargo overboard, or—”

He didn’t get to finish his explanation. Another wave struck the broached ship and hammered it back onto its side. The rest of the port bulwark vanished, along with Lord Matsudaira’s informant. The heel-over was more pronounced, this time. The violent movements had parted some of the standing rigging, and as a result the affected masts were apt to fail if the ship were righted, and its sails exposed to the wind, without first replacing the missing lines.

The men still alive were hanging from the starboard bulwark, or from the base of a mast, or some chance protrusion from the deck. They were in no position to fiddle with the rigging or the cargo at this point.

The
Sado Maru
was well within the grip of the tidal current, which was still running west south-west, if not as rapidly as before, carrying it away from the Golden Gate and toward the open sea. However, the wind was also pressing on the great exposed part of the hull, pushing the hulk southeast. This first took the
Sado Maru
out of the strongest part of the tidal current, and then into an eddy that carried it in a counter-clockwise arc until it was heading east. At last, it ran aground on Baker Beach between Mile Rocks and Fort Point, dismasting itself in the process.

Soon thereafter, the moon, a few days past full, rose above the Berkeley Hills and glinted down at the exhausted survivors. They had mustered barely enough energy to crawl above the high-water mark.

* * *

In the morning sun, the
Sado Maru
lay in uneasy repose between the high and low water marks. It was completely dismasted, and, driven against the rocks at the shoreline, there were great gashes across its bottom, like the claw marks of some prehistoric sea monster. Fortunately, those same rocks pinned it in the shallows, and it couldn’t sink farther than it already had. Until, at least, the waves broke it completely to pieces.

“So how soon will you have her afloat?” Lord Matsudaira asked the captain.

The captain stood gape-jawed. He finally managed to say, “Afloat? Even with a shipyard close at hand, it would be difficult to make her seaworthy again. Here in the wilderness, it’s impossible.”

“I will not accept defeat,” Lord Matsudaira announced flatly. “If you cannot get me to the other shore, I will appoint a captain who will.”

Guard Commander Shigehisa coughed. “Milord, can we not walk around the Bay?”

“Let me see our maps.” The maps, fortunately, had been rolled up inside bamboo tubes, plugged at both ends with tar, and thus were still dry.

Lord Matsudaira laid a string as best he could around the outline of the South Bay, then compared it to the scale. “I make it out to be a hundred miles. We will have only the provisions that we can carry, so we will have to hunt or fish periodically. On foot, we might make five miles a day. Certainly not more than ten. And we will encounter Indians along the way that we would avoid if we went by water.”

Shigehisa was also looking at the map. “It’s a pity; the northern route is shorter. By as much as two-thirds.”

Lord Matsudaira’s laugh was abrupt and bitter, a bark. “But we would have to cross the furious waters of the Golden Gate to get there.”

The captain had also been studying the map. “Lord Matsudaira, two of the ship’s boats survived the shipwreck, so perhaps we can row across. We can look on the bay side of this peninsula for a safe launching spot.” He traced a path with his forefinger. “Here—between the map’s ‘San Francisco’ and its ‘Oakland’—the crossing is less than three miles. Closer to two, in fact. Even rowing we could do it in an hour. And there’s this Yerba Buena Island here, at the halfway point, if we run into trouble.”

Lord Matsudaira raised his eyebrows. “Won’t the Bay be too dangerous for small boats? Look what it did to the
Sado Maru
.”

“The ebb current was very strong in the Golden Gate, because there was so much water rushing through so narrow an opening. The San Francisco-Oakland gap is perhaps three times as wide, and only the waters of the South Bay will ebb through it. Anyway, we can observe the tides for several days and launch when the waters are slack.”