Survivor: The Autobiography (40 page)

‘All the time we are slowly slipping back. As we eat our curry and drink our cocoa we decide to slip the sea anchor . . . We have been almost stationary for so long there are several small fishes under the boat, and as I put the sea anchor over Blyth tries to sniggle one in best Scottish fashion. The fish is about eight inches long and fairly deep and mottled brown and white in colour.

‘We didn’t catch it. Neither of us wanted our food. This was caused in me by an amalgamation of pure fear and seasickness. We now realise our position and are both simply afraid. With the sea anchor over we both curl up under the canopy in the stern – both wet before it started. The salt is extremely irritating to our skin, and the position very cramped and a nightmare for anyone who suffers from claustrophobia. A grim, grim day.’

My own log was equally stark. ‘We have been rowing against this south-east wind now for three days,’ I wrote. ‘Now we’ve reduced it to one hour on and one hour sleeping. My hands are very sore indeed. I can’t clench my fists. It seems all the tendons and muscles and all my fingers have been pulled. Before I start my hour’s sleep I put lanoline on my hands, but they are so painful it doesn’t seem to help. When I wake up it’s a nightmare those first few minutes. My hands won’t do anything. When you take a stroke you get this fantastic jerk on your arms and hands. How I pray the wind will change to the West.

‘There’s been some fish following us all day. When we throw some paper over the side they dart out to it and then back to the stern. We rowed all day and then the seas gradually built up. At 10.00 GMT it was getting dark and the seas were very large by this time. We decided to put over the sea anchor. The first time for over a month or more – I can’t really remember. The night was spent in the two sleeping positions. Very uncomfortable and not a great deal of sleep. I got soaked all down my legs and behind. The water rushed in under the canopy into my boots and down my trouser leg. This only happened once, but it was enough.

‘We used water bags inflated as pillows and to put next to us where something would be sticking into us. I slept next to the pumps, but was very lucky. I only had to get up four times to pump out. I only hope the sea anchor holds the night.’

On 29 July we emerged only once from beneath the canvas canopy, and that was to check the sea anchor. To have lost it at that point would have been a disaster. For nothing could have stopped us being blown West with the wind, and we could easily have lost fifty miles.

We spent the day huddled together in the stern in a space measuring no more than five feet by four feet. John felt very sick and tried to sleep as much as possible.

The waves were like mountains and bigger than any we had seen up till then. Their tops were sliced flat by the wind, and they came towards us frighteningly fast and with a noise like a plane on full throttle. We learned to judge by their speed and sound which waves were going to pass under us, which would break into the boat and which would hit us smack on.

The constant battering of hundreds of pounds of falling water on the canvas canopy finally proved too much for the metal frame. It collapsed and introduced yet another form of personal discomfort. We tried to prop the edges up with two stout poles from our emergency kit. Every half minute or so the wind would lift the canvas. The poles would dislodge and the whole soggy mess would come tumbling down on our heads. We were driven almost to the point of hysteria.

Again I think it is worthwhile quoting from our logs to explain the full misery of that day. Nothing I can add now would so completely capture the events and feelings we experienced.

Wrote John: ‘The sea anchor seems to hold well – I believe because it does not have a rigid ring at the mouth, but can “breathe” like a parachute.

‘As night draws on we think of Samuelson and Harbo and how they rowed into a great easterly wind for two days and then lay exhausted at sea anchor – an exact parallel to our present circumstances. On the third night they were overturned. We believe
English Rose III
to be more seaworthy.

‘Tonight we lie and wait – nothing could save us if we get into difficulties. No ship could get us off these seas, even if it arrived in time. We are completely in God’s hands, at the mercy of the weather. All night the wind screams louder and louder and the sound of the sea becomes louder. We talked of many things, the night train to Scotland, the things we had done. And slowly we were overtaken by an enormous feeling of humility and the desire to return and try to live a better life.’

I noted a similar conclusion in my own log.

‘We stayed in our beds all day. You really start thinking of the good things in your life. A lot of humble pie can easily be eaten in a situation like this. There’s only one word for it – nightmare.

‘We often think of Johnstone and where he is. How fortunate for him he has a cabin. If both boats make this I’ll shake his hand. If he’s having it the same as us, as he must, he’s having it rough. We ate very little. No hot meals. We would have had to move everything to cook. The best way round this is to sleep. The sticks that kept the canopy up kept falling down. The wind would lift it a little and it would come down and hit us on the head about five times a minute. It would drive you to the point of getting angry – which I did. About 18.00 I got up to check the sea anchor. Okay. Pump out. I looked at the waves. They were huge. The biggest we’ve had so far. This must surely be the effect of the hurricane. It was almost white everywhere I looked.

‘At 3.00 hours we were wakened by the storm. The wind howled and the waves crashed against the stern and bow. Whack! It would hit the boat – but “Rosie” took it all. What a boat this is, wonderful. The dorymen certainly knew what they were talking about.

‘I pumped out very few times. Awful.

‘You could hear the waves roar like an engine coming towards you, crash into you, then roar off into the night. Then the next one. Only one thing for it. Sleep then prayer. God comes close to you out here.

‘You have three feet on each side of you. Then death.

‘I have never been so frightened before as I am here. I pray tomorrow that it will change. During the night I get fantastic pains in the knees. It came from them being bent for so long.

‘We are now both sleeping on the side which is away from the wind so that the side nearest the wind is higher and helps stop the water coming over the side.

‘My feet are numb. This must be the effect of the cold and the canopy resting on top of them. This canopy is continually wet now, laying on top of me. I can’t get away from it.’

The Lord must have heard our prayers, for early the next morning – Saturday, 30 July – the wind shifted to the North-west. We hauled in the sea anchor, and with the waves decreasing by the minute, we were soon racing eastwards with John on the oars.

But the sea had not finished with us yet. As the afternoon dragged past the wind swung round to the South, and by early evening we were in the grip of another storm, having had no chance to dry out and still reeling from tiredness and exposure.

The seas rapidly climbed to enormous proportions and life became a constant nightmare once more. For John the suffering was even more intense. He had developed a rash from knees to hips, and his neck was circled with salt water sores. the only thing in our first-aid kit which gave him any relief at all was foot powder – and we were already down to our last tin.

During the night it began to rain and the winds grew even fiercer. Dawn found us weakening rapidly and almost crying from lack of sleep. We were weary now to be finished, but home seemed so far away. There was a growing desperation in both of us to put an end to it – but that we were unable to do.

For four days we had been soaked to the skin. The salt water worked its way into our sores and John’s rash, and every movement meant further pain and misery.

Again the wind veered round to the West, but the storm continued without a let-up, and we saw nature performing tricks which defy logic. Great mountains, covered in icing sugar, marched endlessly towards the East, and we, thank God, were dragged along with them.

It is difficult to say which was worst, being on or off watch. The choice: to crouch soaking wet under a pile of streaming canvas or sit in the open wrapped in a dripping blanket. John looked exhausted with dark, sunken eyes, and I dreaded to think how I must look.

So we crashed on and on. Nothing mattered but to keep on going. ‘Rosie’ seemed like a thing alive. We hung precariously for long moments, balancing on the crest of a wave, surfing eastward with a speed that was terrifying yet wonderful. The dory took a terrible battering – but seemed to be indestructible. This fight against nature was going the whole distance, with only one round to the elements. A small hand-painted plaque was ripped from our stern.

It had been fastened there by George Hitchcock, a Cape Codder who gave us tremendous assistance in preparing for the crossing.

It was while I was out with George, taking lessons in rowing, that it suddenly dawned on me just what we were attempting. I turned to him and said, ‘Three thousand miles. What the hell have I done?’

He had scored these words on the plaque along with another quote: ‘Let’s get bloody rowing.’ It was a phrase we used often in the days preceding our departure from Cape Cod.

‘Let’s get bloody rowing,’ we said, ‘and get on with the job.’

I missed that tiny plaque, that and a nine-year-old letter from my mother and the last letter from Maureen were very comforting in moments of strain. Also the verse which the dorymen put on one of the watertight compartment doors:

This I believed in.

Under the Ground

I reached Pierre Saint-Martin on 3 August 1954, a whole day in advance of my companions. Two Spanish
carabiniers
stood near the entry to the pothole. These men were wrapped in heavy cloaks, for the weather was grey and cold as it so often was throughout that dreary summer. They had been on guard for several days, taking turns of duty with four others under the command of a lieutenant.

At the bottom of the shake-hole (a depression about 30 feet deep giving access to the narrow opening of the shaft itself) I could see the wooden cross upon which, in 1952, we had painted these words: ‘In the depths of this chasm lies Marcel Loubens, fallen on the battlefield of speleology.’

Wind, rain, snow and sun had obliterated much of the inscription, and I noticed that the first line ‘In the depths of this chasm lies . . .’ had completely vanished. The coincidence struck me, and I chose to regard it as a favourable omen of our purpose: Loubens would rest no more in that vast, cruel abyss; we would succeed in bringing up his body, and give it Christian burial at long last in the cemetery of his native village. We had given his parents a solemn promise to that effect in 1952.

4 August
The sun rose in a cloudless sky; and while the last of our party hurried up from the valley to the camp, pitched at an altitude of 5,800 feet, the drone of approaching aircraft could be heard. As in 1953, the Air Force and Parachute Regiment at Pau had kindly agreed to deliver our heavier and more cumbersome gear by parachute.

Three Junkers machines made several journeys to drop some fifty loads. They fulfilled their task with incomparable skill; for in spite of strong winds and the slope on which we were assembled, the multi-coloured parachutes came down literally into our arms. A single tourist plane carrying a press photographer, together with an observation-aircraft circled overhead throughout the morning. The whole business, in fact, looked like an aerial display staged for the benefit of all – shepherds, sightseers, speleologists, French and Spanish police. The most important and most fragile load came down in twin parachutes joined together, and landed gently on the grass. This was the duralumin container; it measured 7 feet 6 inches in length, and was made at the École Pratique at Bagnères-de-Bigorre to Lépineux’s design.

Later in the day a convoy of mules brought up the remainder of our gear, which we stored near the shepherd’s hut. For the fifth successive year the hum of activity caused by our arrival had disturbed the solitude and silence of the Pyrenees.

Tents sprang up like mushrooms; packing cases that lay where they had fallen from the air were now collected by members of the team, and by a crowd of trippers who lent a willing hand but who were obliged to beat a hasty retreat on the approach of bad weather. Mist rose stealthily from the valley and enshrouded everything. Torrential rain driven by an icy wind brought the day to a miserable close; reminding us that we were indeed high up on the western Pyrenees, where the Atlantic gales provide an annual rainfall of something like ninety-six inches. Lévi had warned us in the circular letter before the expedition: ‘Waterproof clothing will of course be no less essential in the surface camp than at the bottom of the chasm.’