The Boat Who Wouldn't Float (9 page)

The original
Black Joke
was a particularly infamous slaver sailing between West Africa and Virginia. She made a desperate reputation for herself. Her accommodation was so bad that a large part of her hapless passengers died of it. She also had the reputation of carrying such a stink that her presence could be detected aboard ships fifty miles to leeward of her. In general, the name seemed apt even if our vessel was green instead of black.

One night Jack and I visited the Morrys to cleanse ourselves physically and spiritually, and Howard began yarning
about Peter Easton, gentleman and captain in the Royal Navy who, early in the seventeenth century, decided to better himself by going into business on his own. He became one of the most successful pirates of all time. With a fleet that at one time numbered thirty vessels he dominated the sea routes between Europe and North America. He captured the Governor of Newfoundland and virtually made that island his personal domain.

Using it as a base, he raided the Caribbean, even capturing Morro Castle, together with its governor. On another foray far afield he captured four vessels of the Spanish treasure squadron off the Azores and took them to Tunis. The Bey of Tunis promptly concluded an
equal
alliance with Peter who then set out to singe the beard of the King of Spain. He did this so effectively that the royal Spanish fleet refused to face him in open battle and remained bottled up in its home harbours for more than a year. By this time Peter was growing weary of the active life, so he blackmailed the King of England into granting him a pardon, after which he retired to the Duchy of Savoy, bought himself a vast estate and the rank of Marquis, and gave up the sea.

Peter Easton was unique. He never made anyone walk the plank. He paid his men well and treated them decently. He had a sharp sense of humour. He was kind and loving—very loving, it is said—to women.

Jack fell completely under the Easton spell, possibly because of a psychological phenomenon known as transfer identification. He became such an Easton fan that he insisted we call our ship after Peter's flag ship—the ironically named
Happy Adventure
.

I at first demurred, being well aware that it would be necessary in future to offer long explanations for such a choice to critics who thought the name was simply too sentimental to be true. However in the end Jack won.

We did not have a traditional christening ceremony since nobody in Muddy Hole would have tolerated the waste of a bottle of anything alcoholic. Instead we sat in her crowded
cabin one evening and drank a number of toasts to the reincarnation of Peter Easton's ship. Then we pumped
Happy Adventure
dry (it now took only an hour or so) and bade our guests goodnight. We had determined to try our wings upon the morrow.

 

Seamen refer to the first tentative voyage of a newly commissioned ship as her trials.
Happy Adventure
's trials began at 1400 hours the next day, and so did ours.

It was a “civil” day (in Newfoundland this means the wind is not blowing a full hurricane) and a stiff easterly was whitening the waters of the harbour. Because this was our first departure, and because we were being watched by most of the inhabitants of Muddy Hole, we felt compelled to leave the stage under full sail.

We did not do too badly. With main, foresail, jib, and jumbo hoisted. Jack cast off our moorings. We sheeted everything home, the heavy sails began to draw and
Happy Adventure
slowly picked up way. In a few moments she was standing swiftly across the harbour.

In order to get out of the long narrow harbour of Muddy Hole against an east wind a vessel under sail must beat to weather—that is, she must tack back and forth against the wind. We were, of course, aware of this necessity. We were also aware that, as we left the stage, directly ahead of us there lay a covey of two dozen dories and skiffs, moored fifty yards off shore. As we approached them I prepared to come about on the other tack.

“Ready about!” I sang out to Jack. Then, pushing the big tiller over, “Hard a'lee!”

Happy Adventure's
head came up into the wind. She shook herself a bit, considered whether she would come about or not—and decided not. Her head fell off again and she resumed her original course.

Jack was later to claim that this was one of the few honest things she ever did. He claimed she knew perfectly well what would happen if we ever took her to sea, and so she decided
it would be better for all of us if she committed suicide immediately by skewering herself on the rocky shores of her home port, where her bones could rest in peace forever.

I disagree. I think that, never having been under sail before, the poor little vessel simply did not know what was expected of her. I think she was as terrified as I was as she bore down on the defenceless mess of little boats and the rocks that lay beyond them.

It was Jack who saved us all. He did not even pause to curse, but leapt into the engine room with such alacrity that he caught the bullgine sleeping. Before it knew he was there he had spun the flywheel and, even without a prime, the green beast was so surprised she fired. She had been taken totally off guard, but even as she belched into life she struck back at us, thinking to make us pay for our trickery by starting in reverse.

There were a great many people watching from the fish-plant wharf. Since they could not hear the roar of the bullgine above the thunder of the plant machinery they were incredulous of what they saw. Under full sail and snoring bravely along,
Happy Adventure
slowly came to a stop. Then with all sails still set and drawing—she began to back up. The fish-plant manager, a worldly man who had several times seen motion picture films, said it was like watching a movie that had been reversed. He said he expected to see the schooner back right up Obie's stage, lower her sails, and go to sleep again.

I
would have been happy to have had this happen. To tell the truth I was so unnerved that it was on the tip of my tongue to turn command over to Jack, jump into our little dory which we were towing astern, and abandon the sea forever. However pride is a terrible taskmaster and I dared not give in to my better instincts.

It was now obvious to Jack and to me that we were not going to be able to beat out of the harbour and that we would have to go out under power if we were to get out at all. But neither of us cared to try to make the bullgine change direc
tion and drive the boat ahead. We knew perfectly well she would stop, and refuse to start, and leave us to drift ignominiously ashore. Consequently,
Happy Adventure backed
all the way out of Muddy Hole harbour under full sail. I think it must have been the most reluctant departure in the history of men and ships.

Once we were at sea, and safely clear of the great headlands guarding the harbour mouth, Jack did try to reverse the engine and she reacted as we had known she would. She stopped and would not start. It no longer mattered.
Happy Adventure
lay over on her bilge, took the wind over her port bow and went bowling off down the towering coast as if she was on her way to a racing rendezvous.

During the next few hours all the miseries, doubts, and distresses of the past weeks vanished from our minds. The little ship sailed like a good witch. She still refused to come about, but this was no great problem in open water since we could jibe her around, and her masts and rigging were so stout that this sometimes dangerous practice threatened her not at all. We sailed her on a broad reach; we sailed her hard on the wind; we let her run, hung-out, with foresail to starboard and mainsail to port; and we had no fault to find with her sea-keeping qualities.

She had, however, some other frailties. The unaccustomed motion of bucketing through big seas under a press of canvas squeezed out most of the fish gunk with which she had sealed her seams, and she began to leak so excessively that Jack had to spend most of his time at the pump. Also, the massive compass I had brought with me from Ontario demonstrated an incredible disdain for convention, and insisted on pointing as much as forty degrees off what should have been the correct course. It was apparent that, until we found someone who could adjust the compass, our navigation would have to be, in the time-honoured phrase, “by guess and by God.” Neither of us was a very good guesser and we did not know how much we could rely on God.

In our temporarily euphoric mood we dared to sail sev
eral miles off shore to reconnoitre a belated iceberg. We were circling it at a discreet distance, for the great bergs become unstable in late summer and sometimes turn turtle, setting up tidal waves that can swamp a small vessel, when the sun began to haze over. The Grand Banks fog was rolling in upon the back of the east wind.

We fled before it and
Happy Adventure
carried us swiftly between the headlands of the harbour just as the fog overtook us, providing a grey escort as we ran down the reach and rounded-to in fine style at Obie's stage.

Despite her unorthodox departure, and despite the leaks and the compass, we felt reasonably content with our little vessel and not a little proud of ourselves as well. We were as ready as we would ever be to begin our voyage.

 

8.
The Old Man earns his drink

O
NE SMALL
difficulty still remained. We had no charts of the east coast of Newfoundland. The lack of charts, combined with a misleading compass and the dead certainty of running into fog, suggested we would do well to ship a pilot until we could make a port where charts could be bought and the compass adjusted.

The obvious choice for a pilot was Enos. Like most Newfoundland seamen he possessed, we presumed, special senses which are lost to modern man. He had sailed these waters all his life, often without a compass and usually without charts. When you asked him how he managed to find his way to some distant place he would look baffled and reply:

“Well, me son, I
knows
where it's at.”

We needed somebody like that. However when we broached the matter to Enos he showed no enthusiasm. For
a man who was usually as garrulous as an entire pack of politicians, his response was spectacularly succinct.

“No!” he grunted, and for emphasis spat a gob of tobacco juice on our newly painted cabin top.

There was no swaying him either. Persuasion (and Jack is a persuader
par excellence
) got us nowhere. He kept on saying “No” and spitting until the cabin top developed a slippery brown sheen over most of its surface and we were prepared to give up. I was, at any rate, but Jack was made of sterner stuff.

“If the old bustard won't come willingly,” Jack told me after Enos left, “we'll shanghai him.”

“The hell with him, Jack. Forget it. We'll manage on our own.”

“Forget him nothing! If this goddamn boat sinks I'm at least going to have the satisfaction of seeing him sink with it!”

There was no arguing with Jack in a mood like that.

He arranged a small farewell party on board that night. It was one of the gloomiest parties I have ever attended. Six or seven of our fishermen friends squeezed into the cabin and ruminated at lugubrious length on the manifold perils of the sea. When they got tired of that, they began recalling the small schooners that had sailed out of Southern Shore ports and never been heard of again. The list went on and on until even Enos began to grow restive.

“Well, byes,” he interjected, “them was mostly poor-built boats. Not fitten to go to sea. Not proper fer it, ye might say. Now you takes a boat like this” un. Proper built and found.
She
won't be making ary widows on the shore.”

This was the opening Jack had been waiting for.

“You're so right, Enos. In a boat as good as this a fellow could sail to hell and back.”

Enos eyed Jack with sudden suspicion. “Aye,” he replied cautiously. “She be good fer it!”

“You
certainly wouldn't be afraid to sail in her, now would you Enos?”

The trap was sprung.

“Well, now, me darlin' man, I don't say as I wouldn't, but a'course….”

“Good enough!” Jack shouted. “Farley, hand me the log. Enos, we'll sign you on as sailing master for the maiden voyage of the finest ship you ever built.”

Enos struggled mightily but to no avail. He was under the eyes of six of his peers and one of them, without realizing it, became our ally:

“Sign on, sign on, Enos, me son. We knows you'm not afeard!”

So Enos signed his mark.

 

Happy Adventure
sailed an hour after dawn. It was a fine morning, clear and warm, with a good draft of wind out of the nor'west to help us on our way and to keep the fog off shore. We had intended to sail
at
dawn but Enos did not turn up and when we went to look for him his daughters said he had gone off to haul a herring net. We recognized this as a ruse, and so we searched for him in the most likely place. He was savagely disgruntled when we found him, complaining bitterly that a man couldn't even “do his nature” without being followed. Little by little we coaxed him down to the stage, got him aboard and down below, and before he could rally, we cast off the lines.

Happy Adventure
made a brave sight as she rolled down the reach toward the waiting sea. With all sails set and drawing she lay over a little and snored sweetly through the water actually overtaking and passing two or three belated trap skiffs bound out to the fishing grounds. Their crews grinned cheerfully at us, which is as close to a farewell as a Newfoundland seaman will allow himself. There is bad luck in farewells.

Before we cleared the headlands I celebrated a small ritual that I learned from my father. I poured four stiff glasses of rum. I gave one of these to Enos and one to Jack, and I kept one for myself. The fourth, I poured overboard. The Old Man of the Sea is a sailor and he likes his drop of grog. And
it is a good thing to be on friendly terms with the Old Man when you venture out upon the grey waters that are his domain.

All that morning we sailed south on a long reach keeping a two-or three-mile offing from the grim sea cliffs. We came abeam of Cape Ballard and left it behind, then the wind began to fall light and fickle, ghosting for a change. The change came and the wind picked up from sou'east, a dead muzzler right on our bows, bringing the fog in toward us.

Enos began to grow agitated. We were approaching Cape Race, the southeast “corner” of Newfoundland and one of the most feared places in the Western Ocean. Its peculiar menace lies in the tidal currents that sweep past it. They are totally unpredictable. They can carry an unwary vessel, or one blinded by fog, miles off her true course and so to destruction on the brooding rocks ashore.

In our innocence Jack and I were not much worried and when Enos insisted that we down sail and start the engine we were inclined to mock him. He did not like this and withdrew into sullen taciturnity, made worse by the fact that I had closed off the rum rations while we were at sea. Finally, to please him, we started the bullgine, or rather Jack did, after a blasphemous half hour's struggle.

The joys of the day were now all behind us. Sombre clouds began closing off the sky; the air grew chill, presaging the coming of the fog; and the thunderous blatting of the unmuffled bullgine deafened us, while the slow strokes of the great piston shook the little boat as an otter shakes a trout.

By four o'clock we still had reasonably good visibility and were abeam of Cape Race—and there we stuck. The engine thundered and the water boiled under our counter but we got no farther on our way. Hour after hour the massive highlands behind the cape refused to slip astern. Jack and I finally began to comprehend something of the power of the currents. Although we were making five knots through the water a lee bow tide was running at almost the same speed against us.

The fog was slow in coming but the wall of grey slid inexorably nearer. At six-thirty Jack went below to rustle up some food. An instant later his head appeared in the companionway. The air of casual insouciance, which was as much a part of his seagoing gear as his jaunty yachting cap, had vanished.

“Christ!” he cried, and it was perhaps partly a prayer. “This bloody boat is sinking!”

I jumped to join him and found that he was undeniably right. Water was already sluicing across the floor boards in the main cabin. Spread-eagling the engine for better purchase, Jack began working the handle of the pump as if his life depended on it. It dawned on me his life
did
depend on it; and so did mine.

The next thing I knew Enos had shouldered me aside. Taking one horrified look at the private swimming pool inside
Happy Adventure
, he shrieked:

“Lard Jasus, byes, she's gone!”

It was hardly the remark we needed to restore our faith in him or in his boat. Still yelling, he went on to diagnose the trouble.

He told us the stuffing box had fallen off. This meant that the ocean was free to enter the boat through the large hole in the sternpost that housed the vessel's shaft. And since we could not reach it there was nothing we could do about it.

Enos now retreated into a mental room of his own, a dark hole filled with fatalistic thoughts. However, by giving him a bottle of rum to cherish, I managed to persuade him to take the tiller (the little boat had meanwhile been going in circles) and steer a course for Trepassey Bay, fifteen miles to the eastward, where I thought we might just manage to beach the vessel before she sank.

There was never any question of abandoning her. Our dory, so called, was a little plywood box barely capable of carrying one man. Life-preservers would have been useless, because we were in the Labrador Current where the waters are so cold that a man cannot survive immersion in them for
more than a few minutes.

By dint of furious pumping, Jack and I found we could almost hold the water level where it was, although we could not gain upon the inflow. And so we pumped. The engine thundered on. We pumped. The minutes stretched into hours and we pumped. The fog held off, which was one minor blessing, and we pumped. The engine roared and the heat became so intense that we were sweating almost as much water back into the bilges as we were pumping out. We pumped. The tidal current slackened and turned and began to help us on our way. We pumped.

Occasionally one of us crawled on deck to breathe and to rest our agonized muscles for a moment. At eight o'clock I stuck my head out of the companionway and saw the mas
sive headland of Mistaken Point a mile or so to leeward. I glanced at Enos. He was staring straight ahead, his eyes half shut and his mouth pursed into a dark pit of despair. He had taken out his dentures, a thing he always did in moments of stress. When I called out to tell him we were nearly holding the leak he gave no sign of hearing but continued staring over the bow as if he beheld some bleak and terrible vision from which he could not take his attention for a moment. Not at all cheered I ducked back into the engine room.

And then the main pump jammed.

That pump was a fool of a thing that had no right to be aboard a boat. Its innards were a complicated mass of springs and valves that could not possibly digest the bits of flotsam, jetsam, and codfish floating in the vessel's bilge. But, fool of a thing or not, it was our only hope.

It was dark by this time so Jack held a flashlight while I unbolted the pump's face plate. The thing contained ten small coil springs and all of them leapt for freedom the instant the plate came off. They ricocheted off the cabin sides like a swarm of manic bees and fell, to sink below the surface of the water in the bilges.

It does not seem possible, but we found them all. It took twenty-five or thirty minutes of groping with numbed arms under oily, icy water, but we found them all, re-installed them, put back the face plate, and again began to pump.

Meanwhile the water had gained four inches. It was now over the lower part of the flywheel and less than two inches below the top of the carburetor. The flywheel spun a niagara of spray onto the red-hot exhaust pipe, turning the dark and roaring engine-room into a sauna bath. We pumped.

Jack crawled on deck for a breather and immediately gave a frantic yell. For a second I hesitated. I did not think I had the fortitude to face a new calamity—but a second urgent summons brought me out on deck. Enos was frozen at the helm and by the last light of day I could see he was steering straight toward a wall of rock which loomed above us, no more than three hundred yards away.

I leapt for the tiller. Enos did not struggle but meekly moved aside. His expression had changed and had become almost beatific. It may have been the rum that did it—Enos was at peace with himself and with the Fates.

“We'd best run her onto the rocks,” he explained mildly, “than be drowned in the cold, cold water.”

Jack went back to the pump and I put the vessel on a course to skirt the threatening cliffs. We were not impossibly far from Trepassey Bay, and there still seemed to be a chance we could reach the harbour and beach the vessel on a non-lethal shore.

At about eleven o'clock I saw a flashing light ahead and steered for it. When I prodded him Enos confirmed that it might be the buoy marking the entrance to Trepassey harbour. However before we reached it the fog overtook us and the darkness became total. We felt our way past the light-buoy and across the surrounding shoals with only luck and the Old Man to guide us.