The Log from the Sea of Cortez (5 page)
Read The Log from the Sea of Cortez Online
Authors: John Steinbeck,Richard Astro
We have a book to write about the Gulf of California. We could do one of several things about its design. But we have decided to let it form itself: its boundaries a boat and a sea; its duration a six weeks’ charter time; its subject everything we could see and think and even imagine; its limits—our own without reservation.
We made a trip into the Gulf; sometimes we dignified it by calling it an expedition. Once it was called the Sea of Cortez, and that is a better-sounding and a more exciting name. We stopped in many little harbors and near barren coasts to collect and preserve the marine invertebrates of the littoral. One of the reasons we gave ourselves for this trip—and when we used this reason, we called the trip an expedition—was to observe the distribution of invertebrates, to see and to record their kinds and numbers, how they lived together, what they ate, and how they reproduced. That plan was simple, straight-forward, and only a part of the truth. But we did tell the truth to ourselves. We were curious. Our curiosity was not limited, but was as wide and horizonless as that of Darwin or Agassiz or Linnaeus or Pliny. We wanted to see everything our eyes would accommodate, to think what we could, and, out of our seeing and thinking, to build some kind of structure in modeled imitation of the observed reality. We knew that what we would see and record and construct would be warped, as all knowledge patterns are warped, first, by the collective pressure and stream of our time and race, second by the thrust of our individual personalities. But knowing this, we might not fall into too many holes—we might maintain some balance between our warp and the separate thing, the external reality. The oneness of these two might take its contribution from both. For example: the Mexican sierra has “XVII-15-IX” spines in the dorsal fin. These can easily be counted. But if the sierra strikes hard on the line so that our hands are burned, if the fish sounds and nearly escapes and finally comes in over the rail, his colors pulsing and his tail beating the air, a whole new relational externality has come into being—an entity which is more than the sum of the fish plus the fisherman. The only way to count the spines of the sierra unaffected by this second relational reality is to sit in a laboratory, open an evil-smelling jar, remove a stiff colorless fish from formalin solution, count the spines, and write the truth “D. XVII-15-IX.” There you have recorded a reality which cannot be assailed—probably the least important reality concerning either the fish or yourself.
It is good to know what you are doing. The man with his pickled fish has set down one truth and has recorded in his experience many lies. The fish is not that color, that texture, that dead, nor does he smell that way.
Such things we had considered in the months of planning our expedition and we were determined not to let a passion for unassailable little truths draw in the horizons and crowd the sky down on us. We knew that what seemed to us true could be only relatively true anyway. There is no other kind of observation. The man with his pickled fish has sacrificed a great observation about himself, the fish, and the focal point, which is his thought on both the sierra and himself,
We suppose this was the mental provisioning of our expedition. We said, “Let’s go wide open. Let’s see what we see, record what we find, and not fool ourselves with conventional scientific strictures. We could not observe a completely objective Sea of Cortez anyway, for in that lonely and uninhabited Gulf our boat and ourselves would change it the moment we entered. By going there, we would bring a new factor to the Gulf. Let us consider that factor and not be betrayed by this myth of permanent objective reality. If it exists at all, it is only available in pickled tatters or in distorted flashes. Let us go,” we said, “into the Sea of Cortez, realizing that we become forever a part of it; that our rubber boots slogging through a flat of eel-grass, that the rocks we turn over in a tide pool, make us truly and permanently a factor in the ecology of the region. We shall take something away from it, but we shall leave something too.” And if we seem a small factor in a huge pattern, nevertheless it is of relative importance. We take a tiny colony of soft corals from a rock in a little water world. And that isn’t terribly important to the tide pool. Fifty miles away the Japanese shrimp boats are dredging with overlapping scoops, bringing up tons of shrimps, rapidly destroying the species so that it may never come back, and with the species destroying the ecological balance of the whole region. That isn’t very important in the world. And thousands of miles away the great bombs are falling and the stars are not moved thereby. None of it is important or all of it is.
We determined to go doubly open so that in the end we could, if we wished, describe the sierra thus: “D. XVII-15-IX; A. II-15-IX,” but also we could see the fish alive and swimming, feel it plunge against the lines, drag it threshing over the rail, and even finally eat it. And there is no reason why either approach should be inaccurate. Spine-count description need not suffer because another approach is also used. Perhaps out of the two approaches, we thought, there might emerge a picture more complete and even more accurate than either alone could produce. And so we went.
1
How does one organize an expedition: what equipment is taken, what sources read; what are the little dangers and the large ones? No one has ever written this. The information is not available. The design is simple, as simple as the design of a well-written book. Your expedition will be enclosed in the physical framework of start, direction, ports of call, and return. These you can forecast with some accuracy; and in the better-known parts of the world it is possible to a degree to know what the weather will be in a given season, how high and low the tides, and the hours of their occurrence. One can know within reason what kind of boat to take, how much food will be necessary for a given crew for a given time, what medicines are usually needed—all this subject to accident, of course.
We had read what books were available about the Gulf and they were few and in many cases confused. The Coast Pilot had not been adequately corrected for some years. A few naturalists with specialties had gone into the Gulf and, in the way of specialists, had seen nothing they hadn’t wanted to. Clavigero, a Jesuit of the eighteenth century, had seen more than most and reported what he saw with more accuracy than most. There were some romantic accounts by young people who had gone into the Gulf looking for adventure and, of course, had found it. The same romantic drive aimed at the stockyards would not be disappointed. From the information available, a few facts did emerge. The Sea of Cortez, or the Gulf of California, is a long, narrow, highly dangerous body of water. It is subject to sudden and vicious storms of great intensity. The months of March and April are usually quite calm and dependable and the March-April tides of 1940 were particularly good for collecting in the littoral.
The maps of the region were self-possessed and confident about headlands, coastlines, and depth, but at the edge of the Coast they become apologetic—laid in lagoons with dotted lines, supposed and presumed their boundaries. The
Coast Pilot
spoke as heatedly as it ever does about mirage and treachery of light. Going back from the
Coast Pilot
to Clavigero, we found more visual warnings in his accounts of ships broken up and scattered, of wrecks and wayward currents; of fifty miles of sea more dreaded than any other. The
Coast Pilot,
like an elderly scientist, cautious and restrained, on one side—and the old monk, setting down ships and men lost, and starvation on the inhospitable coasts.
Coast Pilot
spoke as heatedly as it ever does about mirage and treachery of light. Going back from the
Coast Pilot
to Clavigero, we found more visual warnings in his accounts of ships broken up and scattered, of wrecks and wayward currents; of fifty miles of sea more dreaded than any other. The
Coast Pilot,
like an elderly scientist, cautious and restrained, on one side—and the old monk, setting down ships and men lost, and starvation on the inhospitable coasts.
In time of peace in the modern world, if one is thoughtful and careful, it is rather more difficult to be killed or maimed in the outland places of the globe than it is in the streets of our great cities, but the atavistic urge toward danger persists and its satisfaction is called adventure. However, your adventurer feels no gratification in crossing Market Street in San Francisco against the traffic. Instead he will go to a good deal of trouble and expense to get himself killed in the South Seas. In reputedly rough water, he will go in a canoe; he will invade deserts without adequate food and he will expose his tolerant and uninoculated blood to strange viruses. This is adventure. It is possible that his ancestor, wearying of the humdrum attacks of the saber-tooth, longed for the good old days of pterodactyl and triceratops.
We had no urge toward adventure. We planned to collect marine animals in a remote place on certain days and at certain hours indicated on the tide charts. To do this we had, in so far as we were able, to avoid adventure. Our plans, supplies, and equipment had to be more, not less, than adequate; and none of us was possessed of the curious boredom within ourselves which makes adventurers or bridge-players.
Our first problem was to charter a boat. It had to be sturdy and big enough to go to sea, comfortable enough to live on for six weeks, roomy enough to work on, and shallow enough so that little bays could be entered. The purse-seiners of Monterey were ideal for the purpose. They are dependable work boats with comfortable quarters and ample storage room. Furthermore, in March and April the sardine season is over and they are tied up. It would be easy, we thought, to charter such a boat; there must have been nearly a hundred of them anchored in back of the breakwater. We went to the pier and spread the word that we were looking for such a boat for charter. The word spread all right, but we were not overwhelmed with offers. In fact, no boat was offered. Only gradually did we discover the state of mind of the boat owners. They were uneasy about our project. Italians, Slavs, and some Japanese, they were primarily sardine fishers. They didn’t even approve of fishermen who fished for other kinds of fish. They frankly didn’t believe in the activities of the land—road-building and manufacturing and brick-laying. This was not a matter of ignorance on their part, but of intensity. All the directionalism of thought and emotion that man was capable of went into sardine-fishing; there wasn’t room for anything else. An example of this occurred later when we were at sea. Hitler was invading Denmark and moving up towards Norway ; there was no telling when the invasion of England might begin ; our radio was full of static and the world was going to hell. Finally in all the crackle and noise of the short-wave one of our men made contact with another boat. The conversation went like this:
“This is the
Western Flyer.
Is that you, Johnny?”
Western Flyer.
Is that you, Johnny?”
“Yeah, that you, Sparky?”
“Yeah, this is Sparky. How much fish you got?”
“Only fifteen tons; we lost a school today. How much fish you got?”
“We’re not fishing.”
“Why not?”
“Aw, we’re going down in the Gulf to collect starfish and bugs and stuff like that.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, O.K., Sparky, I’ll clear the wave length.”
“Wait, Johnny. You say you only got fifteen tons?”
“That’s right. If you talk to my cousin, tell him, will you?”
“Yeah, I will, Johnny.
Western Flyer’s
all clear now.”
Western Flyer’s
all clear now.”
Hitler marched into Denmark and into Norway, France had fallen, the Maginot Line was lost—we didn’t know it, but we knew the daily catch of every boat within four hundred miles. It was simply a directional thing; a man has only so much. And so it was with the chartering of a boat. The owners were not distrustful of us; they didn’t even listen to us because they couldn’t quite believe we existed. We were obviously ridiculous.
Now the time was growing short and we began to worry. Finally one boat owner who was in financial difficulty offered his boat at a reasonable price and we were ready to accept when suddenly he raised the price out of question and bolted. He was horrified at what he had done. He raised the price, not to cheat us, but to get out of going.
The boat problem was growing serious when Anthony Berry sailed into Monterey Bay on the
Western Flyer.
The idea was no shock to Tony Berry; he had chartered to the government for salmon tagging in Alaskan waters and was used to nonsense. Besides, he was an intelligent and tolerant man. He knew that he had idiosyncrasies and that some of his friends had. He was willing to let us do any crazy thing that we wanted so long as we (1) paid a fair price, (2) told him where to go, (3) did not insist that he endanger the boat, (4) got back on time, and (5) didn’t mix him up in our nonsense. His boat was not busy and he was willing to go. He was a quiet young man, very serious and a good master. He knew some navigation—a rare thing in the fishing fleet—and he had a natural caution which we admired. His boat was new and comfortable and clean, the engines in fine condition. We took the
Western Flyer
on charter.
Western Flyer.
The idea was no shock to Tony Berry; he had chartered to the government for salmon tagging in Alaskan waters and was used to nonsense. Besides, he was an intelligent and tolerant man. He knew that he had idiosyncrasies and that some of his friends had. He was willing to let us do any crazy thing that we wanted so long as we (1) paid a fair price, (2) told him where to go, (3) did not insist that he endanger the boat, (4) got back on time, and (5) didn’t mix him up in our nonsense. His boat was not busy and he was willing to go. He was a quiet young man, very serious and a good master. He knew some navigation—a rare thing in the fishing fleet—and he had a natural caution which we admired. His boat was new and comfortable and clean, the engines in fine condition. We took the
Western Flyer
on charter.
She was seventy-six feet long with a twenty-five-foot beam; her engine, a hundred and sixty-five horsepower direct reversible Diesel, drove her at ten knots. Her deckhouse had a wheel forward, then combination master’s room and radio room, then bunkroom, very comfortable, and behind that the galley. After the galley, a large hatch gave into the fish-hold, and after the hatch were the big turn-table and roller of the purse-seiner. She carried a twenty-foot skiff and a ten-foot skiff. Her engine was a thing of joy, spotlessly clean, the moving surfaces shining and damp with oil and the green paint fresh and new on the housings. The engine-room floor was clean and all the tools polished and hung in their places. One look into the engine-room inspired confidence in the master. We had seen other engines in the fishing fleet and this perfection on the Western Flyer was by no means a general thing.
As crew we signed Tex Travis, engineer, and Sparky Enea and Tiny Colletto, seamen. All three were a little reluctant to go, for the whole thing was crazy. None of us had been into the Gulf, although the master had been as far as Cape San Lucas, and the Gulf has a really bad name. It was a thoughtful crew who agreed to go with us.
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