The Brendan Voyage

by Tim Severin

  When we were sufficiently confident, we took Brendan back down to the coast and tried sailing her in the estuary where I had first tested Finnbarr. Sometimes we were dispirited; sometimes we were greatly heartened. Once again we found it was impossible to row against the wind, and spent one dreary and uncomfortable night bottled up in a bay, anchored just out of reach of the surf that creamed and roared past us onto the beach. On another day we tried capsizing the Brendan, and found that she floated like an upturned whale, virtually impossible to turn the right way up. So we placed inside her some blocks of buoyancy so that we could spin the boat the right way up. In this state, when totally swamped, we learned that five of us using buckets could bail her dry inside ten minutes.

  In Saint Brendan’s Navigatio it had been written that the monks “got iron tools and constructed a light boat ribbed with wood and with a wooden frame, as is usual in those parts. They covered it with oxhides tanned with the bark of oak and smeared all the joints of the hides on the outside with fat. Into the boat they carried hides for making two other boats, supplies for forty days, fat for preparing hides to cover the boat, and other things needed for human life. They also placed a mast in the middle of the boat and requirements for steering a boat. Then Saint Brendan ordered his brothers in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to enter the boat.”

  In the twentieth century it had taken nearly three years of work and research to reach the same point. Now, like the original monks, it was time to put to sea to look for our way to the Promised Land.

  4

  DEPARTURE

  Yellow and brown, Brendan lay at the head of Brandon Creek on Saint Brendan’s feast day. Bright yellow tarpaulins had been stretched over bow and stern to make her easier to locate if a search-and-rescue mission had to be mounted to save her, as some Cassandras prophesied. “They’ll need a miracle if they hope to cross the Atlantic in that—more than Saint Brendan ever did!” was how one spectator put it.

  But we weren’t going anywhere that particular day. Although it was May 16 and the day I had scheduled for our departure, a full-blown gale was raging. The rain was sheeting down, and the wind buffeted against the damp cliffs of the creek. In the open Atlantic, outside, the surface of the sea was torn to smoke as the squalls rushed across it. The crew and I stood dejected and dripping around Brendan where she lay dragged up on the landing slip. The boat was in chaos. It had been a hectic, last-minute flurry to get her into position. In theory, at least, we had a stowage plan for Brendan to help us find room for enough stores, water, and equipment for five men. But there had been no time to stow anything properly. Everything lay higgledy-piggledy, tossed in the bottom of the boat—kit bags, torches, food, first-aid kit, the hurricane lamp, even the ship’s bell, which looked like a large Swiss cowbell but was in fact a copy of the chapel bells that in Saint Brendan’s day had hung outside the monks’ oratories and called their congregations to prayer. How much easier it had been, I thought to myself, for Saint Brendan and his monks all those years ago. They would have simply put to sea with spare leather and currying fat; the woollen clothes they used for everyday wear, especially the hooded gowns of heavy wool; a supply of water in leather flasks; wooden dippers for bailers; dried meat, cereals, and roots for their food; and—most important—a sublime faith that God would take care of them.

  They were men accustomed to extraordinary hardship. From the other side of the Dingle Peninsula one could see the twin pinnacles of the Skellig Islands, thrusting out of the Atlantic. Out there it was so exposed that spray from the waves broke the lighthouse windows four hundred feet above the surface of the water. Yet, in Saint Brendan’s day, a community of monks chose to live on those bleak rocks. With devoted labor they had cleared a ledge and built six beehive huts and two oratories of rough stone. Here they had lived huddled together in Christianity’s most lonely outpost. Flailed by the great winds of winter and early spring, they were cut off from contact with the mainland when no skin boat, however skillfully handled, could have reached them. Yet somehow they survived, and clung as stubbornly to their faith as their hemispherical homes clung like housemartins’ nests to the rock. They were so constant and so isolated that long after the Church calendar was amended, the monks of the Skelligs still celebrated Easter on its original date.

  To try to emulate such hardy men would prove little. They had shown their fortitude for all history to see; and now for Brendan’s crew to set out wearing medieval clothing or eating a medieval diet would teach us nothing new. It would only make our modern task more difficult and uncomfortable. We were embarking on the Brendan Voyage not to prove ourselves, but to prove the boat. Brendan was what mattered. No wonder I envied the monks their simplicity. They had not worried where to stow camera equipment so that it kept dry, nor how to find space for the pair of twelve-volt car batteries that powered our small radio telephone. As for the radio itself, it was still in its carton. The radio had arrived so recently that there was no time to unpack it, let alone install or test it properly. Like many other items of our equipment, our radio was an unknown quantity. Radio manufacturer after manufacturer had been approached for help in supplying a suitable set, but most of them were appalled at the thought of exposing their radios to conditions in an open boat. Even the makers of military radio sets designed to be dropped by parachute had doubted if their equipment would survive aboard Brendan. Only at the very last minute was a set offered.

  The rest of our equipment was relatively basic. We had a life raft and a box of distress flares, jerry cans of water and paraffin, a small radio direction finder, a sextant and tables, and a bundle of charts. Most of our drinking water was stored in soft rubber tubes—the modern equivalent of the leather flasks of the monks—tucked under the slatted floor of the boat where it would also serve as ballast. Our food was packed in plastic bags, one bag to be opened each day and, if my calculations were correct, containing sufficient food for five men for twenty-four hours. The food itself was a gourmet’s nightmare. There were the usual tins of meat and fish and baked beans; packets of dried soups and vegetables; dried fruit and bars of chocolate; and an apparently endless supply of Scots oatmeal cake, which I hoped would prove a substitute for bread. On our past record, George and I doubted if we would catch many fish to supplement our diet, and looking at all those dehydrated packet foods, I had a premonition that all would not be well. Everything seemed to be plastic. More than half the items were wrapped in plastic or came in plastic tubs, and we had spent a hectic day wrapping every item in a second plastic bag before sealing the full day’s rations in an even larger plastic bag. Our food looked and smelled of plastic and—as it turned out—soon began to taste of plastic, too.

  Brendan’s monks had probably cooked on a peat or wood fire kept burning in a fire tray or in a cauldron, which could also be carried ashore. And, of course, they were accustomed to eating cold food. On the other hand, I had placed great value on the morale-boosting effect of regular hot meals, and so had arranged for a traditional paraffin stove to be built into a cook box about the size of a footlocker. Its lid hinged back to serve as a windshield; two side flaps pulled up to give additional protection; and, best of all, the entire stove hung on gimbals. It was an ingenious device because the cook box could be lashed into position wherever we wanted it, and used in almost any weather.

  There was one other item on the slipway in Brandon Creek that would have surprised a yachtsman but not a medieval monk. Alongside the boat lay a soggy heap of sheepskins, looking grubby and smelling strongly. I had read that polar explorers had found sheepskins excellent insulation when sleeping on the ice; and as they were a typical material from Saint Brendan’s day I thought it worth trying them as sleeping mats inside the boat. As it turned out, the smell of sheepskin was to become the third member of our triumvirate of grease and leather and wool which was to pervade our lives for the entire voyage.

  For our clothing I had selected modern sailing suits. Each member of the crew was color-coded so that
our garments did not get muddled. George wore orange; I had yellow; and as befitted our most Irish crew member, Arthur Magan had chosen green. Arthur already had a nickname for the voyage—Boots—because on the day he first joined the project, he showed up wearing a pair of size 12 boots that would have done credit to an oversized cowboy. In fact, nearly everything about Arthur came in the larger sizes. He was burly and stood over six feet, with a shock of yellow hair that stuck out at all angles. He exuded a genial air of crumpled untidiness that somehow gave him the impression of a friendly young bear just emerged from hibernation. At twenty-three he was the youngest member of the crew—but also the strongest. When anything was jammed, a mast needed lifting, or a mooring warp had to be hauled right, it was Boots who was called on for the job. When he heard about Brendan, he had written me a letter which was a model of brevity:

  DEAR TIM,

  I am writing to offer myself as a possible crew member. Mrs. Molony gave me your address. I was at school with George’s brother.

  I have been sailing since I was large enough to go near a boat. I have also spent several winter months recently fishing in trawlers in Icelandic waters.

  I realise nothing can be gained by writing letters to each other. I am available at any time to come down and see you if you are interested.

  YOURS GRATEFULLY,

  ARTHUR MAGAN

  So I had invited him to come to Cork, and two days later he clumped into the boatyard in his size 12s, glanced briefly around the boat, mumbled his name, took off a battered tweed jacket that was a kaleidoscope of patches and mends, and began working alongside us.

  Like his letter, Boots’s sentences were brief. Bit by bit, I learned that his family lived near Dublin, that he had spent much of his childhood in Valentia near the Dingle, and could “sail a boat a bit.” Later I would also discover that he was a magnet for the girls. Young ladies could not resist the challenge of trying to feed him, tidy him up, and generally take care of him. Boots, it seemed, was an ideal feminine project, but a hopeless one too. At landfall after landfall on the voyage he would be returned to Brendan by his latest girlfriend, despair mingling with sadness in her expression, as before her very eyes he began to dissolve into his usual chaotic state the moment he stepped aboard. And as likely as not, we later discovered that he had left some of his clothing behind, and these would be sent ahead to be at our next port of call. Arthur himself took such matters in his stride. He never offered any information unasked; and he hadn’t even told his family that he had been selected for the Brendan crew until one morning his father read in the newspaper that a certain “Boots” Magan was going on the voyage. “Do you know anyone called Boots?” he asked over the breakfast table. “Yes, me,” was his son’s brief reply.

  That rainy morning in Brandon Creek Arthur’s crumpled green sailingsuit was topped off with—of all things—a battered Sherlock Holmes stalking cap, its ear flaps lustily blowing in the wind. “Hello, wearing your Deputy Dawg outfit today?” the inevitable wisecrack came from Peter Mullett, Brendan’s photographer, dressed in a bright red sailing suit that made him look more like a cardinal than the London sparrow he was. Born and reared in London, Peter had been a successful magazine photographer before he had become exasperated with city life, thrown up his job, and moved with Jill, his glamorous ex-model wife, and his son Joey to the west of Ireland. There he had bought a plot of land, built a small cottage with his own hands and to his own design, and settled down to live as simply as possible. Then he too had heard about Brendan, and impressed me by arriving at the boatyard with a large suitcase. “Have you brought your cameras with you?” I asked him. “Yes,” he replied, and opened the case. It was divided down the middle by a partition. On one side a complete professional’s array of camera bodies, lenses, and sundry equipment lay neatly cradled in foam padding. But what caught my eye was the opposite half of the case. There was a comprehensive and well-used carpentry kit—complete with saws, draw knives, spoke shaves, drills, planers, and all the tools of a professional woodworker. Brendan, I thought to myself, was not just getting a photographer but, equally valuable, a man who could mend her wooden frame en route.

  Rolf Hansen in his Norwegian blue sailing suit was the fifth and last member of the crew to join. He had come from Norway to volunteer, and was an old-boat fanatic. His hobby was interviewing retired fishermen in remote Norwegian coastal villages to collect their reminiscences about the days of sail. Short, barrel-chested, and bespectacled, Rolf was second only to Boots in physical strength; and like the Irishman, he was a man of few words, partly because he spoke only a smattering of English, but also because Rolf regarded seafaring as a serious business. When someone ventured to ask him if he was married, Rolf answered very seriously, “I am married to the sea.”

  So an Irishman, a Cockney, a Norwegian, and an Englishman had joined Brendan, and I wondered how well we would get along together during the days that undoubtedly lay ahead. We were attempting a voyage which differed in two important respects from many previous voyages in reconstructed historic vessels. First, we were embarking in a true boat, not a raft. Brendan was not simply a platform on which the winds and currents might carry us to our destination if we were lucky. She would have to be sailed properly if she were to survive, and there was little margin for error. A single mistake—a rope jammed around a cleat in a squall, or a sail suddenly blown hard against the mast—could capsize her with disastrous results. Second, and more important, we were about to venture into cold waters where few modern yachts cared to go. This was not to be a sun-drenched cruise in bathing suits. We were about to take a very small, open boat into sub-Arctic conditions, where we would have to be muffled in heavy clothing for weeks on end, frequently soaked by rain and spray, and according to the Royal Navy survival experts who had drilled us in safety procedures, if anyone fell overboard incorrectly dressed, he would be dead within five minutes.

  Fortunately, the bad weather on Saint Brendan’s day had not discouraged our friends. Many of those who had helped us came to the Dingle Peninsula to see us off, and held a farewell party at the nearby hotel with a conviviality that only the Irish could manage. Whiskey and stout were consumed in vast amounts; lively conversation culminated with an Irish public relations man, sent to calm proceedings, offering to fight all our critics; and at the right moment the roof of the bar sprung a massive leak under the weight of collected rainwater and deluged the guests.

  “Why do you want to go on this voyage?” a reporter asked each crew member in turn.

  “Because I enjoy sailing and want to learn how to handle this type of boat,” answered George.

  “It’s a challenge,” said Peter.

  “Because I love the sea,” was Rolf’s answer.

  “For the crack. For the fun of it,” grunted Arthur, taking a long pull at his pint of stout.

  “What about your wives? What do they think of your going off into the Atlantic like this?”

  Jill Mullett looked at her husband. “You can’t stop Peter from doing what he wants to do,” she said. “Besides, it’s time he had another project to occupy him.”

  Judith, George’s wife, agreed. “I think George ought to do what he wants to do. Besides, I hope to be seeing him when Brendan gets to Iceland.”

  My wife managed to pass off the question. “Tim’s always doing this sort of project,” she told the journalist with a smile, “and after all, I’m a medievalist, and so I approve of anything that is good for medieval studies.”

  Then came the inevitable question. “Aren’t you worried?” The three wives looked at one another. “No,” they replied firmly.

  May 17 dawned fine, with high clouds chasing across the sky and thunderheads lurking on the horizon. The swell left by the gale was heaving into the Creek as I went up to one of the two cottages at the top of the road to consult Tom Leahy who lived there and kept a curragh in the Creek. Tom was another of the breed of craggy raw-boned Dingle men, tall and soft-spoken. “You go back to the hotel and get
some rest,” he had told me the previous evening. “You’ll be needing it. Don’t worry about the boat. I and my son will keep an eye on her for you, and see that she is all right. No one can come past us without our hearing them.” And he had been as good as his word. In the small hours of the morning, when I had come down to check that all was well on Brendan, I found the silent figure of Tom Leahy, leaning like a black shadow against the wall that rimmed the Creek, gazing out over the boat. I thanked him for his help. “There were some children scrambling down there this evening,” he told me. “But they’re local lads and they wouldn’t take anything.” Indeed, the honesty of the country children was such that although they had explored inside and out of the Brendan, and fingered its child’s treasure-trove of torches, knives, bars of chocolate and other delectables, not one single item had been filched.

  Now, looking at the tide sucking past the mouth of the Creek, I asked Tom for his advice.

  “Would you say that we could sail today?”

  He looked at me steadily. “Wait till the tide turns,” he advised. “You should have a few hours, two or three at the most, in which to get clear. And I wouldn’t leave it any longer.”

  “Why not, Tom?”

  “I don’t like the look of the weather. We’re in for some rain and wind, and if the wind swings round to the northwest it’ll bring a heavy sea into the Creek. You’ll be trapped there, and I wouldn’t answer for the safety of your boat. The surge could break her to pieces.”

  “All right, Tom. Then we’ll leave when the tide floats Brendan off the slipway. Will you be escorting us out?”