The Brendan Voyage

by Tim Severin

  “Of course, and the prayers of my family and I will go with you,” he said.

  It was Tom’s curragh that I had first seen at Brandon Creek so many months ago when I originally visited the area, and I remembered that Tom was the last man regularly working a curragh out of Brandon Creek. Somehow I thought it fitting that the last descendant of a tradition that stretched back for a millennium should see us on our way.

  All that morning the local people began to filter down to the Creek. Farmers arrived with their families clinging to muddy tractors. Holidaymakers—for the Dingle is a favorite holiday area—came in cars. Students arrived on foot, and there were many who came on bicycles. A pair of local policemen drove up looking very self-conscious in a smart blue patrol car. Officially they were there to control the crowd, but they were far more interested in peering into Brendan with the other sightseers. A small group of priests settled themselves comfortably on the upper wall, and called out their blessings. Down on the quay, an old woman pushed forward from the crowd and thrust a small bottle of holy water into my hand. “God bless you all, and bring you safe to America,” she said. “We’ll pray for you each day,” chorused some nuns. I tucked the bottle of holy water safely inside the double gunwale in exactly the same place where every Dingle curragh, however small, still carries its phial of holy water. John O’Connell had given each of us a small religious motif to carry with us. He was looking strained with worry and tension. So too were the wives and families. “Look after our son,” said Arthur’s father to me. Rolf stepped ashore from Tom Leahy’s curragh. He hadn’t been able to resist a chance to go for a spin in this rare breed of boat. It was high time we were gone.

  “Come on!” I called to the crowd. “Give us a hand to push her off the slip.” There was a confused blur of faces, of hands and shoulders pushing at the brown leather hull, and with a soft slithering groan Brendan floated off the slipway and rode to an anchor in the middle of the narrow cleft.

  “Goodybye, Daddy.” I heard Ida’s small voice clearly across the water. Fortunately, she and Joey Mullett were having such a good time together that they regarded the departure as a game.

  “Time to put up the flags,” I called to George, and he hoisted them to the mainmast. They flew in the order of the countries we intended to visit: the tricolor of Ireland, the Union flag for Northern Ireland; Saint Andrew’s Cross for Scotland; the flag of Faroes; the flag of Iceland; the Danish flag for Greenland; then the Canadian Maple Leaf; and finally the Stars and Stripes. At the peak, on its own, flew the twin-tailed Brendan Banner, red cross on white.

  There was so much to do at the last minute there was no time to be worried or nervous. All of us wanted to be on our way out to sea. Inevitably there was a last-minute hitch: the anchor jammed under a rock. Boots gave it a mighty heave, but it would not come free. A fishing launch maneuvered up. “Throw us the line. We’ll pull it on a drum!” came a shout. Their winch took up the slack, the anchor came clear, and Brendan was free.

  As if on cue, the wind died away almost completely. I took the helm, while George and the others settled themselves to the oars. “Give way, together!” I called, and Brendan turned and began to roll out of Brandon Creek into the Atlantic. Deep-laden and sluggish, we began to push against the swells heaving into the entrance. “This is like rowing a supertanker with a ball-point pen,” grunted George, glancing along the slim blade of his oar. On either side of us skittered a curragh. Tom Leahy was in one of them, and I noticed that each boat boasted a tiny Irish tricolor jauntily tied to its prow.

  The crowd waved and shouted good wishes; and then, as we cleared the mouth of the Creek and passed the cliffs rising on each side, I turned back and saw a sight that etched itself indelibly into my mind: two hundred or more people were scrambling and scurrying to the headland for a final view. The sight had a dreamlike quality, for the sun was in the far west and the flat light picked up the silhouettes of the people along the crest of the hill like a frieze. Their figures were very tiny and very black, cut out like a trail of disciplined insects, all clambering and hurrying in one direction and with one intent toward the farthest tip of the cliff. From there they could see us disappearing smaller and smaller into the ocean. Never before had I witnessed such an air of determination, and I felt awed that it reminded me of the pilgrims who climbed to the peak of Mount Brandon each year to celebrate mass in honor of their patron saint. So many people had helped us, so many people had shown confidence in us, I thought, that we could not let them down.

  As soon as we were well clear of the entrance and there was no longer any risk of the tide setting us down on the nearest headland, I ordered our sails to be raised. The wind was from the southwest, fair for our passage along the Irish coast. The Celtic crosses on Brendan’s sails filled out, and soon we began to gather speed. We pulled aboard the unwieldy oars, and made fast all the loose items in the boat as Brendan began to settle down on her course. Tom Leahy waved goodbye; the two escorting curraghs turned back and soon were no more than specks rowing back into the mouth of Brandon Creek, dropping out of sight into each wave trough. We were finally on our way.

  5

  GAELTACHT

  Beneath us Brendan rose and sank on each wave crest with a motion that managed to be both ponderous and sensitive at the same time. Very slightly, the hull bent and straightened to the changing pressures of the waves, and the masts creaked in sympathy against the thwarts. Aft, at the steering position, the massive four-inch shaft of the steering paddle nuzzled gently against the cross piece of an H-shaped frame that held the paddle in place. Every now and again the shaft dropped back into the crotch with a dull thump that could be felt as a quiver along the length of the hull. But apart from this sound, the boat was remarkably quiet. The leather skin seemed to muffle the usual slap of the wavelets against the hull, and the thong-tied frame damped out the customary tremors of a stiff-hulled sailing boat. The result was a curiously disembodied feeling, a sense of being a part of the sea’s motion, moulding to the waves.

  This sensation was enhanced by the way Brendan lay low in the water. The surface of the sea came within sixteen inches of her gunwale so that even a modest wave loomed over her. But as each wave advanced, Brendan canted her hull slowly and deliberately, and the wave slid underneath harmlessly. The up-and-down movement was disconcerting. First Arthur, then Peter began to turn slightly green with seasickness. It was no good advising them to breathe fresh air, for the while boat was virtually open to the winds. The only remedy was to try to distract oneself by tackling the various tasks that had to be done. There were ropes to coil and stow; halliards and sheets had to be rearranged so that they did not tangle one another. In the waist of the boat there was such a clutter of jerry cans and food bags that it was impossible to find a place to put one’s feet without the risk of twisting an ankle. We stored each item to make the best use of space, lashed down the water cans, arranged the oars neatly along the center of the boat, and made sure that the anchor was ready on top of the pile.

  These chores helped to keep our minds occupied in the first, strange hours of the voyage. There was very little conversation. Each man was wrapped in his own thoughts, thinking of the days and weeks that lay ahead of us, all to be spent in the cramped conditions of our little vessel. I, for one, was acutely aware that many of the tiny decisions taken now—where, for example, to stow the binoculars, or how to fold the sheepskins—were very likely to become adopted as standard practice for the rest of the voyage. The human mind prefers order and seeks routine, and once such decisions are made they often become permanent arrangements. None of us, I fancy, cared to think too much about our main purpose in the voyage. That was a luxury reserved for the future, a mental excursion to indulge in during the long periods of tedium which characterize any small-boat trip. For the moment it was enough for us that the leather sails were filling and pulling Brendan along, and that the grey Atlantic lay all around.

  But we had to do something about our sleeping arrangement
s. There was simply too much gear in both the forward and central shelters to allow anyone to lie down properly and rest. Arthur and Rolf occupied the two spaces forward, one each side of the foremast, where they lay on the duckboards under the thwarts. There it was impossible to sit up quickly and it required some wriggling to get under the thwarts, but at least our two “gorillas,” as we cheerfully called the muscle squad, had room to stretch out full length, and stow their gear by lashing it with thongs to the inside of the curve of the hull. Boots and Rolf retaliated by calling the center shelter “the girls’ room,” and jeered as George, Peter, and I burrowed like moles into the mess, trying to sort out the equipment and find space to lie down. We soon discovered that it was an impossible task. There was simply not enough room for three men and all the equipment.

  “Either we’ve got to find some space for this extra gear or we’ll have to dump it overboard,” I said, looking doubtfully at the unruly heap.

  “Let’s chuck out some of the aft buoyancy and use the space for our gear,” suggested George.

  “Okay, but don’t put anything too heavy back there, otherwise the stern will be weighed down, and Brendan won’t rise to the waves in an emergency. We want to try to keep the weight in the center of the boat, and let the banana ends lift with the seas.”

  “Right, give us a hand,” said George briskly, and began pulling down the light bulkhead just behind the steersman’s position. On the far side were blocks of buoyancy foam we had fitted in case Brendan was swamped. Ruthlessly George hauled out the first large block and threw it overboard, where it went bobbing off in our wake. “Still not enough,” he announced. A rasping sound, and another block went floating off. “Almost enough. Pass me the saw, please,” and in a few seconds he was furiously cutting out an even larger hole. Meanwhile I gathered up every item that I hoped we wouldn’t be needing for some time: charts and pilot books for the Faroes and Iceland, spare parts for the cooker and lamp. They were all stuffed away in the new space. I looked at the sextant. Why bother to have a sextant when we were still near land. The Irish monks hadn’t needed them. The sextant, too, was hidden away.

  Next we tackled the jumble inside the cabin. The shelter measured six feet by six feet, no larger than a big double bed. Somehow we had to find enough room for three people to sleep, plus their clothing, a radio telephone, all Peter’s camera gear, and my own navigation equipment. The crush was horrible. The radio was put on a makeshift shelf, and we heaped our kit bags to form a partition running down the length of the shelter. This partition divided off one third of the shelter and it was my privilege as skipper to sleep in the space behind the wall. It was no more than a trough, so that even my thin shoulders did not fit broadside, and it was easier to sleep on my side with my head under a thwart and my feet pressed against the far end of the shelter. Even so, I was luckier than George and Peter. They had to share the remaining two thirds of the space, without the benefit of a partition to keep them apart. Whenever George turned over in his sleeping bag, he could not help kicking Peter; and if Peter had to climb out of the shelter to go on watch, it was almost impossible to avoid treading on George. To make matters worse, we were so heavily dressed in sweaters and oilskins and heavy clothing that we were dreadfully clumsy. We made it a rule that sea-boots should on no account be brought into the shelter, but the penalty was that our sea-boots, even if they were left upside down in the cockpit, invariably filled up with water, so putting on a clammy boot became the first step to going on watch.

  We split the watches into two-hour shifts, with two men on duty in each watch. With only five men on board this meant that each person had to do four hours on duty, followed by only six hours of rest. As Brendan did not steer herself, she always needed a helmsman in charge and this placed a great strain on us all. But luckily we soon discovered that the second watchman could stay on standby, out of the wind and rain, provided he was ready for an emergency. So as each helmsman finished his two hours, he would hand over to his relief man, and wake up the next watch-keeper, who would don oilskins, move to the cockpit, and curl up on the floorboards ready to help the helmsman or take over when his two hours had passed.

  That first night we slept only fitfully in the strangeness of our new surroundings. Only Rolf seemed utterly oblivious to the change. He crawled into his sleeping bag and dropped off to sleep, content to be back at sea. Meanwhile Brendan plodded steadily northward. It was a very black night, with increasing cloud and several heavy rain showers. The rain was the worst nuisance. Even more than the spray, the rainwater seeped through the chinks in our defenses. Puddles of water collected on the stores in the waist of the boat; rain dripped down the helmsman’s arm as he stood holding the cross piece on the steering paddle; and the rain saturated the sheepskins which we had left on the rowing thwarts. The sheepskins became wet and soggy, and squeezed like sponges when you sat on them. The rain had also soaked into the sails, which absorbed so much water that they doubled in weight. They still worked properly, but in the dawn light George pointed to the main mast.

  “Tim, I don’t like the way the mast’s bending under the weight of the sail,” he said. “I think it could easily snap in a gust.”

  “The ash ought to be strong enough,” I replied. “That timber should almost bend like a fishing rod before it goes.”

  “Yes, but look what it’s doing to the thwart and to where it rests in the mast block,” George warned. Together we inspected the area where the lower part of the mast fitted into a recess in the thwart and its foot rested on a block of oak in the bottom of the boat. “Look, as it rocks, the mast is sawing away at the thwart. It’s going to chafe away the side pieces. If that happens, then the mast will come adrift. We could lose it overboard in a squall.”

  I agreed. We had to reduce the pressure of the wet sails before they broke the masts. So we lowered the sails a couple of feet, and fastened leather thongs to their lower edges, tying them down so that they did not swing so much to the roll of the boat. The situation improved, but the masts still swayed and bent alarmingly.

  By now it was breakfast time, and we rigged up the stove to brew coffee. We had agreed that each man should cook one meal, turn and turn about, so that we would spread the burden of cooking and no one could complain of the cuisine, as we should have to suffer everyone else’s cooking. But like many seemingly good ideas, this was another scheme that failed the test of time—in this case surprisingly quickly. I cooked the breakfast. Then George, who freely admitted to being the world’s worst cook but is among its champion dishwashers, offered to do the dishes on my turn if I did his cooking for him. So I cooked lunch. Then Rolf cooked supper, or rather the stove nearly cooked Rolf. The paraffin stove needed careful adjustment, and Rolf’s efforts became a rapid alternation of striking matches, clouds of dense smoke, and sudden bursts of flame that singed his hands and covered everything with soot. Rolf persevered until the box of matches ran out, and then as everyone else was getting hungry, I cooked supper. Peter’s turn was not too bad, but his stew of vegetables was so anonymous that no one could identify the ingredients. Then came Arthur’s turn. He rummaged in the day’s ration bag, pulled out a packet of instant mashed potato, and looked more than ever like a seasick and crumpled young bear, inquiring: “Now, you must tell me how I cook this.” From beside me, Peter let out a theatrical groan. “I’ll tell you something better,” he said. “Why don’t we make Skipper do the cooking?” and so that was that, at least for the time being.

  Unavoidably our first few meals were flavored with wool grease. We had cheerfully painted a new coat of grease on the leather hull just before we launched it, and splattered the grease heedlessly. Now we regretted it. We found ourselves sticking to stray blobs of wool grease everywhere—on the thwarts, ropes, on the stove; and of course it crept onto our knives and forks, canteens and cups. Everything we touched and tasted had the stickiness and smell of grease until the surplus finally rubbed off. Only Brendan’s liquor store avoided the curse. The number and var
iety of bottles that had been presented to us just before we sailed was legion. It seemed that our well-wishers were determined to send us off in an alcoholic stupor. Every time Brendan rolled, she clinked. There were bottles of whiskey and Irish stout, Norwegian aquavit for Rolf, and even a ferocious-looking brew, presented by a friendly Icelander, of a tipple called The Black Death. But pride of place went to our keg, especially made for Brendan by the Irish Distillers, which contained two gallons of superb malt whiskey. As soon as we had settled down and cleared the boat, we broached this keg, lifted our tin mugs, and toasted “Saint Brendan and the Voyage!”

  We were making satisfactory progress. During the first full day’s sailing, Brendan moved stolidly northward. Astern of us, between the rain showers, we could glimpse the peak of Mount Brandon steadily sinking lower and lower on the horizon. To starboard we passed the mouth of the Shannon, whose estuary was the last safe haven for about forty miles. Navigating Brendan along this lee shore was really only a matter of identifying each port of refuge in case a gale blew us down on the coast. In the mouth of the Shannon I had marked down Scattery Island as a possibility. In the days of the monks Scattery had been a landmark for the curraghs, a very holy place, for it was here, according to repute, that Saint Senan, the contemporary of Saint Brendan, had defeated the monster Cata and founded his monastery on the island in the first half of the sixth century. Today its most evocative relic is the stump of a round tower, perhaps erected by the monks as a place of refuge when the Vikings came raiding the coast. And until recently the local fishermen, when they launched a new boat, sailed her “sunwise” around the island to bring the new vessel good luck and carried to sea a pebble from Scattery Island as a talisman.

  I had hoped that Brendan on her first run could sail clear of the great finger of Slyne Head which points out into the Atlantic from the west coast and formed the first turning point of our coastal passage. But it was not to be. The wind gradually moved into the west, and blew us down on the coast. For every ten miles Brendan sailed forward, she lost a mile slipping sideways across the surface of the water. The darkness of our second night at sea closed in on us as Brendan plodded forward with so little fuss that she actually ran down a gannet sleeping on the water. The bird was not awakened until the bow actually touched, and the poor creature was tipped upside down in the water. There was a startled squawk, followed by much thrashing and flapping and an irate-looking gannet eventually surfaced in our wake, grumbling with vexation before it flew off to less disturbed waters. Dawn was slow in breaking, its light shrouded by mist that reduced visibility to less than a mile. Then rocks loomed up ahead, a group of isolated reefs with the swell breaking in a wide ring around them. A glance at the chart confirmed that they were the Skird Rocks, well inside Slyne Head, and that Brendan could not possibly get around the headland until we had a fair wind. So I changed course, and Brendan bore away to find shelter in the Aran Islands. I was not downcast. In thirty-six hours we had come over a hundred miles, and what better landfall than the Aran Islands—which, according to the Navigatio, had been the place where Saint Brendan came to discuss his idea for a voyage to the Promised Land with his mentor Saint Enda the great teacher-saint.