The Brendan Voyage

by Tim Severin

  “I think we’ll do it,” I said hopefully to George. “I can see the end of the island. Another quarter of a mile and we’ll be clear, and Vagar is ahead.”

  George had climbed up on to the gunwale for a better view and was coaxing Brendan forward yard by yard. Edan and Arthur sat calmly in the waist of the boat, huddled in their oilskins and trying to calculate our progress.

  “Christ! I hope the mast doesn’t go,” George muttered. “That really would be curtains.”

  I glanced up. The mainmast was curved more than we had ever seen it, drawn down by the intense pressure of the gale on the mainsail, which still carried its bottom bonnet and one side bonnet.

  “We’ll have to leave the bonnets up,” George said. “We need all the driving power we can get to pull free of the tide.”

  “Keep an eye on the mainmast where it passes the thwart,” I shouted forward to Boots. “If it begins to splinter, cut the bonnets free with your knife.”

  A few moments later, it happened: our world suddenly seemed to stand still. The normal motion of the boat and the waves stopped. It was as though we had gone into suspension. Through some quirk of the tide race in the gale the waves, instead of moving horizontally, simply rose up and down as if marking time. One such wave rose up beside Brendan, seemed to jump sideways, and dropped apparently vertically into the bilge. The wave was harmlessly small, but Brendan appeared to be hanging motionless to receive it. The boat herself no longer pitched nor rolled, in her normal style. At the same moment, the cloud base rose another thirty or forty feet, and we saw them: thousands upon thousands of seabirds, pouring out from the cliffs of Mykines: gulls, guillemots, razorbills, fulmars, gannets, puffins, skuas, and terns. They came in droves, in squadron after squadron, wheeling and turning, and swooping and dipping down toward the queer, lumpy, contorted sea. Driven by primeval experience, they had emerged to fish in the waters at a time when they knew the combination of wind and tide would bring the shoals of fish close to the surface.

  I was awed. If there was any place which fitted the idea of a Paradise of Birds, this was it. “It’s fantastic!” I shouted to George above the roar of the wind.

  He gave a shout and pointed. “Look! Over there. On the starboard bow. Something big, jumping in the water.” I followed the line of his arm. About a hundred yards ahead was a large swirl of water where something had just disappeared. A vast shape heaved beneath the surface. Then it came up again, and this time it was visible, throwing itself clear of the waves—the lurching massive shape of a whale, hurtling out of the depths and leaping into the air again and again as if it were a salmon, only its grey body flopped loosely as it fell back with a burst of white water.

  Brendan was at last clawing past the trap where Mykines reached out its heel of cliff toward us. In the space of ten yards we suddenly broke free from the counter eddy, and plunged into the main tidal stream running into Mykines Sound, two miles wide separating Mykines from Vagar Island. Brendan shot forward into the gap like a log into the mill race. On each side of us the fjordlike cliffs of the Sound rose up seven or eight hundred feet, funneling the wind into a full gale. Luckily the wind and tide were together, or Brendan would have been swamped in the tide rip.

  I wrenched out the Admiralty Pilot and glanced at the lines I had underlined while considering Brendan’s approach—“The depths in Mykines Fjord are small compared with those northward and south of it,” gloomily announced the Pilot, “causing tremendous tide races, especially during gales, in which the waves rise to a great height…. There are sudden changes in depth in the fairway; the streams are consequently very strong, and there is violent turbulence, especially during gales, in which undecked vessels will probably founder.” There we were in the midst of it, but Brendan merely fled into the Sound with scarcely a drop of spray coming aboard. The needle of the log swung smoothly up to six knots, to eight, to ten, to the end stop at twelve knots, and stayed there. The mass of water sluicing through the narrow channel was being accelerated by the gale to six or seven knots, so that Brendan was covering the ground at close to twenty knots. I could scarcely believe it. Brendan was breaking all speed records for skin boats!

  With every gust she leaned over, gunwale almost in the water. The sea swirled by. Heaving on the tiller, George struggled to keep her running straight. If Brendan broached, we would be rolled over.

  “Ease the sheets. Spill wind,” he called to Arthur and Edan. “We have to slow her down.” But the moment we slackened the ropes, they began to snap and crack like bullwhips, and I was afraid that someone would crush a hand or finger if they were caught. Abruptly there came a loud report like a rifle shot, quite distinct above the shriek of the wind.

  “What was that?” I yelled at George.

  “Masthead stay. It’s snapped,” he yelled back.

  “There’s no time to fix it,” I replied. “Just keep going. We’ll have to risk the mast and keep running on. We daren’t lose speed in this Sound.”

  The mainmast gave a groan and dipped forward as its foot slipped on the keel plate. Nervously Edan and Boots glanced up and wisely moved over to the gunwales in case the mast came crashing down.

  Brendan careered forward. There was no way we could enter harbor on Vagar. We were right in the grip of the tide race now and fairly flying through the gap. George weaved her slightly from side to side, trying to spill the wind from the bulging sails. But it was not enough. A fierce gust struck, and there was an abrupt ripping noise as the lower bonnet tore free, breaking away from the mainsail. It ripped in an instant, with one continuous crackle of its breaking lashings, a dozen lengths of a hundred-pound codline bursting one after another as if they were threads of cotton. Edan dived for the flailing piece of canvas before it flew overboard.

  “Drop the mainsail,” I yelled and scrabbled at the halliard. The main yard came sliding down. Arthur pounced on it and wrestled the flapping canvas, spreadeagled across it.

  The sail had done its work. Before bursting, it had driven us almost the length of the Sound, and we could see the open sea once again at the far end, the full Atlantic once more.

  “I’m glad the sail went then,” I commented to George. “It was nicely timed. A little earlier and we would have been in real trouble.”

  Scarcely had the words left my mouth when a williwaw, a mountain gust, came shrieking across the water. It literally flattened the waves, tearing the surface off the sea into a blinding white sheet. Brendan shuddered as if a giant fist had punched her. Under the tiny remaining scrap of our headsail, she plunged away downwind like a frightened colt, while her crew grabbed for handholds.

  “If we hadn’t got the mainsail down already,” I shouted to George, “that gust would have ripped the mast clean out of her.”

  Even when the tide spat us out of the Sound, Brendan was still at the mercy of a full southerly gale, and so I decided to try to lie in the lee of the Faroes, riding to a sea anchor. As soon as we were clear of the tide race, George jury-rigged an oar as a mizzen-mast; Edan lashed on the headsail bonnet as a scrap of riding sail; and Arthur heaved over the drogue. There, in comparative peace, we hung for an hour, brewed up a cup of tea, and relaxed from the excitement.

  “Sorry about that, lads,” I said. “It looks as though we’ve lost our chance to land in Faroes. If this gale keeps up, we’ll finish up in Norway or Iceland.” My companions didn’t even flicker an eyelid.

  “Great!” said Edan. “We’ll just get even further ahead of schedule, and that will give us more time to go to a few parties in Reykjavik.”

  George put down his tea mug and peered toward the horizon.

  “The rain’s lifting. And the wind seems to have come round a bit. I think if we go now, we might just have a chance of getting into one of the other islands. But we’ll have to act quickly.”

  We lost no time. Hand over hand, Arthur and Edan pulled in the drogue; up went the sail; and Brendan slanted off toward the high cliffs of the main island Streymoy. These cliffs were an awe-ins
piring sight, a series of magnificent vertical rock faces with elevations of 1,300 feet and more, half-hidden in scudding clouds. As we closed them, we found once again the myriads of seabirds, swooping and soaring in the air currents. Mile upon mile of the cliff face was streaked white with their droppings, and the birds came, unafraid, hovering around Brendan.

  We failed by half a mile to gain the entrance to Sakshovn, the only shelter facing us on Streymoy, and Brendan was swept inexorably round the north tip of Streymoy, its huge wedge of cliffs towering above our heads, riddled with sea caves against whose gaping mouths the tiny white shapes of the gulls tossed like flecks of spume. We ourselves tried to imitate the seabirds, taking advantage of the broken air currents around the foot of the cliffs. George steered Brendan until she was no more than fifty feet from the cliff wall, sliding past in hair-raising style, but out of the main blast of the wind. Then we came to the tip of the island, and put the helm hard over to make a ninety-degree turn to starboard, and astonishingly plunged into the grip of another tide eddy running directly against us. Once more, it was an uncanny sensation. Brendan was carrying full sail, main and headsail, and they were billowing out, straining on the masts. The rigging was taut with effort; a bow wave curled back impressively; the log gave us a speed through the water of six knots. Yet we were not moving an inch! Fifty feet away, the cliff face was absolutely motionless. The tide race was running against us at exactly the same speed, canceling out our progress. There was nothing we could do. For fully an hour, Brendan poised there, as if suspended in the air by a magician. Then the tide changed. The rip slackened, and Brendan sailed serenely forward as if released from a spell.

  “I don’t know how you feel,” I said to the others, “but I don’t think I expected ever to experience such things in my life—storm and seabirds, leaping whales and such a tide race—and all in the space of twelve hours.”

  Soon afterwards we spotted a small trawler putting out from one of the channels between the islands. “This should fetch them,” cried Edan, and he leapt up on the shelter roof, waving a tow rope in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. The Faroese fishermen altered course, and towed Brendan into the nearby bay of Tjornuvik, where a cluster of gaily painted houses set into the back of an embayment in the cliffs looked like a child’s set of building toys. Arthur and Edan paddled ashore in the rubber dinghy to stretch their legs on land, and to the astonishment of the villagers raced one another, cheering up the steep hillside. Meanwhile a Faroese asked me about our landfall.

  “We came through Mykines Sound,” I told him, and he looked startled.

  “In this gale?” he asked.

  “Yes, the wind was behind us, and it was a thrilling ride.” He was astounded.

  “It’s some of the most dangerous waters of our islands,” he said. “You were lucky. If the wind had turned against you on the tide, then I think your boat would have been destroyed.”

  The Faroese were fascinated by Brendan. At Tjornuvik the village children put out in their little boats to row around Brendan and gaze at her; and when the next day Brendan was towed up the narrow Sundini Channel to the capital at Torshavn, entire families came out of their houses to watch her progress. On the green slope, high above the side of the Sound, a line of cars snaked along keeping pace with us, following the road that was etched into the hill, where stream after stream came gushing down from this breathtakingly beautiful land. Each turnof the channel brought more and more hills into view, one rising behind the other, and every slope clothed only in moorland and rock, for native trees do not grow in the windswept islands, and the Faroese hills stand bold and stark to view.

  Torshavn’s quayside was thronged with onlookers, and when Brendan came sailing up toward the pier, out from the harbor dashed the elegant, slim shape of a large rowing boat, manned by a crew of eight oarsmen, all of them rowing in perfect rhythm to a short, quick sea stroke. This superb craft fairly flew across the water, approached us, turned, and then escorted Brendan toward harbor. Every line of the classic hull shape indicated her ancestry: she was the traditional sea boat of the Faroese, the direct descendant of the boats which the Vikings had sailed to the Faroes and replaced the Irish occupation. Now lovingly restored and manned by a crew from one of Torshavn’s rowing clubs, she led Brendan, her predecessor, into port.

  Immediately we were deluged with questions, not about the Voyage itself, but about Brendan. Every question revealed how strong was the seafaring tradition of the islanders. How was the hull fastened together? What were the dimensions of the frame? What was Brendan’s draught and her displacement? Did the side rudder work well in a following sea? It was more like being cross-examined by a board of shipwrights than by ordinary townsfolk. Old men wearing traditional red stocking hats with the top turned smartly over one ear hopped nimbly aboard and prodded the leather, clucking with appreciation. Someone thrust a tidal chart of the Faroes into my hand and pointed out the best channels to follow if we were sailing around the islands. Even the local radio station asked me to give an item-by-item account of how Brendan was constructed and how she behaved at sea. More than any other people I had ever met, the Faroese understood the sea and showed their appreciation of the endeavor, and once again it was easy to detect the common bond which linked all seafarers in those hostile, northern waters.

  And, of course, the Faroese were marvelously hospitable. Brendan’s matelots-ashore, Boots and Gannet, were swept into an embrace of comfortable hospitality. When they began to show a strange enthusiasm for doing the breakfast dishes, George and I were suspicious. So we followed our two heroes one morning when they went ashore with the bucket of dirty pannikins, and tracked them down to the seamen’s hotel. Sure enough, we found the pair of them sitting at the kitchen table to consume a second—and free—breakfast while an admiring squad of Faroese girls was doing all the work for them.

  Saint Brendan’s name is familiar to every Faroese who learns in school that the Irish priests were the first people to settle in their remote islands. But no tangible remains of the Irish occupation have yet been found, presumably because the Papars, as the Irish priests were called, left too faint a mark on the islands before the Norsemen overprinted their massive stamp. Recently, however, Faroese archaeologists working at Tjornuvik have dug up cereal grains which indicate that there was agriculture in the Faroes before any record of Viking settlement. And of course there is the enduring literary and traditional evidence of the Papars in the islands. Nowhere is this tradition stronger than on the main island of Streymoy where, it is asserted, the Irish priests established themselves on a small, well-favored creek on the southwestern corner of the island. To this day the creek still bears a significant name; it is called Brandarsvik—Brendan’s Creek.

  I had made up my mind to visit Brendan’s Creek as soon as possible, when I came back from a shopping trip one morning to find a striking couple on board Brendan waiting for me. The girl was most attractive. She had beautiful features, large brown eyes, and—for the Faroese, who are very blond—a sallow skin that gave her a gipsy look which was enhanced by her long black hair and a voluminous skirt. But it was her companion who really held my attention. He could have stepped straight from an illustration in Grimm’s fairy tales. He was a powerful, thickset figure, sitting motionless on the gunwale. He was wearing very strong boots, rough corduroy trousers, a homemade brown sweater, and had the large, powerful hands of an artisan. But what was really impressive was his head—it was encased in the most splendid growth of hair, so luxuriant that it formed a solid mass extending from his chest to an arc a good three inches out from his scalp. It was a hairstyle worthy of Neptune himself, and from the serious face framed in the midst of this wild tangle, a pair of calm brown eyes gazed steadily at me.

  “Hello,” I said, as I climbed aboard. “Can I help you?”

  The Neptune said nothing, but gazed at me for a full five seconds before calmly looking away at the girl. She spoke for him: “On the radio interview yesterday you said t
hat you had room for one more person on your crew, and you would like someone from the Faroe Islands. This man would like to join you.”

  Good Lord, I thought to myself, even a Viking raiding party would have thought twice before taking on this fellow.

  “Yes, that’s right, but I’m looking for someone who’s very experienced in a boat, if possible a person who can help take photographs.”

  “This man is better than that,” she said proudly. “He’s an artist and a very good one. Also he has sailed his own boat to the Mediterranean, and has been a fisherman on Faroe boats off Greenland. He is a serious man.”

  I can see that, I thought to myself, as I stole a surreptitious glance at the heavily bearded figure who had still not moved a muscle.

  “Perhaps he could show me some of his work?” I inquired tactfully.

  Neptune muttered something to his girlfriend.

  “His name is Trondur, and he is shy to speak English,” she said. “But he invites you to his home tomorrow.”

  “We’ll be delighted to come.”

  “Good. We will come to collect you in the morning.”

  Next day they reappeared in a small, battered car. Brendan’s crew squeezed in, and we rattled off across the spine of Streymoy. Neptune still had not said a word, but scowled solemnly through the windshield, occasionally hauling massively on the handbrake as the decrepit vehicle dived down the hairpins.