The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow

by A. J. Mackinnon

  ‘These may interest you,’ he said. ‘A few statistics about the Bristol Channel. Tide records. Information on currents. Position and depth of shoals. Prevalent weather conditions. And this,’ said he, hauling out a file as thick as a dictionary, ‘is a record of shipwrecks, lost vessels and fatalities in the Channel over the last decade alone. Do feel free to browse.’

  As he turned back to his desk and rapped a few curt orders into the radio, I flipped the pages. Numbers, figures, graphs swam before my eyes; the only thing that I could take in was how many exclamation marks there seemed to be. As for the file of shipping disasters, well, they were all great big boats surely – huge, unwieldy vessels with deep keels that were bound to catch on the bottom occasionally. Not nimble little craft like Jack de Crow with a four-inch draft and the buoyancy of a cork.

  ‘Hmm, yes,’ said I, trying to sound thoughtful and wise. ‘So these tides …?’

  ‘Second highest in the world,’ snapped Captain Eggersley. ‘They reach twelve metres or more.’

  ‘Hmm. I see. So that means the current is …?’

  ‘Ten knots in most places. Fifteen under the bridges. Your outboard motor won’t have a chance if you have to fight against it.’

  ‘Ah.’ Was this a good time to confess that I didn’t in fact have a motor?

  I confessed.

  Captain Eggersley’s jaw sagged briefly and then snapped shut again.

  ‘So the whole idea is, I’m sure you realise, out of the question.’

  ‘Um …’

  He sighed. He took a deep breath, and then quite kindly and patiently said, ‘Look. Let me explain.’ Moving over to a wall chart and picking up a pointer, he continued. ‘We are here, you see. Now every six and a half hours all this water here’ (he swept a hand over an area that embraced half the Atlantic) ‘tries to race up the ever-narrowing channel of the Severn Estuary and rises TWELVE metres. It comes in at over ten miles an hour, which is four times faster than anything you’ve been on so far down the river. It is so fast that it actually forms ridges and bumps of water, standing waves in midstream big enough to swamp a boat twice your size. Six hours later the whole process reverses itself but with the added volume of water coming down the Severn itself. This is called “flood tide and ebb tide.”’

  The Severn Estuary

  ‘Flood tide and ebb tide,’ I repeated obediently.

  He was into the swing of it now. Sunlight, warm and strong, poured through the wide glass windows looking out onto the estuary under the late afternoon sky. The office was drowsy with the faint hum of computers – a bluebottle fly buzzed sluggishly on the window pane. So peaceful, such a tranquil place to sit awhile dreaming … Captain Eggersley moved irritably across to the window and dispatched the fly with a glossy copy of Yachting World, and I was wide awake once more.

  ‘Now usually between the flooding and the ebbing there are tranquil periods known as high water and slack water. We here, however,’ he said proudly, as though he had personally invented the system, ‘have virtually no such periods. Ten minutes of still water at the most and the whole lot is on the move again. Now to get to Bristol, which is nine miles inland, you will note here on the chart that a vessel needs to travel down the estuary on the ebbing tide for sixteen miles and up this other river, the Avon, on the flooding tide. You’ve got to time it exactly right. If you get swept past Avonmouth on the way down, you’ll be in Madeira by tea-time. If, on the other hand, you haven’t made it down to the Avon before the tide starts racing in, you’ll be in Tewkesbury again – that is, if you haven’t sunk on the first shoal, sandbank or navigation buoy that you hit at ten miles an hour in the first five minutes. Now you can see why I’m advising you to give it a miss.’

  I considered, frowning a little. It seemed to me that Captain Eggersley was being a trifle pessimistic. Didn’t the South Sea Islanders reach New Zealand? Didn’t the Vikings sail to Newfoundland? Didn’t St Brendan reach America? Didn’t Doctor Dolittle bump into Africa?

  ‘Er …’ I said.

  ‘Look,’ he said firmly, his voice regaining its hard edge. ‘I’m a busy man, I’ve got a lot to do, and when all’s said and done, I can’t actually stop you. However,’ he continued as he took the documents from my hands, ‘I am here officially warning you, and most strongly advising you’ (he slipped the documents back into the filing cabinet and rammed it shut) ‘that to travel from here to Bristol in an unpowered Mirror dinghy is, in my considered opinion, suicide.’

  He picked up the thick Shipwrecks and Fatality file and weighed it in his hand. ‘Still, high tide here tomorrow will be at 6.26 a.m. sharp. The lock gates will be open between then and 6.47 a.m. I very much hope I will NOT be seeing you then.’ He turned to replace

  the file on a shelf. When he turned back, I looked into his corn-flower blue eyes. They were almost pleading. He sighed, glanced at the file in his hand and replaced it on his desk. ‘No point in putting it away then. I expect I’ll be adding another report tomorrow. Dismissed.’

  I am not actually the reckless type. Nor am I a complete fool. I knew that one or two items of equipment were absolutely essential for this hazardous trip on the tidal waters of the Bristol Channel: namely, a chart and an anchor. The little chandlery down by the pontoons and the waterlilies had neither.

  So I got out my trusty Ordnance Survey map of the Bristol Channel area, my equally trusty fountain pen, and found a wall chart of the Estuary pinned up in the bar of the Sharpness Working Man’s Club. There I copied as well as I could the buoys, the beacon posts, the leading marks and the major shoals onto my own map. As for an anchor, I found an old concrete besser-brick that no one seemed to be using, tied a length of rope around it, and voilà – an emergency brake!

  The next morning I woke early and hurried down from my bed and breakfast through the grey dawn to the harbour. I rowed from the little yacht basin around to the main port and into the lock that would lower me gently to the level of the sea. There Captain Eggers-ley was waiting with two cronies, and all three greeted me with a mournful shaking of their heads.

  ‘I can’t dissuade you then?’ asked the Captain. I hesitated. I did in fact have one worry. For the past three days the wind had been blowing steadily from the south-west; even now I could see a green flag flapping out from the masthead of a grain ship lying next to the lock. This wind meant I would have to beat all the way down the Channel, and I had been warned that when the wind is blowing against the tide, the turbulence and chop is enormously exaggerated. In addition to this, I was concerned that my navigation skills were not up to keeping clear of the shoals while at the same time zigzagging about the Estuary. The centreboard would have to be down, of course, and this increased the likelihood of sticking on the bottom – my experience with the barbed wire on the Severn above Shrewsbury had already shown me how disastrous that could be even in a mild current. In short, I was uneasy.

  ‘I think I’ll be okay.’

  ‘You’ve got a proper chart of course, haven’t you?’ asked one of the three. I proudly showed them my specially doctored Ordnance Survey Map. The early morning was damp and I wished I had used something a little more permanent than fountain-pen ink. The head-shaking increased.

  ‘An anchor?’ queried the other. I pointed out the besser-block lying on the foredeck and waggled the rope at them playfully. The looks they exchanged spoke volumes. By this time the water level in the lock was dropping, and I and the dinghy were gently descending with it. The three had to crane over the edge of the lock to see me. And still the questions came.

  ‘Food and water? It’s a long way to Madeira.’ Ah. I hadn’t thought of this, but then remembered that somewhere in my bag, I had … ah yes, here it is. A Mars Bar. I held it up for inspection.

  ‘Radio? Compass? Foghorn?’ The words came dropping gloomily down the blackened well of the lock as the dinghy descended deeper and deeper, and my spirits dropped with it. ‘I’ve got a tin-whistle,’ I called back brightly, but no reply came echoing down from the i
nvisible trio thirty feet above me. The only thing visible now was the rectangle of grey sky and that high green flag, still blowing from the south-west, but drooping even as I watched. The dank black walls and dripping gates rose sheer on every side as I continued to sink. It was like being lowered into a grave.

  One last call descended hollowly. The invisible Captain Eggers-ley was saying: ‘Look, I’ve just consulted the tide tables again. It’s the equinox. Today’s tides are predicted to be the highest in thirtysix years. Leave it a week and they’ll be back to normal. How about it?’

  I stared up at the grey sky and that flag, thinking. I was certainly being offered a way out. It was arrogant of me to ignore the concerned and professional advice of these men who dealt with tides and shipping every day of their lives. It was all very well to play this hero game on quiet inland waters – to exaggerate the dangers of bulls and barbed wire, willow trees and weirs, and then laughingly go on my way regardless. It was fine to play the mythical wanderer, pretending that any goldfinch or bright star was an omen, a portent of good fortune to bless me on my way. But here there were no omens, and no belief in any oracle save that of common sense. Was I really wise to venture out onto one of the most treacherous tidal channels in the world, in an unpowered and ill-equipped dinghy, and with a contrary wind to boot?

  I glanced up once more at that drooping flag. The wind had now died completely and the flag lay inert. But now, having tried everything in His arsenal to dissuade me, including sending his personal deputy, Captain Eggersley, God finally turned around and said, ‘Well then, go on if you’re going. Off with you … and here’s a present to help you on your way.’ For as I watched, the inert green flag twitched. It twitched again, then fluttered out faintly once more. Within a minute it was bellying out in a fresh wind, a new wind, a wind blowing steadily … from the north. It was just the wind I needed.

  ‘Well?’ came that disembodied voice from the heavens again.

  ‘Open the gates, thank you. I’m on my way.’

  And after all that, it was easy. I rowed out onto the estuary waters at the very top of the tide, a vast brown-silver stretch of calm waters almost a mile wide, and had my sail hoisted and rudder down in two swift easy moves. The northerly filled the scarlet sail as I reached across to the central channel and then turned south. My makeshift map was spread before me on the decking, the day was warming up, and I sluiced through the sand-coloured waters with enough speed to give me plenty of steerage.

  Even once the tide had fully turned and started its long fierce ebb, the impression of tranquillity remained. Drifting with the water, of course, I was not aware of how fast I was actually travelling – only landmarks on the shore could tell me that, and these were so far away that they too crept minutely, serenely, by.

  At times I would spot a distant buoy or beacon post and check my home-made map, ticking each one off as I passed it. Sometimes I would notice that two buoys, one behind the other, were shifting oddly in relation to one another and I would realise that the current was carrying me sideways across the main channel while my only apparent motion was forward.

  The day grew so warm and the sailing was so easy – lying in the stern, steering with an idle elbow, watching the dreamy glide of the hazy land passing – that I was in more danger of dozing off than anything.

  As the first of the two great Severn Bridges approached, I sat up and took notice. I had been warned that the tidal current here was at its fiercest and that I would be reaching this point round about half-tide, the period of maximum flow. There was still a fair following wind, but I shipped the oars into their rowlocks in case I needed extra power. It was only when I was virtually under the giant span, and too close to one of the upright piers for comfort, that I realised the strength and volume of water that was bearing me along. The brown water piled up in a foaming, bulging wave four feet higher on the upstream side of the piers than the surface downstream, and poured in an angry, tawny torrent beneath the mighty bridge. I was swept so swiftly along that the breeze no longer kept my sail bellied out, but let it flap idly as the current bore me quicker than the wind itself. At least here there were no worries about headroom. Far, far overhead a trail of tiny vehicles were on their way to Swansea across that shining span.

  The turbulence was worse under the second bridge – below the piers the water churned into a cauldron of eddies and back-currents and muddy-coloured whirlpools that sucked at Jack’s keel and tugged alarmingly at the rudder. But so light and buoyant was she that the boiling race could never really get a grip on her shallow hull as it might have done on a larger boat. For all Captain Eggersley’s experience and advice, I think I can now claim as true what I had guessed at before: a small dinghy with its lightness and shallow draught was in some ways safer from the shoals and tidal rips than many larger craft.

  Not in all ways, however. By one o’clock the wind had died to nothing and I was rowing hard for the shore towards the enormous concrete pier at Avonmouth. The tide, swifter than I had calculated, actually swept me past the pier when I was a mere two hundred yards out from it, and yet it took me another hour of muscle-cracking, back-straining rowing to take me around the end of the pier and into still water. I tied up with shaking, sweaty hands to the rung of a ladder against the pier wall and regarded Captain Eggersley and his pet performing tides with new respect; I had very nearly made that predicted trip to Madeira after all.

  The pier at Avonmouth is titanic. From where I moored to the ladder, it was an eighty-foot ascent to the top of the pier. I knew I would have to wait here several hours for the last third of the ebbtide to run out before catching the incoming floodtide up the Avon to Bristol, and I was careful enough not to make the classic mistake of mooring Jack de Crow on a short line. If I did so, I would return in two hours to find her dangling down the wall from her painter, fifteen feet above the ebbing tide. No, I left her on a nice long line so that nothing could possibly go wrong. Then I clambered up the wet, barnacled iron ladder to the top of the pier.

  I was met by the Harbourmaster of Avonmouth, a relaxed gangling fellow with amused eyes, clearly no relation to Captain Egg-ersley. ‘Ah, well done,’ he grinned. ‘I was wondering for a while if you’d ever make that last half mile. Come and have some lunch.’

  We repaired to his office on the end of the pier, a vast aff air of glass and computer screens looking for all the world like a ship’s bridge. Here, over sandwiches and coffee, he showed me the electronic instruments for measuring tides, currents and winds, the radio system and the radar screen. ‘We’ve had our eye on you since you left Sharpness – or tried to at least. There’s not a lot of metal on your boat, is there? You could sell the design to the Stealth project, no problem.’

  He had also rung the Coastguard who had been on full alert, and Captain Eggersley to tell him that the black armbands were no longer needed. Then he turned the topic to football, his son’s schooling and life in general. A pleasant two hours passed until a green wavy line on a computer screen told us that the tide had turned and it was time to be on my way.

  ‘You did leave her on a long line, didn’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I replied. ‘No worries there.’

  And with that and a cheerful thanks for the sandwiches and coffee, I went back along the pier to the ladder-head. I leant cautiously over. Yes, there she was, more than eighty feet below like a tiny yellow toy duck at the foot of that vast wall. She was sitting on grey mud, but even as I watched a swirl of rising water was licking at her bows and soon she would be afloat again.

  I clambered gingerly down the iron ladder that plunged away below me, but when I was still fifteen feet above the dinghy, my feeling foot met air. I glanced down, wondering why I could not find the next rung.

  Next rung?

  There wasn’t one. Nor one after that. Nor even after that.

  The ladder stopped short just where I had tied the painter two hours previously – between me and Jack there was nothing but a sheer drop of black,
mud-slimed concrete wall. Clearly the designers of this gargantuan pier had only ever expected gargantuan ships to dock here and had not seen the need for a ladder to descend fully to the muddy ooze.

  Sigh …

  I climbed all the way up the ladder again, marched off to the Harbourmaster’s office and explained the problem.

  ‘Doesn’t reach the bottom? Good Lord, I’d never noticed that before. Deary, deary me. You do have a problem, don’t you?’

  I marched back to the ladder head and glanced around. Over there was a bundle of old nets and floats and … yes … a rope. Back again to the office.

  ‘Yes, old boy. Take what you like. It’s all old stuff .’

  With a great coil of hairy, slimy, coarse hemp rope over one shoulder, I made my way once more down the ladder. There, somehow, with one hand only (the other being used to cling on to a slippery rung) I managed to tie a bulky knot to the lowest rung and then steeled myself to abseil down into the dinghy. At the very last second, just as I’d taken a deep breath to swing into action, I remembered to untie Jack’s painter first. (Had I omitted to do this, I’d have had a further two-hour wait in the dinghy until we rose high enough to reach the ladder rung once more.) Holding this painter in my teeth – it tasted of barnacles and salty mud – I launched myself down the abseil rope. I would like to be able to claim that the manoeuvre was executed with the ease and elegance of an SAS-trained marmoset, but honesty compels me to admit that I went down that horrible rope like a bead on a string, serious rope burn only being prevented by the ancient sliminess of the mud that smeared its hairy length. I banged hard into the barnacle-encrusted wall three times as I descended, and believe that I actually let go of the rope for the last six feet, falling in a muddy, shaky heap into the bottom of the dinghy. Luckily, she was now fully afloat. Had she been resting on the mud, my clumsy landing would have surely sent a foot straight through the thin hull. As it was, no damage was done and soon Jack and I, muddy but unbowed, made our way around the pier end, waved goodbye to the Harbourmaster behind his glass walls and turned our noses up the Avon for Bristol.