The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow

by A. J. Mackinnon

  I declined. I do not to this day know why. This was just the sort of serendipitous opportunity I revel in, but something stubborn in me won that evening, something wilful and daring, something that whispered that if I really could cross the Channel unaided in a Mirror, then that would be a story worth telling. In fact, it urged, why even bother Wilf with his broken foot?

  I could do it alone.

  The wind had died right away by next morning, and the day was fair and warm with just a ghost of a breeze to carry me southwards. The misery of the last section had dissolved into a dew, as shimmering and insubstantial as the mirage over there on the horizon, the glassy slurring of the sea that showed where the fabled Goodwin Sands were drying out under the hot sun. To my right, the sweeping shoreline of Pegwell Bay receded into the distance, faded greens and sand-whites and ochre smudges. Beneath the bow, the water was clear blue-green, rippling happily as we footed forward at a gentle two miles an hour. So still and calm it was that I spent much of the day basking belly down on the foredeck, having rigged up the tiller in such a way that I could steer with a length of rope attached to an idle foot.

  It was bliss. It was boring. Beyond the Sands a yacht ghosted by, barely moving. To while away the long hours, I took compass bearings off distant landmarks and drew lines on my chart to pinpoint my exact position. I wrote a couple of postcards. I sunbathed again until, at my head, a large fish jumped from the water, startling me awake, and I realised that I had, in fact, been snoozing.

  By about four in the afternoon I had reached the White cliffs themselves, and the little breeze had died to nothing, so I took to my oars and set myself rowing the last stretch to Dover. The cliffs themselves were beautiful, more so than I had supposed. Most of the White Cliffs are topped by green pasture, vivid now in the late afternoon sun against the white chalk, but what architecture there is to be seen from below is varied and charming: a windmill, a row of fine gabled houses, a lighthouse, an obelisk and finally the grey ramparts and bastions of Dover Castle. They are the story-book structures from some giant-child’s toy box, all set out with loving hands among the folds of green counterpane and white fall of linen sheets at the edge of the nursery bed that is England.

  But before your ever-ascending eye reaches this homely array, there are the cliffs themselves, which still contrive to be as wild and giddying as Edgar describes them to poor blind Gloucester in King Lear:

  Stand still. How fearful

  And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so high!

  The crows and choughs that wing the midway air

  Show scarce so gross as beetles. Half way up

  Hangs one that gathers samphire – dreadful trade!

  Methinks he seems no bigger than his head …

  Look up a height; the shrill-gorged lark so far

  Cannot be seen or heard. Do but look up …

  Finally, on the upward flight, one’s gaze floats up beyond the chalk, beyond the green turf, beyond the last lofty cupola of tower or windmill and up into the sweet empyrean blue, the lark-singing English sky of a late afternoon, and the tune has changed to Vera Lynn and her bluebirds over … and the long day’s journey is nearly done.

  Nearly, but not quite. Dover Harbour has two entrances, and I am approaching the northern one, rowing sluggishly against a turning tide. I am trying to creep in at the very foot of the strong-based promontory and do not see the emerging ferry until it rounds the harbour wall with a throbbing roar and a mighty surge of wash – far bigger and more beetling, it seems, than all the White cliffs stacked on top of one another. At least the cliffs stay still, give or take the odd tectonic shift every few million years. The ferry captain quite certainly does not see me far, far below his lofty bridge, so throwing overboard the time-honoured dictum of Steam Gives Way to Sail, I plunge wildly to one side and sit out the swell that threatens to swamp me.

  Ten minutes later when the maelstrom has subsided, I try again, this time checking carefully for the least sign of an out-bound ferry. That is how I am caught completely unawares by the in-bound ferry that chooses that precise minute to steam up behind me, missing me by mere yards. This time, the tsunami-like wake flings me right up the harbour wall like a rejected lobster and very nearly over it. A pity it didn’t, as it would have saved the patrol boat the bother of coming out to tow me in, as I’m sure they were very busy men and really didn’t want to be bothered with a nuisance like me and all that tedious paperwork to fill in when they charged me fifty pounds for the privilege of their piloting skills.

  Fifty bloody pounds, eh? Odysseus, Doctor Dolittle, Tom Bom-badil – in their entire histories the words chequebook, credit card and piloting fee never get a single mention. As I rowed the last stretch to the wharf, I muttered to the departing patrol men, ‘Where were you on the Morda Brook, eh? Where were you in the Jackfield Rapids? The Caen Hill Flight? Under Waterloo Bridge, eh, and on the Whitstable Oysterbeds when I really needed you?’

  I didn’t like Dover. Like a doormat, there is something gritty and utilitarian about the place. Useful, breezy, it is somewhere to wipe one’s feet on entry to the country, but not a place to linger, to luxuriate. I considered the tourist options, came across one called, thrillingly, The White cliffs Experience, and at that point decided it was time to get out of Dover as quickly as might be.

  And there was the rub. I was at the end of the springboard. No longer could I put off the decision – the call to Wilf or the choice to go solo. I had now to speak to the local people, the coastguard, the yacht club, the Harbourmaster, everybody and anybody who could advise me about the Crossing. And it was now that I found an odd thing. Ever since I had first considered the idea, while I was still deep in the heart of Oxfordshire, people had been advising me in the strongest possible terms against such a course of action. Elderly couples cruising on the placid upper Thames in narrowboats called Meadowlark or Buttercup had warned me of the speed and size of oil tankers that ploughed the Channel day and night. Kindly landlords whose sole nautical experience had been regular weekly viewing of The Onedin Line twenty years previously seemed fully up-to-date on the casualty statistics pertaining to the North Sea. Whenever I had tried to introduce the idea of the gallant little ships of Dunkirk, The Snowgoose and all that, I had firmly been given more modern analogies, such as the one about attempting to cross the M25 at peak hour on your hands and knees. But strangely, as I approached the sea, people had become less dire in their outlook. The Dunsters had thought it was possible – with an escort, of course – and the Royal Temple Yacht Club members, at their most tanked-up, had been positively enthusiastic.

  And here, now, in Dover itself, as I did the rounds, the attitude could best be described as blasé. When I said, ‘Call it mad if you will, but I’m thinking of taking my Mirror dinghy across the Channel, ha, ha, I know, crazy, eh? Any advice?’ the response ranged from boredom to indiff erence. The President of the Yacht Club said, ‘Yes, and …?’ The Harbourmaster said something along the lines of, ‘Really, yes, my seven-year old daughter sailed her Optimist across last July, got a pen-friend across there, you know what young girls are like.’ Various seasoned sailors I met, picking up on the fact that I was after reassuring advice, merely mumbled, ‘Lovely weather for it. Wouldn’t leave it too long if I were you.’

  Disturbed rather than comforted by all this half-hearted shoulder-shrugging, I decided to go to the experts. I took myself off to a phone-booth armed with a pad of paper and pen and rang the Coastguard. When I outlined my plan, I was relieved to hear a note of stern warning creep into the official’s voice. ‘Across to Calais, you say? In a Mirror dinghy? Right, now look here, son, I feel that I must most strongly advise you – ’ ‘Yes, yes?’ I asked, pencil in hand to take down some vital bit of marine wisdom.

  ‘Are you writing this down? Good. Well, when you get into Calais Harbour – ’

  ‘C-a-l-a-i-s H-a-r-b-o-u-r,’ I wrote.

  ‘Past the green entrance buoys – conical things – ’

  ‘G-r-e-e
-n / c-o-n-i-c-a-l’

  ‘And you turn to starboard – ’

  ‘S-t-a-r-b-o-a-r-d’

  ‘There’s a huge white building ahead that acts as a landmark, have you got that?’

  ‘Yes, huge white building.’

  ‘Good. Well, it’s a restaurant, see, and whatever you do, don’t have the moules au vin there. I did last bank holiday and was as sick as a dog for a week – overpriced too, mark my words. Apart from that, have a good crossing. Cheerio!’

  And that was it, the sole piece of advice from the marine authorities about the crossing of the busiest shipping lane in the world in an unpowered Mirror dinghy. I went to bed that night singing to myself a jingle half-remembered from many years ago:

  Will I, won’t I, will I, won’t I, will I join the Dance?

  The further ’tis from England, the closer ’tis to France!

  Interminably it revolved in my head as I tried to place it. Wasn’t it something from Lewis Carroll, and something to do with a melancholy Mock Turtle? And wasn’t it a whiting or a Dover Sole making the invitation to the dance? Was I being invited by all the fishy, finny folk of the North Sea to join them under the briny blue, my bleached bones to dance to the tune of the tides in the salt and oozy depths?

  Full fathom five thy father lies;

  Of his bones are coral made;

  Those are pearls that were his eyes …

  As I drifted off to sleep, I reflected that I’d have to check the weather forecast for the next week or so, find a ‘window’ as they say in nautical circles. I’d have a chance to visit the Castle tomorrow perhaps, brush up my knowledge about thirty-million-year-old chalk at that other place maybe …

  It seems I was to be given no excuse. The next morning was fine, so I went.

  Crossing to Calais

  Wherefore my heart leaps within me,

  my mind roams with the waves

  over the whale’s domain, it wanders far and wide

  across the face of the earth, returns again to me

  eager and unsatisfied; the solitary bird screams,

  irresistible, urges the heart to the whale’s way

  over the stretch of the seas.

  —ANONYMOUS ANGLO-SAXON FRAGMENT,

  The Seafarer

  It was on the tenth day of May that I made the crossing, a day in which the elements so combined that all the world could stand up and say, ‘This is the day to cross.’ I needed a wind strong and steady enough to allow me to move swiftly through the water and cover the twenty-two miles before nightfall, and yet not so strong that I would be in danger of capsizing. The day also needed to be warm and clear, to enable me to stay comfortably in the open and to see where I was going – poor visibility would spell disaster – and yet a blissful calm such as I had from Ramsgate to Dover would be equally disastrous, leaving me idly adrift in mid-Channel with only my oars to propel me out of the way of the tankers and ferries that ply the waves with ferocious speed. This day was it.

  Just before I leave, I pay a last visit to the Harbourmaster’s office and they allow me to ring the local Coastguard. Despite their casual attitude of the day before, they give me a special number to ring and ask me to let them know when I reach Calais that evening, just so that they are not up all night worrying. With a final warning to watch out for the moules au vin, they ring off and I have no more excuse to linger.

  At about ten o’clock that morning I untie from the sheltered pontoon beneath the harbour wall and row towards the harbour mouth. Before I am even halfway there, there is a breeze sufficient to warrant hauling up the sail and I glide smoothly across the gentle swell of water towards the entrance between its concrete moles. Even as I do so, I note that there is a swirling current around the northern mole, sweeping me towards it almost as fast as I am sailing forward, but I clear it with a good fifty yards to spare and am then out on the open sea. I have my compass lying on the central thwart, held in place by an elastic bungy-strap. The compass dial is set to the exact degree I must follow, 125 degrees, so all I have to do is steer in such a way that the quivering red needle is kept pointing to the large red N on the dial and I know that Jack will be pointing her nose at Calais somewhere over there beyond the horizon. Of course, it is not quite as simple as that, because with every wave Jack veers about as she mounts the oblique slope of one comber and races down the further slope in a skidding sideways glide, but as long as the average of all her gyrations keeps the needle wavering about the red N, then nothing can be too amiss.

  I am excited and elated and yet feel secure. I have learnt all my lessons over the past fortnight, so have started this leg properly prepared. I am clad snugly in my large green cagoule, my fleece and my waterproof trousers. I have gardening gloves on my hands – not exactly de rigeur for the Cowes yachting set, but adequate for the prevention of blisters and cramp, though with a tendency to leak indelible navy-blue dye all over one’s hands. Ship’s provisions consist of two Mars bars and an apple. My trusty and beloved pith helmet is on my head: warm, broad of brim to prevent sunstroke, and sturdy enough to ward off any sudden blows from the boom should they occur.

  Not that such mishaps are likely today. The wind is what every sailor prays for, coming straight on the beam from the north-east, balancing the boat beautifully and sending her along with the optimum speed and security. Yes, there is the occasional gust that sends a fine arrow-flight of spray into my eyes and face, to be wiped laughingly away. Yes, there is the odd rogue wave that catches us unawares and dollops into the bilges a lump of sea water, there to slosh and swish about my shoes until I can bail it out again. But these are no more than the spice on the adventure, reassuring, friendly knocks to remind me that this is intrepid stuff, this is real, this is remarkable.

  It is difficult to keep watching behind me for the White cliffs dwindling astern. One minute they are there, faded blue and hazy white. The next time I turn around, I am out of sight of all land, ringed by the wide horizon, and there is nothing to show where England has vanished to – nor that before me lies the vast Continent. I am at the very centre of a huge green-grey plate about five miles wide, and licked clean and empty of every living morsel but myself.

  My moment’s reverie is broken by a particularly wet slap in the face by a passing wave and a threatening shake of the irritable sail. What can the matter be? A glance at the compass shows me that the needle is pointing wide of its mark, that I have allowed the boat to swing too far north and into the wind. I hastily correct her course and settle down to concentrate on the frail red needle in its clear perspex case. Soon, however, I discover that the direction of waves and wind is so regular that I can steer on the whole by ensuring that I am angled into each new wave correctly. To get the maximum speed out of the sail, I have eased it off to a point where, let out any further, it would lose its taut curve and start to flap. Thus if I start heading too far north and into the wind, the leading edge of the sail will start bellying fretfully and I will know to ease away a little. Less and less must I keep glancing at the compass; more and more I feel like some seafarer of the ancient world, steering by wind and water and the flight of birds overhead. This is the whale’s way, the haunt of scaly Fastitocalon, the wine-dark sea of Odysseus.

  It soon occurs to me that the sea really is rather empty, especially as this particular stretch is supposed to be the busiest shipping lane in the world. Not only should there be all the traffic steaming up and down the Channel, but surely there should also have been a few cross-Channel craft by now. But no. Far, far off to the south is a tiny dot on the horizon that might just be a ship and there is a vaguer smudge ahead that might even be land, but of all else the sea is empty. There is just me, my compass and the thrumming rigging.

  Actually, this thrumming has begun to baffle me a little. It has grown distinctly louder in the last few minutes. I can see where the bottom edge of the sail is vibrating tautly in the wind, making a sharp buzzing rattle, but it would also appear that the whole ship is emitting a deep throbbi
ng roar. Can wind and water on tightly stretched stays and hollow timber produce such a sound? A sound that one could now almost call a snarl? I glance around again, scanning the horizon and the skies for any sign of another craft that could be responsible, but there is nothing, nothing at all.

  The snarl has begun to crescendo, and every rope and stay seems to be vibrating like a manic set of harp strings, with the whining roar echoing from all about, sea and sky and wooden hull. I am beginning to wonder if this is what victims of the Bermuda Triangle witness before being carried to their doom, when a panicky glance over my shoulder reveals its source. There, just a mile from my dinghy where there had been a blank horizon merely a minute before, is a Sea Cat. In two minutes flat, it has hurtled past in a snarling cloud of spray just one hundred metres to the south of me and disappeared over the horizon, leaving the sea as empty as it was before but still with that noise reverberating from the sky on every side. It leaves me in a state of wide-eyed, stiff-backed sobriety, realising for the first time that day just what a precarious position I am in. The speed of these Sea Cats is deadly, and had I been directly in its course there would have been no chance of it spotting me in time to avoid a collision. I doubt whether the captain of such a demonically fast vessel would even be aware of hitting anything. As I recall, there are another four or five such craft due to make the crossing today, quite apart from the ones returning to Dover or leaving out of Ramsgate, and suddenly I feel keenly the aptness of the M25 analogy.

  There is nothing to be done but to keep sailing onward – the sooner I get to the other side, the better. Meanwhile, that faintest of specks on the southern horizon has materialised into a large orange tanker churning its way up-Channel, and I am able to see at first-hand how fast these ships move as well. When I first identify it as a ship, it seems to be virtually straight off my starboard bow and about four miles away. It will quite clearly pass behind me. Ten minutes later and I am not quite so sure; it now appears to be very much closer and heading straight for me. After another five minutes of willing Jack to skip along faster and cross its path well ahead of it, it becomes apparent that far from slipping under its bow, I will be crossing its wake only when it is halfway to Rotterdam.