The Lonely Sea and the Sky

by Sir Francis Chichester

  But I should never get off into the swell, so I headed along the line of swell, and opened the throttle. The seaplane gained more speed than before, swayed and rocked, knocking the waves. It was much harder to control, made a big jump into the air, yawed to the right, and came down slightly across its course. A bigger jump, and a worse yaw made me realise that little more would be needed to sheer off the floats, or to capsize the plane. I was now well out to sea, picking up rough water of a deep-purple blue. It was solitary out there. I had a feeling that my personality had split, and that I was watching myself futilely struggling. I was weary all through.

  After one more try, I decided to make for Duncombe Bay, 2½ miles farther on from Cascade. Off Bird Rock, between the two bays, I had to nag at the controls the whole time, to get through the cross sea safely. Suddenly I heard a loud scream behind my head, and twisted round as if I had been stabbed! This was one place where I felt sure I was alone, and I was more startled because I had never before heard a noise above that of the engine roar. It was a large bird, with spread wings, outstretched neck and pointed bill, swooping at my head. (The bird was a sheerwater, called 'mutton bird' by the islanders.) I ducked, but the bird swept on, turned, and then flew straight at the propeller. I watched anxiously, wondering if it could see the flying blades. It spun round when a few inches from them. Dozens of the birds appeared, whirling, screeching, and just missing me, while I cursed at them, knowing that the propeller would be smashed if it hit one. When at last I reached Duncombe, the water was smoother, and I decided to try once more before testing the bilges. Here the breeze was parallel with the cliffs, and to get the longest run as close under the cliffs as possible, where the water was calm, I threaded a way through craggy rocks to the far side of the bay. But these efforts to take off failed too. I switched off the motor, and wondered how I could test the bilges. I had no bilge pump, and if I removed the manholes, the floats would promptly be swamped by the waves. I dug out a rubber tube, and pushed one end down the pipe leading to the bottom of a float compartment. The other end I sucked, but there was no water in that bilge. From the fourth compartment I sucked a mouthful of water. I began sucking the water up three or four feet, and spitting it out. I was squatting in my socks, with one knee on the float, my feet awash, and waves lapping me to the waist. Now and then the floats submerged with a gurgle, and broke surface again like toy submarines, with water streaming away each side. The water was not really cold, but clammy. My mouth began to ache, my cheeks grew sore where they were drawn against my teeth, and soon my jaw muscles began to cramp. After half an hour's sucking, I reckoned that I had drawn up four gallons, and my jaws ached as if they had been hit with a pole. I no longer had the strength to spit the water out, but could only open my mouth, and let it fall out. Then my mouth jammed altogether with cramp. I could think of no other way of pumping the bilges, so replaced the cap on that bilge pipe, and left the rest unplumbed.

  I started the motor and taxied inshore to calmer water. There was a rock ahead, and I put on some engine and full rudder to avoid it. The seaplane was slow to turn. The throttle was now nearly full open, and suddenly the seaplane was nearly on top of the rock – I found myself staring down at the black stone crown of it, some six feet above water, dead ahead. The seaplane had refused to turn, and my only hope was to do something drastic. I put on full opposite rudder and maximum engine. The seaplane lurched round, heeled over, and the wing-tip dipped into white water. I dared not slow the motor, but I eased the rudder amidships, and the seaplane dragged clear.

  I thought, 'I may do it yet!' The next time I kept the seaplane on the surface, planing until I thought it was going as fast as it could, when I yanked the stick back hard, to pull her off suddenly. She jumped from the crest of the swell, and was in the air, but she had not enough speed to stay airborne, sank back and plunked into the sea. Again I tried, but this time as the seaplane hit the water, I saw a wire flicker like a rapier blade. One of the twelve inter-float bracing-wires had snapped. The question now was, Could I get back to Cascade? Each wave spread the floats apart like flat feet, and in the troubled sea off Bird Rock I was expecting them to break up every minute of the passage. I was surprised and relieved when I arrived.

  CHAPTER 13

  WRECKED

  The next few days were spent in worrying efforts to get the wire stay replaced, and to take off. People were very kind to me. Mr Martin, a merchant, invited me to stay with his family – it was a most friendly, hospitable house. A man named Brent, who turned out to be a crack mechanic, gave me enormous help with the plane. Martin found some wire rope to make a new stay, and Brent fixed a shackle to take it. After he had fixed the shackle he started dismantling the motor. Holding the detached cylinder head, he said, 'You're lucky, aren't you? Look at this!' The exhaust and inlet valves had been changed over, and the metal seating of the exhaust valve had begun to unscrew and was already a third of the way out. 'It's a wonder it did not come right out and jam the valve port open or shut, in which case the motor would have broken up,' he said. It looked as if reaching the island was due to fate rather than to skill on my part.

  Meanwhile I studied the floats. How had the water got in if they were watertight at Auckland? Martin helped me to fill up the eight float compartments one by one with fresh water. There was no sign of a leak – only a slight weeping at one place; but that would not have let in ten gallons in a month. Brent and I examined them carefully, and finally decided that the only possible entry was under the inspection plates screwed into the top of each compartment. Some of the screw threads were worn, and we decided that the plates must have lifted when the floats were submerged. Brent fitted larger screws and we thought the trouble was fixed. But it wasn't. The real trouble, which eluded all the technicians who handled and examined these floats in New Zealand and later, was that after the floats had been dropped on the deck of the cruiser, the keels had been replaced with stainless steel; and electrolytic action (which no one thought about in those days) corroded away the rivets and some of the thin duralumin skin of the float. When the floats were in the water, the thin sides were pressed away from the keel, and the water flowed in. As soon as they came out of the water, the water inside pushed the sides of the float against the keel and stopped the leak.

  Martin's stepson made me a bilge pump by reversing the valve in a bicycle pump, and he made me a new anchor in a borrowed forge. Martin collected a mail of 140 letters for me to take to Lord Howe Island and Australia.

  When all this was done I tried to take off. It was a perfect, cloudless day, but there was not the slightest breeze, and still a swell from the south-east. I tried runs away from the island and towards the swell, but it was useless. I jettisoned an hour's petrol, my rubber dinghy and everything else I could possibly do without, and then the bracing wire fitting snapped. Brent repaired it on board the seaplane. Time after time I tried to take off, each time handling the seaplane more harshly, and I was amazed that it stood up to the bashing. The bracing wire snapped again. I needed a completely new idea. I went ashore and strolled about thinking; suddenly an idea came – the seaplane must be structurally rigid without the fore and aft bracing wires; why not see if one of these would fit in place of the actual wire which had snapped? Brent returned with me to the seaplane, and the wire fitted. It was then too late to start for Lord Howe Island, so I went off with Martin for something to eat.

  I considered the other bays of the island for trying to take off. The only possible one seemed to be Emily Bay, on the south coast. It had a horrible coral reef, but there was water between reef and shore, and I thought that if I could get a run along the strip of water without the floats being ripped open on the coral, I could get off. The worst feature was a bend in the strip of water at its narrowest place where I should have to change course while taking off, but it seemed my only hope, and I decided to have a shot at it. The question was how to get the seaplane in to Emily Bay. It was a long way to taxi round with the propeller chopping spray all the ti
me. I considered taking it across in a lorry, but there were many objections to this. 'Why not fly her over?' suggested one of the boatmen. Everyone applauded, and I realised that unless the seaplane flew soon people would lose interest in helping me. Hardly anyone had seen the seaplane fly.

  I unloaded all my gear and siphoned all the petrol out of the lower tanks, filling ten 4-gallon tins with it. Empty, the seaplane took off at last. She left the crest with one swell, hit the next and sprang off about forty feet in the air. She looked like settling down again, but gathered speed before the floats touched. I climbed to 3,000 feet and made for the lagoon at Emily Bay. I circled the lagoon, studying it, and the longer I looked the less I liked it. Dark blobs of coral sprinkled it from end to end. 'If I look much longer,' I thought, 'I shall get stage fright.' I swooped down and put the seaplane on the surface at high speed and planed fast through where I judged the narrow neck to lie. As I passed the neck I let out the breath I had been holding.

  I anchored off the little sand beach in Emily Bay, and Brent and I worked on the seaplane until the evening. I sorted my gear and left behind everything possible, including the rubber boat. I hated doing this, but it weighed 27 lbs with the oars and pump. On my way back to Martin's I suddenly remembered that my nautical almanac, which gave the position of the sun for every hour of the day, ran out on 31 March and that tomorrow was 1 April. There was no other nautical almanac on the island. I had to have one, because I had to rely on sun observations for finding Lord Howe Island. I decided to make a new almanac myself. I needed the sun's declination and right ascension for every hour, so I took the readings for several days beforehand, noted how they changed, and assessed the values for the corresponding times of tomorrow. The cable station checked my watch against Greenwich Time, and I promised to transmit a message every hour of the flight if I could get off.

  In the morning, on waking, I walked out into the starlight to study the weather. I knew that I could get off that stretch of water only against a fresh breeze, and it had to be blowing straight up and down. Against a starlit sky I could see the fringe of a tree-top swaying. For the first time since I arrived there was a fresh breeze of 15 to 20mph blowing. I turned my head till it was blowing equally on each cheek – it was south-easterly, almost dead up and down the stretch of water. It was marvellous.

  I had to get to the opposite end of the lagoon from where the sea­plane was anchored in Emily Bay. In such a breeze it would have been impossible to taxi slowly downwind through the channel, so Martin had a dinghy carried overland to Emily Bay, and two boatmen towed the seaplane to the neck in the lagoon, and then let it drift downwind. We reached the end of the reef, and there we moored to an anchor bypassing the rope over a float boom. Brent sat in the rubber boat astern, and held the loose end of the mooring rope. Standing on the float, I swung the propeller and then nipped back into the cockpit. Looking over the cockpit edge I found myself staring into the excited face of a swimmer, half out of water and balanced with his hands on the end of the float. The propeller blades, invisible to him, were cutting past his face, and if he swayed forward an inch he would be killed. I stabbed my finger at him and shrieked. He slipped back into the water with a sheepish expression – I think because of my screaming at him in front of the people, and not because he realised his narrow escape. I felt weak with the shock of having nearly killed him. I pulled myself together, and opened the throttle wide and signed to Brent to let go the rope. The seaplane shot forward and gathered speed quickly. I pressed back in the cockpit, my head as high as possible, darting quick looks from side to side at the reef, to shore, and ahead. I was not aware of the seaplane, or its controls at all. At the narrow neck, about to shut off for having failed, I found to my surprise that I had left the water, and was a few feet above it. I had not enough height to turn properly to avoid a hillock in front, and slithered round in a horrible flat skidding turn. I flew back to the lagoon in a wide sweep. I deeply regretted my rubber dinghy. I could have carried it easily! It seemed terrible to face the distance ahead without it, in this battered, strained plane. But no! I had escaped with the seaplane in one piece, and nothing would induce me to return. I dived, and flew along the lagoon, saluting the crowd. Then I headed west.

  The sun was behind my right shoulder and during the flight I could expect it to move round over the right wing, to ahead. To fit in with this I changed course ten degrees to the right, which should take me 100 miles to the right of Lord Howe Island. This would increase the flight to 600 miles, but it was the only scheme that would find me the island. Using the slide rule and my home-made nautical almanac I calculated what the bearing and distance of the sun-point would be from the island about an hour before I was due to arrive, and then selected the turn-off point along my present line of flight which would have the same bearing and distance from the sun-point as the island at that time. This imaginary turn-off point was my first objective.

  I looked back for a last sight of Norfolk Island but was surprised to find it already hidden in a purple haze, although only 15 miles away. I used the same navigation system as on the flight to Norfolk Island, taking three drift readings every half hour, and plotting them. Forty minutes out I slipped the wireless key under a band round my leg to send a message to the cable station. I found the battery current meter needle dancing about madly before I switched on; I assumed that vibration had short-circuited it somewhere, and that the set was useless. But I had no means of checking whether it was working or not, and as I had promised to transmit, I did so.

  At the end of the first hour I found that the wind had backed to east by north, and given me a lift of 20 miles. It looked as if I was going to have an easy flight, and I had to fight against drowsiness. I made the calculations necessary to check the compass error as soon as the sun was abeam. This was important, because I had not had an opportunity of checking the compass on this heading, and an error of ten degrees would put the seaplane 100 miles off its course in a 600-mile flight. The method I used for checking the compass was this: I calculated when the sun would be nearly abeam, and worked out how far I would be from an imaginary sun-point if I was on my right track; then, when the time came, I would take a sextant shot at the sun to find out my actual distance from that point. The difference between the two distances would tell me how far I was off the right track.

  It was difficult to work; the seaplane was hard to control, and could not be trimmed to fly level. If I took my hands off the controls for a second, it would go into a steep dive, or climb immediately. Besides the nuisance of having to nag continuously at the controls, this meant there was something wrong with the rigging – perhaps a float had been knocked out of trim. The speed indicator on the strut outboard showed that the speed had dropped to 72mph. That suggested that perhaps the propeller might be damaged – that, at least, would explain the terrific vibration. A few months ago I would not have flown the plane in this condition over the safest route in the world, but now I just had to go on.

  Glancing to the south I noticed a small black cloud on the horizon and as I watched, it changed shape. It was no cloud, but smoke, and I decided that it must be the steamer Makambo on her monthly visit to Norfolk Island. I rocked the seaplane's wings in salute, as excited as if I had seen a ship after being in the water for three days. I seized the wireless key, and tapped out an exuberant message that I could see her; as I finished, she belched out a big smoke, which warmed my heart as a signal that they had heard me on board, or seen the plane. I could not see the ship, for she was below the horizon from me. When plotting my drift observations it occurred to me that the slow old Makambo would be steaming a direct course from Lord Howe Island to Norfolk Island. I could see from the chart that she must have been 30 miles away when I joyfully waggled my wings in salute – I might as well have been at the North Pole for all the chance they had of seeing me. It was curious how plain the smoke was, whereas the island had been out of sight at half the distance.

  Holding my log-book in my left hand with the lit
tle finger crooked round the control-stick, and my other elbow touching the side of the fuselage, I found it impossible to write. This drove home to me that the vibration was not only severe, but dangerous. The whole fuselage was shaking, with a quick short period, and the rigging wires, which should be taut, were vibrating heavily. Why? It was not the motor, because the exhausts were firing with a steady, even bark. I decided that it must be the propeller. I thanked heaven for a following wind and perfect weather; if the seaplane struck bumpy air in this condition God help us.

  When I came to plotting three drift lines at the end of the hour I found that I had made some blunder. They should all three meet in a point, or nearly so, but they didn't. It was simply that I had plotted one of them to starboard instead of to port, yet, though I tried to detect this silly mistake time after time, I could not spot it. As I knew that there was a mistake, it showed how stupid I was, either because of the blast of wind on top of my head, the roar of the motor, the salt air, or my weariness, or perhaps anxiety about the seaplane's breaking up.

  Glancing down, I had a shock. The compass had worked loose, and had turned until the seaplane was headed north-west. The vibration had rattled out the holding screws. I twisted it back into place, and rammed wads of paper down the side to keep it there. It was now subject to the full force of the vibration, and the needle shivered violently on its pivot. I checked that I had my pocket compass in my belt. Presently I recovered a bit from my worries, and felt hungry. I pulled a tin of pineapple through the hole cut in the seat of the front cockpit, and my mouth watered as I cut open the tin. The juice was like nectar. I cut the slices across with my sheath knife, and ate the chunks with a pair of dividers.