by Ice! [V2. 0]
Physically by this time, at the age of thirty-four, I was in excellent condition after six years under sail in all conditions of weather and welfare. Mentally, I was shaping up. I was extremely pragmatic, almost to the point of short- sightedness; very curious about every and all things, though not yet very observant about people and their nature, as I would become later. If I had great faults, they were that I thought I knew more than I did and that I didn't suffer fools gladly. I was still impetuous in most things, where later I would find that one should be choosy about what one is impetuous about. I was, to use the sailor's phrase, "full of piss and vinegar."
As the train chugged through the apple orchards of Kent, my mind was intent on finding a suitable vessel. If possible, she would be somewhere near one of the Royal Dockyards. There, through the grapevine of ex-sailors, I would be able to get hold of good cheap gear. I had now fourteen hundred pounds (three thousand dollars) saved up. That should be enough to find a craft, furbish her for a five-year cruise, and victual me without too much strain.
I took the one and only taxi in town to Tansy's cottage, about a two-mile hike in the glorious English autumn—apples on the trees and sweet wildflowers by the lane's edges—through a countryside so rich that even the cows looked as if they owned the land they grazed upon. The ancient taxi wheezed out of the neat, tidy, spoon-fed Borough of Sandwich, once one of the ancient Cinque Ports of medieval times, but now stranded some miles inland through centuries of silt deposits. Through villages and hamlets as old as man's delight in the taste of a pint of ale, through the weft and warp of England, the taxi trundled. Past gnarled oak trees forged by the forceful Channel breezes as they blew eternally eastward from the Celtic Sea, bringing their lilting chant to the green-topped cliffs and gently rolling downs; past the swinging rings of creaking inn-signs, worn away through untold lives—the Iron Duke, the Royal Oak, the Sailor's Return....
Tansy's cottage was like Tansy. It managed to glower and grin at the same time. Low, with a steep thatched-straw roof and whitewashed walls, the bedroom curtains drawn at the shady orchard end, it looked, as he so often did, as if it were blind yet all-seeing. The weatherworn brick path from the green wicker gate was so eggshell delicate it seemed it would crack under the weight of a sailor's sea bag. An empty swing dangled expectantly. The old wooden door had a rope's-end served into a back-splice, with a Turk's-head knotted into it so shipshape you would think it had grown that way. That was the knocker. So I knocked.
Tansy's niece, Daisy, opened the door, but not in the cheerful way she had done on my previous visits. Her rosy smile was a sorrowful frown. She grabbed my arm.
"Lo, Daisy, what's up?"
"Oh, Tristan, he's gone—" She burst into tears. I put my arm around her shoulder.
"Come on, love, where's Bogey?" This was her husband.
"Out fishing, but he'll be in any moment." She sniffed, then said with a gallant attempt at a smile, "But come in, Tris, I'll make a pot of tea. And there's some cake if you'd like. You must be famished."
"Thanks, Daisy. Yes, I am a bit, but let me do it for you."
"No, don't be silly, I'm all right." She walked into the kitchen, just beyond the tiny, cluttered living room, with its flowery wallpaper, shiny piano, and best-china-bedecked dresser in the coiner. A stern photograph of King Edward VII glared down imperiously from one side of the chimney, while Queen Alexandra did her royal best not to look frightened from the other. A coronation mug, where Tansy had kept shillings for the gas meter, stood at one end of the mantel shelf, with a Peek Frean's biscuit tin, where he kept his half-crowns for his daily outing down to the pub, in the middle. At the far end was a small china statue of a little lad eating a bunch of grapes, only his arm and the grapes had been knocked off years ago.
As Daisy tinkered with the tea tray in the kitchen, I studied the pictures on the walls. Tansy's dad, looking like the wrath of Jehovah in the center of a group of lifeboat- men, stood next to the Ramsgate rescue craft. They all looked stolidly intrepid, except for one, a rather small, mustachioed chap in the front row, to starboard, who looked half-crocked. The caption said, "Ramsgate Lifeboat Crew 1872—ready, aye, ready."
On another wall was a picture of Tansy as an able seaman on the West Coast of Africa during the Ashanti wars. Tansy and his mate wore pith helmets and white neckerchiefs, like the Foreign Legion used to, bandoliers across their shoulders, Lee-Enfield 303 rifles, with cutlasses slung from their belts. The Ashanti tribesmen in the picture looked fierce.
Just as Daisy trotted in with the tea, there was a rustling under the table. Tansy's old Labrador dog, Nelson, looked at me through his one good eye. He hopped over on three legs and nuzzled my leg. By now he was at least twelve years old and wise in the ways of the world. His tail wagged, but it looked like the black feathers on a funeral horse. I patted him. Nelson sighed.
"When did he go, Daisy?"
"Last week. We put him away three days ago."
"Where?"
"The Baptist Chapel. He couldn't stand parsons. He wanted to be buried behind the Royal Oak pub, but you know how folks are, so we settled for the Baptists. I mean, they're not the same, are they?"
"No, I suppose not. A bit more easygoing, like, I'd say, Dais."
"Anyway, all his old chums came for the funeral. You should have seen it, Tristan. Some of the old boys could hardly walk. At least not until they got the darts out in the pub. Tansy had left twenty pounds for beer money. Well, they got through that within an hour of opening time. Old Shiner Wright, the landlord, reckoned it was the best day's business he'd done in years."
"Bully for him. Was there free booze?"
"Yes, three free pints all around. The old boys, by the time they'd got that lot down, as well as the twenty quid's worth, couldn't think what it was all about. I swear some of them thought it was Coronation Day."
"Tansy would have loved that, Daisy. Right up his street."
Daisy poured another cup of tea and cut another slice of Dundee cake.
"What will you and Bogey do now, Dais? Will you keep this place running, or what?"
"I don't know yet. There's an editor fellow down from London wants to buy it."
"What's he like?"
"Funny little cove, effeminate-like. Bogey says he sits down when he goes for a pee." She giggled.
"Ah, well, lass, that's the way it goes!"
"Yes, and Tansy said he wanted you to have Nelson."
"Nelson? What am I going to do with him? Look, girl, I'm going to be knocking around looking for a boat, and then I want to do some serious cruising. Hell, it's going to be hard enough for me, without some lame old mutt traipsing around after me."
Nelson knew we were talking about him. He looked at me with an eye so pitiful it would have melted the heart of Artila the Hun.
"Can't you take him?" I asked her.
"We've already got two, and with the baby on the way..." Nelson stood looking at her, his tail brushing my foot.
"Oh, Jesus Christ, Daisy. Well, all right then, but I can't see me taking a bloomin' cripple to sea. One's bad enough, but with two—" I fondled Nelson's head and he fairly jumped for joy, putting his one front paw on my lap.
"Now cut that out, yer black bugger, behave yourself!" He dropped to the floor, all ears, wet nose, and attention.
Just then Bogey came in, bobble cap, ginger hair, eyes like the summer sky, seaboots and sweater, and a great sack of flounder under his arm. We sat by the fire yarning and drinking tea, eyeing the grandfather clock for pub-opening time. Just before dusk, off we went to the Royal Oak, Daisy, Bogey, Nelson, and me, to talk of times with Tansy at an ancient wooden table in the garden, while the sweet, quiet English evening folded itself into a parcel of dreams, leaving light caught in the leaves of trees and streaming with cheery sounds through the backdoor of the Royal Oak. And though we laughed at tales of Tansy, we silently wept in our hearts for the passing of a good man.
My father was the keeper of the
Eddystone Light
And he loved a mermaid one fine night, The result of the union were
offspring three, A dolphin and a porpoise and
the other was me! Oh, Ho! the wind blows free, Oh, for a life on the rolling sea!
From a traditional English Channel song.
6
God Helps Those What Helps Themselves!
I stayed with Daisy and Bogey Knight for the next two days, Monday and Tuesday. Bogey, like most Channel fishermen, did not go out on Mondays and Fridays because of old superstitions. He and I sat around in his living room in the morning until opening time, then, with Daisy's blessing, for she was pleased to have Bogey's great frame out of the way while she prepared lunch, we adjourned to the Royal Oak. Two pints of ale and a game of darts, then back to the cottage for cold cuts from Sunday's dinner, with applesauce, for it had been pork this week, all washed down with a great Jeroboam of "scrumpy," as rough cider is called in those parts.
Old Tansy had never installed running water. As we ate I could see beyond the kitchen door, with its rusty horseshoe. There was a whitewashed wall streaming with sunlight, and on it the shadow cast by Tansy's well-water-bucket yoke, and there were deep grooves worn by the bucket chains as he, and his father before him, and his father before him, had restowed the yoke. There was a small window above the stone sink, and I could see the tips of mint leaves growing outside, nourished by the sink drain, which emptied straight into the garden soil.
"What will you do now, Tristan, old son?" said Bogey. "I'm looking for a boat. I want to have a shot at making a different cruise."
"Not much round here, all fishin' boats. No sail left, except for a few old yachts, an' like I was sayin', most of them are survivors from Dunkirk." He warmed his under- shirt by the open fire.
"I thought I'd have a look around Sheerness, Bogey. There's this advertisement for an ex-R.N.L.I. [Royal National Lifeboat Institution] hull up there, and I think I'll go and see if I can do anything with her. The price is reason- able enough—four hundred quid [a thousand dollars in those days]—and it'll leave me with a tidy sum to fit her out, if she's any good."
"When was she built?"
"It says 1908."
"Should be good then. Is she one of those beach-launched boats?"
"I think she must be, Bogey. It says thirty-four feet. Must be a Watson design."
"Should make a good conversion, 'cos in those days they were building hulls like bloody cathedrals with the finest wood ever brought into U.K."
"It's not a cathedral I want, Bogey, just the flamin' parsonage'll do."
And so it was that next day Nelson, my sea bag, and I caught the early morning train to Tunbridge and Sheerness, with me wearily wondering how much wandering I was in for before I found a boat. Nelson got stroppy with every male dog coming in sight and handsomely gallant with every bitch, making all the old ladies on their way to Tunbridge market nervous and sharp. As soon as the compartment was clear, I gave him a belt over the ear. "Pipe down, you randy old bastard."
By late afternoon we were in Sheerness, for distances in England are only great in time and memories, not in miles. Shortly, we were at the back of a boatyard looking at a hull, all thirty-four abandoned feet of her. I often wondered afterwards if we looked at her or if she looked at us. She seemed an even sorrier sight than Nelson with his one eye and three legs or me after three days of knocking back the bewys with Bogey. The dirty grey paint on her sides was peeling off, and she was covered by an even dirtier tarpaulin, tattered and oily, which had been played upon by every wind in southeast England for the past decade. Grabbing a ladder, I propped it against the boat's side and lifted the rotting canvas cover. Inside the bottom of the boat was a two-foot-deep pool of black, stagnant rainwater, with a botanical display around the edges that would do justice to Kew Gardens. Minnows jumped, frogs croaked, and a rat rustled into safer hiding.
I hopped inside the hull. Out with the knife; quick poke around into the double-diagonal planking underwater. Vicious shove into half a dozen frames. "Mahogany... oak... mmm."
I sloshed my way aft, poking and prodding. Back out, I shinned down the ladder and checked the garboard and the deadwood aft. All sound. I stood back to study her. She had the classic lines of a lifeboat, with a whaleback cuddy fore and aft. Her original short stubby masts and oarlocks were still in her. She was narrow in the beam, only seven feet, but she was built like a tank. Her keel was as straight as a die, and under the filthy paint her West African mahogany was as good as a Steinway grand piano—a good inch and a half thick!
Her rounded hull was fitted with two long but shallow galvanized-steel bilge keels. She would need ballasting internally and even then she would not be able to carry much sail. But in the strong Arctic winds she wouldn't need much sail. The watertight bulkheads fore and aft were still sound, and there was room for a good twelve-foot cabin amidships and eight feet to spare for the cockpit—nice and roomy.
Nelson emerged from sniffing the keel. I looked at him. "Nelson, old son, I think we've got ourselves a boat." He looked at me, then at the boat, moving his tail as if to say, "Well, I hope to Christ you know what you're doing."
Then the owner arrived, a worker at the Royal Dockyard, which was, at that time, in the process of closing down, After introducing himself, he said, "Make a good fishin' boat. She'll take any amount of power in that hull."
"Yeah, but all I want is a boat for messing around in. Like on weekends, you know, trips up the Thames and all that, take the bird out for a jaunt. I like the hull, but the price is a bit steep for me."
"Well, seeing as how it looks like she'll go to a good home, how about 350 nikker?"
"Three hundred?"
"I'll tell you what, you being ex-R. N. and all, I'll let her go for 325."
"Right, you're on." I shook the slight little man's hand and the deal was concluded.
Next day I went into Chatham and bought a surplus Army tent, pumped out and cleaned the inside of the boat, set up the tent inside the hull, and there we were, in residence. Paying rent revolts the Celtic soul.
The five months of hard work which followed, from blooming August until snowy January, lie outside of the realm of this tale. If you are a boatman, you will know what effort was expended, what problems were solved, what limits of exasperation were reached, what resigned patience was nurtured, what poking around in heaps of scrap to find good but cheap materials, what marvels of expediency were arrived at, and how many tears were almost shed when nothing at all seemed to be going right.
Finally the day came when Cresswell (her original Lifeboat Institute name) started to take shape, to become a vessel instead of a hulk. I sat patiently in a snowbound shed cutting sheets of quarter-inch pure lead, recently "salvaged" off a blitzed London church, into "kentledge," as we call the shaped ballast cut to fit very closely between the frames of the hull in the bilge of the boat. I studied even' surplus war material leaflet which came my way, and soon I had installed my engine. This was a twin-cylinder, horizontally-opposed diesel engine which had formerly been mounted on a trailer. The trailer had been towed around London behind a truck, and sensed as an auxiliary fire pump during the great German aerial bombardments. With the pump end detached and a shaft and propeller buttoned on, it worked admirably, with its ten horsepower, to shift Cresswell along at five knots or so. And it used only half a pint of fuel an hour! I started it by ramming lubricating oil down into two brass cups which fed the oil into the cylinders. Then I swung like hell on the handle, there was a loud explosion of noise and fumes, and off she went. I stopped the thing by simply shutting off the fuel. There was no throttle or astern gear.
The deck and doghouse I built also out of West African mahogany, which was expensive, but I wanted to earn' the scantlings of the boat (i.e., the material specifications) right through the additions. Between the mahogany strakes I laid oiled canvas, just as it was in the hull, and over the deck and doghouse roof I laid and painted canvas so fine that even after I played water on deck for hours not one d
rop got through. I laid out the entire compartment, with access from above through a close-fitting hatch with hasps like you'd find in the Bank of England.
The amount of good, solid, hefty material which I collected on my nightly forays in a borrowed dinghy under muffled oars to the abandoned Royal Dockyard on the other side of the river and the muted conversations on the misty jetties and foggy foreshores, keeping a wary eye out for H.M. Dockyard Police, plus the number of pints stood for in the Admiral Jellicoe pub would be a wonder to anyone except those who have fitted out a long-distance cruiser with such meager resources as I had. I had no qualms of conscience about it, for I thought My Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty owed me something a bit more than a measly ten dollars per week.
The sails, the standing rigging, the running rigging, the diesel fuel tank (of finest copper), the zinc water tanks, the fuel piping, the stove, the one good sleeping berth in the cabin, the steering cables, the huge hand bilge pump, and the great brass fog siren, all came out of Her Majesty's custody and into mine, and so into the furbishing of the gallant ketch Cresswell. With the aid of half a dozen boat- loving cronies employed in the Dockyard, we fitted her out as good as Captain Warts (the gentleman's boat outfitter) could have done for two thousand guineas and more. Practically everything except the engine, that is. We'd have had one of those, too, for there were a dozen old fleet tenders lying rotting and woebegone at their moorings, but their engines were all too big. So we made do with the London Fire Brigade pump engine. The engine trade name was Vixen, and if ever a collection of nuts and bolts had a will of its own, that one did. But once running she'd run forever, and I got hold of some insulation out of H.M. Dockyard in which I sheathed the engine compartment. What with that and the rigid-resilient mountings (which I got out of the old Dockyard printing shop), she was at least smooth and steady, once the initial purgatory of starting her had been suffered.
