Tristan Jones

by Ice! [V2. 0]

  On the morning after, that is the day of the night of our rendezvous with "the Brethren," the wind swung around to the west, so we slowly started beating in to Spithead, the channel between the Isle of Wight and England. By dusk we had the old Nab Tower (an artificial island with a great round fortress, built during the Napoleonic Wars to guard the naval port of Portsmouth from French intrusions) in sight, and by ten in the evening we were hove to in the lee of the fort, showing two dim lights from the forestay.

  At eleven we heard the noise of an engine close by, and soon we were tied up alongside a motor fishing vessel, around eighty feet in length, with her engine softly keeping us head to sea in position while the soft-spoken Hebridean Scottish crew quietly and quickly transferred 150 cases of whisky onboard. These they distributed into Cresswell with an eye to her trim. They were obviously good seamen, but we knew no more about them, for they spoke only of the job. Their skipper, a chubby man of around sixty, with an Oxford accent and a peaked cap, shook my hand as the last cases were loaded and pressed an envelope into my pocket. "There's half there. Your destination is written down. Don't open it until you're half-way across the Channel. Head due south until you know the destination. You'll get the other half when the cases are ashore. Good luck!" The lines were cast off, and as we hoisted the mainsail, the fishing craft became a dark shadow, disappearing towards the east. Cresswell, with the extra weight of the booze, was well down in the water.

  "Let's get away from here fast, Tris. She's probably got another rendezvous and won't want us around."

  "Right. Hoist the jib and mizzen. We've got a good run out to Selsey Bill, then a smashing broad reach due south. Where d'you think the destination is?" I fingered the envelope, itching to open it.

  "I don't know for sure, but if it's where I think it is, you've got no worries. I've been there a hundred times."

  By two in the morning we had dropped Selsey Bill light astern and were leaping over the short Channel seas with even sail drawing. We showed no lights, and when there was no shipping around, it was an eerie feeling. The night was pitch black overcast, and Cresswell became a ghost ship on a sea of spirits.

  By dawn I reckoned by the log we were half-way over the Channel, and I opened the envelope eagerly.

  "What is it, Tris, Omonville?"

  "Yeah, Omonville, how did you know?"

  "I didn't, but the Major knows me, and I thought that's where he'd send us. He knows I know that bay like the back of my hand."

  "Good. How much water?"

  "No problem, you can drive her straight onto the beach under mizzen and jib. It's soft sand. Chuck out the stem anchor as you go in. We'll be there at half tide up. In half an hour she'll be afloat again and we can kedge out."

  "Pity we've no chart."

  "Don't worry; I've got one in my head. I was there only a month ago last time. It's a cinch."

  I thought, "By God, it has better be a cinch, or no voyage for me!" More like five years in a bloody French jail!

  That evening we sighted the fishing boats off Cherbourg, and as dusk fell handed the sails and motored in among the fleet. The idea was that if a radar sight of us had been gained by the French customs or navy, they would think we were a fishing boat. We waited hove to, in the middle of about a hundred fishing craft, all with nets out, until around midnight, then slowly made our way out of the western end of the fleet. Anyone who has not done it cannot imagine the difficulties of such navigation; there is always the risk of getting the nets or lines wrapped around the propeller. Not only is this risky, as the propeller shaft might be bent by the nylon lines piling up as the propeller revolves, forcing the shaft out from the hull, but it also meant being seen and reported by the French fishermen. The only way out of that predicament would have been to ditch all the booze before the fast French police launches arrived on the scene. But we were lucky and careful, and so emerged unscathed, though the night was very dark and a fresh breeze, around twenty-five knots, was blowing from the west.

  By two in the morning we were off the bay of Omonville. Down main, and, guided by Bill, who certainly did know the waters, for the entry was tricky, I eased her in, no lights, and as quiet as a wary witch. I soon spied the dull, silver beach right ahead, and when I judged we were fifty yards off, softly lowered the kedge anchor and slowly sailed the boat under mizzen and jib right onto the beach. She touched with a slight judder, then slid up over the silky sand and came to a halt. The moment she bumped, a car's headlamp blazed right in front of us for half a second, and we were soon boarded by six men led by another whom Bill knew. The cases were offloaded in less than ten minutes, while not one word was spoken except a few muttered exchanges between Bill and their chief. As the cases were offloaded, the boat was lightened and her stem lifted out of the sand, then her bow. Ten minutes after the Frenchmen had disappeared back into their wagon, we were hauling Cresswell out again to the kedge anchor. With the westerly wind blowing offshore, on the eastern side of the Cotentin peninsula, we were soon out in deep water with the main, mizzen, stays and jib pulling like dray horses, headed back for the French fishing fleet. As we came up to the outer craft of the immense fleet, we handed all sail, started the engine, and again chugged our way slowly through them. Then, after an hour of this, we broke through the northerly line of nets and were away, with all sail and the engine pushing, the wind fair for England.

  "Good job!" said Bill, handing me an envelope with my other half of the earnings inside. Cresswell seemed to be quite at home, Nelson normal. They'd both done all this before.

  "Yeah, two hundred quid will see me O.K. for two years."

  "Fancy another run?"

  "Not really, Bill. Too risky."

  "We can ask for another destination."

  "Where?"

  "I know a good "un, don't worn."

  "When?"

  "Before the moon grows."

  "Next week?"

  "If you like." He grinned. "Head for Weymouth, northeast by north; drop me off there and I'll fix it up."

  "Right. You're on, but mind you, Bill, this is the last one."

  I then explained to him what my true intentions were, and after a first grimace of astonishment, he saw that I was serious.

  "O.K., Tris, just this one. That'll at least give me enough to put down a deposit on my own boat. Once I've got that, I'll be right." And that's how, when I set sail from Falmouth for Ireland, I had onboard two years' supply of canned and dried food, a new rubber dinghy, three years' supply of boat's stores, and three hundred pounds sterling.

  After all these years, I do not regret having done this. It helped keep some otherwise impoverished Hebridean island going for a few more months; it brought the delights of good Scotch whisky to many a benighted Frenchman; it helped Aussie Bill (whose name I have changed because he is now a prominent figure in the worldwide charter boat scene) recoup his loss and find his feet; and it taught me that Cresswell was an extraordinary vessel.

  After a few days in Falmouth, I got out the charts for the south and west of Ireland. Saint Brendan's land! Falmouth parish church bells rang as Cresswell cleared for Erin. "Oh God, our help in ages past...." In the offing, Nelson sniffed the Atlantic breezes for traces of Chihuahuas away across the ocean in Mexico, from whence blew the wind. I sang my own song, for we were free with all the world before us.

  Part II

  Veni (I came)

  Foolish men overlook and disregard their present blessings, because their thoughts are always intent on the future, but the wise keep the past clearly in mind through memory. To foolish people the present, which allows us but the briefest instant to touch it and then slips from our grasp, does not seem to be ours or to belong to us at all.... With most people, a stupid and ungrateful forgetfullness has possession of them, and wipes from their minds every past accomplishment... braking the unity of life, which comes from the weaving of the past into the present. For by separating yesterday from today, as if it were something different, and tomorrow, likewise, as if
it were not the same as today, it soon makes what is now happening into what has never taken place, by not recalling it.... So those who do not keep or store in memory things that are past, but let them float away, actually leave themselves vacant and empty daily, while they cling to tomorrow, as if what happened last year or day before yesterday or even yesterday mattered nothing to them, or had not happened to them at all.

  This habit, then, is one interference with peace of mind. (Emphasis added)

  Plutarch, "On Peace of Mind," Essays.

  Oh some they came from Boston And some came from New York, Some came from the County Down And some from the County Cork, Some they came from Kerry And some came from Kildare; But the boys who bate the Black 'n Tans Were the boys from the County Clare!"

  Irish Republican Song. The Black and Tans were British-recruited auxiliaries, a bad lot. The words' order changes according to the locale. I have arranged it for Corghain. Sung to the tune of "Wearing of the Green."

  8

  The Irish Islands

  From Falmouth, my sail plan was to cross the St. George's Channel, as the English call the Celtic Sea, and make for a landfall in southwest Eire. The most likely haven to make for was Bantry Bay, about 250 miles' straight sailing. In this long, wide bay, on its northern shore, was the port of Castletown. But if the weather held good, I would hold on course for Knights Town, in the lee of Valentia Island, at the southern end of Dingle Bay. The first landfall, in both cases, would be the Fastnet Rock, a lonely pinnacle, surmounted by a lighthouse, twenty miles south of the southern shore of County Cork. I would be heading west-northwest-by-northwest, and as the prevailing winds which sweep into the British Isles are southwesterly, it meant I would be on a dose reach, that is, with the wind coming from about sixty degrees off the bow. This was important, because Cresswell was an old-fashioned gaff-rigged ketch, and unlike the modem Marconi-rigged ocean-goers, she could not sail very efficiently with the wind anywhere ahead of fifty degrees off the bow.

  Bear in mind also that these were the days before the self-steering wind-vane gear, as now shipped aboard ocean-cruising boats, was developed to its present efficiency. In Cresswell it was all hand-steering with the wind anywhere abaft (behind) the beam (right angles to the boat), except when she was close hauled or on a close reach (that is, sailing with the wind ahead of the beam). Then, the sails could be trimmed and she would sail herself for long periods, holding the course with only minor adjustments to the helm. So in those conditions I always tried to shape a course where the wind would be slightly ahead of a direction at right angles to the boat's intended course.

  If that sounds complicated in practice, imagine what a job it was to work out the courses. It was for this reason, among others, that my course for Iceland was laid out to pass outside the western periphery of the British Isles. To have gone directly up the east coast of England and Scotland would have been a thousand miles shorter, but in the North Sea the winds are both strong in force and fickle in direction. On the Celtic fringe they are strong, but mostly steady in direction. For this reason, the old sailing directions of Pliny had given this route. For this reason, too, the isolated Christian missions, the last remaining refuges of the light of Western civilization, had been able to communicate with each other during the centuries of savage destruction, blood, and ignorance which in Europe we call the Dark Ages. Now, replete with 184 twelve-ounce cans of corned beef, 100 pounds of porridge, 500 pounds of rice, 300-weight of potatoes, 200-weight of flour, 5 pounds of yeast, 50 pounds of tea, and 0 of sugar, 240 pounds of peanuts, 20 pounds of lemon powder, besides new fish-trolling gear, I was ready to take off.

  In Plymouth, on a swift trip up by train from Falmouth, I had been able to obtain all the charts I would need of the Irish and Scottish Islands, the Faroes, Iceland, Eastern Greenland, Jan Mayen Island, and Svalbard. This had cost a tidy sum, but it was essential to have them.

  On May I worked Cresswell out of Falmouth, having cleared with the customs for Eire, and worked my way out against the wind, until, early on the morning of the eighth, my thirty-fifth birthday, I dropped the light of Lizard Head, Cornwall, astern. This was the last sight I would have of England for more than four years. As I made a kettle of tea I glanced out of the hatchway at the lightening dawn in the east over the ray of the Lizard Light. I threw Nelson a bone. "Well, old son, that's that. Ireland, here we come!"

  The passage over the Celtic Sea took three days, because of a slight shift of the wind to due west on the second day. The weather was fair, with not much cloud or rain, so I was able to get good sights, which put Fastnet right on the starboard bow early in the false dawn. Beyond it I could see, as the sun rose slowly in the east behind me, the faraway, seemingly low hills and mountains of Ireland, rising, first black, then lightening to grey, purple, blue, and finally green, Irish green, emerald green indeed. The sea itself was blue green, topped with fresh frisking white horses, driven by the Gulf Stream wind, charging along to the rim of Ireland and beyond, to the roaring coasts of Cornwall and the singing shores of Wales.

  On the port bow there was nothing between Cresswell, Nelson, and me but salt water all the way to Battery Point in New York. It sometimes happens, presumably due to abnormal activity of sunspots (as the gigantic hydrogen explosions spearing out millions of miles from the surface of the sun are called), that there is freak radio reception, and local radio broadcasts are bounced back to earth thousands of miles from the transmitter. On the night before my sight of the Skelligs, the holy sanctuaries of the Christian monks in the sixth century, ten miles or so off the coast of Kerry, I hove the boat to (that is, dropped the headsails and stopped her) while I made supper. The pressure cooker was steaming away merrily, with the spuds, corned beef, and Oxo gravy bubbling away inside, and I was fiddling with the dial of my small transistor radio receiver trying to find the shipping forecast from Niton radio station in the Isle of Wight. Suddenly I heard a conversation, loud and clear, between a New York taxi driver and his radio control office. There was no doubt about it, because he was heading for La Guardia Airport! The reception lasted quite clearly for several minutes, then static took over and I was back with Saint Brendan in the sixth century, sailing in the moonless dark, off one of the oldest coasts in the world.

  On the morning of the third day out, I sighted the two conical peaks of the Skelligs, the remains of two mountains lost to the ocean in some dim and distant past. I worked my way into the lee of the larger islet, which rises two hundred feet sheer out of the sea, and as the landing stage hove into dear view, let go the sheets, dropped the anchor over the bow, and looked around. There was no one in sight. I lowered the sails and waited a few minutes to make sure the anchor was biting properly, for the seabed around the islands is littered with rocks; then, admonishing Nelson to keep a good lookout, I went below to snatch some sleep. This having been my first solo voyage of any length in Cresswell, I had not slept much in three days, no more than ten minutes or so every few hours. I was crossing a heavily used shipping lane, and I did not yet know all of my craft's idiosyncrasies when she sailed herself; so, until I was sure of her steadiness, I was forced to keep watch on her. The weather was fine and springlike, with the wind blowing gently from behind the island and flat calm water in the roadstead.

  It must have been mid-forenoon when I was awakened by Nelson barking and growling at the hatchway. "Pipe down, you son of a bitch," I growled in return, but he persisted and so I turned out of my bunk, donned my jersey, and made for the companionway.

  "Halloo, there, halloo the boat riding there at anchor this fine day!"

  I poked my head up over the hatch and gazed towards the shore. There, standing on the tiny landing stage, was a man in a peaked cap wearing pajamas and carpet slippers, holding a bicycle.

  "Hello!" I shouted. He was about fifty yards away, but voices carry well over water, even against the breeze.

  "Where are you hailing from in that fine, upstanding boat of yours?"

  "England. Falmouth, England
!" I shouted back. "Arr, ye poor fellow, the shame of it! Come ashore and have a drink!"

  "I'll be right with you!"

  I had been towing my brand-new Avon rubber dinghy, and in three shakes of a gnat's ass I had the oars onboard and was paddling away for the jetty. The man in pajamas caught the painterline as I came alongside and tied it to a ring set in the stone.

  "Cead Mile Fdilte," he said softly in Erse. "A thousand welcomes."

  "Ddwy Da" replied I in Welsh. "A good day to you."

  "Is it Saxon you are?"

  "Welsh."

  "Corrigan's the name." He spoke now in English. "I'm the keeper here, and sure it's not a soul I've seen for the three weeks past of my life. Is there no one with you?" He was a large, hefty man, about fifty, with Viking blue eyes.

  "Just the dog."

  "Bejasus, he earns a fine keep for himself. He'd guard a tinker."

  "He's been at sea most of his life. He's used to it and knows what to do." I climbed onto the jetty and took his proffered hand.

  "Did you ever see the like of such? Now, it's up the brew we'll be climbin' an' you can tell me of the news. Are there wars still burning down the world?" His eyes saddened.

  "Nothing big."

  "There's the pity of it. A fine thing, wars. Sure they bring good pensions to half the widows of Ireland!"

  "Have you no radio?" I asked him as we puffed our way up the finely paved but narrow concrete path to the light-house perched a hundred feet above the sea.

  "Sure, Flaherty's thinkin' of installin' one but it's me against it, what with all the strange things comin' out of the blue sky and the gulls screamin' their heads off in pain at all the human misery, what with all the riots and strikes and wars goin' on."

  "I thought you said wars were a fine thing?"