Racundra's First Cruise

by Arthur Ransome

  PORT OF REVAL

  I suppose it is as true as many things in history that Linda, with whom Esthonian chronicles begin, was born from a grouse’s egg. She refused the sun and the moon in marriage, giving them the soundest categorical reasons for their rejection, and married instead the young giant Kalev, who, after a seven days’ wedding feast, drove off with her in his sledge and came to this wild country by the seashore. Their son, the Kalevipoeg after whom the Esthonians name their ships, cleared parts of the country from rocks and made places fit for corn-growing and pasture, slew all the wild beasts, took part in the struggles of his people against the Christian invaders from Germany, and ended in hell with his fist stuck fast in the doorpost thereof. The old giant Kalev died here at Reval, and Linda heaped stone after stone upon his grave and so made that proud hill of Reval by the Baltic Sea, to carry in stone and mortar the record of over seven hundred years of Esthonian history. Up there on the skyline are fortifications built by the Danes. There are walls and towers built by the Swedes. The old town hall under the shadow of the rock is a legacy from the Hanseatic League. There is the ancient Lutheran church with the skeleton carved by the doorway. There are the narrow houses of the German merchants, some of them with the old portraits of the burghers still on the walls; up on the hill-top the houses of the barons, and over all the monstrous gold-domed Russian church, breaking with a touch of Byzantium the Gothic and Scandinavian outlines of the place. But for the Russian church, Reval is in colour a little like Shaftesbury; in form its rock is a little like the rock of Edinburgh, if only that were set in a plain on the edge of the sea. Most of all, it is like those night-cap-country towns that the old German wood-engravers used to put into their backgrounds.

  But I know Reval too well, and like it too much, to be able to write of it with the aloof ease that is only possible in writing of chance acquaintanceships with towns and people. Sailing in there is always, for me, like coming home, and I hardly know how to give a picture of it as if I were seeing it for the first time.

  Coming in as we did on this occasion in a series of rain-squalls, there was little of the town to be seen; but going home to the hills a man does not feel their presence the less if the tops are veiled in clouds. Everything in the harbour was an old friend. There were the little tugs, the Kalev and the Walter. How often their wash had almost rolled me off the roof of Kittiwake’s cabin, on which I used to sit here in the evenings watching the ships! There was the old grey elevator that somehow, though modern, carries with it a suggestion of Danzig and the Hansa towns, rising high above us amid a forest of masts, for the basin beside it was full of schooners and cutters. Beside the quays were the little steamships Ebba Munck and Kalevipoeg, busy as usual on their regular trips to Finland and Stockholm. The same old motor-boat on the Yacht Club Quay was undergoing the same old repairs, and even the buoy to which we made fast was one into which I had often bumped in bringing the erratic Kittiwake home at night. Why, Kittiwake herself, unkempt, dilapidated, lovable little thing, was moored just on the other side of the mole.

  The stranger going ashore for the first time at Reval from his little ship need ask no other guide than the castle rock. Leaving the harbour, he has but to follow the road that leads towards the hill and he will enter the town as it should be entered, through an old stone gateway defended by a tower, with stout and lofty stone walls stretching to right and left. He will then walk on a cobbled street or on a very narrow pavement under ancient houses until he comes to the foot of the rock. He can then climb by a zigzag path up the face of the cliff, but if he is wise, and would not spoil what is before him by preliminary tastes, he will keep on under the walls till, through a narrow street, he comes to another fortified gateway, and going through that will climb a long slope within the inner wall until he comes by the fantastic Russian church to the upper town, as it is called, built on the summit of the fortress. Here is the old house of the Russian Governor, where the Esthonian Parliament meets. Still working upwards, he will read on the doorways into old square courtyards the names of the old German families that once ruled the country, and he will come to an old church with great trees so bent with age that they stretch across the road and seem to try to sweep the opposite pavement. Turning then down a narrow lane, going through an archway, crossing a yard and going through yet another arch, he will come out upon the battlements and have before him the finest view to be obtained in any of the Baltic capitals. He will be looking down a sheer precipice on the ancient walls of the lower town, with the round grey towers that rise above them and the tall dark spire of the church of St Nicholas of the sailors, and far over the roofs of the town he will see the harbour with the ships coming and going about their business, while before him lies the great stretch of the blue bay, steamers lying in the roads, white-sailed yachts, sedate schooners slipping away northward to Finland far beyond the little island of Wulf, or moving westward between Nargon and the mainland, where again is open sea and clear horizon ... I cannot believe that any man who has looked out to sea from Reval castle rock can ever be wholly happy unless he has a boat.

  My imaginary wandering freemason of the sea, warmed by the thought that he has a share in all this, that he too can sail past those distant promontories, since his little ship is awaiting him in harbour, will then go down from the battlements by the rock path until the sea is hidden from him, but only for a moment. He will cross the railway lines and come out on the stony foreshore, where he will find a little square harbour for the shallow-draught fishing-boats and a row of wooden-trestle piers where those who have looked from the rock and have no boats try in vain to salve their pain by hiring boats from other men. Here, too, he can listen with amusement to the buying and selling of every sort of small craft, which goes on with all the cheerful mendacity of a horse-fair. This is the last refuge of boats discarded from the Yacht Clubs, and here all kinds of ancient ruins are given a coat of paint and bought by the unwary and sold by the cunning, who know that those who have looked from the battlements above them must have a boat or die. On the foreshore men are always at work repairing little ships, and you may find there illustrations for a whole history of Baltic boat-building. Only a year ago I saw here one of the early fishing-boats that were brought from the upper reaches of the Volga, a flat-bottomed boat with planks sewn together with strips of leather. In old days these boats used to be brought to Reval by fishermen from Ostashkovo, in the interior of Russia, who came for the summer fishing season, sold their fish and their boats here, and bought little Esthonian horses with which they returned by sledge overland in the winter, to build new boats and come again next summer.1

  But if castle rock and stretching bay and intimate disreputable foreshore are among the glories and delights of Reval, they are not the town itself, which, clustered about the foot of the rock, has, of all the Baltic capitals, least of the vices of a town and most of the virtues of a village. Nobody in Reval tries to dress well, with the exception of a few young women, and they, by the manner of their failure, do but emphasize this cardinal virtue of their native place. Top-hats were unknown there until the British Consul and Vice-Consul spread awe and astonishment by wearing them on state occasions, thereby startling the Ministers into ordering at least two from England, for the use of the Cabinet. Not that for a moment I would be thought to laugh at men who had the courage to carry through a foreign policy against the almost open threats of greater Powers, and have had the satisfaction of seeing half Europe follow at their heels. I do but lament the introduction of those four top-hats and recognise that we, and not the Esthonians, are to blame for them. Anyway, they are very seldom to be seen, and I think that after that first moment of horrified excitement everybody has come to realize that Reval is not the place for them. In Reval nothing is done for show, except, perhaps, an occasional march of troops or fire brigade. And that you must have in any capital. There is no single street in Reval given up to fine shops and the parades of fools. Everything is decent, homely and unflurried.


  There are shops, of course, but the buying and selling in the town is for the most part done in the older manner. The Reval housewife does not go shopping for her day’s provender. She goes to market with a big string bag in summer and dragging a little sledge at her heels in winter. In the middle of the town, under the big Esthonian theatre, is a wide open space where there is a food-market, and beside it little wooden booths where you can buy string bags or even baskets to carry your food in, doormats to wipe your feet on when you get home (I bought one for the feet of Racundra’s visitors), and saucepans in which to cook it after you have arrived. The market is made up of rows of tables on trestles, each with a little roof. By old tradition, the sellers of each particular kind of goods keep together. In this way they can keep a check on each other’s prices, and you, interested in quality, can compare one cabbage with another or prod the breasts of half a dozen chickens on different stalls before you make your choice. In one part of the market you may walk between rows of boxes full of pike, some of them still alive in bath-tubs, big perch (two- and three-pounders are not the rarity that they are at home) and baskets full of the little shining killos. In another part of the market you are among green vegetables. In another you buy hunks of meat wrapped in Esthonian newspapers and dripping blood and printer’s ink. At one side of the square are the little carts which have brought all this food in from the surrounding country. And there is a row of booths where, as you pass, you hear the loud cheerful noise of people drinking tea with great pleasure, with bits of sugar between their teeth, and there are the farmers and their wives, sitting by the samovars on the trestle tables, eating enormous quantities of sausages. Besides this market there is another under the walls, for clothes and old iron, where I have picked up a block or a shackle now and again. This market is called “Lousy Market” by the inhabitants of Reval, and they ought to know. Both markets are in perfect keeping with the medieval character of the town.

  * * * * *

  Racundra lay five days in Reval, while her designer examined her all over inside and out to see what the builder had made of his dream, and set himself to put right as many as possible of our makeshifts. He made a new horse for the mainsheet to work on, gratings for the seats in the steering-well and battens for the sails, besides putting on the best of his old workmen to repair our damaged gaff. Meanwhile, we bought what we could of the things we needed, but finding that there were no blocks in Reval to fit our ropes, we decided to sail over to Finland and to finish our fitting out in Helsingfors. We rigged a yard for our squaresail, but found that the sail was too small to be of real use. The making and mending took time, and meanwhile the S.E. wind that would have carried us to Finland in a few hours was blowing itself out day after day.

  We had plenty to do, of course, as one always has in even the smallest of ships. The gangway plank that we had rigged up over the stern was continually trodden by Racundra’s visitors. We, too, had many friends to see in the town, and now and again went visiting in the dinghy in the harbour. Baltabor was there, having got in the morning of the day that we arrived, and Captain Whalley was to have lent me a Pelorus for the business of correcting Racundra’s compass, but, clearing unexpectedly, as we had done in Riga, steamed away with the instrument on board. Then there was another English ship in the port, the Maid of Erin, a fine Bristol Channel pilot vessel, ketch-rigged, which had taken a cargo of boots to Petrograd. Her owner was a true merchant-adventurer, who told us that his real business was the breeding and selling of polo ponies. Without wishing to hurt Racundra’s feelings, we envied a little the broad decks and roomy hold of the Maid of Erin. She was three times our tonnage, of course, black and piratical in appearance, but what a ship to make a home of! Her owner, on the other hand, had plenty of admiration for Racundra, so we parted with mutual good feelings, made still warmer on our side by a present from the Maid of Erin, whose owner hailed me as I was rowing back in the dinghy from getting my papers cleared for Finland, and handed down a cake of plug tobacco, worth to me then many times its weight in gold. The Ancient and I shared it between us, and often, as we smoked, spoke of “that fine black pirate ketch” and wondered if we should meet her again. She was gone when we returned from Finland.

  GROHARA ISLAND AND LIGHTHOUSE.

  GROHARA ISLAND AND LIGHTHOUSE TODAY.

  Footnote

  1 Not far from here, in a river farther along the coast, I have seen a quite new dug-out, like the boats of primitive man, hollowed with the axe out of a single tree. On a Russian river I have been in a boat scarcely less simple, with an Evinrude motor fixed over the stern, so near in Eastern Europe are the earliest and latest stages of civilisation.

  REVAL TO HELSINGFORS

  ON August 30th, when we had our new gaff jaws and had put the battens into the sails, we were impatient to be off. The Cook remained in Reval, making room for my friend Mr. Wirgo, who at one time represented Esthonia in London and had arranged to make the passage with me to Finland. In early youth he spent some time in a sailing ship, and now owns the Condor, a little Swedish yacht, delightful in sheltered waters, but not fit for the crossing to Helsingfors. We had sailed round the harbour in Condor the preceding night, when Wirgo managed to tumble into the water while getting into a dinghy. The unfortunate effect of this was that when we had already started for Finland he complained of feeling ill, and after being dosed with aspirin from Racundra’s medicine chest, had to spend most of the passage in his bunk. At the start, however, he was most impatient to be off, and was anxious that we should use the engine, which, however, was determined not to be used. He explained that, whatever happened, he must be back the day after tomorrow in order to take his wife to a ball in honour of the British Fleet, a squadron of which was expected. In his hurry, he actually towed us out of the harbour in the dinghy. That was at seven o’clock in the evening, and when he came on board again after a magnificent piece of work, for Racundra is a heavy little ship, the illness began which lasted until we were already within sight of the Finnish coast.

  We started in the evening in the hope of getting a land breeze through the night, and this we did, though the breeze was so slight that when morning broke we were still close to the island of Wulf, which protects the Bay of Reval from the north. I steered all night until the dawn, which found us clear of the bay. It was pleasant work with the admirable leading lights of Reval as a guide, and I took a number of bearings which confirmed the deductions made already about the gigantic character of our compass deviation. By half-past six we had passed Nargon and Wulf, and at eight we could see Wrangel island, east by north, and on the horizon the Revalstein three-masted lightship a little north of N.W. The wind dropped to nothing. It had only needed the dotting of an i and the crossing of a t to make it nothing before. We were simply drifting.

  And then, quite suddenly, came the fog, and with it the slightest possible breath from the north, veering now and again. We steered, or rather pointed, for the ship could hardly be considered as under sail, N.E., E. by N., and E.N.E. The fog was a white, cool fog, and hid everything but the water within a few yards of the ship. The Ancient Mariner brought up the foghorn, and at the proper intervals we made the noises prescribed by law. Wirgo came up, looked about him, wondered rather dismally what his wife would say to him if she had to go to the ball alone, and retired to his bunk. The Ancient and I drowsed at the wheel in turns. There was something uncanny in being unable to see in a fog so white, so luminous in itself. Yet there it was, sure enough fog, as Huckleberry Finn would say, and we began to be worried by noises. Once or twice there were good recognizable noises made by other vessels: to these we cheerfully replied, proud of the fact that we could do as much ourselves. The worrying noises were the regular ones, signals from lighthouses, lightships and similar things, which we ought to have been able to identify and could not. The fog lasted until four in the afternoon. For some time before that the wind had been easterly, such as it was, and we had been pointing north. We had heard one particular noise which had disturb
ed us very much indeed. Hoots on a fog-horn and then the clear ringing of a bell, repeated accurately at three-minute intervals. Now, when a ship moves at all, the desires of those on board tend to make them believe that she is moving faster than she is in fact. Although, until we heard these signals, somewhere to the south of us and seemingly quite near, we had supposed Racundra was about half-way across the Finnish Gulf, yet when we heard them, it never for a moment occurred to us that they could be anything but signals from some lighthouse or lightship standing far out from the Finnish coast. We accordingly searched the Baltic Pilot, and examined the Finnish coast in both English and German charts, trying to find a place alleged to make such noises during fog. We could find nothing of the kind, and were actually beginning to be afraid that we had already come too near the land, when the fog rolled southward as swiftly as it had come, disclosing a horizon absolutely naked to the north and bare to the south except for a three-masted ship without sails and with curious swellings about the masts: the Revalstein lightship, which we had thought to be quite twenty miles astern. It was not until long afterwards that, idly looking over the chart of the Esthonian coast, I realized that the three-minute bell we had heard when wrapped up in that blanket was from the Kokskar Lighthouse, a few miles east of Wulf.

  With the lifting of the fog came a wind from the N.E. which allowed us to sail northwards, humbled as navigators but renewed in hope as human beings. We knew now where we were, and the wind was taking us, not quite in the direction in which we wished to go, but pretty nearly in that direction. The only thing remaining uncertain was the deviation of our compass, and even with regard to that, we had a good deal of definite knowledge in place of the complete ignorance with which we had started from Riga. Later on our confidence was increased by the sight of a three-masted schooner also sailing north. She had her sails full and was going at a great pace, rapidly overhauling us, but when she passed us it was obvious that she was making much more leeway than even the generous Racundra allowed herself. We were sure that she too was bound for Helsingfors, or at any rate for a sight of the Aransgrund light-vessel, which is the outermost mark to show the way in. When she was almost hull down beyond us she went about and came sliding back again, and we decided that she had tacked on getting a sight of the light-vessel, which we knew must be somewhere a little east of our course. In this way, navigating very much from hand to mouth, we took the schooner as our guide and stood on as she had done, until at the same moment the Ancient sighted land ahead and I saw the light-vessel about five miles distant on our starboard bow. We stood on till we thought we could fetch the vessel on the other tack and then went about, just as dusk was falling, when we received an extremely disconcerting shock.