The Ra Expeditions

by Thor Heyerdahl

  Fourth possibility: the papyrus might sink under us. One month's experience showed that even if the papyrus absorbed water it sank so slowly that there would be plenty of time to send out an SOS. But we would also have to send out an SOS if we transferrred to the crowded lifeboat. We would all rather be able to stretch out in our comparatively spacious basket cabin than sit squashed together in that little lifeboat tent, waiting for rescue.

  Fifth possibility: the papyrus might rot and disintegrate. We already knew from sight and touch that the papyrus experts had miscalculated on this point. Their laboratory experiments had certainly been made in still sea water. We all agreed wholeheartedly that both the papyrus reeds and the lashings were stronger than ever, so we were absolutely unanimous in ruling out that emergency.

  Sixth possibility: hurricane. We could run into one at any time as we neared the West Indies. A hurricane might carry away masts and oars and steering bridge, might even rip off the sunken stern. But we had lived through more than one storm on the Ra now and were certain that the tough wicker cabin would continue to cling to Rcfs central reed bundles, leaving us a raft with more room, water and food on board than the little foam rubber raft could possibly provide. Nobody would move to the rubber raft in a hurricane.

  Before we had finished we were all in high spirits. No one had preferred the life raft to Ra's reed bundles in any conceivable situation. Yuri was visibly relieved. He grinned and shook his head, marvel-

  ing. Carlo laughed. Norman drew a deep breath and was the first on his feet.

  "OK. Let's get the saw!"

  Everyone wanted to make for the stern, but such heavy seas were breaking over the submerged deck aft that three men made quite enough extra load there. Norman, Abdullah and I waded into the stem. With ax, knife and saw we attacked the heavy packing crate and then threw planks and plastic inner container overboard. These sorts of things were out of place on Ra. The green foam rubber raft came into view. Under it Abdullah was appalled to see that several of the ropes holding together the Ra herself had been chafed through by the movement of the crate in the cascades of water. Rope ends bristled from the papyrus like ghastly skeletal claws. Only the swelling of the reed had prevented the ropes from slithering through and allowing the whole stern to break apart. Abdullah fell on the loose ends and tied them together with extra rope. We stood knee-deep in foaming water and Abdullah showed us how the skin on his legs was peeling in wet white flakes, after all the work in sea water over the last few days. Then I felt one of the mightiest of the towering waves crashing against the Ra, lifting us up and twisting us abruptly sideways. I was staggering in an attempt to regain balance when I heard the deafening roar of tons of falling water and breaking timber. The sea surged in up to my waist from behind, while wood and rope yielded to the power of the ocean and slowly collapsed. I was swept to port by the torrent of water and bent to grab a rope before I could be washed overboard when I felt a great weight of broken timber thumping over my back. I heard Norman's voice bellowing: "Look out, Thor!" and was sure that this deafening sound of cracking wood came from the entire bridge subsiding in its lashings and breaking over our heads. As our foundations rocked and broken timber held me down in the surge of water, I expected at any moment to find the three of us being towed along behind Ra by our life lines with bridge and stern torn off and left floating in our wake. Then the floods subsided and I found myself left knee-deep as before with broken timber pressing me down.

  "It was the double-shaft rudder-oar that went," shouted Norman, helping to free me.

  Above us bobbed the splintered ends of two big logs lashed

  together. The thick, round original shaft and the square balk of the spare mast bound to it as reinforcement, had broken off side by side. The big oar blade was left hanging on the ropes, lashing like the tail of an angry whale, but in a flash Norman was there with Carlo and Santiago to haul it in, while Abdullah wrestled alone with the rubber raft, now floating freely onboard, and I struggled with a two-hundred-pound keg of salt meat, which had suddenly broken loose among the bridge poles and threatened to cause disaster unless prevented from crashing about in the cascades of water.

  That night Abdullah assured me, when I came out for the change of watch, that we were now surrounded by kind big swells with no nasty little waves on their backs. Ra rode smoothly and rhythmically; two small rowing oars were temporarily tied on where the big port rudder-oar had been. When we switched our flashlights on we could see a squid swimming as though behind the glass of an aquarium when the water rose like a wall beside us. The Egyptian sail occasionally stood out clearly against twinkling gaps in the cloud ceiling, but the horizon was invisible in the darkness. What sometimes seemed to be stars low on the horizon often proved to be florescent plankton twinkling brightly at eye level, carried up on an invisible wave crest.

  It certainly felt very odd next day to begin attacking our undamaged life raft with a saw. Norman and I looked at each other and I paused uncertainly for an instant before sending the saw rasping through the green canvas cover and into the foam rubber. Then we all set about dismembering our only means of getting away from the boat we were standing on knee-deep in water.

  'Teople will think we are crazy. No one will understand," said Yuri, grinning.

  But the decision was unanimous and well-weighed. The life raft was reduced to narrow strips, the shape of papyrus bundles, then pushed under water and lashed fast to the surface of the sunken deck. The miracle happened. The stern began to rise. It lifted enough to give us better steering control over the boat, and once again the waves slid under us without filling our swimming pool with such floods of water. The event was appropriately celebrated. However, the sea gradually stole on board and plucked the sawn-

  up foam rubber away bit by bit, until only the natural papyrus stems were left. Neptune might have been telling us: "No cheating. Pharaoh's men had no foam rubber." So our delight was short-lived, but with the disappearance of the heavy crate v^th the life raft we had removed a dangerous load from the afterdeck.

  On June 19 we found ourselves dancing in heavy swells augmented by waves reflecting from cliffs on shore that stirred the sea into indescribable turmoil. The deck of Ra billowed like a carpet and in some places dry papyrus crinkled itself into little curls on top of the bundles. Between mast and cabin, where two men could usually walk side by side, one man had to watch out before slipping through alone, and the little gap between bridge and cabin wall opened and closed like a nutcracker. If we sat on the narrow crack between two of our sixteen boxes in the cabin, we were nipped in the bottom. For the first time a clay jar was crushed to pieces and the nuts spilled out, to Safi's delight. We discovered that another was empty of water because friction with the neighboring jar had v/om a round hole in its side. The starboard rudder-oar was spliced and launched, while water gushed round our bodies, but soon afterward there was another crack and the blade was floating astern again, while the sail swung round and imprisoned Carlo and Santiago, who were busy tapping water from a goatskin. They were bowled over toward the open railing and would have finished up in the sea had they not been roped up. A big flying fish sailed on board and swam happily for a time in the pool aft while Abdullah floundered about vainly trying to catch it.

  In the struggle with rope and sail and broken rudder-oars I got my hand pinched and it was hurting even more that night when I came on deck to relieve Santiago. He pointed silently. A light to port. We clung to the guardrail, legs braced, so as not to tumble over while we stared. Cape Verde? No, a boat. It was heading for us. It was signaling. The flashes were too fast for us to read, but it was asking about something.

  ''Ra OK, Ra OK," we flashed back in Morse. The boat was close to us now and we guessed that it was a patrol boat from Cape Verde. It was rolling violently, while we were calmly undulating with the waves.

  "Rd, bon voyage," it finally flashed slowly. Have a good trip.

  Then it turned away and the comforting Hghts vanished in tlie darkn
ess.

  "Have a good trip," I said to Santiago as he went to bed.

  Two hours later I had akeady begun to whistle carefully through the wicker wall to waken Yuri in all the noise. He was to relieve me, but the others must be left to sleep. Then I felt as if Neptune himself had taken hold of the oar blade out there in the blackness of the sea. Vast forces wrenched the oar from me and the whole vessel heeled, while white furies thundered out of the darkness and buried everything under my legs. The bridge vibrated and the crack of breaking wood was loud in my ears again. Was it the bridge collapsing this time? No. It was the other rudder-oar. Now we had nothing to steer with. I had to yell through the wickerwork and rouse everyone. The sail thrashed. The water seethed. Ropes and timber screamed louder than shouted orders. It began to rain. We threw out both our sea anchors. Then all was well.

  "They wished us a good trip," said Santiago, staring out into the night. We felt alone as never before. There was no light to be seen now from land or ship. At last the whole Atlantic lay open ahead of us.

  "Good watch, Yuri, You have no problems—nothing to steer with."

  Chapter Ten

  INTO AMERICAN WATERS

  W E WERE having a party on board the Ra. Sky and sea smiled. The tropical sun burned down on the dry foredeck and the Atlantic washed quietly to and fro across the afterdeck. Inside the basketwork cabin it was cool and shady. A blue Atlantic chart was tied with twine to the yellow wicker wall. On it was drawn a line of small penciled circles. The last was quite new and showed that today we had crossed longitude 40° W. and were therefore in the American half of the Atlantic. For several days Brazil had been our nearest fixed point, because we were now much closer to the South American mainland than to Africa, but as we were sailing almost directly westward we would be crossing the widest part of the ocean, and then the West Indies would be the nearest landing place ahead.

  This was an occasion for celebration. Our Italian chef, Carlo, had extra help in the galley from gourmet Georges, who produced the choicest dishes out of the contents of our ceramic jars. After an hors d'oeuvre of Moroccan olives, sliced salt sausage and sun-dried Egyptian fish roe, we were each served an enormous omelette of fresh eggs filled with artichoke hearts, onions, whole tomatoes, scraps of smoked mutton and peppered sheep's cheese, and with a choice seasoning of all sorts of special spices, from Egyptian kamon to Moroccan desert herbs and red pepper. For dessert we

  had raisins, prunes, almonds and best of all, triple rations of Madame Aicha's honey-sweet Moroccan sello crumbs.

  Who missed refrigerators and can openers? None of the representatives of seven countries who sat stuffing themselves with this variation of a Pharaonic feast, while our papyrus ship marked the occasion by heading under full sail in the right direction, with no watch on the steering bridge.

  We had a floating grocery store on board. Santiago, our Mexican quartermaster, kept order in the store and Carlo was the only legal customer. Only Safi was caught shoplifting. Unable to read Santiago's numbers, she had a peculiar talent for removing the cork from precisely those jars that contained nuts. From Santiago's little book the rest of us knew that jars i to 6, for instance, contained fresh eggs in lime solution, 15 to 17 were full of whole cooked tomatoes immersed in olive oil, 33 and 34 contained peppered sheep's cheese cut in cubes and likewise immersed in olive oil. Into jars 51 and 52 Aicha had pressed Moroccan butter, boiled and kneaded with salt, in the Berber manner. Jars 70 to 160 contained only clear spring water from a rural well outside Safi, but as they do in the desert, we had slipped small lumps of pitch into the water with which the goatskin bags were filled. Otherwise it would go bad. In the other jars and in baskets and sacks we had honey, salt, peas, beans, rice, various types of grain and flour, dried vegetables, karkade, coconuts, karubu beans, nuts, dates, almonds, figs, prunes and raisins. Our baskets of fresh root crops, green vegetables and fruit had come to an end in two or three weeks. From the roof of the wicker alcove projecting forward beyond the cabin roof we had hung salted and smoked meat and sausages, bunches of onions, dried fish and nets of pressed Egyptian fish roe. Under this hanging delicatessen stood wickerwork baskets containing dried bread of various types, made from ancient Egyptian, Russian and Norwegian recipes. We wanted to find out if a papyrus boat could really be used at sea, not if we were capable of eating authentic Egyptian dishes. On the other hand, we also wanted to find out if jars and baskets could last the journey, and whether raft voyagers could live without cans and frozen food if their fisherman's luck gave out. Obviously there were no problems in filling a papyrus boat with any food that could be stored on any ocean-going vessel.

  Captions for the following four pages

  76. African Neptune crossed our bow in mid-Atlantic while Sinbad the duck acted as Ra's figurehead. (Above)

  77. A sack fastened to a life belt was thrown overboard from the American ship and Georges swam after it while Santiago and Yuri held him on the Hfe line. (Below)

  78 and 79. The catch was some weekly magazines and a pile of fresh fruit.

  80 and 81. Rcz in mid-Atlantic photographed from African Neptune en route from New York to Cape Town. The sail had faded but the hull was sound.

  82. Shipboard feast at half^^'ay point From the left: the author, Yuri, Santiago, Georges and Norman. Special refreshments for the occasion. (Above)

  83. The author's chart after a full month's voyage. We passed the fortieth meridian and were then in the American half of the Atlantic. (Below)

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  Captions for the preceding four pages

  84. Listing to windward as opposed to the leeward list of ordinary sailboats. Only bitter experience could teach us that a reed boat has to carry its ballast on the opposite side from other sailboats because the reed bundles absorb more water on the windward side where the waves splash higher. (Above)

  85. Problems were beginning aft, but at first Santiago found it practical to be able to wash clothes on board. (Below)

  86. The afterdeck sagged still further and it was difEcult for Norman and Georges to work aft when the rudder-oars broke in the darkness of the night. (Above)

  87. Abdullah praying on night watch with a string of beads on the steering deck. (Below)

  88. There was no boat left aft of the steering deck but Yuri held the course steadily as long as the rest of the vessel was riding high. (Above)

  89. Our only life raft is cut into strips by unanimous decision. The foam rubber was tied to the afterdeck to lift it but everything was washed away by heavy seas. (Below)

  90. In the grip of the sea. Alpinist Carlo, knot and rope expert, helps sailor Norman to secure a sea anchor when both rudder-oars break again.

  Crossing the fortieth longitude inspired Georges to break with ancient tradition. He opened one of Rds two champagne bottles, while Yuri served his own hair-raising home brew in hand-painted wooden Russian beakers. Abdullah refused. He patted the visibly taut skin of his stomach and disappeared beyond the cargo of jars to wash in our inland sea before giving thanks to Allah.

  When he returned to his earthly friends he wanted an explanation of the pencil line on the chart to which he owed such a splendid meal. That we were constantly adjusting the clock, because the earth was round and the sun did not shine at the same time on all sides of a sphere, he could understand. And that Carlo had a watch with an automatic winder that went just as well after lying unwound in a box on board for five weeks he could also understand, because the Ra's v^ckerwork cabin was more mobile than any walking person. But what he did not understand was that every day we marked our route on a chart where the sea was divided by straight lines running down and across. Today we had passed the fortieth longitude and up to now he had not set eyes on a single one of them. Norman explained. Land and sea were divided into imaginary squares with numbers on them, so that people could tell by the numbers where they were.

&nbs
p; "Aha," said Abdullah. "On land the squares keep still, but at sea they move west with the current even if there is no wind."

  "We have to imagine the lines on the ocean bed," interrupted Norman. And then he explained that we had begun our journey in Safi, which lay on longitude 9° W., and today we were passing longitude 40° W. At the same time we had also been traveling south, all the way from latitude 32° N. down to 15° N., so now we were just as far south as Abdullah when he was at home in Chad.

  Then Abdullah himself pointed out that the westernmost point of Africa, Dakar, lay 18° W. and the easternmost point of Brazil, Recife, lay 36° W., so now that we were on 40° W. we had passed the nearest corner of Brazil and had good reason to celebrate the fact that we were now in the American half of the Atlantic.

  Out on deck the feast went on. Yuri had climbed on the lid of the galley chest and stamped and leaped in the Russian manner as vigorously as the pitching boat would allow, while he sang Russian folk songs. When he came to "Song of the Volga Boatman"

  we all joined in. Tlien Norman jumped onto the box with his harmonica and led the whole chorus in "Down in the Valley" and other cowboy songs. Italy followed with heroic Alpine marches, Mexico with catchy revolutionary tunes, Norway with gay sea shanties and Egypt with an exotic whimpering accompaniment to his belly-dancing. But Chad took first prize partly because Abdullah was so absorbed in his own performance and partly because there was such an absurd contrast between the ubiquitous backdrop of sea and the Central African standing on a box drumming on the bottom of a pot while singing his pulsating jungle tunes.

  The watch disappeared aft at intervals to look at the compass. We were saihng due west with the wind at our backs, still at an average speed of fifty to sixty nautical miles a day. For six days after passing the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa we had had an infernal time keeping control of our sagging stern section with the help of our clumsy stumps of botched-up rudder-oars. But out here in the middle of the ocean the waves had become much more co-operative and we had achieved a sort of modus Vivendi v^th the sea around us. As long as we let the waves tag along free of charge as far up the boat as the cabin wall, the ocean let its current send both waves and men speeding westward at a good pace. Carlo was one of those who suffered in silence at the sight of Rd's tall sternpost emerging in solitary splendor from the sea astern. It was humiliating to see our once proud golden bird swimming v^th the neck of a swan and the rump of a toad. But on a day of celebration like this we just had to keep to the swan's big neck and torso and forget that aft of the cabin we were a toad.