The Ra Expeditions

by Thor Heyerdahl

  We had covered 1725 nautical miles from the starting point and had 1525 left to sail when we ran into an absolute plethora of oil

  pollution for the second time. The next day the wind was strong. The day after that, June 18, the sea began to pile up in the biggest waves we had seen on either of the Ra voyages. The wind which reached us was a moderate gale with fierce squalls approaching full gale strength, but the breakers reared up in parallel ridges, higher and higher, out of proportion to the force of the wind. Perhaps a major storm had passed where they came from in the northeast. At first it was exciting, then one after another we began to feel a little suppressed anxiety, followed by astonishment and a rather dubious relief at how well we were doing. Finally we felt a surge of uninhibited admiration for the masterly way in which our little nutshell took the towering walls of water. I stood alone on watch on the steering bridge behind the cabin, turning the port oar so that we took the seas directly astern, while the starboard oar shaft was lashed securely and thus worked only as a keel. It went unbelievably well, the breaking wave ridges were quite different from breakers in shallow water on a beach. The sloping base of the wave first overtook us from behind, rolled in under the sickle-shaped stern and lifted us high into the air before the crest broke. The comb would usually break while we were perched on top, so that we shot forward in the rush of wind, water and foam, and sped at a mad rate, tail up and nose down, into the deep, blue-green valleys. It was vital then not to swing broadside on.

  "Twenty feet, twenty-five feet."

  The men were guessing at the height of the wave crests with a mixture of glee and horror.

  "Thirty feet." Now the wavetops were towering higher than the masthead.

  Thirty feet. Madani was struggling with seasickness. Thick storm clouds and rain on every side. Everything going like clockwork. Ra 11 took those parallel hills of water with incredible elegance. Just a little splash on deck now and then, nothing to speak of. No problem so long as we could keep our fabulous tail to the pursuing water. Fortunately the waves were regular, well spaced, just right for the Ra's length and shape, the ranks evenly dressed, one, two, three, lined up behind one another. Best not to turn one's head, to steer straight. Behind, one wall of glass after the other seemed to be toppling forward to bury us as we fled, unable to

  escape. My companions, off watch, crawled into the cabin one by one. There they could stare up at the basket roof and only listen to the deafening noise of the sea in uproar. But Carlo, the mountaineer, went on sitting in the high papyrus bow, his favorite spot, legs dangling as if he were on horseback.

  Once again I felt the boat being lifted high in the air, higher than usual, and rushing forward and downward with the wall of water. Then the same crest rose ahead of us again, smooth and white-streaked, as it swept past.

  ''That was higher than the top of the mast," yelled Carlo enthusiastically, white teeth flashing in his full red beard.

  A little later he unhitched himself from the bows and came teetering aft, dragging his life line to join the others inside. He told us that a gulf of a valley had yawned under him in the bows, so deep that when the Ra tilted and began to rush down, it looked as if we were plunging headlong into a bottomless watery grave. Better not to look.

  The change of watch had to be almost due, but I dared not take my attention off the course for a second; the boat must not turn broadside to the waves. It had to be nearly four o'clock in the afternoon. From behind came the sound of the next foaming wave crest, higher above us than any of the others. Every muscle tensed to prevent the oar blade from being swept round. I felt a tremendous wall of water grip hold of the stern and lift us up, up, up. Eyes fixed to the compass so as not to lose the course. Must lie at right angles to the wave. Was there no end to the height we would reach this time before the boiling giant passed under us? Then the crest itself came gushing along our beams, seemed to be passing, the foam seethed, we tipped sharply and were about to career forward and down again at breakneck speed, as if on a surfboard equipped with a giant sail. Then it happened. A mighty crack. The harsh sound of thick timber breaking. A shock through oar shaft and vessel, and Ra 11 was rushing diagonally forward out of control, port side foremost, into the valley of water.

  It was like being stunned with a club. I clung to uncertainty for a moment before forcing myself to turn my head and look catastrophe in the face. The rudder-oar! The thick shaft of the

  rudder-oar I was holding had snapped right across and the broad blade hung loose, dangling on the safety rope. I caught only a glimpse of it before the masses of water broke over us, rushing unimpeded over the whole starboard beam now that the peaked stern was not breaking the waves and lifting us into the air.

  "All hands on deck! Port rudder-oar broken! Out with the sea anchor, Yuri!"

  Vessel and bridge together buckled savagely under the pressure of water and I allowed myself to slide sideways down to the lashed oar shaft on the starboard side, to loosen the ropes there. The roar of water surging against the cabin wall and the thunder of the mainsail twisting and slamming against the straddled mast told the seven men in the cabin more than any call from the bridge, and they came swarming out, silent and dogged, knotting loose life lines round their middles.

  "Which sea anchor?"

  "The biggest."

  I had undone the lashing on the undamaged rudder-oar, but the two hardwood forks that held it top and bottom were stuck askew, so that the rudder shaft could not be moved. Another heavy sea broke over us, and another. The mast creaked ominously, while wind and water flung sail and papyrus boat about at will.

  "Lower the mainsail!"

  To increase our speed Norman had recently hoisted a little topsail on a bamboo pole. That had already splintered and the topsail was flapping and whipping against the mainsail like a punctured balloon.

  "Lower the mainsail before it rips!"

  Norman took command on the foredeck and clambered up to the masthead himself to cut down the topsail. Then five men grasped the thick halyard to lower the mainsail and soon the twenty-three-foot yard began to move away from the mast top. But instead of allowing itself to be lowered, the heavy yard was lifted forward and up by the big v^dnd-filled sail and the five men on the foredeck could only hang on with ten outstretched arms and all their united weight to stop the mainsail from flying out like a kite over the waves. Another thunderous sea engulfed us.

  "Out v^ith the sea anchor, damn it!"

  ''The waves have tangled the rope!"

  "Then throw out the Httle one before the seas smash us to bits!"

  Another sea right over the boat. And an even bigger one. It was lucky that we happened to be twisted starboard onto the torrents. The cabin had no opening on that side and we had covered the long wall with sailcloth, against which the sea was now hammering, up to the height of the roof.

  "The little one is out," called Carlo triumphantly.

  But its braking power was too little, the small bag we were now streaming in our wake did not hold well enough to turn the stern of the waterlogged papyrus boat back again. Yuri and Carlo stood waist-deep in water on the papyrus aft and regularly disappeared, heads and all, in the tumble of foam as they worked feverishly to sort out the tow rope of the biggest canvas bag, which the waves were continuously tangling up on deck.

  "Check your life lines. Everyone must be tied on!"

  Then I managed to get the jammed starboard oar turned a few inches, a little more and still a few more inches. But it was no good. The squalls tossed the bottom edge of the huge sail heavily against the top of the peaked papyrus bow. Wild, uncontrolled uppercuts from right and left, then the sail hooked itself over the slender tip and viTcnched the papyrus bow to port. Seas and gale crashed and howled, so that shouts and suggestions from every side had to be intercepted and transmitted from bridge to mast and back again.

  "Lower the sail before the whole ship is torn to shreds!" I shouted.

  Now it was jerking its way down.

  "Stop
! Get the sail up again before a wave gets hold of it!" screamed Norman.

  "If it falls in the sea we'll never get it on board again," yelled Georges.

  He was absolutely right. Across the bottom the Egyptian sail was of the same width as the deck, but at the top, the same sail and the heavy yard holding it were very much wider, so to lower it without the wide upper section being swept up by the wild waves on both sides of deck was hardly feasible.

  A solution offered itself. The sail was lowered a few inches at a time but never touched the deck, because five men stood secured

  across the boat, rolling it up from below as it came down. The five were struggling all the time to keep their feet against gusts of wind, the rolling boat and surging floods of water. Tugging and banging on the tiller as well as the shaft of the unbroken starboard rudder-oar, I finally forced it to swing by degrees in uneven jerks, but it did not help at all v^th the course. The men on the sail managed bit by bit to roll up one third and reefed the roll firmly with a series of rope ends hanging in a line along the sail for this very purpose. It was time to rescue the big loose oar blade, which was still dangling and skipping wildly in tow, and was regularly flung heavily against the stern by the waves. The safety rope attached to the blade, copied from Egyptian tomb paintings, helped us to pull it in. The shaft had broken across just by the lower fork. Six inches thick all the way down, like the average telephone pole, and made of the strongest pitch pine, the timber we had all regarded as invulnerable had snapped like a matchstick, though there was no fault in the wood. Not a single papyrus reed was broken, loose or damaged. The papyrus bundles had withstood more than the wooden log, so once again the strength of Goliath had been forced to yield to the dexterity of David. The accident taught us once and for all that we had used too thick a rope to secure the rudder-oar top and bottom. We should have tied it with thinner rope at the bottom so that the rope would snap, like a safety catch, before the oar shaft. Only upon our return did we learn that this was precisely what the ancient Egyptians had done, but this detail had been overlooked on the ancient design, since everybody had thought that the difference in thickness of the upper and lower ropes had been a mere coincidence in the artist's reproduction. Yet, a re-examination of the old designs showed that this difference in thickness was most consistent.

  It was Georges who hauled in the heavy oar blade, overgrown with edible barnacles. He cut off a bunch of short papyrus stubs that Norman had tied to the blade in order to streamline it on the side where we had bound the thick shaft. He threw the short, maltreated papyrus ends into the sea and stood expectantly waiting to see what would happen. They sank. He said not a word to a soul, and had no idea that someone else was watching from the bridge, equally perplexed and with the same sinking feeling in the stomach. What was the matter with the papyrus? Had all the air been squeezed out

  of it? Yuri and Carlo had their backs turned to him. They had quite enough on their hands, sorting out the rope of the big sea anchor. Then it, too, was in the sea, the httle one retrieved, and now the canvas bag held and began to turn the stern slowly back again. But not completely. We were still lying slightly across the wind, taking the sea in huge waves over the starboard quarter, just as on Ra I.

  The storm raged. The time on board was ten to nine and night was falling when the men on the foredeck managed to reef half the mainsail so that the orange-red sun symbol was left half rolled up from the bottom, like a reflection of the sunset we could not see behind the storm clouds. Had we seen it, it would not have been straight ahead today, as we lay drifting at an angle; it would have been far to the left of the crooked bow.

  Tragedy. Catastrophe. No reserve log thick enough or long enough for a few oar shaft. All heavy hardwood pieces suitable for splicing had been dumped overboard at the Canary Islands. If we lay here long enough with the sea anchor out to brake our speed they might come drifting after us! Bad joke. Hopeless situation. No solution. Good-night everybody. We must sleep now and think tomonow. Useless to steer any more with half a shaft and no blade and another that does not work. The sea can thunder on board and out again, the sea anchor will hold our course so that it does not come gushing in through the cabin door. But we must alternate watches through the night, to avoid being run down by ships in the big waves.

  It was hopeless trying to sleep that night. We were on Ra I again, on those last nights when the sea was gaining the upper hand. Tons of water smacked against the back wall on the starboard side, surging, seething, sucking, gurgling and clucking all round us. A regular river was running to and fro on board, under the cabin floor, in the broad, deep cleft between the two papyrus rolls that kept us afloat. The water surged along the papyrus, chasing v^ldly along the cracks between the reeds which could have let it out. But the reeds were swelling more and more and closing up all the fissures so that the water never had time to run out before new torrents surged on board and filled the big bathtub to the brim.

  I tossed about in my sleeping bag and did not manage to sleep a wink before it was my turn to crawl out and keep watch. Then, I fell asleep like a log, sitting on the bamboo bench, lashed fast, outside

  FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA ^ig

  the cabin door. I awoke with a shock, ashamed and bewildered, to see a bat, no, it was a night owl, swerving round and round the Ra until it came tumbling in between the lines of stays straight toward me. Swooping to the attack, our nocturnal visitor was flying badly, caught a wing on a guy rope, missed me, and staggered before getting its feet safely under it on the bench close beside me. But it was a pigeon! It was our own ringed traveling companion! It had been scared away from the roof by the mad battle of sail and heavy seas, had missed the usual human company on the steering bridge, which was empty and deserted. Frightened by the loneliness of its own basket nest on the roof, it had searched vainly for another dry spot, and now came exhausted back. It continued to sit close beside successive watches in the doorway until day dawned. Round the corner the Atlantic broke on board unimpeded. It poured overboard again on each side of the cabin, so that we on the lee side only had rivulets running back and forth round our feet before they, too, ran out again into the sea.

  Extraordinary vessel. The trouble was that she was beginning to be as watertight as an ordinary boat, so the water no longer ran away fast enough through the hull, which should have had a leaky bottom.

  The next day was still an inferno. We were dead tired as we waded in foaming water, moved jars that had to be rescued from the stormy side, threw the cracked ones into the sea, resecured loose cargo, tightened stays and stitched sails and racked our brains trying to work out how to recover our steering ability. Lying as we were, waterlogged and at an angle to the waves, the sea's final victory was only a question of time. Wood and reed were only held together with rope, which we could expect to snap at any time under this enormous strain. The long spiral rope that held the papyrus together was half an inch thick, like a man's little finger. The cabin, the feet of the mast and steering bridge were all lashed in place with a much thinner, third of an inch rope braided in three strands like a pigtail. The Indians would not allow anything thicker to pass between the reed bundles. But we danced ahead like a ball. If all the joints of cabin, bridge and mast had not been completely flexible the sea would have torn us apart as violently as it could splinter timber and

  bend steel. During the early days the sea got nowhere with the reed ball; it bounded away from all the punches. But the sea had another trick. It slowly boarded us and lay there as useless deck cargo, pushing us under. We were beginning once more to sink at frightening speed, partly because of tons of splashing sea water dammed up as a dead weight in the long deep ditch between our two papyrus rolls, and partly because this water, entering from above, was now penetrating the upper half of the papyrus rolls, which had stayed dry and light hitherto. All the papyrus was busy soaking itself full and heavy, from above and from below. We were really sinking at an uncanny rate again. We all realized that. There was no sign that an
yone was seriously afraid; everyone was doggedly determined that we should weather this. We all made suggestions, which were considered and then unanimously rejected. Madani, who had not seen the sea on board Ra I, took me aside and asked warily if it was dangerous. When told that for the time being it was not, he was all smiles from ear to ear again. Kei shook the sea water off his ears and his shining black hair and said with a broad grin that he had had no idea that such waves existed.

  Thanks to the sea anchor the stern had turned slightly to meet the waves. If we pulled it in we would be lying broadside on again and get the whole sea over our full breadth. On the other hand, with the sea anchor out we stayed put and made no progress. We were stuck in the middle of the Atlantic, sinking, nineteen hundred nautical miles from the start and thirteen hundred nautical miles from our goal.

  For two days we could do nothing but fight to save ourselves and the cargo. To splice the rudder-oar proved impossible. The seas continued to run twenty to twenty-five feet high, with a few thirty to thirty-five feet giants among them. Inside the cabin I cut up the cardboard back of a writing tablet and made a model of the loose oar blade, the two broken pieces of shaft and the gap between the two wooden forks that held the slanting rudder shaft in place top and bottom. The model showed that if we tied the upper and longer portion of the shaft to the upper part of the blade, the top of the shaft would just reach the floor of the bridge. That was how we fixed it, evolving by our united efforts a system that allowed the helmsman to stand on the opposite side of the bridge, twisting the starboard

  rudder-oar with his right hand, while he turned the curtailed shaft on the port side one way by means of a rope tied to his foot, and the other way by means of a long bamboo pole held in his left hand. This was quite an acrobatic performance, and the maneuvering became still worse because the helmsman also incessantly had to haul on the sheets, which were tied to the railing of the bridge, because the reed boat was now lying so deep that the combined effect of two rudder-oars was not always enough. If tlie boat did not obey the two rudders, it was necessary to steer with the sail as well, to avoid being caught broadside by wind and wave.