by Tim Severin
That night was the most physically tiring of the entire voyage. It was difficult to rest or sleep properly. On watch one stood for half an hour on the helm, then went forward to take over the pump, scarcely having time to nod to one’s partner as he struggled wearily back, to go to the helm. There, peering through the murk, one tried to decide whether the white flashes ahead were the manes of breaking waves or the telltale sign of a growler lying in Brendan’s path.
As soon as the first watch ended, I called the Canadian Coast Guard radio station at St. Anthony in Newfoundland. “This is the sailing vessel Brendan,” I reported. “We have been in open pack ice for the last twenty-four hours but now seem to be clearing the ice. We have suffered hull damage and the vessel is leaking. In the next twelve hours we will attempt to trace and repair the leak, but it is important to note our estimated position, which is 53°10’N., 51°20’W. I repeat, this position is only an estimate, as we have lost our log line sheered off by the ice, and due to poor visibility have had no sight of the sun for two days. We are not in immediate danger. But could you please investigate the possibility of air-dropping to us a small motor pump, with fuel, in case we cannot contain the leak. I will call again at 14.15 hours GMT to report progress. If no contact is made at 14.15 hours or 16.15 hours, we may have activated an emergency locator transmitter on 121.5 and 243 megacycles. Over.”
“Roger, Roger,” replied the calm voice of the radio operator at St. Anthony, and he confirmed the details I had given. Then he advised me that he would inform the Rescue Coordination Center at Halifax, and listen out for Brendan on the next schedule. Later I learned that the Canadian Coast Guard responded unstintingly to our request for standby help. An aircraft was readied at Halifax, and the Operations Room at St. John’s calculated that a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker could reach us from Goose Bay in twenty-one hours. “But to be honest,” said an officer who was on duty that night in the Operations Room, “we didn’t know how our ship would be able to locate you in time. And after the loss of the Carson, which sank in the same ice not many days before, when we heard that a leather boat was in trouble in the ice, we rated your chances of getting out as nil. How could a leather boat survive when a steel icebreaker went down?”
Nevertheless, at the time of our ordeal, it was very comforting to know that someone, somewhere, was informed of our plight and, if worst came to worst, we could call for help. Partially relieved by this thought, I sat hunched in my sleeping bag and tried to concentrate my mind. Brendan was leaking at the rate of two thousand pump strokes an hour. This represented a sizeable leak, and obviously we had to track it down without delay at first light. But how on earth would we find the leak? It could be almost anywhere in Brendan’s hull below the water already filling up the boat. We would have to shift all our gear, section by section, along the vessel; lift up floorboards, remove the fresh-water storage tubes from the bilges—and where would we store the drinking water temporarily?—and then try to trace the leak by following any current or bubbles in the bilge. All this would have to be done in a rough sea.
And if we were lucky enough to trace the leak, what then? Suppose we had cracked the skid keel under the boat when Brendan rode upon an ice floe, or pulled its fastenings through the leather hull? At sea we could neither refasten nor mend the skid. And what if we had gashed the leather skin or ripped the flax stitching? Then, I feared, we would be in an even worse way. I could not imagine how we would ever stitch on a patch under water, it would be impossible to reach far below the hull, and equally impossible to work on the inside because there was not enough space between the wooden frames and stringers to put in a row of stitches. The more I thought about our straits, the gloomier I felt. It seemed so futile if Brendan were to sink so close to the end of her mission. She had already proved to her crew that an early medieval Irish skin boat could sail across the Atlantic. But how could people be expected to believe that fact if Brendan sank two hundred miles off Canada? It would be no good to say that there was less pack ice off Canada and Greenland in early Christian times, and that the Irish monks would probably not have faced the same problems. To prove the point about the early Irish voyages, Brendan had to sail to the New World.
To clear my mind, I took up a pen and made a summary of our position:
Brendan is leaking fast. We can keep her afloat for two days, or less, in bad weather; indefinitely in fair weather but at great physical cost.
First priority is find the leak—skid fastening? Burst stitches? Hull gash?
If we cannot trace and mend a leak, the Coast Guard may get a motor pump to us. Do they have a suitable pump? Can their plane find us? This will depend on visibility and sea state.
No pump—we MAYDAY and abandon ship.
It was a grim scenario, and the situation did not become any more cheerful during that night. Driving rain reduced visibility to a few yards, and with an increase in wind strength, the helmsman no longer had the option to dodge potential growlers in the water. Brendan could only flee directly downwind, and we trusted to luck that we did not hit isolated pieces of ice, or worse yet an iceberg recently set free from the pack.
All of us were desperately tired. The constant strain of bilge pumping was a stultifying chore, which battered mind and muscle. First there was the awkward slippery climb along the gunwale to go from the steering position to the midship’s lashing in the tarpaulin. There you had to open the lashing with half-frozen fingers, drop into the dark slit, turn around to unclip your lifeline, duck under the tarpaulin, and tug the tarpaulin shut. If you did not, the next breaking wave would cascade into the midship’s section and drop even more water into the bilge. Once under the tarpaulin, you had to strip off your oilskin jacket or wriggle half out of your immersion suit. Otherwise the next half hour’s work would drench your clothes in sweat. Now it was time to squirm down the tunnel under the tarpaulin to reach the handle of the bilge pump. Grasp the handle with the right hand, lie on one’s left side on top of the thwart, and pump four hundred to five hundred strokes. By then the muscles of the right arm and shoulder would be screaming for relief; and so you reversed position laboriously, lay on the other ribs, and pumped for as long as possible with the left arm. Then reverse the procedure, and begin all over again, pumping and pumping, until at last came the welcome sucking sound of the intake pipe, and you could begin the laborious return journey to the helm, put on oilskin top, unfasten and fasten the tarpaulin, clamber back to reach the helm, and arrive just in time to find that the water level had risen to exactly the same place as when you had started the whole operation. Only now it was the turn of your watch companion to empty the bilge.
Rocking the pump handle in the dark tunnel of the tarpaulin had an almost hypnotic quality. The steady rhythm of the pump, the dark wet tunnel, and aching tiredness combined to produce a sense of detachment from one’s surroundings. The feeling was heightened by the incongruously pretty little flashes of phosphorescence which slid aboard with every second or third wave crest, and dripped brilliantly down the inside of the leather skin of the boat in random patterns that confused one’s weary eyes and created illusions of depth and motion. The motion of arm and torso, rocking back and forth relentlessly at the pump handle, was matched visually by a strange phosphorescent glow in the translucent bilge pipes. This strange glow varied in intensity with each wave, sometimes soaring to bright sparks of luminescence, but usually a somber green pulse like a ghostly heartbeat. Under the dark tarpaulin, eyes tricked, shoulders aching, head drooping down onto the thwart with exhaustion, it was desperately tempting to drop off to sleep while still mechanically rocking back and forth. Only to be jerked awake by the rattling crash of yet another wave breaking onto the tarpaulin just above one’s head.
At 6:00 A.M. dawn came, and I looked at the crew. They were haggard with exhaustion, but no one had the slightest thought of giving up. In the night watch I had surreptitiously stolen five minutes to lever up the stern floorboards and check the aft section of the bilge to try t
o find the mysterious leak. It was a job that really should have been left until morning, but I could not restrain my curiosity. When I told George what I had done, he confessed that he had made exactly the same investigation in his forward berth and already examined the bow section without finding the leak. It seemed there was no holding back Brendan’s crew.
“Well, here’s the battle plan,” I explained. “Each man has a cup of coffee and a bite to eat. Then Trondur and Boots work on both pumps amidships to get the water level as low as possible, and keep it there. This will allow George and me to work down the length of the boat, shifting the cargo area by area, and checking the bilge for leaks. We already know that the leak must be somewhere in the main central section of the hull.”
The others looked very tough and confident, and utterly unperturbed. We had just eight hours, I reminded myself, to find and repair the leak before I should be in touch with the Canadian Coast Guard.
Three of us had coffee and then I went forward to relieve George at the bilge pump.
As I sat by the pump, waiting for George to drink his coffee so that we could begin our search, I wondered where we should commence our hunt—aft, under the shelter? But this meant shifting all our personal gear. By the foremast? But this was where we had put the heavy stores like the anchors and water cans. Then, quite unconnected, a thought occurred to me. Last night, while pumping in the dark, the flashes of phosphorescence over the gunwale had been repeated almost simultaneously inside the boat and in the bilge pump tube. I knew nothing of the physical properties of phosphorescence, but imagined some sort of electrical connection was required. If so, then the phosphorescence had traveled directly from outside the hull to inside the hull, apparently by a direct link—the leak.
With a faint stir of interest I abandoned pumping and traced the line of the bilge pipe to its intake amidships on the port side. At that point I peeled back the tarpaulin and hung head first over the gunwale. There, just on the water line, was the most encouraging sight of the day—a sizeable dent in the leather hull. The dent was about the area and shape of a large grapefruit, an abrupt pockmark in the curve of the leather. With growing excitement I scrambled back inside the hull and began shifting away the food packs which had been stored there. As soon as I had uncovered the hull, I saw the grapefruit-shaped pocket and the cause of our trouble: Under tremendous pressure from outside, the leather had buckled inward into the gap between two wooden ribs, and opened a tear about four inches long. The force of the pressure had been so great that it had literally split the leather. The skin had not been cut or gashed. Despite a tensile strength of two tons per square inch, the leather had simply burst. Now, whenever Brendan wallowed, a great gush of sea water spurted through the tear and into the bilge. Jubilant, I poked my head up over the tarpaulin and called, “Great news! I found the leak. And it’s in a place where we can mend it.” The others glanced up. There was relief on all their faces. “Finish your breakfast,” I went on, “while I check that there are no other leaks.” Then I went round the boat, hanging over the gunwale to see if there was any more damage. In fact, apart from that single puncture the leather was still in excellent condition. Indeed it was scarcely scratched by the ice. The other floes had simply glanced off the curve of the hull or skidded on the wool grease.
Except that one puncture. There, a combination of the curve of the hull, the wider gap between the ribs at that point, and the nipping between the two floes had driven a knob or sharp corner of ice through Brendan’s hull. By the same token, however, we also had room to wield a needle between the ribs and could sew a spare patch of leather over the gash. George and Trondur came forward. “The patch had better go on from the outside,” I told them, “where the water pressure will help squeeze it against the hull. First we’ll make a pattern, then cut the patch, and stitch it in place.”
“We must cut away some wood,” suggested Trondur, examining the ash ribs.
“Yes, whatever’s needed to get at the work properly.”
“I’m going to put on an immersion suit,” George announced. “This is going to be a cold job.”
He was right. George and Trondur in their immersion suits now had three hours of bone-chilling work. First they cut a patch of spare leather to size, then George hung down over the gunwale, his face a few inches above the water, and held the patch into position. Trondur poked an awl through the hull and the patch, followed by a long nine-inch needle and flax thread. George reached for the needle with a pair of pliers, gripped, tugged and pulled, and eventually hauled it through. Then he took over the awl, stabbed from the outside of the hull, groped around until he could poke in the tip of the needle, and Trondur gathered it up from the inside.
It was a miserable chore. The top row of stitching was difficult enough, because it lay just above water level, so that each time the boat rolled on a wave, George was lucky if he went into the water only up to his elbows. With the heaviest waves, his head went right under, and he emerged spluttering and gasping. Each large wave then went on to break against the hull, and drenched Trondur who was crouching in the bilge, stitching on the inside. All this was done in a sea temperature of about zero degrees Centigrade, with occasional ice floes and icebergs in the immediate vicinity, and after nearly two days without proper rest. Inch by inch the stitching progressed, and a pancake of wool grease and fiber was stuffed between the hull and the patch to serve as a seal. Then the last row of stitches went in. This last row was completely under water, and George had to use the handle of a hammer to press in the needle.
Finally it was done. The two men straightened up, shivering with cold. George wiped the last of his protective wool grease from his hands and they had a well-earned tot of whiskey in their coffee. Even Trondur was so exhausted that he went off to curl up in his sleeping bag. Arthur pumped the bilge dry, and scarcely a trickle was coming in through the mend. I inspected the patch. “It’s almost as neat and tidy as if you had put it on in Crosshaven Boatyard and not in the Labrador Sea—John O’Connell would be proud of you,” I congratulated George.
“Well, that’s a job I would not like to have to do again,” he replied with quiet understatement.
That afternoon I reported our success to the Coast Guard radio station at St. Anthony’s. The operator’s voice revealed his delight. “Well done,” he said. “I’ll pass on the information to Rescue Coordination. I believe they want to move a Coast Guard ship into your area as a precaution, anyhow. Good luck with the rest of your voyage.” I switched off the set and reflected that the Canadian Coast Guard were worthy colleagues for our friends in the Icelandic Coast Guard Service. Then for the first and only time in the entire voyage we let Brendan look after herself. We dropped all sail, lashed the helm, and all four of us retreated to our sleeping bags and took a few hours of well-earned rest. My last thoughts before dropping off to sleep was that we had been able to repair Brendan because she was made of leather. If her hull had been made of brittle fiberglass or metal, or perhaps even of wood, she may well have been crushed by the ice and foundered.
13
LAND IN THE WEST
Neatly patched and safely clear of the pack ice, Brendan began the last lap of her voyage toward Newfoundland. Every day, we still saw icebergs drifting athwart our track. But after our recent escapade we were content to admire them at a distance, and at night keep a sharp lookout for their tell-tale ghostly shapes in the gloom. By now our chief feeling was the growing anticipation of finishing the voyage. We had been at sea for six weeks and were feeling worn. The constant strain of keeping alert for bad weather, the perpetual confines of our tiny boat, and the monotony of our daily seagoing routine had imposed its own form of mental strait jacket that became daily more constricting. It was more than just good seamanship that made us scan the horizon for signs of land: we were eager for our landfall. We knew that the icebergs meant that the New World could not be far away, because the bergs were drifting south in the Labrador current which runs close to the Canadian coast. We
began to see other evidence of land—logs floating in the water, occasional patches of weed, and an increase in bird-life. But Brendan seemed to be dragging herself forward with deliberate sloth. She stalled in the calm weather and light airs, and drifted aimlessly in the current.
There was plenty of time to reflect that Brendan was not the first Irish leather boat to have reached the fringes of the Arctic sea ice. The monk Dicuil at Charlemagne’s court had said that Irish priests had sailed to the edge of the frozen sea, a day’s journey beyond the land where the sun scarcely sank below the horizon. And the Navigatio itself spoke of a “coagulated sea” which Saint Brendan reached during his voyage, a place where the sea was uncannily so still and flat that it seemed coagulated. Perhaps he had reached an area of frazil ice, one of the first stages of pack-ice development, where spillicules of ice hang in the water in total calm and then coalesce into lumps which resemble the curds floating on the surface of coagulating milk.