The Brendan Voyage

by Tim Severin

  But there is a more spectacular description of sea ice in the Navigatio. One chapter seems to tell how Saint Brendan and his crew sighted a great iceberg drifting along at sea, surrounded by its halo of broken ice. They sailed over to investigate this marvel, rowed around it and even coaxed their curragh into the natural caverns and arches of the drift ice which surrounded the iceberg.

  “One day after they had celebrated Mass,” the Navigatio says of this episode, “there appeared to them a column in the sea which did not seem to be far away. And yet it took them three days to get near it. When the Man of God had come near, he looked for the top, but could see very little because it was so high. It was higher than the sky. Moreover it was surrounded by an open-meshed net. The openings were so large that the boat was able to pass through the gaps. They did not know what the net was made of. It was silver in color, but it seemed to be harder than marble. The column itself was of clearest crystal.” Stripped of the storyteller’s imagery, the incident is not difficult to interpret: Icebergs are visible from very far off because of their size and color, and the fact that they stand up from the horizon in clear weather. Apparently the crew of Saint Brendan’s curragh were deluded by this, and they underestimated the distance to the iceberg when they began to row after it. More important, they failed to realize that the iceberg itself would be moving along with the current, perhaps at one or two knots, and this would greatly extend the time it took them to catch up. When they did reach the berg, they then seem to have run into the ring of broken ice which often surrounds a major iceberg recently released from the pack, and they were puzzled that this “net” was made of a different substance than the main “crystal” of the berg. Probably the outer floes were of opaque sea ice in contrast to the pure-white glacier ice of the main berg.

  The Navigatio continues: “Then said Brendan to his brothers, ‘pull in your oars and unship the mast and sail, and some of you hold on to the meshes of the net.’ There was a large space of about a mile between the net and the column, and similarly extending into the deep. When they had done this, the Man of God said to them, ‘Push the boat through a gap, that we may inspect the wonders of our Creator.’

  “When they had gone in and looked here and there, the sea appeared to them to be as clear as glass, so that they could see everything down below. For they could see the base of the pillar and the fringe of the net lying on the sea floor. The sunlight was no less below the water than above.

  “Then Saint Brendan measured a gap between four sides of the opening, which was four cubits in all parts. They then sailed all day along one side of the column and through its shadow could still feel the heat of the sun. They stayed there until three o’clock. All the time the Man of God kept measuring the one side. Seven hundred yards was the measurement of one of the four sides of that column. The venerable father was busy for four days in this way between the four angles of the pillar.

  “On the fourth day they found a chalice in the same material as the net, and a plate of the color of the pillar, lying in a window in the southern face of the column. Saint Brendan at once took hold of these vessels, saying, ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ has shown us the miracle, and given me these two gifts in order to be shown to be many that they may believe.’ Then the Man of God ordered his brothers to perform divine novice and afterwards refresh their bodies, because they had not had any free time to eat or drink since they had seen the pillar.

  “When the night was over, the brothers began to row toward the north. When they had passed through an opening in the net, they set up the mast and raised the sail, and some held on to the net, while all was made ready on the boat. When the sail had been spread, a fair wind began to blow from astern so that there was no work to sailing, but they had only to hold the sheets and rudder.”

  So ended the episode with the iceberg, an encounter which obviously made a profound impression on the travelers of the Navigatio. The “chalice and plate” they found in a niche in the berg were probably no more than curious-shaped pieces of broken ice which resembled church ornaments to the devout minds of the crew, overawed by the huge “crystal pillar,” and it is interesting how Saint Brendan is credited nevertheless with the intellectual discipline to set about taking measurements of the iceberg to satisfy a more scholarly outlook. From the geographer’s point of view, the iceberg is very important to the Navigatio, because it emphasizes that the main events of the voyage were taking place along a northerly trans-Atlantic route and not, as has been suggested, along the easier southern route using the trade winds to the West Indies. There was no possibility of seeing an iceberg at sea along the southern route. Rather, the “crystal column” is geographically consistent with the other episodes of the northern route, particularly with the volcanic Island of Smiths as Iceland, the Island of Sheep as Faroes, and the simple practical fact, so clearly demonstrated by Brendan, that leather boats survive longer in the colder waters of the North.

  Light airs and calms off Newfoundland also meant fog and mists. Brendan was now in one of the foggiest areas of the North Atlantic. Even in the summer months the visibility is notoriously bad off the east coast of Newfoundland. The naval handbooks advise that visibility is less than five miles between forty and fifty percent of the time during May, June, and July, and that it drops to under half a mile in fog for between thirty and forty percent of recorded observations. Once again, the Navigatio bore out the facts with similar information about approaching the Promised Land. According to the text, Saint Brendan went back to the Island of Sheep after his seven years of fruitless voyaging and took on board sufficient stores for forty days and—very important—a pilot. This pilot was the “Steward” who lived on the Island of Sheep, and he told the travelers that without his help they would not be able to find the Promised Land. The Steward then led the way and after forty days the boat came into a thick fog which enveloped her. “Do you know what this fog is?” asked the Steward. “What?” replied Saint Brendan. “This fog,” the Steward replied, “encircles the island for which you have been searching for seven years.”

  Literary scholars have pointed out, correctly, that the notion of a dark cloud hiding the goal of a search is a well-rubbed device of medieval storytellers, and so the fog which surrounds Saint Brendan’s Promised Land should be treated with some caution. Nevertheless it is a fascinating coincidence on the long path that matches the geography of the North Atlantic from Ireland to the foggy coast of northeast America with the episodes of the Navigatio.

  Three days of mist and low cloud had hidden the sun from Brendan, too, when on June 23 we picked up a radio message to say that the Canadian Coast Guard ship John Cabot was hoping to rendezvous with Brendan that day. Our little boat was being swept south by the Labrador current, and without an accurate sunsight my dead reckoning for position was thirty miles wrong.

  So John Cabot found us quite by chance. Her skipper Captain Les Eavis had altered course to investigate a large iceberg when his lookout called down from the crow’s nest to say that he could see a small shape in the water. It was Brendan, and we were about 120 miles off the Newfoundland coast.

  “Actually we were lucky to run into you,” said Captain Eavis as he came aboard Brendan from a rubber dinghy to see what life was like aboard a medieval vessel.

  “You know, we were heading a little more to the eastward, and we were looking at that iceberg, and then the look-out called down and said there’s something fine on the port bow. I was looking and said, ‘Jesus! He’s supposed to be thirty-eight miles away. Can’t be him. It’s awfully small!’ But after the second or third look we realized it had to be you. We could see the cross on your sails. The red cross.”

  Captain Eavis was an old sailing-ship man himself, and intrigued with Brendan’s rig. “Well, you didn’t need any help, and you’ve shown that the old boats can make it,” he said after he had taken a look around and shared a tot of whiskey. “You can imagine it’s a bit different aboard my vessel. So it’s nice to see that such things can still
be done. I’m taking John Cabot back to port in the next thirty-six hours, and I’ll make sure that there’s a welcoming committee for you. Just let me know if there’s anything we can let you have.”

  Before she steamed off, John Cabot left us with more fresh food, extra kerosene for the cooker, spare batteries for our torches, and five pairs of dry socks from the first mate’s wardrobe. Her visit had finally broken our sense of isolation, and in consequence the impressions of those last days became a blur, smudged under the growing anticipation of a landfall, and the realization that we were nearly at journey’s end.

  The weather held mild with light winds which were so fickle, switching to all points of the compass, though mostly from the west, that Brendan closed erratically with the coast of Newfoundland. Now we were heading toward St. Johns, now swinging so far north that it seemed we might almost be making back toward Labrador. But we were taking no chances. A single gale from the wrong direction could blow Brendan back out to sea for another week, and so we disciplined ourselves not even to speculate about the place and day of our landfall. The weather would bring Brendan to land when and where it chose, and our single-minded purpose was to see that the boat was given her best chance.

  To our delight the number of whales actually increased as we approached Newfoundland. It was as if the companions of our odyssey were coming to see Brendan complete her mission. We were passed by several schools of pilot whales, some traveling in scattered groups so that the sea for a mile in either direction was dotted with the regular rise and fall of their bodies as they swam leisurely past, and one bright afternoon a pair of dolphin put on a superb display of acrobatics, leaping for sheer joy in head-to-head double arcs as if they were entertainers in an aquarium. On the final days we were inspected by large numbers of white-bellied humpback whales from a great whale colony which spends the summer in Sir Charles Hamilton Sound on the Newfoundland coast. We followed the surging movements of the humpbacks on all sides of Brendan, surfacing and blowing, diving with the unmistakable slow arching of their backs which gives them their name, followed by the graceful skyward wave of the tail before the animal slips below the surface. Then we could trace the huge white patch beneath the water as the whale swam over toward Brendan and passed close beneath the hull to inspect it. In the distance other whales were leaping clear out of the water and toppling back with great splashes, or sometimes thrusting their tails from the water and repeatedly slapping down their flukes on the sea with mighty bursts of spray as if in farewell.

  During the night of June 25 we were able to distinguish faint pinpricks of shore lights to the south of us; and when a dull grey morning broke, we began to make out the indistinct line of land ahead. Our noses confirmed the sighting. Across the water came the definite smell of pine trees wafted by a gentle off-shore breeze from the great forests of Newfoundland. I set Brendan’s course toward Hamilton Sound because I wanted to be sure that there was land on three sides of us and no contrary wind could drive us clear. At last, and gradually, we began to accept the fact that we were certain to make landfall. The coast drew closer. It was low and featureless, and protected by a string of small islands. The radio began to chatter with messages from Coast Guard radio stations. A helicopter loaded with photographers clattered out and circled around us, its pilot careful not to capsize Brendan with the downdraught from his rotor blades. Another, larger helicopter appeared from the airport at Gander. It too was loaded with cameras, wielded by servicemen from the airbase. Suddenly, from behind one of the islands a pair of small Coast Guard boats came skimming over the water toward us. “There’s a small fishing port three miles or so up the coast called Musgrave Harbor,” shouted one of the coxwains as he roared up. “We can tow you in there if you like.”

  “No. Thank you. First we want to land by ourselves,” I called back, and checked the chart once again. Downwind of Brendan lay the small island chain of the Outer Wadham Group, uninhabited except for lighthouse-keepers. The islands were an ideal spot for a quiet landfall. The nearest was called Peckford Island. “There’s nowhere to land on that island. It’s all rocks on the beach,” warned a voice from the Coast Guard boat as Brendan changed course. But it did not matter. There had been no port in Saint Brendan’s day either, and I reckoned that if Brendan had come through the Labrador ice, she was tough enough to stand a final landing on a rocky beach.

  “Trondur, stand by to drop over an anchor. Boots, pull out an oar and get ready. We’re going to make our touchdown.”

  George went forward to lower and stow Brendan’s little foresail for the last time. Under mainsail alone, she crept toward the rock-ribbed shore. The swell heaved and sucked on ledges of bare, grey rock. Boulders dotted the shore, and grass and scrub covered the inner dunes. “Let go the anchor!” There was a splash as Trondur dropped the anchor overboard, paid out line, and gave a great tug to make sure that it had set firmly. We would need the anchor to pull Brendan off the rocks once a man had been put ashore.

  “George, can you take a line onto land?” He looked doubtfully at the slippery rock ledges and the foam of the undertow. “Yes, if I don’t break a leg,” he muttered. “There’s no point in getting wet at this stage.” Pulling on his immersion suit, he climbed out on the bow with his legs dangling on each side.

  Brendan eased forward. Not with style or speed, but in the same matter-of-fact manner that she had crossed three and a half thousand miles of sea. The red ring cross on her mainsail began to sag as I eased the halliard a few feet to slow the boat even more. Trondur took up the slack on the anchor rope and handed it gently over the gunwale. Arthur made a couple of dips at the water with his blade to keep the boat straight. Brendan nosed quietly onto the rocks. George leaped. His feet splashed, and touched ground … and I thought, “We’ve made it!”

  Brendan touched the New World at 8:00 P.M. on June 26 on the shore of Peckford Island in the Outer Wadham Group some 150 miles northwest of St. John’s, Newfoundland. She had been at sea for fifty days. The exact spot of her landfall has no particular significance to the story of the early Irish voyages into the Atlantic. It was merely the place where the wind and current had brought a twentieth-century replica of the original Irish skin vessels. Earlier navigators could have made their landfalls almost anywhere along the coast of hundreds of miles in either direction. What mattered was that Brendan had demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt that the voyage could be done.

  A leather boat that some had feared would disintegrate in the first gale off the Irish coast had successfully crossed the Atlantic.

  When Brendan nuzzled her bow onto Peckford Island, she may have looked more like a floating bird’s nest than an ocean-going vessel, an untidy muddle of ropes and flax, leather and wood. But she was strong and sound; and the four of us who sailed her knew that she was still seaworthy to our highest expectations. She had brought us safely through gales and pack ice and through two seasons across some of the most unforgiving waters in the Atlantic. We had put our trust in her, and she had repaid that confidence. She was a true ocean-going vessel, and there was no longer any practical objection to the idea that Irish monks might have sailed their leather boats to North America before the Norsemen, and long before Columbus.

  Brendan had demonstrated that the voyage could be done with medieval material and medieval technology. But in the final analysis the only conclusive proof that it had been done will be if an authentic relic from an early Irish visit is found one day on North American soil. Perhaps it will be a rock scratched with an early Irish inscription, or the foundation of an Irish beehive hut that can be dated accurately to the days of the extraordinary Irish voyages. Admittedly the chances of such a discovery are slim. Irish relics have not yet been found in Iceland, where it is known the Irish hermits settled for some time; and if the early Christian Irish did touch on North America, they would have left only the lightest fingerprint. It would be singularly fortunate if such a faint trace is located on a very long coastline which is either desolate and little kn
own, or in well-favored areas covered over by more recent development.

  This being so, it was all the more vital that Brendan’s successful voyage should have rescued the early Irish seafaring achievement from the category of speculation and doubt, and returned it to its proper arena of serious historical debate. At best, land archaeologists should now be encouraged to search for Irish traces in the New World, and at very least, it is difficult any longer to bury the early Christian Irish sailors into a footnote in the history books of exploration on the excuse that too little is known about them and their claims are physically impossible.

  Brendan’s success also went a long way to vindicate the Navigatio itself. Episodes in that remarkable narrative, which had seemed so fanciful, now appeared in a new light. In fact it was remarkable to review the number of times where it had formerly been necessary to conjure up imaginative, learned parallels to explain the puzzles of the Navigatio when simpler and more practical explanations would have fitted the facts better. For example, it is easier to explain the episodes of the Island of Smiths and the Island of the Fiery Mountain as first-hand descriptions of volcanic Iceland seen from a visiting curragh than to ransack the classics for similar Latin descriptions of submarine and land volcanos. And it is more logical to place the Island of Sheep in the Faroes, in company with the Island of Birds, when we know that the Irish could easily have sailed there and seen the very scenes that the Navigatio touches on than to dismiss such places as fantasies.

  Then Brendan had also produced some unexpected solutions to the Navigatio’s riddles. Surely the famous story of Jasconius, the friendly “great fish” who returned again and again to Saint Brendan’s leather curragh, is rooted in the actual reaction of the great whales when they meet leather boats at sea and come back time after time to inspect the stranger at close quarters. Such leviathan behavior must have made a deep impression on the minds of the medieval monks, perhaps seeing these huge creatures for the first time in their lives and astonished by their massive bulk swirling alongside an open boat far smaller than the animal. And the great Pillar of Crystal with its surrounding net of “marble” fragments is sufficiently like an iceberg, newly freed from the pack ice and still surrounded by its patch of broken field ice, that it would be impossible for the storyteller to imagine the details without first-hand knowledge at his disposal. Even today it is difficult for the scholar to understand the allusion unless he too has seen the northern icebergs.