The whole stately fabric of the Gilcruix seemed to quiver and sway, and I glanced over the focs’le rail and saw a line of bubbles spreading, spreading, whitening away from her bows. We were off.
… From down the docks came a confused noise of cheering.
‘So long the Gilcruix. Hip! Hip! Hip! Hooray!’
Very presently we were at the pier head, passing slowly, slowly through the narrow passage which led to the wide seas – the wide seas I had read about in Marryat. Such a crowd to give us a send off. Dock officials in peaked caps, customs men, boarding house runners, old sailors, lumpers, riggers, stevedores, ships husbands, crimps and what-not.
And one man there, dressed in thin dungaree slops, barefooted, hatless, sleeveless in that bracing cold wind, stood at the dock’s edge ready for what is called the ‘pier head jump’. We were one man short and the mate signed to him and he sprang aboard of us in the fore chains.
Then all the long-shore company took off their hats and shouted ‘So long the Gilcruix. Hip! Hip! Hooray!’
The little pockmarked mate uncovered.
‘Three cheers for the pier head,’ he cried, adding, under his breath, ‘Three cheers for the bloody stay at homes,’ and I passed into blue water leaning over the rail, waving a ragged cap and cheering, cheering.
Now we were clear of the docks and busy with the towing gear on the focs’le head. Busy getting our port anchor inboard, bustling and heaving and getting my ears singed generally.
I was outside England. England lay astern and to the port hand, stretching ahead, all bright in the sun, screamed over by gulls and kittiwakes – was the dancing, tossing channel.
From this point onwards, Masefield kept a diary of his trip, although it ends rather suddenly once the Gilcruix is off the pitch of the Horn. Compared with his later reminisces his writing style is short and terse. The first entry is typically understated, simply saying:
Was very sick while passing Bull Point and felt very ill indeed until I went below at 9pm. Coming on deck at 12pm I took the poop watch and was very sick all watch. Captain and Mate were very kind.
This describes a period of two days, which must have been nothing short of a world of misery. As the Gilcruix was towing out of the Mersey she would not have set any sails, meaning her motion would have been most uncomfortable and this had an immediate effect on the youngster:
A strange deadly feeling, like a cold cloth laid suddenly over the heart, an uncanny giddiness and lassitude; I was faint, clammy, helpless, weakly wishing for death or dry land.
He was most fortunate that the officers treated him kindly during these first two days of seasickness. He was the youngest crewmember aboard and this seemed to bring out the protective side of these men of iron, for, after a bit of lighthearted chaffing from each of them in turn, he was generally sent to his bunk or ordered to go and vomit over the side, whichever seemed more suitable. This was fortunate indeed, and not at all typical. In many tall ships, much rougher and crueller treatments were often doled out. James Bissett, a contemporary of Masefield who served aboard the barque County of Pembroke and went on to become captain of both the Cunarders Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, recalled the mate aboard the County of Pembroke curing his seasickness by manhandling him out of his bunk and forcing him to drink seawater scooped from the scuppers. After this – and a good deal of vomiting – he was set to work.
The gentler treatment John received was a real blessing and, over the course of the passage, he admitted that he ‘grew to worship’ the captain, stating that all of the first voyagers would have gladly ‘oiled his boots with their weekly whack of butter.’ After two days of utter misery, Masefield found his sea legs and was able to report more effectively for duty. By now the Gilcruix was clear of land and heading out into the broad sweep of the North Atlantic, and Masefield was able to get into the routine of life aboard. His first task aloft seemed to carry with it an omen, as he recalled:
One bell had been struck and I was lounging about the poop when the old man [the captain] came on deck for a turn in the sun before he went to breakfast.
With that sailor’s second nature, he went aft for a squint at the compass, then forrard to the break for a look aloft. Something was not altogether right. ‘Jan,’ [Masefield refers to himself as ‘Jan’ in these reminisces] ‘I see you got some nice rope yarns in your belt.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘You see that mizzen to’gallan’ yard?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘There’s a buntline aloft that needs overhaulin’ about a fut n’ a half an then stoppin’. Now, let me see how you kin run aloft after all them nice pickles I seed you eat yesterday.’
‘Ay ay, sir.’
I flung the buntlines off the pin and overhauled them through the fair lead and up I trotted to the swaying topgallant mast. It was the first time I had been aloft since we left the dock.
The sea air and seasickness had freshened me up into a hearty state of health. If this is sea life, I thought, as I laid out on the yard, I shall do alright after all. Just then the foot of the topgallant sail lifted slightly and brushed my cap from my head. It fell slowly, hitting the bunts of the topsails, hanging a second in one of the crojick leech lines, then flopping into the sea with a gentle splash.
It was a common sea incident, but happening just then it came to me like a rebuke. I was superstitious as any in blue water and I felt it a bad omen. The blow fell later on, announced or unannounced, and knocked the poor tune clean out of me.
Bad omens aside, these first days gave Masefield a chance to settle in and also assess his shipmates. It was soon clear to him that of the five other apprentices he housed with, there was only one he actually got on with particularly well, and he was in the opposite watch. The two boys in his own watch, Hely and Shaw, were both first voyagers out of the Conway like himself and he already knew from his time on the school ship that he disliked them and, as often as not, he tried to separate himself from them. He recalled that they both viewed him as ‘an odd fish’ and ‘a bit uncongenial’ as well as being ‘a damned innocent etc etc’. He was also unfortunate that he was denied his favourite habit of yarn spinning as one of the senior apprentices saw it as his domain and would not tolerate usurpers. The company of the ordinary sailors was also denied to the apprentices, for although they were expected to do the same work, they were separated off otherwise, and it was made clear to them that, as officer material, it was unacceptable to have much to do with the men. It was a strange and isolated existence, and his recollections of coffee break aboard illustrate this:
There was no ships biscuit to eat with it, and ships sugar to eat with the ship’s biscuit, dirty tin pannikins to drink from and two shipmates whom I loathed (and loathed me) to drink with.
After I had been at sea a while I used to keep poop watch after watch so as to escape the society of Hely and Shaw. And especially did I keep the morning poops, partly in order that I might watch the sunrise, partly that I might escape that comfortless cup of devilled water.
Despite this lack of companionship, one big consolation of life afloat was that the work was somewhat less backbreaking than it had been ashore. Aside from night watch, when the boys were set the rather pointless task of ‘lee poop watch’ (essentially acting as an extra lookout and general runner of errands) the largest part of his work was cleaning, scrubbing, polishing, and chipping rust from the hull. It was while engaged in this last activity that Masefield was again laid low with ‘a slight touch of sun’. If this got him out of chipping rust, then it was a good thing, for this activity was undoubtedly the most loathsome aboard. Iron ships of a certain age accrue rust internally at an alarming rate, and this must be chipped from the hull for hour after hour. Eric Newby gives an excellent insight into the full misery of this activity in The Last Grain Race, his account of life aboard a Finnish windjammer:
The rust got in our eyes and blinded us, trickled down our sleeves and down the backs of our necks, setting up violent itchin
g.
As always when engaged in ‘Knacka Rost’ [the Finnish term for this activity] I tried to think of nothing at all, but only succeeded in conjuring up visions of failure, bankruptcy and death from painful diseases brought on by this monstrous occupation, all the fears that beset civilised man.
Although much of the work was tedious and punishing, out in the Atlantic, bowling along before the trades, life aboard was often very comfortable and pleasant. Masefield’s relationship with the officers remained good and the mates indulged him. He recalls playing a game of chess with the first mate and, halfway through backing his superior officer into a corner that could only end in checkmate, he realised his error and subtly allowed his boss to defeat him. Then there was the sailing of the ship which, as she thrummed before the steady breezes, was always satisfying and at other times truly exhilarating. The Gilcruix was no flier – she had been easily outpaced by the Cutty Sark when the pair had fallen in together in 1890 – yet she was still a big, powerful vessel and could log up to 15 knots in favourable conditions. This may not sound like much in modern terms, but aboard a windjammer powered only by her towering sails, it feels like flying. Off the coast of South America, the Gilcruix showed what she could do, as Masefield recalled joyously many years later:
We were at sea off the River Plate, running south like a stag. The wind had been slowly freshening for twenty four hours, and for one whole day we had whitened the sea like a battle ship. Our run for the day had been 271 knots, which we thought a wonderful run, though it has, of course, been exceeded by many ships. For this ship it was an exceptional run. The wind was on the quarter, her best point of sailing, and there was enough wind for a glutton. Our captain had the reputation of being a ‘cracker on’, and on this occasion, he drove her till she groaned. For that one wonderful day we staggered and swooped and bounded in wild leaps and burrowed down and shivered and anon rose up shaking. The wind roared up aloft and boomed in the shrouds, and the sails bellied out as stiff as iron. We tore through the sea in great jumps – there is no other word for it. She seemed to leap clear from one green roaring ridge to come smashing down upon the next.
I have been in a fast steamer – a very fast turbine steamer – doing more than twenty knots, but she gave me no sense of great speed. In this old sailing ship, the joy of the hurry was such that we laughed and cried aloud. The noise of the wind booming and the clack, clack, clack of the sheet blocks, and the ridged seas roaring past us and the groaning and whining of every block and plank, were tunes for a dance. We seemed to be tearing through it at ninety miles an hour. Our wake whitened and broadened and rushed away aft in a creamy fury. We were running here and hurrying there, taking a small pull of this and getting another inch of that, till we were weary. But as we hauled we sang and shouted. We were possessed of the spirits of the wind. We could have danced and killed each other. We were in an ecstasy. We were possessed. We half believed that the ship would leap from the waters and hurl herself into the heavens, like a winged god. Over her bows came the sprays in showers of sparkles. Her foresail was wet to the yard. Her scuppers were brooks. Her swing ports spouted like cataracts. Recollect too that it was a day to make your heart glad. It was a clear day, a sunny day of brightness and splendour. The sun was glorious in the sky. The sky was of a blue unspeakable. We were tearing along across a splendour of sea that made you sing. Far as one could see there was the water shining and shaking. Blue it was, and green it was, and of dazzling brilliance in the sun. It rose up in hills and in ridges. It smashed into a foam and roared. It towered up again and toppled. It mounted and shook in a rhythm, in a tune, in a music. One could have flung one’s body to it as a sacrifice. One longed to be in it, to be a part of it, to be beaten and banged by it. It was a wonder and a glory and a terror. It was a triumph it was royal to see that beauty.
And later, after a day of it, as we sat below, we felt our mad ship taking yet wilder leaps, bounding over yet more boisterous hollows and shivering and exulting in every inch of her. She seemed filled with a fiery unquiet life. She seemed inhuman, glorious, spiritual. One forgot that she was man’s work. We forgot that we were men. She was alive, immortal, furious. We were her minions and servants. We were the star dust whirled in the train of the comet. We banged our plates with the joy we had in her. We sang and shouted and called her the glory of the seas.
Few before or since have managed to convey with such fervour the sheer delight of the sea. Here was the consolation, and here was the crux of Masefield’s relationship with the sea. Those sentences convey great love, just as much as his other reminisces of the voyage convey despair and depression. Such writing and memories can be seen in many of his later descriptions of ships running well, most particularly in The Bird of Dawning, which conveys the exhilaration of sailing swiftly in a tall ship with almost as much fervour and feeling as this. There was more too: Masefield’s diary describes with wonder many of the strange sights that to the seasoned sailor eventually become everyday. He speaks of the great beauty of a night watch spent among phosphorescence as ‘a cloud of spray coming over the bows like a shower of sparks’.
Slowly the Gilcruix edged her way down the Atlantic, thrumming through the north-east trade winds and then flogging and ghosting her way through the doldrums. There was real labour here, for once out of the trades, the entire suit of over 30 separate sails had to be switched over and replaced with an older set. This was to minimise the expense of the chafe caused by the constant flogging of sails as the ship drifted through the doldrums. Once through this belt of calm, the process was reversed. To write about two changes of sail takes a couple of sentences and does little to convey the world of hard, backbreaking effort required to complete the task. Nevertheless, the consolations for this tough life kept presenting themselves to Masefield in all sorts of ways, and he was particularly moved by the sight of a fellow tall ship passing them by. This was the four-masted barque Glaucus, owned by Carmichael’s ‘Golden Fleece’ line of fast sailers. All of these vessels had a reputation for speed and beauty and the sight of the Glaucus slipping by in the first glow of dawn had a profound effect on the young sailor, as he later recalled:
When I saw her first there was a smoke of mist about her as high as her foreyard. Her topsails and flying kites had a faint glow upon them where the dawn had caught them. Then the mist rolled away from her, so that we could see her hull and the glimmer of her red sidelight as it was hoisted inboard. She was rolling slightly, tracing an arc against the heaven, and as I watched her the glow upon her deepened, till every sail she wore burned rosily, like an opal turned to the sun, like a fiery jewel. She was radiant, she was of an immortal beauty, that swaying delicate clipper. Coming as she came, out of mist into the dawn, she was like a spirit, like an intellectual presence. Her hull glowed, her rails glowed; there was colour upon the boats and tackling. She was a lofty ship (with skysails and royal staysails) and it was wonderful to watch her blushing in the sun, swaying and curvetting. She was alive with more than mortal life. One thought that she ought to speak. She came trembling down to us, rising up high and plunging; showing the red lead below her waterline, then diving down until the smother bubbled over her hawse holes. She bowed and curvetted, the light caught the skylights on her poop; she gleamed and sparkled; she shook the sea from her as she rose. There was no man aboard us but was filled with the beauty of that ship.
The old mate limped up to me and spat and swore. ‘That’s one of the beautiful sights of the world,’ he said. ‘It’s beauty and strength.’
All the while, the great menace of Cape Horn lay ahead, creeping up on them day by day. To make matters worse, the Gilcruix was approaching this savage cape in the midst of the southern winter, when the uncompromising stretch of water was at its most malignant. Masefield had already had a taste of heavy weather following that exhilarating burst off River Plate. Once the vessel had become overpowered, Masefield had been ordered aloft to wrestle with the mizzen royal sail. This was the uppermost of all the square sa
ils in the ship and was recognised as the domain of the apprentices. This was his first true tussle with the elements and is worth recounting:
And there was the mizzen royal. There was the sail I had come to furl. And a wonder of a sight it was. It was blowing and bellying in the wind and leaping around like a drunken colt and flying over the yard, thrashing and flogging. It was roaring like a bull with its slatting and thrashing. The royal mast was bending to the strain of it. To my eyes it was buckling like a piece of whalebone.
I lay out on the yard and the sail hit me in the face and knocked my cap away. It beat me and banged me and blew from my hands. The wind pinned me against the yard and seemed to be blowing all my clothes to shreds. I felt like a king, like an emperor. I shouted aloud with joy of the ‘rastle’ with the sail.
Masefield’s description of the royal mast ‘bending’ is no exaggeration. These upper spars all had an alarming degree of flex in them once it really started to blow, and Frank Baines, who served in the tall ship Lawhill (a ship not nearly as heavily sparred as Gilcruix), attests to the upper masts flexing to such an extent that the rigging he was climbing went completely slack to the point that he was spun around as he clung on until he was facing outwards away from the mast, only to be spun back facing toward the mast as the great spar flexed back and pulled the rigging taut again. This gives you some idea of the kind of risk involved with climbing the rigging and explains why so many men fell to their deaths.
As the Gilcruix descended into the southern latitudes, temperatures began to plunge, although the weather was surprisingly clement. In the crystal clear conditions, the rigging was bejewelled with frost, and the sheets and sails became stiff with ice. If this ice was left too long, it built up to such a level that the stability of the ship could be compromised, so sailors had to go aloft and whack it off periodically: a nasty, chilly job. The apprentices were fortunate in being able to rig up a small stove in the half deck, which must have been a great consolation after several hours spent freezing on deck. Arrival off the Horn was marked out by an eerie calm:
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