by Roger Bax
The interview, in fact, went off quite smoothly and there were no repercussions, but I felt that the sooner we left Stockholm the better. It was evident that, if we stuck around, the hospitality of the Swedes would again become embarrassing. After we’d refuelled, filled our water tanks and taken in stores, therefore, we slid out of the Yacht Basin towards dusk one evening and anchored in sheltered water in the lee of an unoccupied island at the eastern or seaward edge of the archipelago which covers the harbour. We were now spared the gaze of curious eyes and the questions of friendly fellow-yachtsmen, and were in a good position to make sail for the Gulf at any moment.
Here, in this quiet anchorage, we had our first real council of war. The chief problem—indeed, almost the only problem for us—was one of timing. We must be neither too soon nor too late. We had to be inside Tallinn Bay on the night of August 14—subject to any fresh instructions we might still get from Steve—and it lay 160 miles due east of us across open water. The trouble was that the distance was too great for an accurately-timed last-minute dash. Theoretically, we could steam across in something under twenty-four hours with fuel to spare, so that if we left our present anchorage on the night of the 13th we ought to arrive at Tallinn at dusk on the 14th. By making that quick passage we should reduce to a minimum the chance of being spotted on the way. But there were two objections. One was that it seemed unwise to use half our fuel before we even reached Tallinn, since we couldn’t tell what insistent calls there might be on the engine later. The other was even more serious. Over so long a distance a small boat couldn’t work with certainty to a timetable, and we felt we dared not bank on good weather just because it had been good for so long. We couldn’t risk being blown a long way off our course, if a wind should get up, with no margin of time in hand. In the end we decided that for safety we needed a jumping-off point very much nearer Tallinn, even though it would mean exposing ourselves in the Gulf longer than we liked.
We got out the charts covering the western section of the Gulf of Finland and studied them carefully. The Gulf itself is about fifty miles wide. Tallinn lies on the southern shore, about fifty miles inside the neck, with the Finnish capital of Helsinki almost opposite to it on the northern shore. Slightly to the west of Helsinki, also on the northern shore, we found the Porkkala Peninsula, which the Russians had taken over as a naval base under the terms of their peace treaty with Finland. That base and its immediate vicinity were definitely places to avoid. But west of Porkkala there was another vast archipelago of fantastic complexity. There were thousands upon thousands of islands, many of them little more than rocks. It seemed to me that without venturing far into this maze, which would be dangerous without local knowledge, we could at least lie quietly just inside the outer fringe—perhaps for a couple of days—and then emerge and steam across the fifty miles of Gulf to Tallinn on the afternoon of the 14th with a good chance of reaching our objective at the right moment.
We weren’t exactly happy about this plan, but on balance we preferred it to the other. We should be in Finnish territorial waters, of course, but we looked innocent enough, and though the Finns were very much under the thumb of the Russians they still presumably controlled their own waters and were not likely to molest us. So, at least, we reasoned. In any case, however and whenever we entered the Finnish Gulf by daylight—and it would have to be by daylight if we were to find an island sanctuary—we could hardly fail to be seen. At least we should look less suspicious pottering about among islands, which yachtsmen always like to do, than sailing direct for the Estonian coast.
It was a crucial decision we had to make between the two alternatives, and rightly or wrongly we decided to lie up in the islands. The idea was to reach them in the evening of the 12th, forty-eight hours before our Tallinn rendezvous, and if possible find a sheltered spot just before nightfall. We planned to sail there, if conditions were favourable, so that we should have plenty of fuel left for our getaway. That meant leaving our present anchorage two or three days before the 12th.
It was after we had made our plans, and therefore felt that for a short time we could relax again, that Denny became interested in maritime law. All the talk about Finnish territorial waters and the right of innocent passage must have aroused his curiosity. Anyway, he began to browse in a textbook that I’d brought along with the rest of our small nautical library, and before long he was holding a sort of seminary. As we had absolutely nothing to do except keep Dawn shipshape and cook our meals and swim, it helped us to while away the time and it was certainly fascinating.
Like most people, I suppose, I had always believed that under international law territorial waters extended three miles out from any coast, and that after that distance the ‘high seas’ started, where no country had any jurisdiction, at least in peacetime. Joe, too, had the ‘three-mile-limit’ firmly in his head. However, what Denny found in the book was very different, and rather disturbing. He read out some interesting bits about how various States at various times had regarded the limit of territorial waters as ‘two days’ sailing’ or ‘the range of vision’, or the ‘range of cannon-shot’—which, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, was apparently about three sea miles. But it soon became clear from the book that while Britain and the United States, as the chief maritime nations, had done their best to get general recognition for the three mile limit, there wasn’t in fact any universally recognized law on the subject at all. Some countries, it seemed, claimed a six-mile limit, and some even twelve miles, and I was interested to learn that Denmark, Norway and Russia had once tried to close the Baltic altogether. Russia had claimed a twelve-mile limit in 1909, but nobody seemed to know what she claimed now, which was not surprising. My guess was that she would claim whatever happened to suit her at any given moment, and that where she was concerned the less faith one put in international law the better. I was for putting the book back on its shelf.
“But we must know our rights,” said Denny stubbornly.
“If we get away safely we shall have to answer to our own Government for whatever we’ve done. We ought to know what we’re entitled to do.”
I could see his point. If we got into trouble with the Russians inside what was indisputably territorial waters nobody would be able to help us anyway. But if there were any untoward incidents on the high seas, and we managed to get away safely, we’d have British law on our side. At least, I thought so.
Denny, however, was becoming less certain. He read out something about ‘the right of hot pursuit’. “A vessel may be pursued upon the high seas and there seized” [he read] “when she or a person on board her commits a violation of the laws of a foreign state while within its territorial waters.”
“That’s what we’re going to do,” said Joe, a little unnecessarily.
“But it’s all rather vague,” said Denny. “One chap here says: ‘The party in such cases seizes at his peril. If he establishes the forfeiture, he is justified.’ I don’t get that.”
“Might is right,” I said. “If he wins, he’s right. If you win, you’re right. I say, I don’t very much like the sound of this. Where’s the ‘freedom of the seas’ we always used to hear so much about? Does it say how far they can go after you?”
“There doesn’t seem to be any limit,” said Denny. “Wait a minute, though—it says here that the pursuit must be ‘immediate, hot and continuous’. And it must start in territorial waters, not on the high seas.”
“Ah! So if a Russian patrol boat, for the sake of argument, spotted us as we were leaving Tallinn Bay, it would be entitled to chase us out on to the high seas—supposing that we could get that far!—and make us hand the girls over?”
“That’s about it,” said Denny grimly. “But if we were already at sea, they wouldn’t have the right to board us just on suspicion.”
“They’d probably do it all the same,” I said. “I hope we don’t have to put them to the test. If we can leave Tallinn Bay around midnight, we should be practically out of the Finnish Gulf
by daybreak and well on our way to Stockholm. Chuck the book overboard, Denny!”
He didn’t, though. He put it carefully away. I knew Denny would never break a law if he could help it, even a vague one.
That night we had another message from Steve. It was skilfully wrapped up in a long-winded broadcast about a Soviet oilfield on the Volga, and it confirmed the time of the Tallinn rendezvous, which was all that we now needed to know. I would have loved a quiet hour with Steve just then. Though I trusted him implicitly I would have been glad to hear just how he had made his dispositions, and so would the others. The message had made the climax of our expedition seem near, and I knew Denny‘s thoughts were very much with Svetlana and the journey she would have to make alone from Leningrad—if that was still the plan. This last brief period of waiting was trying, and the strain showed in our long silences and our somewhat brittle spasms of conversation. I had seen men in the same mood before an attack. Joe alone was fairly unconcerned.
The long holiday voyage had made us all fighting fit, and we were deeply sunburned. Denny’s hand was now quite healed, and we were all itching for departure, particularly as one or two yachting parties out of Stockholm had passed near by and waved to us in the last day or two.
It was on the evening of the 9th that the barometer, which had long been steady as a rock, gave a little downward flicker when Joe tapped it. The drop was slight, but we were all very conscious of our unbroken run of good luck. The wind, which for so long had been southerly, began to back a little and freshen.
We were now in a serious quandary. It looked as though we might be in for a bit of really dirty weather. It might amount to nothing more than a short hard blow finishing in a night, like the one which had given us such a tossing on Lake Vanern. In that case the thing to do was to remain at anchor until it blew itself out, since we still had time in hand. But who could forecast how long the storm would last? This might be the beginning of a break, in which case we should have to beat to windward all the way to the islands and should need every minute of time that remained. Whatever decision we took would be a gamble. Joe sniffed the air, and ran over the timetable again, and finally said he thought the risk of a bad dusting at sea was less than the risk of arriving late at the rendezvous. We accepted his decision. In a few minutes we had the anchor weighed and the sails hoisted and were on a course for a point ten miles south of Hango, close-hauled and reefed
It was grand to be moving again, but the possibility of bad weather pressed heavily on our minds. As night drew on the glass fell further and the wind headed us, so that we had to change course. Dark clouds were banking up ominously, and there was a rumble of thunder in the air. I was unable to sleep a wink during Joe’s watch and was quite glad to take my turn at the tiller towards morning. I didn’t at all like the metallic look of the sky at daybreak, or the very confused sea that was getting up. However, Joe seemed unconcerned. He told me to give him a shout if the wind strengthened appreciably, and then turned in for a short nap. Like all real sailors he could sleep under almost any conditions of wind and water if he had a mind to.
I let him have his sleep without disturbing him, but the wind was steadily rising, and when he came on deck again a couple of hours later he had a quick look round and decided that we’d better take in another reef. We had been making heavy weather of it for some time, and with shortened canvas the motion was much easier. The storm was still grumbling away all around us but seemed unable to break. Towards noon there was a bright gleam of sunshine between two dark edges of cloud and Joe had a shot at taking sights, which was pretty difficult in view of the motion. Presently he emerged from the cabin with a new course, and what he said was our position, though he didn’t look very happy about it. Fortunately we had plenty of sea-room, and for a boat of our draught there were no navigational hazards anywhere near.
As the day wore on conditions became much worse. The wind strengthened steadily from the north-east, the sea got up alarmingly, and Dawn began to plunge like a bucking horse. It wasn’t a gale, or anything like it, but there was a lot of weight in the wind, and to my inexperienced eyes the black water looked very menacing as it rose above our bows and then raced away under our stern. After all these sybaritic weeks it was clear that we were going to get our real baptism. Joe was a new man. All this time he had been playing at sailing, but now he had something worthy of his skill. His eyes narrowed against the wind and he lost his faintly mocking grin. There was a fresh snap about his instructions. Previously he had been skipper only in a technical sense, but now he imposed his will both on us and on the boat. “Never be afraid of a boat,” I had heard him say. “Always believe that you can make it do what you want it to do.” The same thing obviously went for the crew. When Denny emerged from the cabin chockfull of pills and looking like a scared green ghost, Joe ordered him below without a second glance. Poor old Denny went gratefully.
Suddenly there was a crack of thunder right overhead and a fork of lightning split the sky. Rain swept down on us, reducing visibility to nothing. We were quite alone on a grey-black sea that smoked with spindrift. Joe and I had long since struggled into oilskins and sou’westers but there was no chance of keeping dry. Dawn was sailing well and we took very little green water, but the cabin-top streamed continuously. Time after time we buried our nose in the tops of the waves, and foam surged into the cockpit and flooded round our sea-boots. Joe kept me hard at work pumping, and I even had to use a bucket when the water got too deep.
A storm at sea experienced in a small boat is incredibly awe-inspiring and frightening. The waves rushed down on us like hungry animals, and the fury of the wind in gusts and its mad scream through the rigging was something I could never have imagined. Dawn seemed unbelievably tiny and I couldn’t think she would survive if the sea got worse. But Joe was calm enough and I took my cue from him. He was watching each wave, easing the tiller occasionally to avoid a beam sea. Every now and again he glanced up at the sails. He had fitted out the ship and I know he thought she would stand up to pretty well anything with proper handling. He must have felt more than a bit disconcerted when the mainsail, reefed down though it was, suddenly split with a crack like a gunshot under the impact of a particularly ferocious gust. It began slatting about violently, and in a moment it had blown to shreds and a large triangle of canvas was being whirled away over the steaming sea.
There was plenty of excitement then. Joe yelled, “Get the trysail!” and went forward to wrestle with the remnants of the mainsail. The next few minutes were as mad as anything I’ve known. Dawn was at the mercy of the sea, and a good deal of water was coming aboard. I staggered about the cabin, indifferent to Denny’s groans, too busy now to be scared, trying to hold the sail locker open long enough to get the storm-sails out. After that, of course, we had the devil of a job bending them on. Joe, with admirable foresight, had rigged a lifeline across the cabin top before we sailed—otherwise I doubt if we could have done it. As it was, Joe did most of the work. I managed to get the old foresail and jib in, with my legs knotted round the mast a good deal of the time and a prayer in my heart. Joe was having a private fight with the trysail and he seemed to be winning.
Just as I finished bending on the storm-jib we took one green sea which almost tore me from the ship and Joe yelled “Go and bail!” I practically swam back into the foaming cockpit and got to work again with the bucket. All hell seemed to have been let loose—the rain was lashing us, the wind was hammering at us, and Dawn was wallowing horribly and taking more and more water. But in a few minutes Joe had joined me in the cockpit, the storm-sails filled, and the little ship had gathered way again. I plied the bucket without pause until the water was no more than a slop around our feet. It seemed a miracle that Dawn was still floating; even more astonishing that in little more than five minutes we could have achieved so much.
Joe shook the water out of his eyes like a wet dog and grinned. He shouted, “I thought you were gone that last time!”
It seemed that we
had had the worst of the storm. Slowly, through the evening, the wind moderated, and by supper-time I was able to prepare some hot food, and Denny was sufficiently recovered to join in eating it. He was a bit shamefaced about his sickness, but Joe told him amiably that he’d been far more use out of the way, and he cheered up when he realized that Joe hadn’t expected anything else. By dusk we had bent on the spare mainsail and we all felt quite cheerful again. The barometer had risen a little and the wind had veered once more to the south. It had been a sharp storm, but there were no signs that the weather had broken for good. We were back on our course again, though with only a very approximate idea of our whereabouts.
Next day, August 11, was as bright and fair as we could have wished. We all had plenty to do cleaning up, drying clothes and sleeping-bags and making shipshape after Dawn’s battering of the day before. What was annoying was that if we’d waited at the island for another twenty-four hours the storm would have passed and we would have had a fair passage to Hango. But no one could have foreseen that, and now that the storm was over I felt I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.