The Lonely Sea and the Sky

by Sir Francis Chichester

  The Commandant at the Empire Central Flying School was a regular RAF Officer called Oddie, a stalwart character. He got himself into trouble with the Air Council because he believed in getting on with the war in the best possible way, and that regulations ought to be made to fit this purpose. After I had been there for ten days he put me into the Navigation Officer's post to succeed Wing Commander Edwards, who was leaving for an operational tour. The ECFS ran courses for officers such as Chief Flying Instructors with ranks from Flight Lieutenant to Group Captain. They were mostly pilots drawn from every arm of the Service and from every ally. In one course we might have Fleet Air Arm, Army and RAF officers, together with Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Poles, Frenchmen, Norwegians and Americans. (But we never had US Air Force and US Navy pilots at the same time, because they did not mix well.)

  My job, principally, was to brief them on the navigation of their flights, and to devise navigation exercises for them. At the end of each course we used to have a navigation race with twelve light two-seater Magister training planes in it. This was fine training for the sort of navigation that is really valuable to a pilot. We made it a kind of treasure hunt. For instance, in one race they had to fly to Stowe, the public school, and count the number of tennis-courts there, multiply the number by x, and then fly in that direction for 5 miles to find another clue. These races were immense sport, and very popular. I acted as pilot in one of them to Group Captain Teddy Donaldson, who at that time held the world record for high speed flights. He had to do all the navigating, and I simply acted as chauffeur. He swore afterwards that I had made him airsick for the first time in his life, but I think the truth was that it was the first time he had ever put his head down to look at a map in a cockpit.

  Another of my jobs at Hullavington was to devise methods for teaching 'nought feet' navigation to pilots intruding into enemy territory when they would be unable to take their eye off the ground ahead, and must be jinking all the time to avoid anti-aircraft fire. It amounted to map reading without maps, in other words all the map reading had to be done on the ground before taking off. It sounds an impossible requirement but, with the right methods, and plenty of drill, pilots could find a haystack 50 miles off while dodging about all the way to it. Oddie reasoned that it was impossible for me to do this sort of work if I was not allowed to fly or, for that matter, navigate. As a result, I was not only navigating continuously in the various types of aircraft at the station, but also had a light plane for solo flying and experimental work whenever I wanted it. This enabled me to prepare the flight tracks for the instructional films we were making, work up interesting exercises, and also to fly myself home occasionally at the weekend.

  I used to land at Fairlop, a mile from our house at Chigwell Row. One morning, just before I took off, a cryptic message came through from Air Traffic Control London saying that I must take great care while flying and look out for anything strange. I usually flew low, because it was more interesting, and I was surprised to see all the children dash across a playground and take cover as I flew over. When this happened a second time, I realised that they were taking cover from me, and when it happened a third time, I wondered what it was all about. On this occasion I landed at the Fighter Station at Hornchurch. As I stepped out of the plane, I saw one of our fighters tip a doodlebug over with its wing tip, and send it crashing into the ground where it exploded with a mighty bang. The schools had mistaken my little monoplane for a doodlebug. When I got home I found that one of the first three of these infernal machines had flown low over our house where Sheila was living alone. Our house was slightly damaged many times (I gave up counting after it had been repaired nine times), and naturally it was a great worry to me leaving Sheila there. I tried to persuade her to come down to Wiltshire, but the only accommodation I could find was a room in a house which she would have to share with several others. She said that she preferred living in her own house with the bombs. One day I returned to find that a doodlebug had exploded nearby, and blown every leaf off the big lime tree next door. The completely bare tree looked strange in the middle of summer. Some weeks later I came home and was delighted to see a new crop of leaves appearing on the tree, just as if it was at the beginning of spring.

  I tried to console Sheila by telling her that the bomb risk in London was nothing like the risk from flying accidents at the ECFS Most of our students had been doing administrative office jobs before coming on the course, and when they were expected to fly every one of our thirty-seven different types of aircraft while undergoing an intensive course of lectures, it was not surprising that we had a high casualty rate. The chief safety factor when flying is thorough drill in handling the aircraft. It was thought, however, that we could not win the war if we played for safety.

  It is an ill wind that blows no good, and if any of my students were lost on a navigational exercise I used to spend many hours in my light aeroplane searching where I estimated them to be. Two South African majors were lost on one exercise, and I hunted for days among the Welsh hills. Three months later when we had given up all hope for them, word came through that they were prisoners of war. They had flown the reciprocal heading of their compass, south-east instead of north-west. When they crossed the English Channel they thought it was the Bristol Channel. They were grateful when an airfield put up a cone of searchlights for them, and it was not until they had finished their landing run on the airstrip and a German soldier poked a tommy gun into the cockpit that they realised that they were not on an English airfield.

  I often used to make solo flights to operational stations to find out if there were any developments in navigation and, I must admit, to try for a job as navigator on a raid. When I climbed to the control tower after landing on a strange airfield the duty officer would look at my wingless tunic and say, 'Where's the pilot?' I enjoyed this, and regarded it as some consolation (childish, perhaps) for the indignity and disregard the non-flying man had to put up with from operational pilots.

  At the end of the war I wanted to get into business on my own again, and decided to become a maker of air games and toys. I visualised toy jets. I dare say 10 per cent of the RAF had a similar idea. I also wanted to get into the air travel business. When on leave I marked off an area in the West End of London where I thought the air travel business would be centred after the war. This was a rectangle, with Piccadilly in the centre. I hired a taxi and drove through every street in the area noting down all the houses for sale. In the end we bought one in St. James's Place where my business now is. My forecast of air travel has turned out to be right, because nearly every airline and major air travel firm has an office in this area now. But it was all wasted for me, because I never got into that business.

  The first thing I found on being demobilised was that I could not get any materials to make my toys. A friend – or was it an enemy? – suggested that I should make jigsaw puzzles. There were 15,000 maps left over from my 'Pinpoint the Bomber' game. I bought a ton or so of cardboard, designed some cutters, and turned these maps into map jigsaws. I set off on a sales campaign and sold the first 5,000 to big stores and other shops. I came back elated thinking, 'Hurrah! I'm in business,' and promptly made 10,000 more. On my next sales round the buyers told me that the puzzles had not sold as well as they had hoped. I decided that this was due to using an old map, so I designed a new one. Several times when the sales lagged I produced a better map to help to sell the old ones. Then one day a man walked into my office and said, 'This picture map of London is the best I've seen; if you will take it off this lousy piece of cardboard I'll order 5,000.' And so I became a map publisher by accident.

  CHAPTER 24

  BACK TO SEA

  At this time, besides being the designer, producer and salesman, I typed all the letters, did the book-keeping, invoiced the goods, parcelled them up and delivered them – it was very much a one-man firm. I think map publishing was the right business for me, for I had been involved with maps ever since I made my first chart fo
r my Tasman flight. My adventures with faulty maps when flying, the game 'Pinpoint the Bomber' which I had devised for teaching map reading, and my search for methods of teaching fighter pilots how to map read at nought feet without using a map, had left me with strong views on what should be put into a map and, equally important, what should be left out of it. My map of the heart of London was different from a flying map, but I worked in a number of my ideas. For example I pictured prominent buildings; the eye would go straight to one of these, which would make it easier to find a near-by street; and I tried to keep the map clear, by not overcrowding it, and by keeping out unnecessary features.

  Gradually I made bigger and better maps, but it was a struggle for financial survival. At one time we kept only one room of our house in St. James's Place, and I not only worked in it, but slept and lived there as well. Sheila was living in a weekend cottage on the banks of the Kennet in Wiltshire with our young son Giles, and I joined them at weekends. This Fisherman's Cottage was also an accident, like my map publishing business. After the war I tried once more to switch from flying to sailing, and looked for a cottage at various places near the sea. However, a friend offered us the Fisherman's Cottage with a length of the Kennet for trout fishing, and the north half of Savernake Forest, 750 acres, for rough shooting. I thought that if there was another war I should at least have fish to eat in summer and game in winter. However, shortly afterwards my family turned vegetarian, and when I did the same, I was left literally with the bag. I had had gallstone trouble. I have been told this is the greatest pain known to man; I believe it. Fortunately, a man can stand only a certain amount of pain, and then passes out. The doctor wanted to operate on me, but my wife refused to let him. I was introduced to a nature-cure doctor, Gordon Latto, who said that he would stop the stones forming, but that I must go on a strict vegetarian diet for a year, besides knocking off drink and smoking, which he said was worse than drink. This was a tough regime; the gallstones gave up, but I survived. I found that I was cured of smoking, too. And I have preferred vegetarian food since then.

  My New Zealand partner, Geoffrey, visited England and suggested that I should produce my picture map of London in pocket book form. Our Pocket Map and Guide of London was the result, but for two years it did not sell, and at one time I thought about dropping it. Then it started to sell, and in 1963 we produced our half millionth copy.

  I fondly imagined that I had settled into a comfortable office chair and had finished with all the difficulties, discomforts and dangers of flying and suchlike adventures. But seven years after the war I was attacked by an overpowering urge for some practical navigation. The map business was growing slowly, but would not run to a twin-engined jet, which I should need for the sort of private flying that would interest me. So I decided to go in for sailing or gliding, and plumped for sailing, because it was more sociable; the family could weekend in a yacht, but hardly in a glider.

  My first sail was to the Baltic as crew for a friend. I accepted the invitation with the keenest anticipation of cruising over the waters made famous by Erskine Childers's Riddle of the Sands, which I had re-read time after time since leaving my first school. That cruise was not a success, but it did result in my becoming an ocean racer. Rationing was still in force in England, and things like butter and cheese were scarce. After my gallstone trouble I found that the vegetarian diet had agreed with me so well that I now preferred it. However, man cannot live by bread alone. My skipper had a fine hunk of cheese, but said he wanted it to last him his whole voyage, and he used to watch me like a cat whenever I nibbled at it like a mouse. One day he took umbrage at my scraping the mildew off the surface. (I think it was due to his having spent his life in the Merchant Navy.) When we reached Holland I bought some more cheese, which I thought was the solution, but when he found out he took greater umbrage. In the end we never reached the famous sands of the 'Riddle'. I suspected that he had never intended to go farther than Terschelling, and that the Baltic had been bait to get me to sign on.

  At the end of that voyage I decided that sailing would be a misery for me if I was going to worry about the weather all the time, about getting caught out in a gale and being fearful of my gear in a blow. If I was going to sail, I must learn to do it properly. I thought that the Royal Ocean Racing Club sailors would be the ones to learn from, because they raced in all weathers. I advertised my services as a navigator in an ocean race, but nobody seemed interested in an air navigator who knew nothing of the sea. So I was forced to buy a yacht of my own in order to learn. I said nothing to Sheila about this, because I felt sure that she would disapprove when we were so hard up, but I was determined to get a yacht. I went round looking at various likely yachts for sale, and finally bought a day-sailor with the horrible name of Florence Edith. She was fitted with two comfortable seats on each side of the doghouse, where the owner and his wife could sit while out for a day's fishing. I paid £1,150 for this yacht in September 1953, and started sailing her immediately to get in as much time as possible before the end of the year, to decide how best to convert her for ocean racing.

  Then I had to break the news to Sheila. Expecting a terrific rocket for my extravagance, imagine my astonishment when she said, 'Oh, I always wanted to sail. What an excellent idea!' I had no time to spend on navigating charged sandbank after sandbank on the east coast, and when Sheila came up to have her first sail from Brightlingsea no one had seen or heard of the Florence Edith. At last an old fisherman said to her, 'Oh, you mean that there yellow boat? She be lying on Buxey Sands, and it's lucky 'tis fine weather, otherwise she'd be sunk when t'sea rises. What's more, there be thick fog coming up, and if she do get off the sands, it'll be a long time before you see her in Brightlingsea.' My wife was urged by the friend she was staying with to go home and get a divorce, but she decided to defer that, and left a message in case I should turn up. The fog did come up, as the fisherman forecast, but I had an amusing bit of navigation feeling the way along the channel into Brightlingsea by means of the hand lead. Sheila had her sail next morning, and enjoyed it. She joined in enthusiastically in redesigning the interior of the yacht. We rebuilt the cabin, making berths for six, which cost as much as the boat.

  Next spring I entered for the North Sea race, 220 miles from Harwich to Rotterdam round the North Sea. I had been in only one race before, and was the only member of the crew who had been in any. Sheila had so much faith in me as a navigator that she expected me to win, and was most disappointed when I telephoned from Rotterdam to say that we had come nearly last. Before the start I had run aground in the River Crouch, losing my kedge anchor in the process of getting off.

  We renamed the yacht Gipsy Moth II. I changed her from sloop to cutter rig. With her mainsail, staysail and yankee she carried 540 square feet of sail. She was 8 tons, Thames measurement, and 24 feet on the waterline, the minimum length permitted to enter for RORC races. I had one brilliant idea after another for speeding her up. For example at great trouble and expense I streamlined her sharp-edged iron keel with a false wooden keel, bolted on below. It made not the slightest difference to her performance.

  My next race was from Cowes to Corunna. Unfortunately there was a weakness in the new masthead fitting which had been specially designed for her, and the top of the mast snapped off in the middle of the night in some dirty weather west of the Channel Islands. From the cabin it sounded like the crack of doom, and when I darted up into the cockpit there was a tangle of shrouds, halyards and wires wherever I shone the torch over the boat or in the water. Then one of the crew dropped the torch overboard with the light still shining, and as it sank getting fainter and fainter, it looked like a ghost leaving us for a better world. One of the crew evidently thought that we might be doing the same, and wanted to signal to a steamer whose lights were visible some distance off for help. I squashed that, perhaps more roughly than I need have, and told everyone to turn in except for one man to keep watch. When I awoke and went on deck I found our watchman fast asleep in the cockpit. N
ext morning we cleared up the tangle of gear, set a small staysail, and headed for Guernsey. There was a strong current as we approached the island, and it looked as if we were going to be carried on to the rocks. One of the crew was a very devout Roman Catholic, and I noticed his lips praying nervously as we were being carried towards the rocks. We cleared the point, sailed into St. Peter Port and tacked up to a mooring buoy by carrying from one side of the deck to the other the boom to which the staysail was attached.

  In my first season I sailed that boat 2,510 miles, including three races. Our racing record was one of the worst in the club, but I was learning.

  Next season in the North Sea Race one of Gipsy Moth II's crew was an ex-wartime naval commander, who claimed to have sailed a lot. He had been maddening the rest of the crew throughout the race across the North Sea. We crossed the finishing line in the dark, running downwind with spinnaker set in a fresh breeze. Two of the crew were lowering the spinnaker, I was at the helm, and I asked the fourth man of the crew, my naval friend, to take in the rotating log trailing astern. When he said he must have someone to help him do it I was so enraged that I felt a hot flood in my belly as if something had burst inside me.

  On the way back from Rotterdam to the Solent I began to feel ill. Sailing down channel I asked this same man to pump the bilge, but he refused. I pumped it myself, but shortly afterwards was in agonies. Later in the season, before the start of my first Fastnet Race, I was becoming a sick man. The race took us six days, and before it ended, I had to be helped out of my bunk to the cockpit, and had difficulty in holding on while navigating. I went off to a hospital where a specialist, after examining the X-ray, said that I was a typical case of chronic arthritis. I certainly was in a bad way; I could not open a door without great difficulty, even using two hands, and once I dropped a full plate of soup over myself because I was unable to grasp it. I started visiting the hospital regularly for treatment. One day my nature-cure family doctor said to me, 'Ask your fellow patients how long they have been receiving this treatment, and then decide for yourself whether it seems likely to cure you.' This made me think hard, and as a result I underwent a severe course of nature-cure treatment at Edstone. Shortly after I arrived there I sat down on the ground on a fine autumn day and was unable to get to my feet again. I had to wait there until someone happened along who could pull me up. Fortunately the treatment succeeded; it seemed to take a long time, but by next spring I was a fit man and started a hard season's racing in Gipsy Moth II.