by Ice! [V2. 0]
As the anchor came aboard, I reflected that I had passed right along the coast of Ireland, from south to north, calling at five havens, without having officially entered the country, without having to show one piece of paper. Now I was leaving Irish waters with no official clearance and nothing to show for my sojourn but memories of good people, fascinating storytellers, kindness and courtesy, humor and hospitality, a bottle of poteen and a pound or two of Dhugan's rat specific.
I took on a few gallons of sweet streamwater from Tory Island and some diesel fuel from a fishing boat resting in the bay. Then, after a lunch of lobscouse, I hoisted sail and was away on the wind.
Lobscouse is a very old method of cooking several meals at once in one pot. Thinly sliced potatoes go on the bottom, in a layer about two inches thick, then sliced carrots or turnips or other roots, followed by cut cabbage (and on Tory Island, dandelion leaves) and sliced onions, a one-inch layer, then on top of it all, fish cut into small chunks, just the flesh. Water is added until it just covers the food, a cube or two of beef bouillon (these days), and the lot is brought to a boil, then left simmering for a couple of hours, until the fish falls to pieces and mixes with the rest. A pressure cooker three-quarters full of this lobscouse provides about four meals. All you have to do is dish it out of the pan after it's warmed up. When the pot got low, I used to make a curry paste and add that to liven it up. It's good and sustaining, and very little trouble. It can be concocted before sailing, while the boat is steady at anchor. This obviates having to mess around too much at preparing food while the boat is lurching around in heavy seas such as are the case usually in the North West Approaches of Britain. Then, when sea legs are found, which usually takes a couple of days, another two-day stock can be prepared. In Cresswell I used to place the pot, after the food was cooked, in a "haybox," that is, a box packed with hay for insulation. This kept the pot hot for up to twenty-four hours, thus saving precious kerosene.
Lobscouse was once the staple food on the ocean-sailing ships out of Liverpool to America and the Far East. Liver-pool sailors were nicknamed "scousers" for that reason.
The run from Tory Island was a rough 220 miles, with hard winds, which meant shortening sail. I rigged the '"dodgers" (canvas cloths) around the cockpit, which was not self-draining. With the frequent rain showers, I spent the whole three days of the passage in oilskins. I had black oilskins, because yellow is supposed to be unlucky in a boat, at least in those waters, and I would take no chances, even though I am not particularly superstitious.
There are many, superstitions among fishermen and sailing men. Such as never mentioning the word "rabbit" onboard and not sailing if you see one of these animals on the way to the boat. Never having a priest onboard and always referring to them as "the men in black." Never sailing out with a menstruating woman onboard. Never sailing on a Friday the thirteenth, or any Friday if it was avoidable. Never whistling onboard a sailing craft (it was supposed to anger the wind, but I suspect that it was just that it got on other crewmen's nerves; it was once a flogging offense in the Royal Navy, but that was because signals were passed between plotters at the Spithead mutiny of 1792 and at the Nore by that means). Again, it is very unlucky indeed to coil a rope "widdershins," or counterclockwise, or to stir a cooking pot in that fashion, for it is against the direction in which the sun travels. In ancient days, if a man found his wife stirring the pot "widdershins," he had the right to kill her, for it was thought she was putting a curse on his voyage.
As the light of Tory Island fell into the sea astern at dusk, Nelson and I could see the lights of many steamers out on the north horizon. The North West Approaches to Britain is one of the busiest shipping areas in the world, with trade coming from around the globe to Glasgow and Liverpool. This meant that I had to stay topsides all night, despite having the sails neatly balanced so the boat steered herself. Having a good stock of batteries for the radio, I indulged in the luxury of listening to music until the transmitters closed down around midnight. Then I switched to the trawler band and listened to conversations from as far away as south Iceland and the Norwegian Sea.
During the first night out from Tory Island, an overeager cod hooked himself on one of the two lines I had streamed astern. I made some batter and fried him up for a midnight special, which was a comfort from the rain and wind while bouncing and bashing over the seas.
The next day, early in the first light, I hove to and slept for an hour, then plodded on and at mid-forenoon sighted, far away on the starboard bow, low and misty, the rocks of Skerryvore and, beyond them, like Afghans in ambush, the turbans of the grey hilltops of Tiree, the island from where the matron at the Aden hospital hailed. Tiree and its neighboring island of Coll have the highest sunshine average in the British Isles, and I remembered the matron's eyes. I wondered if she was at home and was tempted to haul over to the isles to see, but June was upon us and the north was waiting, so I held course steady for Barra. I picked up the light of Bernerey, the southernmost of the Outer Hebrides, at dusk, and by midnight I was quietly hove-to in the Barra Passage, awaiting the dawn to show the way into Castletown. Again I was forced to stay topsides all night, for there were many ships and fishing craft in the passage. The wind had dropped to a breeze, and the sky was clear and starlit. I rigged up the bright Tilly oil lamp, hung it over the side, and tried my luck for a fish, but they were too crafty, and in the dawn the deck bucket was forlornly empty. At seven in the morning Nelson took over the watch and I turned in for two hours, until the light improved for entering the port. By eleven there we were, safe and secure, anchored in a lovely bay with a wide, white, sandy beach.
The harbor master was soon out in his launch, uniform and all.
"Where're you from?"
"Falmouth." I didn't tell him about Ireland.
"That's a lang run, laddie."
"Aye."
"Weel, mon, ye're lucky." A big man, he was standing in his blue motor launch, grabbing my gunwale with his great hamfists. "Why's that?"
"There's a weddin' on, and it's you that's invited."
"What time?"
"As soon as ye're ready, the hard stuff s already oot."
"Where?"
"At the church up yonder." He pointed up the hill to the grey tower. He didn't say "kirk," for this was a Catholic island. "I've no suit."
"Och, lad, dinna fash ye'sel. Come as ye are. This is no' London."
So it wasn't, as I soon found out, with the fiddles playing and the lads and lasses dancing reels and jigs and even some modern dances. Whisky there was by the crate and beer by the hogshead. I had put two anchors down, and for the first time since leaving England, I took Nelson ashore with me. (He was getting randy and the island had a fair chorus of bitches yapping at him from the beach). In short, we had a whale of a time; so much so that it took me a week to find out who got married! I slept in a different cottage every night, and it was like home away from home, only better.
There was still no electricity on Barra in 1959. The population (around twelve hundred) gained their living fishing or crofting, working a small plot of land with potatoes and sheep for wool. They lived in what they call "black houses," oblong thatched cottages about fifty feet long and twelve feet wide, the narrow gable end facing the prevailing wind, like a boat at anchor. The cottages were built of stones, not hewn, but picked from the rocky ground and packed with moss. The walls were surprisingly thick, four to six feet, and the insides were lime washed, just as they had been on the Irish Islands. The insides of the black houses consisted of one long living room where everything was done. If the family grew, an addition was built on, but not, as in Eire, only to the east.
Crime is virtually unknown on the islands, and often the innkeeper left the bar while the customers paid their money into the till!
From the heights overlooking the dazzling white beaches, probably the prettiest beaches in the United Kingdom, I gazed down bewitched at the patches of purple and green where large rafts of seaweed had washed up, and the
brown streaks where the peat streams ran their meandering way to the sea. Overhead, gulls and petrels screamed welcomes to the fishing craft entering the bay.
The island airfield, which in fact was the main beach, could only be used at low tide. It is the only one I've ever seen where the flight schedules were dictated by the state of the moon. A lady was in charge, who was thought to be the only female airport manager in Europe, if not the world.
The Outer Hebrides had been described by Pytheas 330 years before the birth of Christ. Agricola's fleet had called there in the first century A.D.; Ptolemy had shown them on his map of the world, drawn in the second century A.D. (the same map which had shown Peru). On it he gives the island of Skye the name of Scitis Insular and modem-day Lewis, the biggest of all the Hebrides, is called Dumma. But, before Ptolemy, Pliny had fisted thirty islands in the Hebrides. In fact, he misnamed them, for their Celtic name was Hebudes, but to the ancient Gaels they were Tir Nan Og, "The Land of the Ever Young."
Columcille arrived in the Hebrides in A.D. 563 and by the time of his death, in 59, not only the islands, but the whole of Scotland was under Christian tutelage.
The centuries of peace lasted until around A.D. 800, when the dreaming islands were rudely awakened by the arrival of the Vikings, who drove their knirrer-longships south from the Faroes and the Orkneys. The latter they called the "Nordereys," while the Hebrides became the "Sudereys." Thus the oldest rocks in Europe became part of the kingdom of Norway for three hundred years until Scotland, under King Alexander III, defeated the Vikings in 1263. The Norse people of the islands were slowly absorbed into Scottish culture, yet kept their own identity.
The Celts always held on in the southern islands. The difference between the Norse-descended folk of the northern islands and the Gaels of the south was further widened during the religious reformation of the sixteenth century. The dark, gloomy spirit of Calvinism appealed to the Norse blood, while in the south the Gael was faithful, as always, to the teachings of Rome, Saint Patrick, and above all, Saint Columcille. For five hundred years after the Scots defeated the Vikings, sporadic warfare flamed among the Lords of the Isles—the McLeods, the McLeans, the McNeils, the MacPhees, until the strength of the clans was broken, finally, at Culloden. The Lords of the Isles became lords of empty lands, as the clansmen flew in droves, like wild geese before a storm, to America and Canada. The lonely islands dreamed on, sad, bereft, and beautiful.
Time was pressing. There were only two months left of reasonable sailing weather. I sat down in the cabin with the charts and worked out a route. I had intended to pass up through the Outer Hebrides, in their lee, out of the way of the great Atlantic rollers, then sail north for the Faroes on the way to Iceland—the old '"steppingstone" way of the ancient traders. But I had wasted a week in merrymaking. I traced the track to Iceland on the chart. I would sail direct. But first, there was a tiny dot on the chart, well to the west of the Hebrides, sixty miles out, all alone and remote in the deep Atlantic—St. Kilda—where I wanted to call and look around.
In 1942 I was in a destroyer which picked up two Norwegian seamen from St. Kilda. They had been torpedoed and, after surviving a lifeboat trip of two weeks, had washed ashore on the remote islands. There they had survived on birds' eggs for some weeks before being rescued. I recalled, vaguely, seeing the abandoned village from the decks of the warship. But we had not been allowed to go ashore because the skipper was anxious to get in and out fast in case of a U-boat attack.
Now I was in my own ship. Now there were no U-boats. Now I could see for myself. I cleared Barra for Reykjavik, Iceland, hauled up the anchor, hoisted the main, mizzen, and jib, and was off with a good forecast and a stiff breeze, through the Barra Sound, between that island and the lovely islet of Eriskay, flung like a green garment over the blue waters. Eriskay, where in 1745 Prince Charles Edward Stuart, "Bonnie Prince Charlie," landed from France with Gallic gold to rally the clans and cry rebellion against the House of Hanover. A rebellion that was later smashed on the bloody field of Culloden. Ever since the bagpipes have mourned the defeat of the clans.
Eriskay, where in 1941 the S.S. Politician, badly damaged by German torpedoes, drifted ashore carrying twenty thousand cases of whisky. Uisque-bach Gu-leor! Whisky galore! As soon as she touched the rocks, the news spread faster through the islands than the fiery crosses lit for the 1745 rebellion! In three days there was not one case of booze left onboard the pounding Politician.
Eriskay, where the musical poem of the Gaelic love-lilt was born! I settled down to a close reach for two days and nights in search of the three small dots of St. Kilda in the immense, eternal, infinite, heaving ocean.
To sail to St. Kilda was rough. With the seas piling up on the continental shelf after their passage across the Atlantic, it could not be otherwise, especially as Cresswell was sailing on a course only fifty degrees off the wind. But I had rested well in Barra and was fit as a fiddle. The days of empty sea and the nights under starlit skies, with the west wind moaning low in the shrouds and around the hounds-bands, passed by. The daytime summer skies were clear enough to give me good sextant sights, and on the third morning out I spied the mighty capsized cliff of Boreray, the most remote part of the British Isles, dead ahead. I hove to, had breakfast and an hour's sleep, then worked into Village Bay, where there had once been a settlement.
As Cresswell sailed up to the root of the bay, I lowered the mainsail. The gaff hoist slipped out of my hand, and the heavy, twelve-foot-long spar clattered down on deck with a sharp crack. At this a million, a million, birds lifted up from the cliffs, which rise over fourteen hundred feet straight from the ocean, and darkened the noon sky. There were so many birds, sea birds of all kinds, that they turned day into night, and there was such a noise with their screaming that I can still hear it now. I had never seen anything like it before, nor have I since. It was so violent, that rise of life from the white cliffs of Dun and Boreray, that I was genuinely frightened in case they should attack the boat. Even Nelson cowered under the cabin table.
I dropped the hook and looked around. The granite cliffs were snow white with bird-shit. There was a tremendous feeling of sadness about the place, intensified by the wheeling and screaming of the birds. It was a sadness so real that I could reach out and touch it. Overhead, the sky was dark with rainclouds, which swept low over the lonely peaks of grey Hirta, the main island. The heavens themselves seemed to be weeping as the first raindrops pattered on deck. Then, as the birds descended to their nesting ledges, all was quiet again, except for the soughing of the wind as it swept down the valley and over the ruined cottages of the village which had once, only a short time ago, known the cry of mothers and the laughter of children. Despite my fatigue I stayed on deck for an hour, taking in this melancholy scene; then, with a shudder, I stepped below into the warm and cozy cabin, gave Nelson a shove with my foot so he would go topsides, and turned in to sleep until the rain ceased. I fell into darkness trying to sort out the pad of Nelson's paws on deck from the patter of the great, dolloping raindrops.
When I woke it was around two in the afternoon and the rain had stopped. After a quick meal of lobscouse, I made ready to go ashore. I took some rope, an ax, and my knife. And Nelson. From the deck, I had seen some sheep climbing the steep cliff faces, looking like goats.
I looked around the old village. Here, people had lived from the Iron Age on, right up until 1930. In ancient times they were the most isolated people in the Western world. Their life was very tough indeed. They could not fish from boats because there was no wood for boat building, so they fished from the rocks, where the great Atlantic seas rushed and gushed at these lonely specks of land under the grey skies. Their main food was birds' eggs and bird-meat. They made their clothes out of bird-skins and feathers. Then sheep, which they plucked, not sheared, were introduced, and for a while life improved.
Through all these centuries there were only three families on the islands. The only visitors, from the mid-eighteen-hundreds on, were str
ay trawlers coming to rest and the twice-annual boat from the mainland. In 1912 influenza arrived on the island and killed off many. These folks were converted Calvinists. What the effects of that stern, gloomy philosophy, together with the results of hundreds of years of inbreeding were on these simple people, I can hardly imagine. The sum result was that in 1930, the British government, under strong public pressure, decided to evacuate the island.
All 36 of the surviving islanders (the population in 1850 had been 110) were taken to Ardtornish, in Argyll. And what do you think the British government did to these people who had never before seen a tree? They set them to work for the Royal Forestry Commission! Of course, they were totally unfit for this kind of labor, and eventually they all drifted off to disappear in the slums of Glasgow. Sic transit miseria!
I searched through the old cottages. All the thatched roofs had blown away. Inside there was only tough grass growing. But the spirit-presences were so strong they were almost physical. I looked into the manse, the old preacher's house, the biggest house in the village, with its tin roof clattering away in the wind, and found old Encyclopedia Brittanicas from 1840. The dining table had collapsed, and the glassless windows swung in the breeze. There was an air of complete and utter hopelessness about the place—as the French say, "une tristesse absolue." I could not understand why this should affect me so. I had visited many ruined places—the Coliseum, the scattered ruins of South Turkey, and old, abandoned castles in Spain. Far from feeling sad, I had been curious, then interested, and even proud that men could leave such works behind them. As I knocked a timid sheep over the head with my ax and roasted it over a fire of wood chopped from one of the manse shelves, I thought and thought about it. Then it dawned on me. The reason I felt so sad here, in this tearful, remote place, was because there were relics and ruins of people of our time and of our age. This is what the world would be like if a nuclear holocaust came about.