Polsinney Harbour: A heartwarming family saga set in Victorian era Cornwall

by Mary E. Pearce

‘For as much as I can see tonight, I might so soon keep my eyes tight shut.’ Billy, coming to stand beside Brice, tapped the glass on the compass-case. ‘Tes a blessing that needle can see in the fog. I’d say we owe more than a groat or two to the man who invented the North Pole.’

  ‘Cousin of yours, wadn he?’ Clem Pascoe said sarcastically.

  ‘Ess, that’s right, on my mother’s side.’

  The men, chuckling, began to move, handing their empty mugs to Reg and piling their crowst-bags into his arms so that he could take them below, and as they did so they teased him, telling him not to get lost in the fog.

  ‘Think you can find the cuddy all right or shall us come with you to lead the way? Well, don’t you fall asleep again, cos we’ll want your help with heaving the mast. And remember, if you’re gone too long ‒’

  ‘Quiet! Listen! What’s that?’ Jacky Johns said suddenly, and turned his head, straining his ears to catch again whatever sound had come to him faintly out of the fog, over on their port bow.

  All six men became very still, heads cocked identically, mouths fallen slightly ajar. Brice, standing with his hand on the tiller, listening for he knew not what, felt the cold, creeping sensation of hairs rising on the nape of his neck; but although he strained his ears to the utmost he could hear only the wind in the stays and the cheeping of the halyard blocks. And he saw that the others were just as perplexed.

  ‘I can’t hear nothing,’ Billy Coit said, in a hollow whisper. He turned sharply towards Jacky Johns.

  ‘Hush! Listen!’ Jacky said. He put up an urgent, imperious hand.

  Suddenly it was heard by them all: a loud swishing noise, getting louder and nearer, coming at them from out of the fog; growing so loud that it filled their ears. Brice felt his head would burst with it; burst with the knowledge of what it meant; for the noise was of a great sailing-ship cutting swiftly through the water. And with the knowledge he found his voice.

  ‘Look out, she’s coming straight for us!’ he roared. ‘For God’s sake save yourselves if you can!’

  But even as he shouted his warning the oncoming ship loomed out of the fog, her tall masts, crowded with canvas, towering greyly over them. The six men cowered away, instinct making them throw up their arms, as though the great ship could be warded off. Her prow passed clean over them and her bows caught the Emmet broadside on. There was a terrible splintering crash, a screeching of wood against wood, and, as the Emmet broke in two, the loud, angry, sibilant rush of the sea pouring in between the halves and spreading out to engulf her.

  Brice, jarred in every bone, was sent hurtling through the air, and his right shoulder, close to the neck, struck the toppling mizzen mast. Then he was in the cold churning sea and the waters were closing over his head. The pain in his shoulder and neck almost robbed him of consciousness but the cold shock of the seawater, sucked in at nose and mouth, flashed its message of danger at the centre of his brain and he fought his way up to the surface, spewing out water and gulping in air.

  The great ship had gone on its way and in the tumult of broken water caused by its passing a few of the Emmet’s timbers and spars tossed and bobbed and clashed together, amidst a strewn-out tangle of cordage, amongst which floated a mass of dead fish that brought the gulls swooping in, no longer quiet, awed by the fog, but restored to their normal boldness, clamouring raucously in their greed.

  The seething of the water gradually lessened, the sea flattened out and became smooth again, and a spar bumped gently against Brice’s head. He got his left arm over it and, thus supported, trod water until he had managed to kick off his boots. Through the crying of the gulls he could hear the voices of his crew calling out to one another and as he paddled his way towards them he heard Reg Pascoe crying shrilly: ‘Feyther! Oh, feyther! Are you there?’ But he could not be quite sure whether he heard Clem answering.

  A dark shape loomed out of the fog immediately in front of him and his heart gave a jolt as he saw that it was the Emmet’s punt, right way up, undamaged, and with two of his crew clinging to it, Martin Eddy and Billy Coit. He swam closer, let go of his spar, and reached up to grip the gunwale. He and Billy remained where they were, steadying their side of the punt while Martin splashed his way round and climbed in at the other side. He then gave them a helping hand, but as they clambered into the punt it canted over dangerously, shipping a fair amount of water and a few dead fish. Martin, splashing about on his knees, groped in search of the boat’s dipper which, together with the rowlocks, was fastened with twine to one of the thwarts. He wrenched it free and got to work, bailing out water and fish.

  Brice and Billy, peering into the fog, cupped their hands about their mouths and set up a long, loud halloo that scattered the rabble of squabbling gulls and sent them wheeling and crying overhead. There was an answering call from nearby and very slowly, out of the fog, came floating the punt’s four oars, still lashed together in a bundle, and with Jacky Johns swimming beside them. They hauled him inboard, bleeding from a gash in his cheek, and then hauled in the oars. The rowlocks were slotted into place, the oars were untied and put into them, and the four men settled themselves on the thwarts. The two Pascoes were still missing but young Reg’s voice, faint and despairing, could be heard not far away and in a short while they were pulling towards it.

  To their surprise they found that the two shattered halves of the Emmet were still floating, only partly submerged, a space of fifteen feet between them, but tethered together and borne up by a great tangle of nets and cordage and by the floating mizzen sail which, still attached to its splintered mast, lay out flat on the sea’s surface. And in the midst of this terrible tangle, made worse by the fishing line floating in coils out of the baskets, they found Clem Pascoe and his son.

  Clem was caught up in the coils of line and young Reg, with a knife in his hand, was desperately trying to cut him free; but in their frantic struggle together they had become more and more embroiled, the line coiling itself about them, the barbed hooks sticking in their clothes and their flesh; and all about them, as they struggled, the screaming gulls flapped and swooped, gorging themselves in a frenzy of greed on the dead fish floating everywhere. Reg, with sobs of fear and frustration, hit out at them with wide sweeps of his arm, for in their frenzy the ravening gulls took so little heed of the two men struggling in the water that they kept buffeting them with their wings.

  Father and son were close to exhaustion, but strong hands now reached out to them, the tangle of line was cut away, and they were hauled safely into the punt. For a time Clem lay on the boards, his whole body shaken in spasms as he fetched up water from stomach and lungs, helped by Billy Coit who was squeezing his sides. Then, at last, it was over; Clem gave a protesting groan, humped himself over onto his back, and raised his head to look about him.

  ‘Are we all here?’ he asked weakly.

  ‘Ess, one and all,’ Billy assured him.

  ‘I thought my last hour was come.’

  ‘So it would’ve done, sure nuff, if it hadn’t been for boy Reg.’

  Clem, with an effort, struggled up and was helped to the seat in the stern. The other men resumed their places, unshipped the oars, and, with cautious strokes, because of the tangle, began pulling away from the wreck. It was scarcely a moment too soon, for the two halves of the Emmet were now sinking rapidly.

  When they had got well away from danger, and well away from the noise of the gulls, they took a rest and leant on their oars, allowing themselves not only a breather but time to absorb what had happened to them. In silence they followed their own thoughts. Then Billy Coit spoke.

  ‘To think that a great smart ship like that should come all the way from America just on purpose to run us down!’

  ‘She’ve certainly made a good job of it!’ Jacky Johns said bitterly. ‘And where was her look-out, I’d like to know?’

  ‘Think she’ll come back and look for us?’ Reg Pascoe asked.

  ‘Not she! Oh dear me no! All these merchantmen think about is gettin
g where they’ve got to get and God help those who get in their way. Anyway, if they did come back, they’d never find us in this fog.’

  ‘Anyone see what she was called?’

  ‘Don’t talk so soft as you are, boy. Wadn no chance of seeing that.’

  ‘She must’ve got some damage, surely, sheering clean through us like that.’

  ‘Ess, I daresay, and serve her right.’

  ‘Poor old Emmet,’ Billy said. ‘She was a good old boat to us. She didn’t deserve to end that way.’ He turned his head and spoke to Brice. ‘Only yesterday she was given to you and now, this morning, she’ve been taken away. Tes some queer old mysterious job, the way things belong to be sometimes, and I don’t understand it at all.’

  ‘No more do I,’ Brice said.

  ‘The old skipper’ll have something to say when he hears she’ve been all scat up like that.’

  ‘My uncle’s first concern will be to ask what shape her crew are in.’

  ‘Well, you can tell him we’re middling, then.’

  ‘Ess, that’s right,’ said Jacky Johns. ‘Twill take more than a barquentine to sink us old Polsinney boys!’

  ‘I could do with a change of clothes, mind,’ Billy Coit said wistfully.

  ‘You can change with me and welcome,’ said Clem Pascoe’s voice from the stern.

  ‘I’m sticking to mine,’ Martin Eddy said, ‘cos when the water inside’m gets warm, that’ll keep me warm as well.’

  ‘You’re right there, Martin, sure nuff. Edn nothing like saltwater for keeping you warm, I believe.’

  ‘Or for bringing you up in boils.’

  ‘Or for drowning you,’ Reg Pascoe said.

  ‘You haven’t been drowned yet, have you, boy?’

  ‘No, just practising for it, that’s all.’

  Sitting hunched in the open boat, coldly blanketed by the fog, the six men, by joking together, defied the danger they were in and sought to keep their courage alive in a mixture of faith and obstinacy.

  Underneath their oilskin smocks, their sodden clothes were icy cold upon flesh that cringed and shrank on the bone, and each man had to fight, with all the willpower at his command, to still the spasms that swept over him and brought teeth clicking together in rigor-clamped jaws. All of them had lost their sou’westers and all except Clem Pascoe had kicked their boots off in the sea. But at least they were still alive; at least they had the punt and the oars; and if they had been spared this much, surely they could hope for more? And so gradually, by degrees, and always with a touch of grim humour, they came to a discussion of their plight.

  The Emmet, when they had shot their line, had been seven hours south west of Crockett Light and had made eight knots almost all the way. So now, in the little twelve foot punt, they were more than sixty miles from Burra Head, their nearest landfall; had no compass to guide them, nor any glimpse of the stars; and were on a westward going tide which would not turn for another two hours.

  Their only present guide was the wind, which had blown all night from the west. But if it changed ‒ and it probably would ‒ they could, as Billy Coit said, row themselves to Kingdom Come ‘and be none the wiser in this skew’. But row they must, to keep themselves warm, and, being all of one accord, they brought the boat cautiously round till the oarsmen had the wind in their faces and Clem had it on the back of his neck. The boat rose and fell on the long-backed waves and the oars creaked and splashed in unison.

  ‘Good practice, this, for the June regatta.’

  ‘Ess, so long as we get there in time.’

  ‘What are the chances,’ Reg Pascoe asked, ‘of coming up with one of the fleet?’

  ‘What do you think they are?’ Jacky Johns asked.

  ‘Well,’ Reg said, and gave it some thought, ‘there’s a brave lot of boats out here, counting the ones from Carnock and all.’

  ‘Ess, and a brave lot of open sea, too.’

  ‘Not much hope, then? Is that what you mean?’

  ‘There’s always hope, boy,’ said Billy Coit.

  They pulled for a time, then took a rest; pulled again and rested again; and when they rested they shouted together, sending a long hallooing call, hopefully, into the fog. But fog and darkness swallowed their shout and all that came back to their listening ears was the cold heave and surge of the sea.

  ‘Nobody home, seemingly.’

  ‘No, not even Sally Quaile.’

  ‘I keep thinking about my crowst. I was saving the best to eat going home. Now they old gulls will’ve had it all.’

  ‘There’s a few fish down here, somewhere, floating about round my feet.’

  ‘Ess, and we might be glad of them, some time before we’re done.’

  ‘Raw?’ said Reg Pascoe in disgust.

  ‘Aw, you’re some faddy, boy!’ Jacky Johns said.

  They pulled again, two hundred strokes, and Brice counted them to himself. The pain in his shoulder and neck had grown intense and the upper part of his arm was swollen, filling the sleeve of his guernsey so that it pressed tight and hard on his flesh; and although he shared his oar with Reg Pascoe, the effort it cost him was such that the sweat poured from his forehead and dripped down into his eyes; and this time, when they stopped for a rest, he was glad to yield his place to Clem, who, perceiving the pain he was in, crept quietly from the stern and edged him off the thwart.

  ‘You sure you’re all right now?’ Brice asked.

  ‘Ess, fitty,’ Clem said, ‘but could as a quelkin, just about, and got to do something to warmy myself.’

  Brice, now sitting in the stern, took off his oilskin smock and dipped his arm in its tight guernsey sleeve into the cold sea water, leaning over to plunge it in right up as far as the armpit. This brought him some relief, the coldness gradually quenching the fire that raged up and down his muscles; and when, in a while, the arm became numb, he withdrew it, dripping wet, and shrugged himself back into his smock.

  The men began pulling again; the oars creaked hollowly; and the fog licked and curled about the small boat as though trying to devour it.

  They had hoped, with the coming of dawn, that the fog would lift and clear away, but instead it persisted, thick as ever, so that even when daylight whitened the sky, the sun itself remained in recession, yielding no trace of its orbit to guide the watchers in the punt.

  ‘The fleet’ll be on their way home by now.’

  ‘So are we on our way home. Tes just that we’re more behinder than they.’

  ‘Tes all very well saying that,’ said Reg Pascoe despondently, ‘but in this durned old blinding fog we don’t even know for sure whether we’re even going the right way.’

  ‘No, that’s perfectly true, my son. We can only hope for the best and maybe say a word of prayer.’

  To some extent they lost count of time but when at last the fog did lift they saw by the height of the sun in the sky that it was well after ten o’clock. To their dismay they saw, too, that the wind had gone northerly and they watched as the fog drifted before it, rising to form a dusky bar that gradually fell away to the south.

  As the pale daylight grew they searched the sea with hungry eyes; with gaze that ranged about swiftly at first, skimming impatiently over the surface and all around the clearing skyline; but then more slowly, meticulously, searching the dark patches of sea as well as the light, watching every rise and fall, always hoping that out of some trough a sail would be revealed to them. But there was nothing. Not a sign. From one horizon to another they had this stretch of the sea to themselves. And those horizons were utterly bare. There was no slightest smudge to suggest a landfall.

  ‘Silly, I know,’ said Billy Coit, in a voice grown husky with tiredness and thirst, ‘but when that old fog began to clear, I thoft to see Crockett just over there and Burra Head rising handsome behind it.’

  ‘I was the same,’ said Jacky Johns, ‘only I thoft to see the Ellereen or maybe the old Betty Stevens, perhaps, cos they were the last two boats we passed before we got a berth of our own. B
ut there, twas only a foolish dream and I did know it all along, cos the fleet’ll be just about nearly home by now. Twas all a sort of mirage in my mind. Wishful thinking, as they say.’

  The men’s disappointment was bitter indeed; their screwed-up faces were grey with it and had a shrivelled, defeated look; but in their eyes as they scanned the sea there was at the same time a steely glint, showing keen minds at work, weighing up the odds against them. Tired men, chilled to the bone, out in a small open boat in the Channel, without food or water, unable even to tell how far they were from land: they knew only too well what peril they were in; and yet about each man’s mouth there was a certain grim twist that seemed to say to the sea: ‘You have not seen or heard the last of me yet!’

  ‘Anyone like to guess where we are?’

  ‘A pure way from home, I can tell you that.’

  ‘I fancy the Bay of Biscay myself.’

  ‘Why, have you got a cousin there as well?’

  ‘Ess, that’s right Cousin Frog, he’s called.’

  ‘Jacky, you’re nearest. ‒ Give Billy a clip.’

  ‘We’re certainly too far south and west. We took a wrong turning somewhere back there.’

  ‘That old wind played us false, going about like that,’ Billy said. ‘I knowed it would, sure as fate, but I can’t forgive’n all the same, cos that’ve put another few miles between us and the breakfast we deserve.’

  ‘Breakfast!’ Reg Pascoe said hollowly, and looked with loathing at the dead fish lying in the scummy pool at his feet. ‘We shall miss more than our breakfast, I seem, before we make harbour and home again.’

  ‘Yes,’ Brice said, still scanning the sea, ‘we’ve got a long pull in front of us.’

  But at least they now had the blessed daylight and could take a bearing from the sun, and this they now proceeded to do, debating the matter quietly and pooling the knowledge of many years. Together they then studied the waves, which, with the wind obliquely behind them, were just beginning to break a little, curling delicately at the crests. The tide was now running from west to east, which meant a strong drift southward, and to counter this they judged it best to set their course north east by east. And so, guided by the sun and the set of the sea, they brought the punt gently round and, at a word from Brice, began once again to straighten out.