Читать книгу The Last Grain Race - Eric Newby - Страница 13

I crossed on the night steamer from Heysham and as we came into Belfast in the cold early morning I saw for the first time the masts and spars of Moshulu. By comparison the scaffolding of the shipyards, where riveting hammers reverberated about the dark bulk of a new Union Castle liner, seemed solid and rooted in the earth. The barque was invisible, but the four enormously tall masts, fore, main and mizzen, and the less lofty jigger mast, towered into the sky above the sheds of the dockside, not white as I had imagined them, but yellow in the October sunshine.

‘Anyone’s welcome to that,’ said the smooth young steward as he plonked a pot of Oxford marmalade on my table. ‘Nasty great thing.’

I did not have the strength to argue with him. All through breakfast I had felt like someone in a condemned cell and my knees had been knocking together under the influence of a nervous impulse which I had been unable to control.

On the quay when I landed there had been some competition among the waiting taximen for my Vuitton trunk. ‘You’ll be wanting the Grand Central Hotel, most likely?’ said the shaggy owner of the most dilapidated taxi who had finally secured me as a fare. I told him I wanted to go to the Moshulu and as this did not seem to mean anything to him, I pointed to the towering masts, upon which he mumbled something about ‘that big sailer full of Chinks’ and we set off at a crazy speed, lurching into the puddles where the cobbles had subsided and slewing dangerously across the tracks of tank engines that bore down upon us at full steam. I barely noticed these things as I was in terror at the thought of climbing those masts which had a beautiful cold remoteness about them like the North Col on Everest. For the first time in my life I wished that a taxi ride would never end, but it was only three or four hundred yards to where the ship was discharging her cargo in York Dock and, too soon for me, we drew up alongside her. There was no sign of life aboard except on the well deck forward, where some stevedores were still unloading her cargo of grain.

Moshulu taken in Cork (Cobh), June 1936

I left the taximan extracting my trunk from the fore part of his vehicle where it had become jammed between the floor and the roof, and went forward to explore, waiting for a lull in the unloading operations to go up a slippery plank which led over the bulwarks and so on to the deck. When I reached it I began to feel that the taximan might be right about the ship being full of Chinese, for I found myself face to face with a rather squat, flatnosed boy of about seventeen who would have looked more at home outside a nomad tent in Central Asia. From beneath a great shock of disordered hair his eyes stared unwaveringly at me. Only the filthy dungarees in which he was dressed and the oilcan he carried proclaimed him to be a child of the West.

It was his face that finally reassured me. Surely, I thought to myself, such an ugly face has something better behind it. I held out my hand and said: ‘I am Newby, a new apprentice.’

The slant eyes looked at me suspiciously but I thought I could detect a glimmer of interest in them. He did not take my hand but a deep voice finally said, in a way that made me jump, ‘Doonkey.’ Believing this to be an epithet directed at me, I began to prepare myself for a fight. None of the books I had read said anything about a situation like this. Their heroes fought only after months of insult. Fortunately I was mistaken and he put me at ease by pointing at himself and saying: ‘Jansson, “Doonkey,” orlright,’ and at the same time grasping my hand which completely disappeared in his.

This was one of the two Donkeymen responsible for the proper functioning of the donkey engine, the diesel, brace and halliard winches and all things mechanical on board. In spite of his villainous appearance he was really the most tolerant and long-suffering of people, and we went through the entire voyage without trouble.

I indicated the trunk on the dock, and Jansson said: ‘Orlright’ again, and we went down the gangplank to the taxi. The driver was waving a piece of the roof of his vehicle which had broken off in his efforts to dislodge the trunk and was telling a little knot of stevedores everything he knew about me. As our acquaintance had been short he was drawing effortlessly on his own ample imagination. I was anxious to be rid of him and overpaid him considerably, but this encouraged him to ask for a large sum for the damage to his taxi, for which he said I was responsible. The stevedores closed in to support their countryman, but Jansson made such a threatening gesture with his tattooed forearm that they dispersed and the driver, finding himself outnumbered, gave up the struggle and drove away.

We now lifted the trunk and tried to make our way up the plank, but it was steep and my leather-soled shoes slipped backwards. ‘Orlright,’ said Jansson. He spat on his hands, slung the trunk on his back and shot up the incline like a mountain goat depositing it with a great crash on the deck. I followed him. My luggage and I were aboard.

We were now on the starboard side of the foredeck by the square opening of No 2 hatch. A travelling crane was dipping over it like a long-legged bird, pecking up great beakfuls of sacks. Underfoot was a slush of oil and grain; the oil came from a diesel winch which lay about the deck completely dismembered.

‘Kom,’ said Jansson and kicked open a door. I followed him through it and found myself in the starboard fo’c’sle. I had imagined the ship to be deserted but once I was accustomed to the half light and the thick pall of cigarette smoke that hung between the deck and the low ceiling, I was able to make out the figures of half a dozen men in overalls who were silently regarding me whilst sitting at a long table which ran the whole length of the fo’c’sle. Most of them seemed to be between seventeen and twenty years of age; all were muscular and pallid.

‘Good morning,’ I said, and their silent impassive staring went on until, like a long-awaited echo, they rumbled some kind of reply. Fortunately Jansson handed me a mug of coffee which he poured from a big white enamel jug. Someone else on the other side of the table shoved over a can of milk, a loaf of bread and a ten-pound tin of margarine. I helped myself to my second breakfast; there were some perfunctory introductions, and munching steadily, I listened to them discussing (without visible enthusiasm) my English nationality. At the same time I was able to take note of my surroundings. They were not inviting.

The fo’c’sle was about twenty feet long and thirteen feet-wide; its steel bulkheads were painted light grey; round the four sides were bunks which looked like double-banked coffins in an Italian cemetery. The lower ones mostly had home-made curtains which could be drawn when the owner was inside. Only one of the bunks was now occupied, but the curtains were half open, revealing an inert figure with its face to the wall, from which groans escaped at intervals. Down the centre of the fo’c’sle was the long narrow table, its feet screwed to the deck, the top pitted by the scrubbing and scouring of several generations of sailors. Around the edge was a raised beading, or fiddle, intended to stop the crockery sliding off in heavy weather. On either side of the table were heavy wooden benches cleated down to the deck.

Some natural illumination came from the portholes in the ship’s side, one or two of which looked out on to the well-deck; but the light was more or less obscured by a chaos of wooden sea-chests, oilskins and mysterious roped bundles which completely filled the upper bunks. Above my head was a teak skylight with a number of thick glasses set in it through which daylight seeped reluctantly. Artificial light was provided by a heavy lantern swinging perilously low above the centre of the table. Behind me was a cupboard with a shelf for crockery, and another for bread, margarine and condensed milk. Below the cupboard was a white drinking-water tank with a brass tap. The crew had just finished breakfast; on the table were the remains of this ghastly repast: some sort of thick brown stew with macaroni, now rapidly congealing, and what seemed to me, judging by the mounds of skins, an unhealthy quantity of potatoes. Standing among the ruins was an archaic gramophone with a fluted horn. This was now wound up and amidst sighs of anticipation a record was put on. There followed a preparatory churning as the needle engaged itself in the grooves and then the most appalling dissonance of sounds burst upon my ears. After I had become used to the din, I distinguished the words:

There’s a little Dutch mill on a little Dutch hill

Where the little Dutch stars shine bright.

Now a little Dutch boy and his little Dutch girl

Fell in love by the light of the moon one night …¹

This was Moshulu’s only record and though I may probably never hear it again, it will always remind me of Belfast and the time after Munich.

The playing of the record released any inhibitions my arrival had imposed on the company. Conversation became animated and deafening, and as the song ground itself to a standstill the boy sitting next to me, a Lithuanian whose name I later discovered was Vytautas Bagdanavicius, turned to me, flashed a brilliant smile and said happily ‘No good’ as he wound the motor and started the record again.

Jansson, wishing to show off every item of interest, pointed at the body in the bunk and winked significantly.

‘Is he sick?’ I asked.

‘Bloddy sick, drank too much Akvavit last night,’ said Jansson. To confirm this he began prodding the blankets and when this had no effect started to roll whoever it was backwards and forwards like a piece of dough on a pastry-board, roaring ‘Rise op, rise op.’ Upon this there was a violent heaving among the blankets.

‘Perkele, perkele, perkele; devils, devils, devils,’ screamed a furious voice from the bed, mounting to a crescendo like an engine on a bench being tested to destruction. Even the hardened audience jibbed at the rich descriptive obscenity which followed and begged Jansson to leave him alone. He did so, and just like an engine, the voice died away.

Somewhere on the deck, a whistle blew. One by one the occupants of the starboard fo’c’sle went out to continue their work and soon the sounds of hammering proceeded from the port side of the ship where most of them were over the side chipping rust and painting.

Because Vytautas, the Lithuanian, had been watchman all night, he did not go with them. He advised me to get into my working clothes and report my arrival to the Mate. First he helped me stow my trunk in a convenient space behind the fo’c’sle door. Gingerly I put on my navy blue dungarees which seemed stiff and unprofessional compared with the faded blue overalls worn by most of the boys.

‘Do not leave anything in the fo’c’sle,’ said Vytautas in his rather oriental sing-song. ‘These stevedores are thieves. At sea we are all right. Here … nobody is good.’

I asked him whether he had just joined the ship, but he replied that this would be his second voyage. Moshulu had been on the timber run from Finland to Lourenço Marques in Portuguese East Africa in 1937 before going to Australia for her grain cargo. I was glad; at least he was not leaving, as many of the others were. I had already begun to cling to any acquaintance as a drowning man clutches a straw.

It so happened that I met not the First Mate but the Second, as everything was in a state of flux: some members of the crew were signing off and returning to Mariehamn, others arriving to take their place. The old Captain, Boman, who had commanded her since she joined the Erikson fleet, was going home and being replaced by Captain Sjögren who was coming from the Archibald Russell.

The Second Mate was thin, watery-eyed and bad-tempered. At sea he was to prove much better than he looked to me this morning. He did not like ports and he did not like to see the ship in her present state. My arrival did not seem propitious and after dressing me down for not reporting aft directly I had come on board, he suddenly shot at me: ‘Ever been aloft before?’

‘No, sir.’

We were standing amidships by the mainmast. He pointed to the lower main shrouds which supported the mast and said simply: ‘Op you go then.’ I could scarcely believe my ears, I had imagined that I should be allowed at least a day or two to become used to the ship and the feel of things, but this was my introduction to discipline. I looked at the Mate. He had a nasty glint in his eye and I decided I was more afraid of him than of the rigging. If I was killed it would be his fault, not mine, I said to myself with little satisfaction. Nevertheless I asked him if I could change my shoes which had slippery soles.

High rigging

‘Change your shoes? Op the rigging.’ He was becoming impatient.

At this time Moshulu was the greatest sailing ship in commission, and probably the tallest. Her main mast cap was 198 feet above the keel. I started towards the main rigging on the starboard side nearest the quay but was brought back by a cry from the Mate.

‘Babord, port side. If you fall you may fall in the dock. When we’re at sea you will always use the weather rigging, that’s the side from which the wind blows. Never the lee rigging. And when I give you an order you repeat it.’

‘Op the rigging,’ I said.

The first part of the climb seemed easy enough. The lower main shrouds supporting the mast were of heavy wire made from plough steel and the first five ratlines were iron bars seized across four shrouds to make a kind of ladder which several men could climb at once. Above them the ratlines were wooden bars seized to the two centre shrouds only, the space for the feet becoming narrower as they converged at the ‘top’, eighty feet up, where it was difficult to insert a foot as large as mine in the ratlines at all. Before reaching this point, however, I came abreast of the main yard. It was of tapered steel, ninety-five and a half feet from arm to arm, two and a half feet in diameter at the centre and weighed over five tons. It was trussed to the mainmast by an iron axle and preventer chain which allowed it to be swung horizontally from side to side by means of tackle to the yardarms; an operation known as ‘bracing’.

Above me was the ‘top’, a roughly semi-circular platform with gratings in it. This was braced to the mast by steel struts called futtock shrouds. To get to the ‘top’ I had to climb outwards on the rope ratlines seized to the futtock shrouds. There was a hole in the ‘top’ which it was considered unsporting to use. I only did so once for the experience and cut my ear badly on a sharp projection which was probably put there as a deterrent. I found difficulty in reaching the top this first time and remained transfixed, my back nearly parallel with the deck below, whilst I felt for a rope ratline with one foot. I found it at last and heaved myself, nearly sick with apprehension, on to the platform, where I stood for a moment, my heart thumping. There was only a moment’s respite, in which I noticed that the mainmast and the topmast were in one piece – not doubled as in most sailing ships – before the dreadful voice of the Mate came rasping up at me:

‘Get on op.’

The next part was nearly fifty feet of rope ratlines seized to the topmast shrouds. Almost vertical, they swayed violently as I went aloft; many of them were rotten and one broke underfoot when I was at the level of the topsail yards. Again the voice from the deck:

‘If you want to live, hold on to those shrouds and leave the bloody ratlines alone.’

The lower topsail yard was slung from an iron crane but the upper topsail yard above it was attached to a track on the foreside of the topmast allowing the yard to be raided by means of a halliard more than twenty-five feet almost to the level of the crosstrees. The crosstrees formed an open frame of steel girdering about 130 feet up, at the heel of the topgallant mast. Originally the topsail had been a single sail, but to make it easier for the reduced crews to take in sail, it had been divided into two. At the moment the upper topsail yard was in its lowered position, immediately on top of the lower topsail yard. The crosstrees seemed flimsy when I reached them; two long arms extended aft from the triangle, spreading the backstays of the royal mast, the highest mast of all. I stood gingerly on this slippery construction; the soles of my shoes were like glass; all Belfast spread out below. I looked between my legs down to a deck as thin as a ruler and nearly fell from sheer funk.

‘Op to the royal yard,’ came the imperious voice, fainter now. Another forty feet or so of trembling topgallant shroud, past the lower and upper topgallant yards, the upper one, like the upper topsail yard, movable on its greased track. The ratlines were very narrow now and ceased altogether just below the level of the royal yard.

I was pretty well all in emotionally and physically but the by now expected cry of ‘Out on the yard’ helped me to heave myself on to it. In doing so I covered myself with grease from the mast track on which the royal yard moved up and down. It was fifty feet long and thinner than those below it. As on all the other yards, an iron rail ran along the top. This was the jackstay, to which the sail was bent. (In cadet training ships this rail would have had another parallel to hold on to, as, with the sail bent to the forward jackstay, there was little or no handhold. Moshulu had not been built for cadets and this refinement was lacking. With no sails bent what I had to do was easy, but I did not appreciate my good fortune at the time.) Underneath the yard was a wire rope which extended the length of it and was supported half-way between the mast and either yard-arm by vertical stirrups. This footrope was called the ‘horse’ and when I ventured out on it I found it slippery as well as slack so that both feet skidded in opposite directions, leaving me like a dancer about to do the splits, hanging on grimly to the jackstay.

‘Out. Right out to the yardarm,’ came the Mate’s voice, fainted still. I hated him at this moment. There were none of the ‘joosts’ and ‘ploddys’ of the stylised Scandinavian to make me feel superior to this grim officer. He spoke excellent English.

Somehow I reached the yardarm. I tried to rest my stomach on it, and stick my legs out behind me but I was too tall; the foot-rope came very close up to the yard at this point, where it was shackled to the brace pendant, and my knees reached to the place on the yard where the riggers had intended my stomach to be, so that I had the sensation of pitching headlong over it. Fortunately there was a lift shackled to the yardarm band, a wire tackle which supported the yard in its lowered position, and to this I clung whilst I looked about me.

What I saw was very impressive and disagreeable. By now I had forgotten what the Mate had said about falling into the dock and I was right out at the starboard yardarm, 160 feet above the sheds into which Moshulu’s 62,000 sacks of grain were being unloaded. The rooftops of these sheds were glass and I remember wondering what would happen if I fell. Would I avoid being cut to pieces by the maze of wires below, or miss them and make either a large expensive crater in the roof or a smaller one shaped like me? I also wondered what kind of technique the ambulance men employed to scoop up what was left of people who fell from such heights. I tried to dismiss these melancholy thoughts but the beetle-like figures on the dock below that were stevedores only accentuated my remoteness. The distant prospect was more supportable: a tremendous panorama beyond the city to the Antrim Hills and far up the Lough to the sea.

‘Orlright,’ called the Mate. ‘Come in to the mast.’ I did so with alacrity, but was not pleased when he told me to go to the truck on the very top of the mast. I knew that with these blasted shoes I could never climb the bare pole, so I took them off, and my socks too, and wedged them under the jackstay.

There were two or three very rotten ratlines seized across the royal backstays. The lowest broke under my weight so I used the backstays alone to climb up to the level of the royal halliard sheave to which the yard was raised when sail was set. Above this was nothing. Only six feet of bare pole to the truck. I was past caring whether I fell or not.

I embraced the royal mast and shinned up. The wind blew my hair over my nose and made me want to sneeze. I stretched out my arm and grasped the round hardwood cap 198 feet above the keel and was surprised to find it was not loose or full of chocolate creams as a prize. Now the bloody man below me was telling me to sit on it, but I ignored him. I could think of no emergency that would make it necessary. So I slid down to the royal halliard and to the yard again.

‘You can come down now,’ shouted the Mate. I did. It was worse than going up and more agonising as I was barefoot, with my shoes stuffed inside my shirt.

‘You were a fool to take your shoes off,’ said the Mate when I reached the deck. ‘Now you can learn to clean the lavatories.’

Since that day I have been aloft in high rigging many hundreds of times and in every kind of weather but I still get that cold feeling in the pit of the stomach when I think of the first morning out on the royal yard with the sheds of the York Dock below.

TECHNICAL INTERLUDE

(Surface at ‘That night I went ashorev…’)

In the afternoon I went with a number of other newly arrived crew to sign some papers at the office of the Finnish Consul. Afterwards Vytautas took me over the ship. The strength and size of her steel top hamper was matched by that of her immense steel hull – into which more than 4,800 tons of grain would be packed. Moshulu’s gross tonnage (that is to say, the entire internal volume expressed in units of 100 cubic feet to a ton) was 3,116. She drew twenty-six feet of water when loaded and measured 335 feet on the waterline.

She had a very handsome, fine bow entrance somehow disproportionate to her rather heavy overall appearance; a tiny poop only twenty feet long also contrived to spoil her looks when seen from the beam, but the general effect was undeniably impressive. Like Archibald Russell, Moshulu was fitted with bilge keels to make her more stable. Above the loadline the hull was painted black except for the upper works of the amidships, which were white. Her masts and spars were light yellow. Under the bowsprit there was no splendid figurehead like those of the Killoran and Pommern, only on the beak beneath the bowsprit a carved boss with a coat-of-arms picked out in yellow and blue, the house mark of Siemers, the Hamburg owners who had had her originally in the nitrate trade.

The masts, fore, main, mizzen and jigger, were each supported by a system of heavy fore-and-aft stays, six on the foremast, four on the main and mizzen, three on the jigger. On the foremast the forestay that supported it was a double stay set up taut with rigging screws shackled into the deck on the fo’c’sle head. The fore topmast stay, the next above the forestay, was also a double stay led through blocks on either side of the bowsprit and passed round rigging screws. The bowsprit itself was held rigid by two stays underneath it, the outer and inner bobstays, and on each side by three bowsprit guys shackled into the bows.

The three square-rigged masts were supported by shrouds of heavy wire; three pairs of lower shrouds extending from the bulwarks to the ‘top,’ round the mast and back to the bulwarks; three topmast shrouds extending from the ‘top’ to the crosstrees; and two topgallant shrouds above. From aft came great stresses and there were nine backstays on each mast to meet them. Both lower shrouds and backstays were set up to the hull plating and tautened by heavy rigging screws. All the doublings were wormed, parcelled, served and painted black; the seizings were white, one of the few concessions to the picturesque in the whole ship.

In the days when a ship’s masts and yards were wooden, the rigging was of hemp, set up with lanyards and deadeyes. In a dismasting it was sometimes possible to cut away the wreckage and allow it to go by the board; but the shrouds and backstays of Moshulu’s standing rigging were of steel wire so thick and strong that if the masts went over the side and one set of rigging screws was torn bodily out of the ship, it would be a tremendous job to cut away the slack rigging on the lee side without special equipment if the rigging screws stripped their threads.

Each square-rigged mast crossed six yards to which six sails were bent, a total of eighteen: the royal, upper and lower topgallants, upper and lower topsails and below these the big course-sails, fore, main and mizzen. There was a total of thirteen fore-and-aft sails: four head sails set on the forestays to the bowsprit – the flying jib outermost, set on the fore topgallant stay, the outer and inner jibs and the fore topmast staysail all set on their respective stays. In addition there were two staysails set on the topmast and topgallant forestays between each mast, six in all. There could have been royal staysails too, but they were never set in Moshulu while I was in her. With a small crew topgallant staysails were more than enough. Once we set a fore royal staysail beyond the flying jib, but it blew out in a squall and the experiment was not repeated. All the fore-and-aft sails had downhauls for taking them in and halliards for setting them. On the jigger mast there were three fore-and-aft sails, a triangular gaff topsail, an upper spanker between the upper gaff and the gaff boom and biggest of all, the lower spanker. The two lower sails were controlled by brails and were difficult to furl. The arrangement of three sails on the after mast was peculiar to the ex-German nitrate traders. Most barques only had two. With all these sails set, Moshulu’s sail area was in the region of 45,000 square feet.

Vytautas took me right out on the bowsprit. Into the tip of it several nails had been driven, to which some dried horny fragments adhered.

‘Shark’s fins,’ said Vytautas. ‘Good luck, not much of it left now.’ We were facing one another on the footrope. ‘Very dangerous here,’ he said happily. ‘No netting under the bowsprit. If she runs heavily she may dip and wash you off. If you are sent to furl the “Jagare”, that’s the flying jib, look out for the sheet block, it can easily knock you into the water. Remember, please,’ he added a little more wistfully, ‘if you fall from here the ship will go over you and by the time she can heave-to it will be too late to find you.’

I was suitably impressed by these observations and had reason to remember them on many occasions during the voyage.

We worked our way down the bowsprit to the white-railed fo’c’sle head deck, the raised part of the ship at the bows. To port and starboard were Moshulu’s bower anchors, of the old-fashioned kind with stocks, lashed down to the deck. Their stocks prevented them being hauled close up to the hawse pipes, and there was a small crane to lift them on board. Beneath the crane was a teak pin rail with iron pins in it to which the downhauls of the headsails were belayed. The sheets led to pin rails on either side of the fo’c’sle head just above the well deck. In addition there was a capstan with square holes in it to take the heads of the wooden capstan bars. At sea this capstan was used for hauling down the tack of the foresail when the vessel was beating into the wind, but it could also be geared to the anchor windlass beneath the fo’c’sle head. On both sides of the capstan there were massive bitts to which the tack of the foresail could be made fast.

At the break of the raised deck were the two lighthouses which protected the port and starboard navigation lights; each could be entered through a hole in the roof of the lamp rooms under the fo’c’sle head. In port, the copper domes of these lighthouses were neglected and bright green from exposure, but at sea, unless the weather was very bad, they were kept brightly burnished. Two companion ladders led to the well-deck below, and between them hung in a sort of gallows the big bronze bell with Kurt, Hamburg (the name given her by her German owners), engraved on it.

Lashed up next to the bell, with its heel on the deck, was the spare sheet-anchor. Immediately below the lighthouses on the well-deck were the pigsties, built solidly of steel but for the present untenanted.

Underneath the fo’c’sle head-deck were the lavatories, ablution rooms, blacksmith’s stores, the boatswain’s store, and the port and starboard lamp-rooms. It was a draughty, smelly part of the ship. The lavatories were very gruesome, with no locks on the doors and no flushing arrangements. I had spent a memorable half-hour on the first morning cleaning them with a long iron rod and innumerable buckets of dirty dock-water. This was the most disgusting task I have ever been called upon to perform in peace or war. In war not even the pits beside the railway tracks so thoughtfully provided by the Germans for our convenience when we were being moved westwards in chains from Czechoslovakia equalled the lavatories in Moshulu.

Between the two washrooms stood the anchor windlass with its massive cables, and the salt-water pump, a very rickety affair with a pipeline aft to the main deck.

Immediately aft of the pump was No 1 hatch, a tiny thing eight feet square, leading down into the tween deck space and also to the forepeak where the bulk of the coal for the galley was kept. Forward of the coal store were the chain lockers, two vertical shafts in which the anchor cables were faked down link by link as they came in over the windlass pawls above. In the forepeak were great coils of wire strop, mooring springs and towing hawser, and for some distance aft in the ’tween-deck the space was filled with a pell-mell of bundled sail. The ’tween-deck was really an upper hold eight feet high, extending the length and breadth of the ship as far as the after peak, or lazarette, beneath the poop. This deck was pierced through by tonnage openings of the same size as the hatches above them. At sea both the hatches above and the tonnage openings below were battened down, cutting off the upper and lower holds. There was no artificial light below and because of this there was to be a nasty accident quite soon.

Next to No 1 hatch the great trunk of the foremast rose up through the deck from its roots on the keelson of the ship. By the mast was a teak fife rail with iron belaying pins to which the headsail halliards and the sheets of four square sails above the lower topsail were belayed; the lower topsail and foresail sheets were belayed to cleats on the fore part of the mast itself. Not far distant from the fore mast were the halliard winches for raising the upper topsail yards and topgallant yards when setting sail. The royal halliards rove through blocks and were belayed to the pin rails. It took ten men to raise a royal yard. The square sail halliards were so placed that with the yards raised they became in effect additional backstays.

Abaft the foremast was the donkey boiler room with a hinged funnel on top where Jansson and his even more savage-looking superior tended their charge, which was intended to raise the anchors. On very rare occasions it provided power for sending aloft the heavier sails. Here the Donkeymen kept the tools of their trade, which included a blacksmith’s forge, spares for the winches and, an important item, a blow-lamp with which they were always brewing cocoa, happily independent of the irascible cook. On either side of the donkey house was a capstan to which the sheets of the great foresail were brought through fairleads in the bulwarks. They were also used to send sail aloft by manpower.

Between the donkey house and the raised bridge deck amidships was No 2 hatch with Jansson’s dismantled winch beside it. Here the Belfast stevedores, using shore cranes, were unloading with an almost ritualistic deliberation, like figures in a slow-motion film of a coronation ceremony. To port and starboard were the pin rails for the forebraces which controlled the final angle or trim of the foresail and upper and lower topsail yards after they had been roughly braced round with a Jarvis brace winch. Only the course and topsail yards on each mast were operated by winches. The hand braces for the topgallant and royal yards came down to the deck still farther aft on the midships section, and were belayed to the fife rail at the mainmast.

Next to the mainmast was the Jarvis brace winch for the foremast yards with which four men could brace round the course and upper and lower topsail yards according to the direction of the wind, the wire braces playing out on cone-shaped drums on one side of the winch, whilst the slack was taken up by a similar set on the other side. There were three Jarvis brace winches in Moshulu, which eased what would otherwise have been an almost impossible task in so large a vessel for a crew as small as ours. The remaining yards, the two topgallants and the royals, were braced round with long rope braces. In the same way those operated by the winch had also to be trimmed properly by hand.

The forepart of the raised bridge-deck was painted white and had brass scuttles set in it. These portholes shed some light into the port and starboard fo’c’sles and into the galley where the Cook, that most wretched of men, lived in a stifling atmosphere filled with escaping steam, looking very much like ‘the Spirit of the Industrial Revolution’ in a Nursery History of England. The bridge deck, sixty-five feet long, forty-seven feet on the beam, was connected with the fo’c’sle head and poop decks by flying bridges over the fore and main decks which enabled the Mates to move about more quickly when issuing orders. On the bridge-deck was the charthouse, a massive construction where the charts, sailing directions, log-book, barometer and navigational instruments were housed. A companion-way led below to the Officers’ quarters.

Right amidships were the two massive teak wheels connected with the steering-gear aft by well-greased wire cables running through sheaves in the deck. These cables would sometimes break when a heavy sea was running. In a big gale three men would stand on the raised platforms to assist the helmsman who checked the more violent movements of the wheel with a foot-brake set in the floor. In front of the wheel was the big brass binnacle and behind the helmsman was the ship’s bell on which he echoed the striking of the clock inside the charthouse. On a brass plaque below the bell was engraved: Wm. Hamilton, Shipbuilders, Port Glasgow.

Beneath the bridge-deck, in the forepart, were the port and starboard fo’c’sles with the galley in between them; the Petty Officers’ cabin, which housed Carpenter, Donkeymen, and the Sailmaker’s assistant, who normally worked by day; and the Sailmaker’s loft. In the after part were the six rooms of the Master’s accommodation – saloon, bathroom, cabin, etc – spare room for guests – and the Officers’ quarters, also the accommodation for the Steward and Cook. The Steward, Steward’s boy and Cook lived aft but helped to work the ship, and even went aloft when the necessity arose.

Short ladders to port and starboard led down to the 130-foot long main deck, where the ports of the Captain’s saloon amidships faced on to No 3 hatch. By the mizzen mast was another Jarvis winch for the mainbraces, the mizzen halliard winches and the main pumps. On either side of it were skids supporting the ship’s motor-boat and a gig. Farther aft, to port and starboard, were two sets of davits each supporting a lifeboat. Between them was the standard compass on a raised platform, level with the flying bridge and connected with it, a henhouse on skids above the deck, No 4 hatch, a freshwater tank, just before the break of the short poop and the jigger mast with the mizzen brace winch. On the poop was the patent sounding machine, a capstan and the spare kedge-anchor.

Beneath the poop was the entrance to the after peak where the stores were kept. It was covered with a grating, heavily padlocked. Also under the poop was a pair of auxiliary wheels which could be connected to the steering-gear if the cables parted; there was also a binnacle with a compass card that displayed the most extraordinary abberrations. The helmsman’s head projected right through the deck, but he was so walled-in by a curved steel coaming above and on either side that only a very imperfect view aloft could be had through the glass window in the front of it. There were six compartments under the poop. Two were originally intended for the apprentices, one was appropriated by the Sailmaker as a cabin in cold weather, another served the Carpenter as a workshop.

The bulwarks on the fore-well and main decks were shoulderhigh and fitted with steel doors at intervals, hinging outwards from the top. These freeing ports enabled the water to drain off when the ship took a heavy sea. They made an abominable din and ropes were often washed off belaying pins and jammed in them.

All the slack of running rigging was coiled down on these belaying pins. There were a couple of hundred pins with some 300 lines belayed to them, some miles of hemp, wire and chain. As no sails were bent aloft, they seemed mystifying and without purpose.

All this I learned from Vytautas.

‘The higher the gear, the farther aft, is the rule,’ he said. ‘You see, it’s quite easy.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You know the names of all the yards?’ asked Vytautas.

‘Yes,’ I said. I thought I did.

‘But do you know buntlines from leechlines and clewlines and the difference between a sheet and a tack? You will have to know these things, you will have to know them in Swedish, and you will have to find them at night.’

‘How?’

‘We must see Sömmarström. He’s the Sailmaker and the only one who can help you.’

*

That night I went ashore with Jansson and Vytautas Bagdanavicius to have a ‘liddle trink’. It was the farewell to the boys who were going back to Mariehamn. A steady Ulster drizzle was falling as we came on to the dockside and the cobblestones shone greasily in the glare of the arc lights.

It was a long way to the main gate. We passed a steamer moored astern of us, brilliantly lit, throbbing with the movement of hidden machinery; there was no one about her, no one on the dockside, only a mangy cat scrabbling at a rubbish pile, whilst the rain swished down into the filthy water of the dock. After what seemed an interminable walk, for my feet still ached after the business in the rigging, we arrived at the dock gates, where in addition to the watchman there were two vast Belfast policemen, hard as nails, armed with pistols and long sticks, who eyed us unlovingly. Outside the gate we were on the Donegal Quay where, what now seemed a whole life ago, I had put my trunk in a taxi. Facing us, across the quay, was a wild and woolly-looking pub with its name ‘Rotterdam Bar’ over the door in letters of blood.

Inside, most of the crew had already gathered. Many of them I had never seen. Those I had were unrecognizable in the shore-going uniform, single-breasted blue serge suits of very Teutonic cut and light-coloured caps. In their company the evening passed in a haze. I remember meeting an Englishman called Sowerby who had just completed a round voyage in Moshulu as a passenger. As the evening wore on and people became drunker and spoke more freely I got the impression that the ship had not been very happy or the Captain very popular.

I was unused to beer in large quantities and, downing pint after pint, I quite soon found myself drunk. Leaning my forehead on the brickwork in the lavatory, I remember being sick and groaning to myself: ‘Oh, God, I’m drunk, oh, Christ, I’m drunk, what am I here for?’

There was a lot of singing of a dark, Nordic kind. Then, after a long while, I heard a voice calling ‘Time’. Lights were dimmed and we reeled out into the wet unfriendly night.

Someone suggested that we should dance and we set off down a street of heart-breaking squalor in the direction of a dance hall on the first floor of a building in Corporation Street. We went up a flight of narrow stairs and paid a shilling each to a man who, in any Police Court, would have been described by the Magistrate as a ‘Corrupter of Youth’. The pleasures which we were made free of appeared innocuous enough. The room was large and to the music of a modernist radiogram two or three couples were circling rather gingerly. At intervals the music was drowned by the noise of passing tramcars which swayed past the uncurtained windows like ‘Flying Dutchmen’. The seats round the walls were filled with a lot of girls heavily powdered but well below the age of consent. Some were drinking fizzy lemonade. Most of them looked like schoolgirls who ought to have been in bed asleep by this time after finishing their homework. Soon I was prancing round the room with a big, niffy red-headed girl who was liberally covered with the wrong shade of powder. I tried to talk to her but was relieved to find that she spoke no known tongue. I was very tired.

I was almost glad when a quarrel broke out between one of our crew and one of the natives; chairs were raised and began to fly through the air, the lights went out, there was the crash of glass and a bottle landed in Corporation Street. My partner vanished to join the opposition and soon we were fighting a rear-guard action on the stairs. By the time we reached the street police whistles were trilling merrily.

The march back to the ship was like the ‘Retreat from Moscow’ painted by an elderly spinster. The injured and the incapable were being supported by their companions. Jansson, who was very far gone, was being held up by Vytautas and myself, one on either side.

‘The police will not like this,’ said Vytautas, who was almost sober. ‘I also do not like this place.’

At his suggestion we disengaged ourselves from the main body and made for a different entrance to the dock. Just then Jansson passed out completely and we dragged him forward along the street with his feet scuffling the granite cobbles.

‘We must lift him now,’ said Vytautas, as we came up to the gate. There were the inevitable two policemen, suspicious and broken-nosed. They bore down on us as we hoisted the Wretched Jansson into a vertical, more lifelike position.

‘Where are you going?’ one of them demanded accusingly.

‘Moshulu,’ said Vytautas in a disarming way.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ asked the other, flourishing his great bludgeon in the direction of Jansson whose head unfortunately chose this moment to fall forward with an audible click.

‘He is suffering from overwork,’ I said with drunken insolence, and hiccuped. Nothing seemed to matter any more. Fortunately the policeman failed to understand my English accent. At the same time the drizzle of rain increased to a downpour and they both retired to their hut. Otherwise we should probably have been arrested.

We proceeded on our miserable and interminable way. To reach the Moshulu we had to pass round three sides of the York Dock. On the way we tripped over a hawser in a patch of shadow and nearly dropped Jansson in the water.

At the gangplank we were met by a bedraggled watchman armed with a pick helve who scrutinised us minutely before allowing us on board. Exhausted and wet we reeled into the fo’c’sle and after removing Jansson’s boots, pushed him into his bunk and sought our own. As soon as I lay down on my straw mattress the fo’c’sle began to revolve like a gramophone record. I crawled on deck, barking my shins on all sorts of projections, and sticking my head over the rail, was fearfully sick for the second time. It had been a long, long day.