FOUR DAYS BEFORE THE MAST

or

What am I Supposed to do with all These Ropes

and
Why is this Person Yelling at me?

Click on picture to enlarge

Mackerel skies and mares’ tails make tall ships carry short sails
When the sea-hog (porpoise) jumps stand by at your pumps
Seagull, seagull, sit on the sand; it’s never good weather when you’re on the land

In the film Master and Commander, the HMS Rose was used as the main ship.

Actually, there was a time when I would have found such quaint sea lore as
quoted above extremely interesting; unfortunately, this is not the time.
Although the lines are for some reason running through my head, I am far
too otherwise engaged to enjoy them. In what is a dream come true, I am at
the bow of a three-masted "tall ship," a "windjammer," a "square-rigger," an
almost exact wooden reproduction of a 24-gun British frigate, the HMS
Rose.

The replica I am standing on was built in Nova Scotia in 1970 to sail during
the American Bicentennial; the original was built in England in 1757 to fight
in the French and Indian War and to eventually bottle up American towns,
destroy American ships, and stop daring Rhode Island smugglers once and
for all. She did her job well; partly in response to her power, the Americans
began building their own navy.

Yet, just as nature-lovers belatedly learn that Henry David Thoreau forgot to
mention bugs, lovers of tall ships belatedly learn that people who write
pretty paeans to the sea forgot to mention seasickness. And so what I am
doing at the port bow of a frigate on a storm-tossed sea somewhere off Long
Island is what seamen often refer to as giving back to Neptune what Neptune
demands; i.e., I am throwing up for the eighth - yes, 8th - time in thirty-six
hours. In between such pleasantries, I have to continue working the lines and
sails as well as pull my watch including tricks as helmsman, bow watch and
boat check.

It is just as well that I continue to work on deck because on my hard mattress

cot in the compartment, where sleep is impossible, I hear the loud,
monotonous, nausea-inducing sloshing of the sea within the bulkheads and
exquisitely feel the sway of the boat. Make that: swaaaay of the boat. And,
sure enough, none of the versions of Mutiny on the Bounty be it with Clark
Gable, Marlon Brando or Mel Gibson suggests for a second that there might
be a problem of that nature. In such films there is no need for Dramamine,
patches behind the ear or accupressure on the wrist. So much for Hollywood
and mal de mer verite.

Fiction written on life at sea is, at least, far more realistic. For example, in
C.C. Forester's Ship of the Line a very seasick Captain Hornblower reflects
on how he hated "the indignity of seasickness as much as he hated the
misery of it. It was of no avail to tell himself, as he did, despairingly, while
he clutched the rail, that Nelson was always seasick, too, at the beginning of
a voyage."

****************************
I had wanted to sail on a tall ship both for researching my novel set in 1857
Hong Kong, Hangman’s Point, as well as for the thrill of a lifetime I knew it
would be. I soon learned that the ship was based in Bridgeport, Connecticut's
Captain's Cove Seaport and that, yes, I could sail on the Rose, but as their
Manual For Sailing Aboard The American Tall Ship Rose makes clear:
There Are No Passengers on the Rose!

I would, in time, learn what an understatement that was.

By the time the day for my boarding actually arrived, I had already managed
to buy my rigging knife and marlin spike, my small but powerful flashlight
with lanyard, foul weather gear including a slightly ridiculous rain hat, old
clothes (which would soon be full of tar from the standing rigging of the
ship), insect repellent and binoculars.

I took the train from New York City to Connecticut, grabbed a cab, and ten
minutes later, I was boarding the ship. I could see the "blue peter" flying
high, the flag with a white rectangle within a blue background which meant:
"All persons should report on board as this ship is about to proceed to sea."
Being part of this tradition sent a thrill through me and I thought of the
sailors over the centuries as they prepared to leave the safety of a port and to
once again take their chances with what Joseph Conrad accurately describes
as the "unconcerned immensity of the sea."

At first glance, it looked as if pirates must have attacked the ship shortly
before I arrived. The mainmast course yard was missing, the mainmast
t'gallant yard was lying on the weather deck and cannons and piles of rope
were strewn everywhere. The course yard, I would learn, had been lost in a
50 knot gale off Nova Scotia and the topgallant (t'gallant) yard would be
daringly replaced at sea. An expertly performed cleanup soon cleared the
deck and had the Rose "all shipshape and Bristol fashion" and ready to leave
by noon the following day.

My second surprise was the number of people joining the ship. During
wartime, there had been 160 men on board the Rose to both sail the ship and
man the cannons. During modern cruises there are up to 49 people on board.
What I found was a crew of about 14, myself, and one other person who.
like myself, had joined for the four-day journey. Apparently, by boarding in
May, I had come aboard before the popular season for coming aboard had
begun.
Another surprise: As I walked with bath towel in hand toward the men's
head, I was informed there would be no showers; as we would be out to sea
for four days we could not spare the fresh water. Oh. Little did I know that I
would be so tired working, not to mention seasick, that not taking a shower
would be the least of my problems. And yet another surprise was the youth
of the crew. Many of the crew members were 19 or 20. One moment they
might be horsing around like boys and the next they would be expertly and
daringly dangling from footropes 100 feet up the mainmast while, with great
expertise, working to control flapping sails during a strong wind. even at that
young age, in many ways, "the austere servitude of the sea" had already
matured them far beyond their years.

**********************************

Seasick or not, one quickly learns he is needed to participate in whatever sail

evolutions are called for. "Hands aloft to ungasket sail!" What's a gasket?
"Sheet home the main topsail!" The main topsail; you mean there's more
than one? "Hands to the braces!" Whose hand and what's a brace? "Let go
and haul!” Let go of what and haul what?! And why don't you people color-
code these ropes for God's sake? And why isn't the compass closer to the
wheel so I can make out the little numbers on it when I'm at the helm? And
whatever happened to room service? Of course, the term “before the mast”
indicates the motley crew as opposed to the captain and officers who live
and dine in more spacious quarters toward the stern of the ship.

I must admit that from the moment I spotted the Rose, a boyhood fantasy
immediately came to life: I would be placed in charge of the cannons of a
beautiful sailing ship of war. Actually, it made a bit of sense: Inasmuch as I
am not mechanically inclined, I knew I wouldn't be much help working with
the lines (ropes), and inasmuch as I don't particularly like heights I knew I
wouldn't be much help working aloft with the sails, but I had done my
military research thoroughly so at least in theory I could, if ordered, load and
fire a cannon; so where better to place me than in charge of the guns? And
while that did not happen, to my great joy, during my four days at sea, the
good ship Rose fired at passing ships!

On the third day, I had just come up on deck to inform the watch officer
which of the ship's various compartments needed pumping (my stomach, for
one) when I happened to look up. There, flying high on the mainmast, were
two signal flags, SN (Sierra November): The S with its blue square on white
background and, beneath that, the checkered blue-and-white N. I also
noticed a modern naval frigate off our port bow about to cross our path. It
was, in comparison with the size of the Rose, enormous, immense, massive.
I asked one of the mates what the flags' message was and he showed me the
book with the International Code of Signals. The message we were sending
to the modern frigate - which apparently had notified us that he would be
crossing our bow - was:

You should stop immediately! Do not scuttle! Do not lower boats! Do not
use the wireless! If you disobey I shall open fire on you!

Even as I stood there, mouth agape, some of the crew rolled a three-pounder
over to the starboard bow and aimed it while another crew member appeared
from below and shouted: “Gunpowder on deck!”

Everyone put out his cigarette and men began preparing the cannon. No,
they were not joking! The uppity destroyer was to be taught a lesson. And,
incidentally, "three pounder" refers to the weight of the cannon ball it would
fire not to the weight of the cannon. For example, the ball of a "nine-
pounder" weighs nine pounds; the cannon which fires it weighs 2850
pounds. In this case the cannon would not actually be “shotted” (loaded) but
would the “enemy” know that?

Rather than the old-style linstock with slow match, two wires from a hand-
held modern device were attached to the cannon, the crew member doing the
firing donned earmuffs and, after a suspenseful several seconds, the Captain
gave the order: “Fire!”

Even from a mere three-pounder on an open deck, the noise was incredibly
loud, and, until it quickly dispersed, there was plenty of powder-smoke.
Apparently, what HMS Rose lacked in modern armament, her Captain and
crew made up for in brazen daring. The behemoth continued to ignore us
and sail past our bows at about 18 knots while we headed toward her with
reduced sail at about three knots.

I could just make out a sailor running quickly (in panic?) on their top deck
and joined in the laughter with others in my crew. But then I realized the
sailor I was watching seemed to be heading toward some kind of huge turret
gun. Worse, I suddenly remembered that modern frigates such as the one I
was laughing at - the very one we had just "shot" at - have anti-aircraft and
ship-to-ship missiles. Fortunately, the captain of the modern frigate seemed
not to take offence that the captain of a traditional frigate was busting his
chops and off they sailed into the distance while the crew of the Rose
speculated on what - if anything - a cannonball would have done to the
frigate's hull had we actually fired one.

The HMS Rose was the ship commanded by Russell Crowe in the film,
Master and Commander, and the author Patrick O'Brian, in his book of the
same name, wrote of such a battle scene this way: "He could see the round
blackness of her guns' mouths now, and as he watched so they erupted, the
flashes brilliant in the smoke and a great white bank of it hiding the frigate's
side." No, it wasn't exactly as he describes it but we had held our (watery)
ground; we had prevailed. And I began to understand what Herman Melville
meant when he wrote over 150 years ago that "sailors are the only class of
men who...see anything like stirring adventure!"

But make no mistake about it: Working aboard a tall ship is grueling,
arduous and demanding. The helmsman must keep his eye on the compass
and make certain the ship is on the correct course fighting, if necessary,
contrary winds and the awesome power of the ocean; while the ship rolls and
tosses, the boat check must scramble down into tiny spaces with his
flashlight to determine when certain areas of the ship need pumping; and the
men high aloft in the rigging soon learn that the old saying of "one hand for
the ship and one hand for yourself" is fiction. The ship often demands both
hands and, when aloft, men balance on the footropes as best they can. And of
course the crew must at all times control the Rose's 13,000 square feet of
often temperamental sail.

Watches are in four-hour shifts but one must also work each day for another
four hours and be available for any emergency. On one occasion, after
pulling watch from midnight to four a.m., just as I was getting into my bed
or, rather, swaying cot, I was told that the weather had worsened and all
hands were needed back on deck to furl the sails. It was 4:15 in the morning
and until then I hadn't known there was a 4:15 in the morning. Trying to haul
recalcitrant lines as a strong wind blows over the bow of a swaying ship in
the middle of the night is something that has to be experienced to be
appreciated.

And with such a small crew on board, even those without nautical skills
must pitch in and do the best they can. My greatest fear was not the height of
the main t'gallant yard or the wrath of enemy ships but that I might be
thought of as the type of sailor Conrad described so well: "...the man that
cannot steer, that cannot splice, that dodges the work on dark nights; that,
aloft, holds on frantically with both arms and legs, and swears at the wind,
the sleet, the darkness; the man who curses the sea while others work. The
man who is the last out and the first in when all hands are called. The man
who can't do most things and won't do the rest...the sympathetic and
deserving creature that knows all about his rights, but knows nothing of
courage, of endurance, and of the unexpressed faith, of the unspoken loyalty
that knits together a ship's company."

*****************************

Sailing and working on board a tall ship has been compared to bush flying in
Alaska and scaling impossibly high mountains: it leads to the discovery of
another universe. And to be far from land on the deck of a tall ship at night is
to enter a world of intense, vivid beauty and breathtaking resplendence. I
shall never forget the first night I came out on deck for my watch. The ship's
port and starboard lights cast very little light on deck and I stepped out into a
world of complete darkness above which was a sky more full of stars than I
had ever seen. And in the darkness on deck I saw the glow of a cigarette; the
only sign that, in the midst of this immense, dramatic, almost unimaginable
landscape, another human being was somewhere near. I could hear the wind
singing in the rigging above, the slight complaint of sails as they cracked in
the wind, the clattering of the blocks (pulleys) against the masts and the
water striking the bow. I could see waves breaking into foam or, as they are
often referred to by sailors, "Neptune's sheep" and "white horses."

Not surprisingly, it was Conrad who best described such a scene; as he wrote
in The Nigger of the 'Narcissus': "A multitude of stars coming out into the
clear night peopled the emptiness of the sky. They glittered, as if alive above
the sea; they surrounded the running ship on all sides; more intense than the
eyes of a staring crowd, and as inscrutable as the souls of men...The ship
was a fragment detached from the earth...round her the abysses of sky and
sea met in an unattainable frontier."

One thing sailing on board a tall ship will give any modern sailor is a deep
sense of respect for the men sailing them today and especially for those who
sailed them in yesteryear. Whereas we had excellent food and well balanced
meals, they had salted meat and weevil-filled ship biscuit; whereas we had
emergency engines, radar and electronic depth sounding devices, they had
lead lines and sextants; whereas we at least had berthing areas, they slept in
18-inch-wide hammocks on the gundeck. And to be wounded in battle
usually meant facing the ship surgeon's "dismemb’ring blade" which more
often than not ended in death.

Ships such as HMS Rose are keeping such experiences and traditions alive.
And to stand at the bow or to take the helm of a tall ship like the Rose as it
sails on alone through a vast, dark ocean under a sky full of stars is to
understand what Conrad meant when he wrote: "The true peace of God
begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land." And, to the best
of my knowledge, the record I set on board still stands: No one else has ever
vomited on board the HMS Rose eight times in 36 hours!

So let Russell Crowe eat crow on that one.

Copyright Dean Barrett 2009

**********************************

THE AMERICAN TALL SHIP ROSE

Richard Bailey – Captain

A full-rigged ship: three masts with square sails on each one

Specifications
Length overall 179 feet
Length on deck 125 feet
Height of main mast 130 feet
Displacement 500 tons
Draft 13 feet
 Beam 32 feet
Sail area 13,000 square feet

For more information on this great ship go here: http://www.tallshiprose.org/

deanbarr@loxinfo.co.th

www.deanbarrettthailand.com

www.deanbarrettmystery.com