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FredaUtley.com

A MODERN SEA BEGGAR

TEMPLE UTLEY

being the story of his cruise from Newlyn to Fiji

in the yawl `Inyala’, with letters telling

of his life in the South Seas

edited by

FREDA AND EMILY UTLEY

Illustrated with Photographs

LONDON

PETER DAVIES

Published in 1938

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

THE UNlVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

TEMPLE’S MOTHER, EMMIE UTLEY

AND TO

HIS FRIEND, RAB BUCHANAN

PREFACE

This book has been compiled from three sources: from

manuscripts prepared for publication by Temple

Utley (some of which have appeared in The Yachting

Monthly), from his log-book, which he frequently kept as

a private notebook, and from his letters.

The editors have drawn from these sources and com-

bined them. This explanation is necessary because they

know that Temple Utley himself would never have pub-

lished in this form some of the observations and thoughts

which they have included. As far as possible, however,

they have avoided altering his words. The letters have

been printed with the permission of their owners, Temple

Utley’s mother and Rab Buchanan.

The editors desire to express their appreciation and

thanks to E. Warington Smyth, whose nautical know-

ledge was of great assistance in revising the text, and who

gave much time and care in helping with the actual

work of editing. They owe much to her many suggestions.

Their thanks are also due to Rab Buchanan for assistance

in deciphering the MS. and for his encouragement

throughout.

CONTENTS

Page

PREFACE – – – – – – – 7

PART I

The Cruise: Adventures: England to the Marquesas

(September 1930 to September 1931)

NEWLYN TO VIGO- – – – – – 15

VIGO TO TENERIFE – – – – – – 26

III. TENERIFE TO TRINIDAD – – – – – 38

TRINIDAD – – – – – – – 63

TRINIDAD TO BARBADOS – – – – – 72

BARBADOS TO PANAMA – – – – – 80

VII. PANAMA TO THE GALAPAGOS- – – – – 92

VIII. THE GALAPAGOS:

Chatham Island – – – – – 109
Charles Island – – – – – 121
A Visit to Dr. Ritter- – – – 129
James Island – – – – – 135
With Brun on the Norge – – – 150
Disaster – – – – – – 160
A Desperate Journey – – – – 175
Salving the Norge : and Departure- – 195

THE GALAPAGOS TO THE MARQUESAS- – – 204

CONTENTS

PART II

Life in the South Seas (1931-1935)

Page

THE MARQUESAS- – – – – – 225

THE MARQUESAS TO TAHITI– – – – 247

III. TAHITI TO FIJI – – – – – – 281

INTRODUCTION WILFULLY MISPLACED, BEING

A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF TEMPLE

UTLEY – – – – – – – 333

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The yawl Inyala – – – – Frontispiece

Page

Rab Buchanan and Temple Utley – – – 80

The Inyala, lee rail awash – – – 208

Temple Utley at the wheel of the Inyala – 336

PART I

THE CRUISE: ADVENTURES:

ENGLAND TO THE MARQUESAS

(September 1930 to September 1931)

`. . . I often say to myself when I take the wheel

at night, the sky a blaze of stars and the ship

cutting a phosphorescent track through the

black, “Where would I sooner be? Who would

I change places with” I tell myself, “Nowhere

and no one.” One lives fully like this-doing

things and dreaming.’

(In a letter from Temple Utley

to his mother)

NEWLYN TO VIGO

When I was a small boy the first books which made a

vivid impression on me were Nansen’s Farthest

North and the back numbers of the Boy’s Own Paper,

with tales by Ballantyne and Kingston, and especially

Coral Island.

There were two things I wanted to do; one was to go to

the North Pole, and the other was to sail to the South

Seas. I had a great fleet of model yachts, and in my sum-

mer holidays I used to sail a dinghy with my father, and

sometimes I would get twenty-four hours on a fishing

boat.

Whilst still a medical student I spent a holiday in Italy,

where I made friends with an Englishman who was

stranded in Portofino with a yacht. As he had sacked his

French crew and could not ship an Italian one, I offered

myself to him as crew, and I had a delightful week sailing

on the Mediterranean. This revived the old desire to sail.

While I had been away a great friend of mine, called

Rab, had heard that one could spend wonderful holidays

on the west coast of Scotland in a small sailing boat, the

idea being just day sailing with safe anchorages every

night, and to spend much of the time walking, shooting

and fishing. So with this very modest idea of sailing Rab

bought a beautiful little ten tonner called Temptress, and

the following spring four of us went up to the Clyde to sail

her. None of us knew much about it, but each of us tried

to bluff the others that he was a salt-encrusted old shell-

back. But before we ever sailed, before I even saw the

Temptress, the stimulus was given to us which eventually

landed Rab and me in Panama. We met the late owner of

16 A MODERN SEA BEGGAR

the Temptress, Mr. J. S. Douglas Dixon of Glasgow, and

found that he had sailed her round Cape Wrath to Nor-

way, and also round the west coast of Ireland to Mar-

seilles. Our adventure in the Scotch lochs seemed a very

poor thing after that.

We sailed about the lochs for a fortnight; by then

we were fired with ambition to go to sea, and Rab and I

thought we would like to sail to Southampton. This

seemed a great adventure, and we were amazed at our

own daring.

One who afterwards comes into the story, called

Walter, had to leave us, so three of us set out. The first

night we spent at sea we got a bit of a dusting, and we

left another member of the crew on the Isle of Man. So

Rab and I sailed by ourselves to North Wales feeling even

more heroic. But then I had to go home. Nevertheless

two months later we tried it again. We sailed back to

Scotland, and then with a paid hand actually did sail her

to Southampton. We learned a lot.

The following summer I had very little time, but was

invited to go with four strangers on a fifteen-ton cutter

from London to Bergen, Norway. Walter came with me.

I was mate, and pretended to be the complete deep-sea

sailor. I would like to tell the story of that cruise. The

boat was very old; and the hull and rigging were com-

pletely rotten. The skipper, who was a very fine sailor,

had been to sea before, but the others were complete

novices and all were inclined to sea sickness. It was on this

voyage that I learned what the sea could be like when it

really turned nasty. We got to Bergen all right, but com-

ing back ran into a ‘strong’ gale, an official number 9

Beaufort Scale; we carried away the bowsprit and the

boom, and eventually got into Cuxhaven harbour under

bare poles, pumping like mad. The boat was sold there for

twenty-five pounds.

NEWLYN TO VIG0 17

In the winter of 1929 to 1930 Rab decided that we

would go to the South Seas. He found a definite sum of

money and started looking for a boat. He first thought of

buying one of the smaller Brixham trawlers called `mules,’

which had the reputation of being splendid sea boats.

The Brixham smacks are some of the few sailing fishing

boats left in England. He went over four or five of them

with a surveyor, and found every one of them rotten, as

they had been built in a hurry after the war from green

wood. Then Rab tried to buy the Asgard, Erskine Chil-

ders’ old boat, a Colin Archer ketch of the Norwegian

pilot boat type, but after a lot of negotiation her owner

decided not to sell. It was while he was inspecting the

Asgard that Rab first saw the Inyala, and the surveyor

advised him to buy her.

The Inyala was built in Falmouth in 1897 to Lloyds’

special survey. She is an old-fashioned boat of the plank

on edge type, very strongly built, with oak frames and

pitch pine planking, and the surveyor passed her as per-

fectly sound. She is yawl rigged and her dimensions are:

fifty-one feet overall; forty-five feet on the waterline;

eleven feet beam; nine feet six inches draft. There is a

1906 Parsons engine giving a speed of two knots, and she

carries twenty gallons of petrol.

Below from forward aft there is, first, the forecastle

and galley, then a passage with cupboards and shelves to

port, and a small cabin to starboard, once the owner’s

cabin but now holding two fifty-gallon water tanks and

the ship’s stores. Next comes the saloon, then aft of

that the companion ladder with a W.C. to starboard and

another cupboard containing another fifty-gallon tank

to port. Aft again is my cabin, and then the engine-

room and sail locker combined, and there is another,

fifty-gallon tank in the lower part of the forecastle

floor.

18 A MODERN SEA BEGGAR

We could get no information about the Inyala’s qualities

as a sea boat, as her last owner had never taken her out of

the Solent. The experts we consulted all disagreed. Some

said that she was just the boat for the purpose; others that

a boat with so little beam would be a death trap. Also, an

enormous deck house completely spoiled her looks. But we

had seen nothing better that Rab could afford to buy, and

both Rab and I have a prejudice in favour of deep draft

boats. We feel vaguely they cannot turn over. So Rab

bought her. We got our old Scotch hand Willy down from

Oban, and with my sister Freda as additional crew sailed

her to Brixham to fit out.

As we originally planned the cruise to the South Seas

the crew was to consist of four amateurs: Rab, skipper;

myself, mate; Walter, and a doctor friend of mine, whom

I will call `G.’ About the middle of May I went down to

Brixham with G to try her out. I found Rab busily engaged

in cutting four feet off the main mast and six feet off

the top mast before I could stop him. After I had told

him what I thought of him we set sail for Cherbourg.

Then Rab had to go home, so G, Willy and I set off

for Brest. We found the Inyala to be an excellent sea

boat, but she was rather slow and much too tender, and

we decided to put an extra three tons of ballast into her.

We agreed then that Rab was right in shortening the

main mast; but I have since regretted the cutting down

of the spars.

We four met in a pub in London and decided to sail

about the middle of July. There was great enthusiasm.

We toasted one another again and again. We were all

convinced that town life was just silly: we said that all it

amounted to was earning enough money to buy enough

beer to deaden the memory of how one earned the money

to buy the beer. We damned all civilization, and swore

that we would never come home again, that we would

NEWLYN TO VIGO 19

find some obsure atoll and settle, and there spend our

lives waiting for the coconuts to drop off the trees. Then

the first flow fell. G resigned his job, but the local

authorities immediately offered him a better one at a

thirty-three per cent increase. He was still firm about his

atoll, but when they made him an even better offer and

then as there were only three of us we decided to take

Willy, and eventually met in Brixham about the middle

of July 1930.

We spent a hectic ten days. Willy, Rab and Walter

each had his sweetheart or his wife staying with him,

and the women were all convinced they would never

see us again. The Brixham fishermen shook their heads

gloomily and foretold disaster, saying that no boat

with so little beam was fit to go to sea. They worked

on Willy, who felt that way himself, and, worse, they

worked on Willy’s wife. To make matters even worse,

the weather was very bad, the wind blew persistently

from the south-west, and there was gale after gale. When

everything was ready we kept on putting off the day of

departure because the weather was so bad.

At last at the beginning of August we set sail, saying

our destination was the Canaries. The wind was light

leaving Brixham, but as soon as we got out of the shelter

of the Start we met a strong breeze dead ahead with a

very unpleasant sea. Rab, who is a bad sailor, was very ill;

and I, who never actually had been sea sick, was feeling

none too good. I steered the boat until about eight in

the evening and then went below, leaving her to Walter

and Willy. She was then on the starboard tack, but when

I came on deck again at eleven o’clock I found her on the

port tack heading for Bolt Tail; the jib outhaul had

parted, the jib was half up and half down, and Willy at the

wheel did not appear to have noticed that anything had

20 A MODERN SEA BEGGAR

happened. We secured the jib, and I left Willy again in

charge and tried to cook a meal. There was an awful mess

in the forecastle. Willy, on whom we had always de-

pended before, had not stowed anything, and he had also

left the forecastle hatch ajar. Everything was swamped

and I could not get the stove to light for about an hour,

but eventually having done so by dint of soaking it with

paraffin I managed to warm up a stew, which only I and

Willy were able to eat. Then Rab from his bed of agony

ordered us to heave to for the night, which we did; but I

made the mistake of not lowering the mizen, so she did

not lie to very well.

In the morning it was blowing much harder and

Rab decided to put back. We had a furious argument, but

Willy when appealed to also thought it was advisable, so

we shamefully ran back to Brixham. The worst part was

that no one was surprised to see us back.

Rab decided that he would not start with us from

England, but suggested that Walter, Willy and I should

find another amateur and that he would join us later.

Then Willy said that he would not go, so that left Walter

and me.

For nearly a month Walter and I stayed down at Brix-

ham trying to arrange something. We advertised in The

Times and all the yachting papers, but found no one. At

last we got Whitney, a friend of the secretary of the

Little Ship Club, so the only thing we wanted was a paid

hand. We could get no one in Brixham, where our name

was mud, but my sister, who was staying with me for a

few days, and who spends most of her holidays in fishing

boats, was sure she could get me a Cornish fisherman.

After a lot of telephoning, I engaged Richard Jenkins, on

the recommendation of another fisherman friend of hers,

and I arranged for him to arrive two days later. But the

day after I had fixed this up Whitney got a telegram to

NEWLYN TO VIGO 21

say that his brother had got badly injured in a motor

accident and was not likely to live, so he left us.

The following day Richard Jenkins arrived, and then

Rab, not knowing that Whitney had left us, came to see

us off. By this time I was getting desperate, and I per-

suaded Rab to let me go with Walter and Jenkins and

another paid hand if we could find one. But then Walter,

whose morale had been slowly ebbing away through the

weeks, suddenly decided that he would not go, and he,

too, left me. Finally it was decided that I should sail from

Brixham to Newlyn with my sister and Jenkins as crew

in order to pick up a second paid hand in Cornwall. When

we arrived in Newlyn, to my surprise I found Rab wait-

ing for me. He said that he would come at least as far as

Spain with me, but that I could remain skipper and he

would be my mate.

I was very relieved about this. Rab is an expert navi-

gator, but I, on the other hand, only a fortnight before I

left Brixham could do nothing beyond navigating by dead

reckoning and getting my latitude by meridian altitude.

Rab for the last fortnight had been coaching me at odd

times in how to get position lines and I knew how to do it

in theory, but theoretical knowledge and the confidence

that you can practise that knowledge are two very dif-

ferent things.

In Newlyn we took on a second paid hand, another

fisherman called Jack.

Monday, 1st September, was a lovely day, and to our

joy it was blowing fresh from the north-east. We spent

the last hours getting the fresh provisions on board, and

at about four-thirty in the afternoon all was ready. My

mother had come down to see us off, and I took her ashore

and we had two farewell drinks together. My sister was

wanting more and more to sail with me, but had promised

to join her husband in Moscow. All Mousehole and most

22 A MODERN SEA BEGGAR

of Newlyn were there to see us off, including all Jenkins’

and Jack’s relations. At six o’clock we cast off our moor-

ings, and Rab took her out of Newlyn harbour under

motor. As we went by the entrance my sister called out,

`I must come, too.’ I called back, `Jump for the rigging.’

She hesitated, looked as if she were going to, then hesi-

tated again, and we swept by. When well out in Mounts

Bay we set mainsail, jib, staysail, mizen and gaff topsail,

and I knew in my heart that we were really off.

The wind was very light at first, but about ten o’clock

it began to freshen, and at midnight it was blowing about

force 6 steady from the east-north-east.

The sailing directions advise you, on leaving England,

to make as much westing as possible so as to get an offing

of at least 10 degrees West, as the chief danger lies in getting

embayed in Biscay. Also by getting west as quickly as pos-

sible you get beyond the 100 fathom line into the 2,000

fathoms of the Atlantic. It is the sudden shelving of the

Atlantic bed which makes the short dreaded seas of the

Bay of Biscay.

So having the wonderful luck of a north-east wind,

which is so rare at this time of the year in England, I

drove her west-south-west as hard as she would go. We

had forty-eight hours glorious sailing, and from mid-

night September 1st to midnight September 2nd we

logged 161 miles, an average of just over six and three-

quarter knots. The Inyala has never sailed so fast before

or since.

I felt very well, very proud and very happy. After all

the uncertainties of the last weeks I knew we were really

off and that nothing was going to stop us now.

On September 3rd the wind began to fall light, but at

midday we had logged 209 miles, and it seemed to me

that I was in a totally different world. The sea was clear

and of a deep oceanic blue, and the short channel waves

NEWLYN TO VIGO 23

had given way to the long Atlantic rollers. I went over-

board for a swim and the water felt about ten degrees

warmer. Our observed position at noon was 47 degrees 36′ North,

10 degrees 20′ West.

From then onwards there is little to recount. The wind

grew lighter and drew steadily ahead, but we had our

offing and all went well. Rab was very sea sick, but he

clocked my observations every day and checked my calcu-

lations.

Extracts from my Log are:

`September 5th. Wind light from north-west with

periods of calm. Heavy squall from west about midnight

followed by calm. Log reads 289 at 1.45 p.m.

`September 6th. Wind continued light during the day,

but freshened towards evening. Wind backed to south-

west and we had to put about at 2.15 a.m.

`September 7th. Rab is feeling much better and we dis-

cussed the situation. I rather want to go straight on to the

Canaries while the weather is fair, but Rab wants to go

into Vigo so that he can go home to sell his farm. Rab says,

however, that as I am skipper, I must decide as if he were

not there. I retort that if he were not there I would go

on, but as he is there and I have never been to Spain, I

feel we could enjoy life together in Vigo. So we decide to

enjoy Vigo together. That being decided we worked out

our position, making it out at 5.00 p.m. 43 degrees 45’N.,

9 degrees 55′ W. Then we had a large whiskey apiece and an-

nounced confidently to our crew that they would see a

flashing light every fifteen seconds on the port bow about

10.00 p.m. They saw it at about 9.45. Since then they have

had a great respect for our navigation, but they were not

so astonished as we were.

`September 8th. Last night we kept Villano on our port

bow, and picked up Cape Torinano about 2.00 a.m. The

wind was light and dead ahead. I slept from 4.00 a.m. to

24 A MODERN SEA BEGGAR

8.00 a.m., when Rab woke me to take over. We were

halfway between Torinano and Finisterre, wind dead

ahead and everything shrouded in mist. It all looked very

much like the west coast of Scotland. We spent all day

beating down the coast. In the evening the wind dropped

to nothing and then it poured with rain. I was on deck by

myself, and murmured, `If the rain before the wind, then

the topsail halyards mind.’ I awaited the squall, but no-

thing happened.

`I handed her over to Rab about 3.00 a.m., a dead calm

still prevailing.

`When Rab woke me about 10.00 a.m. everything had

changed. Scotland had been transformed into Southern

Europe. There was still a dead calm, but the mist had

cleared up and the sun was shining, and we were about

two miles from the entrance to Vigo Bay, doing about

two knots under the motor. About midday we stopped the

engine and Rab and I had a glorious swim. At four in the

afternoon we dropped anchor off Vigo Yacht Club, eight

days out of Newlyn.’

The port authorities came for our bill of health, and

said that as we were a yacht there would be no further

formalities and we could land when we liked. We rowed

over to the Yacht Club, and were welcomed by the Pre-

sident holding a large whiskey in each hand. He then

took us around the town, feeding us on shell fish and

pointing out all the night clubs. It was quite a welcome;

but I am afraid if the President ever sails into Cowes he

will not receive quite the same hospitality from the Royal

Yacht Squadron. Altogether we had a very good time in

Vigo, and made many friends, but I was sad to think that

Rab was leaving me. At last he decided to sail on the six-

teenth. On the evening of the fifteenth we went into the

agents for the Nelson Line, to buy his ticket home.

There I met a young Dutchman called Tony, who be-

NEWLYN TO VIGO 25

gan talking to me ,about sailing and about an Irishman

called Walsh, who had sailed into Vigo in a little five-

tonner on his way around the world. We went on talking,

and he seemed about as mad about sailing as anyone I had

yet come across. I suggested that he might like to go with

me to Tenerife. He said that it was impossible, but that

he would like to see the boat. We went on board and he

decided to come-but I knew he was coming ten minutes

before he did. I mentioned this later, and he said: `You

could lime me to go sailing with a spitty finger.’

VIGO TO TENERIFE

Rab and I decided to have a quiet last night at Vigo-

just a little dinner and then bed at ten o’clock in pre-

paration for the ardours of the morrow. We got on board

all right at about eleven, but then suddenly half Spain

arrived on board to wish us farewell. The party lasted till

five a.m. I vaguely remember Rab saying good-bye to

me, but the first thing I really knew was Tony arriving

on board at eleven in the morning all ready to sail.

I pulled myself together and we left Vigo at one-thirty.

There was no wind, and to my great astonishment I

managed to start the motor. About two miles out we got

a slight breeze from the north which gradually freshened.

We set all plain sail and the gaff topsail. I wanted to make

as much westing as possible, so I set a course south-west by

west, which made the wind just abaft the beam. We

made good progress and by midnight had logged sixty

miles. That night I rather had the `wind up’. It was

1,200 miles to the Canaries, and I had nobody to consult.

It was the first time I had ever set out on a long cruise

with the responsibility entirely my own. Also, although

I have never been actually sick, I never feel too well the

first twenty-four hours at sea. But it was a wonderful

night; I took the twelve to three watch, and mixed with

my fear was a great pride and joy.

The following morning the sky became overcast, and

by midday the glass had fallen two-tenths. There was a

leaden sunset with ominous triple-banked clouds, and I

had a very definite feeling that there was bad weather on

the way.

During the night of the 17th to 18th the wind con-

VIGO TO TENERIFE 27

tinued to back, and by six a.m. we could only make south

by east. The night was very overcast and there was a very

red dawn.

At noon by dead reckoning I was about forty miles to

the west of the Burling Islands. But my observed position

made me only about twenty miles away. As the wind was

still backing and freshening I decided to go about, and

steered her west by a half-north. It blew harder and

harder, and by six-thirty it was blowing a moderate gale.

But the seas were out of all proportion to the wind, and

she was putting her bows right under, and the forecastle

hatch was letting in a lot of water. I looked around at the

sky and the sea, and decided to take the mainsail off her

and hoist the trysail. Just as we got the mainsail on deck

and the trysail set the wind lulled, and I felt I had been

over-cautious, especially as there was a sneer on Jack’s

face. But the lull was only temporary and the seas got

larger and larger. The boat was greatly eased and she no

longer put her bows under. I did not heave to, but kept

gently edging to windward with a man at the helm. The

glass had fallen over seven-tenths in twenty-four hours.

During the night of the 18th to 19th the size of the

seas continued to increase, but the wind did not rise in

proportion. The boat behaved very well, but in spite of

blankets continued to take a lot of water through the

forecastle hatch; also a good deal came through the aft

hatch, flooding my bunk. At five a.m. the storm cul-

minated. There were three or four very heavy squalls

and the wind blew a sustained force of 8 for about an

hour. The seas, I should say, were nearly twenty feet

hqh. Everything had moderated by ten o’clock. At midday

the wind veered to north-west and the sun came out; we

got all our bedding and clothes on deck to dry. Every-

thing on board seemed to be soaked through. We put up

.ez, A MODERN SEA BEGGAR

the mainsail and sailed south-west. I got my meridian

altitude and took two position lines during the afternoon.

I got a perfect interception, and realized that it was very

lucky that I had trusted to my observations, instead of to

my dead reckoning the previous day. When I went about

I had only been about fourteen miles from the Burling

Islands.

I found I spent all my time navigating. I had not had

to add or subtract for the last seven years, and I made

very heavy weather of it. I remember thinking at that

time that bad weather was merely a tiresome interrup-

tion which took me away from my calculations.

From then onwards the wind gradually dropped and

we got alternating calms and rain squalls, but the swell

remained very large. We argued about the size. Tony

and Jenkins said they were about thirty feet from crest to

trough; I said about fifteen feet, but there was about a

hundred yards from crest to crest and they were built in

three storeys. Everything was banging about, and we

only made twenty-one miles in fourteen hours. On the

other hand, it was a glorious day of semi-tropical

weather, and we began to anticipate the pleasure that

was to come. Tony and I had a very good swim, and we

spent the time sun bathing and cussing the boom.

of strength, the real type to go sailing with. Jenkins had

rather got the wind up, the size of the swells and the

loneliness of the ocean were a little too much for him. He

kept on saying: `If we get swells of this size with no

wind, what will we get if it blows?’ I wrote in my log:

`Jenkins is a magnificent seaman, and altogether a dear,

but like all fishermen he hates the unfamiliar, and he `

hates the idea of having no convenient rock to wreck him-

self on in a blow.’

`Jack has gone west altogether, although he has had

Tony was a great find, a thorough seaman and a tower r”

VIGO TO TENERIFE e9

nine hours sleep each night since we left, He just goes

about with a face as long as a fiddle cussing under his

breath. The fact that there was too much pepper in the

soup was the last straw to-night-a poor fish. But most of

mankind are poor fish when it comes to sailing, either

before you start or later.’

That night was a wonderful one. I stayed up talking

with Tony till three in the morning, and then took over

from him. I sat dreaming at the helm, looking first at the

stars and then at the blazing phosphorescence of the

rollers, and thought to myself if anybody in the world

offered to change places with me, I would answer: `Where

better could I be?’

I decided that my crew would probably leave me in the

Canaries, but that I should try to get a scratch crew and

go on.

On September the 21st the wind was north-east by

north and dead aft of our course. I had hopes that we

might be just within the north-east trades, so I decided

to set the squaresail.

This was a thoroughly experimental affair. We had

first decided to adopt Conor O’Brien’s method of running

the yard up on a jackstay attached to an iron ring round

the mast head. But just before we left England Weston

Martyr had suggested to Rab that this was unnecessarily

complicated, and that it would be better to bolt the yard

to the ring and to hoist the whole contraption on the stay-

sail halyard. Then, when the yard was aloft, to set the

squaresail by first hauling on the central halyard and then

pulling on the two outhauls.

We had got the gear ready in Vigo, but now nothing

seemed to go right. The ship rolled all over the place and

everybody’s temper was very frayed. Everything we could

do wrong we did, and we hauled up that yard and then

brought it down on deck again five times in all. At last

. . .

90 A MODERN SEA BEGGAR

after four and a half hours’ hard work we set it. Then we

were rather disappointed. It seemed very small, and al-

though the wind had freshened to a strong breeze we

could only make three knots. Then we set the raffee. This

was no trouble, and it increased our speed to about four

and a half knots. But the raffee was much too small, and

I remarked bitterly in my log, `Rab always under-

canvases his boats. If we go to the West Indies I will add

two cloths to the raffee. I would like to put a new topmast

on her, six feet longer than the present one. Also I regret

the four feet that has been cut off the main mast. These

deep boats require driving, and the Inyala’s working

canvas is about right for a gale, but nothing less.’

But that evening after a drink or two all round every-

thing seemed very good. The barometer had risen, the

wind was steady from the north-east blowing about force

6, and we were fairly confident that we were at last really

in the north-east trades. I noted in my log at ten p.m.:

`Jenkins is quite cheerful again, and is declaring that he

has never known better sailing. Jack is cussing in the fore-

castle and Tony is singing at the helm. I am writing my

log with my right hand and clinging to a glass of whiskey

with my left. How I pity everybody who is not with me.

This is life as it should be lived. Continue to give Tony

good marks; of all people I have come across he has the

best temperament for this sort of thing. The sea is in his

bones.’

We continued to run happily before the north-east

trades and knew what perfect sailing was, and on Sept-

ember 93rd I decided to make for Madeira.

There is little to record, except how enjoyed ourselves.

The weather was glorious. I went about naked most of

the time. Also I discovered the right way to be towed from

the rope ladder for my morning bathe. This became quite

a ceremony. First I soaped myself all over with a teacup-

VI00 TO TENERIFE 51

ful of fresh water, and then Jenkins tied a rope about my

middle. I hung on to this with my hands, lying on my

back in the sea. It is a glorious sensation. The ceremony

of the Captain’s morning ablutions completed, the work

of the day went on.

One evening I got several bites from bonitos, but they

always got away either with the line or the hook. I felt

I must catch one–for the sake of the Boy’s Own Paper.

On September 24th I told the crew at noon that they

Would see land dead ahead at about two in the afternoon. At

two o’clock I could see land distinctly, but no one else

could, but at three o’clock it was clearly visible to all. I

have never been more pleased about anything in my life.

I had been observing and calculating, but never really

believed that it was quite true. There are few better

sensations than verifying one’s calculations in fact.

The crew began to acquire great respect for my

navigation. We all celebrated at sundown. We rounded

Cima Island at midnight, September 24th, and were in

Funchal Bay about noon the following day. We dropped

anchor in five fathoms between Loo Island and the Mole.

I had wanted to go to Madeira because of my memory

of a happy winter spent there as a child with my father.

But this time, though we thought it a lovely place, we did

not like the inhabitants. You cannot go ashore without

being pestered by louts willing to sell you anything from

chairs and fruit to women and boys. As a last straw the

Captain of the Port sent in a bill for one pound for pilot-

age. Under protest he reduced this to ten shillings, but

we had never seen any pilot. I strongly advise seamen to

keep clear of this place.

We weighed anchor on September 526th at about

6.45 p.m. for Tenerife. The wind was about abeam of

course, and I thought I would try her under the square-

sail. I set mizen, trysail, squaresail, raffee and jib in suc-