The Last Time Around Cape Horn by William F. Stark

The Last Time Around Cape Horn by William F. Stark

Author:William F. Stark [WILLIAM F. STARK]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2012-01-24T16:00:00+00:00


* * *

On June 11th, fourteen days after we’d sailed from Port Vic, we began to pick up what we hoped were the Roaring Forties. We were now well out into the South Tasman Sea that lies between Tasmania and southern New Zealand. It was a Saturday, and the westerly wind increased steadily all day. By midafternoon the Pamir was plunging through the dark greenish seas at 11 knots, approximately 13 miles per hour—good speed for a sailing ship. In any windjammer encountering a rising wind, a tension existed and a decision had to be made about how much sail to carry to maintain good speed but not too much that the ship became overpowered. The boldest captains—who were sometimes also the shortest-lived ones—kept the maximum amount of canvas flying. The most cautious masters ordered it furled early. Always there was a fine line to tread, and the captains’ decisions were closely watched, analyzed, judged, and much commented upon by their crews.

In late afternoon, Captain Bjorkfelt ordered the royals—the topmost sails on the three tall masts—taken in. Sailors scrambled aloft.

The following day, June 12th, a Sunday, the wind increased throughout the morning. Sunday on a windjammer was just like any other day of work. The seas rose all day long, each crest higher, the troughs deeper, spaced much farther apart as they rose. On the midship deck it took two men to hold the two big wheels steady. Unlike a freighter, there was no telemotor on the Pamir, which was a motor, activated by a turn of the wheel, that on engine-powered ships actually does the work of swiveling the rudder. On old sailing ships like the Pamir the wheel and the rudder were directly connected by cables instead of a motor. It was purely the crew members’ muscle that turned the rudder or kept it steady against the battering of the seas. With unfavorable and powerful winds, it demanded two men simply to control the wheel.

All day, the captain ordered first one sail, then another brought in, and all day sailors climbed up and down the riggings and bellied over the yardarms, furling the rough, windblown canvas.

By evening, the canvas had been furled on all the upper yardarms of her three big masts, so the Pamir carried only seven of her eighteen square-rigged sails—three on the foremast, two on the mainmast, and one on the mizzenmast. Even with this vastly reduced sail area, the Pamir logged 238 miles during the day’s twenty-four-hour run—considerably more than we’d made in several of the previous day’s runs combined.

Monday blew hard, and by Tuesday, June 14th, we were south of the southern tip of New Zealand, having sailed over 1,500 miles from Port Vic in a bit over two weeks. It was that day I had my first real taste of what a storm at sea meant. I’d witnessed storms before while working summers on freighters in the Great Lakes and the North Atlantic but sailing into a storm on a windjammer in the Roaring Forties was an entirely different phenomenon.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.