‘The sun,Closing his benediction,Sinks, and the darkening airThrills with a sense of the triumphing night—Night with her train of starsAnd her great gift of sleep.’
‘The sun,Closing his benediction,Sinks, and the darkening airThrills with a sense of the triumphing night—Night with her train of starsAnd her great gift of sleep.’
‘The sun,
Closing his benediction,
Sinks, and the darkening air
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night—
Night with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.’
A particular pleasure of ours was to see the fishermen return. First the fleet of bawleys would anchor in the Ray a mile away, and as soon as the sails were stowed the men would put their catchin the boats to sail home to the creek. Two or three boats, perhaps, would detach themselves before the others like early ice-floes breaking away from the pack. Then groups would shove away from the fleet and tail out into a long procession as they raced for home. In the distance one could see the tide creeping over the flats, but long before it reached us there was water in the creek, so that only the sails of the boats showed moving between the banks of sand. The next fleet to look out for after the bawleys was the fleet of cockle-boats, and they would work the creek or come over the flats according to the tide. Lastly, close on high water, came the loaded barges.
From the time the young flood came up the creek to the time the tide ebbed off the flats there was always something happening. One never woke at night and peered out but one saw the unceasing life of the sea, from the mustering of the humble bawleys in the dark to go shrimping to the passing of the liner, shining from stem to stern, perhaps carrying a Viceroy to the East. Often I said to myself: ‘Here I am on deck in the night, and I ought to be asleep. But it is worth it. Just think; I might be sleepless in a house in a town, and have to look out upon a gas-lamp in a street.’
And then the entrancing variations of the tides! What is the secret of this curiosity that compels me to come frequently on deck even in the nightto see whether the tide is higher or lower than it ought to be? It is the uncertainty of what will happen, and one’s partial ignorance of the causes of whatever does happen. Nautical almanacs give you their explanations of abnormalities, but they add instances of peculiar tides which are in contradiction of all their explanations. Any encyclopædia tells you that the sun and moon govern the tides; that the moon’s influence is two and a quarter times that of the sun; that spring tides occur just after full moon and the change of the moon, and rise higher and fall lower than neap tides, which occur at the moon’s quarters. But when you know that, how little you know! The very next step takes you into one of the least accurate of sciences.
In his famous ‘Wrinkle’ Captain Lecky says that we must wait for a genius to elucidate some of the mysteries. In the accounts of tides and tidal streams in nautical almanacs or the Admiralty Tide Tables one comes across phenomena about which the best authorities can say only: ‘These peculiarities are probably due to....’ Of the double low water at Weymouth Captain Lecky writes that it is not to be explained, but adds characteristically that someone has ‘had a shot at it’ in the Admiralty Tide Tables. The double high water at Southampton, the twelve-foot rise to the westward of the Bristol Channel, which increases to twenty-seven feet at Lundy Island and forty feet at Bristol, and theSevern bore, are easy to understand from the shape of the land. But that there should be only a six to seven foot rise on the English coast by the Isle of Wight, while there is a sixteen to seventeen foot rise on the French coast opposite, is not so simple.
Apart from peculiarities of their own in normal weather, tides are affected by strong winds and a low barometer, and then the tide tables, with their rise and fall to an inch and their time of high water to a minute, become hopelessly inaccurate. A strong north-north-west gale in the North Sea will raise the surface two or three feet and make the tides run longer on the flood; a strong south-east or south-west wind has the opposite effect. A low glass and a strong south-west wind will make big tides at the entrance of the Channel by Plymouth. On October 14, 1881, a large mail-steamer was unable to dock at the East India Docks, London, because a severe westerly gale had kept the tide back, so that at high water it was five or six feet below its proper level, and the next flood came up three hours before its time. In January of the same year a tide was registered at London four feet ten inches above high-water mark. At Liverpool there is a record of a tide six feet above ‘H.W.O.S.,’ which is the abbreviation for ‘high water ordinary springs.’ At Milford Haven in January, 1884, during a heavy westerly gale, the tide stopped falling two hours before the proper time for low water, and atlow-water time had risen fifteen feet. So great is the contrariness of the tides that even strong winds cannot be relied upon for their effects.
For those whose reclaimed marshes lie behind low sea-walls in Essex the irregularities of the tides are too exciting at times. After the fierce gale in November, 1897, had veered from south-west to north-west, innumerable breaches were made in the sea-walls of the East Coast estuaries and many marshes ‘went to sea.’ Watchers on Latchingdon Hill, which overlooks the archipelago between the Crouch and the Thames, saw a memorable sight that day. With the shift of wind the atmosphere had cleared, and the shores of Kent were visible. At the time of high water there was a big tide, and the flood was still running strong, and continued for nearly two hours beyond its proper time. Suddenly great streaks of white appeared along the east side of Foulness Island. It was the tide pouring over the sea-walls. Havengore Island, New England Island, Rushley, and Potton Islands disappeared save for the solitary farmhouses standing in the water, and an occasional knoll crowded with frightened beasts. Then the tide flowed over the sea-walls of the Roach River and across Wallasea Island to the River Crouch. Finally, little Bridgemarsh Island and the North Fambridge marshes for two miles to the west of it disappeared, the tide rolled up to the edge of the high ground, and the sea seemed tostretch from Kent to the foot of Latchingdon Hill.
With all practical observers the turn of the tide is the critical and significant moment; it is then that the auspices are good or bad. Smacksmen tell you that if it begins to rain at high water it will continue for the whole of the ebb. They will say to one another, ‘I doubt that’ll rain the ebb daown,’ or ‘We’re a goin’ to have an ebb’s rain.’ If it begins to rain at low water they say that they will have a ‘coarse flood.’ Again, on a calm summer morning, if it is high water at seven or eight, and the wind then springs up easterly, there will be an easterly wind all day. But if the tide is a midday one there will be no wind till high water. Sometimes it will blow freshly at high water when there has been no wind before, and though there may be none afterwards.
Fishermen who have got ashore on a sandbank in a bit of a sea declare that they can tell at once whether the tide is ebbing or flowing by the way the vessel bumps. On the flood-tide the sand is alive, but on the ebb it is dead and as hard as flint. Ask them for an explanation, and they will retort with further facts, such as that in a calm on the flood-tide the sand can be seen boiling up in the water, but never on the ebb. Again, they believe that frost checks the tides. They say it ‘nips’ them—a play upon the word ‘neap,’ which they use as a verb, and pronounce ‘nip.’ Dredgermen on the River Crouchwill tell you that in winter, after a flood-tide with the wind easterly, the bottom of the river is ‘shet daown hard as a road,’ and the dredges slide over the bottom and will not lift the oysters. They cannot explain it. Undoubtedly an onshore wind and a flood-tide bring sand into the lower reaches, for the men find it in the dredges. On the other hand, some declare that the bed of the river is often hardened, where no sand is, as much as twelve miles from the sea.
No wonder that the tides are for the fishermen the standard of reference in all their conversation. They will say that such-and-such a thing happened about an hour before high water, or that the skipper of theLadybirdwent ashore just as the vessels were swinging to the flood. If a skipper is asked when he is going to get under way, he will say, ’As soon as the tide serves’; or if asked why he did not arrive before, he will answer, ‘I could not save my tide.’
‘From Bermuda’s reefs; from edgesOf sunken ledges,In some far-off, bright Azore;From Bahama and the dashing,Silver flashingSurges of San Salvador.’
‘From Bermuda’s reefs; from edgesOf sunken ledges,In some far-off, bright Azore;From Bahama and the dashing,Silver flashingSurges of San Salvador.’
‘From Bermuda’s reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,
In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama and the dashing,
Silver flashing
Surges of San Salvador.’
In August of our first summer afloat, we went for a month’s cruise on the Essex coast. We had various mishaps of the kind which arrive out of the blue and remind the yachtsman that, however long his experience, he is still a learner.
One day, beating down the Colne in a fresh wind and a buffeting short sea, I made an error of judgment by sailing between two anchored barges where there was not enough room to handle theArk Royal. Finding myself in difficulties, I let go the anchor, but we dragged on to one of the barges and bumped against her as gently as our best fendoffs would let us. Our anchor had fouled the other barge’s cable, and it took some time to clear it, even with the help of the friendly skipper of the barge we had bumped.
THE RIVER ORWELL
THE RIVER ORWELL
‘Aren’t that the little ouldWill Arding, sir?’ he said, when we were ready to drop astern and let go.
‘Yes.’
‘I reckoned that was she as soon as I seed ’er, and ain’t she smart with her enamel and all? But I’d a knaowed she anywhere. Scores and scores o’ times she’s laid alongside o’ we, that she hev!’
No damage was done except to my feelings. But the barge skipper had the delicacy to say that theArk Royalhad meant to rub noses with an old friend, and had dragged alongside on purpose.
At Pin Mill Louisa had the panic of her life. We were all on shore except Louisa, and a shift of wind blew the stern of the anchoredArk Royalon to the mud. As the tide fell the barge’s bows sank lower and lower until, to Louisa’s horror, water began to rise over the kitchen floor. Seeing the water rise continually, she naturally thought the vessel had sprung a leak and was going to sink. Her first idea was to lift the plug to let the water out—a thing she had seen me do when the ship was high and dry. But luckily she could not get at it. With some presence of mind she then went on deck and hailed a neighbouring barge, whose skipper and mate came off and helped her to bail out her kitchen, and explained to her that as a barge is flat-bottomed the pumps can never empty her completely, and a very thin layer of water spread over such a large surface will seem considerable when it runs to one end.
Life moves slowly in Pin Mill. If going by steamer to Ipswich or Harwich one is expected to be seated in the ferry-boat, which goes out to meet the steamer, at least ten minutes before she starts. When we went to Ipswich one day the ferry-man, having stowed us and the other passengers in the boat, left us and returned fifty yards up the hard to resume varnishing a boat. When we did start it was certainly five minutes earlier than necessary, and we had not got more than half-way out when I saw a look of annoyance come into the ferry-man’s face.
‘There yaou are,’ he said angrily, jerking his hand towards some figures on the shore; ‘them people tould me they wanted to go to Ipswich, and they came daown half an hour agoo, and they ’adn’t got nawthen to do, only wait, and they goo off for a walk or suthen!’
Another day the children’s gramophone nearly caused a fire on board to be more serious than it need have been, for it prevented us from hearing the cries for help which Louisa uttered while she struggled with an outbreak in the forecastle. We had bought a new cooking-stove with a patent automatic oil feed. We ought to have understood when buying it that it would be unsuitable because it had to be kept upright. The first time it was used while we were under way was one day in Harwich Harbour. We had been running, and had just hauled our wind to stand up the Orwell.Luncheon was almost ready. TheArk Royalwas heeling a little to a fine topsail breeze, and was spanking along to a selection from the ‘Mikado,’ when suddenly I saw some smoke issuing from the forehatch. I sent one of the boys forward to see what was happening, and he bellowed back that the forecastle was on fire. The Mate took the wheel, and I rushed forward in time to see Louisa, like a pantomime demon, pop up through the forehatch in a cloud of smoke. We attacked the fire from aft, and a few buckets of water and some damp sacking put it out.
In September we returned to Newcliff, went into our old berth in the creek, and once more spent Christmas on board.
Soon afterwards the Mate was taken mysteriously ill. The doctor asked for another opinion, and a specialist came from London. But for the fact of our isolation on board ship the diagnosis would instantly have been typhoid. But the next two days, we were told, would settle the question.
It was typhoid.
The ship now became a hospital, with a special bed sent down from London and two nurses. The saloon was emptied of everything save what the nurses wanted, and the long struggle began.
It was like all other serious illnesses in any other home—the children sent away, the pitiful lies that affection devises, the assumed bravery, the brokennights, the anxious talks with the nurses or doctor, and (the background of it all) the fever chart. I wonder whether any skipper of a ship ever watched his positions on a chart with such feelings as I had then.
The crisis came and passed, but ‘When will she be out of danger?’ was asked secretly for many days before a confident answer came. How far these good nurses perjured themselves I do not know. Often they made me go to London, but the journey home was torture. Once, returning in the dark, I saw from the train that there was no light in the saloon. The Mate, as it turned out, was only sleeping. But afterwards a light was always placed on deck to show me that all was well.
At last the children were allowed to come and look fearfully through the windows, and later to speak a few words through them. And then step by step the Mate grew stronger until at last she walked on deck, and we dressed the ship in her honour, and she went away on a long convalescence.
When she came back well and strong I had a surprise for her. She had always been rather afraid of the great fifty-foot sprit which used to sway in a heavy threatening way over our heads when the barge rolled in a cross sea. I had therefore sold the mainsail, sprit, topsail, and mizzen, bought a large yacht’s mainsail second-hand, and had it made into a new mainsail and topsail. I had also bought aneight tonner’s mainsail, which I rigged as a larger mizzen. The whole transaction from first to last cost about eight pounds.
What we really needed most was a motor-launch to give the barge steerage way in calms, to help her up creeks, or for going on shore. With a slow large craft it generally happens that one has to anchor a long way off the landing-place, because the smaller craft are always near the hard; and in bad weather this means heavy work. We bought a book on internal combustion engines, but it did not prevent us from buying an engine that did not generally achieve internal combustion.
When the next August holidays came we were delayed in starting for our usual cruise because the motor-boat had not been delivered. We stood over her till she was ready, and then went for a trial trip, during which she emitted the most distressing noises we had ever heard. However, we could wait no longer, and took her in tow behind theArk Royal.
The first night of the cruise we lay off Southend. The weather, which had been bad, became worse; the wind backed with vicious determination at low water; and by ten o’clock it was blowing a gale. Southend is an exposed anchorage, and we foresaw that we should have some anxious hours as the tide rose. We were close to the pier, where there were five other barges, whose anchors lay round about ussticking up out of the hard sand, and promising us destruction if we should sit on one of them.
We laid out another anchor, forcing it well into the sand, and by eleven o’clock theArk Royalwas afloat. It was a wild night indeed; the barge wallowed, and the motor-boat jerked about on the rollers, snatched and snubbed at her painter, while the spray was cut off from the tops of the waves as though by a knife and flung into her.
I was on deck all night. The gale was blowing its worst about two o’clock in the morning at high water. I could have sworn that the other barges had driven nearer to theArk Royal, so close did their flickering lights seem to us, till I checked our position by the marks I had taken and by the anchor buoys of the barges, and made sure that none of us was dragging. On board each of the barges I could discern a dim watching figure. What an incredible waste of riven water as I looked over the plunging bows of theArk Royal! The sea was like a snow-drift, and across this bleak waste the wind roared unresisted and tossed the spray even on to the deck of theArk Royal. I was much occupied with the thought of a humiliating wreck on a lee shore, as I had little hope of being able to claw off the land if we did begin to drive. And yet I do not think there was a moment when I would have admitted that I had chosen a wrong way of living to be here with my family instead of in a house on the land.Every moment was enriched by an exhilaration that conquered other feelings, a kind of zest in defiance.
The wind is a grand enemy. He gives you his warnings fairly, and those who are not careless have generally time to cut and run if they are only coasting. In this storm, for instance, no one could have mistaken the signs. The glass had fallen rapidly, and a ‘mizzle’ of rain had been followed by a downpour; and all the time the wind had been flying round against the sun. The glass fell still more during the first four hours of the gale, then it suddenly leaped upwards, and the wind moderated or ‘sobbed,’ as the fishermen say, only to be followed by a harder blow than ever—a blow in which the squalls moved at over sixty miles an hour and followed one another in rapid succession, showing that the gale was still young.
There is nothing that relates the dweller at home so intimately to the business of the wider waters as to lie at the mouth of a great estuary. Here were steamers from the ends of the world slogging across the snowdrift, their masthead lights moving steadily like major planets across the sky. Some, perhaps, had passed through the very region in which this storm had been born. No yachtsman who studies the weather can think of a gale as an accident of the British Isles; he sees in imagination a tiny cyclone created as a whirlwind somewhere, it may be, in six to eight degrees north latitude. In the desert of the Atlantic,in calm and heat, with the sun nearly overhead, a tiny column of air ascends and cooler air rushes in to replace it. The cyclone is born. Perhaps it is not a hundred yards across, but as it goes revolving on its journey of thousands of miles it draws in the air all round it as a snowball gathers snow. Westward and north-westward it travels to the West Indies, turning on its axis against the hands of a watch, unlike the cyclone born south of the equator, which revolves the other way. The wind does not blow accurately around the centre, but curves inwards spirally, so that in the northern hemisphere, when you stand face to wind, the centre of the storm is always from eight to twelve points to the right.
When once you understand this rotatory and spiral movement of the wind you cannot listen to the roar of a gale without thinking of ocean-going sailing ships fleeing from the deadly centre. You think of the cyclone touching the West Indies: one rim on the islands, the palm-trees staggering at the assault; the other rim on the open ocean, a ship laid over by the blast, the crew, clinging to the yards, fighting to get the maddened canvas under control before it is too late. The master of that ship had had the warning of the swell which is the gentle forerunner of the storm, but perhaps he carried on too long. Now, under heavily reefed canvas, or perhaps under bare poles, he races from the deadly centre of the storm.
From the West Indies the storm curves to the northward and north-eastward, still growing in size, till it may have a diameter of even a thousand miles. Along the Gulf Stream it comes, conveying within its frame that mysterious core which no one in a sailing ship ever wishes to see—a central patch, it is said, of unnatural calm surrounded by squalls from every point of the compass, a patch where the sea is piled up into a pyramid, untrue, treacherous, and overwhelming. The cyclone bursts later into that tract of dripping fog where the Gulf Stream meets her frigid sister from the north; and when it reaches us in England it is sometimes huge and harmless, but sometimes it has stored its strength and blares across a comparatively narrow belt with the power of a hurricane. And it comes in various guises, in pale bright skies, or wreathed in films of scud, or in rolling hard-edged clouds of inky darkness, or behind a tormented veil of rain.
About three o’clock in the morning I went below to drink some tea and to smoke. When I returned the motor-boat was gone. The frayed painter, hanging from the stern of theArk Royal, told me what had happened. Our brand-new uninsured motor-boat, which we never ought to have bought! I knew that if she had reached the stone-faced seawall or one of the breakwaters there was little hope for her.
As the tide fell I went off in the dinghy in searchof her. Fortunately, I found her in the hands of two men from the gasworks, who had seen her coming ashore and had waded out to meet her. They had pushed her clear of a breakwater, and were standing in the rollers holding her head to sea at the foot of the sea-wall.
As the tide fell farther we walked her out gradually to theArk Royal, and I settled the question of salvage by paying a couple of pounds. Even Cockney Smith could not have accused the gas-workers of a ‘salvage job’ in the circumstances, though no doubt he would have pointed out that they were gas-workers and not sailormen.
Our cruise of that summer was ordered by the necessity of sailing continually from one port where there was a motor engineer to another port where there was another engineer. The children used to take the metal seals off the petrol cans and hang them on the engine as medals, in numbers according to the merit of its performance. If the engine began to knock, for instance, a medal would be forfeited—to be restored if the knocking stopped. They enjoyed the vagaries of the engine; and loved it in secret even when it stopped work altogether and had lost all its decorations. They christened the motor-boatPerhaps.
‘The stormy evening closes now in vain,Loud wails the wind and beats the driving rain,While here in sheltered house,With fire-y painted walls,I hear the wind abroad,I hear the calling squalls—“Blow, blow!” I cry; “you burst your cheeks in vain!Blow, blow!” I cry; “my love is home again!”’
‘The stormy evening closes now in vain,Loud wails the wind and beats the driving rain,While here in sheltered house,With fire-y painted walls,I hear the wind abroad,I hear the calling squalls—“Blow, blow!” I cry; “you burst your cheeks in vain!Blow, blow!” I cry; “my love is home again!”’
‘The stormy evening closes now in vain,
Loud wails the wind and beats the driving rain,
While here in sheltered house,
With fire-y painted walls,
I hear the wind abroad,
I hear the calling squalls—
“Blow, blow!” I cry; “you burst your cheeks in vain!
Blow, blow!” I cry; “my love is home again!”’
After the Mate’s illness an unreasoning dread of the place where she had lain ill conquered me, and I put away all idea of returning there for the winter. Fortunately, a move was easy enough. If we had been living in a house it would have been otherwise, but a ‘house removal’ for us meant no more than weighing anchor and going to a new spot of our choice. Our choice was conditioned, first, by the necessity of my going to London daily; and, secondly, by the need of providing for our girl’s education, who was now of school-going age.
One anchorage—now known to us as the Happy Haven—attracted us beyond all others. We had found it under stress of weather during one of our Essex cruises, and had ever since thought of it withaffection for the quiet peace of the tidal creek between its grassy banks and for the welcome we had received from the family which lives at the head of that creek and presides over its amenities.
As the autumn deepened it became urgently necessary to decide upon our winter quarters, but the Mate had received no answer to a letter in which she had asked the Lady at the Happy Haven whether means of education for Margaret could be found thereabouts. One day, when we had almost despaired of an answer, I met the father of the family at the Happy Haven unexpectedly in London. His wife, he said, had been travelling; we must write again. And soon an answer came that solved our difficulties. There was no school to give such an education as we wanted, but Margaret could be taught with the family in the house at the head of the Happy Haven. Within a few days we sailed to the Happy Haven, and there we have since lived and hope long to live.
To reach our port there are but two ways, one by water and one by land. Are you coming by water? Then you must come in from the sea and take the young flood up the river past the low-lying islands; if the wind be foul you will have to wait for water according to your draught. With a fair wind come straight on past the village and the wood off which the smacks lie, and past the church tower to the south. When abreast the creek leading to the red-tiledfarmhouse on the starboard hand you will find the best water in the middle.
Keep close to the point on the north side, and from there steer straight for the three great poplars you will see ahead until you reach another church among the trees on the north side. Then keep the hut on the point just open of the old water-mill.
It is quite easy. But long before you come to the Happy Haven our mahogany-faced old pilot, with a walk like a penguin, a parson’s hat tied under his chin with a piece of tarred string, a red jumper, and yellow fearnought trousers, will ‘board you,’ if you want him, and berth you. Two shillings is his charge.
But suppose you come by land. For two shillings you can be driven from the railway station out through the old market town until you come to an avenue of trees and a rookery. There you must turn off the public road into a private road, and drive under the great trees which meet above, and down a lane of thorns until, suddenly turning a corner, you will drive alongside the river to the grassy quay where theArk Royalis lying.
You can go no farther, for the road ends there.
After all, you may say, there is not much to see. Only an old water-mill and three barges alongside it; the mill-house, and above it the mill-head spreading wide; our friend’s house among the poplars; on the opposite shore a farmhouse wherea barge is loading hay; under the sea-walls on both sides fields dotted with cattle and white gulls; an unbroken vault of sky; and the shining creek stretching away into the ultimate green of flat pasture lands. Perhaps a red-sailed barge is coming up the river; the ‘tuke,’ or redshanks, are giving warning of her approach; and a thousand dunlin keep settling on the brown mud, rising to show off all together in a flash that they are snow white underneath.
A cable’s length from theArk Royalis a small head of water held up by a sea-wall and a sluice-gate, and from it, meandering down past the ship into the gut, is a narrow course worn by the water. If you happen to come at the right moment, two families of children in bathing costumes—ours and the children from the house among the poplars—will be taking turns at packing themselves into a large bath. Someone lifts the gate, and the bath in a torrent of foamy water ‘chutes’ down the channel into the gut or is capsized on the way.
Such is a brief description of how to arrive at the Happy Haven, and what there is to see there. But wild tugs with steel hawsers will not drag the name from me. Those who want to live in floating homes will search far to find a better berth.
We have only one very near neighbour, an ex-barge skipper. Like the bargee of whom Stevenson wrote, there seems to be no reason why he should not live for ever. He has seen the best part of eighty years, and is still hearty and quite as active as he need be. He has achieved an appearance barely suitable to old age, and has stopped there. He spends many hours each day in thought. Like us, he pays no rent, rates, or taxes, for he lives in a small and old yacht. And though his means of living are a mystery he lives well.
Bathing in the Sluice at theArk Royal’Headquarters
Bathing in the Sluice at theArk Royal’Headquarters
Twice to our knowledge he has taken a party for a short cruise in the yacht, but beyond this we have never known him earn a penny. And yet if a new mast be wanted, or new iron work, or paint, or varnish, or a rope for fitting out, or a new sail, he buys it. Rumour says he has been a notable smuggler, and there are some that say he has friends who are still free traders. Others believe that he has a share in a barge. But no one knows.
Always healthy, he observes none of the laws of health. It is true he sleeps nine hours every night, but that is in a cabin without ventilation. On a fine summer’s morning most people, when they get up, begin to do something, even though it be unimportant. Not so our friend. He starts the day—breaking, as usual, some rule of health—by lighting his pipe. Then, seating himself comfortably in the open, he airs himself for a long time. While the airing is going on he surveys the sky many times, rotating slowly till he has examined all points of the compass. If anyone be present, he will give his consideredverdict on the prospects of the weather for the day.
When that problem has been solved he will chop a few sticks and remark that he must ‘see about his kittle.’ Soon afterwards smoke will issue from the chimney of his boat, and for the next hour he will not be visible. After that some cleaning operations—not personal—will go on in the cockpit for possibly another hour. Then he may scrape a spar or varnish one, or do a bit of painting. If it be hot he will probably rig an awning, and sit beneath it stitching at an old sail; if it be cold he will rig up a windscreen, and sit behind that.
A couple of hours before high water the pilot, also an ex-barge skipper, arrives to see what barges are coming up, and then he and our friend will be seen side by side discussing things connected with the sea. The approaching barges have to be watched until recognized, and again watched until they are safely berthed. From this important but unpaid labour they know no remission during the proper hours.
Thus, with intervals for meals, our curious neighbour passes his days from one end of the year to the other.
Sometimes I have had the privilege of being present at the sessions of our neighbour and the pilot. One day the pilot described the sorrows of fishermen when the stinging jelly-fish are about, for he spends an odd day at sea in a smack.
‘The water’s full o’ they blessed ould stingin’ squalders, and every time us hauls aour net that’s full on ’em, and they do make me swear suthen. That ain’t a mite o’ use tryin’ to be religious, same as if you wants to be, with them stingin’ squalders abaout. They’re puffect devils.’
I remember the pilot’s comment on our neighbour’s account of a hailstorm. ‘That was a wonnerful heavy hailstorm, that was,’ said our neighbour, ‘and the stones was most as big as acorns. And one come and hit me on the laower part of the thumb. Lor’, that did hurt suthen!’
‘Well, that come a long way, yer see,’ said the pilot.
Another day the pilot, who is appreciably more mobile than our neighbour, described to me an errand of mercy he had undertaken.
‘I’ve just been daown to see pore ould George what bruk his arm last week. Yaou know him, sir, don’t ye? Him what’s skipper of theNancy. I wonder who’ll sail she while ’is arm’s a mendin’. Wonnerful venturesome fellow is George, and that’s haow ’e come to do ut. He took and bought one o’ they bicycles. From what I can hear of it, ’e larnt to ride that well enough same as on the flat. They what taught he to ride tould he to shorten sail same as goin’ daown hills and that, and maybe ’e did. But accordin’ to what I can hear of it, that bicycle took charge daown the hill just past the railway, andGeorge den’t fare to knaow what to do, so ’e reckoned that were best to thraow she up in the wind. And they picked the ould fellow out o’ the ditch with his arm bruk. ’E’s gettin’ on well, and is all right in ’is ’ealth. The doctor’s a givin’ of him some of that medicine aout o’ one o’ they raound bottles.’
Besides his boat our neighbour owns a shed. When he applied originally to the landowner for leave to put up the shed he was refused, because the landowner feared that it would be unsightly. The negotiations that followed are a model for diplomacy.
The old man next asked that he might be allowed to haul up an ancient sieve-like boat on to the bank. To this the landowner assented—if it could be done, which he doubted.
It was done.
But at very high tides the ground underneath the overturned boat was flooded, so that gear stored there could not be kept dry. The boat was then raised bodily a foot or so from the ground by planking. After a few weeks, to make more storage room still, the old man raised the sides of his boat some three feet more and put a roof over her.
This structure escaped objection from the landowner for a year, and so the following summer the roof was removed, the sides were raised another two feet, and the roof was put on again.
This also escaped criticism. Accordingly, thefollowing year an annexe was built on at the bows, and eventually a cement floor was laid. Now there is a water-butt at the junction of the annexe and the main building.
We await further developments.
We made the mistake once—if, indeed, it was not an offence—of offering our neighbour some work. He explained that he had too much to do already, and referred to a particular job which he did not begin till six months later. ‘No sooner do I git one job done than I sees another starin’ me in the face,’ he often says.
Last summer he painted the inside of his yacht, and for ten days he slept in his boat-hut on shore. Sundown every evening was his time for ‘bunkin’ up,’ as he called it, and we used to make a point of asking him what time he would be up in the morning. To this he would answer: ‘Abaout five or six, I reckon. Last summer I used to get up at faour sometimes. Goo to bed with the ould hens and git up along of ’em—that’s the way.’
Then we would watch him retire. There is no door on hinges to his hut, but a flap which fits in the opening. He had to disappear stern first, fit the flap in the bottom of the opening, and pull the top into position with a string. He withdrew from our gaze each evening in the following order: legs, body clad in a blue jersey, white beard, red face, and straw hat.
The next morning we would always be up first, and while we were busy on deck we kept an eye open for the first trembling of the flap. Then out would come the hat, the red face, the white beard, blue body, and legs, and another day had begun for our neighbour. We thought he would have made excuses for not getting up earlier, but we soon discovered that on most days he had no idea what the time was.
At the Happy Haven our water is brought to us by cart in a canvas water-carrier, which holds two hundred gallons. One day we had a panic about one of the tanks. The water-cart had brought four loads, and still the tanks were not full. We heard a sound of running water, which we took to be the water siphoning from one tank to the other. When I returned from London the next evening, the sound of running water continued, but there was something worse—an audible splashing. And the water in the port tank had fallen. Friends were dining with us that night, but luckily they did not expect conventional amusements; they preferred tackling leaking water-tanks to bridge.
The first thing to be done was to break the siphon between the two tanks by letting air into the pipe. After trying in vain to unscrew a joint I decided to drill a small hole in the pipe; but, using more force than skill, I broke my only drill. This meant that all the water still in the tanks—six hundred gallons—might find its way into the bilge. We pulled up a floor-board aft, and discovered that the missing water was even then nearly level with the floor. I lifted the plug aft, but the water would not run out, as the barge was sitting on soft mud, which choked the hole. Pumping is back-breaking work, and I did not intend to do that if it could be avoided. I put on sea-boots and went over the side with a boat-hook and a kind of hoe to puggle about until there was a clear way for the water to run. The difficulty was to find the hole, but the ladies held lights and called out directions while the men shoved a stick through the plug-hole. The water began to run at last, and theArk Royalwas soon dry.
The next day we emptied the port tank into the bilge, and the plumber got inside through the manhole and found the hole, which by a great piece of luck was in such a position that he could mend it by removing enough of the bathroom bulkhead to allow his hand to get through. What we should have done if the hole had been out of reach we hardly dared to think.
Many of our friends have said that they would like to live in theArk Royalin the summer, but most of them boggle at the thought of the winter. To me, somehow, the contrast between the comfortable interior of our home and the rigours of the winter scene pressing close in upon us is particularly satisfying. It is very agreeable at the end ofa winter’s day in London to come back to the barge; to leave an office with its telephone bells, and the hubbub of the streets; to come in little more than an hour to where the lane of thorns ends at the sea-wall. The faint glow ahead comes from theArk Royal. Those piping cries are the redshanks calling in the dark. As I come nearer the separate columns of light from the windows and skylights beam like searchlights. And above the blaze stands up the mast and rigging, free from all burden and strain, resting the winter through. The cheerful chimneys pour out their smoke, which, blowing darkly to leeward, turns into clouds of misty gold as it crosses the belt of yellow light.
Even in our retired creek it is a joy to know that we are on the magic road, which is all roads in the world because it leads everywhere. Of course, we shall never sail out to the back of beyond; but when on summer nights we sit on deck under the pole star, and the phosphorescent water streams past our side like molten metal, we feel that the same sea that bears us laps equatorial islands and continents.
When theArk Royallifts to the rising tide her timbers creak as though she were asking to be free; and her voice is high or low according to the wind. At night she speaks most clearly. In measure to the wind she reminds us of peaceful driftings under still skies, or of torn sails and dragging anchors. When a gale with all the weight of winter behindit bursts in squalls through the rigging, the tiny waves of our haven rip along our sides and the lamp in the saloon swings gently. Then we know, at a safe remove, what weather there must be ‘outside’ if we have such tumult in here. Heaven help us if we were out in the Swin with those clean-bowed fish-carriers that are racing in from the North Sea! Let us hope that the barges that have been ‘caught’ have reached such anchorages as Abraham’s Bosom, or the Blacktail Swatch, sheltered from clumsy steamers by the lighthouse and from the weather by the sand.
Even my insurance policy recognizes that our life is not as life on shore. I am ‘Master under God of and in the good ship or vessel called theArk Royal.’ And the policy deals with life in a large way. For example: ‘Touching the perils whereof they, the assurers, are content to bear, they are of the Seas, Men of War, Fire, Pirates, Rovers, Thieves, Jettisons, Letters of Mart and Countermart, Surprisals, Takings at Sea, Arrests, Restraints and Detainments of all Kings, Princes and People of what Nation, Condition, or Quality soever, Barratry of the Master and Mariners and of all other Perils and Losses.’
Several years have we spent in theArk Royal, and let it be admitted that we feel the need for more room. Once more perceive the advantage of living afloat. We can add to our establishment in units.No builders will tear down our creepers, or excavate our garden, or mix mortar on the lawn. Nor shall we suffer the horrid noise of carpenters. When our additional rooms are ready they will be floated alongside. No District Council will have a word to say about the material of the new building or the nature of the roof.
TheOverdraft, as our first addition under the unitary system is called—a name which is nautical in sound, and suggests both the overflowing of the ship’s company and a certain financial operation at the bank—is an old lighter thirty-five feet long with a beam of twelve feet. We are raising her sides to a height of seven feet six inches and dividing her into three compartments. There will be a sleeping-cabin at each end, and the middle room will be a workshop and playroom, fitted with a carpenter’s bench and a range for both cooking and heating. If our friends in the house among the poplars give a dance we shall be able to float theOverdraftalong to the foot of their garden to provide extra rooms for their guests. When she lies alongside theArk Royalthere will be a covered-in gangway to her entrance-door.
Some day, by the unitary system, we may add other rooms, but the only plan in the offing which seems reasonably likely to reach port soon is a scheme for electric lighting by using our head of water to drive the dynamo.
The reader may permit, however, a vision of our ultimate development. We have often desired to own a tug—having long been strong admirers of the indescribable fussiness and importance of tugs. We should keep steam up in our tug, and use her at moorings as a central heating plant. We should offer to tow the trading barges in and out of the creek, which would be one of the best pastimes imaginable, besides bringing us many devoted friends. And then when we wanted to shift our anchorage! You should just be there to see us start: first the tug, then theArk Royal, then theOverdraft, then the other extra rooms, then thePerhaps, then the sailing dinghy, and lastly the duck punt. When the moment came to anchor again there would be no orders in the manner of ‘Let go the ’ook, Bill,’ but a dignified signal from the tug in the way described by the best of English sea songs: