The cruise of the Nona The story of a cruise from Holyhead to the Wash, with reflections and judgments on life and letters, men and manners
taking us against our course back eastward and northward.
We took council together and determined that with the very first breath
of air we could find we would run back to anchor and wait for a wind
worth having. So we did, and a second day passed in Fishguard harbour,
as empty as the first, and a second night; and then it was I completed
the tune and first verse of a song called the ‘Chanty of the Nona.’
The whole of that time the calm was broken by but few hints of very
uncertain airs.
But just as dawn was beginning upon the third day, when it was already
so light that the sea looked white against the black land, and before
the first touch of colour had made living the edges of the inland
hills, a heartening wind from those hills, cool with morning, fresh
and heavy, not too strong, a friendly wind, a wind just suited to our
course—for it was a point or two north of east—blew down from old
Wales upon the sea.
Of this we took an immediate advantage and were out at once, my
companion steering for the breakwater head at a good pace, while I made
the anchor secure forward and then came back and joined him. We rounded
the breakwater, took her well out and then gybed over with something
of a clatter and a shock and ran down for Strumble, under the growing
day. The great light was still flashing from its tower, standing on
an island off the head, and the name of that island is Michael. Once
we were round that headland, the wind was fairly on our port quarter
and it was a merry race with a happy offshore wind all the way down to
Saint David’s, so that not only the day but also the old land and the
much older sea and the old boat, that was launched so long ago, and we
ourselves, were for the moment young. So ran we down for Saint David’s
and there, putting her nose due south, I, holding the tiller, headed
her for that exceedingly dangerous millrace of a strait between Ramsey
Island and the mainland, called Ramsey Sound.
It was full ebb. The water roared and thundered over the rocks inshore
for all the world as though we were not upon the sea at all but upon
the lower reaches of a tidal river. Though we were running under the
lee of the land we were not too much blanketed, and it was a comfort to
feel the strength of the wind on the boat and to know that one had full
way in such a pass, for these narrow sounds of the Pembrokeshire coast
are perilous to ships and men. Here, in this very passage, lay two sets
of rocks to the right and to the left, called by the name of the two
perils attendant upon the wealthy young. For the first set of rocks is
called ‘The Horses’ and the other ‘The Bitches.’ These are rocks over
which, I say, the rush of the ebb made a noise like a weir. We were
through it in no time, at a pace which, had she touched anything, would
have been the end of herself and of all aboard; but there was no danger
of that because, as I have said, she had full way upon her and was
lively to the helm. Nevertheless was it a relief to come tearing out of
this perilous corridor into the wholesome width of Saint Bride’s Bay
beyond.
Now, as I was coming through this ticklish management of Ramsey Sound,
I was too much taken up with creening below the boom to make out the
water at the rush of the bows and to steer with precision, I was too
much taken up with the business of exactitude under the strain, to
turn to a thing which, from the land long ago, had puzzled me. That is
the way in which one of the most ancient roads in Britain comes down
here to an open beach just above the rush and the roar of Ramsey Sound
and stops dead upon the sands. That open beach is to this day called
_Porth Mawr_—‘The Great Port.’ The ancient road here comes along the
southern coast of Wales as far as Carmarthen and then branches, one
branch coming up Cardigan Bay, which is called, I think, after Saint
Helena, the mother of Constantine, and the other coming straight along
by Saint David’s. They call these old roads ‘Roman roads,’ and so I
suppose they were, but still many of them were there in some form
before this island entered the comity of Europe, before the Roman unity
and order were finally imposed so that England became England.
Anyhow, there was a very old road of the first importance running down
that way, and near it stands the see of Saint David. Now the interest
is this: it comes down to that beach above the narrow roaring river
of Ramsey Sound. Why on earth does it strike the sea there? It is
true that antiquity pulled up boats on to the shore and might use the
beach as we to-day use a harbour—though in our tidal seas a harbour
was always better, I should have thought. But even if they thought
the beach better than a harbour (which it manifestly could not be for
commerce), why should they call it ‘The Great Port’? There it lies
on a most impossible bit of coast, leading nowhere and as valueless
a landing-place as you could get—granted a beach—anywhere in the
island. Did the ancients throw out great breakwaters and thus form a
harbour? That could not be, for surely, had that been done, there would
be remains of such mighty work.
I leave it unsolved, as I and all other men must do this and all other
problems, with the possible exception of the trisection of the plane
angle, which I once all but caught hold of by the tips of my fingers
during a long crossing of the Atlantic in a miserable lame steamer,
too old for her job, in the year 1897, before the gods had left this
broken world.
The Nona came therefore grandly out of Ramsey Sound with a sweep and
dignified nod into the calm of Saint Bride’s Bay, but I knew very well
that there was before me another trial, more difficult still, called
Jack Sound, between Skomer and the mainland, seven miles to the south.
Lord, what a tangle of dangers are here for the wretched mariner! Rocks
and eddies and overfalls and shooting tides; currents and (as you shall
shortly hear) horrible great mists, fogs, vapours, malignant humours of
the deep, mirages, false ground, where the anchor will not hold, and
foul ground, where the anchor holds for ever, spills of wind off the
irregular coast and monstrous gales coming out of the main west sea;
and, most terrible of all, Wild Goose Race.
I will maintain with the ancients that there are some parts of the
sea upon which a god has determined that there shall be peril: that
these parts are of their inward nature perilous and that their various
particular perils are but portions of one general evil character
imposed by the Powers. For you will notice that wherever there is one
danger of the seas there are many. If it is an overfall or a race,
then in that neighbourhood you will also have reefs, unaccountable
thick weather, shifting soundings, bad holding, and all the rest of it.
Witness the western approach to the Isle of Portland, or the Bight of
Saint Malo, with the Channel Islands and their innumerable teeth; the
entry to the Straits of Messina and other places recorded in histories
and in pilot books. Our moderns will have it that such things are
chance and an accumulation of them a blind accident, but I hold with
those greater men, our fathers. Some one here in these places, some
early captain, first sailing offended the gods of the sea. Hence all
the tangle of the southern corner of Wales, Jack Sound and Ramsey
Sound and the Bishop and his clerks, and, worst of all, Wild Goose Race.
I write without knowledge of the Wild Goose Race. I have never been
through it; neither have you been through death, you who read this.
Yet, as we all know that death is a perilous passage and in accordance
dread it, so I with the Wild Goose Race, well so named. My book told
me that little ships like mine getting into that water were often
dismasted and ‘even foundered.’ I like that word ‘even.’
It seems that in Wild Goose Race a boat is taken up and pitched to
heaven and let drop again, twirled round like a teetotum, thrown over
on her side, banged off sideways with great stunning blows upon the
cheek-bone, and blinded all the time with cataracts of spray, the while
the air is filled with a huge mocking laughter. Many races do I know,
Portland Race and Alderney Race and Little Saint Alban’s Race, of which
you shall later hear, and the Race round the Skerries of Anglesey, if
you may call that a race, and the Race in Bardsey Sound. But there
are many races, which, thank heaven, I do not know and which I do not
propose to know, such as the Race of Ushant, and the very damnable
races of the northern headlands, including that Great Maelstrom of
which we hear so much and see so little, and which puts on great
airs: but none of these, I am told, is comparable to Wild Goose Race,
therefore did I let it alone upon this passage. Do not believe it when
you read it in books that a race is made by anything so simple as a
tide against a wind or a sudden precipice in the depths of the sea. It
is made by the anger of those that rule the sea. And yet of races there
is one that has always treated me kindly, and that is the race off the
Start. I have been through it I know not how many times and always was
the sea there either quite smooth, gentle, purring, and domestic; or
an honest running sea, parallel and ordered. But, perhaps, whatever
governs the Start Race had received from me without my knowing it, some
courtesy. I take this opportunity to thank whatever Powers govern that
little corner of the watery world for their kindness.
I have often seen pictures of these Powers, horses and men and women
with fishes’ tails and scales, and gods without scales that ride in
chariots over the sea. I suppose in that world, or in those circles,
the scales are a badge of service, making the link between the
immortals and the dumb fishes of the sea; just as our highbrows make a
link between the rich masters who rob the modern world and the millions
who work. Only there is this difference, that our highbrows have no
scales; they have nothing in common with the dumb millions who work.
But I will not pursue this metaphor lest I should offend Mr. and Mrs.
Able, who themselves indeed live in western suburbs but, upon the other
hand, are perpetually in the houses of the great.
Where then was I? Why, coming into the quiet and amplitude of Saint
Bride’s Bay, but having before me the terrors of Jack Sound. For it is
true of the sea here as everywhere, that it is the symbol of life, and
of our ceaseless duties, and of death. We must never expect long quiet
in the business of our living, nor any long security in any passage of
the sea. But I must say that this run across Saint Bride’s Bay was very
genial upon that summer noon, only there came with the early afternoon
those ominous patches of an oily look to windward, the falling of the
breeze, the sea still running, and yet the canvas not always over well
filled: briefly, the renewed menace of a deadly calm. That calm fell
upon us suddenly enough, just at the moment when we might, with the
last of the ebb, have run through Jack Sound. It came upon us at the
mouth of that forbidden passage, and left us idle and foolish, pointing
anyhow and seeing, to our despair, the marks upon the distant shore
slowly moving backward as (alas!) we drifted north.
Truly, indeed, did the immortal trio—Swift, Arbuthnot, and
Pope—exclaim in chorus: ‘What is mortal man but a broomstick!’ Never
are we in half a gale of wind but we pray crapulously for calm. Never
are we in a calm but we whine peevishly for wind. What, Dog, would
you have the weather cut out for you like a suit of clothes? Is all
the universe to arrange itself simply to your convenience, as it does
for the very rich—so long as they keep off the sea? Will you not be
content with sailing unless just that wind plays which is exactly