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
me, as I considered the many adventures and misadventures of my boat,
that here was a good setting for the chance thoughts of one human life;
since all that she has done and all that a man does make up a string of
happenings and thinkings, disconnected and without shape, meaningless,
and yet full: which is Life.
Indeed, the cruising of a boat here and there is very much what happens
to the soul of a man in a larger way. We set out for places which we
do not reach, or reach too late; and, on the way, there befall us all
manner of things which we could never have awaited. We are granted
great visions, we suffer intolerable tediums, we come to no end of the
business, we are lonely out of sight of England, we make astonishing
landfalls—and the whole rigmarole leads us along nowhither, and yet is
alive with discovery, emotion, adventure, peril, and repose.
On this account I have always thought that a man does well to take
every chance day he can at sea in the narrow seas. I mean, a landsman
like me should do so. For he will find at sea the full model of human
life: that is, if he sails on his own and in a little craft suitable
to the little stature of one man. If he goes to sea in a large boat,
run by other men and full of comforts, he can only do so being rich,
and his cruise will be the dull round of a rich man. But if he goes to
sea in a small boat, dependent upon his own energy and skill, never
achieving anything with that energy and skill save the perpetual
repetition of calm and storm, danger undesired and somehow overcome,
then he will be a poor man, and his voyage will be the parallel of
the life of a poor man—discomfort, dread, strong strain, a life all
moving. What parallel I shall find in the action of boats for a man
of the middle sort, neither rich nor poor, I cannot tell. Perhaps
the nearest would be the travel at a fixed price upon a steamer from
one port not of the passenger’s choosing to another not of his
choosing, but carried along, ignorant of the sea and of the handling
of the vessel, and having all the while no more from the sea than a
perpetual, but not very acute, discomfort, and with it a sort of slight
uncertainty, which are precisely the accompaniments throughout life of
your middle sort of man.
So I have given this book a name: ‘The Cruise of the Nona.’ Had I
called it ‘The Cargo,’ I might be nearer my intention. At any rate, I
am now off to sail the English seas again, and to pursue from thought
to thought and from memory to memory such things as have occupied one
human soul, and of these some will be of profit to one man and some to
another, and most, I suppose, to none at all.
THE CRUISE OF THE NONA
The Cruise of the Nona
It was late in May, near midnight, the air being very warm and still,
and the sky not covered but somewhat dim, with no moon, when I took
the Nona out from Holyhead Harbour, having on board one companion to
help me work the boat, and a local man who could speak Welsh for me in
whatever places I might make along the coast.
The very slight breeze, which had barely moved us through the water
after we had got up the anchor, died away long before we reached the
end of the breakwater, and it was necessary to pull her out with the
dinghy in order to fetch round the end of the stonework and get to sea.
There was at that time of the tide a little current running towards the
Stack, which would slightly help us on our way once we were outside,
and with this we drifted a full hour and more, aided now and then by
faint breaths of air, which rose and died again like memories. So came
we, with the turn of the night, under the glare of the lighthouse at
last, and then put the nose of the little ship round for the point of
Carnarvonshire and the strait between the mainland and Bardsey Island,
which is called Bardsey Sound.
It was a course of about thirty-three miles, with no chance,
apparently, of covering it in all that night, nor perhaps in all the
coming day as well; for we had struck, as it seemed, that hot, steady
summer weather in which one may play at a drifting match for days on
end.
While it was still dark the distant mountains could barely be seen
as something a little blacker than the sky. They looked astonishingly
low, as mountains always do on a moonless night, when there is nothing
to distinguish their details, and nothing against which to compare
them, or by which to tell their distance. Already—it being now nearer
two than one o’clock—a little wind had arisen, settling down, as it
seemed, into somewhat east of north, and blowing over the Anglesey
flats. It gave us perhaps no more than a couple of knots an hour, but
it was heartening after the long calm, and as we had all sail set she
pulled to it steadily enough. I was at the helm, my companion was still
awake, sitting in the cockpit and talking to me, and the hand who was
to be with us till we next landed smoked beside us on deck.
The wind had freshened somewhat, we were making perhaps four or five
knots, when the dawn began to show beyond Snowdon, and those great
hills at once looked higher against the glimmer of grey light. Soon
the whole coast was apparent, and the Yreifles with their triple peaks
(clearer than I had expected; indeed, too clear for fine weather) lay
right ahead and Bardsey Island beyond them and the narrow sound in
between. The wind seemed steady, as though it would hold. I reckoned
that the tide would turn against us anywhere between six and seven in
the morning, that it would turn back through the Sound about noon or
one o’clock, and I calculated that we should be running into Cardigan
Bay, past Bardsey, on the middle of the ebb, an hour or two later than
that time.
But what happened was something wholly unexpected; it is always so at
sea, and that is why it is said that the sea brings all adventures.
Indeed, I think that as we go on piling measurements upon measurements,
and making one instrument after another more and more perfect to extend
our knowledge of material things, the sea will always continue to
escape us. For there is a Living Spirit who rules the sea and many
attendant spirits about him.
But on that brightening morning there was nothing to warn us. The glass
was high and, if I remember right, still rising; the sky uncovered and
clearer than it had been by night; the wind slight, but holding steady;
and all was soldier’s weather, so that any one could have taken that
little ship through such weather where he would. It was weather, one
would say, made for the instruction of the young in the art of sailing.
By the time it was fully light, we were making between six and seven
knots, for the wind had sharply risen. As it was an offshore wind,
there was as yet no sea raised, but little tumbling whitecaps, very
pleasant to look at, and all the movement coming on our quarter from
over the land. With the rising of the sun it blew hard. We were
yielding to it too much; we had taken down the topsail an hour before,
and now I thought it wise to take in a reef as well, which we did in
the headsail and the mainsail, but leaving the jib as it was, for that
sail was not a large one.
I have sailed a great deal off and on in boats of this size (that is,
somewhat more than thirty feet over all, with eight or nine feet beam,
and drawing from five to six feet of water, cutter rigged), and I know
it is an illusion; yet I can never get over the idea that a reef makes
no difference. Two reefs—yes—but one reef I cannot ‘feel.’ It is an
obtuseness in me; but so it is.
However, it seemed wiser to take in a reef of some sort, and two reefs
would have reduced the sail quite unnecessarily, for it was not yet
blowing so hard as all that.
We slipped down the coast smartly, nearing it all the time upon our
slantwise course, and as we did so, the sun being now fully risen, it
blew harder and harder every minute. A sea rose, a good following sea,
but higher than one would have expected so nearly off the land from a
land wind; and, as this boat has very little freeboard (it is her only
defect, for she rises magnificently to the water, and bears herself
better the worse the weather may be), I watched the swirl of the foam
under her low counter as each wave slightly broke under the now fierce
wind.
We shortened down to three reefs, but even so the helm was pulling
hard, and when we changed jibs and put up the smallest we had, it
griped more than I liked, straining my arm after so long a spell at
the tiller. I handed it over to the man who was with us, and went
forward to see that everything was clear, for it was now blowing really
hard, and anything like a tangle if we got into difficulties would
be dangerous. The gale rose higher and the sea with it; but, tearing
through the water as we now were under three reefs, we should soon make
the Sound and get round the point of Carnarvonshire into easier water
right under the lee of the land.
There was only one thing that troubled me, which was this question:
should we make the Sound before the tide turned? It was an important
question, because, although I had never been in those parts before,
offshore, in a boat of my own, yet I could judge that in such a piece
of water, with all the bay pouring through a channel barely two miles
wide with a deep of barely one, the tide against such a gale would
raise an impossible sea. If we could just make it on the tail of the
tide, on the very last of the ebb, we should have nothing to bear but a
strong following sea, such as that before which we were running at the
moment: for the southerly stream was still strong under us. But if the
water turned before we got into the Sound, we should have a time to
remember; and so we did.
For I had done something or other to annoy the Earth-Shaker, and he
pursued me viciously, making the tide turn just before we reached the
mouth of the Sound. In a time much shorter than I had expected, with no
lull in between, the steady run of sea which had been combing behind
us, towering above the counter, but regular and normal to deal with,
turned into a confusion of huge tumbling pyramidical waves, leaping
up, twisting, turning, and boiling in such a confusion as I had never
seen, not even in Alderney Race, which I had gone through many years
before when I was a boy. The painter which held the dinghy to the stern
parted, and that boat, a good and serviceable one, was lost. There was
no question of turning in such a sea and under such a wind; the dinghy
had to be abandoned. The tide against us was so fierce that even under
that gale we hardly moved; and it was strange to see, from the leaping
and struggling of the Nona as the foam rushed by in a millrace, how
steady remained the points on the Carnarvonshire shore, and how slowly
we opened the Sound. The pace was irregular. There were moments when
we advanced at perhaps a knot or a knot and a half against that fierce
tide. There were others when we even slipped back. All the while the
wind howled and the sea continued to rise and to boil in a cauldron
more violent as the gale on the one hand and the tide against it on
the other grew in strength and in the fierceness of their struggle. In
seas like this one never knows when some great tumbling lump of water
may not break upon one’s decks, for there is no run and follow, it is
all confusion; and I remember thinking, as I took the helm again in the
midst of the turmoil, of something I had seen written once of Portland
Race: ‘The sea jumps up and glares at you’—a sound phrase.
We had thus (in some peril, but still able to keep a course, and, on
the whole, advancing) got at last between the point and the Island,
that is, to the heart of the Sound; and a very few more yards would