he sick?’ I asked.
‘Bloddy sick, drank too much Akvavit last night,’ said Jansson. To confirm this he began prodding the blankets and when this had no effect started to roll whoever it was backwards and forwards like a piece of dough on a pastry-board, roaring ‘Rise op, rise op.’ Upon this there was a violent heaving among the blankets.
‘Perkele, perkele, perkele; devils, devils, devils,’ screamed a furious voice from the bed, mounting to a crescendo like an engine on a bench being tested to destruction. Even the hardened audience jibbed at the rich descriptive obscenity which followed and begged Jansson to leave him alone. He did so, and just like an engine, the voice died away.
Somewhere on the deck, a whistle blew. One by one the occupants of the starboard fo’c’sle went out to continue their work and soon the sounds of hammering proceeded from the port side of the ship where most of them were over the side chipping rust and painting.
Because Vytautas, the Lithuanian, had been watchman all night, he did not go with them. He advised me to get into my working clothes and report my arrival to the Mate. First he helped me stow my trunk in a convenient space behind the fo’c’sle door. Gingerly I put on my navy blue dungarees which seemed stiff and unprofessional compared with the faded blue overalls worn by most of the boys.
‘Do not leave anything in the fo’c’sle,’ said Vytautas in his rather oriental sing-song. ‘These stevedores are thieves. At sea we are all right. Here … nobody is good.’
I asked him whether he had just joined the ship, but he replied that this would be his second voyage. Moshulu had been on the timber run from Finland to Lourenço Marques in Portuguese East Africa in 1937 before going to Australia for her grain cargo. I was glad; at least he was not leaving, as many of the others were. I had already begun to cling to any acquaintance as a drowning man clutches a straw.
It so happened that I met not the First Mate but the Second, as everything was in a state of flux: some members of the crew were signing off and returning to Mariehamn, others arriving to take their place. The old Captain, Boman, who had commanded her since she joined the Erikson fleet, was going home and being replaced by Captain Sjögren who was coming from the Archibald Russell.
The Second Mate was thin, watery-eyed and bad-tempered. At sea he was to prove much better than he looked to me this morning. He did not like ports and he did not like to see the ship in her present state. My arrival did not seem propitious and after dressing me down for not reporting aft directly I had come on board, he suddenly shot at me: ‘Ever been aloft before?’
‘No, sir.’
We were standing amidships by the mainmast. He pointed to the lower main shrouds which supported the mast and said simply: ‘Op you go then.’ I could scarcely believe my ears, I had imagined that I should be allowed at least a day or two to become used to the ship and the feel of things, but this was my introduction to discipline. I looked at the Mate. He had a nasty glint in his eye and I decided I was more afraid of him than of the rigging. If I was killed it would be his fault, not mine, I said to myself with little satisfaction. Nevertheless I asked him if I could change my shoes which had slippery soles.
High rigging
‘Change your shoes? Op the rigging.’ He was becoming impatient.
At this time Moshulu was the greatest sailing ship in commission, and probably the tallest. Her main mast cap was 198 feet above the keel. I started towards the main rigging on the starboard side nearest the quay but was brought back by a cry from the Mate.
‘Babord, port side. If you fall you may fall in the dock. When we’re at sea you will always use the weather rigging, that’s the side from which the wind blows. Never the lee rigging. And when I give you an order you repeat it.’
‘Op the rigging,’ I said.
The first part of the climb seemed easy enough. The lower main shrouds supporting the mast were of heavy wire made from plough steel and the first five ratlines were iron bars seized across four shrouds to make a kind of ladder which several men could climb at once. Above them the ratlines were wooden bars seized to the two centre shrouds only, the space for the feet becoming narrower as they converged at the ‘top’, eighty feet up, where it was difficult to insert a foot as large as mine in the ratlines at all. Before reaching this point, however, I came abreast of the main yard. It was of tapered steel, ninety-five and a half feet from arm to arm, two and a half feet in diameter at the centre and weighed over five tons. It was trussed to the mainmast by an iron axle and preventer chain which allowed it to be swung horizontally from side to side by means of tackle to the yardarms; an operation known as ‘bracing’.
Above me was the ‘top’, a roughly semi-circular platform with gratings in it. This was braced to the mast by steel struts called futtock shrouds. To get to the ‘top’ I had to climb outwards on the rope ratlines seized to the futtock shrouds. There was a hole in the ‘top’ which it was considered unsporting to use. I only did so once for the experience and cut my ear badly on a sharp projection which was probably put there as a deterrent. I found difficulty in reaching the top this first time and remained transfixed, my back nearly parallel with the deck below, whilst I felt for a rope ratline with one foot. I found it at last and heaved myself, nearly sick with apprehension, on to the platform, where I stood for a moment, my heart thumping. There was only a moment’s respite, in which I noticed that the mainmast and the topmast were in one piece – not doubled as in most sailing ships – before the dreadful voice of the Mate came rasping up at me:
‘Get on op.’
The next part was nearly fifty feet of rope ratlines seized to the topmast shrouds. Almost vertical, they swayed violently as I went aloft; many of them were rotten and one broke underfoot when I was at the level of the topsail yards. Again the voice from the deck:
‘If you want to live, hold on to those shrouds and leave the bloody ratlines alone.’
The lower topsail yard was slung from an iron crane but the upper topsail yard above it was attached to a track on the foreside of the topmast allowing the yard to be raided by means of a halliard more than twenty-five feet almost to the level of the crosstrees. The crosstrees formed an open frame of steel girdering about 130 feet up, at the heel of the topgallant mast. Originally the topsail had been a single sail, but to make it easier for the reduced crews to take in sail, it had been divided into two. At the moment the upper topsail yard was in its lowered position, immediately on top of the lower topsail yard. The crosstrees seemed flimsy when I reached them; two long arms extended aft from the triangle, spreading the backstays of the royal mast, the highest mast of all. I stood gingerly on this slippery construction; the soles of my shoes were like glass; all Belfast spread out below. I looked between my legs down to a deck as thin as a ruler and nearly fell from sheer funk.
‘Op to the royal yard,’ came the imperious voice, fainter now. Another forty feet or so of trembling topgallant shroud, past the lower and upper topgallant yards, the upper one, like the upper topsail yard, movable on its greased track. The ratlines were very narrow now and ceased altogether just below the level of the royal yard.
I was pretty well all in emotionally and physically but the by now expected cry of ‘Out on the yard’ helped me to heave myself on to it. In doing so I covered myself with grease from the mast track on which the royal yard moved up and down. It was fifty feet long and thinner than those below it. As on all the other yards, an iron rail ran along the top. This was the jackstay, to which the sail was bent. (In cadet training ships this rail would have had another
