again on the bottom rung.
I enclose a German Text Book for Travellers which may help you with some words you have forgotten. I could not get one in Swedish or Finnish and I did not think Norwegian would be much good.
That fellow with the venereal disease sounds a rotten blighter. I should complain to the captain about him …
Good luck to you, my dear boy, and a safe journey.
Your loving father.
PS. Your mother is writing separately.
We sailed for Australia on 18 October 1938 with a crew of twenty-eight.
At two in the morning on 11 December, fifty-four days out from Belfast when we were in Latitude 39° South, Longitude 9° East in the South Atlantic, our watch was called on deck to square up the yards and sheet home the fore-and-aft sail on the port side. There was a new movement in the ship now: she was rocking slightly from stem to stern.
‘Kom the Väst Vind,’ said Tria as we ground away at the Jarvis brace winches. By noon that day the westerlies were blowing strongly, lumping the rollers up behind. This was a memorable day because we ran 293 miles, and Alvar dropped our dinner on the way from the galley.
On the 13th we crossed the longitude of the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Southern Indian Ocean in 40° 33’ South Latitude. Whilst running eastward we edged south to 42° and finally to 43° 47’. Sometimes the West Wind blew strongly, sometimes we were nearly becalmed. Always the drift was carrying us eastwards, thirty to forty miles a day. In the course of this outward voyage we only made one landfall, Inaccessible Island, one of the Tristran da Cunha group.
By five o’clock that evening Moshulu was sailing fifteen knots. The wind was on the quarter and there was a big sea running. When Sedelquist and I took over there were already two men at the wheel. (Sedelquist was helmsman and I was help wheel.)
‘Going to be deefecult,’ he said in an unusual access of friendliness, as we stumbled out on deck, immense in our thick pilot coats, ‘going to be von bastard.’
We took over from Hilbert and Hörglund, a wild-looking but capable team. Although it was quite cold with occasional squalls of hail, I noticed that their faces were glistening with perspiration in the light of the binnacle.
‘Törn om,’ said Sedelquist, as he stepped up beside Hilbert on the weather side.
‘Törn om,’ I echoed as I mounted the platform to leeward.
‘Ostsydost,’ said Hilbert and then more quietly as the Captain was close by, ‘proper strongbody for vind, Kapten.’
The ship was a strongbody too, she was a fury, and as soon as we took over we both knew that it was going to be a fight to hold her.
Sedelquist was a first-class helmsman – very cool and calm and sure of himself. I too was on my mettle to give him all the help I could, not for reasons of prestige but because a mistake on a night like this might finish us all.
Being at the wheel was a remarkable sensation. It was as if the ship had wings. The seas were big, but they never caught up with her to drag at her and slow her down. Instead they bore her up and flung her forward.
Steering was very hard work; heaving on the spokes, at Sedelquist’s direction, I was soon sweating. There was no time to speak, nor was it permitted. Only when I made 7 bells at half-past seven did Sedelquist shout out of the corner of his mouth:
‘Oh you noh, Kryss Royal going in a meenit.’
The Captain, the First Mate, and Tria were all on deck, the Captain constantly gazing aloft at the upper sails. At a quarter to eight with our trick nearly over, when I was congratulating myself that we had come through, we suddenly lost control of her and she began to run up into the wind.
‘Kom on, kom on,’ Sedelquist roared, but it was too late. Our combined strength was not enough to move the wheel.
Moshulu continued to shoot up, the yards began to swing, a big sea came over the waist, then another bigger still. There was a shout of ‘Look out, man!’ Then there was a great smashing sound as the Captain jumped at the after wheel and brought his whole weight upon it. Tria and the First Mate were on the other side. Spoke by spoke we fought the wheel while from above came an awful rumbling sound as the yards chafed and reared in their slings, until the ship’s head began to point her course again.
The danger was past, but as the Captain turned away, pale and trembling, I heard him sob: ‘O Christ.’
Suddenly I felt sick at the thought of what might have happened if she had broached-to.
‘O Yesus,’ muttered Sedelquist, his assurance gone, ‘I tought the masts were coming down out of heem.’
The clock in the charthouse began to strike. Before it had finished, more than anxious to be gone, I had made eight bells, but the Mate was already blowing his whistle for all hands. The Captain had had enough, and before Sedelquist and I were relieved at the wheel the royals came in, all the higher fore-and-aft sails, and the mizzen course. It was now 8.30 p.m. Between 4 and 8 Moshulu logged 63 miles, and the same distance again between eight and midnight.
‘GOD JUL’
For many days we had been thinking of Christmas, which this year fell on a Sunday. There had been a good deal of grumbling about this in the fo’c’sle, but even Sedelquist, who knew his rights, and was always threatening to complain to the Finnish Consul over imaginary infringements, wasn’t able to suggest any satisfactory plan for moving Christmas Day to the following Monday in order to get an extra day’s holiday.
In the week before Christmas I was ‘Backstern’* for the second time on the voyage. My job was to wash up for the twenty occupants of the three fo’c’sles whenever mine was a working watch. Kroner performed the same service when I was free. Besides being a romantic, Kroner was a great grumbler and every day he told me I had forgotten to dry the dishcloths in the galley. Every day I told him the same thing. Very often, on the occasions when we did remember to hang them over the range, they were knocked down by the coal-carrying party and trampled in the coal-dust. Kroner drew my washing-up water; I drew his.
To get sea-water for washing-up I tied a rope to a bucket, stood in the lee rigging of the foremast, and dropped it into the sea. Bäckmann had been the first person to do ‘Backstern’ in our watch and he had cast a new teak bucket into the sea on the evening of our spectacular dash into the Atlantic. With Moshulu running thirteen to fourteen knots it was lucky that he had not known how to attach the rope to the bucket in a seamanlike manner; if he had, the tremendous jerk when it fetched up at the end of a lot of slack would probably have pulled him over the side. As it was, the knot came undone and the bucket sank before the eyes of the First Mate and the Captain, who were interested spectators. I had been charged for a hammer. Bäckman was put down for a teak bucket.
With the water safely on deck my troubles were not over, for it still had to be heated over the galley fire, and if the ‘Kock’ didn’t like you he would move it as far as possible from the hot part of the stove. Like all cooks he was subject to sudden glooms and rages. It was unfortunate that he had taken a dislike to Kroner, who had been rude to him about some bacon instead of keeping his mouth shut and throwing it over the side, but he had nothing against
