The Sea and All Its Devils
Join me for a jaunt on the high seas.
I have had a fascination for oceanic stories and big wooden ships since I was eleven. This comes from no personal experience or tales I heard from family growing up, or even a vague connection some distant relative had with sailing. It all started when I read a book called Victory by Susan Cooper.
In this book we follow a young boy who gets press ganged into serving on a ship. But not just any ship: Lord Horatio Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory, a ship soon to be immortalized in the Battle of Trafalgar. I don’t remember many specifics about this book; all I know is without it I might never have found my metaphorical sea legs.
Like many dangerous lifestyles from a bygone era—gladiators, pioneers, explorers, samurai, gunslingers—the life of a sailor has a romantic and dashing air to it. The promise of adventure, wondrous sights, exotic lands, legendary discoveries, and, of course, the treasure, are all embedded in my vision of what lies beyond the horizon. The sea still undoubtedly has many uncharted corners, but with satellites, planes, shipping lanes, and every type of motorized boat, the sea is merely a conveyance for commerce and commercialized cruises. The mystery is gone.
But only three hundred years ago, during the Age of Sail, the mystery was not only alive, but armed to the teeth. In 1714, the British Parliament passed the Longitude Act, which offered £20,000 to anyone who could create/discover a reliable way to determine longitude. Prior to the Act, and several decades after, ships navigated via “dead reckoning” and tried-and-true routes. With such inexact methods, ships were wrecked, lost, and attacked by pirates who waited along the well-traveled routes. The rewards gained from sailing were too great to halt or slow the tide of ships, so while they crashed on shoals, disappeared into the great unknown or hurried along their path in hopes they might out-sail the pirates, the race to track longitude attracted the best and brightest. (Or not, as one theory suggested using a wounded dog and “powder of sympathy.”1)
Since finding one’s latitude could be accomplished using the stars, many prominent men were convinced that the answers to longitude also rested in the sky. Planets were examined, the moon phases noted, and new maps charting the stars were created over the course of months. Finding your longitude could be done this way, provided you had the charts, expertise to read the charts, calm seas, and enough time at your disposal. But if you were in the midst of a storm or had a cloudy night, you were out of luck. These astronomers remained determined, sure that nothing manmade could outshine the very heavens. Little did they think—and much to their disgruntlement—the answer lay in one man’s quest to make the perfect watch.
John Harrison was a self-taught clockmaker and, to those of sophisticated breeding, a country-born nobody. He wanted to make a clock that could keep time out on the high seas. Edmund Halley (of Halley’s Comet fame) rather liked the idea, but knew that members of the Longitude Board were hoping for a celestial answer. And thus began Harrison’s decades long struggle with his various clock designs and the men who opposed him.
The story of how he made the clocks is both fascinating and frustrating, and a testament to the rewards that come of perseverance, even if he never did get the full prize money. His clocks changed sea travel and gave captains a firmer grip on the tempestuous waters.
Directions at sea, while life-saving and groundbreaking, hardly made voyages smooth sailing. Scurvy wiped out countless men and it’s estimated to have killed more than storms, wrecks, battles and other diseases combined. Despite the eventual discovery of the cure, the disease persisted in dogging sea voyages for many years. It’s a horrific way to die, made more tragic because of the ease with which it can be prevented.
Storms, shipwrecks and mutiny—the immensely powerful as well as the desperate actions of the few—add the unique colors of wildness so synonymous with ocean voyages. One did not have to be over deep waters to encounter the unchecked power of the sea. Ships would run aground within sight of shore, dashed to bits as wind and water beat it apart and the survivors struggled for land, if they made it at all. But when they were far from any hope of salvation, an errant wave might sweep men off the deck and pull them beneath the surface, the rage of nature quickly replaced by darkness and pressure as they slipped further from sight, a trail of bubbles their last wake.
If the ship withstood the havoc of wind and wave, fair weather may yet see it safely to shore where repairs were hastily begun. That was assuming enough of the ship remained. Sometimes a longboat might be the only floating vessel, a fraction of the crew clinging to it, exhausted beyond all memory and stranded on a barren land. Whatever wreckage followed was a boon. But even the best gifts might turn sour. Stripped of any vessel to command, the remaining officers had an uphill battle before them and without hope of rescue or easy escape, the choice to starve on land or take to the water and perhaps starve out there, divided the survivors, as was the case with the 1741 wreck of the Wager.
The crew of the Wager, having found brief respite on a tiny island off the coast of Chile, eventually split apart, some going back around Cape Horn and some heading farther north. The desperation these men faced, the starvation, hopelessness, and the dwindling will to live…it’s impossible to imagine myself in the same situation. What do you do? Is the only path to give up and die? Or do you extend your last bit of effort on the vague hope that somehow, against all odds, you make it back home? Of about 250 men onboard the ship, only thirty-some survived, ten of which made it back to England. How did that experience change their lives and did they often wonder, “What might my life have been if I hadn’t set foot on that ship?”
Many sailors didn’t have a choice in the matter. Press gangs took men and boys to serve on ships when volunteers proved insufficient. Those taken were given no opportunity to say goodbye to family; they vanished and perhaps never returned. The gangs roved the cities and wharfs looking for able-bodied souls, beating those who resisted and hauling them to the ships which weren’t in much better condition.
Worms burrowed tunnels through ships almost faster than the carpenters could repair. Teredo navalis, or shipworm, can thrive in almost any climate or salinity, making it an ever-present threat not just to ships, but dock pilings too. They’re still a problem to this day. This insatiable wood-muncher led to ships being lined with copper to prevent the worms from ever entering. Copper sheathing became popular during the Revolutionary War and allowed English ships to stay longer at sea without constant repairs. For the moment, they had a unique advantage over their enemies.
Food is often only remembered as ship’s biscuits and grog. But they had a wide variety of victuals, from various salted meats, to flour, peas, oatmeal, butter, raisins and cheese. Civilian ships even had animals, like cows, chickens, and pigs, though the Navy couldn’t often afford to house animals as they had to carry more men and armaments. When everything was fresh, sailors were quite well-fed, leading to the phrase “three square meals” a day, as they ate off square plates, which were easy to store.
It isn’t just scurvy, mutinies and hardtack that have snuck into the modern mind. Many common phrases originated at sea, like: slush fund, high and dry, dead in the water, pipe down, flotsam and jetsam, and, of course, walk the plank. There has also been a resurgence in sea shanties, which are always welcome to me. And pirates never go out of style and are the most romanticized of any maritime people.
But back to Nelson…he led the battle against the French and Spanish in October of 1805 and soundly beat them. He died of a gunshot wound, but not before he’d learned of the approaching victory of the British. The whole country mourned his passing and it turned the triumph of the battle to a bittersweet one. Nelson is often cited as the greatest naval commander in Britain’s history; I can’t say whether that’s true or not, but his bold tactics and personable approach to his crew make for an inspiring and interesting man.
This is just a snapshot of what I’ve learned since first discovering Nelson. It seems like such a strange fascination to have since I have no real experience with anything I’ve talked about and it’s unlikely I ever will. But I think that’s part of why it’s captivating: I don’t know what’s out there and hearing all these different stories and learning factoids has formed this microcosm of salt-fueled imaginings. The wild unknowns and far-off adventures are just the thing to keep me cozy and enraptured, a place where I stand at the helm and listen to the gentle wake of the ship. A time when I am borne high on turbulent waves, the sound of distant cannon fire calling me to battle.
“This was a new frontier for Elizabethan England, and like frontiers everywhere it was lawless and violent, offering great opportunities for the lucky and unscrupulous. It was a brawling and vigorous world, where men lived by their wits; where many sought their fortunes and many lost their lives.”
— N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea
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Further reading:
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
Nelson’s Trafalgar: The Battle the Changed the World by Roy A. Adkins
A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
The idea was they’d put a wounded dog on a ship and leave its bloodied bandage on shore. At noon each day, someone would put this magical powder on the bandage and the dog would immediately yelp, therefore alerting the ship to the time back home. The captain could then compare their time with the London time and they’d have their longitude. For reasons I just can’t imagine, it never caught on.
I thought this was terrific! I've never read anything quite like it. Who ever talks about what they went through to figure out longitude! Fun, interesting and educational. Also...love your leaf 'n bark frigate.