The Way of the Sea: Your Turn Today-Mine Tomorrow By Frank G.G. Carr
This true yarn of the loss of a small yacht, in the North Sea is extracted from Mr. Carr's classic A Yachtsman's Log (1935). Mr. Carr went on to ocean sailing in his pilot cutter Cariad, now preserved at the Exeter Maritime Museum, and is Chairman of the World Ship Trust Project in London. Under a reefed foresail we ran before the gale, paying out the end of the main sheet astern to steady the ship in running. The drag had a wonderful effect. We ran dryly, with no tendency to broach-to, and the rope divided the seas and made them break astern of the yacht before they reached her, so that the broken water creamed harmlessly away under our counter. In the evening, when the sky was again overcast and darkness would soon have fallen, we came to realize once more that we were not out of danger. I had reached the northern limit of my charts, and of the waters ahead all we knew was that dangerous shoals lay in our way. It was then that a tramp steamer appeared astern on a course that brought her near our own. She was obviously bound north from the Channel, having come by the back of the Goodwins. Reluctantly, for it was an admission of failure, I hoisted a signal of distress. One may not mind very much about drowning oneself, but to drown one's father and only brother is a different matter. The ship proved to be the Borge/a, a Norwegian of 2500 tons, belonging to Fred Olsen's Line, in ballast, and towering high out of the water. She saw our signal, and with engines stopped · drove slowly past us to loo'ard. She confirmed our position, which was correct, and agreed to give us the benefit of her lee, and a tow from the end of her bridge in the shelter of her hull, promising to drop us off Yarmouth. I feared a heavy salvage claim, and wanted to fix upon some figure, but the skipper, splendid fellow, would have none of it. "It will cost you not'ing," he roared and prepared to take us in tow . It seemed that our difficulties would soon be over, and so indeed they were, but not in the way that we expected; for it was now that I made the fatal mistake compared with which all other mistakes paled into insignificance. Borge/a lay motionless to loo'ard and on our port bow. I had only to run on past her, so that she could overtake us on our weather side, throwing a line from her bridge as she SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1979
steamed slowly by, with which we would haul aboard a warp to secure to our bitts . Yet, fool that I was, I ran round her stern and into the shelter of her hull, where immediately we lay becalmed. A stout line came instantly hurtling down from aloft, which we as instantly secured. Yet before anything more could be done, the end was upon us . Borge/a, a ballast ship, was drifting broadside through the water at a rate of knots, rolling heavily with no forward way upon her. The suction round her bow and stern drew us at once into her propeller aperture, where we lay held like a stick across a sluice, rising and falling some ten feet as every sea broke round her stern. From that moment Quickstep II was doomed. In spite of every effort, she could not be drawn ahead, nor could she be dropped astern clear, while Borge/a could not be moved without her screw cutting us to pieces when it started to revolve. It needed only the first direct blow on the propeller's projecting blade to sink us. We were already making water fast. The time had come to abandon ship if we would save our lives. First my young brother, then my father, after an argument, climbed the Jacob's ladder that had been lowered, and reached safety. My father reali zed that I wanted to leave the ship last, and knew that the only way to get me out of her quickly was to leave himself, which he did on my promising to follow immediately. I did not do so, for a sea came which threw Quickstep II back so that she balanced on Borgela's rudder and I thought there was still a chance of dropping her astern clear. I remember my father shouting, "Don't be a fool-come up! I'll buy you another ship, I can't buy another son." A moment later the yacht fell back into the old position, and then suddenly got the first direct blow from the blade of the propeller. With her 3 Vi tons of iron ballast and her port side sheered in two from the garboard to the deck, Quickstep II disappeared like a loaded crane, leaving me clinging to the bottom of the ladder with the North Sea round my legs. As she sank, she bade me farewell, and left a mark I shall carry to my grave. Her topmast shroud, sliding down the rope ladder, caught my thumb as I clung there, tearing it half off so that it hung by the muscle alone. The ladder was hauled up with me clinging to the end of it, and I was dragged over the rail to safety. No one could have been kinder to us than our Norwegian hosts, and for Cap-
/ / Quickstep II, 29 ' 6" overall, built 1904 in Essex. "! could scarcely breathe for the pleasure of owning such a dainty little lady!" said her new master. Six months later he lost her.
tain Kjoje and his crew, not forgetting his pretty daughter, no praise could be too high. They fed us right royally, and refused to let us pay even the expenses of our passage; the Captain waiving all such suggestions aside with the words, "Oh no, I could not. It is the way of the sea-your turn today; My turn, perhaps, tomorrow!" To the steward's efficient first aid I owe my thumb, for without it amputation would afterwards almost certainly have been necessary. So did our cruise come to an end, and on the Tuesday morning we were landed at North Shields. The wrecked Quickstep Illies ten fathoms down five miles south-east of the Shipwash Light, resting her poor wounded side upon the sandy botton of the North Sea, with nothing but the wheeling gulls above to mark her grave. w
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