Sailing with the Last Sailors: Part I by Neil Hollander & Harald Mertes
When you set out on a strange trail, you can't predict what you will find-all you know is that you will find things, and things will happen, that you would not otherwise have encountered. This trail leads out right round the world, and across millenial exerience. It originated in the Society's late-blooming interest in primitive navigation-an interest to which the maritime musuem world is only just beginning to awaken. Philip Teuscher contributed his experience seeking out the surviving remnants of the once-proud Carib canoe fleets, Terry Linehan actually led a Society-sponsored expedition to build-and sail-a Papuan New Guinea canoe, the master builder dying while the boat was a-building (but not before he had passed on his secrets, with great pride, to his young assistants). And finally, Neil Hollander happened to us-a fellow who sailed around the world with a friend to get to know the ships and people ofthe last sailing trades. I say "happened to us" because we met him through his film -a remarkable hauntingly memorable testament to the long difficult experience of man's venture sailing on the wind across wide and narrow waters (see SH32:47). It will go on happening to us, because with our help, Neil intends to establish a live Museum of Traditional Sail in New York. Times are changing rapidly for the man who hoists sail and sets out to gain his livelihood from the sea. Slowly and inevitably, he is being left in the wake of technology, for neither he, nor his craft , has a place in the new world of micro-chips and macroeconomics. It is perhaps surprising to find that the traditional sailor is still there, quietly straining a living from the sea. After all , the Age of Steam has come and gone. Yet in some of the world's backwaters, men still brave the seas in wooden sailing ships just as they always have. "The Last Sailors" are the oldest caste of seaman , a vanishing breed that will soon die out . Three yearsago we set out to record this final chapter of working sail. We travelled to South America , Africa and Asia , sailed on more than two dozen different craft , and whenever possible, we worked on board as well. We tried to meet the crews as fellow sailors-to let them know we were eager to learn and always ready to sail. Although the task these sailors perform are often the samefishing or transporting cargo-the men and the seas change radically from place to place. Each community of sailors has found a unique way of adapting to their environment, and each craft has passed through its own process of evolution until it has become the best possible solution to the triangle: man-seaand sail. Some of the boats are tied together, others nailed , stapled or even sewn, and the hulls are narrow as a tree-trunk or wide as a small freighter. The sails can be square, rectangular, or just tatters without symmetry, made from whatever is on hand, cotton, flax or needs. There seem to be no limits to the ingenious ways by which sailors meet the seas. Our trip began on the northeastern coast of Brazil where fishermen still use a simple sailing raft called the jangada. It resembles what a castaway might hastily build to escape from a wreck orcannibals,just the bare essentials one needs to go to sea: a raft , a sail and a steering oar. Easily, one pictures Robinson Crusoe or the survivors of the "Medusa" clinging to its mast. Aside from a knife and a few fishhooks , not a single piece of iron or steel can be found on board . Despite four centuries of European contact, not a nail or a bolt is used in its construction. The dipper that wets the sail is hand-carved, the basket which holds the catch, hand-woven , and the cord that supports the mast and trims the sail , hand-twisted . Thejangadas which sail today 32
are virtually identical to those which were built 400 yea rs ago when the Portuguese arrived in Brazil. Thejangadiero, or fisherman , who stands on the stern at the steering oar is also not really a part of this century. More than likely he cannot read . He wears no watch. His clothes are often homemade, his home a palm thatched hut and the furthest he has ventured from it , is to the fishing grounds , some 20 or 30 miles offshore. His dail y routine is always the same, a logical , undulating rhythm guided by the wind , and we easily adjusted to it. In the early hours of the morning, while it is still dark , the rafts leave with the offshore breeze and sail to the limits of the continental shelf. The jangadieros fish with Jines, four for the hands, and two for the feet ,, or if they can afford it, a buoyed net. One man marks his fish by cutting off half the tail , another by cutting a fin. Only the captain's fish go into the basket whole. Mast down and fishing , ajangada has a stark , forlorn appearance, and when seen from a distance, silhouetted against the sky, the men on board can easily look more like shipwrecked sailors than working fishermen . Confusion is almost inevitable., As we were fishing one day, well out of sight of land , ajangadiero told us how many years ago in the same waters he had watched a large freighter change course and sail towards him . " It stopped when it was close and lowered a boat ," he said. " Six or seven men rowed over. They waved and shouted a lot , but I couldn't figure out what they wanted. Finally, the man in the bow pointed to his mouth. I thought he was hungry, so I took a big cavalo we had just caught and threw it to him . He laughed , and threw me some cigarettes. In a few minutes they had all our fish and we had all their cigarettes. That was the best catch we've ever had." But thejangadiero's basket is becoming empty. Along several hundred miles of coastline we heard the same complaint: there are fewer fish in the ocean . As a result , there are fewer jangadas. " The jangadiero's are like Indians," an official told us. " They don't belong in the modern Brazil ." On the other side of the continent in southern Chile, where the land mass ends and the islands begin , the sailing conditions are among the world's worst-a rocky, jagged coast, high tides, and a severe, inhospitable climate. "Cold , squalls, and fog ,'' is the normal forecast , like London in the winter. The Chileans who sailed these waters are engaged in one of the oldest windjammer businesses , the lumber trade. From isolated fjords at the base of the Andes they ferry planks, shingles and firewood to the markets of Puerto Montt. Their sloops are homemade, rough in appearance, and lacking in symmetry. No measurements are ever taken and seldom do part and starboard halves match. Given the implacable climate and the unpredictable seas, every sailor knows that sooner or later trouble will come in an unexpected storm that will leave him dismasted , holed, aground, or at best with a wild improbable yarn . While twisting through the islands we heard more stories of shipwreck than in any other place we sailed. When disaster strikes , the one thing a sailor can count on , is the help of anyone nearby, at sea or ashore, for the code of mutual aid is still strong and sacred. " If the weather's bad ," one captain told us, you never know who is going to knock at your door. If he's a sailor, then he's welcome, whether you know him or not. Whatever he needs, you give it to him. Tomorrow you may be knocking on his door." The lumber trade which supports the region is fueled solely by wind and muscle. On densely wooded islands , or the slopes of the mountains, families work together to fell the trees and saw them into planks or firewood . Everyone takes part, from chi!SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1985