The Shamrock V's Wild Voyage Home by Irving Johnson I came on watch at midnight w ith both sides. We had las hed two men -- - at the wheel and found that the seas the ship doing about nine and a half usually knocked down only one man knots, and the wind freshening all the time. at a time. That left the other one The skippe r, as he went below to standing to keep the wheel from revolving.Oneofthethingswedreaded turn in, called back to me: " The bottom is dropping out of the bamost was to have the wheel get to whirling uncontrolled, because ifthat rometer. We 'd better drive the ship well off shore before we get caught happened and the rudder swung hard over, the steering gear was likely to in some really bad weather." Well , I drove her all ri ght! But I break. The two men were lashed with their backs to the mizzenmast, hadn 't sailed in the Shamrock before, and not knowing how fast she which was only two or three feet aft of the wheel. was supposed to go I left full sai l set until she was straining and creaking. The Shamrock is sh own here rigged down as a yaw/for her Right up until noon the wind At four in the morning, with a passage /Ja ck 10 England in Ocro/Jer 1933 . Drawing /Jy keptblowing harder, andthenit sudmoderate ga le, we were doing just Charles J . A . Wilson. denlydroppedtoaflatcalm . Peterson over twelve knots. I went be low found himself in the middle of a and told the captain what speed we were making, and without sentence yelling lo udly above the roar of the sto1111, when quick leaving hi s bunk he yelled, " Take in the mains' I, take in the as a flash there wasn't any roar. We thought this was a queer way for a storm to end, but there mizzen, reef the forestays'l!" Thi s was some job, believe me, with such condi tions on the we were in a calm , and most of us fi gured that we soon would be deck of a boat like the Shamrock She never had made over ten able to set sail for England. The skipper wasn ' t so sure. The knots under that rig before. barometer was dropping, and he wanted to watch it. Fifteen Soon the wind was a stron g ga le, and we were runnin g minutes later we found the barometer sti ll going down, and in before it under reefed forestays ' I. The seas were peaking up in half an ho ur it was even lower, but there wasn 't any wind. By that queer fashion, for we were in the Gulf Stream with a north - time we had guessed that we were in the exact center of a easter blowing against the current. At about ten o'c lock on my hurricane, and we knew that the second half always is the worse. morning watch, with Peterson at the wheel, a huge sea broke An hour passed a nd still nothin g happe ned , but in another through the heavy canvas weather-c loth in the mizzen rigging ten minutes the wi nd struck us as if with all the fury stored up and sent Peterson ' s feet hig he r than hi s head. Luckily fo r him in an hour 's waiting. The water was j ust picked up from the he he ld on like grim death. If he had n ' t, he wou ld have go ne tops of the waves and passed through the air, blowing horizonright over the life lines. tally , and gettin g thicker al l the time. In the Shamrock log book He landed on hi s knees but was still tall e nough to see over is the fo llowing entry: " Vi sibility 25 feet. " This was in broad the wheel like an ordinary man- and what a look came over daylight, yet seeing was practically im possib le because of all hi s face when he tried to find the compass! He couldn ' t see it, the wate r blowing along the surface. . . , . Most of the crew were huddled amidand he blinked away thinking there was too much salt water in hi s eyes. Then Shamrock v . Si~· Thomas Lipron sfina/ challenger sh ips, where some lashed themse lves .
sudden ly he realt zed that the compass was gone! The whole binnacle-stand , compass and all , had vanis hed along with the wave. I grabbed the wheel and he lped Peterson steer so th e forestays' I wouldn't jibe, for if it had, it wou ld have gone in one s lat. Now that we had no compass to g uide us, we ga uged our course by the w ind , and as soon as poss ibl e took in the sa il and ran dead before the ga le under bare pol es. Tha t was the on ly thing we could do. The deck bolts that had held the binnacle had been sheared off by the force of the sea ... the binnacle, including the stand and compass, had take n a bounce on the deck and then been swept overboard. We had been having plenty of rain for the past twenty-four hours, but now the re came more of it and more w ind ! Soon the wind had inc reased to a full gale, and heavy water came aboard from SEA HISTORY 66, SUMMER 1993
for rhe America s Cup , displays her eleganr profile on a halcyon Sepiem/Jer day in 1930 . Her long and to the lifeboats to get relief from the honorable career con rinues roday in American strain of standing and holding on, while wa fers. © Rosenfeld Coll., Mys1ic Seaport Museum . others held on with their legs around
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the boat las hings. The two me n at the wheel ran the Shamrock before the wind , not knowing no r caring what course we were making. The only time we could look aft was when we were down in the troug h behind a sea. Then the wind blew the water along over our heads, and it just sort ofrained down on us. The worst part of looking back was seeing the huge, ugly , break ing sea coming up aft, which nearl y gave us heart fai lu re .. . . I didn ' t suppose such waves were bred except at Cape Horn . The Shamrock's low , naITow hull and short masts with their scanty rigging presented little surface to the wind , yet our ship 's log showed that the hurricane was forcing us through the water at te n and a half knots wi thout even a single foot of canvas to he lp us. Once the captain yelled in my ear,
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