Three Days Before the Mast

By fightingshy60 Last updated Jun 15, 2023

Three Days Before the Mast

We left Chula Vista aboard The Bill of Rights, just south of San Diego. She was a gaff-rigged, 136-foot schooner of the type that once fished the Grand Banks. With us were young members of the Navy Sea Cadet Corp, a youth program run by the Navy. It looked as if many of them would survive.

They all wore uniforms of Desert Storm vintage, these Sea Cadets, and addressed everyone as ma’am or sir, and could not be dissuaded from this practice. I was sirred so many times that I began to believe I deserved it. They wore regulation fatigue hats and boots, followed the dictates of a young squad leader, lined up in military ranks to be addressed and did everything they were told to do.

There was not a lick of work to be done aboard the ship that I couldn’t fob off to a vigorous young person dressed in desert camo, from cleaning the coffee mugs to swabbing the deck.

They would have to do it. One of the unshakable principles of the Sea Cadet program is that young people build character through discipline and, I might as well say, through duress. Their outings are called “trainings”–this boat ride was a training—and few of those training fail to remove the cadets from their accustomed comforts.

“Our military culture stresses concepts of duty, service, and self-sacrifice which are the foundation of good leadership,” says the Sea Cadets website. “At young ages, our cadets are given leadership opportunities by staffing summer training events, planning unit drill sessions, and teaching others.”

We would be giving them our own opportunities, such as the chance to steer a big boat and navigate the Pacific. This was the reason Bill of Rights, run by the South Bayfront Sailing Association, ever left the dock: to give people a taste of adventure outside their accustomed strengths. It was the perfect meeting of demand and supply.

We went up San Diego Bay and out into the choppy Pacific, and the stern military rigor of the group underwent some adjustment. In place of the no-nonsense faces of the cadets, there was now greenness about the jowls and a perceptible yearning for solid earth. The ocean gave us a ride upon eight-foot swells and confused seas, the leftovers of a previous night’s gale, and this was covered nowhere in the Cadets’ manual. But they flew their colors bravely.

About this time I was at the wheel, twisting it from port to starboard in an attempt to steer a straight course amid the mayhem, and one small cadet stood at my side, the smallest in the group, a 10-year-old boy whom the first mate had named Firecracker.

Firecracker stood as well as he could on the lurching deck, with a kind of nerveless droop at the edges of his small form and a pained look of courage in the midst of bottomless despair. With each fall of the ship, he swayed into a new trough, his eyes burning bright.

All around the boat was evidence of the great battle with the sea: bodies littered the deck in postures of surrender and collapse. Feeble movements at the hatches gave an indication of more casualties below, where the forces of disorder were multiplied.

From each body, a gray hand issued forth and took one of the offerings and retreated with it back to the gloom, and I believe the things were consumed, though I couldn’t quite see. Candies, they were. Ginger. A small hedge against seasickness. One by one, they took the ginger, and the life-resembling movement began to resume.

Night came, and with it no cessation of the roiling and rolling we had come to know during the day, though our ride was much more surprising in that we couldn’t see the swells washing up to us or the wavelets thrusting us sideways. It was a long slog down a stumpy hill, all night long, and the solace of the bunks offered no comfort but merely a different perch from which to ride the tumult.

* * * * *

I came to sailing through the obnoxious habit of dwelling upon the earth in places where it began to hurt. Looking back now on my many hours of sullen contemplation, I can see the steady desire to get up and get out. I recognize it. I evaluate it forensically. But for years, I suffered the fate of a man tortured by the scorch of land beneath his feet, like Bulkington in Moby Dick.

I had been a newspaper reporter and editor for more than 12 years, a freelance writer for another ten, and a complaining crank for all of them. My life was a lengthy, staring at computer screens, a dabbling with mad fingers on a keyboard, a rushing to list all the messaging approved by the marketing committee.

In between gigs, and there was an abundance of in-between times, were areas of extremely low pressure. When the suggestion came of some other possibilities in life, I was ready to worship the new golden calf whenever it arrived.

The change came in a West Marine store near my house in Philadelphia. I had entered the store in what might be described as a depressed stupor, got into a conversation with the manager about how it sure would be nice to find a job that would pay me to sail ha ha ha. He said if I were interested he could probably set me up, as he was the director of a Boy Scout sailing program during the summer. Three months later I found myself the captain of a boat filled with young persons aged 13 to 18.

I was terrified. But such is the nature of challenge that what terrifies in the beginning exalts in the end: after the first day of sailing with earnest young scouts—who seemed as calm as I was frantic—the terrors subsided, the previsions of disaster emphatically did not become fact. The boat did not burst into flame, the crew did not drown, the sea did not run red with blood.

Little by little I grew to embrace the fear, then to put it aside, and at last to forget it long enough to enjoy the job. I remembered the possibilities for disaster, and took pains to prevent them. But through it all and rather suddenly, there opened to me finally the knowledge that I had found a worthy task. I had entered upon worthwhile work.

Each morning I arose from my narrow bunk beside the chart table, motivated the scouts who were to cook breakfast, secured all equipment and set out for our day’s destination, assigned lunch makers mid-voyage, reached our destination and gave instructions, ordered that dinner be made, settled down for the night beside the chart table. And the next day we repeated.

For the ship was built upon the design of the last sailing pilot schooner to stand guard at the entrance to the Capes, ready to put a pilot aboard any ship incoming for Norfolk.

What I saw amazed me. Virginia was crewed by apparently reasonable young men and women, some not much older than the scouts with me, and this was its own mystery. Why would intelligent young people forsake the comforts of modern life to live in a military setting on a rolling vessel among unwashed others, with only the faintest preliminaries of hygiene available, gross discomforts at every turn, indignations abounding in exchange for only a trace of compensation?

Being on a boat can be hard enough, but dwelling on a wooden ship whose amenities met popular acceptance the last time in 1840 is irrational, indefensible, unhinged. It was obvious to me, and to my scouts. I’m pretty sure that’s why, after the Scout sailing ended, I joined them. It seemed like these people were on to something.

* * * * *

Working on a traditional ship, you learn a different way to sail. On a traditional ship, you stop a rope—you make it fast—by tying it around a belaying pin, in a special way. After you’ve hauled up the jib with the right rope you loop the rope in figure eights around the pin, making sure the line travels from left to right behind the pin at the top of the eight, and finishes with a locked hitch or a buried line depending on what the first mate wants.

Then, at the command of the mate, you and your friends pull your rope in coordination with the other line of eight to ten people across the deck who are pulling a second halyard, in such a way that the gaff travels horizontally upward along the mast, raising the sail as it goes.

In place of conveniences you find know-how. In place of powered capstans you find simple machines and human muscle. In place of apprehension you find alacrity.

It is this immediacy, this centered-in-the-moment, that makes the experience valuable to a large contingent of students, Scouts, Navy Sea Cadets, adjudicated youth and even corporate team builders, who troop aboard these tall ships for multi-day voyages to re-engage with the concept of cause and effect. It’s what turned me from a veteran crab and crosspatch to the cheerful, always-optimistic beam of sunlight you find me today.

Okay that might be going a little far. Say rather that the presence of manual work, especially manual work that helped move a big ship upon the waters of the earth, brought home to me my own effectiveness, in a life that had been too much besmeared by abstraction. It was a realist painting in place of a non-representational one. It was stress for a good reason.

What’s more it was an ensemble performance, an enterprise of pressing common purpose made possible by the interaction of coordinated energies: It was the captain turning the wheel while a young woman trimmed the jib sheet and an older man pulled it tight around a pin; it was the crew gathered in the nav house afterwards to make each other laugh.

Working on tall ships, I watched some unbelievable transformations: middle school boys whose idea of competence was turning the Game Boy on and off, and girls who never learned where they might go in life. Suddenly these kids were climbing to the foretop and reigning supreme over the world. Suddenly they were joining to raise a mainsail dozens of times their own weight. On paper it looks minor, but I could feel it: Whatever else happened in their lives, the boat made them pay attention.

* * * * *

By morning the seas had calmed somewhat and it was ascertained there had been no fatalities during the night. We decided we had had enough. The weather would not pacify, and the character aboard had been sufficiently built. We turned around and headed south, a significant change. In Southern California, most of weather comes down the coast from the north, forcing anyone going in that direction to breast the swells and wind.

With our boat going south, we would have all the weather behind us, providing a smoother ride, a chance to learn more knots, eat a well-made breakfast, and enjoy the scenery. Gradually onboard, the signs of morbidity receded and the little soldiers began appearing at their assigned posts once again. Firecracker later boasted he kept watch on deck for more than 10 hours.

We reached the dock that day, spent another day fussing and cleaning the ship, and by dribs and drabs the cadets departed. Also the crew, back to their ordinary lives.

And I will return to the freelance life; I can hardly avoid it, being the delicate flower I am, and unfit to work among normal people in an office. I will return to the lonely desk and the scramble for lucre. But when I dream of perfect freedom and life in friendly company, what I will see is the ocean’s horizon from the top of the mast, with the water sparkling below. What I will hear is the call of all hands.

Three days before the mast

There was not a lick of work to be done aboard the ship that I couldn’t fob off to a vigorous young person dressed in desert camo, from cleaning the coffee mugs to swabbing the deck.

They would have to do it. One of the unshakable principals of the Sea Cadet program is that young people build character through discipline and, I might as well say, through duress. Their outings are called “trainings”–this boat ride was a training—and few of those trainings fail to remove the cadets from their accustomed comforts.

“Our military culture stresses concepts of duty, service and self-sacrifice which are the foundation of good leadership,” says the Sea Cadets website. “At young ages, our cadets are given leadership opportunities by staffing summer training events, planning unit drill sessions, and teaching others.”

We would be giving them our own kinds of opportunities, such as the chance to steer a big boat and navigate through the Pacific. This was the reason Bill of Rights, run by the South Bayfront Sailing Association, ever left the dock: to give people a taste of adventure outside their accustomed strengths. It was the perfect meeting of demand and supply.

We went up San Diego Bay and out into the choppy Pacific and the stern military rigor of the group underwent some adjustment. In place of the no-nonsense faces of the cadets there was now greenness about the jowls and a perceptible yearning for solid earth. The ocean gave us a ride upon eight-foot swells and confused seas, the leftovers of a previous night’s gale, and this was covered nowhere in the Cadets’ manual. But they flew their colors bravely.

Firecracker stood as well as he could on the lurching deck, with a kind of nerveless droop at the edges of his small form and a pained look of courage in the midst of bottomless despair.

He swayed with each fall of the ship into a new trough, his eyes burning bright. All around the boat was evidence of the great battle with the sea: bodies littered the deck in postures of surrender and collapse. Feeble movements at the hatches gave indication of more casualties below, where the forces of disorder were multiplied.

And then came one of the crew bearing a small plate of wrapped somethings, making her way slowly around the deck, stopping at each body like a ministering angel, offering the wrapped things to the fallen. From each body a gray hand issued forth and took one of the offerings and retreated with it back to the gloom, and I believe the things were consumed, though I couldn’t quite see. Candies, they were. Ginger. A small hedge against seasickness. One by one they took the ginger and the life-resembling movement began to resume.

Night came, and with it no cessation of the roiling and rolling we had come to know during the day, though our ride was much more surprising in that we couldn’t see the swells washing up to us or the wavelets thrusting us sideways. It was a long slog down a stumpy hill all night long, and the solace of the bunks offered no comfort but merely a different perch from which to ride the tumult.

* * * * *

I came to sailing through the obnoxious habit of dwelling upon the earth in places where it began to hurt. Looking back now on my many hours of sullen contemplation, I can see the steady desire to get up and get out. I recognize it. I evaluate it forensically. But for years I suffered the fate of a man tortured by the scorch of land beneath his feet, like Bulkington in Moby Dick.

I had been a newspaper reporter and editor for more than 12 years, a freelance writer for another ten, and a complaining crank for all of them. My life was a lengthy staring at computer screens, a dabbling with mad fingers on a keyboard, a rushing to list all the messaging approved by the marketing committee.

In between gigs, and there was an abundance of in-between times, were areas of extreme low pressure. When the suggestion came of some other possibilities in life, I was ready to worship the new golden calf whenever it arrived.

Little by little I grew to embrace the fear, then to put it aside, and at last to forget it long enough to enjoy the job. I remembered the possibilities for disaster, and took pains to prevent them. But through it all and rather suddenly there opened to me finally the knowledge that I had found a worthy task. I had entered upon worthwhile work.

Each morning I arose from my narrow bunk beside the chart table, motivated the scouts who were to cook breakfast, secured all equipment and set out for our day’s destination, assigned lunchmakers mid voyage, reached our destination and gave instructions, ordered that dinner be made, settled down for the the night beside the chart table. And the next day we repeated.

This led to a meeting, at one of our ports, with the captain of a new tall ship, The schooner Virginia, based in Norfolk and out on its maiden sojourn around Chesapeake Bay. My little crew of Boy Scouts went aboard her for a tour and an introduction to life in an ancient ship design, something until that moment I hadn’t known existed. For the ship was built upon the design of the last sailing pilot schooner to stand guard at the entrance to the Capes, ready to put a pilot aboard any ship incoming for Norfolk.

* * * * *

When hauling up the gaffed main sail, usually a several-hundred-pound assemblage of sail, tackles, ropes and a shockingly heavy spar, you first line yourself up along the deck with eight or ten friends, all of you holding one of the thick ropes that raises the thing to the top of the mast. Then, at the command of the mate, you and your friends pull your rope in coordination with the other line of eight to ten people across the deck who are pulling a second halyard, in such a way that the gaff travels horizontally upward along the mast, raising the sail as it goes.

These ropes too get made fast in a special way, all the more special because if you screw it up the heavy gaff comes crashing down to the deck. You will find no modern metal locking clutches or clever jam cleats for stopping lines anywhere on the boat. You will find no winches, and certainly no winch cranks, for taking slack and getting lines tighter. In place of conveniences you find know-how. In place of powered capstans you find simple machines and human muscle. In place of apprehension you find alacrity.

* * * * *

We reached the dock that day, spent another day fussing and cleaning the ship, and by dribs and drabs the cadets departed. Also the crew, back to their ordinary lives.