Evening star. [volume], January 10, 1932, Page 5, Image 73

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
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Allan J. ViUiers says the ro
mance of a seafaring job gets
into your blood once you have
made a trip before the mast.
Ships Have Personalities
Just Like Human Beings,
Claims Alan J.Yilliers,
Free-Lance Sailing
Skipper, as He Recounts
the Thrill of Rounding
the Horn With Death in
the Rigging and an
Insane Mate Aboard.
BY HARRY GOLDBERG.
EIGHT bells! The notes linger faintly on
the early morning air as the Grace
Harwar, a 2,000-ton square-rigger 39
days out of Melbourne to London, beats
her way past the Horn Northward
somewhere, shrouded in the darkness,
the continent runs down into a point of rock,
a malignant menace to generations of mariners,
but the skipper has given Cape Horn a wide
berth and hopes no storm will toss him on the
headland.
•It is the middle of May, balmy in the Nor
thern latitudes, but Midwinter in these South
ern oceans. The Antarctic chill, bearing a
bite of frost, pierces everything—wind and
water, steel, ropes, spars and rigging.
Sky and water are black, thinks Alan J.
Villiers, author, lecturer, wanderer and able
seaman, as he stumbles up from the fo’castle
with the gang of the early morning watch.
The damp cold that penetrates every sliver of
the ship stings through oilskins and woolens
to numb the very marrow of the crew.
A 50-mile wind is blowing up and the skip
per. on deck for mo6t of two days while the
vessel is sliding around the Horn, is still con
ning the ship beside the helmsman. As she
rolls safely under his feet he figures on a few
more knots to give her a spanking speed and
orders more sail.
Two lads spring aloft to let out the fore
t’gallant sheet. There is an overtone of eerie
stillness somewhere between the whistle of the
wind and the crashing waves. Shaken by
these tireless elements, the ship creaks with a
human shiver.
VIIXLERS has been safely around the Horn
four times previous. He thinks of no im
mediate tragedy, although he knows there is
always danger where the walls of the cape,
turning back the waves, chum the waters of
the merging oceans. He does not foresee there
is just before him a culmination of accident
and fate which will make this the most un
happy voyage of any sailing ship since the war.
“It was black as Hades,” said Villiers. He
was sitting in an easy chair in a comfortable
New York hotel room and he almost trembled
with the memory of that dank bleakness as
his mind leaped back to the dwindling Antarctic
night.
“The ship came up and then pitched, prob
ably sliding down the crest of one of those
terrible waves. Every joint protested against
the heaving twist. A long creak, then crack!
We looked up. An old stick had broken, and
when it did'not fall we saw it was held by the
fore t'gallant gear, in which one of the boys
was also tangled.
“Five of us ran up the rigging. Wires were
untwisted, ropes cut, and the lad, who was
my iriend, a boy of 20, was released. While
the others held us fast, I worked to restore
him to consciousness. There wasn’t a quiver
of response. It was no easy job to lower him
to the deck. So water was heated and brought
from the fo’castle and for an hour we worked
120 feet above the deck, with the wind howl
ing and the water battering on every side.
"Exhausted, we decided to examine him on
the deck. It was impossible to lower him at
the end of a rope. If we heeled over on one
side the rope would swing him out into the
boiling sea and, rolling back, would smash
him against tire steel wires and the masts.
“We tried lowering him down the back
The Parma, once headed fi
the scrap heap, will again sail
the main with a writer of sea
stories as one of her otcners.
stays with two men hanging on his legs.
Down on the deck the skipper had spread a
damp blanket. And when the boy was laid
prone the skipper flashed an electric torch
and said, ‘Why, he’s dead.’
"There wasn’t a mark on the lad nor a spot
of blood. I had a bit of a breeze up while
climbing down the mast. I feared his back
might be broken or his spine injured. And
what could we do then, thousands of miles
from skilled medical help? I was shocked at
his death. He was his mother’s only child,
but it was better than living agony.”
Dazed by the suddenness and the manner
of the death, and desperately weary from
the endless struggle to sail past the treacher
ous cape, the body lay for nearly two days
before the skipper called the crew for the
funeral service to permit the sea to claim
what it had destroyed.
THE Finnish second mate took it hard. He
liked the boy and brooded deeply about
his loss. It was his fault, he told himself
and the crew. He shouldn’t have sent the
youngster aloft. Nobody agreed with the
mate’s blaming of himself, said Villiers, but the
mate tore at his conscience until it slashed
his brain from its moorings, and he lost his
sane reckonings.
Three time* the insane officer tried suicide.
Once by hanging in his cabin, once he
snatched a knife to sink into himself, and
then he tried to leap into the ocean.
There were no irons on board and no way
to keep him from sell-inflicted harm. Be
tween fits of insanity he regained his mental
balance.
' “It was a damnable position for the skip
per,” said Villiers. "Every time the mate got
Just a Speck in the Cosmos!
TAON’T you get fed up with cities and
civilization, the distraction of traffic
and noise? asks Skipper Villiers.
%
Five times around the Horn, he has just
bought a windjammer for another tilt with
the tempests of the high seas.
The sea is the only place left where
there is a natural form of the simple life.
Just a man against the elements—a bru
tal life, yet one that men thrive on mightily.
Just a speck in the vastness of the cos
mos—and that’s where you get d true line on
yourself and learn how to live.
..nip at 14 because I was sure that
this was the romance I had read
about.
“I shipped on a small Scotch
bark. The seams of the poop
deck had been newly calked with
pitch, which ran out on the
planks in the heat of the sun.
Apprentices were put through a
severe discipline. There were six
of us, and we had to rub that
deck white with a scraper and
soap.
"It took all of six weeks, and it
rubbed out the romanoe of sail
ing, as well as giving me house
maid's knee. But the romance
slowly came back and I again be
lieve the seafaring life is the only
one for a man. At least it is for
me.
"Don’t you get fed up with the
cities, with civilization? The dis
tractions of telephones, radios,
clattering trolleys, roaring sub
ways, rushing automobiles?
“Don’t you get tired of the
same deadly routine, day after
day? Up at the same time, re
porting on the job at the same
hour, and rushed, hurried and
harried through an artificial,
complicated and complex life?
Even if you’re deep in the coun
try you can’t get away from the
complications of civilization.
They follow you in the form of
newspapers, telephones, radio and
mall.
• \no; me sea is me omy pmce
left where there is a natural, simple form of
life. A world of watery waste, a speck of mov
ing steel or wood with sails to catch the natural
motive power. Hard work, but never two days
the same or on the same job.
“Just man against the elements. A hard
and simple life. And yet men thrive on it
mightily. Such a case of insanity as I have
described is very, very rare. It is the example
that proves the rule.
“Men work drenched to the skin and fight
storms for days without sleep.
11 SHIP is really a tiny world, if you look
at it properly—a complete society—of
course, without women. You have a ruling
caste, the officers; a middle class, the cook, who
usually spoils the food, and shall I aay the
oppressed, pr lower, class in the crew.
“You have class conflicts and the clash of
personalities.
"I don’t think sailors, as a rule, miss women
from one end of the voyage to the other. The
sailor is usually a deep and reflective person.
When you stand watch for hours and have
nothing to do but look out on the immense
waste of waters, when you can go for 6,000
miles without even a landfall to take a bear
ing on, as you do from Australia to the Horn,
you have plenty of time to ruminate on what
it's all about.
“When you completely adjust yourself to
the universe, when you realize you’re just a
speck In the vastness of the cosmos, you get
a fair picture of what you really are.
“Of course, there is a sprinkling of shallow
sailors. You can tell them by the fact that
they talk a lot and quickly degenerate into
*s£& lawyers *
“It's a brutal life, I'll admit, and dan
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Continued on Seventeenth Page _
back his balance he demanded to be put in
charge of his watch.
‘‘If the skipper refused, the irritation and
resentment would be sure to drive him back
into a spell of insanity, and if the skipper
restored the mate’s authority it was probable
that sooner or later he would slip back into
insanity anyway. So the captain made the
best compromise he could by letting him head
the watch, but a man was ordered to keep
a sharp lookout on the mate every moment
and report any orders that might come from
the brain of a demented man.
“His first lapse came on the seventy-third
day out, and we didn’t dock until the 129th
day. Almost two months on a ship with a
crazy mate. An experience I wouldn't like to
have again.’’
Despite the arduous life, the tragedy and
the isolation for long months, Villiers refuses
to be disillusioned In his love for the sea. He
has been on sailing ships since he was 14
years of age, and that was 15 years ago. He
has become one of the owners of the Parma,
a 3,000-ton four-master which Is also In the
grain-carrying trade and on which he pro
poses to make a motion picture which realisti
cally and without Actional sugar-coating re
flects the life at sea.
111 WAS born in Melbourne,” said the author
I of "Falmouth for Orders” In describing the
philosophy which keeps him from cities and
urges him to flee to the sea. “And my earliest
memory Is that of looking down the street to
a forest of masts and yards which then crowd
ed the harbor.
“I read all the sea stories that were within
my reach, and I was pulled into an apprentice