Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey (39 page)

We anchored at Wulaia, where we found four houses, a couple of radio masts, and a small landing-craft loading sheep. Our whaleboat took ashore two women and two children we had brought from Punta Arenas to join their men — the sailors at the radio station. I went along and had a talk with the petty officer in charge on shore. It was a beautiful place, dense forests rising up the slope behind the tiny settlement, a rushing stream, a sheltering island in front, and the snow mountains of Hoste Island spread in jagged magnificence across the western horizon. Three men were stationed there, with their families, for two years at a time. I asked the petty officer whether he did not find the life a little bleak. He seemed surprised at such a foolish question. Why no, certainly not, he said. He had a good house, cows, fresh milk, a few sheep. What more could a man ask?'

Back aboard the
Lautaro,
I told this to Fierro, who said, 'Many of our sailors are from Chiloe. If you think it's bleak here, you should see the places they came from before they joined the Navy.' He also told me of the problem they had been having with such really isolated posts as the Evangelistas. If they put on two men with their wives, there was invariably wife swopping; if they put on men only, there was sodomy. Better the cross-adultery, the navy finally decided, and chose the women.

The name of the island sheltering Wulaia is Button, and it has an interesting history. When the
Beagle's
whaleboat was stolen on the first expedition Fitzroy, in the course of raging up and down the channels looking for it, seized four Indians as hostages. The sailors named them after incidents of their capture: Boat Memory, York Minster, Jemmy Button, and Fuegia Basket (a girl). The whaleboat was never recovered, and Fitzroy took the four back to England with the ship, intending 'to procure for these people a suitable education and, after two or three years... send them back to their country, with as large a stock as I can collect of those articles most useful to them, and most likely to improve the condition of their countrymen...'

Things did not work out quite like that, of course. Boat Memory died of smallpox, and after only nine months of 'education' (and meetings with King William and Queen Adelaide), the other three were once more embarked in H.M.S.
Beagle,
and heading for home. A year later Fitzroy put them ashore at Wulaia, where York Minster was to marry Fuegia Basket (by then eleven and a half). All three were clothed, and well provided with food and gifts. A year and a month later again the
Beagle,
turning into the Murray Channel, saw a canoe ahead with three Indians in it. All were naked, thin, and ill. One was Jemmy Button. Some months before York Minster had stripped him of all his belongings, stolen his boat, and disappeared with Fuegia Basket. After two days on board Fitzroy put Jemmy Button ashore for the last time, again clothed and provisioned. As the little brig headed out of the bay, a column of smoke rose from the sheltering island — Button Island — as Jemmy Button said farewell to his captain and what he had perhaps long thought of as his ship.

In 1859 a party of missionaries, trying to convert the heathen from a base at Wulaia, were murdered by the Indians. The man who threw the first stone was Billy Button, Jemmy's son. Fuegia Basket was heard of whoring herself on passing sealers. In 1865 Captain Fitzroy, a fundamentalist unhinged by progress in general and Darwin's
Origin of Species
in particular, shot himself.

And all this is woven into the warp of the Horn.

The weather report from Diego Ramirez was good, and Patricio said, 'We go.' We weighed from Wulaia at 5.30 p.m. and headed south. It got colder, and I tied down all my belongings and wedged everything that could not be tied.

At 9 p.m. we were forty-five minutes short of False Cape Horn, which is the southern tip of Hoste Island. There was a heavy overcast with a patch of light in the sky to the south. The swell was moderate to heavy, with no breakers there in the lee of Hoste. The
Lautaro
pitched easily. All bridge apparatus — radar, echo sounder, etc. — was working, and Fierro had the watch. Diego Ramirez reported their barometer steady, wind south-west Force
5,
sea
gruesa.
I went to my cabin and jammed myself into the bed. A few minutes later we passed out into the open ocean.

For a long time I thought I was going to be seasick, as the rolling steadily increased to about 25 degrees each way. Then I realized that, although I felt light-headed, I had no cold forehead, no shivers, and no cold sweat or other ill feeling. With that I fell sound asleep until 5 a.m. when I went up to the bridge. After a few minutes Fierro, who was back on watch, went out. Soon Patricio appeared, and a few moments after that...

The quartermaster at the wheel turned the wheel to the left, then more. He glanced at the compass in front of him. Then he spun the wheel to the right... far, far... waited, looked at the compass. He turned the wheel back and said,
'Falló la caña.'

Patricio leaped off his high chair, looked at the compass and snapped
'Al medio la calla! Para la maquina!'

Our steering gear had failed. We were seventy miles out in Drake Strait, with Diego Ramirez still five miles to the south-west. As the light spread, the Cape Horn current began to carry us east at two knots. In that direction there was no land clear around the world, and I began to feel empty and apprehensive. We lay broadside on to the seas, rolling now to 30 degrees each way. The engineer warrant officer scurried off to find the trouble. Half a dozen of us jammed ourselves into nooks and crannies of the bridge, and waited. The sun rose, casting our shadow over the water towards the wall of white spray bursting on the long reef running north from Diego Ramirez. Radio messages reporting our plight went to naval headquarters at Punta Arenas, where the Chilean admiral was a collateral connection of that Indian Army general, quoted in Chapter 1, who had raised the 4th Gurkhas; and bore the same names — Donald Macintyre. Admiral Macintyre put the
Lientur
our sister ship, under emergency orders to come out and help us; but she couldn't reach us in under forty-eight hours.

I had time to think of some of the more gruesome Cape Horn tales, particularly one I had recently heard in Santiago. An old English lady there had shown me her husband's diaries, and one story had stuck in my mind. In the present circumstances I wished it hadn't...

Her husband, Milward, had been a seaman in windjammers. On a day in 1875, just about here, a slackening and sudden filling of the sails to a gust of wind jerked the carpenter overboard. Milward, at the wheel, threw him a lifebelt as he floated astern. Then the ship came up into the wind and they launched the whaleboat. Everyone on board was watching to see whether the whaleboat had rescued the carpenter, when instead, they saw a great wave overturn it. A much longer time was needed before the second whaleboat could be launched, for it was well chocked and lashed down and used to store vegetables. When it was finally launched another crew pulled it away to windward, leaving only a few men on board the clipper. Fog descended. After a long wait the second boat crew loomed out of the fog, bleeding from foreheads, hands, and arms. They had brought no survivors from the first boat, nor the carpenter. They said they had found no one, only lifejackets floating around, all unfastened. The captain's theory was that albatrosses had attacked the men in the water and pecked their eyes out. Rather than face more such torture they had undone their lifejackets and pushed themselves under.

I looked at our whaleboat and cutter, and remembered that there were some automatics and rifles locked up in a corner of the bridge...

The engineers began to fix up a jury steering gear, using large chains direct on the rudder. That was ready by nine o'clock, and we set off erratically for Hoste Island at slow speed, erratically since there was no 'fine tuning' on those chains, and because the telephone had also failed, so orders had to be bellowed by megaphone from the bridge to the poop. Then the chief reported that he could mend the electrical steering gear but that the ship must be stopped and the jury rig disconnected to do it. Patricio ordered this done, and for another two hours we wallowed in the marching waves, wind and current sending us away from Diego Ramirez at over five knots.

When the steering was at last fixed, we turned and headed back towards it, for they had reported landing conditions O.K. When we got there though, Patricio spent barely a minute examining the beach through his binoculars from the wing of the bridge before he said, 'No... Starboard ten. Bearing six three. Full speed ahead!' We circled, tucked our stern under us, and headed for Orange Bay, where we would have to wait until conditions improved at Diego Ramirez. On the way in, with Hoste close ahead, we were rolling a steady 40 degrees each way, and the ward-room toilet excelled itself. In a roll it was always liable to explode water to a height of a foot or so. On this journey, when I was about to begin operations, it geysered up three feet, drenching me from the bottom up, and causing mild psychosomatic constipation for the rest of the trip.

At 5.30 p.m. the anchor splashed down in Orange Bay on the east side of Hoste Island, some twenty miles north of False Cape Horn.

Next day, while the engineers thoroughly overhauled the steering gear, I went ashore with Fierro and a whaleboat crew, to rebuild the Romanche tower. The
Romanche
was a French vessel which came here with a scientific expedition to observe the transit of Venus in 1882. At their camp they had erected a wooden pyramid which was marked on the charts, so the Chilean Navy saw that it was kept in good condition. The pyramid had blown away, but we found a small brick pillar containing a stone slab engraved with the dates Sep 1882 — Sep 1883. Nothing else. A ghostly army of stunted, white tree trunks marched away inland, and the beeches grew horizontally along the ground from the perpetual pressing down of the wind. It was cold, showers of rain and hail coming, passing, going, as the sailors began to rebuild the pyramid. Fierro and I tramped off into the wet wind, he with a Steyr rifle, taking pot-shots at large birds like geese. The ground underfoot was wet and springy, covered with a coarse tight-meshed grass. Pools of water, large and small glistened everywhere, and between the rain squalls we saw the Horn group of islands off to the south-east. After a couple of hours of exercise, harmless to the geese and badly needed by us after our confinement on board, we returned to find the pyramid made and the sailors dancing and singing round a huge fire they had built on that utterly desolate shore. The Chilean sailors, as I saw them, were as fine small-boat men as any in the world, and withal well-disciplined, humorous, tough, hard-working and completely natural. In their simplicity and good humour in primitive conditions they reminded me very much of the Gurkhas I loved. Our trip to Spain enabled me to communicate with them, and I learned some other modes of Spanish. (Here the toilet was neither
escusado, chicago,
nor
retrete,
but
aseo.)

We rowed back to the
Lautaro,
sitting like a grey swan on a calm sea, and had a couple of piscos to get the chill out of our bones. Then, on the forecastle, I taught Patricio and Germain how to dance Gurkha
jaunris,
while the boatswain played a mouth-organ and the sailors clapped in rhythm and laughed ready to burst.

At 8 p.m. there was a favourable weather report from Diego Ramirez, and at eleven we weighed and headed south. It was a terrible night. The
Lautaro
bumped, bored, pitched, jerked, tossed, corkscrewed, and sunfished like a desperate bronco. The companion outside my cabin seemed to be full of metal cans, tearing paper, and hissing snakes. At 4 a.m. I could stand no more and went to the bridge, where I found we were rolling 48 degrees each way. I invited Patricio's attention to this, since it didn't seem quite safe for us to be standing on alternate ears every few seconds. Patricia said, 'We did 60 degrees each way coming up from Antarctica last month.' I went back to bed.

When I awoke we were at anchor in Diego Ramirez 'roads'. The cutter was already in the water, and the crew had started to load the whaleboat. On the island there were two little square houses and a straining Chilean flag, all facing north-east. Through the Nodales Strait, between the two islands, the Southern Ocean heaved under fitful sun in its mighty world-girdling swell, dark, dark blue flecked with broad glittering daubs of white. Both boats went off on their first trip, under Germain, who was bundled up to look like the Fat Boy of Peckham, what with his lifejacket, duffel coat, and probably all the shirts he owned. Thousands upon thousands of seabirds sat like a grey and white army on the island's shore. Catspaws of wind pounced on us, shook us, and vanished. Two squalls passed, but all the sailors cared about was getting their pictures in
Life.
Until Patricio called down a sharp reprimand from the bridge, they were all standing up in the wildly heaving boats as they passed, indicating shots and camera angles to me.

The bearded chief radio operator of Diego Ramirez came aboard to make a report. In contrast to Germain, he was wearing only trousers and a cotton shirt, and seemed quite impervious to the keening wind, the temperature of 36 degrees, and a sudden snow shower.

At noon, all done, we hooted on our siren and headed for St Martin's Bay, a small indentation on the east side of Hermite Island, about six miles from Horn Island. The wind was south-west, Force 6, and we were rolling about 20 degrees but barely pitching. It was difficult to estimate the spacing of the waves, as they were broken up by crests, sub-crests, wavelets, and separate waves five feet or so high crossing the main line of march, but I thought they averaged 300 yards apart. For the same reasons, it was also hard to judge their height, but none were less than twenty feet from trough to crest, and most were about forty feet. They rolled up steep and monstrous high behind the
Lautaro's
poop, where she had barely four feet of freeboard, and were terrifying to watch as I tried to photograph them. I understood why the old sailing masters used to put a box round the helmsman, so that he could not see astern.