So
you have never been to sea and chances if you have been to sea it's
not on sailing ships. I spent about an hour writing my
story of a sailing ship called Blue Moaning and the trevails of it's
crew.
As
a former matelot I can wholeheartedly agree that the story could have
happened "back in the day".
Enjoy.
Blue
Moaning – A small tale.
Part
the First
The
creaking decks held an eerie grip on their planking. Boards groaned,
rivets strained and water washed those decks clearing away any
corrosive spume. The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse danced white
caps on mountainous swells.
The
wheel and all the yards aboard were storm-rigged and lashed, the sole
figure littering the upperdecks that of the nightwatchman tied to the
after bulwark. The slumped figure hung by his lashings around his
waist, his lungs stained with salt-water burns, testament to his
painful drowning. SS Blue Moaning sailed on, oblivious of the fate of
her crew.
But
true to her name and some would claim from earlier passages, true to
her nature, the ship did moan. Her every plank and sail, yard and
mast, whip and stay moaned her displeasure at the rough seas. So too
did three figures lashed to their hammocks in the fwd mess. Not one
of the three dehydrated and hungry crewmen had eaten or taken water
since the inception of the storm, partly due to being lashed in their
hammocks, partly due to the bucking decks beneath them. Death lurked
the storm tossed ship.
The
boatswain, Broghie O’Callaghan, the ships cook, Banger Naills, and
the ship’s youngest crewman but third most adept sailor, Lofty
Blomquist lay below lashed to their hammocks clinging on for dear
life and awaiting the storm to abate, or the onset of their own
death. Judging by recent events in the fwd messdeck, death came
quicker.
The
death toll was extreme, especially when giving credence to the stormy
weather, starvation and stupidity. Of a normal compliment of eighty
seven, hauling molasses, rum, and sugar beet, only three remained,
and in dubious condition at that. Eighty-four dead, twenty-two of who
had perished when the storm first hit and they were trying to trim
the Blue Moaning for the sudden weather change.
The
storm, though now abating coupled with the cold blue gray seas off
Cape Horn, had raged incessantly for eighteen days. It had taken it’s
pound of flesh and then some. The ship had been blown northwest, out
into the southeast Pacific Ocean.
The
survivors noticed the drop in intensity of the wind howling through
the rigging and gunwales, and felt the slackening of the grip of the
merciless sea on Blue Moanings’ hull. Slowly at first, then even
more noticeably.
Broghie
untied his bindings on his hammock, and slipped jitteringly to the
deck. His once strong legs reduced to weakness thanks to the long
stay in the canvas bed. He reached into a locker and extracted a
bottle of Nelson’s Blood, good strong Navy Rum he had purchased
prior to starting the trip. All the older sailors had their own rum
supply, but Broghie preferred the Queens Rum to the lesser potent
stock rum supplied to the merchant marine. He stretched his flagging
muscles. They ached, but still worked.
Lofty
and Banger remained in their hammocks, fragile eyes watching the
Bosun like laboured bulls. They were still to ill to venture from the
safety of their respective pits and they informed Broghie as he
accosted them about some assistance. Truth be known, both were too
mollified by the slackening of the violence and could probably have
moved but felt an unhealthy need to not trust the weather conditions
topside, in case it came on rough again. Therefore they both
concluded, it has been safe in the hammock thus far, just a little
more time and we’ll know the full score with the weather.
Broghie
donned his sou’westers; heavy oilskin coat and leggings, and a tie
on oilskin hood or hat. Most preferred the hat. He then
donned his large seaboots, rubber galoshes or Wellington boots that
suited life on a ship at sea, if dry feet were wanted.
He
advanced through the messdeck unsteadily, as the ship still lurched
occasionally as she surfed down a large swell out of the Antarctic
Sea came rolling on through. He caught hold of the ladder handrail
that lead from the messdeck to the topside deck or the Main Deck as
it was more commonly called. The ladder exited aft of the focsle and
just in front of the foremast. Broghie grabbed one of the Watchlines
that was suspended from the deckhead, and attached the belt end to
his waist, coiling up the clip-end of the line and the remaining 50
feet for ease of laying out when he clipped on topside. This rope was
a Blue Moaning invention, attributed to her former second mate, until
recently the second longest serving member of the 1868-built New
Zealand flagged Barque.
Broghie
then rechecked the manila hemp line for snags, then pulled himself up
the ladder to the topside sliding hatch. Grasping the clip, he
affixed it to the ringbolt at the top of the hatch placed there for
such purposes, laid the coiled line down on the top rung, and
grasping the hatch with both hands, slid the hatch back smoothly to
it’s stops.
The
rope securely fastened to avoid being washed overboard, the Bosun
eased himself out of the hatch, occasionally wearing a greenie or sea
spray wash, on his body. But the sea had abated he noticed, and the
force of the wash was not threatening. He undid the clip, and
refastened it to the foremast ringbolt, and standing on the Main
deck, took stock of the sea across the deck, noting the intervals and
intensity until in his mind he was happy that he could proceed
without the line fixed to the ring bolt. He now felt he could trust
the runner lines between the masts, so he unclipped the ringbolt end
and clipped onto the runner line between the Foremast and the
Mainmast.
He
took a moment longer to assess the damage. At this stage, the ship
was sailing on one storm jib up the foremast, with two storm mains
blown out and fluttering dangerously in the wind that still raged.
Rigging lay about the masts in a state of disrepair, but not as badly
as he had expected. As the chief seaman onboard, his appraisal of the
ship was rapid but knowing. The motion of the ship beneath his feet,
and from his observations in his hammock, indicated the Blue moaning
had taken on a fair amount of water, but not a dangerous amount such
that she would heal over and sink.
His
perusal aft, however brought him back to a sense of reality. At this
stage he had no idea how many of the ships compliment had survived
the storm, but based on the dead forward, and now the figure slumped
on the Poop deck meant that his estimates may be a little below what
he first though it would be. Even in any storm, someone always
managed to man the Poop deck and the Helm, but the lashed figure aft
was obviously very dead.
Part
the Second to follow.
Broghie
made his way aft, negotiating with care the rigging lying about, and
dodging the lap of wave wash across the deck as each swell cap licked
the side of the ship. His actions pure automaton, but his thoughts
clearly focused on the final death toll. The ship would need to be
cleared away and made seaworthy and with his two current shipmates
the task was daunting.
He
had been sent below when the crew numbers had been at fifty percent
left, so he figured that with himself and his two companions forrid
he figured that the better accommodated aft crew and Officers
quarters, the survival rate was much higher than up forrid. Maybe
fifty to seventy percent.
Broghie
reached the poopdeck, passing a cursory glance at the wheel, which
was lashed to the stand rail adjacent it, and approached the stooped
figure. Topyardman Jackson was very dead. Water seemed to fill his
upper torso dragging it forward and down. He’d been dead for some
time, judging by the bluing of the lips and the amount of salt on his
pallid skin. He made a mental note to give the young man a decent
burial, then turned for the after quarters.
A
sense of foreboding took hold of him as he approached the Officers
quarters door. He stopped, hand on the door handle, took a languid
look up forrid to ensure the ship was safe, and to see if his
companions had made an appearance. Broghie turned the handle and
entered to his fate.
A
ship is a beauty, a beast, a scourge, and a lucky thing. Men aren’t!
Blue Moaning was all of these and then some. But mostly she was
lucky. The beauty was in her lines and shape. The beast in the way
she rode the storms of the oceans. The scourge, her incompetent crew.
But she was lucky mostly. Her hull and rigging were built to
perfection to handle big seas. Man may have designed and built her,
but the ship settled into her own comfort zone and took on a soul of
her own. Men got lucky building her, but the ship made her own luck..
Her
crew had in effect had murdered themselves. Out of the fear of the
seas, and lack of trust in their special ship. Some had been worthy,
with three survivors. But the ship had been just one, and was still
one.
************************************************************************
Take
a pasting, me ‘earties,
Eat
the salt in the air,
Take
it like a man, me darlings,
Grapple
nature’s fear,
Fight
it, me shipmates,
Be
damned should ye fail,
The
only loser is you, poor fool,
The
winner, ship and sail.
Blue
Moaning, having been pumped out, and the dead ceremoniously deposited
with Old King Neptune and souls passed heavenward, made way under
abating winds. In four days since the Bosuns’ first walk around,
the three remaining crewman had stripped away all the broken rigging,
pumped out the hull and set a one third mizzen set, a set of lower
mainsails and lower foresails, and one top foresail. The
eighteen-knot wind had the ship progressing steadily on flattening
seas. The crew stood two on watch, and one asleep below decks, a hard
routine but necessary on to maintain the helm and the sails. Eight
hours on watch and four asleep was a hard routine, but the sailors
welcome to work after the near death experience of not doing anything
in a big storm.
Broghie
had managed to find a chart which just happened to have the ship’s
intended track from Nova Scotia to the West Indies, then round the
Horn and off towards New Zealand, their original final destination.
Fixes on the track showed the ships’ track, which ended off the
west coast of Chile, when the storm had full hold on them. He had
estimated that with the storm rig set, and their current progress
under their new set of sails, the ship had traveled approximately two
to three thousand nautical miles to the Norwest, way out into the
southeast Pacific Ocean. Certainly the warmer air and sea
temperatures attested to that fact.
But
even with that knowledge, Blue Moaning was lost at sea. What was
worse is that none of the crew could navigate. Sure, they could steer
a course, but as to actually taking a fix from sights’ and applying
to the chart, they were without a doubt hopeless. The ship followed
the wind, and the crew could only set a course to nowhere.
Captain
Broghie, as his two crew now called him, had to make a decision. Head
due east and reach the Chilean or Peruvian coasts, or head due west
and cross the Pacific Islands or New Zealand. All three decided that
the rogue Spanish colonies would be to harsh, and unfriendly to
English speaking sailors. So west it was.
With
plentiful supplies, a cook, a fair sea, and a graceful ship, they
followed their ships’ bow, looking forward to their new fate. Blue
Moaning thrived under her sails, her keel smoothly massaged by the
great blue Pacific.
The
next night, the skies cleared and shooting stars abounded. The ship
was happy with her course, so Broghie decided to lash the wheel and
the crew would have a little chance to let their hair down for a bit.
The three sailors adjourned to the Captains cabin and proceeded to
drink to old mates and the their own good fortune. Six bottles of
Rum, two bottles of Cognac, and four bottles of Port later, the three
ventured on deck to get a breath of air, and for Banger to relieve
his stomach of it’s contents.
The
other two helped him over to the starboard gunwale, all of them
shuffling in a staggering motion. They leaned over, Banger feeding
the Neptune God, and the other two looking on providing
encouragement.
“Waz
zat?” shouted Broghie, drunkenly.
Suddenly,
Blue Moaning lurched onto a reef, spun sideways, and rolled over to
starboard, tossing the three drunken sailors onto the reef. The next
wave lifted the ship up and deposited it down on the reef again,
crushing the three survivors. The next wave lifted her off the reef,
swung her out to sea and she was on her way again, headed west by
sou’west.
Her
final sighting at Pitcairn Islands was recorded as “SS Blue
Moaning, Course 260, Speed 18 Knots, signaled but no reply
(ignorance!!).
In
the closing the saga of the SS Blue Moaning, it is rumoured that if
you listen closely to all the reefs in the South Pacific, you’ll
hear the blue waters moaning. And wonder at what they are moaning at?
When
men go down to the sea in ships……………..
