‘Haul sail.’ The crew released the bracing ropes and the boom swung round.
‘Well all forward.’
‘Well all aft.’
Tom kept a close watch on the Mignonette’s ageing timbers. Some water still leaked around the heel of the bowsprit, but the work done at Fay’s Yard appeared to have stemmed the worst of the other leaks, though a trickle of water seeped through the seams as the hull flexed in the swell. He set Brooks and the boy to work with pitch and oakum, caulking and leading the timbers, but in heavy seas, both men off-watch were still kept at work pumping the bilges with the hand-pumps.
They were now well established in the ship’s routine, working in pairs on four-hour watches, except in late afternoon and early evening, when the two-hour dog-watches ensured a rotation so that the crew who had two of the three night watches one day — the first, middle and dawn watches — would only do one the next.
All hands were usually on deck during the dog-watches, but even when the first night watch was called at eight in the evening, the off-duty men would often remain on deck, for when the weather was warm and set fair, all preferred clean air to the stale, fetid odour of bilge water below decks.
Now out of sight of land, Stephens used the chronometer and sextant to take a noon sun-sight on the days when the skies were clear, then retired to the cabin to make the series of long, complex calculations that would reveal their position. However, precise readings were difficult to obtain from a small yacht and when the sun was obscured he had to rely on the often inaccurate methods of dead reckoning and ‘log, line and look-out’.
Navigational techniques had altered little since the turn of the century. The magnetic steering compass was housed in the binnacle directly in front of the helm, held on gimbals to keep it horizontal, whatever the angle of the ship. Its circumference was divided into thirty-two points, which did not correspond to an exact number of degrees, but gave the helmsman a clear distinguishing mark to which he could hold the ship’s heading.
The distance run by the ship was measured by a log dropped into the water at the bow and retrieved from the stern. The time it took to cover that known distance was noted and by calculating the ship’s speed relative to the drifting log the mate could estimate the number of miles they had covered since the last reading.
The Mignonette was equipped with a less primitive log, a cylinder housing four rotator blades like the screw of a steamer. A mechanical counter kept tally of the revolutions, allowing an estimate of the distance travelled, though the effects of tides and currents also had to be allowed for. They could add or subtract as much as forty miles in the course of a day’s sailing.
Tacking against the wind, variable winds and violent weather made logging the ship’s progress a far from accurate procedure and often the navigator was forced into dead reckoning that was perilously close to guesswork. As the fate of the European indicated, it could easily be many miles out.
When close to land, regular soundings were also taken with lead and line to help pinpoint the ship’s position, but the ultimate guarantee of a ship’s safety was always the alertness of the look-outs. A good seaman had a restless eye, always shifting his gaze between the weather side of the boat, the masthead’s spars and rigging above him, the sea around and the horizon ahead. He was also alert to the most minor and, to a landsman, insignificant changes in the sea and sky.
This was not merely to give early warning of a change in wind or weather. Proximity to land could be detected by signs visible long before the keenest eye could spot the coast itself. Even a change in the pattern of clouds or an unusual tint to the sky might be enough to alert an experienced seaman.
The dark colour of the deep ocean became paler and fish were usually more numerous close to land. Kelp, driftwood and other floating flotsam might show the presence of an offshore current. The on-and off-shore breezes and the flight of birds that mimicked them — outward at dawn and returning at dusk — could also be detected miles from land.
The other senses also played a part. The outflow of large rivers could be found miles out to sea from the opacity of the silt-laden water and its less salty taste. Breakers could be heard long before they were visible and the scents of land — earth after rain, smoke, swamps, or pungent vegetation like eucalypts — might be carried far out to sea on the breeze.
There was no coast within hundreds of miles of the Mignonette, however, and Tom used the calm weather to instigate a thorough cleaning and overhaul of the ship ready for the heavier weather to come in the southern latitudes.
The work of tarring down the rigging was hot, filthy and gruelling. They changed into their oldest sea-clothes, worn, holed and already stiff with tar. A bucket of pitch was heated in the galley and hauled up to the masthead, where they daubed it over the ropes, using a handful of oakum as a brush. They worked downwards, tarring the stays and shrouds, the ties and runners, and the lifts and foot-ropes around the mainmast. When they had finished they were as black as the ropes they had been working on.
They used bundles of spare canvas and rags to block up the scuppers, then pumped water into them and washed themselves in their primitive bathtub, scouring their skin with coarse soap until the worst of the tar had been removed. They used more sea-water to wash their clothes and towed them behind the boat on a rope for a few minutes to rinse the soap from them. Then they knotted them roughly around the rails to dry and began work on the deck.
While Richard polished the ship’s bell, the binnacle and the brass windlass head until they gleamed, the others scraped the tar spills from the planking with knives, washed the decks and scuppers and swept them with brooms. Tom then covered the decks with a thin layer of coarse, gritty sand from the hold, ready for the laborious process of holy-stoning.
A long flat slab of soft red sandstone, bored at either end with holes from which lengths of rope protruded, was brought up from below decks. Brooks and Richard took a rope each and began to drag it backwards and forwards over the deck, scouring the planks with the damp sand. Smaller, hand-size stones were used in the angles around the hatchways, bulwarks and the galley stove pipe projecting from the deck. The hatch covers and companionway were hauled up and given the same treatment, then Brooks manned the head pump and hosed the decks clean.
As it dried, the sun-bleached wood shone white in the sunlight and it was warm under Tom’s bare feet as he patrolled the deck, testing the sails and checking the tension in the shrouds and stays, his restless gaze never still.
Sailing ships making for Australia avoided the shorter route through the Suez Canal because the winds were less reliable than the Atlantic trade winds. Instead, they usually followed a Great Circle route, aiming to pass close to St Paul’s Rocks in the South Atlantic, not far from the coast of South America.
They then picked up the south-east trades and followed a curving track wide of Tristan da Cunha, to latitude forty or even further south. The powerful westerlies of the roaring forties drove them well to the south of the Cape of Good Hope and, unless there was an emergency, they would not enter port or even come close to land until reaching Australia.
The big sailing barques could handle the enormous seas and heavy gales of the roaring forties. Small yachts were different, but before setting out Tom had scoured the back numbers of yachting magazines for the logs of other yachts making the passage to Australia, and he had chosen a route used by many past captains.