Douglas Mercer
November 25 2024
Continued from Crow (Part Two)
I must say that it did not help matters when on September 23 1968 my wife smashed the champagne bottle against the prow of the Teignmouth Electron it hit with a dull thud. She had given a very eloquent speech just before which very much pleased me; but when the bottle did not break another man had to take it from her hand and do the deed, sending glass every which way. But in for a dollar in for everything I say, and old wives tales and ill omens were converted in my mind to good luck, I would take then all on board with me; after all in any melodrama the tension has to rise to a fevered pitch if you want the climax to be as splendid as possible; and it’s been a long time since we read the future in the viscera of birds.
The weeks leading up to my launch were ones of bitter struggle; as for my ship it looked practical enough but was by no means a beauty, a flat monster totally unadorned. And what followed were long bouts of feverish activity; during this time I fell out with one of the makers of the boat and this time of high wire stress led soon to verbal explosions; I wanted to sail straight off but the others forbid me, and so I desisted lest I be held alone responsible for its condition. Construction costs were rising at an alarming rate and mutual recriminations wildly flew. Testing it out by going down the River Yare we reached Yarmouth in a driving rain and I had to go to land and hail a taxi to get the drawbridge pulled up by the master of the harbor. A swell was running and soon we all felt queasy; by my own admission I was in a foul temper. Once we made the estuary of the Thames my sickness had gone and I was once more euphoric; the proud face of what lay before me reminded me that this was the chance of my lifetime and soon I would punch my ticket. Boy’s Own Stuff as I have said.
We took her out on the Atlantic for a test run and it maddened me when I burnt my hand so badly on the exhaust pipe of the generator that a large patch of skin peeled off; my wife would later say that I had burnt my lifeline off and such a thing frightened her badly, as if when the prospect of death loomed superstition came to the fore as if in a regression; I still think about that burnt life line here, and wonder at the ironies of fate; we sailed back and forth from England to France and against custom I refused to make any prearranged signals to the stations; I learned later that this refusal caused great distress and a special sea search was almost initiated; but my wife assured them that all was fine and it never began. Looking back I have to say that the publicity which would have come from such a search would have hurt nothing.
My fellows and I began to have serious discussion about the boat’s deficits. One ventured that without prevailing winds the boat was liable to be stalled; dogmatically I said that I would have my winds, perhaps a kind of magical thinking but then in my elevated delirium the whole project had come to seem a fairy tale, and as such I would brook no opposition. To tell the truth I had no time for such quibbling as I had so much work ahead: assemblies of electronics to complete, moneymen to charm, repairs and modifications to make; at one point in the process, while my competitors were getting a jump on me, I was stuck in a tawdry harbor while a wind struck up to a gale force, massive waves crashing against the breakwater. Now it seemed that a hostile nature itself, combined with the race rules, were conspiring against me, and like a wild Lear I lifted my arms in rage; when normal weather resumed others noticed that I was reluctant to discuss my actual race plans. This was not the canniness that they took it for; but rather a lingering superstition that to be to exact in my statements would lead to some unknown disaster; in the face of the future no plan is often the best.
As the date of departure arrived I did a television interview, and I gave them the bluff Boy’s Own stuff; fine, grand, and heroic. I allowed that I was an incurable romantic, that I felt the kinship of the ghosts of long dead sailors, and the shared communing with the sea. I said that talking to oneself was very important, that the very process of speaking, even if in one’s head, the forming of words, assists in organizing one’s thought as no mere current of feeling ever can. I assured my interlocutor that I wanted to do what I was doing, that I did not do anything unless it was worthwhile to do it, and that once you make a decision there is no turning back. I told them the story of when I had once fell overboard and how after some soul searching moments I was able to return to my boat, more cheered than chastend. I had never told my wife this but this seemed like the time to bring out this realistic flourish; of course it was read as just another of my flairs for histrionic melodrama and self dramatization, the overtly operatic quality that everyone recognized in me as my salient characteristic.
There were many criticisms of me in the run up to the race; one man said that I tested nothing, that all hell was breaking loose on my dock, that I left the boat for mad errands for inconsequential things, or went to wine and cheese gatherings, and that I was not integrated with the team, and would stonewall them and not let them know what I was thinking; that I was in a kind of self-hypnotized state of blind panic, that I had been numbed into inefficiency due to the number of things I was required to do. There is of course a modicum of truth in these statements. However, the reality was that beneath my frantic posturing I knew that I was having, and was about to have, the time of my life; and that I was so confident in myself that that these details were but niggling issues which obscured the main point, that what I was about to do was so momentous that nothing of such a small nature could impede me.
The weather in the days before my run were gray and drizzly and everyone was getting tense. I am sure in the days to come the main issue which will be on everyone’s mind will be could this process (which they will call nightmarish) have been stopped. The answer is no. I remember what I read about heroes; that in centuries past when a hero arose men looked for Divine Purposes in him; but now with universal skepticism holding sway and the power of the press our heroes are but pale imitations of what they used to be, synthetic products cooked up by high flown rhetoric; while I have never been immune to such things as that I see now that my experience as I faced the sea was telling me that the real could still exist, not the cynosure of all eyes, but in a quiet steadfast way accomplish something that was both worth doing and worth remembering.
In the last days I was taken to a chapel where I refused to pray; I also wrote a letter to my wife in which I implored her should I not return that she should not descend to the dreadful traps of looking for signs of my continued existence through mediums or séances or table tapping; I told her that nothing was certain in life—nothing—from second to second, and minute to minute, and that she should stick to ordinary things; and that if I should be some spectral ghost in some other dimension she could be sure that I was doing what I had always done. I told her that it was always true to say, whatever the designs one has, that what lies ahead is always pure conjecture.
And looking back that day at the dock, and the maudlin scenes with my family, I know I must have looked rather ridiculous to any rational onlooker. And I even recall going to and from the boat in my dinghy and even to myself I had a rather sheepish grin, as if what I had so far got away with was beyond belief, the product of an impresario’s nature and a deep and abiding penchant for laying everything on thick. But I can assure you that I had no lingering doubts, when a man crosses the threshold of his life he must go out to meet it with eyes wide open and foursquare; but on these cloudless calm days that seem to stretch to forever such memories are neither here nor there. It’s not whatever will be that will be; but what you make it.
I set off on the last day possible, October 31, 1968 which date if you think about it indicates all that one needs to know.
***
The horse latitudes are the latitudes about 30 degrees north and south of the Equator. They are characterized by sunny skies, calm winds, and very little precipitation. A plausible explanation for the genesis of the term Horse Latitudes is that it derives from the dead horse ritual of sailors. In this practice, the sailors paraded a straw-stuffed effigy of a horse around the deck before tossing it overboard. Sailors were paid in advance before a voyage, and they frequently spent their pay all at once, resulting in a period of time without income. If they got advances from the ship's paymaster, they would incur debt. This period was called the dead horse time, and it usually lasted a month or two. The sailor’s ceremony was to celebrate having worked off the dead horse debt. As west-bound shipping from Europe usually reached the subtropics at about the time the dead horse was worked off, the latitude became associated with the ceremony.
The Roaring Forties possess strong westerly winds that occur in the Southern Hemisphere, generally between the latitudes of 40 and 50 South. The strong eastward air currents are caused by the combination of air being displaced from the Equator towards the South Pole, the earth’s rotation, and the paucity of landmass to serve as windbreaks at those latitudes. The Roaring Forties were a major aid to ships sailing the Brouwer route from Europe to the East Indies or Australia during the Age of Sail, and in modern times are favored by yachtsmen on round-the-world voyages and competitions. The boundaries of the Roaring Forties are not consistent as the wind-stream shifts north or south depending on the season.
An old English saying is that if you journey far enough out to sea there is no law; go out further and there is no God.
Continued at Crow (Part Four)
