THROUGH MAGELLAN STRAIT
Fog, Shoal, Wind and Tide--Most Awesome Scenery in the World,
but Not a Place to Anchor--Start at the Witching Hour of 11 p.m.
on Friday Brought Only Good Luck to the Long Line of U. S.
Leviathans, Flanked by Its Torpedo Flotilla--Vessels Wabble
Where the Tides Meet, but Steady Hands Curb Them Back to the
Course--The Willywaw--Island Post Office and Cape Pilar, Where
No Ship-wrecked Seaman Ever Escaped.
_On Board U. S. S. Louisiana, U. S. Battle Fleet_,
AT SEA, FEB. 15.
When word was cabled from Chile just before Admiral Evans's fleet swept
in and out of Valparaiso harbor on February 14 that the fleet had passed
through the Strait of Magellan safely, there was probably a feeling of
relief in Washington. Admiration for the successful performance of a
great feat of seamanship was probably expressed generally throughout the
world. The passage accomplished, it was easy to say that all along every
one who had any sense knew that it would come out all right and not for
one moment had there been any real cause for anxiety. Of course, of
course!
Nevertheless all the world knows there was great anxiety and even dread
lest something serious might happen in navigating this most treacherous
and dangerous passage in the world. Even the foreign press said that it
would be a supreme test of American seamanship to take a fleet of
sixteen battleships, to say nothing of the auxiliaries, through those
waters.
It is comparatively easy to take one or two ships through the straits.
Two or three hundred skippers perform that task with success every year.
Time and again have our warships, singly and in groups of two or three,
gone through with ease. But here were sixteen monster ships that had to
go through in single file and within about 400 yards of one another,
with no place to anchor and without the possibility of stopping,
buffeted by swift tides and currents, in danger of running into the
sheer cliffs of mountains or of striking hidden rocks in fog or possibly
snow. If any serious mishap had occurred there was nothing to do but go
right on. You couldn't lay to in these waters. If fog hid the way you
must keep on and trust to picking up headlands here and there, and you
must maintain your sustained speed of ten knots, because each vessel
would then know where its immediate predecessor or follower ought to be.
Certainly it was a difficult performance, one fraught with great danger
and grave responsibility. The chief point is, however, that the fleet
got through without the slightest mishap. It was done as easily as
entering the harbor of New York. There was not the slightest
manifestation of undue concern by any of the officers of the fleet, but
it cannot be denied that every one was keyed up to his best and all were
glad when the roll of the Pacific was felt. When it was over all hands
looked at one another and said, in the French expression, "It is to
laugh."
But you want to know all about it? Is there an impatient call for
details of this much-heralded trip of dread, a breathless demand to know
how many close calls and narrow escapes there were from hitting sunken
rocks, gliding against precipices, scraping the paint from the ships'
sides, dodging willywaws? You want to learn how many men were nearly
swept from the decks by overhanging cliffs and limbs of trees, how often
icebergs choked the narrow places, how many times the treacherous Fuegan
Indians, "the lowest form of humanity on earth," lit their fires as
signals that there would be fine plunder and good eating of humans when
one or more of these ships went on the rocks; whether it was true that
the officers and crews went without sleep or food until all dangers were
passed?
Well, if you guessed any or all those things you must guess again. None
of 'em happened. Of course the winds blew fiercely at times, but they do
that every day in the year in the Magellans. Of course the tide rips
caught the ships at certain critical places and twisted and turned them
somewhat. Of course the rain fell occasionally and now and then shut out
from view a most beautiful glacier or snow field just when you wanted to
see it most. Of course the clouds obscured the mountain tops from time
to time. Of course the currents and tides swept through the various
reaches like mill races. Of course a willywaw or two came out and smote
us, and of course there was fog.
But if you want to know how easily the passage was made let it be said
the last thirty miles of it was in a mist that thickened into a dense
fog, obscuring the land on both sides completely for hours and only now
and then lifting for a moment's revelation of some rock or headland.
Yes, the American fleet not only went through the dangerous passage, but
it actually sailed through miles and miles of fog in doing so, and it
was done in as smart a fashion as if the ships were on the high seas and
not in the most fearsome strait in the world, intervals and speed being
kept perfectly. After all, even if the men on the fleet pretended to
make light of it, the performance was a fine piece of navigation.
Admiral Evans has just reason to be proud of it and so have the American
people. It couldn't have been done better.
There was reason for dread. Hadn't all the timid folk spoken of the
terrible risks to be run? Hadn't the superstitious lifted up their
voices and pointed out that in the fifty-two wrecks that had occurred in
the strait in, say, the last twenty years, exactly twenty-six had been
of vessels beginning with the letter C? Didn't we have the Connecticut
to lead us? And worse than that, wasn't it the Chilean cruiser Chacabuco
which had been sent to Punta Arenas as a national compliment and to act
as escort about half a mile in front of the Connecticut? One ship
beginning with C was enough, but here were two. That surely was wilful
defiance of all the high signs and deep portents. And, then, didn't we
start out from Punta Arenas on Friday night at the eleventh hour? Hadn't
the moon just gone down, and who knows but that a darky had failed to
catch a rabbit over in the graveyard on the beach yonder and so had
missed having his left hind leg in his pocket (or whatever the details
of that superstition are)? And so there was no adequate guarantee from
escaping death and destruction. Certainly it was ticklish business, a
task for the ignorant or the foolhardy.
But, speaking seriously, what the maritime world thinks of this region
is revealed best probably by the nomenclature of the various headlands,
islands, bays and capes. A study of the charts presents such names as
these: Desolation Island, Point Famine, Famine Reach, Point Mercy,
Delusion Bay, Dislocation Harbor, Useless Bay, Disappointment Bay,
Spider Island, Corkscrew Bay and Cormorant Island, to say nothing of
Snow Sound and Snowy Inlet. Why, the very contemplation of the chart was
sufficient to give a landsman the shiverees!
The Strait of Magellan is 360 miles long and the width varies from about
a mile and a half in the narrowest part to twenty-five miles. The strait
is in the form of a letter V with the right part curved down a little at
the top and the left part extended above what would be the correct
proportion of a well-shaped letter. The short end reaches out into the
Atlantic and the long end into the Pacific. The short right end is
barren of fine scenery, the grandeur of the hills being reserved for the
long or western end. Down at the point of the latter is Cape Froward.
Coming from the eastern end there is about fifteen miles of rugged
scenery before you make the turn to the northwest. Punta Arenas, or
Sandy Point, as the English call this hustling, modern city, is about
two-thirds down the eastern side on a broad stretch of water known as
Broad Reach. Opposite is Useless Bay, probably so called because it is
useless to go over there to find an exit from the strait.
It is desirable, almost necessary in fact, to make the run through the
strait in daylight. To do this you enter, say, from the east as early
in the morning as possible so as to make Punta Arenas by night. Leaving
that port you start at night, about midnight. You have about forty-five
miles of broad deep water with no difficulties in navigation to Cape
Froward, which you reach by daybreak. After that you can go through the
western end of the strait by daylight and reach the Pacific about
nightfall.
The strait has half a dozen lights in it, but in time of fog or fierce
snowsqualls these are of little value unless by accident you happen to
pick them up. Again the tide races through the strait at the rate of
never less than three miles an hour and in some of the narrow places it
has a speed of from five to six miles. Where the tides of the Atlantic
and Pacific meet there are cross currents and disturbances that catch
even the most high-powered ship and swing it here and there, despite
careful work of the helmsman.
Still hundreds of steamships go through safely every year and a close
study of the chart revealed only three places which occasioned anxiety
to the fleet officers.
One of these places is Sarmiento Shoal that juts out into the Atlantic
for miles from Cape Virgins, the Argentine headland, 135 feet high, that
marks the beginning of the eastern end. It really is no more dangerous
to cross, for example, than the shoals of Nantucket. The fleet came down
to the shoal about noon. There is one place where there are nine fathoms
of water and it has a width of only four or five miles. The task is to
fix the place of crossing from bearings and then to cross it. When the
exact spot was reached a fierce black cloud came up and obscured
things. With it came a strong southwest wind that made things choppy.
Over the narrow part of the shoal the ships headed. Once or twice,
perhaps because the looks of the water or the lead may have given
warning, the flagship made short turns. But in half an hour it was over
and the fleet turned to the northwest, past Dungeness light, five miles
below Cape Virgins, and marking the real entrance to the strait, which
is now under the entire jurisdiction of Chile. From the mast of the
Chilean signal station there fluttered flags which said, in the language
of the international code:
"Enter Chilean waters; welcome distinguished American seamen; pleasant
voyage."
The fleet voted the sentiment all right, even if the verbiage was
somewhat unusual. There was a quick run up into the broad waters of
Possession Bay, close to the entrance of the First Narrows. There are
two narrows on the run to Punta Arenas and here is where the tide runs
strongest in the strait. If the tide is against you it is better to
anchor and wait for the turn. There is a good anchorage in the bay and
about 4 o'clock of the afternoon of January 31 the mudhooks were dropped
in a boiling sheet of water that in its actions resembled the lower part
of Chesapeake Bay in a storm.
At daylight the next morning the fleet was under way again with a
favorable tide. The First Narrows are ten miles long, two wide and have
water forty fathoms deep. There was no trouble in just skimming right
along. Then the ships entered another big bay, Philip Bay, and after
about twenty-five miles of deep water came to the Second Narrows, twelve
miles long. This passage also has a swift tide, but the waterway is
about three miles wide and very deep, and no one had any concern about
getting through. It was as easy as rolling down hill.
Then came the waters of Broad Reach, the wide sheet of water that
stretches clear down to Punta Arenas. At the very beginning there is one
of the two really difficult places in the strait to navigate. The reach
has extensive shoals. Santa Magdalena Island, with a lighthouse on it,
faces an oncoming ship and there are two channels, one to the north and
the other to the south. Small vessels usually take the north passage,
called Queen's Channel, but larger ones take the other, known as New
Channel. There are two buoys which indicate dangerous places from tide
rips and shoals.
Well, the fleet officers were a little nervous as they saw those tide
rips. Soon it became evident that the current was dangerous. It was
difficult to keep exactly on the course. Twice the Connecticut made
turns to overcome the sweeping effect of the tide and keep well clear of
shoals. The long line of ships kept zigzagging here and there, but in
less than half an hour all the dangers of the first leg of the strait
had been passed. There was nothing but fine deep water all the way to
Punta Arenas, where we dropped anchor about noon.
All the experts of the fleet, the men who had been through not once but
several times before were unanimous in declaring that the worst was over
with the passage of New Channel and it made every one feel good. If that
was all there was to going through Magellan, why on earth had there been
such a big scare about it all? It didn't compare with navigating the
Chesapeake in a fog or a storm and it seemed farcical to make so much
fuss about it.
The fleet lay at Punta Arenas for six days, taking on coal, giving
liberty and the officers going through a round of official receptions
and other courtesies that made the stay one day longer than was expected
because of the unusual courtesy on the part of Chile in sending a
cruiser down to Punta Arenas to greet the fleet bearing a Rear Admiral,
our Minister to Chile, Mr. Hicks, and our Consul at Valparaiso.
The departure of the fleet at night was set for 11 o'clock. Before that
time slow-moving lights in the harbor showed that the Chacabuco had
changed her station to be near the head of the procession when the start
was made. Other lights had revealed that the six torpedo boats of our
flotilla had been taking up cruising positions on the right and left
flanks of the line that was to be formed. Just before 11 o'clock the
signal had been made from the flagship to prepare to get under way. The
ships had hove short. At the stroke of 11 the red and white lights
flashed from the flagship and they were answered from all the ships. At
once anchor engines began tugging at the chains, and soon on every ship
the officer in charge of the fo'c'stle sang out:
"Up and down, sir!"
That meant that the anchor was directly under the bow of the ship and
was leaving the mud, the chain being straight up and down. In a moment
or two the call was:
"Anchor's aweigh, sir!"
That meant that the ship was now swinging with the tide and bells were
jangled in all the engine rooms to go ahead slowly. It was all still,
only a few lights on each ship were showing and soon the harbor
presented the appearance of twenty-five or more craft slowly moving in
one direction as if stealing away down the broad Famine Reach softly so
as not to disturb the slumbers of the town. But the town wasn't asleep.
Half the population was out to witness the departure. The thousands of
electric lights showed that. As you drew away from the place it looked
as if you were leaving the north shore of Staten Island and going up New
York Bay, so thick were the lights on the land.
The Connecticut was quite close in shore and headed toward it. She made
a sharp turn, and the Kansas, Vermont and Louisiana and the others fell
in quickly. There were gaps in the line for the ships that had sought
better anchorages, and these were filled in when the proper time came.
Gradually the line became compact and within fifteen minutes one long
column of American warships was gliding southward at a speed of ten
knots, the Chilean flagship off the starboard bow of our flagship, all
silently stealing away in the beautiful starlight night from hospitable
and attractive Punta Arenas. The start was made as smoothly and easily
as in broad daylight. There was no fuss about it. The fleet had gone
about its business in a businesslike way. That business was to get
through the rest of the strait in the easiest and safest manner.
You went to bed at midnight leaving orders to be called at 4 A. M. so as
to come on deck and see the flagship turned toward home at Cape Froward,
the lowest continental point of land in the world. You got out just
abeam of Cape San Isidro, with its flashing white light, and you found
yourself in the midst of rugged scenery. The sky was overcast and a
strong wind, like that which churned Possession Bay when the fleet
entered the eastern end, was blowing. Bare mountains and rocks stood out
in the gloom. Soon the shadows began to purple the hillsides and rocks;
there was visible a strip of green which you made out to be trees
reaching half way up the black mountain sides. Then the clouds
lightened; everything stood out clearly in a gray light and you knew it
was time for sunrise.
The clouds broke to the east and suddenly there shot through them six
great shafts of crimson light as if they were the rays of an enormous
searchlight in the east, rays colored by passing through bright red
glass. You stood on the bridge fascinated and almost enthralled. Then
you saw the edge of the snowfield of Mount Sarmiento far to the south.
The clouds hid its brow but as they broke occasionally you could catch a
glimpse now and then of a glacier gripping the mountain sides with the
strength and permanence of the ages and you knew that truly you were
looking at God's country, not the country of home, as most folks the
world over call God's country, but one that revealed the majesty of
creation.
So on and on you went in the narrow channels bordered by rock-faced
hills and mountains, green from the water half way up their sides. Some
of the mountains were entirely of stone with abrupt sheers like the
sides of the precipices in the Yosemite. Waterfalls leaped from cliffs
here and there and now and then one could see a stream rushing down the
hillside, foaming and roaring, its waters madly dashing to complete
obliteration in the swirling sea where the immutable laws of gravity
sent them. It seemed a pity that a thing so white and pure should find
an ignoble end, but the power of the sun's rays had set the forces of
perpetual motion in those leaps and bounds and the same streams will
dash down to the sea doubtless as long as the sun's power lasts to heat
the edges of the glaciers and try to rob them of their strength. You saw
great peaks and short ranges. Every one had a different light upon it;
every one differed from another in formation.
But this is an account of navigation rather than a description of
scenery. The ships went along in the slack water easily and smoothly and
again you wondered at the stories of the difficulty of steaming through
this wide deep strait. You passed through Froward Reach into English
Reach, and miles away, straight ahead, you saw the Thornton Peaks, where
Jerome Channel cleaves a way into the large mysterious and only half
explored Otway Waters, a body of water like one of the Great Lakes at
home. You saw no channel ahead.
As you approached these mountains it was like the turn in the Hudson up
in the Highlands, where you seem to be headed for the rocks with no way
of escape except by turning back. You knew from the chart that you were
then approaching Crooked Reach, that runs beside the island called
Carlos III. Soon you saw a bend toward the left and then you stiffened
yourself a little, for you knew that in less than half an hour you would
be in the one dangerous place of navigation in the western half of the
strait. It is necessary to make an S curve in Crooked Reach, something
like the one in the Subway at Fourteenth street, only it is one six or
eight miles long and not of a few hundred feet.
Just before you reached the line running from Jerome Point to the upper
end of the island of Carlos III. you saw black lines in the water
running from shore to shore, now only a little more than a mile apart.
These lines were foam-crested and they marked the meeting place of the
tides of the Atlantic and the Pacific. The officers had no time now to
look at scenery. Here was serious work. The Connecticut crossed the
first one and so intent were you in watching preparations to cross on
your own ship that you scarcely noticed her movements. But what was the
matter with the Kansas, directly astern? She was swaying off to
starboard violently. Then she made a swoop to port. Queer kind of
steering it seemed! Perhaps it was the Connecticut that had swayed this
way and that. Wait a moment.
Soon the Kansas got fairly straight with the Connecticut and then the
Vermont took to dancing sidesteps this way and that. The helm was being
shifted constantly in the endeavor to keep in the middle of the road. It
was the Louisiana's turn next. Standing on the bridge you scarcely
noticed any deviation, but when you looked at the line of ships behind
you knew that the Louisiana was having its troubles keeping straight and
when you saw the quartermaster twisting the wheel about, now this way
and now that, you knew that this ship had been doing fancy stunts far
from home.
Then you looked at those behind. On they came, and that straight line,
the pride of any one who has seen it from day to day, went zigzagging,
twisting and turning, thrust here and there until it resembled the
twists of a snake crawling along the ground rather than a fleet of
majestic ships sailing in a straight line. Once again a similar
performance of the fleet occurred and you began to realize what the
dangers of navigating Magellan meant. You realized that with
high-powered vessels such as these ships it was easy to correct the
swaying of the tides and currents, but you understood what smaller ships
had to contend with.
We were going through at the most favorable season of the year, but you
shuddered to think what it must be to be caught here in the winter,
perhaps with darkness coming on, no place to anchor and a blinding
snowstorm or a fog hiding the way and your steamer having hard work even
to hold its own against the terrific current that might be running
against you. Oh, yes, then you knew what a task, a dangerous task it was
to brave the perils of Crooked Reach and you were glad you were on a
warship with strength enough to scorn nature's effort to hurl it against
the rocks.
You passed dangerous Anson Rock and you soon glided out into Long Reach,
an arm of the strait that runs for fifty or sixty miles to the northwest
almost as straight as a taut rope, and you then took up your glasses to
look around. You saw the little island just off Borja Bay, where the
famous post office of the strait was situated, a place where sailors
rowed ashore to leave their letters to be mailed and their newspapers
months old to be read by those who followed them. You could see the
signs nailed to the trees giving the names of ships that had called, the
dates and the ports to which they were bound. All that is done away with
now that Punta Arenas looks after the mails and gives hospitable welcome
to sailormen, but those signs, some of them a half century old, told
tales of hardship, of shipwreck, of misery to many a man who could read
what they really meant.
Then you began again to watch the mountains. Far down Snowy Inlet you
saw the sloping sides of Mount Wharton and a magnificent blue glacier
sloping down its broad reaches. It had teeth all over the lower part
where it had cracked under the sun's rays, but back for miles and miles,
as far as the eye could reach, the blue ice extended until it hid itself
in the vast snowfields of the mountain's top. You were glad that the
sun's rays came out from time to time to show you a patch of the top of
the mountain, for then you understood what Darwin meant when he compared
some of the glaciers in the strait to "a hundred frozen Niagaras." You
knew that you were looking at one of the greatest accessible ice patches
in the world outside of the ice cap of Greenland.
The wind began to strengthen and black outbursts of it were seen coming
toward you from time to time. Then at last you began to realize what a
willywaw is. It is a fierce blast that comes down from these mountains
with well defined limits like the ray of a searchlight in the night. One
moment you do not feel it and then you shoot into it and it tosses you
about, churns up the waters, roars and barks at you and you feel that a
demon from the hills is trying to tear you to pieces. Half a dozen times
one of these willywaws got started for the fleet and then the sun came
out, the clouds broke up and the blast was dissipated. You could see it
all with your eyes, you didn't have to imagine it. It was as if some big
policemen had scattered a crowd that had begun to torment a procession
and had said "G'wan!" It g'wanned all right. Finally a big one gathered
force that laughed at the policeman, and it fell upon us. With it came
mist and dashes of rain. It spat in our faces. It wrapped our coats
about our legs in knots. It shrieked and howled at us, and when we
staggered through it it laughed at us, as if to say:
"You may be a great fleet of warships, but I'm not afraid to tackle you,
just like any other ship or set of ships. I have fun with every ship
that goes through here, and if I don't one of my rough brothers does the
business. No one who goes through here can escape a willywaw. How do you
like being tousled up? Ha! Ha!"
All that the writer of this cares to say is that willywaws are rude
things, the rudest kind of things he has ever met, and he's glad that
you can find them nowhere else in the world than in Magellan Strait.
Like the man who made a mistake in matrimony, he is willing to sing
hereafter the old song:
"Once was enough for him!"
When you got past that willywaw you began perhaps to speculate on the
height of the mountains and you were surprised to learn that they are
not high, as snow-capped mountains go; that they varied in height from
3,000 to 4,500 feet with occasionally a monster in the distance from
5,000 to 7,500 feet tall. They looked like the Alps or the Canadian
Rockies. You soon realized that it was because they rose directly from
the water and there was no slope to them before they began to shoot
upward, as is the case in the great mountain ranges of the earth. The
fact that they were snowclad, like all the other great mountains, also
made you feel as if they were as high as such elevations.
As hour after hour passed you saw why it was that one writer had said
that if you had taken the Himalayas, the Andes, the Alps, and had moved
them all here and had submerged them up to their necks you would get
scenery like that which the strait presents. As you looked at the
mountains and saw the bays here and there you began also to realize what
another writer meant when he said that a hundred Lake Comos, Lucernes
and Genevas could not present the lordly beauty of some of these bays
and inlets. Perhaps you compared the trip with that of the Inland Sea of
Japan. If you did you could only say:
"This is grand; the Inland Sea is beautiful."
And when we began to reach the end of Long Reach and to get into the
wide open waters of Sea Reach and the fog shut us in completely many a
person then was not altogether sorry, for he had been surfeited with it
all. We went down to dinner just as the ships began to feel the
Pacific's swells. The wind from the northwest began to blow violently
and soon after 8 o'clock word was passed that we had passed Cape Pilar,
where no shipwrecked mariner ever escapes, and that the fog had lifted
and those on the bridge had caught a glimpse of it. There had been
thirty miles of fog navigation in the strait itself. Two hours later as
the ship was plunging and careening in the gale--they always have a gale
or extremely heavy swells at the Pacific entrance to Magellan--we heard
that the Evangelistas Islands, four rugged rocks with a light on one,
had been seen, and then we turned in, knowing that in an hour or so the
fleet would be headed due north, every turn of the screws bringing us
nearer home. On the whole, every one was glad that if the fog was to be
it had shut off the view of the mountains and glaciers and bays just
after it had been finest. We had seen the strait at its best and there
was not a man who did not feel something of awe over it, believing as
he did that he had been in sight of the grandest handiwork of the
Creator that the earth presents.
"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and
let it divide the waters from the waters.
"And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the
firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was
so."
Any one who has sailed through the Strait of Magellan can easily believe
it was there that God began to divide the waters from the waters. Any
one also who has sailed through the strait into the heaving, tossing
Pacific, wrongly named for that part of the world, could realize the
full significance of what was in the heart of a sailor of the midwatch
who sang softly to himself as you passed him:
"Rocked in the cradle of the deep!"