setting, but the city itself, from the narrow viewpoint of the
yachtsman, is somewhat less than easily accessible. The small-boat
anchorage is at the far end of a long, unfinished, and unshaded road
within the commercial dock area where no public transportation is
available. Going out and coming back it is necessary to check with
guards at the customs gate, some of whom were pleasant and some of whom,
like human beings everywhere, were officious. It was at this gate that
another of those incidents occurred, during our stay in Cape Town, which
had far-reaching consequences in terms of misunderstanding. I recount it
merely to illustrate from what a small scratch a festering sore can
develop, particularly if the scratch occurs when poisons are in the very
air.
One evening we were driving out of the dock area in a friend’s car.
Barbara and I were in front with our host; Nick, Mickey, and Moto, in
the back.
As always, we stopped and made the usual report to the guard: “We’re
from the yacht _Phoenix_.”
Usually this was enough to give us clearance, but this time the guard
came over and peered in the rear window. “What about those chaps?” he
demanded.
“They’re from the yacht, too.”
“Seamen?”
“No, yachtsmen.”
There was a pause—and then the guard waved us on. I thought nothing more
of the incident, but many months later Moto rather sadly brought the
incident up.
“You never on our side,” he accused us. “Never—really.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like Cape Town—you let policeman call us Japs.”
Only one who knows the fierce pride of the Japanese can understand how
they hate and resent being called Japs. I was completely in the dark.
“_When_ did anyone ever call you Japs—without my correcting them?”
Finally, after much digging and probing, we pieced the story together.
Moto described the circumstances at the Cape Town docks and suddenly the
scene came back to me. I recalled the guard, peering in the back window
and asking, in quite neutral tones, “What about those chaps?”
The Japanese didn’t know the word “chaps” and had thought they were
being insulted. Almost a year later I was given a chance to explain, but
it was too late. The damage had been done.
The walk to town is long, even after one has left the dock area—and it
is even longer coming back with supplies. And the wind! Here is one
place where it _blows_—and rarely, it seems, in a direction to give the
tired pedestrian a needed boost. One afternoon I was coming back from
town, leaning against the wind at every step, with my eyes slitted to
protect them from the grit that stung my face. Arriving at the club, I
understandably felt the need of a rest and nourishment before attempting
the trip by dinghy to my ship. The anemometer on the clubhouse wall was
registering 60 knots, but no one seemed to be paying it any particular
attention.
“Is your wind gauge accurate?” I asked a member.
He smiled sheepishly. “As a matter of fact, I’m awfully afraid it’s not.
Underregisters a bit, you know—five or six knots, actually. Must have it
fixed!”
In a wind such as this, just getting out to the _Phoenix_ became high
adventure. The method was to drag Flatty around the harbor until well
upwind of the _Phoenix_, then get in and take a sleighride down to the
boat, making very certain not to miss! The approved method of rounding
up into the wind and coming up alongside would have got one
nowhere—except into the most remote corner of Duncan Dock at the other
end of the harbor.
Cape Town, we were happy to find, was more relaxed than Durban. The
Royal Cape Yacht Club extended a welcome to our whole party and gave us
the freedom of their facilities, while the press also played up the
interracial composition of our group and ran a story that resulted in
bringing us many rewarding contacts we would not otherwise have had.
Among these visitors were three representatives of the African magazine
_Drum_, who came down to judge for themselves an intercultural
relationship that would be impossible in South Africa. Two of them were
“Colored,” one Indian, and they stayed for several hours.
“How many of us can you squeeze in your sail locker?” one of them joked,
with a serious undercurrent that was pathetic. “You could drop us off
anywhere—Brazil—the United States—even Mississippi!”
“You wouldn’t like Mississippi,” I said, speaking with some knowledge,
since I had spent much of my youth there.
“Man, just try me and see!” exclaimed one, a big Cape Colored. “I’d
trade places with any Negro in any part of your ‘Solid South’! At least
there I’d know my children and grandchildren would have a future.”
At last, with obvious reluctance, the Indian reminded them that they had
a deadline to meet.
“Just a few minutes more!” the big fellow pleaded. “Let me stay here
just a little longer—on free soil—and dream!”
On another occasion a South African—a Negro—came aboard after writing us
a note. Obviously well educated, a born leader, he was polite but wary.
When he came aboard I offered my hand as a matter of course. He
hesitated, then took it briefly.
We went below and spent a long afternoon. He told us, vividly, quietly,
and without ranting, of the situation that existed in South Africa—from
the black man’s point of view—and tried to explain why it could not
last.
I remember what he said: “A man who drives a truck can drive a tank; a
man who handles a shovel can handle a gun; a man who can read the Bible
can read a sign telling him to rise up in revolt. They cannot use us as
their tools without giving us some education; they cannot educate us
without losing us.”
“Will there be an uprising?”
“There will be. There will be killing and destruction. There will be a
return to barbarism—on both sides—in spite of all we can do. For the
moment,” he added in measured tones, “the barbarism is on only one
side—the government’s.”
“What will you do when the day comes?” I asked.
He looked at us calmly. “I will kill as many white men as I can, before
I am killed myself.”
I rowed him to shore and when he got out he paused a moment—and then
offered his hand to me.
“Today,” he told me, “was the first time in my life that a white man has
ever shaken hands with me! Thank you—and do not stay in this unhappy
place.”
That same week at the home of the American representative of Coca-Cola,
we met the Commissioner of Education—a white man, of course. We found
Mr. De Plessis to be witty, urbane, and well informed, a delightful
dinner companion but, like almost every other “European” we spoke to,
defensive and uneasy on the subject of apartheid. He expressed sympathy
for the condition of the natives and readily acknowledged the dangers
and inequalities of the existing government policy. Nevertheless, he
defended it, refusing to admit that there was any alternative. He
emphasized (as did everyone else, as if it were a lesson they had
learned by rote) that “South Africa’s problem is very different from
yours in America,” and repeated the inevitable statistics: eight million
nonwhites; only two million whites.
Of course, if one accepts his thesis that the white group is innately
superior (citing, among other authorities, the Bible) and must maintain
ascendancy, there does seem to be no alternative. De Plessis’s only hope
seemed to be that during his tenure at least he would be able to
maintain the status quo.
This philosophy, however urbanely expressed, seems to be prevalent in
many countries today including, I am ashamed to say, our own. It can be
expressed crudely as: “Get yours, keep the lid on, and leave the mess
for your children to clean up.”
It is not a philosophy that tends to make for secure or stable children!
While we were in the country, several hundred prominent citizens,
including Alan Paton, were rounded up in a single night and thrown into
jail on the blanket, undocumented charge of “treason.” Treason, in South
Africa, can be attributed to anyone who disagrees with the Nationalist
party or criticizes its policies, with the result that more and more
troubled individuals are leaving the country or, against the dictates of
conscience, letting themselves be lulled into doing nothing.
We met one very brave man, a professor at the university, and a group of
his friends whom we would never have met if it had not been for the
unusual composition of our crew. Professor Maxwell and his wife (that is
_not_ their name) daily expected the ominous knock on the door, the
summons to appear—or to disappear. And for what heinous crime? Only that
they refused to choose or reject their friends on the basis of race.
They have continued to entertain in their home men and women of whatever
ancestry and by this personal defiance have cut themselves off from most
of their “European” associates, who are afraid to continue a
relationship with such dubious characters. Already the professor’s
classes had been cut, his salary reduced, his membership canceled, in an
effort to force him into line. The next step, of course, which he
anticipated momentarily, was outright dismissal from the university—and
jail.
The Maxwells’ courage was a revelation to us and a profound inspiration.
Through them, for the first time, was brought home to us the realization
that blind obedience to the laws of one’s country is not always the
highest duty of a conscientious man. The actions taken by the
Nationalists, such as the disenfranchisement of the Coloreds,
restrictions on travel, the “pass laws” for Africans, curfews based on
race, curtailment of job opportunities, and other encroachments on human
rights have all been done quite legally—that is, in accord with the
existing laws in South Africa. And yet the disparity between law and
morality is so great that even those who have helped to make the laws
seem to feel an impelling need to explain and justify.
What does a scientist do when confronted with such a situation as exists
in South Africa? I saw one man’s adaptation, when I visited another
university near Cape Town. My host was a fellow anthropologist, a
specialist in early man, who very kindly spent the afternoon with me,
showing me his laboratory and materials. Later, over tea, I commented,
as one anthropologist to another, on the obviously erroneous racist
policy of the government. My host froze instantly.
“That is not my field of interest,” he said coldly.
“But as an anthropologist—”
“That is not my field of interest,” he repeated, and the discussion was
ended.
All of us were beginning to look forward almost desperately to setting
sail again, as though we, too, were in danger of being imprisoned if we
lingered. When the Brazilian Consulate stipulated that we must all
present a doctor’s report from a complete physical examination before
visas for that country would be issued, I felt a ridiculous premonition
that something, some symptom, would be discovered which would make it
necessary for us to linger. Let sleeping dogs lie was my feeling—but
there was no way to secure our visas without the doctor’s report—and
Brazil was a “must” on our itinerary because of our Japanese. They had
had slim pickings in many ports, but in São Paulo or Belém, where there
was a very large Japanese population, they could look forward to an
overwhelming reception such as they had experienced in Hawaii. They had
it coming to them—and so I made appointments for our physicals.
I needn’t have worried. The doctor did little more than fill out and
sign the official forms, after asking such general questions as “Do you
feel all right? Any complaints?”
The only complaint I had was the cost—a pretty stiff fee for such a
cursory going over. (I carefully filed the expensive documents away with
our other official forms, but no one in Brazil ever examined or even
asked for them. Needless to say, however, had we neglected to get the
papers, they would have been the first thing we had to produce upon
arrival in Brazil.)
A few days before leaving we moved to Fisherman’s Harbor, where there
was a commercial slip, and once more we hauled out to give the bottom a
check and add an iron brace to the rudder, which had begun to work a
bit. Two nights before our departure I was coming back from the Flying
Angel Mission for Seamen, carrying an armload of books they had
generously donated to the _Phoenix_. While crossing over a couple of
boats to get to our own, I made a miscalculation in stepping from one to
another. Instead of putting my foot on solid deck, I walked off into
air, with the result that I fell heavily, knocked all the breath out of
me, and injured my ribs.
Barbara, as ship’s medical officer, immediately attempted to invalid me,
which I naturally resisted violently. She wound me around with an
elastic bandage and begged me to delay departure until I was “out of
danger,” but I had already announced the day and hour of leaving and,
being a determined sort, I continued with preparations for departure.
(At this point Jessica has just reminded me of the conjugation of “I am
determined.” According to her, it continues: “You are stubborn—he is a
pigheaded fool!”)
In any event, I had no intention of letting South Africa keep us in her
clutches.
Barbara’s diary has something to say about the last hectic day before
sailing:
Usual rush of shopping, this time with the help and company of Mrs.
Maxwell and Mr. T——. (Mr. T——, an African of the Xosa tribe, speaks
flawless English and is highly educated and intelligent. He is a
leader among his people—for which reason his pass has been
confiscated. For five years he cannot leave Cape Town, nor attend any
meetings or speak to any gathering. With dogged determination, he is
trying to get his message across through the written word, but there
is no outlet for his articles, no money to have his books privately
published.)
When we wanted to pause in the middle of our hectic day for a cup of
tea, we had to return to the _Phoenix_, as there is no public place in
all of Cape Town where we could have sat down and been served
together.
While we were relaxing and chatting over our tea, Mr. W—— (a white
man) of the yacht club came aboard. We introduced him to our friends.
Noticed that he did not shake hands with Mr. T——. Stayed only a moment
and did not look directly at him as he made his farewells. Awkward. A
pity, as Mr. W—— is a fine man and has been wonderfully kind to us.
(He even took Nick, Mickey, and Moto to his club one Sunday to sail
with him in an 18-footer event. This took a bit of courage; as he
admitted later: “I didn’t know if I’d get away with it.” But
apparently there is all the difference in the world between a visiting
Japanese yachtsman and a resident African.)
I’ll be glad to leave South Africa, but some of the friends we have
made I’ll carry always with me. The Maxwells, Mr. T——, the rest of
their group—these people I will never forget. How fine they are in
every way—and under what terrible pressures. I wonder how many of us
would have the courage they have if we were put to the test as they
have been—every day, every hour.
At last the final day dawned. Manuia, who had produced one small, black,
and completely tailless kitten in Durban (Hobson’s Choice—or Hobby, by
name), was already in the mood for trying again and had spent the night
out. All day we watched anxiously for her return, but the hour of
sailing drew near and there was still no sign of her.
“We _can’t_ go without Manuia!” Jessica protested tearfully.
I had spent the morning going through the red tape of clearing port, had
handed in our exit visas to the immigration authorities, and had spent
my last few South African coins on a few extra “sweets” for the trip.
Besides, my ribs hurt and I thought Jessica’s tears were misplaced.
Surely my condition justified a few of them!
“Manuia knew we were sailing today,” I pronounced. “Besides, that’s why
you’ve got a Spare Cat.” That didn’t seem to comfort her.
I went below and started the engine.
“Okay—cast off!” Ted, in the cockpit, relayed the order to Mickey on the
foredeck. We drifted slowly away from the dock, Barbara waving to
friends ashore and Jessica still looking despairingly for a glimpse of
the errant Manuia.
Suddenly we heard a hail. “Hold on!” Someone on the dock was waving a
slip of paper. “Here’s a notice from the post office—a package is being
held for you to clear it through customs!”
“Our Christmas package from Minnetta!” wailed Barbara. “It’s finally
here. We’ve _got_ to go back!”
“Manuia!” Jessica called piteously. “Manuia! Please come back!”
At this moment Ted spoke up. “Skip, I don’t think the water’s coming out
right.”
I looked at the engine exhaust. He was correct.
That settled it. Ribs, cat, package, engine—we had four valid reasons
for postponing our departure. There was only one thing to do, and I did
it.
“Get up the sails!” I directed.
The men got up foresail and mizzen and, with a fair wind, we sailed out
of the harbor while I got to work on the balky engine. I knew that if we
turned back we might _never_ get out of South Africa.
We set the course for St. Helena, an isolated dot, 1,700 miles out in
the Atlantic, and by nightfall the beautiful, unhappy land at the tip of
the African continent was fast falling astern.
13 ACROSS THE ATLANTIC THE
LONG WAY: CAPE TOWN
TO NEW YORK CITY
“Beautiful night, new moon, slow progress, who cares?”
For the rest of the day I was very unpopular with the female members of
my crew, and that night Jessica cried herself to sleep with our last
remaining cat, three-month-old Hobby, in her arms.
By the next morning, however, Barbara was able to record:
Feb. 9. Everyone in better spirits now that we have left S.A. and its
creeping poisons behind.... The Japanese seem very friendly and
willing again and I have a hunch that Cape Town was the low point as
far as group morale was concerned. Brazil should be far better.
Our track lay close to the great-circle route between South Africa and
New York, so that we were not in an empty part of the world as we had
been in the North Pacific and the Indian Ocean. On this trip we saw
several ships.
For the first week we worked our way through light variables, with
generally fair weather, until we picked up the trades at about 25°
South. For the rest of the trip the wind for the most part was almost
dead aft, and we sailed with the main on one side and the foresail or
genoa swung out on the other, wing and wing.
On the morning of February 23 we rounded the north end of St. Helena and
dropped down to St. James Bay. As we approached, the wind became strong
and gusty. Several mild squalls made maneuvering difficult, so we
anchored well out, and moved in later after the wind had dropped.
By 1400 we had been cleared and were free to go ashore to look over our
first Atlantic island. St. Helena is rugged and beautiful—not at all the
“barren fortress rock” we had imagined. Perhaps our views had been
shaped by our awareness of St. Helena’s chief claim to world fame, as
the place of Napoleon’s last exile. Certainly it is remote enough, and
we could understand how, to Napoleon and later prisoners, it might well
seem like the end of the world.
On our first expedition to shore we had a few bad moments. A native boy
in a largish dory came alongside and offered to row us in. Since we had
not yet launched Dodo (our new ship’s boat from Mauritius) and the seas
in the roadstead were too high for our Flatty to carry more than two,
Barbara, Jessica and I accepted the offer. We had only gone a few
hundred yards when our oarsman somehow lost one oar, and we began
drifting rapidly out to sea. He attempted to scull with the other oar,
but with little success. Fortunately Ted was on deck and, seeing our
predicament, rowed out in Flatty, rescued the oar, and overtook us. If
he hadn’t acted quickly, we would have had the alternatives of jumping
out and swimming for it or of continuing our seaward drift, with no help
to be expected from shore. The nearest leeward land was South America,
2,000 miles to the west, which would have been quite a trip without
food, water, compass, or sail.
Jamestown, the only settlement on the island, is a clean and fascinating
village huddled in the deep cleft between two rugged mountains. The
streets are narrow, winding into the valley, with dignified houses of
fieldstone painted a yellowish cream and fronting directly on the
pavement. Loaded burros, with or without masters, wander through the
village and sometimes (as we found out) stop to poke their noses into a
conversation. The people—a mixture of European, East Indian, and
African—are friendly, dignified, and self-confident. There is
undoubtedly, as elsewhere, a certain degree of stratification and
snobbishness, but it is refreshingly minor.
Sir James Harford, Governor of St. Helena, invited us to the Residency
for tea, and later Lady Harford, learning that Barbara was planning to
move into the local hotel for a few days in order to finish a book,
invited both her and Jessica to Plantation House, where they could work
in a “breakfast-in-bed” atmosphere—an invitation which the girls wasted
no time in accepting. They returned with a completed book manuscript and
countless anecdotes about the island.
Jessica described the ponderous antics of Jonathan, the 200-year-old
giant tortoise from the Galápagos who makes his home in the Governor’s
front yard and can cross it (all 250 feet) in 33 minutes when moving at
top speed, as officially timed by Jessica.
And Barbara told of the near-disastrous visit of Prince Philip which had
taken place only the month before. (So rare are the visitors to the
Residency that we were the next guests to sign the book after the page
that had been devoted to the single imposing signature: “Philip.”) It
seems that the Prince and his party had created a minor crisis on
arrival, for they had been conducting a beard-raising competition, and
Philip, with “a face full of rather scruffy whiskers,” bore no
resemblance to the official photos that hung in every island home. Thus
many islanders did not realize they had actually seen him until he had
passed, and a number of Girl Guides who had been waiting for hours broke
into mass tears.
During our stay the fortnightly Castle Line ship called, and we saw an
amazing transformation take place when 500 tourists were decanted for
the day. Shops which had been locked and shuttered threw open their
doors to display tables covered with beautiful lacework, weaving,
basketry, and art. The streets were crowded. The visitors undoubtedly
carried away the impression of a bustling port town where hundreds of
people milled and bumped into one another day after day in a frenetic
pursuit of souvenirs. Only we, who remained after the boat had gone and
peace again descended on the somnolent village, knew the truth.
It was amazing how much there was to do on so small an island. For one
thing, there were the 699 steps of “Jacob’s Ladder” to climb, a
morning’s undertaking in itself. This almost perpendicular flight of
steps mounts steeply from Jamestown to a cluster of houses on Signal
Hill, saving a trip by road of several miles. We found the short cut to
be literally breath-taking and made the grade only by pausing every
hundredth step to “admire the view.”
We had planned, of course, to pay our respects to the most historic spot
on the island: Longwood, the last home of Napoleon. Jessica’s lessons
after leaving Cape Town had leaned heavily toward the Napoleonic era
and, needless to say, what Jessica studied we all studied. Always our
readings and discussions in the cockpit gained meaningful focus as we
looked forward to seeing the places we were reading about. (Yet, over
and over, we are asked, “But what did your children do for their
education?”)
But when we were driven up into the hills to see the rambling
house—painted a startling raspberry pink—the gate was locked. The French
Consul, whom we were told to telephone, was most cordial, but we somehow
failed to make connections, and we finally had to sail, reluctantly but
on schedule, with the dubious distinction of being the only visitors who
have spent more than a week on St. Helena without visiting Napoleon’s
tomb.
On March 3 we departed for Ascension, 700 miles to the northwest. There
had been rumors that because of the American missile installations being
erected on this British island, we might not be allowed to land.
However, with the cooperation of C. & W. contacts, we received a cable
from the Resident Magistrate granting us permission to visit, but adding
that “access to certain areas ashore, details of which will be advised
upon arrival, is prohibited.”
Our passage was quiet—almost too quiet. It took eleven days, including
two of flat calm right in the middle of the southeast trades. On several
nights the sea was so quiet that the stars were clearly mirrored on its
surface. My log says, “Beautiful night, new moon, slow progress, who
cares?”