you find that you can just make a difficult channel in the last of the
flow or the ebb, before it turns against you; and that you can only do
it by lying very close indeed. Then you must coax your she-companion
(by whom I here mean your boat), and even spill the wind out of her
sails a little, so as to work her up and through, and you may then get
in your mainsheet as close as you dare, and haul everything tight—too
tight—headsail sheets and halyards as well, for you are attempting a
feat. But I am all against doing such things as a habit; and if again
you ask me why, I cannot tell you, and I will not argue. But while I
am on this let me add that a great deal of your ability to lie close
depends upon the proper set of your jib. The halyard always slacks a
little after a bit of a run, or perhaps your traveller is not really
right out to the end of the sprit. See to all that; for it is by your
jib that you fetch a reach; and, talking of jibs, I come to my sixth
rule, which is this:
_Do not from laziness fail to change jibs often; also, carry three jibs
aboard._ The jib is the most sensitive part of your canvas on a small
fore-and-aft craft. Too much canvas there will press you, too little
will make the helm gripe, and in either case she will not be sailing
her best. Changing jibs is a bother, but it is a task which must not
be shirked. Many a man has got his boat out of hand by failing to set
the second jib, or even the storm jib, when it was coming on to blow.
Note carefully also which of your jibs goes best with such and such a
reefing of your mainsail. The temptation is to carry too large a jib,
and, therefore, to carry too weak a weather helm. It is better to have
your canvas balanced. She will behave better in every way. The Nona,
when she is under two reefs, carries her second jib pleasantly and with
a smile, and yet how often (I must confess it) have I carried my first
jib when I should have changed jibs! and that from indolence.
My seventh rule may seem a strange one, but I am sure that it is sound:
_Carry a pole mast, and do not bother too much about hoisting your
topsail._
A topsail is always a business on a small boat, a business to put up
and a business to strike. There is many a wind in which it would add
half a knot to your speed, but you are not racing, and the half-knot
does not matter. The necessary occasions for carrying a topsail are
exactly two: one, when the breeze is very light, and it makes all the
difference between sailing at a reasonable pace, and merely crawling;
and the other, when you are getting into harbour and have wind aloft,
but little along the surface, or when you have your mainsail brailed up
to see your way, so that only with the topsail can you get a sufficient
amount of canvas and a weather helm.
I know that all this rough and ready talk about the topsail will sound
like heresy to the men who are sailing their boats in all weathers, and
think, as people do, of speed as a special advantage, but I am sure
I am right. Plain sail is the rule, and topsail on a little craft is
always something of a frill. It is never a necessity, and over and over
again you will find it a handicap. What I mean is, do not use it for
the sake of using it. Do not be ashamed of sailing without your topsail
when other craft have got theirs set, if in your case it is a trouble
to set it. Never, never set your topsail when you think she might be at
all over-canvassed under it; your business is to sail, and neither to
show off nor to make time.
My eighth rule (which, if I were putting them in order of importance
would come very early in the list) is: _Look to every part of your
gear_; not only when you are starting out upon a cruise, but all the
time. Look minutely to every point where there may be weakness. See
that all is secure, and that all the running gear runs freely. This
means running your eye and hand over the ropes and looking closely to
the blocks, and to the attachments of hooks and swivels, and to the
ties of the leach upon the rings, and to the parrel line at the jaws,
and, indeed, to all details, of which there is a very long list, when
you come to think of it, even in the simplest rig. Take nothing for
granted, test everything. When you find anything doubtful—a cleat
that shakes a little, or a run that jams for a second, or whatever it
may be—put it right at once. The whole thing may be somewhat of a
business, but in this, as in most things on board a boat, work all the
time.
But who am I that I should write thus? Was it not also I who, in
May-month of the year 1901, ran from France to the English island most
abominably over-canvassed, not being able to take in a reef because my
throat halyard had jammed? I noticed a jerk in it, even as I left the
shores of the Morini, and I neglected to put the block right because
I was eager to be off. I said to myself, ‘It will work all right when
the time comes!’ But it did not, and, therefore, did I run with a
most astonishing speed, and, on to the end of the affair, in no small
terror, until I saw tall England, looming up above me out of a sort
of smoke; and ever since then I have been most attentive to that one
block. And why not to the others? Because conduct is by mood rather
than by reason, and the do-nothing mood is a mastering one; as witness
the home dogs of the rich, the cats of the poor, and sundry other
beasts, including man.
Now my ninth rule is: _Keep with you all the charts you can._
You can never have too many for your purpose. Many people are content
with general charts, and do not take with them the plans of harbours.
It is an error. The plans of harbours are even, in this sort of
knocking about the coasts, more useful than the general charts. For a
man can always tell where he is (more or less) along the coast, but
the working in and out of harbours is the difficulty, and the knowing
of where to lie, and what areas dry out, and the rest. But here it is
important to warn those who are not used to such plans that to many of
our harbours this guide is only approximate because the channel shifts
so much. After almost every gale or exceptional tide, you need new
local knowledge.
No plan, for instance, will help you much to get into Etaples or Saint
Valery, in Picardy, or over Shoreham Bar and into its double fairway.
You must get in as best you can by your judgment and the lead, or
with a local man aboard. And the same is true of the Arum in a lesser
degree, and even, once you are well within the bar, of Barnstaple
River, and fifty others. Nevertheless, a plan is always invaluable.
It gives you the main lines; and in the case of at least half the
harbours, and all the larger ones, it gives you all you need.
In this matter of charts, never fail to have aboard you the book called
the ‘Channel Pilot,’ or the ‘West Coast Pilot,’ or, in general, your
book of directions for whatever part of the coast you are dealing with.
The English charts are not only the best in the world, but one may
almost say the only ones in the world. But our sailing-direction books
are more than that—they are unique; no other nation has them, at any
rate, not of the same quality. They are exact; they tell one pretty
well all one wants to know.
What gives me great pleasure in them is that they are also picturesque.
The unknown authors let themselves out now and then, and write down
charming little descriptive sentences praising the wooded heights above
the sea, or sounding great notes of warning which have in them a
reminiscence of the Odyssey.
One paragraph I have put to memory, and often recite to myself with
delight. It runs thus (after praising a particularly difficult passage
or short cut behind a great reef of our coasts): ‘But the mariner will
do well to avoid this passage at the approach of the turn of the tide;
or if the wind be rising, or darkness falling upon the sea.’ I like
that! If I could write Greek, I would write hexameters, translating
that noble strain into the original of all seafaring language, telling
how the goddess warned him of peril if he should attempt the passage
when the stream of Oceanos was turning, and the night was coming
forward over the abyss, and the shaker of the earth had let loose the
winds.
I would write how she came up out of the deep, under the storm cloud,
like a white sea bird and warned him of peril when darkness was falling
upon the sea.
Do not, while I am talking of charts and the official sailing
books—the ‘Channel Pilot,’ and the rest—be careless about lights.
It is the easiest thing in the world to mistake a light. Time the
flashes carefully, and compare them with what your chart or your book
tells you. But remember that upon coming into harbour there is always
confusion (especially nowadays, with electric lights everywhere and
a mass of illumination on shore), which there was not twenty years
ago. There is great danger to-day, on approaching any shore town,
of mistaking the directions given. I have had trouble in two very
different places through this: one, Hastings, where there is no true
port at all, but only a breakwater, and the other Dartmouth. Not that
civilians, or landsmen, or whatever you like to call them, have yet
gone so far as to set up red and green lights in their windows, but
that in the glare of the lights you may miss the leading marks, and
that a white light when you are close in is of hardly any use at all
unless it flashes regularly. I speak, of course, of small harbour
lights alone. Also you must remember that these are not to be seen, as
a rule, until one is quite close.
But I suppose, talking of lights, that the most difficult thing for
the poor land-living fellow who now and then sails (the most difficult
thing for people like you and me, that is) is dealing with the lights
of moving craft when one comes up a fairway at night.
For this there are a number of rhyming rules, which we all of us have
by heart:
‘When you see two lights ahead,
Port your helm and show your red.’
Or again:
‘Green to green and red to red,
All right—go ahead.’
But these rules, of which there are about a dozen or so, are only for
the simplest cases, and my experience is that in any crowded fairway at
night you must depend upon judgment, subject only to the first and most
elementary rules, such as passing port to port. But even here there are
one or two things the man of the small boat should bear in mind, and
they are singularly like the things which the poor man must bear in
mind in the company of the rich, or the ruler of a weak nation when he
is dealing with a strong neighbour.
For instance, rules or no rules, no large craft will ever make room for
you; you must make room for it. That is especially true of mechanical
craft.
I remember lying off the Dorset coast in a dead calm with no
steerage-way at all, and a huge great tramp going westward, full of
some abominable cargo or other, and bound to some fever-stricken swamp
beyond the ocean, lumping down upon me like a blind rhinoceros.
It was impossible for my little craft to avoid her. If it had been
quite dark, I have no doubt she would have run me down with all the
good nature in the world, but as it was still possible to follow from
the shore what was happening, she did at the last moment give her helm
just the slightest touch, and missed me by a nothing; so that I had the
pleasure of half-shaking my spars out in the tumble of her greasy wake.
When, therefore, you are in a crowded fairway at night, always give
way; it is the only rule. And have the sense to behave as the lawyers
do: forget that there is such a thing as justice, let alone honour or
pride.
Then there is another rule to be remembered, which is serviceable
enough, and that is, when you have plenty of room and the larger
thing coming at you is still at some distance, keep your course for
some little time, in order to give your enemy (as I will call him)
the chance to do the right thing. There is nothing so baffling as to
have to deal with another craft that does not know its own mind. If
the hostile fellow sees you on a definite course, he has at least an
opportunity for making his calculations and avoiding trouble.
Here is more advice, never get yourself in the wrong by having your own
lights dimmed or out of order. Since they must be screened from the
after part whence you steer, have some little splash of white or what
not which shows you from the tiller that they are still alight. And
as for your riding light, which so often has to do duty when all are
asleep aboard, see that it is sound and of capacity and filled. You can
hardly have too large a one; not for the sake of the light, but for the
sake of the number of hours it will burn. And this I say, never having
possessed one in my whole cruising life which did not leak or blow out
in a gale, or come crashing down on deck through insecure fastening,
or in one way or another behave in the fashion true and consonant to
the Nona, which is the chief boat of all the boats in the world, and
therefore, like the chief men of this world, is in trouble all the time.
Indeed, I think that there stand out among all the boats of history,
supreme, singular, incomparable to lesser things, like the two horns of
Hattin, or the Twin Stars, two boats—Noah’s Ark and the Nona; and of
these two, the Nona is the better ship. I judge this by the pictures of
the ark I have seen upon match-boxes, which I take to be upon the whole
our best text, though late and somewhat corrupt. Such a craft could not
have been handled with any satisfaction. It has no gear, only a sort
of deckhouse; but it is famous, and of such antiquity that it should
be revered—from its time onwards there has been nothing but the Nona.
You talk of the Niña; of Columbus’s other ships—whose names I never
knew, nor you either; of the Mora, that brought William of Falaise to
Pevensey; of the White Ship and of the Ark Royal; of the Victory (which
is now, they say, to sail upon dry land); of the Great Harry, of the
Vengeur, of the Hood, and of the two beautiful enamelled motor-boats
which are (I hope) to be purchased out of our pockets for the Salaried
League of Nations at Geneva, and there moored along the wharf of its
private garden, well called Tom Tiddler’s Ground. But none of all these
ships is to be mentioned in the same breath as the Nona.
The wind dropped quite suddenly while it was yet dark before we had
passed Fairlight, that is, within an hour’s running. It left, though
it had been an offshore wind, something of a lump behind it, as nearly
always does such a sudden cessation of strong weather. I have often
noticed this; it is as though the wind blew the sea flat, and then,
when the pressure of it was relieved, the water would move up again to
show its freedom.
It not only dropped; it also, after half an hour’s calm, began to run
right round ahead to the west, and even to the south of west, so that
we had to put out far into the sea upon the starboard tack, and then
beat back again towards the shore to make our course. In this way,
the holy light of day had already begun to grow by the time we were
opposite Hastings and the odd broken breakwater of the place; whereby
they have attempted to restore, but failed to restore, something of the
old harbour.
That harbour of Hastings has to-day quite disappeared, its defences
worn down by the sea, but the Castle still stands there to show how
important a haven it was; one of the great ports of mediæval England.
What I have read upon the matter has not left me much clearer as to the
exact lie of the sheltered water, but my interest in the place (apart
from this, that certain of my forbears are buried there) stands in that
odd disappearance of a great political function. Hastings was a port,
and it is a port no more. Yet the town has survived, and even its use
of the sea has survived; though now they must draw up their boats upon
the shore.
I hope that Hastings has reasserted its right to christen the great
battle. When I was at Oxford it was a favourite piece of humbug among
the academic to call the Battle of Hastings ‘Senlac.’
This queer Gascon name they got out of a footnote of Lingard’s. Now it
happens to be a sacred rule at Oxford never to admit any obligation to
Lingard. Lingard is the creator of documented, exact English history.
Three quarters of the things you hear put forward as modern conclusions
upon the English past come first from that great and unique historian.
He invented the science. Before his time no one had written a history
from original texts; nor had any one taken a general survey.
Since his time he has become a quarry for all those who can, or
pretend to, teach and write history. But it is an unbroken rule at the
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge to boycott his name.
Lingard made that one bad error. He called the Battle of Hastings
‘Senlac.’ Like schoolboys who give themselves away by copying, Freeman
and his gang, following Lingard’s one mistake, worked the thing to
death. They seem to have thought in their ignorance that ‘Senlac’ was
an Anglo-Saxon term! And then, it was so grand to give a shock to
general usage, and to introduce that note of the unusual which is the
mark of the charlatan. Round demolished them.
How often have I not studied that famous field. It was but this year
that I went all over it with a clinometer, taking contours, with two
friends to help me, so that I might reëstablish the battle.
I know not what that fascination is which attaches to seeing, touching,
standing on the very site of some great business of the past. I cannot
analyse its nature, but I feel the strength of it profoundly, and I
would I could recover the hours I have wasted all my life long in
exactly establishing this, that, and the other topographical point of
the past. What reverence do I not feel, and how justly, for such work
as Rice Holmes’, in which every movement of Cæsar’s in those fateful
August days of the first Invasion, is clinched down with iron proof,
exact, converging.
There is nothing more delightful in the ocean of modern historical
work, the moving empty sea of guess and unproved affirmation, than
these few solid rocks of industry and common sense. The people
who get the thing settled once for all are as different from the
question-mongers and theory-spinners as is a vigorous air from confused
harmonies; or better, as is the grasp of a living hand from the ghostly
touches of the spooks.
What could be more masterly than Holmes’ establishment of the
landing-place upon Deal beach, the calculation of the march to the
Stour, the crossing-place, the storming of the camp on Bigberry
Hill. It is like the fitting in of a jig-saw puzzle, everything made
complete, certain, absolute, where before all had been chaos. Over and
over again have I climbed that hill and sat me down on the rampart, in
order to look below towards the ford of the river where the seventh
legion crossed, and over and over again, sailing in the narrows of the
channel, I have called up that great armament on its summer’s day, the
galleys rowing with the tide round the South Foreland and the heavier
transports far away towards the French shore.
It is, I fear, an evil pleasure of the mind, but it is a very real
pleasure, none the less, which a man takes in that which should, if
he were honest and charitable, provoke him rather to indignation, and
the abominable follies of the academic fool do give me that pleasure,
which I suppose I ought to fly. When a don shows his great learning
by spelling Clovis ‘Hclodhovech,’ I feel not pain, as I should,
but pleasure: it makes me think of ‘Clodhopper.’ When the official
historian, hall-marked and log-rolled, assures me that the great
officials of fifth-century Rome knew no Greek, or when his fellow,
similarly hall-marked and log-rolled, assures me that Homer’s poems
were composed by a committee, I, who ought to be pained, laugh. So I
do when they tell me, as one professor solemnly told the world in the
pages of, I think, the ‘Spectator’ (but possibly it was another learned
organ), that the French for ‘very beautiful’ was ‘_beaucoup belle_,’ or
that the phrase ‘_La volonté générale est toujours droite_,’ means ‘The
general will is always right.’
There is another trick of theirs which gives me infinite delight, and
that is the solemn perversion of authority, of which the pleasant name
is ‘Mumbo-Jumbo.’
The power to affirm anything at will to an audience of young and quite
unread undergraduates, without fear of contradiction or examination,
produces an impotent sort of pride in which the very nature of
authority is forgotten.
A great scholar steeped in Greek literature says, ‘The style of this
passage is the style of the third century.’ That is the voice of
authority. A man thoroughly familiar with the language can say a thing
like that, and men not familiar with the language must accept it,
unless they find it challenged by any authority at least equal. If they
all find similar scholars making a similar affirmation, humility and
common sense demand that the affirmation should be taken as true.
But when the affirmer goes on to say that, because the style of a
passage is that of the third century, therefore it cannot possibly have
been written a hundred years later, he is talking nonsense so appalling
that it makes one catch one’s breath.
A man steeped in English can say with authority to a foreigner, ‘This
letter is in the style of Dr. Johnson, and of the eighteenth century;
it cannot possibly have been written in the seventeenth.’ But of what
value would his statement be if he added, ‘Nor could it possibly have
been written in the nineteenth’? Scholarship has authority when it
possesses data which those who accept that authority have not had the
leisure or the industry or perhaps the power to examine. It possesses
no authority whatever against the common sense of the most ignorant
man. I come across a document in which there is used strong language
against Richard III. The manuscript, which denounces him as the
murderer of his nephews, qualifies the advent of the Tudor, and draws
up arguments in favour of his claim. A competent expert who can say to
me, ‘By the nature of the handwriting, I, who am most learned in such
documents, can tell you certainly that this was not written shortly
after Bosworth, but a hundred years later,’ must be believed.
The statement has authority. He can judge the date of the handwriting,
and I cannot. But if he goes on to say, ‘Therefore the statement is
not contemporary,’ he is talking the wildest nonsense, because our
common experience is sufficient to tell us that men do, and may,
take manuscript copies of things written before their time. If a man
steeped in all the details of Elizabeth’s reign, says of a particular
manuscript it is spurious because ‘at such a date in the late sixteenth
century, a document of this particular kind would be found reduced to
print and not recopied in manuscript,’ I should answer, by the use of
my common sense, ‘Why not? How do you know what motive the man may have
had who copied it? How do you know whether it has not been reduced to
print in some form which we have lost? How do you know that it may
not be some family possession which the owner did not want spread
broadcast, or which he only had the curiosity to copy out himself?’
It is the nature of human pride to assume powers beyond those really
possessed; but new forms of such assumption go for a long time
unrecognised. The abuse of religious authority is a commonplace.
Men are only beginning to wake up to the modern abuse of academic
authority. Heaven knows how much we have heard of priestcraft, and it
is true that men holding only spiritual authority have not infrequently
pretended to an authority in other fields beyond their lawful scope.
But such extravagance is far more forgivable than the academic
assumption of false authority based upon supposed or affirmed proof
when proof there is none. For the former is a mere exaggeration, but
the latter implies a falsehood. If a man really possessed of second
sight, and having given evidence of enjoying that strange faculty, goes
on to pretend a knowledge of things of which he is in fact ignorant,
then he is a charlatan presuming upon his merited reputation to
acquire a greater and unmerited one. But it is a worse offence when
a man pretends to repose his statements on common reason and actual
experience in matters where these were absent.