Entering Copenhagen Under Sail

In bright sunlight and light winds the Picton Castle passed through the breakwater into Copenhagen harbour under full sail. Nicely and slowly we sailed past the long quay of Langelinie with a few cruise ships moored for the day. One of the ships was the Albatros, the captain of which is my old friend and shipmate from the Danmark, Jarle Flatebo. When not captain of this modern ocean going cruise ship he is captain of the Norwegian Sail Training Bark Statsraad Lehmkuhl, a ship about the size of the USCG Eagle, built in 1914, sailing out of Bergen with civilian and Naval cadets. After much blowing of loud ships whistles and various other salutes we took in sail at the Albatros and steamed to our berth at Nyhavn past the Little Mermaid, past the new opera house, past the queen’s palace in downtown Copenhagen.

To Nyhavn

Nyhavn - meaning New Harbour - was built in the mid to late 1600’s as part of an expansion of the city of Copenhagen, inspired by the ambitious King Christian the 4th. Now you might well ask “if that’s the new one, what about the old harbour?” Well, that one dates from 1100 or so and is a short walk to the southwest. Copenhagen sort of means “Shopping Hook” or merchant city which is what it was, still is. Anyway, Nyhavn was, until fairly recently, the working port for smaller vessels and has quite a history of being one of the last rough and ready ‘sailor towns’. Now it is a lovely destination in the summer or any time of year for sitting at one of the many cafes in the sun. While much more upscale than before, there seems to be a conscious effort to make a home for the spirit of an old sailors’ waterfront of yore. Old wooden sailing and fishing vessels along the cobblestone quay, cafés, wandering musicians, even a tattoo parlour still in business. If you do not feel like paying high Scandinavian prices for drink and food, bring your own and set up a picnic right on the quay and that is perfectly okay too - it’s a very Danish thing to do. This place is clean and tasteful, they even vacuum the streets…

Albatross on starboard in the approaches to Copenhagen

entering CPH harbour

Nyhavn Friday night

stowing alongside Nyhavn

the very little mermaid

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Starting the race “Fyn-Rundt” and sailing for Copenhagen

Before the start of the Fyn-Rundt race the skippers of all the ships gathered at 0700 at the Naval Association club-room at the old Navy Base (and by ‘old’ I mean early 18th century- before the days when Nelson was sacking Copenhagen and Denmark had a large sailing navy) in Korsor for instructions, coffee and rolls. Surrounded by naval and maritime memorabilia - swords, photos of sailing frigates and steam ships, bits and pieces of brass from ships- we took our good Danish coffee at white linen covered tables. We would sail in an hour. So we did. At 0800 we simply all cast off and streamed out the narrow habour entrance of Korsor without any complicated committee inspired plan in triplicate. We should all just observe good seamanship, common sense and the rules of the road.

Another cool grey, overcast day with spitting rain and a fair wind, but we were getting used to this. The vessels made their way under the huge bridge now connecting Denmark and Sweden with a land route to the rest of Europe to a spot to the north, cracking on sail and dodging about near the starting line. We did likewise. At the gun the Picton Castle had the weather mark and crossed pretty snappily but it was our lot to carry on to the NE while the fleet sailed off to the west. In force 6 breezes soon the fleet of ships were specks lost on a hazy horizon. With a blast on the whistle and a round of greetings and send-offs on the radio we pulled away from the fleet, making good speed under upper topsails.

Luckily for us the wind and rain blew through, breaking out into clear skies and fair breezes from the north as we rounded the top of Sjaelland and we ended up having a beautiful sail overnight right up to the approaches to Copenhagen. Clear skies and light northerly winds carried us along with yards braced sharp on the port tack as we made our way east in smooth seas and fine summer conditions towards Copenhagen.

Kroneborg om Styrbord

At Elsinore, on the north east corner of the main Danish island of Sjaelland, is the castle of Kroneborg, the famous setting for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. A ship must pass this castle on the way to Copenhagen. This castle dates well after the time of Hamlet and he wasn’t real anyway. For Danish deep-sea sailing ships, passing Kroneborg on starboard means that you are really home now, only a few more miles to Copenhagen. It is also the point where the strait between Sweden and Denmark narrows considerably and there is extremely busy large ship and ferry traffic crossing the shipping lanes at top speed. Our wind got lighter and lighter so we fired up the main engine and pushed on towards Copenhagen. Little tiny fishing draggers fished in the channels, north and south bound ships to and from Russia, Finland and Poland passed us. Big deep sea ferries connecting Oslo and Copenhagen lumbered past. The Italian Navy Sail Training Ship the Amerigo Vespucci passed us under power. She is huge and is modeled after the great three-decker naval sailing warships of the 19th century. She went to anchor off the port and we heard them ordering a pilot for the next day. The Picton Castle would just sail in.

double T and wild Bill admiring the small ships

Elbe 5

Elsinore

IMG 1547

Picton Castle and Lille Dan in Korsor

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This afternoon finds the Picton Castle under full sail, every sail set apart from studding-sails, sailing south in fresh winds in the North Sea. We are about 40 miles off the island of Karmoy, Norway steering SSW. Skies are clear with radiant white clouds, seas a dark blue-green and not so big. The wind is cool and from the north. It is good to be back at sea again after some days in port and steaming through the beautiful, mountainous, winding fjords of Norway.

We have just sailed from Bergen after four days of an excellent Tall Ships festival held there. The Picton Castle crew acquitted themselves well. Chibley, the ship’s cat, went walkabout but we got her back with the help of the citizens of Bergen. There are many stories to tell about the last couple of weeks and some of them will be up and posted soon so stay tuned. We have sailed from Kiel, Germany to Svendborg, Denmark, Copenhagen and on to Sweden and Norway. Ships, pulling boat races, crew parades, sailing in and out of small harbours, Norwegian crew from Picton Castle’s old days sailing hereabouts, good weather and bad all figure into our voyage of late and more. But for now we are back at sea sailing and looking after our wonderful ship feeling the seas heave beneath our keel and the kick of the wheel. The air is clean and cool and it is good to be back at sea in the Picton Castle.

Dave seams away

Erin on the wheel

Spenser loosing staysail

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It seemed a good idea to join all these other sailing ships in Korsor for a bit anyway. We had to get on to Copenhagen but we could spare a little time to do something as interesting as meeting up and joining a fleet of fine sailing ships and a great bunch of kindred mariners in a small Danish seaport, so we sailed for Korsor. The current pulled the bow of the Picton Castle off the quay in Svendborg and we rode the last of the fair tide to make our way out through the narrow fjord that is the northern approach to Svendborg and out into the Great Belt, the sound between Fyn and the next and bigger island to the east, Sjaelland (pronounced “Zealand”).

The day was overcast, spitting rain with fresh southerly winds. We are getting used to this sort of weather, it’s not so bad as long as the wind is usable and this is was. The chunks of land are so close to each other and seas so shallow that seas can not really build up properly to anything that would bother a ship like the Picton Castle.

All this sail setting and tacking in wet weather is also making a stronger crew of our gang, nothing wrong with that. The small grey seas that are a dominant feature of so many marine paintings of this area are with us much of the time. Most of the old Baltic Traders, as the ketches and schooners are collectively called, have water lines of 60 to 70 feet and they do okay in these conditions but tend to hobby-horse in head seas. With our 130 foot water line and sharp entry we barely feel these seas as we sail along in their waters. Big fish in a small pond.

Soon we were lined up on the range lights inbound for the port of Korsor taking sail and then tied up to a stone quay at a historic park that was once a naval base in the 19th century. We were the first ship in. This we did intentionally as I thought it might be interesting for us to watch the other ships sail in. We so rarely get to watch the Parade of Sail as we are usually in the thing. This turned out to be fun.

The next morning the ships started to sail in and soon the cobblestone quay was one long line of wooden sailing ships, some rafted up. Varnished and oiled wooden masts, topmasts and yards everywhere. Silhouetted against the clear skies all was a forest of masts and webs of rigging. Schooners, topsail schooners, galeases, ketches, three masted schooners, sloops, cutters and one bark. Former fishing vessels, ex cargo droughers, ex wet-well eel carriers, old packet boats, former custom/revenue cutters, converted herring fishermen and pilot vessels; these were the smaller work horses from the age of sail, all beautifully restored, maintained and sailed. It was a delight to be in their company.

It was not that long ago that most of the vessels were working at their original tasks. Cod, salt, timber general goods, rope, building supplies, you name it, any and all things could be found in their cargo manifests. Before bridges, before big trucks, before big centralized-consolidated shipping, before diesel engines burning cheap fuel these small ships were sailing all over the Baltic, North Sea and around Europe from Finland (and even Russia) to Spain and Portugal and out to Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland carrying small cargos and trading on a regular basis. The small Brigantine Romance under her original name, Grette, made the voyage to Greenland many a time - pretty far away is Greenland. Perhaps soon their practices will be renewed the way things are headed, and all for the good.

Of particular interest was the topsail schooner Lilla Dan and Pilot Schooner Elbe-5 ex-Wanderbird. The Lilla Dan is a wooden topsail schooner built as a sail training ship for young would-be officers of the Lauritsen Line and was the last ever sail training ship built by and for a steamship company. The Lilla Dan was designed and built after a typical Danish cargo trader of her size at the J.Ring Andersen Yard in Svendborg in 1951. She sails for her company yet and does summer charters. Her skipper is an old shipmate from my Danmark days - Jesper Johansen. He is one cracker-jack sailor and keeps that ship up to perfection with little apparent effort. You can eat off any part of that ship including the engine room. The Lilla sailed in, preformed a snappy manoeuvre and was quickly along side with only a few feet to spare under our jib-boom. No grand-standing, he is just good and knows his ship. Our crew were directed to check out the Lilla Dan to be reminded how clean and well painted a ship can and should be.

There were many fine vessels at our gathering but standing out one must point to the Schooner Elbe-5. This vessel holds a special place in the pantheon of the modern small ship sail training and sea experience movement. In the 1920’s the German Pilot Schooner Elbe-5 was bought by Captain Warwick Tompkins and his wife. As the Wanderbird she sailed for many years with young college students as crew making numerous deepwater passages across the North Atlantic and even around Cape Horn (resulting in that great chronicle of a voyage and ship “Fifty South To Fifty South”).

At one time Captain Tompkins’ mate was a young Irving Johnson, a recent graduate was a young Exy Johnson. These two got married and got a North Sea pilot schooner of their own, two in fact, in sequence. The first schooner rigged and the second converted to a brigantine. In these vessels, both named Yankee, the Johnsons made many voyages taking young people to sea including seven world circumnavigations. The idea to do this on a sustainable basis was born and nurtured aboard the Schooner Wanderbird. Sterling Hayden, who at one time sailed as mate in the Yankee, was also inspired by this exquisite schooner. Both the Wanderbird and the Yankees have been very influential in getting young people out to sea in traditional vessels under sail. And those vessels lead directly to the building of the Schooner Westward, the establishment of the Sea Education Association of Woods Hole and inspired any number of other operations.

The hull lines of the Picton Castle are very similar to Elbe-5 although quite a good deal larger and, of course, barque rigged. After her voyage around Cape Horn and WWII the schooner lay as a house-boat in San Francisco with masts cut off. An enterprising tug-boat skipper Harold Summer and his wife Annelise got a hold of her in the 1960’s, probably for a song, and set about restoring this remarkable schooner. Their restoration was perfection itself. Given her provenance it was logical that this example of 1883 German maritime heritage should one day find her way back to the Elbe River and Hamburg from whence she came. Now she is maintained top-notch and sailed actively by the museum association that owns her. It was fun for me to see her as I had spent some time aboard her in San Francisco years ago. Again, our crew were directed aboard to see what a truly fine schooner looks like. They were welcomed by the crew of Elbe-5. The Danes say she is very fast against their vessels.

While it is great good fun to mix it up with kindred spirits in kindred ships, the work goes on with any sailing ship. Topsides get painted, varnish and rig tarring is ongoing and we spied a nice piece of flat grass on which to lay out a new sail so David, Lynsey and Nadja rolled out bolts of canvas that will become a new jib, hand stitched, every inch. The Navy Association held a nice reception for the officers of the Picton Castle as she is an old navy ship herself. We held open-ship and had hundreds of guests from not only the other ships but from towns-folks and visitors to the assembled fleet. On a personal note I had a good number of shipmates, former cadets and officers both, from those days I sailed in the Danish Full-rigger Danmark as Bosun in 1978-82. Then it came time for us all to sail. We would all start the race together, the fleet would head west around Fyn and we would sail east over the north of Sjaelland towards Copenhagen.

Danmark

Elbe-5

Helge

K++benhavn-1

Korsor-Elbe

Korsor-furling

Korsor-jib

Korsor-Lille Dan

Korsor-rafted

Korsor-rigging

Korsor-shipmates

Picton Castle

Picton Castle-quay

Romance

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After passing through the Kiel Canal, our stay in Kiel was perfectly pleasant with lovely weather. We took this chance to re-provision the Picton Castle with fresh fruits and vegetables in this famous naval seaport. As a major shipping artery and transit port they are well set up here to look after ships on the go. A very efficient ship chandler got us all we needed quickly and cheaper than if we shopped for ourselves. We had up to then remarkably good sailing the whole way from Ireland, from Nova Scotia too it must be said.

Kiel has always been an important German Naval base and was pretty much levelled during the Second World War by Allied bombers, thus modern buildings everywhere. It is hard looking around today to think that only two generations ago this part of the world was devastated and little more than smoking rubble. In Kiel we dried sails, painted the topsides and tarred rigging as well wandered around this very old but new in appearance city. Some crew found a very friendly and traditional beer hall with lots of singing and all sitting at long oak tables, good German fun.

These things done we sailed from Kiel. It is a large natural harbour open to the north and the Baltic Sea. Modern freighters, container ships and large ferries to Scandinavia steamed by us coming and going as we sailed under sunny skies out of the harbour past the German Naval base and the grand German Naval Sail Training Ship, the Gorch Foch at her moorings.

We were bound for Svendborg, Denmark in southern Fyn, a large island of Denmark, a nation of islands. “Fyn” is sort of pronounced ‘‘foon’ but as if you had cat hairs up your nose for the correct effect. Svendborg was only a day sail away. Svendborg is a fine, salty seafaring town and I was keen get the crew there to take it in. Soon we were sailing among small low Danish islands covered with fields, patches of forests with charming farm cottages with either red tiled roofs or thatched. I don’t know when last a square-rigged ship of our size had passed through here under sail.

We sailed along up the pretty narrow channel right into the small harbour of Svendborg only to find our carefully arranged and reserved berth at the town wharf occupied by a big gleaming Dutch schooner who was not overly impressed with the large bold sign stating “Reserved for Picton Castle -1800″ in large letters. As there was nowhere else to go we anchored right there in the middle of the channel. The harbour master came down blistering mad at the schooner and they left soon enough only to have another pretty black ketch slip in to the same spot as we were getting our anchor up. This ship (the exquisitely restored West Country Ketch Bessie Ellen) was owned by an old friend and all was sorted out quickly and we went in stern first for our stay.

Coastal Denmark and certainly around Svendborg is a very ‘‘old time’ shippy sort of area and thus perfect for the crew of the Picton Castle. We must start with the J. Ring Anderson Shipyard. This small but bustling shipyard has been in business for a century or two but unlike other wooden shipyards around the western world, this one is still going strong. Rebuilds, refits, overhauls of wooden, steel and iron schooners, ketches and three-masted schooners, annual dry-dockings of dozens of wooden vessels all going on all the time. There are about 40 operational large wooden historic sailing vessels built, restored and based in Denmark that come to this yard from time to time. Around the yard, while listening to the ring of caulking irons or the buzz of band-saws, one wanders around piles of old hawsers and rigging, past old discarded teak deck-houses removed as vessels got converted back to sail and old clinker-built boats. Old spars, anchors and windlasses lie about everywhere while vessels are rafted up waiting their turn for renewal. On the two railways and the floating drydock are vessels hauled out getting new planks or just getting caulked and painted. Norwegian, Swedish, German, English as well as Danish flags fly from these various craft at Ring Anderson. It is quite a sight to see so many sailing ship masts in one place silhouetted against the sky . The Brigantine Romance in which I sailed for four years in the 1970’s was built here in 1936. In the charming wood paneled office of the yard is a photo, painting or model of almost every ship built here. It is a museum on its own.

The town of Svendborg itself is on hills surrounding the landlocked harbour with winding cobblestone streets and any number of places to sit a spell for a nice lunch or dinner ashore; proper seaman’s pubs too, with live jazz or blues many nights. And it is all very, very clean.

Some crew took the ferry over to Aero, an off-lying island, for the day. Aero is perhaps an analog to Nantucket but I think Nantucket would end up being jealous if set next to this island. Aero is truly beautiful. The island of Aero, being somewhat offshore has a legacy of being both very dependent on their own ships and quite independent minded of their association with mainland Denmark, particularly so when it comes to cooperation with federally regulated customs fees and charges and the like. Basically it seems that the Aero Islanders were generally of one mind against the whole idea of paying customs duties to Copenhagen. It seems that when the customs inspector was coming to Aero on his random but weekly visits to the island the ferry-boat bringing him gave a specific, loud and very cheery set of toots on his whistle as the boat was puling into harbour thus saving the local citizenry undue embarrassment with said customs officer (and expense).

The trip to Aero starts with literally a 40 second walk to the ferry from our ship for the hour and 15 minute passage out to the island. All in smooth seas the ferry steams past little islets, some with sheep grazing. Aeroskobing, the town into which the ferry pulls, is a gorgeous old seaport with tiny brightly painted houses some of which date back before the 1500’s. Cobblestone streets, cafes and little shops everywhere. The next thing to do is rent a bicycle to ride around and maybe visit Marstal which is the more working seaport of Aero with more coasters and a shipyard. We had dry-docked here in the Picton Castle in 1993. Down hard packed country dirt roads through fields of ripe grain and corn over rolling hills the scene becomes quite idyllic.

Marstal has a superb maritime museum cram packed with fascinating and very local historical stuff. Dioramas, paintings, a full foc’sle set up even with dirty laundry, sea-chests, tools, models, imports from all over the world and souvenirs brought back by sailors and on and on. And they bring the museum exhibits up to date with exhibits on motor coasters. There even is a full bridge and salon of a 500 ton coaster and delightfully un-restored, looking a bit worn as they would have done when at work. In a gravel yard between the ochre buildings two very old painted up wooden rowboats are set in the ground for kids to row and even a short mock-up of a mast and yard for kids to “climb aloft” and clamber about on, finest kind of jungle-gym it is. On the 8 mile bike ride back to the ferry there are plenty a beautiful spots with lovely views of these inland seas for a small picnic of rye bread, cheese, pickled herring and maybe some Danish salami, frighteningly pink.

Back in Svendborg former Danish shipmates of mine were trying to convince me to join up with the Fyn-Rundt (means ‘‘around Fyn’) sailing ship race in commencing in a town called Korsor. The second ‘‘O’ in Korsor is that funny O with a line through it from 2:00 to 8:00 and is pronounced close to the vowels in the French word for sister “soeur”, good luck pronouncing it. This keyboard does not have that letter. There would be thirty or so 100′ plus wooden and iron sailing ships starting their annual cavalcade around Fyn with a ship/harbour festival there for a couple days. The Picton Castle would fit right in with these veteran ships while being larger than all of them. Many of these mariners had heard a lot about this barque and were keen to see her. Or so I was told.

Aero

aero islands

aero KBHN

aero pasture

Aero tour

aero-bike

Areo Museum

MJM-Aeroskobing house

museum-focsl

PC - Svendborg

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What follows below are the first Captain’s Logs that were written back when just getting the ship and working at seeing this dream come true. The story begins in Norway in May of 1993. We hope you enjoy the tale.

The Story of the Picton Castle

The Captain’s Running Letter
Captain Daniel D. Moreland

England to Spain - March 1994

We steamed out of Falmouth Monday, March 28, after a little over a week’s stay and crossed the western approaches to the English Channel, bound for Madeira. The western approaches along with the Strait of Dover can be the worst part, the roughest part of the Channel. This time, the conditions were “fair to good.” We steamed SSW into a fresh southwesterly breeze. The sky was leaden and overcast. It was spitting rain, but the barometer was steady. The weather forecasts were such that I was convinced that if we didn’t sail now, we could be gale bound another week with a coming front.

All went well enough for the first couple of days. The main engine ticked over without complaint, giving the ship a steady eight knots. The crew got on watch routine. Meals and coffee came off the wood stove in the galley in regular pattern. She steamed well; all of the gear worked. We passed Ushant well offshore, as the sailing directions instruct. We carried on to pass Finisterre the same way, that is, well offshore Finisterre, land’s end on the other side of Biscay.

Around noon Monday, about 90 miles from Finesterre, at the southern side of Biscay, the barometer started to go down about one millibar per hour. It kept dropping into the afternoon and picked up in fits and bursts. The seas built up steadily. There was a severe gale forming south of Ireland that was going to slash its way up the English Channel. It turns out that it slashed more than that. I remember thinking I was glad we weren’t in the western approaches for this one. I’m still glad.

By late afternoon, the wind was screaming out of the southwest, we were in a full gale and the Bay of Biscay was living up to its reputation as a nasty place to be during a blow. Seas picked up to about 20′ and were pretty close together. It would have been worse had we been closer inshore, deeper in the bay. It looked worse to the south as well so we hove her to while we still had sea room to leeward. Even if we could have gotten around Finisterre, that would have put us on a lee shore. Not so fine. We set a sort of storm stays’l forward to help her lay off the wind and not wallow in the wave troughs. We secured the main engine too. As it got dark it was blowing force 9 and increasing. That night it got up to force 10 in my estimation. That’s not far below hurricane strength.

Around eleven that night, it was at its worst. The ship was rolling hard, with the wind and seas just a point or so abaft the starboard beam. She is ballasted pretty stiffly just now to keep her up upright, with big seas staying off the decks and cargo hatch. This, however, gives her a pretty snappy roll period and makes her pretty uncomfortable for human habitation. The cats and dog didn’t like it much either. But she didn’t scoop any real green water and that was the idea. How did she ride? Why, she shamed the gulls…

Just after midnight, with the crew keeping lookout on the bridge wings with flares standing by to alert bigger ships to our presence, the barometer went up a bit. A weather report spat out of one of our little black boxes stating the wind should go to a force 7 “for a time” before veering into the northwest and picking up to storm force 10. Good news-bad news. With the wind out of the SW, we had 300 miles of sea room into Biscay to the coast of France. We could stay here for several days if we had to. With the winds out of the NW we had about 60 miles of sea room and a lee shore on to the rock bound north coast of Spain. Not so fine. But it let up a bit. The Engineer got the main engine going again. We hooked her up and hammered our way for La Coruna, Spain, the closest port of refuge. We hadn’t drifted so much in 10 hours hove to. Fifteen miles or so. As dawn broke, we could see the high coast of Spain and feel the seas become low rolling swells on the rising shelf of land. We surfed into La Coruna, swung around the 30′ high stone breakwater and let go both the anchors. An hour later the wind out of the north was roaring again. We could see the tops of the seas breaking over the stone wall to windward of us. Then, just about all of the crew turned in for some well-deserved sleep. The cats chased each other around in the warm sunlight on the cargo hatch.

Quite a seaport, La Coruna. While gales blew outside, large wooden draggers and other fishing vessels streamed in. While we were there, freighters and tankers came and went. A lone yacht left one morning and got towed in dismasted the same afternoon. It would be an interesting place to come back to as a Barque with a shipload of crew. The yacht club took good care of us with their powerful hot showers.

La Coruna is a big city and carefully managed harbour. A section reserved for every type of vessel including an anchorage for ours. Small fishing vessels, large ones, small yachts, large ones, cruise ships, freighters and supertankers.

The lighthouse called the “Tower of Hercules” is claimed to be the oldest in the world established by the Romans ages ago. While here and in the first sunlight we’d seen for months, we made a jib for the Picton Castle and started painting her up.

The weather was getting better. Slowly the barometer crept up and it looked as if we were in for some decent weather.

Early one morning, after two weeks, the day came in fair and clear with some mist rolling down to the sea off the mountains. We got underway in the light land breeze. All hands were anxious to get going. I couldn’t help thinking that if she were rigged, we would have sailed off the hook and made our way to sea, piling canvas on her. Next time.

Once well offshore, the wind backed around in a northerly direction and slowly picked up. By the time we had Cape Finisterre on the port beam and we were sailing SSW, we had a good force 6 on the stern. We set out our little jib and talked ourselves into believing that it was really pulling us along. Slowly the coast of Spain and Portugal slip-slided over the western horizon as we knocked off 8 ½ knots for Madeira.

Four days later, we let go our big hook just off an old fort in the eastern part of the city of Funchal, Madeira some 600 miles off the coast of Morocco, Northwest Africa.

English Channel passage from Brixham towards the North Sea

The Picton Castle crew got their ship under way under sail from Brixham in fresh westerly winds. She made her way under sail all the way until off the Elbe River, yards squared most of the time, all sails drawing. We are certainly getting our sailing miles in on this voyage.

We had a perfect Channel passage into the North Sea. We had plenty of fog and rain but a fair wind carried us along in fine style, hour after hour going six, seven, eight, even nine knots, at times we almost raced up channel. On radar and our electronic chart which is patched in with an electronic ship identifying system we could keep track of 20-30 ships at a time. The English Channel is like a busy road, most traffic is in the lanes steaming up or down. But there are also ships crossing the channel back and forth to look out for. All very interesting navigation and ship management.

We didn’t see much but it was nice that the mists cleared off Dover so we could see the famous white cliffs. Shortly the Channel opened up and we found ourselves in the North Sea with plenty of water around us. The sky cleared up properly and winds eased a bit and we slowed but still made good sailing time. There were still plenty of ships here too and now we had lots of oil rigs. Also, reading the charts around the British Isles and the North Sea we see the bottom covered with wrecks. It seems that a great deal of them are casualties of war. They must up fetch fishing gear on these wrecks all the time. The North Sea is not much more than a hundred feet deep in most of the part we are sailing.

Midnight Sun

We are getting pretty far north these days now being in the North Sea. One thing that means is that even well after the sun goes down (1000 or so) there remains a strong sunset glow to the north between sunset and sunrise a few hours later - it never gets really properly night time dark. As we head north to Bergen, Norway this phenomenon will become more pronounced. This and the sun rising so early is a nice advantage for navigating in these regions. It’s also pretty.

Approaching the Elbe

Hamburg, the big important centre of commerce and shipping, is up the Elbe River. And as it happens, the entrance to the Kiel Canal is at a place called Brunsbuttel at the mouth of the Elbe and this we were fast approaching, even a day earlier than expected due to the fair sailing. For most of the way the Picton Castle had been sailing in what’s called the “Inshore Traffic Zone” outside the traffic separation schemes. Traffic separation schemes are basically traffic routing, control and management schemes not altogether different than air what air-traffic controllers employ. Small ships, sailing ships and local coastal traffic often operate in the inshore zones where there is more freedom of movement, less control and we stay out of the way of the big ships.

But as we approached the mouth of the Elbe we entered the associated Elbe Traffic Separation Scheme. It was like going up a ramp onto a busy highway. You put on your blinker, look both ways and accelerate. And then steer carefully. From midnight through until 0800 arrival at Brunsbuttel we steamed down the Elbe, hugging the green side and watching large container ships, small freighters, naval ships, and yachts under sail slide past us and disappear. The lookouts got good exercise running back and forth from the foc’s’le head to report lights and traffic, and the helmsmen could see how much they’ve improved in the last two months, steering confidently while 1000 foot ships passed us at two-tenths of a mile or less. The watch officers consumed gallons of coffee. Just as the sun was rising, we steamed past fishing grounds full of beautiful little wooden beam-trawlers, hauling and setting nets in the warm morning light, surrounded by flocks of hungry birds. Shortly afterward we turned to hug the shoreline of Cuxhaven and carry on down the increasingly narrow and busy Elbe River to meet our pilot just off Brunsbuttel.

The Kiel Canal

The Kiel Canal is one of the world’s great shipping canals along with Panama, the St. Lawrence Seaway, Welland Canal (this one dodges about Niagara Falls, a good thing for a ship to do) and Cape Cod Canal. Built (or dug) in the 1890’s and I think expanded in 1912, much the same time as the Panama Canal, it is a very busy ship thoroughfare cutting off a long trip around the Jutland peninsula of Denmark and probably most significantly connecting the great German Naval base at Kiel with the North Sea so it wasn’t bottled up in the Baltic Sea. This was probably a key agenda item in 1912 as the Kaiser was building a Navy to rival his cousin the British King’s. Today, many ships use it each day and soon it was our turn to take the short cut onto the Baltic Sea ourselves.

Like many canals it begins with a lock. In this case it is not so much for lift or mountain climb as is the case with the Panama Canal but in order to control water current between two bodies of sea with differing tide levels. One of the first things we do when approaching a lock is to incarcerate Chibley, the ship’s cat. She might get the idea that we are tying up for awhile maybe she would hop ashore and have sniff around. So Chibley gets locked into a cabin somewhere. She seems to take it better if we explain well beforehand what we are going to do and then again when we do it. I know, sounds crazy but it seems to be true. If we just toss her in a cabin and lock the door she goes a bit nuts and calls us all bad names and then won’t talk to us when released for awhile…

Ben at the wheel, Dover

ditty bag class

Shackle replaces ratlines

stowing royals in the English Channel

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What follows below are the first Captain’s Logs that were written back when just getting the ship and working at seeing this dream come true. The story begins in Norway in May of 1993. We hope you enjoy the tale.

The Story of the Picton Castle

The Captain’s Running Letter
Captain Daniel D. Moreland

Voyage Across the Atlantic - March-July, 1994

After five months alongside the quay of the inner harbour of Ipswich, England, the crew was ready to go. On March 7, 1994, the Picton Castle (which we bought as the Dolmar) passed through the ancient lock gates of the wet tidal dock into the River Orwell. This was the beginning of a 5,000 mile voyage to the USA and Canada where she will become a square-rigged Barque for world voyaging.

It was a cold and blustery winter’s morning but it was time to get moving. After months of fretting over budgets and fixing things on the ship, we were underway again. We steamed slowly down the River Orwell, lashing down things on deck, checking the engine and double-checking the barometer. The Castle glided serenely past eight miles of farms, cottages, fields, little towns and shipyards, with laid up Thames sailing barges and other gaff-rigged vessels along the riverbank’s low grey countryside. A gale started to blow outside, so we brought her to anchor off Harwich for the night. It would be good just to get used to being on a ship in commission again for a night before we put our toes into the North Sea, an anchor watch to hear her ticks and groans.

One side of Harwich Harbour is a bucolic English country scene complete with thatched roof farm buildings and cows spotted about. The other side is a complex of the most modern marine industrial steel works with gantries, loading-unloading platforms and roll on-roll off facilities. What with the sister port of Felixstowe, this is the biggest container port in Europe. North Sea passenger and cargo ferries would be coming and going to and from Holland, Germany, Denmark, France and the deep sea all day and all night. We anchored on the farm side of the river.

The next day we steamed out into what they specialize in around here: a grey leaden heavy water headwind, just like all those nasty old European marine paintings. We were outward bound down the English Channel. All was well enough crossing the broad mouth of the Thames estuary, still a windward shore with the wind blowing off the land and across the subaqueous delta that makes up the hazardous approaches to the River Thames. We left that all well to starboard, passed a lightship or two and into the North Sea. As we made our course more southerly, the wind naturally came ahead. Rounding Ram’s Gate heading for the Straits of Dover, she started butting her head into a building sea. The weather for that day was advertised as force 5 or 7 and now it was all of that.

About the time we were abeam of Dover, and it was the narrowest part of the English Channel, it was pretty rough. The breeze was kicking up to a force 8 or 9, with seas tumbling through the straits, crowding and piling upon each other after their run in from the wintry North Atlantic. With the wind against the tide, we were still making pretty good headway over the bottom, but we were starting to take a pounding. The bow is 18′ high and it was starting to go under occasionally, with gross, grey, foaming breakers spewing as far as I could see. We were still pitching into it pretty hard even after the engine was brought back to half speed. It was getting dark, this was our first day at sea, the barometer was still dropping, and the 7½-second light at the entrance breakwater at Dover was winking at me through the gloom. I decided that after almost six months alongside, none of my crew nor the ship needed this kind of punishment. I put her hard right to steer north through the darkening dusk for Dover Harbour five miles away. This, of course, took the jarring seas off our bow and put them on our beam. Until now, we had been pitching and shuddering as she came out of the head-on seas. Now she began to roll. I forgot to tell the cook about this, and the galley took some punishment. Anything not iron riveted down, took a trip across the ship.

Oh well, an hour later we were at anchor inside Dover Harbour, behind the massive breakwaters. We twisted and yawed our way right up to the harbour entrance where a pilot boat met us and led us to our anchorage. It became suddenly still as Bosun Tara steered her in and we shot into the lee and slowed down. We stayed on the hook for two days of fog and gales. We watched as gales boiled and churned outside. In the daytime, the white chalk cliffs and castles dominate the scene when we could, in fact, see them through the fog. At night, the huge cross channel ferries took over. The weather didn’t bother them much, but then, every once in a while, one rolls over too.

We could see the breakers through the cut in the breakwater and waited. While we waited, Her Majesty’s Customs Service wondered what this old black trawler was doing at anchor in Dover Harbour. They got so curious about us that they sent a boat out to inquire and maybe take a look around. They brought a drug-sniffing dog. I asked if this was a search and they said yes, in fact, it was. The dog was cute and he ended his visit by putting his paw print in the guest book. His name was Daniel. It was a cold morning, so HM Customs all had a cup of coffee before they left. It was nice to have visitors.

On our third day there (no shore liberty), the early morning anchor watch woke all hands with reports of calm winds, clear weather, and a sunny day in the offing. A high-pressure ridge was passing over us and we glided serenely out into the English Channel once again. It’s amazing how still waters around the world look much the same, but tortured seas take on their own distinctive characteristics: Long Island Sound; the North Atlantic; South Pacific; the Baltic Sea; the Grand Banks; the English Channel; all different when rough, similar when calm; but now it was calm.

I hugged the north coast of the Channel, having taken a hint now about the weather and its changes. It was, after all, the English Channel in winter. We steamed along, leaving Dungeness Folkstone (terminus of the channel tunnel - the “Chunnel”) and the Isle of Wight about three miles starboard. That night the barometer started to drop with the advance of the next low-pressure system lifting her skirts to trundle up the Channel as they are wont to do. The forecast was calling for gales again. Yea. Gales aren’t so bad in the middle of the ocean with lots of sea room and deep water to keep the seas spread out and almost no traffic. That, however, does not describe the English Channel.

We pulled into Tor Bay off Devon and anchored off the old fishing town of Brixham in the southwest corner of the bay. We ended gale bound here for a week. In Tor Bay that is. We didn’t stay at Brixham. We alternated between anchoring off Brixham when the gales were west to southwest and then shifting to an anchorage off Torquay at the northern end of the bay three or so miles away when the gales came out of the northwest. The crew didn’t get ashore to speak of. We dragged anchor once and the Mate Jeff got a second anchor down promptly. Screaming gales in the lee of Devon, the land of Drake and Hawkins as well as where my mother’s family came from a long time ago. It was kind of beautiful in a savage sort of way standing all those watches in the wind; straining at the anchor chains, sun and shooting clouds. Brixham, famous for its fleet of ketch-rigged sailing trawlers, is an enchanting old seaport that, with the exception of a new yacht marina where JW & A Uphams Shipyard used to be, is still a crowded old fisherman’s harbour. The “Crown and Anchor” pub saw our custom for pints as it has for untold generations of seafarers. The Uphams Shipyard built the Mayflower replica now in Plymouth, Massachusetts and sailed there in 1957 by Captain Alan Villiers. The Brigantine Yankee fitted out here for four world voyages just after the war. It also built the Brixham trawler ketch in 1935. That became my first ship in the Caribbean when I was fresh out of school those many years ago. They remembered her launching when I asked around, the Maverick ex-Cachelot.

Finally, we got a gale warning that lacked the usual confidence that we had been accustomed to and the barometer wasn’t doing its expected nose-dive. So the anchor watch woke all hands. Doug, the Engineer, rolled over the rumbling beast of a main engine and at two o’clock in the morning, we got underway again so we could make a daylight harbour entrance (always nice to do) in our next harbour, Falmouth.

At 06:00 we were three miles or so due south of Salcombe Bay, the resting place of the magnificent four-masted Barque Herzogin Cecelie, wrecked in 1936 on her way back from Australia with grain. Years ago, as Mate in the Brigantine Romance, put into Cape Town on a world voyage, I met some who had been crew on her, including Pamela Erikson, the skipper’s wife.

We were also pushing along pretty well into a force 5 or 6 with seas not too built up yet and with good visibility. We were headed for Falmouth, but I took her close to Plymouth on the way just in case the weather forecast was more accurate than I believed it was going to be. We passed north of Eddystone Light. It didn’t blow more than force 7, and by then we were in the lee of Cornwall. We got to Falmouth in eleven hours, 90 miles. That night it blew like hell. It turns out they were right after all, but we were happily on a mooring designed for huge ships in Falmouth’s inner harbour.

Falmouth is a lovely place, well known as a landfall for ships bound for England as well as the last British and European harbour for ships bound for deep water, like us. The last large commercial square-riggers bringing grain from Australia often made for Falmouth in the 1920’s and 30’s to get their orders for a port of discharge. There was no radio in those days. We found Falmouth very hospitable and it was a good place to lay out the weather. It was an excellent safe harbour, with a short row to the town dock, fine pubs and folks genuinely interested in the ship. In fact, a couple of old Navy salts said they recognized her and asked if she was the old “Picton Castle“. It turns out she participated in the raid on St. Nazaire. The raid on St. Nazaire in March 1942 was an attempt to put out of action the Normandie Dock in Nazi occupied France. This dry-dock was the only one that could take the German battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz. This, I think, was the first amphibious assault on Europe. While in Ipswich, we were put in touch with Tom Gamble who had served in our ship during World War II. One night he came aboard for dinner and regaled us with life aboard the HMS Picton Castle in the Royal Navy while Europe was in flames.

The steam-fishing trawler Picton Castle was one of five sister ships built for Consolidated Fisheries out of Grimsby. She had a triple expansion Amos & Smith 91 horsepower steam engine with 9-foot propeller. She was fishing mostly out of Swansea. In September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and the natural fertilizer hit the ventilating system. Later that month, our ship and many others were requisitioned into the Royal Navy. She was fitted out as a minesweeper with, among other things, an acoustical hammer projecting from the bow. The weld marks for this can still be seen on each side of the bow, forming a sort of Maltese cross in welding bead. I expect we’ll leave it there. She served as both a minesweeper and a convoy export vessel, since she was capable of 12 knots under full steam. She was also armed, with a 12-pounder on the foc’s’le head, a .30 calibre Lewis machine gun on each bridge wing, a double .50 calibre machine gun aft of the pilot house and a couple of racks of depth charges on the stern. Her crew was made up of fishermen and reservists hastily mustered into service and made up a pretty rag-tag crowd. They called this fleet “Harry Tate’s” Navy, after a popular vaudeville comedian who was pretty scruffy and vulgar. I can understand why. The reservist officers were often not terribly acquainted with the Navy, ships, sea or war. They were also called the wavy Navy for their wavy uniform stripes. I understand this was not a compliment. It seems that efforts to get the old fishermen into uniforms were dropped early on.

Our friend, Tom Gamble, was regular Navy and he was the telegraph operator. He was also dyslexic. Apparently, both the British Navy and German forces thought the Picton Castle was using some extra secret code. No, Tom was just getting his letters and words mixed up. It seems this kind of curious situation was quite common, especially early on in the war. Tom told us of a time when a mine went off under her, sending her further into the air than she was designed to go. They choked her boilers with coal and steamed her to a dry-dock as fast as they could to repair her, but upon inspection, the only thing damaged was the nerves of her crew. The hull was fine. Tom showed us where his bunk was and described the ship and accommodations to us and showed us pictures of her in those days. The Picton Castle was otherwise employed while the evacuation of Dunkirk was carried out. During D-Day in 1944, she was working as a support vessel for the invasion escorting ships down the North Sea to various staging areas in England for the jump to France. One story, nay, claim to fame stands out as the night grew long in our mess room that night in Ipswich with Tom bringing the story of our ship to life. It turns out the HMS Picton Castle is single-handedly responsible for the liberation of Norway.

As the Allies advanced across Europe and Germany, Norway remained occupied by German forces. Without a major invasion but with plenty of resistance fighting, the German leadership figured out things weren’t going their way and pretty much took it upon themselves to back out of Norway. As the Germans retreated, the Allies figured they probably needed to clear the fjords of mines, etc. So at some point, a fleet of these naval mine sweeper/trawlers were sent to Norway to do the job, our ship among them. She developed engine trouble one night and fell out of the flotilla. Once they got it going again, the skipper calculated they were going to miss their rendezvous and their mine sweeping assignment. He had a chart of Bergen, Norway and he had to go somewhere, so to Bergen it was.

I can picture her now: a lone, bedraggled, grey steamer, streaked with coal dust, puffing and winding her way up the Bergen fjord unchallenged. An unkempt, makeshift crew of independent fishermen ignoring naval discipline, reservist officers hopelessly trying to instil some. Perhaps it was a kind of standoff. Quietly, she would have steamed into the deserted harbour of Bergen. She tied up in town. I doubt if much brass was polished and her dirty old Navy Ensign snapped grimly at the peak. All was quiet. Slowly, people started to come out of buildings to see this strange little vessel.

It had been a long time in Bergen since they had seen anything on a flag besides a swastika. The mayor decided to do something. He and the city council solemnly marched down to the ship and requested to come aboard this vanguard of the mighty Royal Navy. Finding the skipper, they shook his hand, holding it, and thanking him and the crew of the HMS Picton Castle “…for liberating Norway!” From that day in the mid-forties, she has been and forever will be known as:
The Liberator of Norway
(frelser av Norge)

She mustered out of the British Navy in December 1945 and was fishing again in 1946. She might well be the only British naval vessel from World War II still in active sea going commission. There was another thing Tom Gamble told us when he saw our wretched mutt. He started by saying it had been so long since, that he checked himself, realizing it had been 50 years. Our dog Yankee is the very image, an exact replica of the dog of the Picton Castle during the war. I asked Tom if he was as dumb as this one.

To be continued…

It was just a day sail from Falmouth to Brixham. With the boat hoisted, engine fired up by engineer Christian (from Switzerland), anchor up, we steamed out of Falmouth against the light southerly winds and fell off on a starboard tack steering eastwards and set all sail. With the wind veering nicely into the southwest and picking up, soon the Picton Castle was slipping along just fine on her way along the coast of England. It became a pretty day. Seas small and with the sun opening up and warming us the sails turned from a mottled greyish brown to the pale creamy colour of the cotton canvas they are they dried out in our new-found sunlight. We sailed a few miles off Ham Rock and then past the mouth of the Salcombe River. These two areas play important roles in the loss of the 4-masted Bark Herzogin Cecelie in 1936. We rounded the Start, braced up and rounded Berry Head. In the falling light of late evening we let go the hook and clewed up just off the breakwater of Brixham Harbour, Devon.

Brixham is not very large, but it is a very significant fishing port in England. Behind a long north/south break-water, the inner harbour and the three basins that have been added onto it are probably not much more than 100 yards across. High stone wharves, a wrap around harbour loop street lined with shops, fishing suppliers, ship chandleries and the ubiquitous waterfront pubs The Crown and Anchor and The Blue Anchor all seem as ancient as the wharves themselves. Rows of two story houses raise in grade up the hills like rice paddies in the far east. The quays are crowded with fishing vessels of all types. Large 120′ beam trawlers (so called because a large beam like telephone pole holds their nets open rather than the kite-like paravanes of an Otter Trawl), little day trawlers and even the little tiniest trawlers of only 20′ to 30′ or so are spread around the small harbour, rafted up and often keel on the bottom at low tide. Tide must be 10′ to 12′ or so. The four fold increase in fuel prices recently is hitting the fishing fleet pretty hard these days. These forms of fishing could only develop around the premise of having large heavily powered stout vessels dragging big nets through the water or over the bottom using a good deal of cheap fuel. Cheap fuel is over now, probably never to be seen again. I think soon, over the next few years, we will be seeing slimmer, smaller vessels with much, much smaller engines using some form of hook and line fishing method selling to a local market in smaller amounts. Maybe we will even see auxiliary sailing rigs. Of course that still depends upon the fish cooperating by showing up, too.

What did people do ashore? I don’t really know. Soon it came time to sail and head on up the channel. But we had gale warnings on the radio, pretty strong ones so we shifted our berth around the corner to a less exposed spot in Tor Bay, set two anchors, plenty of chain and we waited it out. It came on to blow pretty hard and the shift from the SE to the SW which made the seas lay down but still blowing hard with rough to very rough seas in the channel, so we would wait another day. Since we were in a nice lee, a protected spot, we didn’t feel the winds and seas outside, so what to do? I was told that people actually wanted to go swimming. I couldn’t believe it but it was true. Cold water, but not as cold as Nova Scotia or Maine so they got the swing rope rigged up and those daring enough went over the side. The rest of us watched. Later, we carried on with a canvas-work workshop in the form of making canvas rigging bags down in the warm, comfortable main salon in the ‘tweendecks. Donald fed us massively while we waited out the winds. In the morning we got up, loosed sail, hove up the anchor and got under way for passing through the English Channel past Dover, past Holland and onto the Kiel Canal in Germany. That is after we freed the anchor from a long one inch thick wire cable a fishing boat had disposed of here in the bay.

Brixham

Brixham gales

Brixham harbour

View the the rest of this Album

What follows below are the first Captain’s Logs that were written back when just getting the ship and working at seeing this dream come true. The story begins in Norway in May of 1993. We hope you enjoy the tale.

The Story of the Picton Castle

The Captain’s Running Letter
Captain Daniel D. Moreland

Passage to England - November 15, 1993

On a bright, clear, sunny Danish morning in early September, the crew let go the heavy hawsers, the Dolmar backed down on a stern spring and nosed into Svendborg Harbor bound for England. This was to be the first leg of a 4,000-mile, transatlantic voyage to New York, New England and then Nova Scotia.

The crew, including Mate Jeff, Engineer Doug, Bosun Tara, Cook Henrik, Deckhands Scott and Dave, along with others, had been working diligently for three months getting our staunch vessel ready for sea. We were joined by Danish Heidi Baatz, whom we had met in Svendborg. She came from the north part of Jutland. Her father was the skipper of 400-ton coaster and she had a desire to see the watery part of the world. She is also a rust banging fool, unstoppable with a rust hammer.

So we steamed northerly out of Svendborg Sound in between pretty and low wooded isles, passing yachts and coastal freighters to the “Great Belt,” the piece of water between the island of Fyn and the principle island of Zealand, home to Copenhagen. Denmark is a country of islands, and much of Denmark’s charm is a result of that. Now they’re building a huge bridge to Zealand from Fyn. It will be the largest suspension bridge in the world by a large factor. When done, it will connect the capital of Denmark with land traffic to Europe. Cost a bazillion dollars. Put a dozen ocean-going ferryboats out of work. Most Danes don’t seem to want it. I didn’t meet any Danes who thought the European Union was going to be good for Denmark, either.

The ship was performing well. The engineer developed and trained the crew in the minute details of engine checks of the fairly sophisticated engine room. Cylinder temperatures, cooling water discharge, lube oil cooling, voltage, and injectors, grease cups, bilge level, oilers and a lot of things were checked at fifteen minute intervals. The engineer kept a very close eye on his machinery while we started to get used to it all. The steering gear, radios, and safety gear were all up to date and we had conducted all the appropriate drills. The gang was glad to get under way. Smooth sailing in the lee of Jutland.

Rounding Skagen, the Dolmar started punching in the rolling remnants of a spent westerly North Sea gale. Stiffened with 60 tons of ballast, she had a pretty snappy roll. Good news for future sailing ship stability. Pretty tough on crew new to the sea, let the heaving begin. Things started looking pretty snotty. We had been land-bound for months, we were still learning the ship. Discretion being the better port of valour, I ducked here into the last harbour for a while, Hanstholm, and spent 24 hours there working on electrical system repairs and monitoring the weather. We poked back out the next morning, the seas were down and we started across the North Sea.

We had gotten this little black box called a Navtex and it spits out weather reports and predictions for the region the ship is in. A long tape of flimsy fax paper with terse pronouncements is its contribution to my mental health. Things were going fine, smooth seas; crew no longer throwing up, grey and light overcast as we steered southerly courses into the North Sea. We were buzzed frequently by fighter jets on manoeuvres. I don’t know from what country. Twelve years ago or so, when we were homeward bound in these waters in the full-rigged ship Danmark, and Breschznev was head of the Soviet Union, NATO manoeuvres used to be pretty thick around here. We heard later on the VHF radio that a fighter plane splashed near us and rescue operations were under way.

It was strange and amusing, listening to the radio on the bridge while on watch motoring along. As we passed in and out of range of commercial Norwegian, Danish, German, Dutch, French and eventually, English AM/FM radio stations, the languages changed but the bravado of the disc jockeys stayed the same. Picking up BBC Radio, I was reminded of old black-and-white war movies, and then of all the war that had been fought in these waters. We chugged along in these ancient European waters.

All was going well, the engine was going fine, the watches turning over, etc. I was aiming to make a daytime transit of the narrow part of the English Channel between Dover and Calais. Seemed like a good chance along for Plymouth. Our little weather box was reporting all kinds of lows and gale warning north and south of us with nothing special in our area.

But the wind was picking up and seas building. Then out spat a description of a very low-pressure area charging out of the North Atlantic into the English Channel. I figured it was the tail of the hurricane that had just danced around the western Atlantic. Still, no big deal until the black box spat out “Extreme Force 9 gale warnings English Channel 25′ seas in western approaches.” We had a chart for Harwich, a major port on the north side of the Mouth of the Thames on the southeast coast of England and fifty miles away. There we headed. By the time we were off the approach for Harwich, the weather had gotten pretty rotten and the ship was pitching and rolling in the nasty chop of the Channel. Past a couple of light ships and into Harwich harbour. Traffic control sent us to Ipswich, seven miles on up a smooth snaking river, past moored Thames sailing barges, into a locked-in wet dock. There we lay and glad of it. The gales shrieked outside and there were reports of shipping losses.

Here in Ipswich we learned that the Dolmar, as the HMS Picton Castle, has been in the Royal Navy as an armed mine sweeper from September, 1939 to December, 1945. It’s hard for me, in 1993, to imagine the deprivation, loss and courage of those times and in ships like this. I suppose I get a little taste at sea. We’re looking into the Picton Castle’s routes, convoys and activities during WW II. The crew are working away during the day, and at night can be found promoting international good will at the Lord Admiral Nelson Pub as part of the Picton Castle’s “philanthropic” international adopt-a-pub program.

So, after a few days in Ipswich, with endless frontal systems rolling up the English Channel, and with hurricane season in full flower, it seemed a good chance and wise idea to fly back to the States to do some serious fundraising and develop this little Barque project a little further. So I left the mate in charge and took a bus to Heathrow International Airport. Kuwait Air, no bacon, no booze, very good security and plenty of fuel.