Life of a mud club
Adrian and Jane Seligman left England in the autumn of 1936 with a crew of friends and volunteers on the engineless barquentine Cap Pilar. By the time they reached the Gambier Islands in French Polynesia in October 1937, they also had a baby, Jessica.
On Sunday morning the sky cleared and a soft west wind filled our sails. The Cap Pilar slipped merrily northward – away from the cold, grey, westwind seas – away from the gales and rain and fog – northward toward the edge of the tropics. The wind gained strength; the white caps danced joyously upon the sparkling wavelets; aloft the creamy castles of sail stood stiff and round and full.
Everyone was in the highest spirits. For more than a year we had been voyaging across twenty-thousand miles of sea. Now, at last, we were within a short distance of the islands; at any moment we might see them. Hour by hour the air grew warmer, several of the crew removed their shirts to get the full benefit of the sunshine. At 10:00 am, Cyril Money made the hail of ‘Land ho!’ from the fore t’gallant yard.
This was the most dramatic moment of the whole cruise – our first sight of the South Sea Islands. For many minutes we gazed at them in silence. Looking back in our minds we realised for the first time that these islands had been our only true objective since leaving London – almost from the time we had thought of making the voyage. The islands rose steadily higher out of the sea before us. The song of the wind in the rigging made a descant for the deep thunder of our bow wave, growing to leeward.
At first we could only make out the misty outline of the two main peaks of Mangareva, the largest of the Gambiers; however as we drew nearer, other humps and hillocks lifted above the horizon. Soon we could see the palm trees upon the barrier reef itself.
The Gambiers are a group of small volcanic islands enclosed within a coral reef, half of which is submerged to a depth of several fathoms. The other half of this reef lies three of four feet above sea level and forms a horseshoe of land, protecting the islands from the west, north and east. Long stretches of the reef are covered with palms and the lagoon formed by it is about ten miles in diameter.
By 02:00 pm, we were near the south-west passage into the lagoon. On either hand, where the swell was breaking upon the submerged part of the reef, a continuous ribbon of gleaming surf stretched as far as the horizon; immediately before us lay a narrow band of brilliant green, where the absence of surf showed that the water was deeper. We made for this gap. George was busy taking cross bearings so as to determine our position every few minutes, and, from this series of positions, to make sure that the course we were steering would take us across the deepest part of the reef. The rest of us, with the exception of the helmsman, were still gazing ahead.
When we had almost reached the pass I went aloft. From the foretopsail yard I could make out every detail of the reef upon which the little ship seemed to be charging so determinedly. It seemed, as I looked down, that the Cap Pilar had never moved so fast. She drove her long jib-boom, like a harpoon, across the sea, and split the ocean with her sturdy bows.
The last correction on our chart had been made in 1906; I wondered, in a vaguely fatalistic way, how quickly coral would grow, and strained my eyes to pick out a place where the green was perhaps a little darker, and therefore, the water a little deeper than the rest. ‘Port fifteen!’
‘Port fifteen!’ shouted Syd Marshall in answer, as he spun the wheel. Slowly the Cap Pilar began to swing up to the wind. ‘Midships! Starboard Five! Steady!’ ‘Steada-a-ay!’ sang Marshall. We bore up again, straight for the pass.
She drove her long jib-boom, like a harpoon, across the sea, and split the ocean with her sturdy bows
Suddenly the water beneath us turned from blue to brilliant green, and there was the coral, seemingly so near the surface that one could have waded upon it; red, yellow, orange and white, the individual ‘heads’ showed through the crystal water like monstrous cauliflowers. I felt a thrill of terror: suppose our chart was wrong – it was, after all, thirty years out of date; in imagination I felt the sudden grinding shock as the ship struck; saw the chaos which followed. I had never seen coral before. What if this reef was really as shallow as it appeared?
It was too late to do anything now. I shot an agonised glance at the deck. All in that brief moment I saw the crew, standing at their stations, ready to haul; George on the poop clearing the lead line; Doctor Stenhouse levelling his binoculars at the land; Jane peering over the rail, and in her arms, young Jessica crowing excitedly at the glittering sea. I saw Newell scratching the back of his left calf with the stem of his pipe; Donnelly making a humorous gesture at someone’s large behind doubled over the rail; Scanty tying a ropeyarn on to the cat’s tail.
Next moment George had made a cast of the lead, and began to call the soundings.
‘By the deep nine!’
Nine fathoms – fifty four feet! It seemed impossible.
I had expected three fathoms at the very most.
‘By the deep eight,’ called George, in the traditional sing-song voice of the leadsman, and a little later, ‘By the mark seven.’
There was plenty of water after all, and our chart was still accurate; with a sigh of relief I sat down upon the yard to enjoy the view.
We were now in the very middle of the pass. A few hundred yards away on either beam I could see and hear the rollers, ten or fifteen feet high, thundering upon the shoaler parts of the reef. The spray rose smoking to the height of our masts. Ahead of us the lagoon lay blue and placid as a lake. The coral flashed past beneath us; then, as suddenly as it had come, it slipped astern and disappeared.
‘No bottom!’ sang George, heaving the lead for the last time, and we were inside the lagoon.
Cap Pilar and her crew stayed 2½ months in the South Seas, completing her circumnavigation via Peru, the Galapagos Islands,panama and New York. She arrived in London September 1938 in time for the Munich Crisis.