1 lie 1 Iv/W^IV 
 
 of the 
 
 TYPHOON 
 
 WILLIAM 
 WASHBURN 
 NUTTING 
 

 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 GV822.T8 N98 
 
 Track of the "typhoon 
 
 I 
 
 / by William Wash 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 947 409 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029947409 
 
So far as the weather was concerned we might have been on the 
 Grand Banks all the way to the Scilly Isles 
 
THE TRACK OF THE 
 "TYPHOON" 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM WASHBURN NUTTING 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE MOTOR BOAT PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 1925 
 
COFTRIGHT, 1921, BT 
 
 THE MOTOR BOAT PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 '7 
 
 ^ f^ o ^'^^ 
 
 K 
 
 Second Printing, 192a 
 Third Printing, 192J 
 FotrRTH Printing, 1925 
 
 Press of 
 
 J. J. Little & Ives Companr 
 
 New York, U. S. A. 
 
 ^^y 
 
TO 
 
 "Casey" Baldwin and William Atkin and the 
 
 youthful crew of the "Typhoon" ail of whom 
 
 have a serious belief in the importance of 
 
 doing things for fun. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Except in the case of Shaw who writes a preface 
 and then sticks on a play to justify it, prefaces are 
 usually sort of afterthoughts put in at the begin- 
 ning. Further than that, I don't know much about 
 them, but after looking over the rather technical 
 beginning of this book, I feel that we need some- 
 thing of the kind to get the reader under way with 
 sufficient impetus to carry him through the dol- 
 drums of the first chapter. Furthermore, there are 
 certain things still to be said for which there seems 
 to be no other place. And then, too, most books 
 have prefaces. 
 
 On a cold, blustery, late November day in 1920 
 a little black yacht beat her way slowly through 
 the Narrows against an ebbing tide and a raw nor'- 
 wester and tied up at St. George, Staten Island. To 
 the casual observer there was nothing unusual about 
 the event, except possibly the lateness of the season, 
 but to the practiced eye there were signs that spelled 
 something more than a post-season run to the fishing 
 banks. Her storm trisail, her tattered ensign, her 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 decks and rail scoured white, the life lines strung 
 between her shrouds, all were marks that told of a 
 battle with strong winds and heavy seas. She was 
 the "Typhoon," thirty-two days from the Azores, 
 and in her short career, since her launching in July, 
 she had completed a cruise of seven thousand-odd 
 miles that had taken her twice across the North 
 Atlantic. 
 
 It was not long before the reporters and the movie 
 people found her — a horde of inquisitive visitors, 
 who came aboard and asked endless questions, or 
 left abruptly when the pitching of the little vessel 
 in the harbor chop proved too much for unaccus- 
 tomed stomachs. "Shades of Stephen Brodie!" I 
 thought, when I read the harrowing accounts of our 
 cruise the following morning and I felt myself los- 
 ing standing as an amateur sailor and skidding into 
 a class with Steve and the immortal who went over 
 Niagara Falls in a barrel. 
 
 Not that there was any very serious motive be- 
 hind the cruise of the "Typhoon." We were not 
 trying to demonstrate anything; we were not con- 
 ducting an advertising campaign; we hadn't lost a 
 bet. Nor were we subsidized by anybody who had 
 — or was. I had the little vessel built according to 
 Atkin's and my own ideas of what a seagoing yacht 
 should be and we sailed her across the Atlantic and 
 back again for the fun of the thing. We feel that 
 the sport of picking your way across great stretches 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 of water, by your own (newly acquired) skill with 
 the sextant, pitting your wits against the big, more 
 or less honest forces of nature, feeling your way 
 with leadline through fog and darkness into strange 
 places which the travelers of trodden paths never 
 experience, chumming with the people of the sea — 
 these things, we believe, are worth the time, the 
 cost, the energy — ^yes, and even the risk and hard- 
 ship that are bound to be a part of such an under- 
 taking. We did it for the fun of the thing and 
 we believe that no further explanation is necessary. 
 
 Explaining the cruise of the "Typhoon" on such 
 grounds recalls that delightful situation in Henry 
 Sydnor Harrison's novel Queed, where the absent 
 minded young philosopher who has been knocked 
 down in the middle of a crowded crossing by a huge 
 dog pauses, before rising, to inquire of the young 
 lady proprietor of the dog : "What's the good of a 
 dog like that? What is he for?" You will recall that 
 the young lady replies, "Why, he's a pleasure dog — 
 a dog to give pleasure to people." 
 
 "Typhoon's," was a pleasure cruise. 
 
 How many, I wonder, of the really big expeditions 
 of the past, things that would make the cruise of 
 the "Typhoon" pale into insignificance, were in- 
 spired by a burning scientific purpose, and how many 
 just from the love of action, the hardship, the fun? 
 Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Capt. Robert 
 Bartlett. Do you suppose that Capt. Bob was lured 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 to the Arctic by any profound scientific conviction? 
 Do you think that Theodore Roosevelt was driven 
 through the African wilds and the Amazon basin 
 as much by a scientific itch as by his love of adven- 
 ture ? Do you believe that my friend, the late Harry 
 Hawker, attempted to fly across the Atlantic so 
 much from an uncontrollable urge to demonstrate 
 the feasibility of transoceanic air travel as from an 
 exuberance of youthful spirit? Neither do I. 
 
 Of course, these people all had at least an excuse 
 whereas we hadn't even a scientific shoestring, ex- 
 cept possibly the vindication of our ideas about the 
 seaworthiness of small vessels. But why have any 
 excuse? 
 
 To be sure it is always desirable to have an ob- 
 jective, especially when one is asking for several 
 months' leave, and we seized upon the British Inter- 
 national Races for this purpose. Why not sail across 
 and cover them for the magazine? The races were 
 scheduled to start on the afternoon of the tenth of 
 August and in order to reach Cowes in time we 
 planned to start on the first of July. But, as always 
 with a new boat, "Typhoon" was not finished in 
 time. In fact she was launched three days after 
 the date set for our departure and it was not until 
 the eighteenth of July that we actually cast off. 
 There seemed but one chance in a hundred that we 
 could make it, especially after the failure of our 
 motor at the start, but we did make it and that saved 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 the cruise from becoming rather pointless in the eyes 
 of those who require any further motive than the 
 one to which I already have confessed. 
 
 Many people who seem not to realize that size 
 is the least important element in the seaworthiness 
 of a vessel, felt that in looping the Atlantic in so 
 small a boat we had taken too great a chance. The 
 New York Tribune, for example, while it did run 
 a bully full page story about the cruise, for which 
 we are duly appreciative, printed an editorial in 
 which it praised the accomplishment as a feat of 
 seamanship but added that this sort of cruising is 
 too dangerous to be considered sensible yachting and 
 hardly the sort of thing for American yachtsmen 
 to emulate. Now, apart from the question of the 
 risk involved, which is largely a matter of personal 
 opinion, I feel that what American yachting needs 
 is less common sense, less restrictions, less slide rules 
 and more sailing. As an example of what the pon- 
 derous technicians have done to yachting, take the 
 situation of the "Shamrock" and the "Resolute" 
 lying at their moorings on a day set for the last 
 race for the America's Cup because they could not 
 risk their gear in a brisk, wholesail breeze. Con- 
 trast with this the picture of the crack Gloucester 
 schooner, "Esperanto," and this year the "Elsie," 
 beating it down to Halifax to meet the pick of the 
 Blue Nose fleet, a prayer in the heart of every man 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 aboard that it would "blow like hell." Isn't the 
 latter picture more typical of what we should like 
 our yacht racing to be? 
 
 And is "Safety First" going to become our na- 
 tional motto? 
 
 However admirable this sentiment may be when 
 applied to the ordinary every day pursuits of life, 
 it has no place in the glossary of sport. If you 
 apply such a limitation to yachting or to football or 
 to mountain climbing, you will emasculate it into a 
 pale, weak thing unworthy of the name of sport. 
 And if the risk were to be taken out of our sports 
 we should defeat our own purpose for no one would 
 go in for them — at least not while rum running 
 offers so much excitement — or sticking up a bank. 
 
 I think it is reasonable to say that a country is 
 only as big as its sports. In this day when life is 
 so very easy and saf e-and-sane and highly-special- 
 ized and steam-heated, we need, more than ever we 
 needed before, sports that are big and raw and — 
 yes, dangerous. Not that we recommend taking 
 chances with the "roaring forties" in the middle 
 of November or crossing the Atlantic on the fiftieth 
 parallel at any time of year. This sort of yachting, 
 I suppose, never will be popular. But I do hope that 
 if there is any result from this book on the "Ty- 
 phoon" it will be to inspire a confidence in the possi- 
 bilities of the small yacht and instil in the young- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 XI 
 
 sters an interest in the sea and a desire to explore 
 our wonderful coast line in their own little ships. 
 
 The following story covers the history of the 
 "Typhoon" from the time of her conception to the 
 finish of her cruise a year later. I have kept the 
 chapters in chronological order, pretty much as they 
 appeared originally in the pages of Motor Boat. If 
 the discussion of the boat itself seems dry and un- 
 interesting to those unfamiliar with the language of 
 the sea, they are at liberty to skip the chapter entire- 
 ly or wade through it with the help of the glossary 
 in the back of the book. I have felt that the few 
 stories of this kind that haye been published in this 
 country, have been lacking in the more technical side 
 of the subject and therefore unsatisfying to the 
 yachting enthusiast. Why the American publisher 
 should be so squeamish about technical detail in a 
 book of fact, when he will stand for any amount of 
 it in the fiction of such writers as Kipling and Con- 
 rad and H. G. Wells, is difficult to understand. 
 
 It is primarily for the yachtsmen and for the 
 youngsters, most of whom have an inherent love for 
 boats, that this book has been written, but if the 
 story proves of interest to a broader audience and 
 helps to establish what Slocum and Voss and Black- 
 burn and Day already have proved — that the size of 
 a boat has little to do with its seaworthiness — well, 
 then I shall feel that unjustifiable pride that comes 
 
xu 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 when you take a kid to the circus, to cover your 
 own interest in the show, and someone praises you 
 for your magnanimity. 
 
 W. W. N, 
 New York City., 
 October,' 1921, 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CBACTES lAGE 
 
 I. How "Typhoon" Came To Be Designed and 
 
 Built i 
 
 II. "Typhoon" Goes Overboabd 24 
 
 III. Fighting Time Across the North Atlan- 
 
 tic 35 
 
 IV. "Typhoon" Reaches Cowes With Thirty- 
 
 Seven Hours to Spare 53 
 
 V. Loafing in English Waters 72 
 
 VI. Across the Channel to Brittany ... 90 
 
 VII. Crossing the Bay of Biscay 106 
 
 VIII. "Typhoon" in Sunny Spain 126 
 
 IX. "Typhoon" Picks Up the Azores .... 142 
 
 X. From Santa Maria to San Miguel ' . . . 165 
 
 XI. Ten Days at Ponta Delgada 181 
 
 XII. Off on the Last Leg 200 
 
 XIII. The Gales in the Gulf Stream .... 219 
 
 XIV. The Knockdown 228 
 
 XV. Land Ho! 245 
 
 Appendix 261 
 
 Glossary 267 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 We might have been on the Grand Banks all the way 
 
 across Frontispiece 
 
 FACING rAG£ 
 
 Profile sketch of "Typhoon" 3 
 
 The BeU-Baldwin glider "HD-4" 4 
 
 Gilbert Grosvenor's "Elsie" 4 
 
 The launching party 5 
 
 The lines of the "Typhoon" 6 
 
 Just after the launching 8 
 
 A close-up of "Typhoon's" bow 8 
 
 The innumerable finishing touches 9 
 
 The sea anchor 9 
 
 "Typhoon's" body plan 9 
 
 "Typhoon's" accommodation plan 12 
 
 The deck plan 18 
 
 Our apparatus for distilling drinking water .... 20 
 
 The bull»nose for the sea anchor line 20 
 
 Fitting out at the Bell laboratory 21 
 
 "Casey" at the wheel 24 
 
 Commander Dobson, R. N., V. C, D. S. O. . . . 24 
 
 The skipper's trick at the wheel 25 
 
 Close to the fiftieth parallel 25 
 
 Jim never missed a trick at the wheel 30 
 
 Steering was an oilskin job all the way over .... 30 
 
 We cracked on till the lee rail was buried 31 
 
 XV 
 
xvl LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING FAGI 
 
 "Typhoon's" track loops the North Atlantic (chart) . 38 
 
 The heave of the open sea 46 
 
 Snug in the lee of the coaming 47 
 
 The galley 47 
 
 "Casey" improvises a strop for the main boom ... 50 
 
 Some ships we met 51 
 
 On the morning of our arrival 58 
 
 "Typhoon" as she arrived at Cowes 59 
 
 A part of the quaint water front 59 
 
 The castle of the Royal Yacht Squadron 62 
 
 The Solent is the Long Island Sound of England . . 62 
 
 The anchorage of the Royal Yacht Squadron .... 63 
 
 Running up the English Channel with spinnaker set . . 78 
 
 Claud Worth and Ingham Reeves 78 
 
 The Royal Cruising Club's chart of the Solent ... 79 
 
 The King's racing cutter "Britannia" 84 
 
 The Royal yacht 84 
 
 The Dutch barge yacht "Velsa" 85 
 
 "Maud" made famous by Claud Worth 85 
 
 Typical English auxiliary-powered barge 88 
 
 The late Herbert Reiach, owner of the "Velsa" ... 88 
 
 Old Ship House at Bursledon 89 
 
 "Red Shank" — a little single-hander 94 
 
 Thomas Ratsey at the tiller of "Dolly Varden" ... 94 
 
 We tried on Thomas Ratsey's trisail 95 
 
 "Tern III," Claud Worth's latest cruiser no 
 
 "Solopax," a sturdy double-ender no 
 
 The Sea Scouts of Cowes aboard "Typhoon" . . . in 
 
 "Typhoon's" track from Cowes to Spain (chart) . . 114 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xvii 
 
 l.ittle French fishing boats sitting on the mud . . . 115 
 
 Our friends of Les Capucins 115 
 
 Slipping out of Roscoff Harbor 122 
 
 Scrubbing the bottom at low tide 122 
 
 Our Roscoif friends came down to see us off . . . . 123 
 
 A lug-rigged fisherman of the Death Coast .... 130 
 
 Out of the fog came a little steam packet 130 
 
 The track along the coast of Spain (chart) .... 131 
 
 A Spanish lighthouse perched high on the cliffs . . . 138 
 
 Fox retrieves a puffin 138 
 
 Launching a trawler at Ferrol 139 
 
 "Typhoon" at Ferrol 142 
 
 We took in tow a cargo of seiioritas 142 
 
 The inner harbor of Coruna 143 
 
 Wives of Galego fishermen 158 
 
 The bull ring 158 
 
 Tied up along the quay at Coruiia 159 
 
 A little old Spanish fortress 164 
 
 Dorsett hatds in our first mackerel 164 
 
 The crew shake the kinks out of their legs 165 
 
 The Azores (chart) 168 
 
 Portuguese fishermen at Ponta Delgada 169 
 
 A wine press of San Laurenco 169 
 
 Views of "Typhoon's" interior 174 
 
 The home of our friend Albino Augusto Pereira . . 175 
 
 The little cove of the terraced grape vines 175 
 
 One of the lateen-rigged coasting vessels of San Miguel 190 
 
 Hanging over the side for the morning bath .... 190 
 
 "Typhoon" alongside two other American cripples . . 191 
 
xviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Preparing to lift out the broken mizzen 194 
 
 The water front of Ponta Delgada 195 
 
 Hookey, Dillaway, Fox and Dorsett 202 
 
 The skipper feeds the little visitor 202 
 
 Shooting the sun was frequently a two-man job . . . 203 
 
 Running before it in a bit of a bubble 203 
 
 We passed a three-master hove-to 206 
 
 Bowling along before it on the southern run .... 207 
 
 Fox semiphores a steamer 222 
 
 The Spaniard stopped his engine and waited .... 223 
 
 Capt. Francisco Soler pelted us with canned peaches . 246 
 
 Working through Hell Gate at the end of the cruise . 247 
 
THE TRACK OF THE 
 "TYPHOON" 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 How "Typhoon" Came to be Designed and Built 
 
 1 
 
 IT would be hard to say just when the idea of the 
 "Typhoon" had its beginning. Possibly it was 
 one night in October, 1920, in the snug cabin of the 
 "Elsie," way down at the other end of Nova Scotia. 
 "Casey" Baldwin and I, not to mention Johnny 
 Walker, had sailed up the Bras d'Or Lake after 
 ducks and at nightfall had anchored in a little cove 
 several miles from Baddeck. It had been a year 
 since Baldwin had trod the gay white way and six 
 since "Nereis" and I had plowed out the Great Bras 
 d'Or Passage bound for Newfoundland. . . . 
 There were many things to talk about. 
 
 "Casey" and I did most of the talking, while 
 Johnny, faithful fellow, just sort of stood by and 
 furnished the inspiration. 
 
 Finally we got down to the inevitable subject of 
 boats and more particularly to cruising boats, for, 
 after all, what sort of a boat can hold a candle to a 
 
2 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 cruiser for the great big gobs of enjoyment that it 
 returns on the investment? Now, Baldwin has sev- 
 eral boats, including the famous "Scrapper," known 
 throughout eastern Canada for her consistent show- 
 ing in many a race. She's a little "R" boat and 
 when there's a regatta on at Halifax or Sydney, 
 Casey sails her down the coast, races her and sails 
 her back again. Although the "Scrapper" is a rater, 
 she's a comfortable boat for two people, even for 
 coastwise cruising, but the "Elsie," in whose cabin 
 we were sitting, was more nearly his idea of what 
 a cruising boat should be.* 
 
 When we got along to boats for short-handed 
 work or even for single-handed sailing, Casey ven- 
 tured the opinion that if, through any unkind freak 
 of circumstance, he was ever doomed to sail alone 
 from Baddeck to Broadway, he'd rather it would 
 be a boat like the "Elsie" than one of the so-called 
 single-handers. He is all for a big boat — as big a 
 one as possible without going beyond the strength 
 
 * "Elsie" was designed by George Owen for Gil- 
 bert Grosvenor, the editor of the National Geo- 
 graphic Magazine, and was built at the Bell Labora- 
 tories. She is really a modified "P" boat, 56 ft. over 
 all, 36 ft. 6 in. on the water line, with 12- ft. beam 
 and 6- ft. draft. She is rigged as a knockabout yawl 
 and has an auxiliary motor of 17-25 hp. driving a 
 28x28-in. propeller through a silent chain reduction 
 gear with a ratio of 2 to i. 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON' 
 
 "Typhoon," designed by William Atkin, embodied our ideas of what 
 a small sea-going yacht should be 
 
 of one man in the matter of the mainsail and the 
 ground tackle, which are really the limiting factors. 
 I'm not. I think a single-hander should be as 
 small as possible without sacrificing full headroom 
 — say, 28 to 30 ft. on deck. Many a good boat is 
 smaller than that, especially in England, where they 
 have made an art of tabloid cruisers, but I'd put 28 
 ft. as about the limit. The righteous walk up- 
 rightly, as my friend Jim Pitkin would say, and you 
 can't get full headroom in a properly designed boat 
 under 28 ft. 
 
4 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 But single-handing it, while a most worth-while 
 experience, is, after all, not the most desirable way 
 to cruise, and so we left this matter entirely unset- 
 tled and turned to the question of the most suitable 
 type of boat for coastwise or even deep-sea cruising 
 in general — a boat to accommodate, say, four per- 
 sons. Many times before we had talked over the 
 possibility of a cruise along the Labrador, or to 
 Iceland, or even across the Atlantic, and so we kept 
 at it until we had a pretty good idea of what a 
 cruiser for this purpose should be. 
 
 By this time Johnny Walker was merely the 
 empty shell of a departed spirit and we decided to 
 call it a day. 
 
 In order to get to the subject of this story we'll 
 have to skip the harrowing account of how two 
 sleepy mariners, each afraid of the ridicule of the 
 other, went overboard for a swim on the following 
 cold, rainy, late October morning and how an accom- 
 modating duck made it possible for a bespectacled 
 editor to rise several points in the estimation of a 
 skeptical engineer. Suffice it to say that we spent 
 the greater part of the following day in the drafting 
 room of the Laboratory giving expression to our 
 conclusions of the night before. Result: a 40- 
 footer, fisherman style, ketch rigged with an 
 auxiliary motor. 
 
 We tried a sort of bug-eye rig on the sketch we 
 had made, with raking sticks and the typical leg-o'- 
 
The Bell-Baldwin glider, "HD-4,'' at seventy miles an hour 
 
 Gilbert Grosvenor's "Elsie," in whose cabin we conceived the idea 
 that developed into "Typhoon" 
 
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THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 5 
 
 mutton mainsail and mizzen, but found that, even 
 with excessive height to the masts, we could not get 
 more than 450 sq. ft. of sail on her, whereas such a 
 boat ought to have about 750 to 800 ft. And that's 
 about as far as we got, for the weather improved 
 and was too fine to stay indoors when the remark- 
 able glider "HD-4," the fastest thing afloat, was 
 waiting impatiently for a crew. 
 
 After returning to New York I took up the 
 cruiser question again with William Atkin. Time 
 and again Atkin and I had talked over such a boat 
 and we talked a lot more, but it was not until well 
 after the first of the year that we decided that we'd 
 done enough talking and if we really believed in 
 such a boat she deserved to be built, and, further- 
 more, to be given a fair tryout. 
 
 We decided to do it. 
 
 Atkin was the logical man to draw up the lines. 
 He is a clever designer of small craft; he knows 
 precedent,, but is not bound by it; in fact, he's fairly 
 bursting with sound original ideas which make 
 my own look as reactionary as those of a hard- 
 boiled Republican Senator. Furthermore, having 
 built many boats, he knows a thing or two about 
 construction. 
 
 I knew Baldwin would like to build her in the 
 bully boat shop, which is a part of Dr. Graham 
 Bell's laboratory, and I knew all the men who 
 worked there would welcome the change from a re- 
 
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THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 7 
 
 cent diet of lifeboats. And they are as skillful a 
 crew as there is in Nova Scotia, the home of good 
 boat builders. 
 
 A wire confirmed my suspicions and we went 
 ahead. 
 
 Our first idea was that "Typhoon" should be 40 
 ft. on deck, which seemed a pretty big boat to me. 
 Atkin got out the first set of lines, and we sent them 
 post "haste" to Baddeck — and then waited to see 
 what the effect would be. Baldwin went into tele- 
 graphic ecstasies over them at several cents a word, 
 but suggested that we stretch her out to 45 ft. by 
 spacing equally between stations. The ease of 
 planking the longer boat would offset the increase 
 in material, he said, so that the cost would remain 
 substantially the same. Reluctantly we wired back 
 to do it and we were glad we did when it came to 
 doping out the interior accommodations for four 
 men. 
 
 The next word from Baldwin indicated that he'd 
 been figuring her displacement, for he suggested 
 that in order to be on the safe side we'd better add 
 three inches to her already liberal freeboard and if 
 necessary sink her that much deeper with ballast. 
 He believed we were figuring a bit too closely, con- 
 sidering the endless amount of junk we'd have to 
 load her down with for the long cruise. We ac- 
 quiesced reluctantly to this also, which necessitated 
 certain slight changes in the flare forward and the 
 
8 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 tumble-home at the stern. The result is the length- 
 ened design shown herewith. 
 
 Now look at the lines and the body plan care- 
 fully. You will see that she is somewhat over 45 
 ft. over all, 35 ft. on the waterline, by 12 ft. beam 
 and slightly over 6 ft. draft. You will see also that 
 she is not really so much of a fisherman as you 
 thought — below the waterline. Note the slightly 
 hollow waterlines and sections at the bow, which 
 correspond somewhat to Herreshoff's racing prac- 
 tice and to some of John Alden's auxiliary cruisers. 
 A McManus fisherman would have fuller water- 
 lines and fuller sections, and this is true also of 
 William H. Hand's cruising schooners. 
 
 Referring to the body plan and particularly to 
 the midship section, you will see that we have ample, 
 though not excessive, beam. This feature, with the 
 well-pronounced bilges, should give us plenty of 
 stability. Atkin has kept the deadrise moderate, 
 somewhat less in fact than is customary in the Eng- 
 lish cruiser designs and in the Gloucester fishing 
 type. That fatness of the sections at the garboard 
 characteristic of the English designs has been 
 avoided, as we believe it detrimental to speed, al- 
 though we have employed the reverse curve to the 
 sections at this point, as it cuts down wetted sur- 
 face considerably and gives a cleaner flow of water. 
 
 The section at station E, you will observe, is prac-^ 
 tically a straight line like the forward sections of a 
 
"Typhoon"' at the dock just after her launching 
 
 "Typhoon's" bow, showing the full length boom for the jib 
 
Those innumerable finishing touches 
 
 The sea anchor, one of the things that were not finished 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 9 
 
 whaleboat, and from that point forward there is a 
 slight hollow,, giving an easy entrance, great re- 
 serve buoyancy, dryness in a choppy sea and a very 
 full deck line. Aft the sections show less deadrise 
 as they near the broad stern, giving a flatter run and 
 easier buttock lines than those of a fishing schooner. 
 Those big Gloucester schooners are practically 
 
 The much criticized lack of symmetry of the bow 
 and stern is shown by the body plan 
 
 double enders, and while this feature is good in a 
 boat of their size, a shorter boat, especially to make 
 good speed under motor power, should, we believe, 
 have a flatter run and easier buttock lines. 
 
 Notice the deep forefoot, which still leaves a good 
 angle of drag to the long straight keel. I have been 
 unable to see why it is that so many designers cut 
 the forefoot away on a cruising boat where the 
 ability to spin about on her heel is of little impor- 
 
10 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 tance. Of course an easy forefoot is necessary with 
 the knockabout type of rig where the stretched-out 
 bow really takes the place of a bowsprit. Without 
 it the boat would gripe and you'd never be able to 
 keep her off the wind. But for a craft with a nose 
 pole it's different, and my experience with the old 
 cutter type has given me a profound respect for 
 plenty of forefoot. With it your boat will not be 
 thrown off when trying to get to windward in a 
 bad sea and she'll lie-to in a moderate blow and let 
 you go below and sleep without bothering with a sea 
 anchor. Furthermore, she'll lie quietly to her moor- 
 ing without wandering all over the lot. 
 
 You may think "Typhoon" dreadfully heavy in 
 the quarters with such a broad stern, but remember 
 that those quarters give us long running lines when 
 heeled down— the very thing that is so valuable 
 on racing craft that the "quarter-beam length" is 
 penalized to keep the designers from carrying it to 
 extremes. We lose slightly in this respect with our 
 hollow lines forward, but we gain it aft. 
 
 One reason why Baldwin was so taken with the 
 design was that she is bound to be easily driven. 
 He spoofed me a bit for holding out for a fisherman 
 and then sending him the design of a "rater." 
 There's some truth in his accusation, but while I've 
 always felt that fairly symmetrical ends were desir- 
 able for a sea boat,, I have been strong for Tom 
 Day's contention that a fast hull and a short rig 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" ii 
 
 make the best cruiser. Besides I like a broad stern 
 and you'll find that the Old Man does too. And 
 remember the "Spray," with a stern as broad as 
 one of Bill Rogers' jokes. Don't let them tell you 
 that a broad stern won't run before a sea. It will 
 rise up and over the sea instead of splitting it, and 
 while this very fact may cause the bow to root if 
 too fine, I feel that the tremendous reserve buoy- 
 ancy of the forward sections above the waterline 
 will prevent this in our case. 
 
 A noticeable thing about "Typhoon" is her sheer 
 — another thing that I'm keen for. Doesn't she 
 seem to fit the sea better than some of those flat- 
 sheered ladies ? Some will argue that a sea conies 
 aboard most frequently amidships, and that free- 
 board is just as essential here as at the ends, but, 
 where headroom is not at stake, I'll take mine at 
 the ends. And I'll have the bowsprit follow out 
 the line of the sheer ; it not only looks better, but it 
 helps to keep you out of the water when you're on 
 the end of it muzzling the jib in a seaway. Notice 
 that the low point of the freeboard is nearer amid- 
 ship than is usually the case, allowing plenty of rise 
 to the stern, where freeboard is just as desirable as 
 at. the bow; and notice the bully profile of the short 
 sea-going ends. 
 
 Before dismissing the subject of the "Typhoon's" 
 lines, I want to call attention to the fact that the 
 fineness of the waterlines and the forward sections 
 
12 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON' 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 13 
 
 is not so great as it at first appears, due to the short 
 overhang and the exceptionally deep forefoot. If 
 the forefoot were to be cut away in the customary 
 manner and the lines faired up, this apparent fine- 
 ness would not be nearly so noticeable and there 
 would be just about as much boat left as in the 
 orthodox design. 
 
 Everyone knows the ancient arguments pro and 
 con the various types of rig — ^the advantages and 
 disadvantages of the schooner, yawl, sloop and 
 ketchj and while many would prefer the schooner or 
 yawl rig for a 45-ft. auxiliary, we have chosen the 
 ketch. We feel that the various combinations of 
 sail permitted by a ketch and the shorter main boom 
 make it more desirable for our purpose than either 
 a yawl or a schooner, even at a slight loss of speed. 
 This is largely theoretical, for our experience with 
 the rig is not great, and we may be wrong. The 
 total area of the three sails is about 950 sq. ft. 
 
 There was a lot of discussion about the headsails. 
 First, Atkin drew in a jib and forestaysail because 
 the size of a single jib terrified us. We felt that 
 it would give us greater sail combinations for bad 
 weather and would allow us to tack our forestay 
 down to the stem head. Then Casey took the floor 
 in behalf of the single jib and reminded me that 
 "Elsie's" jib gave us no trouble when we had sailed 
 her short-handed. 
 
 Then I remembered the heart-breaking job of 
 
14 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 casting off and belaying two sets of headsail sheets 
 on the old "Nereis" every time I came about, and 
 while this could have been simplified by sheeting the 
 forestaysail to a traveler, the impression was so 
 vivid that I yielded without a struggle to the single 
 jib. There is no question as to its greater efficiency. 
 And with such a bowsprit as we have indicated, the 
 added security of a forestay to the stemhead is of 
 little consequence. 
 
 Possibly the thoroughgoing motor boatman, by 
 this time, may be a bit fed up with this lengthy dis- 
 cussion of "Typhoon's" lines and rig, to the exclu- 
 sion of her power plant. We ask his indulgence and 
 wish to explain that "Typhoon" makes no pretense 
 of being a motor boat. She is an auxiliary and an 
 auxiliary of the only type that is worth bothering 
 with — ^that is, a boat that can take care of herself 
 on any point of sailing, except possibly in light airs, 
 when her motor will be depended on to drive her. 
 And may I be permitted to voice the opinion that a 
 little sail boat dope administered in mild doses will 
 do no harm to those of the motor boat fraternity 
 who have arrived without the experience of the 
 windjammer. 
 
 Now let's look at the deck arrangement. You 
 will see that we have played for simplicity, with as 
 few openings as possible. The cabin trunk, six feet 
 in width, is rectangular, leaving broad decks on 
 either side, and the sides of the trunk extend aft to 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 1 5 
 
 form the coaming for the bridge deck and cockpit, 
 making an unbroken erection with nothing to stop 
 green water in its passage along the waterways. 
 
 I have always liked a bridge deck on a seaboat. 
 It strengthens the boat by permitting continuous 
 deck beams; it gives a lot of room above the motor 
 space and is even more useful as a seat or table than 
 equivalent space in the cockpit would be. The self- 
 bailing well is six feet square, and we have left it 
 open without side seats, so that we can get down 
 in the lea of the coaming out of the wind. The deck 
 fore and aft of it will be used for seats and because 
 of the depth of the well, two little corner seats are 
 indicated, which may be used either as seats or as 
 foot-rests when seated on the after deck. They 
 occupy the corners only so as not to interfere with 
 anyone standing at the wheel. 
 
 The mizzen mast is supported by a king plank ex- 
 tending from the bridge deck and flanked by nat- 
 ural crook knees to take the side thrust. It steps 
 in a bronze socket in the cockpit floor and the step 
 is supported by a stanchion to the keel. 
 
 To prevent water, taken over the stern or run- 
 ning aft, from coming back into the cockpit due to 
 the lift of the sheer at the stern, a coaming has been 
 placed across the deck, and in the angle formed by 
 this and the side coamings, the quarter bitts are 
 placed. 
 
 Eventually we shall want some sort of a hatch or 
 
i6 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 skylight in the cabin trunk, but since we should have 
 to keep it battened down on the cruise across the 
 Atlantic, we have decided to leave the cabin top 
 unbroken for the present except for the companion- 
 way. We are using swing ports,, the kind with the 
 collar, in the forward and after ends of the trunk, 
 and oval deadlights with brass frames in the sides. 
 The glass for these, as well as for the deadlights 
 in the hatch covers is laminated, non-shatterable 
 Triplex. It is a half inch in thickness, and even if 
 cracked by a flying block or the fluke of an anchor, 
 it will remain watertight. 
 
 We have spared no pains in the matter of the 
 standing and running rigging. Harry Greening 
 made up the galvanized plow steel wire for our 
 shrouds and stays especially for us in his wire 
 works at Hamilton, Ontario, and with this we are 
 using bronze turnbuckles and bronze outside chain 
 plates. The turnbuckles are of the type with the 
 tobin bronze screw in the middle, and were made 
 by Merriman Bros., of Boston, the master hands 
 when it comes to such fittings. 
 
 Merriman also made our blocks. They are of 
 lignum-vitse and bronze, with bronze roller sheaves, 
 and I'll stack them up with anything obtainable on 
 either side of the Atlantic. 
 
 For our running rigging I went to the Columbian 
 Rope Co. We already had had some experience 
 with the fine white bolt rope put out by this concern, 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 1 7 
 
 and we are using it on the "Typhoon" for every- 
 thing from signal halyards to sea anchor cable. Be- 
 sides the running rigging, sheets,, lazy jacks and 
 lifts, for which we are using sizes from ^ to ^ 
 in. diameter, we are carrying 75 fathoms of i in. 
 manila for towing, warping, etc., and for use with 
 the drogue. All of it is three-strand in preference 
 to four-strand; it handles better and I think lasts 
 longer, because the inside has a better chance to 
 dry out. 
 
 Our anchors are of the regular kedge type with 
 the sliding stock, the big one 100 lbs. in weight and 
 the regular service one 60 lbs. The chain for these 
 was made for us by the American Chain Co. It is ^ 
 in. galvanized and the 75 fathoms we are using 
 weigh 720 lbs. We are using some of this chain 
 for the bob stay, with a % in. bronze turnbuckle, as 
 this stay is the keystone of the whole rig, especially 
 on a boat without a fore stay tacked down to the 
 stem head. 
 
 In her interior arrangement "Typhoon" is more 
 radical than in her lines and for this I must plead 
 guilty. I have never liked to see a boat cut up into 
 6 J^ -foot compartments, and I decided long ago that 
 mine at least wasn't going to be that way. Jack 
 Hanna once said, and he hit the nail on the finger 
 that time, that until a generation or so ago, the 
 kitchen fireplace was the social center of 90 per cent 
 
i8 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 of the American 
 homes. That's the 
 idea behind "Ty- 
 phoon's" interior. 
 The galley is the im- 
 portant thing. Jack 
 said also that every- 
 one on the ship is 
 going to crowd into 
 the galley and offer 
 suggestions anyhow, 
 and you might as 
 well make it acces- 
 sible and comfort- 
 able, and that is just 
 what we have done. 
 The Shipmate range, 
 the second size by 
 the way, is right aft 
 where the motion is 
 the least and within 
 easy reach of the 
 cockpit, and the table, 
 sink, food lockers and 
 plate racks are ar- 
 ranged alongside. 
 Except for the toilet 
 room and a hanging 
 locker, the rest of the 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 19 
 
 cabin is open and in full view of the galley stove., 
 Some super-sensitive people may feel that such an 
 arrangement isn't refined. Possibly not, but I know 
 from experience that "Typhoon's" interior will be 
 comfortable, and that is the first consideration. 
 American yachting is suffering from an overdose of 
 refinement. There is a type of prosperous yachts- 
 man who will go to elaborate lengths and fabulous 
 expense to finish a room in his country home to look 
 like a regular ship and then turn around and dis- 
 guise his yacht until it looks like the boudoir of the 
 Sultan's favorite. "Typhoon" is a he ship to take 
 anything that comes, comfortably and without a 
 whimper ; beyond that we have not tried to go. Her 
 finish will be plain. She'll look like a ship below 
 decks and she'll smell of tar and probably of cook- 
 ing, with possibly just a suggestion of fuel oil and 
 St, Pierre nun, and we won't have to apologize to 
 a hob-nailed fisherman or to Sir Thomas himself, 
 if he chooses to come aboard. 
 
 If "Typhoon" had been beamier we might have 
 had built-in bunks on both sides, but as it was we 
 chose an unsymmetrical arrangement with two 
 built-in berths to starboard and two swing-up pipe 
 berths to port. This gives us more foot room and 
 a couple of sizeable seats besides. 
 
 At the foot of the companionway to starboard 
 there is a large hanging locker for oilskins and 
 
20 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 boots, and you will notice several sets of hooks on 
 the bulkheads for clothes which will be kept in place 
 by a strap as indicated on the drawing. On the 
 bulkhead forward there will be book shelves, a Chel- 
 sea luminous dial clock and a barograph. Just aft 
 of the toilet room you will notice a dresser with 
 large drawers for personal effects, and the space 
 beneath the bunks and transoms will accomniodate 
 the canned goods. On the starboard side, between 
 the seat and the hanging locker, there is a novel 
 chart case to hold charts vertically, folded once. 
 It's Baldwin's idea, but I'm as proud of it as if it 
 were mine. The charts will be arranged in groups, 
 each group in its own cardboard folder, easily ac- 
 cessible, and when o^ie is wanted it can be pulled out 
 and spread on the table, the drop leaf of which folds 
 down against the front of the cabinet when not in 
 use. 
 
 The plumbing consists of a "Knockabout" closet, 
 corner porcelain lavatory, porcelain sink and pumps 
 for both the galley and toilet room. A 200-gallon 
 water tank will be built to fit the bilge space beneath 
 the floor. 
 
 Now a word about the motor. This was decided 
 only after endless discussion. Had we used' gaso- 
 line, there were several corking good engines avail- 
 able, but the idea of using fuel oil appealed very 
 strongly because of the novelty, and also because 
 of the almost prohibitive cost of gasoline in some 
 
The apparatus presented by Dr. Bell for distilling drinking water 
 from sea water 
 
 The bowsprit showing the buUnose through which the sea anchor 
 
 line was led 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 21 
 
 of the places we are likely to visit. These considera- 
 tions finally decided us, and we "chose a new heavy 
 oil motor. This is a two-stroke, high compression 
 machine, depending on the heat of compression for 
 ignition. The fuel is injected through 15 per cent 
 of the stroke and burns at almost constant pressure 
 as in a Diesel. The motor is started by compressed 
 air^ and to take the place of what heat of compres- 
 sion would be radiated to the cold cylinder when 
 starting, a piece of punk is inserted by means of a 
 steel plug with bayonet lock. 
 
 It was the intention to use the smaller of the two- 
 cylinder models, which is rated at 15 hp., but due 
 to the difficulty of obtaining this size in time, we de- 
 cided finally to take the single cylinder 7^^ hp. model. 
 This, of course, is mighty small power for such a 
 husky boat, but we figure that it should give us 
 somewhere around five knots in light weather, and 
 think of the cruising radius. The motor uses only 
 slightly over a half pound of oil per horsepower per 
 hour, and this means that we burn about a half gal- 
 lon an hour. With the 170 gallons in our two 
 permanent tanks alone we could run for 340 hours, 
 which, if we actually did 5 knots, would take us 
 from Newfoundland to Queenstown. Of course we 
 shall have no occasion to run for more than a day 
 or two at a time under power, but it is comforting 
 to know that we actually could get somewhere with 
 the motor alone, even if it did take a while. The 
 
22 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 motor is equipped with a Navy reverse gear, a Mc- 
 Cord mechanical oiler and a Colador strainer. The 
 inside stuffing box, stern bearing and propeller are 
 Columbian, the latter a 2-blade 24 in. diameter by 
 i8-in. pitch. 
 
 Getting the tanks in time was a problem, but L. O. 
 Koven & Bros, did a quick job for us and turned 
 out the two main tanks and two smaller tanks for 
 lubricating oil and kerosene in a week. The smaller 
 ones are equipped with gauge glasses in the ends, 
 so that we can keep tabs on our kerosene and cylin- 
 der oil. 
 
 Atkin suggested the Debevoise Co.'s paint for 
 the job, having had considerable experience with it 
 in past years, and we are using it throughout — 
 yacht black for the top sides, white for the cabin 
 trunk, buff for the decks, red anti-fouling for the 
 bottom and their special red lead for the construc- 
 tion in general. For the deck seams, for applying 
 the canvas to the trunk and for all water tight joints 
 we are using "Nupro" marine glue. 
 
 Although the risk of fire is not great, with crude 
 oil fuel, we are carrying two Pyrene guns. 
 
 Without going into the endless details of 
 "T3rphoon's" construction, I must say that her white 
 oak ribs are 3 in. by 3 in., spaced a little over 13 
 inches center to center, v/ith sawed ones on the sta- 
 tions and bent ones between, made up double, one 
 part bent inside the other. The planking is of yel- 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 23 
 
 low pine i^ in. thick, and the backbone is fine 
 clear white oak. 
 
 Note: This chapter was written in March, 1920,, 
 while "Typhoon" was under construction. Al- 
 though most of the features of her design have been 
 justified in the light of actual experience, other 
 things would be changed, were we to build another 
 boat for the same purpose. Of these we shall tell 
 later on. 
 
CHAPTER ir 
 
 "Typhoon" Goes Overboard 
 
 Baddeck, N. S., July 5, 1920. 
 
 ON the third of July, just two days after the 
 date we had hoped would mark her hop- 
 off for foreign parts, "Typhoon" was launched. 
 Early in March when the keel was laid we figured 
 that she would be overboard about the middle of 
 June, and this would have been the case had it not 
 been for a belated epidemic of the flu which swept 
 the shop clean and set back the schedule by a fort- 
 night. The delay cuts down our time factor of 
 safety alarmingly, and means if we are to reach 
 Cowes, England, in time for the Harmsworth 
 Trophy Races on the loth of August, we'll not only 
 have to cut out such alluring prospects as a party at 
 the Royal Cork Yacht Club and possibly even the 
 very important call at St. Pierre, Miquelon, but also 
 that we shall have to drive her for all she is worth 
 across those intervening two thousand odd miles 
 of North Atlantic. But we are going to do it if it is 
 physically possible. 
 
 Many things remain yet to be done on the ship, 
 and further to complicate the matter of getting 
 away all the navies of the world seem bent on de- 
 
 24 
 
"Casey" at the wheel offers greater possibilities for poetic treat- 
 ment than his cognominal predecessor at the bat 
 
 Commander Dobson, R. N., V. C, D.S.O., 
 
 taffrail log 
 
 bends the line on the 
 
The skipper's trick at the wheel 
 
 Close to the fiftieth parallel 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 25 
 
 scending simultaneously on Beinn Bhreagh for dem- 
 onstrations of the "H.D.-4." It looks as if either 
 Baldwin or Sydney Breese will have to remain be- 
 hind to do the honors to these visiting delegations, 
 and Harry Greening is so busy whipping his new 
 Fisher Trophy challenger into shape that he too will 
 have to be counted out. We should have a crew of 
 four all told although three could do it in a pinch, 
 but who the rest of the crew will be God only 
 knows. 
 
 But to get back to the launching. Never was 
 there a prettier one. As the bottle of rye flew into 
 a thousand sparkling splinters against her stem, 
 with a determination that suggested Mrs. Bald- 
 win's prowess with a racquet, "Typhoon" started 
 majestically down the ways. Gaining impetus as 
 she went, she slid into the water on her broad stern, 
 left her cradle behind and floated serenely out into 
 the lake, her shiny black sides, red boot top, white 
 house, buff decks fairly singing in the sunlight. It 
 was inspiring and it drew a shout from the little 
 knot of workmen and visitors who had gathered in 
 the shop to witness the ceremony. Then, taken in 
 tow by the "Dundee," she was brought alongside 
 the wharf, where a reception was held in which our 
 "water" breaker played a prominent part. 
 
 It was a great relief to see her afloat. When I 
 arrived at Beinn Bhreagh nineteen days ago it 
 looked as if the game was up. The hull was prac- 
 
26 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 tically completed except for the cabin top, but the 
 caulking had not been finished and it seemed as if 
 the work of jacking and smoothing the hull, paying 
 the seams and painting alone would take a month. 
 Then there were such things as chain plates to cut 
 and shape from the tobin bronze stock, the rudder 
 to make with its special bronze fittings, the plumb- 
 ing to finish, the standing-rigging to cut, splice and 
 serve ; and each day seemed to make but a terribly 
 small hole in the vast total of things still to be done. 
 But as we slid down the ways, "Typhoon" and I, 
 we seemed to leave behind us that sense of the im- 
 possibility of the thing, and once afloat, sailing for 
 England in a week seemed well within the realm of 
 rational things. 
 
 So carefully had Atkin made his calculations that 
 the ship floated perfectly, several inches above her 
 load waterline and, joy of joys, slightly up by the 
 head. I had feared that those fine waterlines and 
 forward sections, and her consequently light dis- 
 placement at this point, might bring her down too 
 low, due to her exceptionally heavy construction, but 
 this was not the case, in spite of the fact that some 
 ballast already had been placed pretty well forward 
 beneath the water tank. Allowing for the masts 
 and the three tons or so of additional ballast (she 
 carries only 3000 lbs. in her lead shoe) and her equip- 
 ment of gear and stores, there still seemed no 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 2y 
 
 danger of pulling her down much below her de- 
 signed load waterline. 
 
 To-day both her sticks were stepped, their beauti- 
 ful proportions and saucy rake adding materially 
 to the already trim appearance of the boat. 
 "Typhoon" looked quite lofty until the bully old 
 battering ram of a bowsprit was housed, which car- 
 ries out the line of the sheer and puts the finishing 
 touch to a picture of concentrated power. The 
 standing rigging, too, is quite in keeping with the 
 sticks. Old George McKay, erstwhile square-rig- 
 ger, who did the splicing and serving of the shrouds, 
 pennants, bridles and stays, "never seen the like o' 
 that wire for toughness in all his sea-goin' days.". 
 
 The exhaust line and fuel and waterpiping of the 
 engine are now complete and the power plant, while 
 not large, has the reassuring air of being able to 
 plug along till the crack of doom. The crude oil 
 and lubricating oil are waiting on the dock and in 
 a day or so we shall have a chance to see whether 
 a crude oil engine actually will run. 
 
 The installation of the exhaust line was a prob- 
 lem. Atkin's plan of running a pipe clean through 
 the boat from side to side would have been all right 
 if a hump had been worked into the line connecting 
 it with the muffler to prevent water backing up, but 
 since the exhaust would always be from the weather 
 side when the boat was heeled under sail and conse- 
 quently would blow directly across the cockpit, we 
 
28 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 decided to abandon it. Tlie usual method of run- 
 ning the line out the stern undoubtedly is the neatest, 
 but there is the ever-present possibility of taking in 
 water when running before a sea, and for this 
 reason we decided to run the pipe right out the side 
 deck abaft the cockpit. A 2-ft. length of 3-in. brass 
 pipe on a swinging elbow makes It possible to shoot 
 the gas out of the way no matter where the wind is, 
 and furthermore the chance of taking water into 
 the motor is eliminated. 
 
 We figure that we shall have to use the motor 
 whenever there is insufficient wind to drive us more 
 than about 4 or 4j^ knots, and in light weather, of 
 course, we shall run it continuously. But in this 
 country, which the good Lord must have designed 
 for sailor men, there seems always to be a spanking 
 breeze and most of the time from the southwest. 
 Outside, the conditions should be much the same, 
 and unless we strike a run of bad luck the passage 
 should be a quick one. 
 
 To-morrow the sails are to be bent. Besides the 
 three working sails we are taking a squaresail for 
 running straight before it in heavy weather and a 
 storm jib to be set flying to an eye-bolt in the stem 
 head, obviating the necessity of working out on the 
 bowsprit. With the instincts of a true racing man 
 Casey is strong for a spinnaker. It is really not a 
 bad idea, for at this time of year there should be 
 plenty of moderate weather, and so we are carrying 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 29 
 
 a spare one off the "Scrapper." We are not taking 
 a trysail, for we figure that there are sufficient com- 
 binations of sail for heavy weather without it and 
 besides it's a nuisance to set one. If it gets really 
 bad w,e'll put out the sea anchor and call it a day. 
 
 The sea anchor is a modification of the Voss type 
 — a big canvas bog. The mouth is 6 ft. square 
 and there is a i-ft. opening in the apex, the whole 
 heavily bolt-roped. To make this sure-fire we have 
 worked out a sort of bull nose fitting for the end of 
 the bowsprit, through which to lead the rope, and 
 with this 7- foot extra leverage afforded by the stick 
 there should be no difficulty in holding her head 
 into it. 
 
 Before getting off the subject of sails I would like 
 to take this opportunity to thank old Jack Hanna for 
 what looks to be a mighty good suggestion for hold- 
 ing the outboard end of the club of the jib. Instead 
 of the short club which he feels will eventually tear 
 the sails, or the traveler frequently seen on working 
 schooners, he suggests a goose-neck fitting for the 
 end of the club, well out at the end of the bowsprit, 
 and a loose lacing and an outhaul for the foot of the 
 jib, which allows it to be properly trimmed and per- 
 mits it to be completely lowered — an impossibility 
 with a full length club and a tight lacing. I sent 
 the sketch on to Baldwin some time ago and he 
 thought so much of it that he had the fitting made 
 up in bronze. 
 
30 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 Another problem that confronted us was what 
 sort of tender to carry — whether to go in for a dory 
 or some other type of craft which might be used as 
 a lifeboat, or just a plain dink. The dinghy idea 
 won out, although I must confess that the presence 
 of a partially finished 12-footer in the shop deter- 
 mined the matter. But after all it seems to us that 
 it is better on a boat the size of "Typhoon" to put 
 your confidence in the ship itself and take a chance, 
 rather than try to carry a lifeboat, which to be 
 worthy of the name would have to be so large that 
 it would be a nuisance on deck. Barring the slight 
 possibility of being run down or of hitting some- 
 thing substantial enough to put a hole in the plank- 
 ing, I can see no contingency where a lifeboat would 
 be more desirable than taking a chance with the 
 ship. Certainly no stress of weather would war- 
 rant it, and fire with a cargo of crude oil and kero- 
 sene only is out of the question. 
 
 The tender has been finished up and she is a little 
 beauty, combining those seemingly incompatible 
 qualities so desirable in a dinghy : carrying capacity, 
 lightness, ease of rowing and the ability to tow well 
 even in a bad sea. The model is one developed here 
 in the shop and is the embodiment of Baldwin's ex- 
 perience with a long line of such craft. We shall 
 carry her capsized over the side of the cabin trunk 
 and lashed down to eye-bolts in the deck. 
 
 Saturday, July 10. To-day we gave "Typhoon" 
 
Although under the weather all the way across, Jim never missed 
 his trick at the wheel 
 
 Steering was an oilskin job all the way over 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 3 1 
 
 her first trial run. In the morning she was towed 
 around from her berth at the aeroplane shed in the 
 little harbor and brought alongside the dock where 
 the remainder of the ballast was put aboard. Si- 
 multaneously the crude oil was syphoned from the 
 barrels into the fuel tanks and the 200-gallon water 
 tank was filled. And when these operations were 
 completed her trim was almost exactly on her de- 
 signed waterline. A few last touches were given 
 to the rigging and everything was in readiness for a 
 trial. Would she balance and steer well ; would she 
 keep her nose up when she heeled and would she 
 be fast enough to justify the loss of interior space 
 forward caused by her fineness ? These were ques- 
 tions that bothered us but we need have had no con- 
 cern. 
 
 Starting out close-hauled to a brisk southwest 
 breeze she slid along through it with a noticeable 
 lack of fuss, although with rather more angle of heel 
 than we had expected. This can be corrected by more 
 ballast, but we regret that we did not put 6000 lbs. 
 of lead in the shoe instead of 3000 lbs. This weight 
 would have given her a greater righting moment 
 without resorting to so much inside ballast. Of 
 course a large proportion of ballast inside is desir- 
 able on a cruising boat, as it makes for easier action 
 in a sea, but with such heavy construction as we 
 have gone in for in "Typhoon" we could really hang 
 
32 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 all our ballast on the keel without danger of too 
 quick a roll. 
 
 Her balance I think is better than any boat I have 
 ever sailed. With just enough weather helm for 
 safety a touch of the finger is sufficient to put her on 
 her course, and by trimming the sails she can be 
 made to sail herself when reaching or when on the 
 wind. 
 
 Our party on this first run was an unusually crit- 
 ical one,, including as it did three representatives of 
 the British Admiralty, who had come across to play 
 with the "HD-4," each of whom had had a large 
 experience with small boats. G. H. Child, R. C. 
 N. C, who had had a great deal to do with designing 
 small craft for the British Navy, could find no fault 
 with the lines of the hull, and Engineer Commander 
 W. S. Mann, O.B.E., an expert on Diesel engines 
 took quite a fancy to our motor. He liked the 
 sturdy quality of it. 
 
 Commander C. C. Dobson, V.C, D.S.O., was the 
 third of the experts, who among them cover the en- 
 tire field of the small boat. Commander Dobson, 
 erstwhile submarine skipper, was later in the war 
 transferred to the C. M. B.'s, the fast hydroplanes 
 that did such spectacular work in the later months 
 of the war. He was awarded the Victoria Cross 
 for dashing into the Russian harbor of Kronstadt on 
 the Gulf of Finland with a small flotilla of 55-foot 
 motor boats and sinking a number of battleships 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 33 
 
 right under the nose of the land batteries. He has 
 handled all sorts of small craft and when, after a 
 session at "Typhoon's" wheel, he pronounced her a 
 successful boat, we felt that our own enthusiasm 
 was justified. 
 
 Were it not for Admiralty orders Dobson would 
 sail back with us to England. There is a side to 
 every "Limie's" nature which I have always ad- 
 mired, and that is the serious belief in doing a thing 
 for the sheer fun of it, whether it's sailing a small 
 boat or merely storming the Zeebrugge Mole. 
 
 Successful as she was close-hauled, she was more 
 so on a broad reach at somewhat less angle of heel. 
 The wind dropped a little but still she slipped 
 along at a good clip instead of becoming sluggish, as 
 is frequently the case with heavy cruisers. We 
 were sailing back from Shenacadie toward Baddeck, 
 leaving the boats which had come out to test our 
 speed well astern, when we sighted a yawl beating 
 down the Big Bras d'Or Passage. As we drew 
 together I was struck by the familiar appearance of 
 the stranger and we changed our course a bit to try 
 if possible to overhaul her before she reached Bad- 
 deck. 
 
 As we bore down on her our suspicions were con- 
 firmed, for she proved to be none other than the 
 good old "Tamerlane," which at one time I had 
 thought of buying and which had influenced us to 
 some extent in laying out "Typhoon." Designed 
 
34 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 by Larry Huntington as a straight sailing craft, she 
 carries more sail in proportion to her size than does 
 "Typhoon." She is 7 feet shorter on deck but her 
 bowsprit is much longer and her jigger extends well 
 over her counter. Only a day or so before Casey 
 and I had looked over her design and wondered 
 what our chances against her would be, and then, on 
 the very day of our trial run, there she was. 
 And we beat her. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Fighting Time Across the Nprth Atlantic 
 
 TIME: Thursday evening, July 29, 1920. 
 Place: Mid- Atlantic in latitude 49°-4o' W. 
 
 Dramatis Personae: F. W. (Casey) Baldwin, 
 James Dorsett (slightly out of focus), W. W. Nut- 
 ting. 
 
 Scene: Cabin of the "Typhoon," at an angle 
 var3ang from ten to twenty-five degrees from the 
 horizontal, looking aft. 
 
 In right foreground, unoccupied pipe berth folded 
 against sheathing; farther aft, transom on which 
 reclines blanketed form of J. D. in attitude like car- 
 toonist's conception of "a morning after"; still 
 farther aft, galley with drain board and range cov- 
 ered with pots, pans and dishes in artistic disarray. 
 
 On left, dresser and two unoccupied bunks filled 
 with heavy clothing, sleeping bags and Dill's Best 
 in countless yellow packages. 
 
 Seated at table endeavoring to write, with rem- 
 nants of dinner sliding hither and yon, W. W. N., 
 cursing softly as coflfee slips to loo'ard and is lost 
 in blanketed form of J. D. 
 
 Up-stage,, well-nourished form of F. W. B. strug- 
 gling to maintain vertical position, ever and anon 
 coming up sharply on one side or the other as ship 
 rolls, tripping over boots and wet oilskins and skid- 
 ding dangerously on oil-soaked floor, the while en- 
 
 35 
 
36 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 deavoring, with all the helplessness of a thorough- 
 going engineer, to keep the home fire burning in the 
 Shipmate range. 
 
 Farther up-stage, companionway steps, beneath 
 which may be seen the shrouded figure of a motor 
 with pressure gauge on air tank registering zero, 
 and out the hatch above, the light of a lantern re- 
 flected on the wet mizzenmast and deserted wheel. 
 The ship is sailing herself. 
 
 W. W. N. reads rough draft of Chapter III as 
 follows : 
 
 So this is the North Atlantic and these are the 
 "Roaring Forties !" It isn't half bad now that we 
 have mastered the art of living under constant mo- 
 tion and have developed a sort of sixth sense jof 
 equilibrium. But it's strenuous beyond the dreams 
 of a landsman; To cook a meal and no less to eat it 
 in a rolling cabin withnever a let-up to the motion, 
 requires several days of adjustment, but we have 
 come through all that, and although J. D. is still a 
 bit "out of the picture," we are as hard as the black 
 gang of a submarine chaser. 
 
 To-day marks the completion of a week's run 
 from Cape Race, Newfoundland, and in that week 
 we have covered 1037 nautical miles (nearly 1200 
 land miles). This run was made entirely under sail 
 (and very little of that at times) and never to our 
 knowledge has a small craft of the type of "Ty- 
 phoon" made a better one. Hard,, continuous 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 37 
 
 weather, mostly from the southwest, made possible 
 the rather remarkable daily average for the week of 
 148.39 nautical miles, and if we could count on 
 maintaining this speed for the rest of the voyage 
 there would be no difficulty in reaching Cowes in 
 time for the races. But to hold an average speed of 
 6.18 knots is too much to hope for, and the best we 
 can do is to drive "Typhoon" for all she is worth 
 without a moment's let-down, and pray to Boreas to 
 remain abaft the beam. 
 
 In the last chapter we told of the launching of 
 "Typhoon" three days after the day on which we 
 had hoped to start for England. It was July 17 
 before we were actually ready for the take-off, and 
 even then many things had to be left undone. In 
 those intervening fourteen days the masts were 
 stepped; the spars, standing and running rigging 
 completed; the tender finished; galley and coal bin 
 installed; sails bent; bunks, table and pipe berths 
 finished; motor tried out; ballast, fuel and water 
 taken aboard; all of which left only time enough for 
 the trial spin mentioned in the last story. 
 
 On the evening of the 14th the little Bras d'Or 
 Yacht Club gave a party for the crew of the "Ty- 
 phoon" — an affair that will always stick in the 
 memory of at least one of those who were present. 
 Never was our old friend Commodore George Holli- 
 field in better form, and the things he said as he 
 made me an honorary member of the club and pre- 
 
38 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 sented me with the blue burgee with its arm of gold, 
 warmed by hospitality and good red punch, so flus- 
 tered me that I couldn't think of a thing to say — and 
 said it. However there were those at the memorable 
 little gathering who made up for my own inadequacy. 
 George Kennan, the man who first let the light of 
 day into darkest Siberia and whose name is a house- 
 hold word among the older generation, told of his 
 first meeting up with little old "Nereis" seven years 
 ago ; Dr. Graham Bell presented us with a clever ap- 
 paratus for distilling drinking water from sea 
 water, which he had developed for the "Typhooi^," 
 and drank our health in water distilled with it; 
 Premier Murray of Nova Scotia wished us God- 
 speed in a bully talk; Commander Dobson and Com- 
 mander Mann lent an international aspect to the 
 toast list, and Old Casey Baldwin, thus far the only 
 other member of the crew, delivered a few intelli- 
 gent remarks about the purpose of the boat and the 
 cruise and really made the whole venture sound 
 quite rational. Up to that time I had been some- 
 what in doubt as to just how to explain the thing. 
 
 There were more talks and songs, some of them 
 in the native Gaelic of the Highland ancestors of 
 Baddeck — the same wild, free tongue that had 
 hurled down defiance on the Romans centuries be- 
 fore the Norman Conquest. And as we went back 
 across the lake in the small hours of the night I felt 
 that if ever I failed to make a go of it in New York, 
 
-^ 
 
 
 NORTH ATLANTIC OCKAN "^ ' •" 
 
 
 
 
 The track of the "Typhoon" loo] 
 her approximate position when she w 
 
 Novemb 
 
. ; -i^fBirr raaiuUiHiwa-. i 
 
 
 
 irth Atlantic. The cross marks 
 1 down during the storm of 
 eenth 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 39 
 
 which is entirely possible, there would be at least one 
 place in the world in which I should feel at home. 
 
 Thus far little attention had been given to the 
 motor, but the next day we mobilized all the avail- 
 able talent and went at it seriously. In the hurry 
 before leaving town I had failed to make the run up 
 to the factory to get some pointers on the new oil 
 engine, and this oversight I keenly regretted when 
 it came to trying out the power plant. We found 
 that no adequate instructions had been sent and 
 none of the punk which is used in starting, and it 
 was then too late to communicate with the shop. I 
 remembered that someone had said something about 
 blotting paper and saltpeter, and with these we 
 finally got a fairly successful fuse that burned 
 neither too fast nor too slowly, and after charging 
 the air tank with the air bottles used in starting 
 the Libertys of the "HD-4," we were ready. 
 We opened the air valves. Nothing happened. 
 Then we tried priming with gasoline and heating 
 the bayonet plug with a blow torch and finally with 
 150 lbs. of air we got her going — and a world that 
 had begun to look as gloomy as the Grand Banks 
 took on a much more cheerful aspect. 
 
 It was gratifying to see that we had guessed right 
 and that "Typhoon" actually did about five miles 
 under power. With the motor we ran our pres- 
 sure up to 250 lbs., but found that we lost it rapidly 
 due to an imperfect seat in the safety valve on the 
 
40 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 tank. When we stopped the motor we found that 
 the plunger which is actuated by the starting cam 
 had stuck and by the time this was taken down and 
 corrected our air pressure was too low to turn her 
 over. We took off the safety valve and plugged the 
 hole in the tank and then repeated the operation, 
 having no difficulty in starting with 200 lbs. of air. 
 But we were working in the dark and doubtless went 
 to a lot more trouble than would have been necessary 
 had we been supplied with proper instructions. 
 
 The problem of a crew not yet having been solved, 
 we looked about for an available third hand and hit 
 on James Dorsett, a young chap from Washington 
 who was spending the summer keeping the Lib- 
 ertys of the "HD-4" in condition. Jim had never 
 been to sea, but his enthusiasm and adaptability 
 were sufficient qualifications and we signed him on 
 and decided to let it go at that. I must confess that 
 I was relieved, for I had felt that while two uni- 
 versity-trained mechanical engineers could sail "Ty- 
 phoon" to England, we might need a little practical 
 assistance on the motor. 
 
 But one day remained before the 17th, the day 
 we had decitied on for the start, and this day was 
 spent largely in taking things aboard. The 200- 
 gal. water tank was filled ; six water breakers were 
 chocked and lashed along the sides of the cockpit ; all 
 but one bag of a ton of hard coal was stowed, part 
 in the coal bin and the rest in the lazarette, together 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 41 
 
 with some kindling; our 75 fathoms of chain was 
 stowed aft of the motor and our spare rope was 
 placed part in the cockpit and part forward. Then 
 about 700 lbs. of pig lead was fitted in around and 
 forward of the motor bed and we were ready for our 
 stores. 
 
 Long into the night we worked getting the canned 
 goods stowed, checking off the various items and 
 making a note of where they were placed as we went 
 along. In a small boat where every last bit of space 
 is utilized, this matter of keeping a list of what the 
 various lockers contain is of great importance and 
 saves a lot of time and effort when you get to sea. 
 Later, as we used the stores, we checked them off, 
 and in this way maintained a sort of running inven- 
 tory, obviating the necessity of going through the 
 lockers when restocking on the other side. 
 
 The next day was Saturday, July 17, the day we 
 had set for the start, and it was spent in taking 
 aboard and storing our personal effects, Waltham 
 chronometer, navigating instruments, charts and 
 cooking utensils. It wasn't as though we could put 
 in now and then and pick up odds and ends that 
 might be overlooked. Except for the possibility of 
 a hurried call at St. Pierre, Miquelon, our first stop 
 would be the Isle of Wight or possibly Queenstown, 
 Ireland. Nothing could be overlooked. 
 
 The man who puts to sea in a well-found ship has 
 a comparatively easy job of fitting out. His boat 
 
42 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 has been tried out, his gear is in working order, he 
 knows the deviation of his compass, he already has 
 accumulated, through long experience with his craft, 
 those innumerable little odds and ends, tools, spare 
 parts and the like, that go to make up the equip- 
 ment of a boat, and he has them stowed in con- 
 venient places. All he needs to worry about is the 
 stores and duffle for that particular cruise. But our 
 ship was new, not really finished in fact ; she had not 
 been swung for deviation and the mass of gear and 
 stores had not gravitated to their most convenient 
 places as they Will only in the course of time. 
 
 And then just as we thought we had everything 
 aboard, there arrived a lot more stores — eighteen 
 dozen eggs packed in salt, several cases of ginger ale 
 and the other important ingredient of a ginger ale 
 highball, a cold roast of beef, oranges, bananas, 
 fresh bread and a crock of butter, and when these 
 were' safely below decks, it was obvious that we 
 should have little comfort until we had eaten a hole 
 out of the chaos big enough to turn around in. It 
 was a strenuous day and it was dark before we were 
 ready to pull out for Baddeck, across the lake, from 
 which point the official start was to be made. 
 
 Sydney Breese planned to convoy us possibly as 
 far as the Miquelon Islands, and he already had left 
 in the "Filatonga," with Commander Mann and 
 Commander Dobson aboard, when at 9 :20 p. M. we 
 cast off from the dock below Baldwin's bungalow, 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 43 
 
 waved a last good-bye to the little group on the pier 
 and slipped off for Baddeck Light under jib and 
 mizzen. 
 
 Our electric lighting outfit, which had been 
 shipped from Dayton four months before,, had not 
 yet arrived and there was a last-minute scramble for 
 lamps, several of which we commandeered from 
 Pinaud's "Alexander." These necessitated extra 
 chimneys and more kerosene, and there was signal 
 oil to be found for the English lamp we had fitted to 
 our binnacle in case we should have trouble with the 
 dry cells which we were forced to use as a source of 
 current for the Polaris electrically-lighted compass. 
 And then, too, there was alcohol (at $7 a gallon) to 
 start the Primus stove which we carried in gimbals 
 as an auxiliary to our Shipmate. When these 
 things and a few others had been attended to, to the 
 accompaniment of songs from a vjsiting choir and 
 innumerable farewells, we were ready to start the 
 motor and get under way. But the air pressure had 
 dropped again, necessitating considerable exercise 
 with the hand pump contributed by enthusiastic vol- 
 unteers, before we finally got her going. Then a 
 farewell booster, a handshake with old George Hol- 
 lifield and our fellow members of the Bras d'Or 
 Club, and we were off at 1 140 a. m. July 18. 
 
 As we rounded Beinn Bhreagh Point twenty 
 minutes later we hoisted full sail to a light south- 
 west breeze and under power and sail headed out 
 
44 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 Great Bras d'Or Passage for the sea. At 3:50 
 A. M. the motor stopped for some unknown reason, 
 but, although there was practically no wind, a fa- 
 vorable tide carried us briskly on our way At 7 :45 
 we passed out of Big Bras d'Or with a southwest 
 breeze and streamed the log. At last we were at 
 sea. 
 
 Breese crowded all sail on "Filatonga" and 
 headed for St. Pierre and the "Alexander," which 
 had accompanied us from Baddeck, came alongside, 
 shouted a farewell and headed back. Then we 
 turned-to on the motor. Taking off the air-connec- 
 tion plug we found that water had leaked past the 
 ground joint into the cylinder, and in all probability 
 this water backing into the check valves in the air- 
 line had caused trouble. When we got the parts re- 
 assembled we overlooked the fact that the clutch was 
 still engaged, as it had been when the motor stopped, 
 and in attempting to start we lost our air and were 
 unable to get it up to the required pressure again by 
 hand. Things had stiffened up a bit, necessitating 
 more pressure than would have been required nor- 
 mally. 
 
 There was practically no wind, we were dog tired, 
 Jim was beginning to feel the effects of the ground 
 swell and withal the outlook was anything but en- 
 couraging. Then about the middle of the after- 
 noon, "Filatonga" hove in sight again. Breese 
 came aboard and explained that they had decided to 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 45 
 
 put back to St. Anns after tuna instead of continue 
 ing on to St. Pierre, and as they waved us a bon 
 voyage, chugging off under motor power, our pros- 
 pects looked anything but bon. In fact the bottom 
 seemed to have dropped out of our luck entirely, 
 
 All that night we slatted about in a glassy ground 
 swell — absolutely the most exasperating experience 
 in the whole category of unpleasant things. Hell, I 
 am, sure, is paved not with good intentions, but with 
 glassy ground swells. 
 
 Finally, about midnight during my watch,, I could 
 stand it no longer, and feeling that the last vestige 
 of a chance to reach Cowes in time was gone, I took 
 in all sail, snugged the booms in the crutches and 
 went below and turned in with the rest. At 3 A. M. 
 Casey put sail on her again and was able to make 
 about two knots until 6 a. m., when it went flat again 
 and remained so until about noon, when a light 
 southerly breeze sprang up. 
 
 Thus far we had not determined the deviation of 
 our steering compass, except as we could approxi- 
 mate it by comparison with the spare one, which we 
 took forward out of the influence of the motor and 
 iron ballast. But Casey, who has the happy faculty 
 of using his head occasionally for the purpose for 
 which it was intended, got the bearing of the sun as 
 it rose, and from this we were able to get a fair idea 
 of our deviation by comparison with the azimuth of 
 
46 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 the sun for that day as found in the tables, as. fol- 
 lows: 
 
 Sun rose E. x N., or roughly 80°. 
 
 Latitude (approximately) 46° 30' 
 Declination from almanac 20° 55.5' 
 
 Azimuth (from Burdwood) 58° 57'^ 
 Variation (from chart) 26° 15'" 
 
 85° 12' 
 Observed bearing of sun 80° 00' 
 
 Deviation = 5° 12' 
 
 The only really important piece of equipment we 
 forgot was our prism sighting compass. Had we 
 brought it such bearings as the alfove would have' 
 been accurate instead of mere approximations, as 
 was necessarily the case when taken by aiming the 
 whole ship at the object or merely looking across the 
 compass card. But for our purpose an error of two 
 or three degrees made no material difference. 
 
 Throughout the afternoon the breeze held, but it 
 was so light that our progress, at no time was over 
 a couple of knots. At 9 it picked up a bit and at 10 
 had attained sufficient weight to warrant taking a 
 single reef in the mainsail. At midnight we took in 
 the mainsail entirely and made good headway for 
 the rest of the night under jib and mizzen. Our 
 luck was changing. We wanted heavy weather. 
 
The heave of the open sea 
 
Snug in the lee of the coaming 
 
 Photograph by Levick 
 
 The galley. The rope hung from the Shipmate 
 range was used to lash the cook in place 
 when the weather was bad 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 47 
 
 Tuesday the 20th was one of those ominous days 
 that requires no falling glass to convince you that 
 something unusual is going to happen. St. Pierre, 
 that had been so alluring when we were planning the 
 cruise, now took on an entirely different aspect. 
 Logically we should put in there to correct the 
 trouble that had been developed in our air-starting 
 system. It seemed reasonable to waste another d^y 
 or two in order that we might depend on the motor 
 for the rest of the passage. Cold, calm reason said 
 that time thus spent would be more than made up 
 later by the motor, but secretly I felt that once we 
 got into St. Pierrre harbor, cold calm reason might 
 persuade us that there was not a ghost of a chance 
 of reaching Cowes in time for the races, and, this 
 being the case what would be the point in sailing 
 across the Atlantic at all? 
 
 Secretly I was glad that just at this juncture we 
 got a spell of weather that put St. Pierre out of the 
 question entirely — and I think the others were too. 
 Tacitly we agreed to take the hundred to one chance 
 and keep on for England. 
 
 By 3 o'clock in the afternoon the wind had backed 
 so far to the eastward that we were forced to come 
 about on the other tack. Night was coming on, the 
 fog was thick and we were not sure just how far we 
 were off the Newfoundland coast. The best we 
 could do on the port tack was S. E. x S., but we were 
 working out to sea, which was more comfortable 
 
48 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 than taking chances with one of the deadliest coast 
 lines in the world. Still under jib and mizzen we 
 kept her headed well into it until we were practically 
 lying to, and all the while the wind and sea were 
 increasing. 
 
 By night far. it was blowing a full gale. We 
 should have had the sea anchor ready and the line 
 rove through the bull nose on the end of the bowsprit 
 so that we could have thrown it over from the cock- 
 pit. But the sea anchor was one of those things 
 that hadn't been finished, and even had it been, it 
 was then too late to work forward without a bad 
 drubbing and a fifty-fifty chance of going over- 
 board. The only thing to do was to stick it out in 
 the cockpit and take a chance that the jib and mizzen 
 would stand the punishment. 
 
 Steadily the wind increased. I had the wheel for 
 the first night watch while Casey went below to 
 grab what little rest was possible. Jim was under 
 the weather, and anyway we felt that it was better 
 to take watch and watch and hold him in reserve in 
 case it became necessary to take in sail, when Casey 
 and I would have to work on deck. Crouched down 
 in the shelter of the weather coaming I kept her fuU- 
 and-by, luffing her now and then to meet the phos- 
 phorescent crests as they bore down on us. Never 
 to my knowledge was her nose actually under it, but 
 time and again great masses of broken water came 
 over the weather bow. 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 49 
 
 It was a roaring, wild, wonderful night — ^the sky 
 pitch black, the sea a driving stampede of weird, un- 
 earthly lights. The countless crests of breaking 
 waves made luminous patches in the blackness as 
 though lit by some ghostly light from beneath the 
 sea, and the tops, whipped off by the wind, cut the 
 sky with horizontal streaks of a more brilliant light, 
 like the sparks from a prairie fire. Never have I 
 seen such phosphorescence. 
 
 At 12 o'clock, wet and cold from constant drench- 
 ings and tired out, I turned the wheel over to Casey. 
 We were carrying too much sail, but we decided to 
 wait for daylight before attempting to take off any- 
 thing. Below the sensation was indescribable. 
 The roar of the wind and breaking seas was dead- 
 ened, but the crash of water as it fell on deck with 
 nearly every sea was terrific. Sleep was out of the 
 question. It was impossible to stay in the weather 
 bunks, and in fact it required constant effort to stay 
 put anywhere. Gradually I dozed off into cat naps,, 
 to wake with a start with every smash. Now and 
 then I looked out the companionway to see how 
 things were going. Casey, drenched and grinning, 
 was in his element. The wind was still increasing, 
 but there was no trace of concern in his voice as he 
 shouted back a "cheerio" through the racket. He 
 was enjoying himself as only the man at the wheel 
 can at such a time. "Casey at the wheel" offers 
 
50 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 greater possibilities for poetic treatment than his 
 cognominal predecessor at the bat. 
 
 By 3 o'clock the wind seemed to have dropped a 
 trifle and, as it was then starting to get light, we all 
 went on deck and Jim took the wheel while Casey 
 and I doused the mizzen and secured the boom in 'its 
 crutch. Running before it, under the jib alone, 
 "Typhoon" behaved better, or rather was easier, for 
 she had behaved superbly under jib and mizzen, and 
 we found that she would sail herself beautifully 
 with the wind over the quarter. This being the 
 case, we snugged things down and all went below 
 and slept until 9 o'clock. 
 
 The next entry in the log reads : 
 
 9:15. Opened a can o f peaches. We had eaten 
 
 very little. Jim reports success with the 
 
 peaches. 
 9:15. Although wind and sea high, set mizzen 
 
 for greater speed. 
 12 M, Log 201 miles. Doing 6 knots under jib 
 
 and mizzen. 
 
 By this time, the weather having cleared, we had 
 got back on our course again with the wind well 
 abaft the beam. "Typhoon" ran beautifully with 
 none of the predicted rooting; the fine bow and 
 broad stern seemed to work in perfect harmony. 
 Whether the radical features would be justified by 
 
"Casey" improvises a strop for the main boom 
 
The "Lapland" bound out from the English Channel returns our 
 
 salute 
 
 An inquisitive French trawler circles us on the Grand Banks 
 
 The "New York" dips her ensign as we pass her in the Solent 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 51 
 
 unusual speed remained to be seen, but there was no 
 question that her behavior on any point of sailing 
 in a heavy sea was superb. 
 
 Although we were then well beyond the French 
 islands,, we could have made Trepassy Bay without 
 much loss of time, but we decided to hold to our de- 
 cision to keep on. 
 
 About this time we made an annoying discovery. 
 In some way several gallons of fuel oil had got into 
 the bilge, and during the drubbing of the night be- 
 fore, this oil, floating on the bilge water, had got into 
 everything. Following up inside the sheathing as 
 the ship rolled, it had worked through into the lee 
 berths and cushions and, had it not been for the fact 
 that most of the food in the lockers on that side was 
 in tins, it would have caused much more damage 
 than it did. We found that we had forgotten to 
 shut off the fuel line at the tanks, and when we 
 heeled, the head of pressure created by the upper 
 tank had forced the oil out of the air vent in the 
 filler cap of the lower one. Our rotary bilge pump 
 had not yet been connected up, and it involved con- 
 siderable labor and acrobatics to bail out the ship by 
 means of a hand pump and pail. 
 
 At 5 :45 the following morning, July 22, we spoke 
 the schooner "James W. Parker" of Gloucester and 
 asked him to report us. He gave us our position as 
 about ten miles S. W. of Cape Race, which was a bit 
 
52 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 off, as we sighted the dim outline of the Cape 
 shortly before noon. The log read 337 nautical 
 miles (359 from Baddeck) and from, this point we 
 took our departure, 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 "Typhoon" Reaches Cowes With Thirty-Seven Hours to 
 
 Spare 
 
 Aboard "Typhoon" Bay of Biscay, 
 Sept. 10, ipso. 
 
 WE'RE half way across the Bay of Biscay 
 headed for the point of the Spanish Penin- 
 sula. We took our departure from Ushant night 
 before last and should reach Cape Ortegal to-mor- 
 row evening if the easterly wind holds out. It's a 
 crisp, sunny day and hardly conducive to writing, 
 but we must catch up with the yarn, and it is next to 
 impossible to do anything while "Typhoon" is in 
 port. 
 
 The last chapter told of the hurried departure of 
 the little ketch from Baddeck soon after midnight, 
 July i8; her run under motor power out the Big 
 Bras d'Or Passage ; the discouraging experience in 
 the calm ; and finally the gale off the coast of New- 
 fotmdland and the decision to keep on for England 
 in spite of the fact that there seemed scarcely one 
 chance in a hundred of reaching the Isle of Wight 
 in time for the British International Races. The 
 close of the chapter saw us about lo miles off Cape 
 Race, from which we took our dejparture at noon 
 on July 22. 
 
 53 
 
54 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 For just a few minutes we could see the land — a 
 distant gray silhouette — and as it was lost in the 
 haze over the port quarter, we made out a steamer 
 of some sort making directly for us from the same 
 direction. My first thought was that kind friends, 
 feeling concern at our failure to put in at St. Pierre, 
 as we had expected to do, had put a coast guard boat 
 on our trail. Or possibly the U. S. Navy delegation 
 had descended on Baddeck to see the "HD-4" and 
 Baldwin was needed. On she came and I had that 
 same uncertain feeling you get when the traffic cop 
 at the City Island cross-roads stops you, and you 
 don't know whether he merely wants a ride in to 
 town or you're pinched for the third and last time 
 for exceeding the speed limit. 
 
 However our friend proved to be only the steam 
 trawler "Afrique" overcome by curiosity. Steam- 
 ing completely around us, he sized us up at close 
 range, and from the way all hands and the cook 
 talked vociferously with both arms, and from the 
 general sloppiness of the ship, we judged she was 
 one of those French trawlers that have largely taken 
 the place of the St. Pierre schooners since the New- 
 f oimdland bait legislation was enacted. Waving us 
 farewell, she steamed back again in the direction 
 from which she had come. There's something de- 
 lightfully amateurish about a Frenchman on the 
 water. 
 
 The first two hours of the actual trans-Atlantic 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 55 
 
 part of the cruise were- anything but exciting. A 
 light S. W. breeze over the quarter gave us about 3 
 knots. Then at Casey's suggestion we set the spin- 
 naker and by 4 o'clock we were doing 6j^. From 
 then on things improved and by 5 o'clock the wind 
 was sufficient to warrant taking in the spinnaker. 
 At midnight we were tearing it off at the rate of 8^ 
 knots under full sail, too glad to be driving her again 
 to think of shortening down, as we might have done 
 had we not been pushed by the calendar. 
 
 Friday, July 23, was a fine sunny day — about the 
 only one we had, in fact, until we reached the Eng- 
 lish Channel. At noon the log showed that we had 
 covered 142.35 sea miles since 12 o'clock of the pre- 
 vious day — 3. fairly good day's run. But in the aft- 
 ernoon we had to resort to the spinnaker again, and 
 for three hours from 4 to 7 slatted about with prac- 
 tically no wind at all. Had we known that it was 
 to be the last experience of the kind we were to have 
 for some time we might have taken it a bit more 
 stoically. 
 
 By this time Dorsett was beginning to feel better 
 and we decided to divide the nights into three 
 watches of three hours each. Although never quite 
 right until we hit the Channel, and not able to do any 
 work below, Jim never missed a trick at the wheel, 
 and in fact he made up for his shortcomings below 
 decks by doing more than his share of the steering. 
 And steering from then on was a job that demanded 
 
S6 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 boots and oilies and woolen gloves and the heaviest 
 of clothing, for we were running a rough great- 
 circle track close to the fiftieth parallel, and the 
 North Atlantic in that latitude is far different from 
 Long Island Sound. 
 
 Saturday, the 24th,, was more typical of the sort 
 of thing we were to get. I awoke about j6 o'clock to 
 find Casey, in dripping oilskins from a foggy third 
 watch, wrestling with the Shipmate range while 
 "Typhoon" sailed herself. Having allowed the fire 
 to go out, he was relighting it for the third time 
 with no great success. Casey in the galley always 
 suggested Briggs' classic series of cartoons entitled : 
 "A Handy Man Around the House*' ; but all his do- 
 mestic shortcomings are excusable in the light of his 
 expert seamanship and his cool judgment and iron 
 nerve that were the despair of those who faced him 
 on the gridiron — and his never-failing humor, all of 
 which make him the best man on the water that I 
 have ever known. 
 
 We breakfasted leisurely on prunes, ham and eggs 
 and coffee, while the ship kept her course with the 
 wind one point abaft the beam — a rather unusual 
 performance, as anybody who has sailed, with the 
 possible exception of old Joshua Slocum, will appre- 
 ciate. Later in the day, when the wind hauled 
 from S. X W. to S. W., bringing it four points abaft 
 the beam, she kept her course long enough for the 
 jnan at the wheel to go below for a smoke or a mug- 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 57 
 
 up,, but we found that this was possible only when 
 the wind was absolutely steady. Close-hauled or 
 when running before it under jib alone, she would 
 sail herself for days if necessary. 
 
 Conditidns were unfavorable for a noon sight for 
 latitude, but by this time we were pretty sure of the 
 deviation of our compass on the easterly headings 
 and felt that we were not far ofif our great circle 
 course. The lack of a longitude observation didn't 
 matter either, for our Bliss log, while set to overrun 
 a trifle, gave us a fair idea of our position. At noon 
 it registered 588.25 miles, showing that we had made 
 109.25 nautical miles for the day — a rather poor 
 showing due to the lack of wind the previous after- 
 noon. It was the poorest showing of our record 
 week, but the barograph curve was slumping, and 
 increasing wind and rain indicated that our run for 
 the next twenty-four hours would be better. 
 
 From noon on we maintained a speed well over 7 
 knots and by 6 o'clock were tearing it off at nearly 
 8}4 knots, which I think is close to "Typhoon's" 
 limit. She was staggering a bit under full sail and, 
 feeling that she would be more comfortable for the 
 night, without any material loss of speed, we tucked 
 two reefs in the mainsail. Thus shortened down 
 she maintained a speed between 7 and 8 knots 
 throughout the night. 
 
 By 10 the next morning, July 25, the seas had 
 grown to a tremendous size^ but the wind had 
 
58 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 dropped enough to warrant shaking out the reefs, 
 which brought our speed up again to a full 8 knots. 
 At 12 the log registered 760 miles, indicating a day's 
 run of 1 71. 4 miles, and we set our clocks ahead an 
 hour to 45th meridian time. We were well beyond 
 the limit of the Grand Banks, in the neighborhood 
 of Flemish Cap, but the weather was still thick. In 
 fact we might have been on the banks all the way 
 across, so far as the weather was concerned. 
 Where time is less of a consideration than comfort, 
 I would suggest crossing the Atlantic via the 
 Azores, as Skipper Tom Day advised us to do, 
 rather than by the northern route. But with us 
 the one important thing was to reach Cowes in 
 time for the races. 
 
 In the afternoon the wind increased again, neces- 
 sitating a double reef in the mainsail, and at mid- 
 night it was blowing so hard that we were forced to 
 take in the sail entirely and run under the jib and 
 mizzen. We were all beginning to feel the lack of 
 sleep and two hours at the wheel was about all we 
 could stand without actually falling asleep, and even 
 then the second hour was a series of cat naps ending 
 with a start just in time to keep the boat from gybing 
 or luffing up into the wind. Steering becomes so 
 automatic that it is possible to sleep and still carry 
 on until the shifting of the wind on your face or the 
 changing motion of the boat breaks the monotony 
 and brings you back to consciousness with a jerk. 
 
Copyright Central News Photo Service 
 
 Baldwin, Dorsett and the skipper the morning of the arrival at 
 
 Cowes 
 
"Typhoon'' as she arrived at Cowes 
 
 Photograph by Debenham 
 
 A part of the quaint waterfront of Cowes 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 59 
 
 This groggy condition we experienced during that 
 first hard wepk out from Cape Race was due largely 
 to the fact that it was difficult to get adequate rest 
 below when off watch. Casey and I had the two 
 bunks on the starboard side, and as we were prac- 
 tically continuously on the starboard tack, these 
 bunks were on the weather side, and the motion of 
 the boat made it almost impossible to "stay put" in 
 them. They are spring bunks and rather broad,, to 
 accommodate the regular navy springs, and it is not 
 easy to wedge yourself into them. In spite of the 
 bunk board, Casey used occasionally to fall out of 
 his in his sleeping bag and fetch up in the galley on 
 the lee side. I used to make a trough of the mat- 
 tress and a duffle bag and tie my arm to one of the 
 rods about the bunk with a bath towel, but even then 
 it was impossible to keep from rolling about like jelly 
 on a plate, without constant exertion that was quite 
 detrimental to proper rest, Jim had no trouble on 
 the lee side, and in fact seemed so comfortable that 
 I shifted to the unoccupied pipe berth on that side — 
 and have been there ever since. 
 
 Spring bunks may be perfectly comfortable in a 
 quiet anchorage, but I don't think I shall ever have 
 one on a boat again. A pipe frame with a canvas 
 bottom loosely laced so as to sag somewhat and with 
 a thin cot or hammock mattress, is to my mind the 
 most comfortable type of bed for a boat. In the 
 day time it is folded up against the sheathing with 
 
6o THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 the bedding in it, taking up no valuable room, and 
 when in use it may be topped up at any angle to keep 
 you from rolling out. The secret of the comfort of 
 this sort of a berth is that it sags and adapts itself 
 to the irregularities of your person, supporting your 
 weight uniformly instead of only at the bumps. 
 If you must have spring bunks in a boat for ocean 
 cruising, make them with high bunk boards and nar- 
 row enough to enable you to wedge yourself in 
 with your knees. 
 
 The log of the "Typhoon" is a decidedly sketchy 
 document. Like our navigation it shows a lack of 
 system that would shock a thorough-going mariner, 
 but it tells the story briefly, and a few pages from it 
 will help to keep this narrative from becoming tire- 
 somely long. 
 
 Monday, July 26th. Cloudy but no fog; wind 
 strong WSW. All feeling the lack of sleep. High 
 seas running and almost impossible to stay in bunks 
 when we get an opportunity. 
 
 3 130 A. M, Doused mizzen and let her take care 
 of herself under jib alone. Motion considerably 
 less and all had a good sleep. 
 
 7:30 A. M. Turned out and spent most of morn- 
 ing rigging up the rotary' bilge pump and pumping 
 bilge which had begun to slop around again. Raised 
 mainsail without mizzen, which seems to be a good 
 arrangement for running before it. 
 
 12 M. Log, 910 miles; day's run, 150 miles (for 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 6i 
 
 23 hours) . Maintained almost constant 7 knots all 
 afternoon under double-reefed mainsail and jib. 
 
 10:30 p. M. Main boom traveler carried away. 
 Doused mainsail with some difficulty, secured boom 
 in crutch and let her sail herself under jib while we 
 all slept. 
 
 Tuesday, July 2yth. Thick except for a while in 
 morning. 
 
 4 A. M. Wind heavy WxS ; course ESE main- 
 tained without touching steering wheel. Log, 995 
 miles. 
 
 6 A. M. Log, 1001.5 miles. 
 
 Casey improvises a strop of wire and rope to re- 
 place main-boom traveler, while W. W. N. cleans up 
 below decks. Set mainsail. 
 
 12 M. Log, 1030.4 miles; day's run, 120.4 miles. 
 
 Took noon sight — really the first good one, al- 
 though the horizon was obscured by fog. 
 
 Latitude, 49° 8' — ^just about what we wanted and 
 quite good considering frequent changes of course. 
 If longitude from log is anywhere near correct we 
 are nearly half way across. 
 
 4 p. M. Log, 1057.6 miles. 
 
 5 :30 p. M. A large school of porpoises played 
 about us for half an hour or so, almost touching the 
 ship and jumping clear of the heavy, seas. They 
 seem to travel in groups of two or three and show no 
 fear of the boat. 
 
 Wednesday, July 28th. Fog still holds; wind 
 heavy, WxS; barograph high but starting to dip 
 slightly. 
 
 2 A. M. Log, 1 121. 5 milea 
 
 4 :30 A. M. Set mizzen. 
 
 8 A. M. Log, 1 162,5 miles. 
 
62 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 12 M. Log, 1192,3 miles; day's run, 161.9 miles. 
 Fog too thick for latitude sight. 
 
 Wednesday was the sixth day out from Cape 
 Race, and it was on this day that we got our first 
 time sight for longitude. It was blowing hard and 
 we were bowling along before it at top speed under 
 jib, mizzen and double-reefed mainsail, when early 
 in the afternoon the fog thinned sufficiently to give 
 us a glimpse of the sun. Casey took advantage of 
 the opportunity and rushed for the sextant, and I 
 stood by the chronometer while he brought the sun 
 down to the very fuzzy horizon. Ignoring all of 
 our profound volumes on navigation and armed 
 solely with Henderson's little manual we worked out 
 the sight together and found after several errors, 
 and much to our astonishment, that we were ac- 
 tually but a few miles from our position by dead 
 reckoning. I say much to our astonishment, for you 
 are bound to be surprised the first time you work 
 up a sight and find that you actually are just about 
 where you ought to be. Neither of us had ever done 
 any serious navigation before. Casey had played a 
 bit with his sextant and had gained some acquaint- 
 ance with the various methods of obtaining longi- 
 tude, by a casual reading of several text books. I 
 had written an article on the "89-48" method of ob- 
 taining latitude. But until we were in mid- Atlantic 
 neither one of us ever had had occasion to work up a 
 
The castle of the Royal Yacht Squadron originally was a fortress 
 built by Henry VIII in 1540 
 
 The Solent is the Long Island Sound of England 
 
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 bt 
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 3 
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 S 
 
 m 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 Pi 
 
 bo 
 
 o 
 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 63 
 
 time sight with a real Hve chronometer. It's a dam- 
 aging admission, but it goes to prove that navigation 
 is really not the formidable thing we are likely to 
 consider it. 
 
 But, dear reader, "do as I say and not as I dp" in 
 these matters, and don't start across the Atlantic 
 unless you are sure both you and your boat are 
 ready. I wouldn't for the world give the impres- 
 sion of flippancy in my attitude toward ocean cruis- 
 ing. What cruising of this kind I have done has in- 
 stilled in me a profound respect for the sea; she 
 detests cowardice and is a friend to those who know 
 and respect her ; but on the other hand she is likely 
 to chasten flippancy or over- familiarity with pitiless 
 severity. 
 
 With two reefs in the mainsail we averaged 8.19 
 knots throughout the entire afternoon and drove 
 her through the night under the same canvas, too 
 elated over the progress we were making to think of 
 easing down a bit. "Typhoon" fairly flew and the 
 next morning for one hour, between 10 and 1 1,, the 
 log showed that she actually made a full 9 knots — 
 the best she has ever done. 
 
 This was Thursday, July 29, the seventh day 
 from Cape Race and the twelfth from Baddeck. It 
 was foggy as usual, with rain, but nothing mattered 
 so long as the wind held. At 8 in the morning, Jim, 
 who was at the wheel, sighted a full-rigged ship on 
 our starboard bow bound up probably to some Nor- 
 
64 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 wegian port. She was the first vessel we had seen 
 in a week, and she made a bully picture tearing along 
 with all her kites pulling. At noon our log showed 
 that we had covered 183.4 nautical miles for the day, 
 the J)est run for the entire passage, and this brought 
 our mileage for the week up to 1038.7, which I think 
 we are safe in saying is a record week's run for a 
 boat of this size and type. Our average day's run 
 for the week was 148.39 miles and our average speed 
 was 6.18 knots. Those hollow water lines of Billy 
 Atkins, and that broad run, aren't such bad features 
 after all, if seaworthiness and speed are the quali- 
 ties upon which the success of a boat depends. 
 
 Just by way of contrast and to take us down a 
 peg, the next day proved to be the worst since that 
 exasperating one after leaving the Bras d'Or Lakes. 
 In fact, save for that one exception, it was the worst 
 of the entire run to Cowes. At about 8 o'clock 
 Thursday the wind hauled around to the north and 
 from then on gradually diminished. It was during 
 my watch, and as the wind was now on the port 
 beam, I trimmed her to sail herself, hung up a lan- 
 tern and went below and joined the others in a good 
 old snooze. We needed it. 
 
 By 2 in the morning the wind had died entirely 
 and we took in the mainsail and jib to prevent slat- 
 ting. Occasionally throughout the day we got a bit 
 of wind from one quarter or another, but our 
 progress was slow. It rained continuously and we 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 65 
 
 spent the day below on such jobs as the sea anchor, 
 which never had been finished, straightening out the 
 gear and working up longitude sights. Our po- 
 sition was slightly below the 50th parallel in longi- 
 tude 28° 21' W. 
 
 But the wind was hauling around to the N. W. 
 with a rising glass and that night we were treated 
 to a change from our almost steady diet of thick 
 weather. A glorious sunset and later a full moon 
 with patches of clean, high wind clouds spoke well 
 for the following day, and another good sleep, while 
 "Typhoon" sailed herself, made up for what we had 
 lost during the hard week. 
 
 The second week out from Cape Race was less 
 strenuous than the first had been. On the whole the 
 wind was good and we kept on driving her, but 
 things had become more systematized and, hardened 
 up as we were, we felt none of the fatigue that we 
 had experienced in the earlier days. When the 
 weather permitted, we took a daily noon sight for 
 latitude and a morning and afternoon sight for 
 longitude, for we could not afford to waste time on 
 a poor landfall. Queenstown and the Royal Cork 
 Yacht Club were out of the question and,, instead of 
 heading for Cape Clear at the southern point of 
 Ireland, which would have shortened the trans- 
 Atlantic run by a full twenty- four hours, we shaped 
 our course for Bishops Rock in the Scilly Islands 
 off the point of Cornwall. 
 
66 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 As we drew down to the traffic lanes we sighted 
 more ships, which are always a welcome break in the 
 monotony of ocean sailing. It happened that most 
 of these meetings were at night, and several rather 
 close calls woke us up to the realization that we had 
 better start again to use our running lights, for 
 which there was little need in mid- Atlantic, north of 
 the steamer lanes as we were. In thick weather, even 
 if not actually foggy, there isn't much warning of an 
 approaching vessel. If she is going in the opposite 
 direction she may loom up suddenly, pass you and be 
 lost astern in five minutes, and a lighted lantern or a 
 flare ready at hand in the cockpit never should be 
 neglected. As we drew nearer to the shipping we 
 never failed to have someone at the wheel except Jn 
 clear weather. 
 
 One night we sighted two vessels bearing down on 
 us from opposite directions. It was hazy and they 
 were close aboard before we saw them, the masthead 
 range lights of each almost in line. The situation 
 demanded a bit of quick maneuvering and much 
 waving of our lantern. It impressed upon us the 
 necessity of a constant lookout. 
 
 As the second week drew on, our chances of reach- 
 ing Cowes improved with each good day's run. On 
 the afternoon of Aug. 4 our longitude sight gave us 
 13° 45' W., or about 275 miles west of Bishops 
 Rock, which meant that., by averaging a little over 
 100 miles a day for the five remaining days, we 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 67 
 
 could make it. The wind was holding up in great 
 style. That day it was from the N. W., and at 
 noon our log registered 174 miles for the past 
 twenty-four hours. 
 
 At 5 in the afternoon we lowered the mainsail to 
 replace the lacing in the head, which had carried 
 away, and incidentally to tie in a double reef, and 
 during the operation we had a bit of excitement. In- 
 tent on our work, we allowed the mizzen to gybe, 
 which carried away the starboard shrouds at the 
 mast and nearly cost us our stick. We luffed and 
 lowered away just in time to keep it from going 
 overboard, for it was blowing half a gale. 
 
 The cause of the accident was the slipping of the 
 seizing at the eye of the shrouds, which were made 
 in one continuous piece. That is the forward and 
 after shrouds on either side of the mizzen are in one 
 length of wire rope seized to form an eye to go over 
 the mast head. This seizing was put on wire-to- 
 wire and consequently slipped down, enlarging the 
 eye and placing all the strain on the oak cleat, which, 
 although set into the mast, carried away under the 
 strain. Clearing up the tangle of shrouds and life 
 lines we snugged the mizzen boom in the crutch 
 for the night, and when we reached the Channel 
 rigged up a jury shroud with a fore stay we had put 
 on the mizzen for just such an emergency^ and this 
 allowed us to carry our sail to Cowes. 
 
 On Friday, Aug. 6, we made our landfall. Our 
 
68 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 morning longitude sight put us 60 miles west of 
 Bishops Rock in longitude 8° 2' 17" W., and our 
 noon sight for latitude gave us 49° 40' 50", which 
 meant that we ought to pick up the light early in 
 the evening — ^unless our chronometer had changed 
 its rate. 
 
 At 9 A. M. the "Lapland" passed us close aboard, 
 outward bound, and apparently on a course parallel 
 to our own. Could it be that we were exactly right 
 in our navigation and that she had come out of the 
 English Channel ? Or was she bound out from Liv- 
 erpool and the Irish Channel ? We hoped mightily 
 that the latter was not true, although we were under 
 the impression that this particular vessel docked at 
 Liverpool. However, we dipped our ensign to her, 
 she did the same, and we went our way trusting that 
 our latitude was correct. 
 
 Our afternoon longitude sight put us almost on 
 the meridian of Bishops Rock, but night came on 
 without picking it up. And then at 9 : 25, just as we 
 were beginning to fear that the drubbing had been 
 too much for the little Waltham, we caught the glow 
 of the light, still down below the horizon. It was 
 just where it should have been — about three 
 points ofif the port bow — and again we were very 
 much surprised and not a little elated. Our trans- 
 Atlantic run had been made in 15 days, 9 hours and 
 25 minutes from Cape Race,, and we know of no 
 other small craft that has done it in better time. 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 69 
 
 Our first day in the English Channel will always 
 be a crisp picture of my memory when other parts of 
 the cruise have become blurred by time. It was 
 clear and sunny, unusually so for England, and as 
 we reached along to a southerly breeze, within sight 
 of the Cornish coast, we passed all sorts of inter- 
 esting ships and small craft — some bound up or 
 down Channel and some trawling or lying to drift 
 nets. We passed a whole fleet of steam drifters 
 each with her mizzen set, and a number of large 
 yawls with the characteristic red sails. Bully sailers 
 they are, too, as we found out when we had a brush 
 with one later on. She beat us, but the sting of de- 
 feat was eased somewhat by the fact that she was 
 twice our size. 
 
 Navigating the English Channel is simplified by 
 the chain of wonderful lights along the south coast 
 of England — ^The Lizard, Eddystone, Start Point, 
 Portland Bill and the rest. It is so simple that I 
 can Understand why some of the skippers of our 
 Shipping Board fleet (locally known. as the tissue- 
 paper fleet) are the laughing stock of the Limies 
 for their habit of taking on pilots at Land's End. A 
 pilot from Land's End to Dover gets the equivalent 
 of about a thousand dollars,, I am told, and our new- 
 laid skippers are supporting a large and ever-grow- 
 ing element of the English population. 
 
 No unusual incident marked our run up the Eng- 
 lish Channel. Due to the effect of a head tide we 
 
70 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 mistook the Bill of Portland, faintly visible, for the 
 Isle of Wight, and put in and were caught in the 
 notorious Race, which we had been warned particu- 
 larly to avoid, but suffered nothing more than a few 
 hours' delay. We were running before a good 
 breeze at the time, with the spinnaker set — ^we must 
 have been doing 6 knots through the water — ^but 
 we were scarcely able to make any actual progress 
 against the current. But other than a moderate tide 
 rip we saw nothing of the dreaded over-fall in 
 which so many ships have foundered. 
 
 We carried the spinnaker until we were within a 
 few miles of the Needles, which mark the entrance 
 to the Solent. There could be no doubt of St. Cath- 
 erines light, but the Needles light bothered us. Our 
 light list gave the characteristics of the light as a 
 20-second cycle with light 2 sec, eclipse 2 sec, light 
 2 sec, eclipse 14 sec. ; whereas our count was light 
 2 sec, eclipse 2 sec, light 14 sec, eclipse 2 
 sec, which is exactly the reverse. However, we 
 made for it, and shortly after passing St. Albans 
 Head I went below for an hour's sleep. When I 
 came on deck again we were right in the middle of 
 a constellation of blinking lights, with rocks close 
 aboard on the starboard side. I wouldn't have given 
 much for our chances of getting through the chan- 
 nel, which is such a difficult one that large vessels 
 usually go out Spithead at the other end of the 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 71 
 
 Solent rather than risk it even in daylight. I said 
 so and Casey grinned. 
 
 But Casey hadn't been asleep, and before I had 
 waked up sufficiently to know just where we were 
 we had shot into the Solent and were sailing in quiet 
 water for the first time in twenty-two days. It was 
 a strange, depressing sort of feeling. 
 
 The tide was with us now and we covered the .15 
 miles to Cowes in an hour and a half in spite of jthe 
 light breeze. Luffing up off the Royal Yacht Squad- 
 ron near what seemed to be the King's yacht, we 
 dropped the hook alongside a "C. M. B." and a 
 converted "M. L." at 3 a. m., having covered the 
 logged distance of t.'j'j'j nautical miles from Bad- 
 deck in 22 days, i hour and 20 minutes. It had been 
 a glorious fight without a single let-up, and as we 
 stood there on deck, the three of us, in the faint 
 light before the dawn, we felt the glow of pride 
 that comes only from a task well done. We had 
 accomplished, "Typhoon" and her crew, what had 
 seemed to be an impossible thing. We had reached 
 Cowes with a day and a half to spare. 
 
 And then, as the quaint town and the interesting 
 craft about us thanged from mysterious silhouettes 
 to living things with form and color, we went below 
 and slept as we had never slept before. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 Loafing in English Waters 
 
 TYPHOON" lay at anchor, for the first time 
 in 22 days, off the Squadron Castle. All 
 about her the harbor was alive with interesting 
 craft ranging from, the royal yacht "Victoria and 
 Albert,," over on our starboad hand, down to the 
 fleet of international i8-footers and a heterogene- 
 ous assortment of motor craft and steam pinnaces. 
 Alongside us lay an "M. L." converted into a yacht 
 and just astern, one of the famous "C. M. B.'s", 
 also used privately, I imagine, although you can't 
 be sure, for the Squadron ensign is the white one 
 of the Royal Navy. 
 
 The most striking thing about the fleet as a whole 
 was the great variety in the types of craft. There 
 were new boats and old boats, trim raters and sturdy 
 cruisers — many of them what might be called single 
 banders. The boats as a whole reflected an admir- 
 able disregard on the part of their owners for the 
 other fellow's opinion. Each one seemed to reflect 
 the personality of its owner. They indicated a 
 genuine love for the sport rather than a competition 
 in the matter of style and speed. Motor boats, 
 strictly speaking, were in the minority and, except 
 
 72 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 73 
 
 for the converted submarine chasers, there was 
 scarcely an example of what might be termed the 
 express cruiser. The extremely high price of gaso- 
 line, or petrol as it is called in England, of course 
 was partially responsible for this, but I think the 
 real explanation lies in the fact that this type of 
 craft is not compatible with the temperament of 
 the British yachtsman. He has in his veins more 
 of the tradition of the sea than we have and he 
 runs rather to the types that have been evolved 
 through generations as the most suitable for his 
 conditions, which, on the whole^ are somewhat more 
 severe than our own. Nowhere in England is there 
 a body of water that would compare with I^ng 
 Island Sound except possibly the Solent and the 
 various estuaries, and while we saw little evidence of 
 it during our stay, the winds as a general thing 
 are stronger than our own, as might be expected 
 on the lee side of the Atlantic. 
 
 By far the greater number of the boats about us 
 were auxiliaries — staunch sailing craft with low 
 auxiliary power. Many of these were twenty or 
 thirty or even fifty years old, but all were kept up 
 regardless of age or type. There were Falmouth 
 Quay punts, Bristol pilot cutters, double enders of 
 the North Sea type and some that showed the skill 
 of Fife or Linton Hope or the late Albert Strange. 
 There were all types of rig but the most popular 
 were the cutter, the yawl and the ketch. The sloop 
 
74 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 except in racing craft is practically unknown and 
 the schooner is rare. 
 
 All this we could see in the early light as we 
 snugged down "Typhoon" preparatory to the first 
 undisturbed sleep we had had since leaving Bad- 
 deck. 
 
 Our coming to Cowes had been like that of a 
 modest burglar ; not so our awakening several hours 
 later. It seems that Cowes had heard of our de- 
 parture from Baddeck and had been expecting us 
 — but not so soon. We were jolted into conscious- 
 ness about eight o'clock by the arrival of the cus- 
 toms authorities, whom we received in our pajamas. 
 The irrepressible Casey, seizing upon the oppor- 
 tunity as an event demanding a certain amount of 
 hospitality, broke out a case of Canadian rye and 
 in consequence the formalities incident to entering 
 our ship were brief indeed. The little informal 
 health certificate which our friend, Doctor Mc- 
 Aulay, had scribbled the midnight of our departure 
 from Baddeck, was accepted and we were given 
 the formal certificate of "pratique." This finished, 
 we were legitimate prey for a horde of newspaper 
 correspondents,, photographers and the movie men. 
 With an admirable disregard for convention Bald- 
 win insisted on being photographed in his luridly 
 striped night gear much to the disgust of the skip- 
 per, who endeavors to maintain an air of dignity 
 and respectability at all times. 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 75 
 
 With the assistance of the customs launch, the 
 press contingent and our faithful friend, Harry 
 Speed, the boatman, we found a more convenient 
 mooring off the "Pontoon," and if some of the as- 
 sistance was a bit sketchy from over-participation 
 in Casey's hospitality, there were enough, willing 
 hands to make the job light and almost in less time 
 than it takes to tell it we were securely berthed with 
 bow and stern lines out to the big mooring buoys 
 which are provided for this purpose. From, this 
 time on Harry Speed became our guide, philosopher 
 and friend, and in helping with our repairs, taking 
 on stores and looking after "Typhoon" his services 
 were invaluable. His name is not exactly descrip- 
 tive, for his virtues, while manifold, do not include 
 quixotic or impetuous haste of action. Reliability 
 would have been a better cognomen. 
 
 In the meantime the "Victoria and Albert" with 
 the royal family aboard had left the harbor, but 
 many of those who come to Cowes for Regatta 
 Week had stayed over for the international motor 
 boat races, and for the rest of the day and in fact 
 for the three weeks our ship remained at Cowes 
 there was scarcely a moment that some interested 
 visitor was not aboard. The Royal Yacht Squadron 
 sent us an invitation to make use of the Castle and 
 the Royal London Y- C. made us honorary members 
 during our visit. 
 
 A list of those who visited "Typhoon," had 
 
76 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 one been kept,, would have been most interesting. 
 From the highest to the lowest they came and all 
 were welcome. One of the first of our visitors was 
 Gen. John Seeley, the Lord Lieutenant of Hamp- 
 shire, who came aboard and welcomed us in the 
 name of the King and expressed a regret that His 
 Majesty had left without an opportunity to inspect 
 our ship, in which he felt the sailor King would 
 have been interested. The Earl of Dunraven did 
 us the honor of coming aboard. (I say did us the 
 honor not from any particular respect for titles but 
 because of his record as a sailor.) All but the young- 
 est of our yachtsmen will remember Lord Dunraven 
 as the owner of the "Valkyries" that attempted to 
 lift the America's Cup. 
 
 Several days later I returned Lord Dunraven's 
 visit. The grand old Irishman's yacht is a tre- 
 mendous thing that was used as a hospital ship dur- 
 ing the war — the absolute ideal according to the 
 popular conception of what a steam yacht ought 
 to be. But as he welcomed me aboard, he said: 
 "You know, Nutting, I'm not satisfied with this sort 
 of thing. I'd much rather have a tiller in my hand; 
 I'ni a sailor at heart. But this ship is comfortable 
 and she was useful during the war. 
 
 "But I know what you want," he continued, with 
 remarkable insight into the innermost conscious- 
 ness of a perfect stranger. "You want a good, old 
 American cocktail." And I did. . . . 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 'j'j 
 
 As I left him, I explained to Lord Dunraven that, 
 so far as I was concerned, he could sail any old kind 
 of a ship he chose. 
 
 Several days after our arrival a modest sort of 
 man rowed by in a dinghy with a couple of ladies, 
 evidently wishing to come aboard. Casey, who was 
 standing in the companionway, smiled reassuringly, 
 but after several unsuccessful attempts to muster 
 courage to invite himself aboard, the retiring gen- 
 tleman rowed away. We found out later that it was 
 the Duke of Leeds. Imagine a well-known mem- 
 ber of our most prominent yacht club rowing about 
 Newport harbor in a lo ft. dink! The Englishman 
 has not forgotten how to play. 
 
 Every day during our stay at Cowes brought 
 new and interesting craft that dropped in out of 
 the Solent. One of the most noteworthy of the 
 many boats that were moored near us was an 
 auxiliary cutter of the famous Bristol pilot type 
 owned by Mr. F. W. Lanchester, whose works on 
 aerodynamics are well known in this country. I 
 had heard the praises of the type sung by a number 
 of the British writers, but she was the first of the 
 class that I ever met up with. Built originally as a 
 pilot boat, she had been taken over by Mr. Lanches- 
 ter and converted according to his own ideas into 
 a most comfortable cruiser. She was typical of her 
 class, a little larger than the "Typhoon," but much 
 bluffer of bow and fuller in body, giving her a great 
 
78 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 deal more room below decks. In their work in the 
 Bristol Channel such boats are handled by two men 
 or sometimes in fact by a man and a boy, and when 
 the pilot goes aboard the incoming ship the boat 
 frequently is sailed back to her mooring single 
 handed. There is a great deal to be said for the 
 cutter rig for cruising, as I have always felt since 
 the days of the old "Nereis." My friend, Claude 
 Worth, considers it the ultimate type as exemplified 
 by his auxiHary, "Tern HI." 
 
 Another of our friends was the "Solapax," a 
 40-footer, owned by Mr. E. G. Hawker of Poole. 
 "Solapax" is a double ender of the North Sea type 
 and although but 40 ft. on top, has full headroom 
 throughout under a flush deck. She is a high sided, 
 buoyant looking ship, as the picture will show, 
 and her gear like that of Mr. Lanchester's cutter 
 made that of "Typhoon" actually look light. 
 "Solapax" is 36 ft. on the waterline by 12 ft. beam 
 and 6 ft. draft and is powered with a two-cylinder, 
 15 hp. kerosene motor. She is rigged as a ketch 
 with the rudder hung on the curved stern post, like 
 many of the Scandinavian fishing craft, and steers 
 with a tiller which is universally used in England 
 in preference to a wheel. 
 
 Unique among the craft with which "Typhoon" 
 hobnobbed was a Dutch barge type yacht which I 
 knew instantly, as she luffed up near us, as the 
 "Velsa," once owned by Arnold Bennett and on 
 
Running up the English Qiannel with the spinnaker set 
 
 Claud Worth, the author of "Yacht Cruising," 
 and Ingham Reeves aboard "Tern III." 
 

 
 ^.^ Si' 
 
 , .*<i 
 
 
 I! 1,1^ . '/ 
 
 
 
 4. 
 
 <.«,• 
 
 ^A^, 
 
 
 cc 
 
 =^ H, 
 
 
 
 ^j;'ife;.j 
 
 a 
 
 
 
 
 This chart of the Solent is typical of the excellent ones published 
 by the Royal Cruising Club 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 79 
 
 which he wrote "From the Log of the 'Velsa.' " 
 This boat is now owned by Mr. Herbert Reiach, the 
 editor of Yachting Monthly, who dropped in at 
 Cowes to look over the "Typhoon," and it would 
 be possible to devote a whole volume to her many 
 unusual features. In Denmark I had seen a num- 
 ber of freighters of the Dutch barge type but I had 
 always felt that in spite of the claims that are made 
 for them, they were more picturesque than efficient, 
 defying as they do most of the precepts of naval 
 architecture. 
 
 I had not realized what a really comfortable 
 cruiser such a boat would make until I stepped 
 aboard the "Velsa." All the peculiarities of the 
 original type had been retained in her design, in- 
 cluding the tumbled home top sides, the spoon bow,, 
 lee-boards and tremendous carved rudder. The 
 bow is a bit flatter, I believe, than is customary and 
 must be a terrible thing in a head sea, but for cruis- 
 ing in shoal water where the ability to lie over a 
 tide on the mud, get under bridges and the like is 
 necessary, she would be hard to improve on. Her 
 mast is stepped in a tabernacle and can be lowered 
 by means of the deck winches and her rig, while 
 complicated in appearance, has many advantages 
 for short handed work. The loose footed mainsail 
 which, by the way, is characteristic of most English 
 cruising craft, may be triced up at the tack and is 
 much easier to reef than our own laced sail. The 
 
8o THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 bowsprit is of the reefing type popular on the other 
 side, and may be completely drawn in when lying at 
 a mooring or when the weather is such as not to 
 require the jib. 
 
 Below decks "Velsa" is a veritable houseboat with 
 more room than a Harlem flat and her joiner work 
 is of a school now practically dead. When they 
 built "Velsa" they built her for a hundred years and 
 her construction was an eye-opener to me. I 
 thought I knew what heavy construction was, but 
 "Velsa" in this respect transcends anything I have 
 ever seen. 
 
 While most of the boats were auxiliary cruisers 
 there were exceptions. I remember one boat about 
 35 ft. long, evidently a converted ship's life boat,, 
 with considerable power and a stocky, short ketch 
 rig. This boat, I found later, belonged to one of 
 "Typhoon's" friends. I have forgotten the exact 
 circumstances of our meeting with this yachtsman, 
 but I remember distinctly one beastly rainy night 
 we were stumbling along the unlighted streets of 
 Cowes on our way to a dinner, when some one hailed 
 us with: "'Typhoon,' ahoy!" I shouted back: 
 
 "Hello, old Top, can you direct us to H 
 
 Lodge?" The muffled stranger happened to be 
 going to the same place and we trudged along to- 
 gether through the rain. When we arrived he 
 proved to be Lord Albemarle. 
 
 When I remarked to him. later upon the fact that 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 8i 
 
 many of the members of the Royal Yacht Squad- 
 ron, the most exclusive club in the world, were con- 
 tent to play about with small boats in contrast to the 
 yachtsmen of some of our best known clubs,, he 
 laughed and explained the phenomenon on purely 
 economic grounds. There may be an element of 
 truth in the explanation, but the fact remains that 
 most Englishmen prefer to sail comparatively small 
 boats. General John Seeley sails a lo-ton Falmouth 
 Quay punt, and his brother. Sir Charles, owns or 
 rather owned a 35-ton yawl that was wrecked on 
 the French coast while we were at Cowes. 
 
 As we of the "Typhoon" were in a sort of unoffi- 
 cial way representing American yachtsmen, it may 
 not be out of place to express here our appreciation 
 of the delightful hospitality of both Sir Charles and 
 General Seeley, to whom we are grateful for 
 glimpses of Gatcombe and Brook, the sort of his- 
 toric country places that we Americans see pictured 
 in architectural journals but seldom have the oppor- 
 tur^ity to see and touch. Their kindness was char- 
 acteristic of that shown us on all sides. Everyone 
 on the Isle of Wight seems to have the tradition 
 of the sea in his soul, and we who dropped in out 
 of the sea were fortunate in consequence. 
 
 Cowes is the home of the famous Saunders shops 
 and we had an opportunity to see a good deal of 
 the sort of work that this concern is now turning 
 out. The Saunders' motor boats are interesting 
 
82 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 more from the standpoint of their construction than 
 from the design, which is of the usual V-bottom 
 type. They, are made entirely of "Consuto" linen 
 sewn plywood, with which the hull is planked in 
 five pieces — two for the sides, two for the bottom 
 and one for the transom. In the framing the ex- 
 perience gained in the building of airplanes is ap- 
 parent and the finished boats are considerably 
 lighter, I believe, than our own craft of this type. 
 
 Over at Southampton the Thornycrofts also are 
 building interesting boats. Besides their speed 
 boats, which are a development of the famous 
 "C. M. B.'s", this concern is building a number of 
 light fast cruisers,, one of the best examples of which 
 is owned by my friend, Theophile Desnos, the Vice- 
 Commodore of the British Motor Boat Club. On 
 a trip to London with Mr. Desnos the run from 
 Cowes across the Solent and up Southampton Water 
 was made in his "Eileen H" and, little as I am inter- 
 ested personally in the express cruiser, I must con- 
 fess I enjoyed slipping along past the best of them 
 at IS knots. 
 
 On the way up Southampton Water we passed 
 group after group' of odd craft, rusty and covered 
 with the scars of hard usage — the remains of a vast 
 fleet developed for the highly specialized uses of the 
 war and worthless for any other purpose. There 
 were "mystery ships," double enders at which you 
 would have had to look twice to tell whether they 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 83 
 
 were coming or going, patrol boats, sweepers and 
 the like, all bearing mute testimony to the terrible 
 waste of a war which, due to our own reactionary 
 selves, has left the world little in return for its 
 heroic sacrifices, either material or spiritual, except 
 a burden of debt and a great cynicism and disillu- 
 sionment. 
 
 And then there was the cruise over to the Hamble 
 River, which of all the places in England probably 
 is the most interesting to the man who sails his own 
 boat. I had an invitation to attend a regatta at 
 Burham-on-Crouch, over east of the Thames 
 Estuary, which I was unable to accept. This is an- 
 other rendezvous for single-handers, but I can't see 
 how it would be any more delightful than, Scjy, 
 Burseldon on the Hamble. The expedition to 
 Burseldon was made on "Redshank," the little sloop 
 owned by my friend Ingham Reeves, to whom I am 
 indebted for two of the most delightful days spent 
 in England. His little auxiliary is a masterpiece 
 in teak and mahogany, with the tanned sails that 
 are so popular in England. 
 
 The run from, Cowes across the Solent was made 
 under power, and as we turned into the Hamble 
 from Southampton Water we sighted my friend 
 Parmenter, an American from Paris, who had 
 sailed across the Channel and was cruising in Brit- 
 ish waters in a little French rater. His red sails 
 were slatting idly in the calm and we took him in 
 
84 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 tow and all had dinner at the Old Ship House, the 
 home of Mr. Reeves. 
 
 I had heard that there were a lot of old "M. L.'s" 
 in the Hamble, and sure enough, a half mile or so 
 from the mouth we came upon the first group of 
 these weather-beaten, battle-scarred little ships 
 moored four abreast and extending as far as the 
 eye could see. For the first time I realized the 
 magnitude of the job of building such a fleet. They 
 extended for miles, and the strange and varied gear 
 with which they were cluttered gave evidence of the 
 extent of their work in the war. Most of them I 
 understand had been sold to some French concern, 
 to whom,, I suppose, I am indebted for "Typhoon's" 
 present steering wheel, which I lifted from one of 
 the most dilapidated of the fleet. Since there were 
 enough steering wheels to supply all the yachts that 
 might be built in the next ten years, I feel no very 
 great remorse. 
 
 One of the principal reasons for visiting the 
 Hamble was to meet Claude Worth, whose "Yacht 
 Cruising" is one of the best known books on the 
 subject. He had just returned from a cruise along 
 the French coast in his 53-ft. auxiliary, "Tern III," 
 which is the embodiment of the experience he has 
 gained with a number of cruising craft of all kinds. 
 Here also was the "Maud," the Fife designed 
 double-ended ketch made famous in Worth's book 
 and now owned by our good friend Dr. Bowers. 
 
The King's racing cutter "Britannia" going into winter quarters 
 after the Cowes regatta 
 
 Photograph by Debenham 
 
 The Royal yacht "Victoria and Albert" 
 
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 3 
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 3 
 
 Is 
 
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 43 
 
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 3 
 CIS 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 85 
 
 F. E. Knight, the author of "The Cruise of the 
 'Falcon' " and "The Cruise of the 'Alert,' " was not 
 aboard his houseboat and we missed him, but we 
 met Dr. Harrison Butler^ whose designs of "tabloid 
 cruisers" are famous, and also many of the other 
 sailor men with whose names I was already familiar 
 through their articles in the British yachting papers. 
 
 At Swanwick, not far from the Old Ship House, 
 were discovered recently the remains of an old 
 Viking ship which has lain buried in the mud since 
 about the year 800 A. D. At any rate, it was long 
 before the Norman Conquest that a roving band of 
 Norsemen descended on the Hamble River, which 
 even then proved so attractive that the crew de- 
 cided to remain, killing off the men and old women 
 and settling down to a life of domestic happiness,, 
 thus spoiling a brilliant cruising career. In 
 "Typhoon's" fo'c'sle there is a part of a plank from 
 this old ship with the treenails still in place and 
 showing the marks of the huge square-headed iron 
 nails used in its construction. 
 
 After we had been at Cowes a week we lost Bald- 
 win, We realized when we started that it would 
 be necessary for him to spend some time with the 
 Admiralty in London and then to rush back to 
 Baddeck. But when it actually came to his leaving, 
 it was just plain hell. I tried to pound the type- 
 writer that morning while he packed up, and when 
 old faithful Harry Speed rowed him away to the 
 
86 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 Southampton steamer, there seemed no joy in the 
 world at all. Judging from Casey's face, on which 
 the characteristic grin was struggling hard to stay 
 put, he, too, was having a hard time of it. 
 
 We were confronted with the problem of filling 
 Casey's place, and I thought of the old crowd who 
 were in the habit of dropping in at the Motor Boat 
 office to talk boats, and I wished, as I have so often 
 since, that they might have been along — old George 
 Bonnell, with whom I had cruised so many stren- 
 uous miles, or Syd Breese or "Koke" Stephens or 
 Bayard Rodman or any one of the members of the 
 New York Canoe Club. W. P. Stephens in particu- 
 lar would have been in his element. W. P. has a 
 very high regard for British yachtsmen and British 
 yachting, and his articles are better known in Eng- 
 land than they are here. 
 
 Thomas Ratsey, the dean of yacht sailmakers,, a 
 man who not only practices sailmaking as a busi- 
 ness but loves it as well, and still sails the "Dolly 
 Varden" to frequent victories, although she is well 
 over 40 years old, said to me: "We admire Ste- 
 phens' articles because of their absolute fairness 
 and honesty. In fact I can do no better than say 
 that we consider W. P. Stephens a man without 
 guile." 
 
 Mr. Ratsey lost three sons in the war and now 
 runs his business single-handed under the name of 
 Ratsey & Lapthorne, a branch of which we have 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 87 
 
 at City Island; His shop is a veritable treasure 
 house of yachting lore and his home also reflects 
 his interest in the subject. Given such an interest 
 and a craftsmanship that transcends the term and 
 should be spoken of as an art, no wonder Ratsey's 
 sails are masterpieces. In speaking of the veteran 
 sailmaker, Lord Dunraven told me that if he were 
 making an estimate of British society, he would list 
 Tom Ratsey as one of England's foremost gentle- 
 men, and if that grand old Irishman's opinion is as 
 good as his American cocktails, it is worth a great 
 deal. We are grateful to Mr. Ratsey for his hos- 
 pitality and his kind interest in the "Typhoon." Be- 
 fore we left, learning that we carried no trisail, he 
 insisted that we take his own from the "Dolly Var- 
 den." We have since had occasion to use this sail 
 in many a tight place and I don't really see what 
 we should have done without it. 
 
 But to get back to the matter of a crew. It would 
 have been foolish for Dorsett and me to attempt the 
 long grind back to New York alone, but it began 
 to look as if this might be necessary. We had op- 
 portunities to sell "Typhoon" but I had determined 
 to bring her back. I couldn't leave her over there 
 after putting into her the thought and energy that 
 I had and after what we had been through together. 
 I was determined to bring her back even if we had 
 to do it alone. 
 
 In spite of his hard time of it on the way over, 
 
88 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 Dorsett was keen to see it through. We had several 
 applications from people who seemed not to realize 
 the nature of such a cruise and whom we were 
 forced to turn down. Then along came a couple of 
 young chaps from a little sloop that had been 
 moored alongside us for several days. They were 
 expecting to go to Canada with a party in the fall 
 and were of the opinion that they could arrange 
 their affairs to come with us. They were good small 
 boat sailors and their experience as Captains in the 
 Tank Corps during the war insured their staying 
 qualities. Of course I don't mean "staying quali- 
 ties" in the literal sense, for once started there is 
 nothing to do but stay. I refer more to those quali- 
 fications such as endurance, adaptability and cheer- 
 fulness without which I imagine a long passage at 
 sea would be hell indeed. Our problem, seemed 
 solved as they rushed off to London, but due to 
 lack of time they were unable to make the neces- 
 sary arrangements and we were left within two 
 days of the date we had set for starting, still with- 
 out a crew. 
 
 That evening the solution came in the form of a 
 boat load of sea scouts. I had seen and admired 
 these youngsters in the Hamble River the day be- 
 fore, and as they luffed their long, rakish whale- 
 boat alongside "Typhoon" with all the snap and 
 skill of an American Coast Guard crew, I had an 
 idea. They, too, had had one, for it seems that 
 
A typical English auxiliary-powered barge 
 
 The late Herbert Reiach at the wheel of the "Velsa" 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 89 
 
 there were all sorts of stories afloat about the plans 
 of the "Typhoon." They clambered aboard and 
 their interest in every last detail of our equipnient 
 and their keen intelligence was most refreshing. 
 Fox, the scout master, a stalwart youth of 23, ex- 
 plained that he had tried to bring up his "nippers" 
 in the way they should go, and they certainly did 
 reflect a lot of good hard training. They all wore 
 the characteristic British sea scout uniform — ^jersey 
 and shorts with bare legs. Fox explained without 
 further formality that he would like to go back with 
 us and that if we needed another hand, Hookey, 
 one of his boys, a youngster of 18, with an over-all 
 length of 6 ft. 2 in., would like to go, too, or rather 
 he felt that they would be able to do it, for there 
 wasn't one of all that boat load who was not itching 
 to sign on. 
 
 But the next day brought news of paternal dis- 
 approval in Fox's case and, of course, I advised that 
 he forget it. But again that night the youngsters 
 gathered aboard. Fox was in a quandary but de- 
 cided to flip a coin and the matter was settled. It 
 was then late but we were scheduled to sail the 
 following morning and the crew decided to row, 
 there being no wind, the 14 miles over to the Hamble 
 and back, to enable Fox to get his gear off the 
 "Black Rose" on which he had been cruising. 
 
 They were back in three hours and at last things 
 looked bright again. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Across the Channel to Brittany 
 
 TYPHOON" had remained at her moorings 
 during her entire stay at Cowes. While 
 she had stood up well under the drubbing of her run 
 across the Atlantic, which was really her trial trip, 
 there were a number of minor repairs to be made 
 before taking her to sea again. You will remember 
 that a day or two before reaching the Scilly Islands 
 we had come near losing our mizzen mast. Due to 
 the shock of a gybe, the seizing had slipped down 
 the mizzen shrouds which are in one piece to the 
 side and this opened up the eye and allowed all the 
 strain to come on the shoulder cleat, which had 
 carried away. New cleats had to be fashioned and 
 mortised into the mizzen head and the shrouds had 
 to be reseized in a manner that would prevent a 
 recurrence of the trouble. A strop had to be made 
 for the main boom to replace the temporary one 
 Casey had rigged up when the boom traveler car- 
 ried away in mid-Atlantic. In a number of places 
 where the shrouds chafed the mainsail and mizzen 
 the stitching had worn through necessitating a day's 
 work with the palm and needle, and there were other 
 
 go 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 91 
 
 trifling things,, unimportant in themselves, that took 
 what time our hospitable friends would allow us. 
 
 Then there was the motor. Jim took it down 
 completely and after this major operation the vital 
 parts lay strewn all over the cabin floor. Among 
 other little troubles we found that in some way 
 water had worked into the cylinder and the rings 
 were "frozen" in their grooves. I don't know just 
 how this happened as our exhaust line runs out of 
 the deck and is kept plugged when the motor is not 
 running. When the job of reassembling the motor 
 had been completed, still laboring under the delusion 
 that we needed very high air pressure in order to 
 start successfully, we took the air tank to the J. S. 
 White shops to have it charged with their com- 
 pressor. We didn't realize then, what we found out 
 later on, that the motor will start on as low as 100 
 lbs. of air if everything is right. We imagined we 
 wanted about 300 lbs. in order to make sure of start- 
 ing without using the blow torch, but we split the 
 tank before this was reached. After welding it we 
 tried it again and split it a second time. Welding 
 it again, we finally got 200 lbs. and went back and 
 wasted it in a futile effort to start. When we turned 
 on the starting lever there was no snappy response 
 and it seemed as if something were obstructing the 
 air line. Taking down the air connections to the 
 cylinder again, we found a certain mushroom valve, 
 the function of which we were unable to fathom 
 
92 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 unless it was placed there to prevent too great a 
 rush of gas to the air tank when charging the latter 
 from the motor compression. At any rate we took 
 it out and thereafter had little difficulty in starting 
 with even lOO lbs. although we noticed that to pre- 
 vent hammering it was necessary to exercise care 
 in opening the charging handle when the starting 
 air was low. From then on when for any reason 
 we lost our air pressure we had no difficulty in get- 
 ting it back by means of the hand pump that was 
 supplied with the motor. 
 
 When we arrived at Cowes we still had about 
 half the food with which we had started and, except 
 for a couple of hams and a strip of bacon that had 
 become insubordinate and had to be made to walk 
 the plank, the food was still in good condition. An- 
 ticipating a stop on the French coast and another 
 in Spain, we took on only a small supply of such 
 things as fresh bread and tinned milk, meats and 
 fruits. The water in the main tank had held out 
 well and had kept in perfect condition. In fact, 
 although we used the main supply for washing as 
 well as cooking and drinking, it had not been neces- 
 sary to tap the water breakers, six of which were 
 lashed along the sides of the cockpit. 
 
 Oak waterbreakers,, I think, are much over-esti- 
 mated as a means of carrying fresh water. Ours 
 had been filled a week or ten days before we sailed 
 and had been emptied and refilled several times, but 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 93 
 
 even so the water was discolored with tannic acid 
 and really unfit to use for any purpose except wash- 
 ing. I suppose it would be possible to correct this 
 condition, possibly with soda, but we were not en- 
 tirely free from it throughout the cruise, although 
 later on we were able to use the water from the 
 breakers for cooking and even for making tea and 
 coffee. 
 
 Feeling that we could depend upon the main 
 water tank we discarded two of the breakers at 
 Cowes and later on at the Azores knocked the head 
 out of a third and used it as a pickle barrel for our 
 salt pork and salt beef. 
 
 F. E. Knight, in his books, "The Cruise of the 
 'Falcon' " and "The Cruise of the 'Alert' " speaks 
 of the necessity of getting down to simple food when 
 making long ocean cruises. While we came to this 
 later on, we had not thus far realized the necessity. 
 Our original stock of food had been remarkably 
 complete and included a big supply of tinned beef- 
 steak and onions, corned beef, vegetables and fruit 
 and had such things been available later on, the 
 problem of meals for the homeward cruise would 
 have been simple. But fancy food of this kind, at 
 the few places on the other side where it is avail- 
 able, is tremendously expensive, and I would advise 
 anyone contemplating a long cruise to lay in a good 
 supply of flour, potatoes, salt beef, salt pork, sea bis- 
 cuits, and, in fact, the sort of thing that is carried 
 
94 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 on sailing ships that are not equipped with the cold 
 storage facilities of our modern steamships. 
 
 Before leaving England there is one institution 
 we must mention because I hope that some time 
 there will be such a one in our own country. This 
 is the Royal Cruising Club whose membership in- 
 cludes many of the real cruising yachtsmen of Eng- 
 land. My friend, Mr. Claude Worth, the vice-com- 
 modore, told me many interesting things about the 
 activities of this organization and presented me with 
 a number of the charts which it publishes. These 
 charts cover much of the English coast, at least that 
 part of it which is suitable for cruising, and also 
 parts of the French coast. They are conveniently 
 arranged in small sheets and of a scale about that 
 of our own 1/80,000 scale U. S. Coast Survey charts 
 and they contain all the information required by a 
 small boat, much of which is not shown on the regu- 
 lar Admiralty charts. At the outbreak of the war 
 the data compiled by the Royal Cruising Club was 
 of inestimable value to the Admiralty which, I be- 
 lieve, co-operates with the Club to some extent in 
 the work of preparing the charts. Why can't some 
 such club be started on this side of the Atlantic? 
 
 It was on Tuesday, August 31, that we finally 
 took leave of Cowes. The quaint town that had 
 come to mean so much to us had sobered down again 
 after its annual fling, to drift placidly along for 
 fifty weeks until the next regatta should stir it into 
 
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THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 95 
 
 life again. The English yachting season already 
 was drawing to a close,, the "Britannia" had gone 
 into her winter quarters and we began to realize 
 that there were long miles ahead of us and that it 
 was time to be on our way again. 
 
 Had we started earlier I had planned vaguely to 
 cruise possibly as far as Dover or the Thames 
 Estuary and then cross the Channel to the Belgian 
 coast and visit Zeebrugge where the "Vindictive" 
 and the gallant "M. L.'s" wrote one of the most bril- 
 liant pages in naval history. From Zeebrugge I 
 had thought of following down the French coast 
 as far as Ushant and from there taking a departure 
 for Cape Ortegal or Cape Finisterre at the point of 
 the Spanish Peninsula. But Cowes, the Solent, 
 Southampton Water and the Hamble had proved 
 fascinating and had held us too long. Besides the 
 English coast from the Isle of Wight to Dover is 
 far less interesting to the yachtsman than that sec- 
 tion we had already passed from Land's End to 
 Cowes. The coast of France, especially the Brit- 
 tany coast, I had had a hankering to visit — and the 
 quaint Channel Islands, Alderney, Guernsey and 
 Jersey, those little bits of the British Empire that 
 lie nestled close to Cape la Hague. It is a wicked 
 coast, this coast of Brittany, broken and rock- 
 strewn and therefore fascinating. But to get to 
 New York before bad weather should set in meant 
 direct courses and hard sailing and left no chance 
 
96 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 for exploring a coast that in itself is worth a sea- 
 son's cruise. And so we decided to make directly 
 for Ushant or some point on the mainland which 
 would allow us a glimpse of Brittany without taking 
 us far out of our track. 
 
 By one o'clock of August 31 everything was in 
 readiness for the start. The Sea Scouts had come 
 down in their rowing cutter to cheer their two com- 
 rades on their way, and Mr. Bruce Atkey and his 
 children had come aboard for the run down the 
 Solent. A little group of friends waved us farewell 
 from the pontoon as we slipped our mooring and 
 worked out into the harbor under motor power. 
 Circling the fleet of yachts, that had dwindled 
 greatly since the big week, we chugged our stately 
 way past the Royal London Y. C. and the Castle of 
 the Royal Yacht Squadron, dipped our ensign and 
 headed down the Solent for the Needles. 
 
 Half way to Hurst Castle we met an incoming 
 pilot cutter under power. She whipped out a snappy 
 "bon voyage" by semaphore, and Fox, who proved 
 to be an expert with the code, shot back "many 
 thanks." 
 
 At 2.55 P. M. Yarmouth was abeam and here the 
 motor, that had been performing perfectly, slowed 
 down and seemed unable to carry the load, although 
 it picked up instantly when the clutch was thrown 
 out. We were approaching the deep narrow pas- 
 sage between Hurst Castle and Ft. Norton. In fact. 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 97 
 
 a fair tide was carrying us down at an alarming 
 speed and there was not wind enough to give us 
 steerage way under sail. We cleared the kedge 
 anchor, ready to let go in the hope of picking up 
 bottom in time to prevent being carried through the 
 narrows with its mill race tide, and possibly on to 
 the rocks that lie beyond. 
 
 Examining the stuffing box we found that it had 
 heated due to the fact that the gland had been drawn 
 up too snugly and after this was backed off and the 
 shaft and fittings had been cooled with water, the 
 motor was started again, without even the necessity 
 of a fuse, and thereafter maintained a constant 422 
 r.p.m. 
 
 Shooting through the narrows with tide and 
 motor power, we bent in to Totland Bay, threw out 
 the clutch and stood by while a boat from shore took 
 off our passengers. As we drew out again and 
 headed for the Needles we passed an inbound liner. 
 The ship proved to be the old "New York" and she 
 must have known us, for as she passed, her ensign 
 came down in salute. Months later in New York 
 I happened to meet a man by the name of Melville. 
 During our conversation it developed that he was 
 the first officer of the "New York" and had been 
 on the bridge and given the order to dip the ensign. 
 The world, as somebody I believe has said before, 
 is small after all. 
 
 Threading the Needles in broad daylight with a 
 
98 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 fair tide and motor power was not nearly so excit- 
 ing as it had been that memorable night when Casey 
 shot "Typhoon" through under full sail, and by 
 four o'clock we were clear of this ticklish place and 
 were again in open water. Outside we found a 
 westerly breeze which by six o'clock had freshened 
 enough to warrant putting on sail. 
 
 Under full sail and motor power we were able 
 to hold a W. S. W. course, which is about S. W. x 
 W. magnetic, for the deviation of our steering com- 
 pass we found by comparison with the spare one 
 to be about one point north on westerly and south- 
 westerly headings. By 7.30 we were off St. Albans. 
 The log registered 17 miles and we concluded that 
 the tide was still with us for St. Albans' head is 
 about 19 miles from the Needles. But the wind was 
 dying and we faced a night of chugging under 
 power. 
 
 Until the new members of the crew should be 
 broken in we decided to run four-hour watches with 
 two men to the watch, and at eight o'clock Charles 
 and I went below for a rest while Dorsett and Fox 
 carried on till midnight. When he became familiar 
 with the ship, I felt that Fox, who was the only 
 other man besides myself who had had any previous 
 cruising experience, would be able to act on his own 
 initiative and for this reason I put him and Dorsett 
 in one watch and took Charles in the other with me. 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 99 
 
 This arrangement would enable us to carry on in- 
 definitely in bad weather and when things were 
 quiet we could reduce the watches to two hours with 
 one man on deck at a time. 
 
 The last entry in the log for August 31st is : 10.45 
 — Full rigged ship about two miles on port hand 
 going our way, sails shining in the moonlight. 
 Hardly a breath of wind, oily swell, head tide since 
 passing St. Albans. 
 
 Wednesday, September ist. — Barograph high 
 and rising slightly. No wind. Running under 
 motor power. 
 
 I :oo A. M. Log 45.25 miles. 
 
 1:15. Breeze springing up from N. W. 
 
 1:50. Portland Bill Light abeam (four flashes 
 every 20 seconds). 
 
 3:10. Engine slowed down. Picked up again 
 when clutch was thrown out but stopped when clutch 
 was thrown in. Got Jim up, started motor and 
 pumped up air. This rest seemed to cure difficulty 
 which may have been due to clogging or improper 
 fuel adjustment. 
 
 4:00. Log 61.00 miles. Stopped motor, turned 
 out port watch. 
 
 5:00. Breeze freshening. Course W. S. W. 
 
 8:00. Wind dying. Log 68.75 miles. 
 
 8:30. Wind dead. 
 
 9 :30. N. W. breeze springing up. 
 
 II :oo. Log 74.75 miles, course W. x S. J/2S. 
 
 1 1 :40. Wind heading us. Course S. W. x W. 
 12.00 M. Course S. W. Log 78.50 miles. 
 
loo TH£ TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 3 :45 P. M. Changed course to S. W. x W. Log 
 
 96.75- 
 
 4:45. Set up main back stay and mizzen fore 
 
 stay as wind is all we can stand under full sail. Log 
 102 miles. 
 
 5 :oo. Took double reef in mainsail. 
 
 7:00. Log 1 1 6. 1 5 miles. Course W. S. W. All 
 three of crew seasick. 
 
 8:00. Took off mainsail eritirely and lashed 
 boom in crutch. Stowed Charles and Fox, who 
 seemed to be greatly perturbed over being sick, 
 especially so soon after partaking of tinned peaches, 
 his favorite fruit. Dorsett feeling better. 
 
 9:00. Got Jim up again at the wheel while I 
 took off mizzen. "Typhoon" was doing nicely 
 under full jib and mizzen but really requires some 
 one at the wheel and I feel the need of a rest. Under 
 jib alone she will sail herself with wind abeam or 
 abaft the beam. As there is considerable shipping 
 even in this part of the Channel, hung out a riding 
 light and at 10:00 P. M. joined the invalids below. 
 I figure we are midway between Start Point and 
 the coast of France and about 50 miles off land. 
 
 10:30. Wind N. N. W. Course W. S. W. Log 
 131 miles. Glass rising. "Typhoon" steering her- 
 self. All turned in. 
 
 Thursday, September 2d. — Cloudy. Wind N. W. 
 Barograph high and steady. All slept late while 
 "Typhoon" sailed herself under jib alone. 
 
 4 A. M. Fox went on deck and reported glow 
 of two lights below horizon off port bow. 
 
 6 :oo A. M. Lights proved to be two light houses, 
 one on a small island. 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" loi 
 
 7:00. W. W. N. prepares breakfast of oatmeal 
 and tea as crew are still a bit groggy. 
 
 10:30. Raised mizzen and steered S. W. along 
 French coast now plainly visible. The islands abeam 
 seem to be Les Sept Isles as nearly as we can judge 
 from our small scale chart. 
 
 1 1 :30. Started motor to fetch point that makes 
 out ahead of us. 
 
 12.00 M. Log 154.00 miles. 
 
 1 :30 P. M. Changed course to W. to dear out- 
 lying island which seems to be He de Batz. Slow 
 work bucking strong head wind and tide and decide 
 to put in instead of beating farther. 
 
 3 :30. Ran through fleet of small fishing boats 
 with red (and some blue) sails. These boats are 
 practically uniform as to size and rig, about 25 to 
 30 ft. in length with tiny jib and mainsail double 
 reefed. One of these craft tried to overhaul us, 
 man standing in bow like Maxfield Parrish's pirate, 
 gesticulating madly and yelling "Pee-lot, pee-lot" 
 at the top of his voice. Left him yelling astern and 
 took a chance of getting through the rocks with 
 lead line going constantly. Picked our way between 
 two light houses on rocks, luffed up in the lee of one 
 of them and slid gently on to a mud flat. At low tide 
 the section we had come through looks like the 
 Sierra mountains and "Typhoon" proved herself a 
 sensible little ship in picking out the only available 
 soft spot on which to go aground. 
 
 Log 172.00 miles. (As it is 15 miles from Cowes 
 to the Needles, where we streamed the log, we had 
 covered 187 nautical miles.) 
 
I02 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 At last we had hit French soil but whether the 
 picturesque little town that lay across the rock 
 studded harbor was St. Pol de Leon or Roscoff, we 
 were unable to tell from our chart. We are always 
 getting into places for which we had no large scale 
 charts and that fact recently was seized upon by 
 one of our newspaper friends as proof that we were 
 indeed amateur sailors. I should like to remind 
 this man, however, that we carried more charts than 
 an Atlantic liner and if we had taken on large scale 
 sheets of all the sections of the European coast on 
 which our sketchy itinerary might land us, we 
 should have had little room for anything else. The 
 only part of our itinerary that was adhered to 
 strictly was the run to Cowes. From there on, as I 
 already have explained, we had no very distinct 
 plans and, while we don't advise this sort of thing, 
 the fact remains that there is a great fascination in 
 exploring unfamiliar coast lines armed solely with 
 general charts. By studying the lay of the land, the 
 range lights and the other local aids to navigation, 
 and by constant use of the lead, it is possible to get 
 into the worst harbors, as we had proved on many 
 occasions, but this sort of thing, of course, is not 
 "sensible yachting" and should never be attempted 
 in bad weather except under motor power. When 
 in doubt, better stay outside. 
 
 Kedging off was not a difficult process, as the tide 
 was rising, and to get the tender overboard, to place 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 103 
 
 the small kedge anchor and back "Typhoon" off 
 with a windlass took but a few minutes. The motor 
 which we had allowed to run idly during the process 
 died for some unknown reason and we lost our air 
 pressure in an unsuccessful effort to start it again. 
 
 While working on the motor we had a bit of an 
 accident. We had lighted the primus stove which 
 is hung in gimbals under the bridge deck and while 
 opening the valve on the air tank, I knocked the 
 stove out of the rack into a pile of kindling in the 
 coal box. The burner broke off releasing the kero- 
 sene under pressure and causing something of a 
 conflagration, which was put out without difficulty 
 with one of the Pyrene guns. 
 
 In the meantime Fox had gone ashore to forage. 
 Knowing no French and lacking confidence in his 
 ability to make himself understood by the sign lan- 
 guage, he armed himself with a pencil and a paper 
 plate on which he drew the items required for our 
 dinner. In an hour he returned triumphantly, stone 
 broke, but the proud possessor of four mackerel. He 
 reported a fine protected little inner harbor back of 
 a stone quay and after an elaborate dinner we beat 
 in under sail and moored at dusk at the very back 
 door of what proved to be Roscoff, one of the 
 quaintest of the. coastal villages of Brittany. Al- 
 ready the quay was alive with Bretons in wooden 
 sabots and picturesque tam o' shanters, vastly ex- 
 cited over the fact that a strange, rakish looking 
 
104 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 craft, manned by a crew of mad foreigners, had 
 come into their very midst — without a "pee-lot." 
 
 One of the greatest fascinations that cruising 
 holds for me is the landfalls. The long passages 
 in themselves sometimes are tiring and often are 
 monotonous but they serve to make keener the joy 
 of dropping in out of the sea on some strange sea- 
 faring nook and fraternizing with its people, with 
 whom one who loves the sea is bound to find much 
 in common. 
 
 It would have been difficult indeed to have struck 
 upon a more delightful place than the one we had 
 found totally by accident. For centuries Brittany 
 has withstood the onslaughts of modern civilization 
 and this picturesque corner of France still lives 
 largely in its legendary past. Even the religion of 
 the Bretons is colored with legend and superstition 
 and the costumes are those of another century. 
 Everything in Roscofif is old. The stone buildings, 
 constructed at a time when men built for perma- 
 nency, are gray with age and weathered by the 
 winds that blow in f rpm the sea, and even the peo- 
 ple give the impression of age. So far as the men 
 are concerned, this impression is a reality for Brit- 
 tany, like the rest of France, gave all her young men 
 to the defense of her country, and but few of them 
 t-eturned. 
 
 One of the first of those to greet us on the quay 
 was an Englishman by the name of Carnegy, who 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 105 
 
 took me in tow for a stroll about the town and a 
 glass of vin rouge before turning in. Despite the 
 hospitality of this man, who became our good friend, 
 the first evening ashore was a melancholy experi- 
 ence. The unlighted streets were melancholy, the 
 gray houses were melancholy, and the people them- 
 selves, though hospitable, seemed melancholy. We 
 turned in that night with a depressed sort of feel- 
 ing, for you see we had not experienced Roscoff 
 by daylight and we did not realize what lay in store 
 for us. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Crossing the Bay of Biscay 
 
 BEESQUI, M'sieur, you please beesqui?" 
 "Cigarette, s'il vous plait, cigarette, ciga- 
 rette?" 
 
 It was some such chorus as this that aroused 
 us that first morning at Roscoff. Shrill and in- 
 sistent and repeated ad infinitum, it emanated from 
 a dozen touseled little heads that packed the com- 
 panionway and jostled each other for an intimate 
 view of the mad foreigners. 
 
 "Cute little devils," I thought as we turned out, 
 dressed and ate our breakfast under a barrage of 
 excited comment and insistent pleading for 
 "beesqui" and cigarettes. Although usually tol- 
 erant in my judgment of the conduct of others, 
 I did feel that the tender age of four to seven was 
 too young for cigarettes,, but when a generous hand- 
 out of "beesqui" (sea biscuits) only served to at- 
 tract other and equally ravenous visitors, I dropped 
 both descriptive adjectives. From then on they were 
 just plain devils. But you can't be too hard on a 
 regular kid, and during our three days at Roscoff 
 they had the run of the ship. 
 
 Although the weather was gray and dreary, the 
 
 I06 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 107 
 
 town that had seemed so melancholy the night be- 
 fore took on an entirely different aspect in the morn- 
 ing. The buildings seemed less drab and the people 
 more alive. After all Brittany is a corner of France, 
 and no part of France could be dull or uninteresting. 
 Furthermore, Roscoff proved to be something of a 
 summer resort, and while not exactly a Trouville, 
 the hotels and bathing beach, in spite of the lateness 
 of the season^ added a bit of life and color to the 
 gray little town. But there was none of the garish 
 artificiality that seems a part of most summer re- 
 sorts the world over, and those who come to Ros- 
 coff come because of a love of its native quaintness. 
 Among those who spend the summer months on 
 the coast of Brittany are M. and Mme. Chaumier of 
 Paris, and while the skipper was ashore wandering 
 about the town to avoid the curious visitors who 
 were increasing in numbers as the news of 
 "Typhoon's*' arrival spread through the village, 
 these people came aboard and left an invitation for 
 me to look in on them at Les Capucins. What Les 
 Capucins might be I hadn't the slightest idea, but I 
 went straightway and discovered one of the most 
 delightful places on the coast of France. Originally 
 a monastery built by the Capucin monks, the place, 
 with its extensive grounds walled in in the French 
 manner, had been taken over by M. Chaumier and 
 converted into a villa with every appointment of a 
 modern country home. 
 
io8 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 There were tennis courts and wines and Ameri- 
 can cigarettes and the largest fig tree in the world. 
 The grim forbidding walls that were built to cloister 
 somber monks were softened by vines and flowers 
 that were a symbol of the happiness and kindly hos- 
 pitality of two people who unwittingly had come 
 closer to the true spirit of Christianity than the 
 venerable brotherhood that they succeeded. And 
 there was a guest from London, a Miss Enid Guest, 
 to be exact, who knew my good friend. Miss M. 
 Czaplicka, the Oxford ethnologist and explorer, and 
 so I was convinced that blundering into a little 
 niche in a rock-bound coast was right and proper 
 and just as it should have been. Always pretty 
 strong for blundering, I have now become convinced 
 that it is the only policy. Never have I been able 
 to plan for myself better than chance has done it 
 for me. 
 
 On the second day the wind held westerly and 
 we were easily convinced that little would be gained 
 trying to beat to Ushant against it, and so the 
 Chaumiers and all their friends took me for a tramp 
 along the cliffs that skirt the coast. There were 
 quaint farms where respectful, God-fearing peasants 
 eke out a difficult existence. The air was rich with 
 the smell of burning peat and the downs were bright 
 with purple heather. I like the heather — the 
 weather-beaten kind that scorns the easy lowlands 
 and clings to rocky wind-swept crags. There's char- 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 109 
 
 acter in such a flower. With the agility of the 
 elusive mountain goat and at great sacrifice of edi- 
 torial dignity, the skipper gathered great bunches 
 of heather f rorn inaccessible places and later lost his 
 reputation for physical prowess by being soundly 
 beaten at tennis by the lady from London. 
 
 Mme. Chaumier spoke quaint, delightful Eng- 
 lish, and her husband made up for his inability to 
 handle the language by constantly running off to 
 reappear with American cigarettes or dusty bottles 
 of old wine. No wonder then that we again called 
 off our plan to sail the following day, Sunday, Sept. 
 5, on the slim excuse of a head wind, and spent still 
 another day with our friends. 
 
 In the meantime we had an opportunity between 
 visits to look around the town. An interesting and 
 typically Breton institution with which I first be- 
 came familiar at St. Pierre, Miquelon, was the 
 municipal laundry — an open-air stone tank about 
 the size of a swimming pool, where the women of 
 the village wash the clothes. Standing, each in her 
 own wooden tub, a score of elderly matrons pound 
 away furiously at the family linen laid out on the 
 stone flags about the basin and rinse it in the com- 
 mon pool — a practice delightfully communistic in 
 principle but decidedly at variance with modern 
 ideas of sanitation. 
 
 But the thing that impressed me most was the 
 ancient, weather-beaten cathedral. I looked in dur- 
 
no THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 ing the Sunday service and, in the space of a few 
 minutes, got a better idea of what the war had 
 meant to France than by the reading of a dozen 
 books. There were hundreds of black-clad women 
 with the quaint white head-dress that is typical of 
 Brittany, and a few old men also dressed in black, 
 each holding stiffly a low-crowned hat with broad 
 brim and black ribbons hanging down behind. Each 
 reverent pair of shoulders seemed bent not only 
 from a life of physical toil but with a sorrow that 
 only their church could ease. There was not a 
 young man in the entire congregation. 
 
 When at last we were ready to cast off at high 
 tide on Monday noon, Sept. 6, our friends were all 
 on hand to see us off. Carnegy came with a bottle 
 of wine; M. Motz, a young physician from Paris, 
 brought the father of the whole crab family; a kind 
 American lady, whose name I have forgotten, 
 brought a basket of fruit,, and the Chaumiers came 
 loaded with interesting packages for the entire 
 personnel. 
 
 The wind was W. x N. and strong enough to war- 
 rant leaving the double reef in the mainsail. Hoist- 
 ing the jib, we let "Typhoon" pay off from the quay 
 and then hoisted all sail and worked our way out 
 beyond the harbor lights. During low tide we had 
 studied the character of the harbor bottom and its 
 range marks, and we were able to sail out smartly 
 without hitting any of the numerous submerged 
 
"Tern III'" is Claud Worth's idea of wliat a cruising yacht 
 should be 
 
 "Solapax" a sturdy double ender of the North Sea type 
 

 O 
 
 S 
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 J3 
 
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 J3 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" iil 
 
 mountain ranges. Once outside the harbor we held 
 her close hauled just to clear He de Batz, and 
 streamed the taffrail log. 
 
 At the risk of boring a large percentage of the 
 readers, I am going to run in extracts from the log 
 occasionally, for I know there are at least a few 
 enthusiasts who are strong for detail. 
 
 2:00 P. M. Log 6.25 miles. Came about on 
 starboard tack heading S. W. 
 
 3:00. Log 1 1.5 miles. He de Batz light abeam. 
 Sun coming out. 
 
 4:00. Log 15 miles. Running through fleet of 
 little fishing craft with red sails, close in to a rock- 
 strewn coast with beautiful sandy beach beyond. 
 Came about. Course N.j^ W. 
 
 4:10. Caught good-sized mackerel on trolling 
 spoon and started fire in Shipmate in anticipation 
 of crab and fish dinner. 
 
 4:30, Came about. Log fouled with fish line 
 and not working since 4 :oo P. M. 
 
 5:00. Log 18 miles. Caught another fish of 
 some strange local brand. 
 
 5:15. Tacked again close in to rocky coast. An- 
 other mackerel. 
 
 5:40. He de Batz lighthouse fading astern. 
 
 6:00. Log 21 miles. Came about and stood in 
 again for fish. 
 
 7 :oo Log 26 miles. Tacked again. Dinner of 
 crab meat and vin rouge, with which we drank the 
 health of our Roscoff friends. 
 
 S:oo. Log 28.25 miles. Tacked. Course 
 
1 12 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 W. S. W. Vierge's 5-sec. flash visible occasionally 
 through the mist and rain about three points off 
 starboard bow. 
 
 9:00. Log 30 miles. Came about. Course N. 
 
 1 1 :oo. Log 36 miles. Change course to W. S. 
 W. Fresh breeze. 
 
 12:00. Log 40 miles. Tacked to N>4 E, Driz- 
 zle. No lights visiblcf 
 
 Tuesday, September y. — i :oo A. M. Log 41 miles. 
 Tacked to W. S. W. 
 
 2 :oo. Log 44 miles. Wind dead. 
 
 2:15. Sheeted all sail flat to prevent slatting. 
 All hands below. 
 
 4:00. Went on deck. Both He de Batz and 
 Vierge lights visible for a while. Hardly steerage 
 way. 
 
 9:00. Cooked breakfast of fish, bacon and tea 
 (concession to English contingent). Slatting about 
 in oily ground swell. Too thick to see land al- 
 though we must be only a few miles from Vierge, 
 the tall lighthouse which was visible for a while in 
 the morning. Charles "out of the picture" due to 
 the swell. Pumped up pressure to 150 lb. and tried 
 to start motor, without results. 
 
 12:00 M. Still slatting. Weather too thick for 
 noon latitude sight. Visibility about 100 yds. 
 
 3:30 P. M. Sun breaking through. Heavy 
 ground swell from N. W. indicates that we will 
 soon get wind. Lashed booms to rigging to prevent 
 slatting and just have steerage way. 
 
 4:00. Time sight for longitude. Chronometer 
 3 hr. 47 min. 29 sec. Observed altitude 27° 41' 30".; 
 Longitude from above 4° 2/, 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 113 
 
 5:10. Light on Vierge visible again, just about 
 where it was before. If anything we have Iqst a 
 bit. Longitude of Vierge from Ught list is 4° 34'. 
 It bears S. W. x S. about 4 miles, so that our longp!- 
 tude by observation 4° 27' is not more than about 
 2 miles off, which proves that chronometer rate is 
 not far out. 
 
 7 :40. Light breeze springs up from N. Drizzle. 
 Course W. x N. Several flashing lights at entrance 
 to L'Aber-Vrace on port beam. Vierge scarcely 
 visible through drizzle on port quarter. 
 
 12 :oo. Log 46.85. The end of another blue day. 
 
 Deleted paragraph of purely personal and highly 
 colored opinions on oil motors, 
 
 Wednesday, September 8. — Barograph high and 
 steady. No wind but less ground swell makes life 
 a bit more tolerable. 
 
 3:00 A. M. Steamers passing close aboard. 
 Vierge 5-sec. flash bears S. S. E. A light (prob- 
 ably He de Batz) dying out astern. Another flash 
 every 5 sec. bears S. W. x S. 
 
 3:30. Drizzle with fog which cuts out every- 
 thing but Vierge, a faint glow. 
 
 6:00. Log 48.5 miles. Clearing. 
 
 7 :oo. Log 48.6. Barely steerage way. 
 
 8:00. Flat oily calm. During the morning we 
 shot a mess of puffins or guUymonts, which I took 
 for bull birds like those found off the Newfoundland 
 coast. They have small wings and resemble pen- 
 guins. Fox goes overboard and retrieves them. 
 
 12:00 M. Log 49.0 miles. Faint breeze from 
 N. E. gradually freshening until at 2 :oo P. M. we 
 are doing 2j^ to 3 knots. 
 
1 14 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 2:50 P. M. Fog suddenly envelops us,, shutting 
 out Vierge, for which the Lord be praised, as we 
 have been within six miles of it for 43 hours. Hell, 
 as we had occasion to observe once before, is paved 
 with glassy ground swells. 
 
 3:30. Clear and sunny again. Doing about 4 
 knots. 
 
 5:00. Log 57.5. Fog shutting in. Fog horn 
 bellowing somewhere off port beam. Decide to go 
 outside Ushant, as the channel inside the island is 
 a ticklish one even in clear weather. 
 
 5:30. Rocks visible for a moment far off port 
 bow, bearing S. W., and we head for them so as to 
 get a departure from something definite. 
 
 6:45. Several islands appear in sky and rapidly 
 join together into rocky land as fog thins for a few 
 minutes. Suddenly two powerful flashes pierce the 
 clouds far up above us, and soon the black and white 
 striped shaft of a towering lighthouse takes form 
 through the murk almost close enough to hit with 
 the proverbial biscuit. We have gone farther than 
 we thought, due to a favorable tide. Those rocks 
 we saw were actually Ushant, and we nearly ran 
 down the light on the western end of the Island, 
 which stands 223 ft. high and is visible 21 miles in 
 clear weather. There can be no doubt of the identity 
 of the light, for her two flashes every 10 sec. and the 
 siren at 2 min. intervals coincide with the descrip- 
 tion in the light list. Fortunately we have cleared 
 Ushant instead of hitting inside it, for this is the 
 worst spot on the entire French coast to be mixed 
 up with in thick weather. 
 
 7:20. Picked up red flash of La Jumente on the 
 
"Typhoon's" track from Cowes to Roscoff and thence across the 
 Bay of Biscay to the point of the Spanish Peninsula 
 
At low tide the little French fishing boats sit on the mud. "Typhoon'' 
 is alongside the quay at the right 
 
 Our friends of Les Capucins visit the ship 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 1 1 5 
 
 south side of Ushant. Roar of surf brought to us 
 by the wind, which is now over the quarter. 
 
 7:40. Squared away 220° (magnetic) for Cape 
 Ortegal on the point of Spain, 300 miles across the 
 Bay of Biscay. 
 
 8:00. Log 65.75 niiles. Wind directly astern. 
 Running wing-and-wing before it with mizzen boom 
 lashed to shroud, so that in yawing we can favor 
 the mainsail without running a chance of jibing 
 mizzen. Below reading E. F. Knight's "Cruise of 
 the 'Alert,' " in which he tells of taking practically 
 the same route from the Solent to Finisterre on his 
 treasure-hunting cruise from England to the desert 
 island of Trinidad. 
 
 12:00. Log 78.35. Wind shifting to E. Glass 
 dropping slowly. A tanker bound up channel 
 passes within 100 yd. of us. Porpoises jumping all 
 about us and blowing like a school of punctured 
 tires. 
 
 The run across the Bay of Biscay was uneventful 
 except for a bit of a blow on the night of Sept. 9. 
 The notorious bay certainly did not live up to its 
 bad reputation. This was really my first oppor- 
 tunity to try out my powers as a navigator, for 
 Casey Baldwin had done most of the heavy navigat- 
 ing on the way over, and for this reason I decided 
 to lay a course for Cape Ortegal, which is the north- 
 ernmost point of Spain, rather than for Finisterre, 
 which is somewhat farther east. This would permit 
 of a bad landfall without much possibility of miss- 
 ing the coast of Spain entirely. The Reynolds cur- 
 
ii6 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 rent that sweeps in around the point of the Spanish 
 peninsula would tend to set us to the eastward, but 
 I decided to hold for Ortegal even at the risk of 
 a bit of coastwise work at the other end, which after 
 all would be interesting. The most possible town 
 indicated on our general chart was Ferrol, which 
 seemed to be on a sort of indentation a third of the 
 way from Ortegal to Finisterre. I knew nothing 
 of Ferrol and the chart certainly did not enlighten 
 me, but at any rate the town seemed to be near the 
 coast and looked Kke the logical place to put in for 
 provisions for the run to the Azores. Originally I 
 had thought of following down the coast tg Lisbon, 
 Portugal, which is in practically the same latitude 
 as the Azores, and hopping across from there, but 
 this was now out of the question. There was no 
 time to travel two sides of a triangle when the 
 hypothenuse would do. 
 
 Thursday, September p. — Beautiful sunny day. 
 Light breeze from N. E. Course S. W. % S. 
 
 I :oo A. M. Log 82.55 miles. Lights of Ushant 
 dropping below horizon. 
 
 3:00. Several steamers passing. Ushant light 
 just visible from cabin top. Bearing E. N. E. j4 E. 
 
 4:cx). Log 92.05 miles. 
 
 6:00. Log 102.0 miles. 
 
 8 :oo. Log 1 1 1 .0 miles. 
 
 10:00. Log 118.25 miles. Glass still droppmg 
 slowly., 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 1 1 7 
 
 12:00 M, Log 123.15 miles. Day's run 74.15 
 nautical miles. Wind dying. Observed altitude 
 47° 24' 30". Latitude from above 47° 43' 26". 
 
 2 :oo P. M. Log 127 miles. Doused mizzen and 
 set spinnaker. Changed course to S. W. J^ W. 
 
 4:00. Log 131.75. Observed altitude 19° 37' 
 CX)". Chronometer 4 hr. 42 min. 37 sec. Longitude 
 from above 5° 40' W. 
 
 6:00. Log 141.95 miles. 
 
 8:00. Log 154.55 miles. Doing about 7 knots. 
 
 10:00. Log 166.15 miles. School of porpoises 
 close aboard. 
 
 12:00. Log 176.35 miles. 
 
 Friday, September 10. — Cloudy. Wind still 
 astern. Barometer rising rapidly. Course S. W. 
 
 2:00 A. M. Log 186.75 miles. 
 
 4:00, Log 198.25 miles. 
 
 8:00. Log 221.45 miles. Cloudy. Drizzle. 
 
 9:00. Log 227.35 miles. Rain stopped. Wind 
 falling and hauling a bit east. Barograph straight- 
 ening out. 
 
 10:00. Log 233.15 miles. 
 
 10:35. Tack fitting on spinnaker boom carries 
 away. Took in spinnaker and jibed as wind is 
 nearly east. Raised mizzen. 
 
 12:00 M. Log 245.75 miles. Day's run, 122.6 
 nautical miles. Noon sight: observed altitude 48° 
 ^3' 40". Latitude from above 46° 11' 27". 
 
 4 :oo P. M. Log 268.75 miles. Longitude sight : 
 observed altitude 26° 26' 30". Chronometer, 4 lir. 
 8 min. 26 sec. Longitude from above 7° 10' W. 
 Find we are a bit too far west and alter course to 
 S. W. X S. 5^ S. (steering compass). 
 
1 18 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 •; S 
 
 g'^ <u „ « g 
 
 g 
 
 03 S'Ji si O u 
 w &,-•« a-S 
 B o a ^ oi e 
 
 01.2 •- ^ 
 2 33 . 60-" S 
 
 S rt g 13 .Sf.S 
 
 «« *^ #T» _. -» 
 
 
 O J^ o X 4> 
 
 K s „■« ?** 
 
 a, S g O rt , 
 
 »k* tn r" .. ^ 
 
 §• 
 
 i W TO . 
 
 „ ^ <u ^^ 
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 <3I||:I| 
 
 - .„ o u a ^ 
 
 "O O K « s-tJ 
 
 - ° g ^^ i 
 
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 •013 « 
 
 S >. o te o 'is 
 
 «< a b 5 •« 
 •° «^ 2 ••- 
 
 u*.3 *- ga 
 
 0:SS5S8 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 1 19 
 
 6:00. Log 283 miles. Blowing pretty hard. 
 Propeller starts to spin due to drag of water. 
 
 6:30. Put a double reef in the mainsail. 
 
 8:00. W. W. N. on wheel from 8:00 P. M. to 
 12:00 and drove her in the hope of getting in be- 
 fore Saturday night. Seas came over occasionally. 
 One sea doused me and put"* out lantern and binnacle 
 lamp. Sailed by the stars for hour and a half. 
 Clear and noticeably warmer and, though wet, not 
 uncomfortable. 
 
 12 :oo. Log 326.75 miles. Turned her over to 
 Fox and doused mizzen. Motion easier, although 
 it's still coming over. One sea goes clean over the 
 mizzen boom, which is in its crutch. New experi- 
 ence for Fox, who takes it stoically. 
 
 Saturday, September 11. — Bright, sunny day. 
 Wind S. E. moderate. Barograph dropping grad- 
 ually. 
 
 10:00 A. M. Shook out double reef in mainsail 
 and hoisted mizzen. 
 
 12:00 M. Log 390.75. Day's run 145 nautical 
 miles. Noon sight: Observed altitude 50° 13' 00". 
 Latitude from above 44° 19' 11", which is about 
 22 miles north of latitude of Estaca Point. 
 
 2 :oo P. M. Log 399.35 miles. Wind dying out. 
 
 4:00. Log 401.65 miles. No wind. Longitude 
 8° 00' 00", which puts us exactly on our course 
 and about 10 miles off land. 
 
 6:00. Log 403.25 miles. Becalmed. Had a 
 drink to cheer up and ate a leisurely supper, includ- 
 ing some of Gilbert Fairchild's Dasheen chips, a 
 new vegetable that the Department of Agriculture 
 is introducing. Flattened in all sails and lashed 
 blocks to travelers to prevent slatting. 
 
I20 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 Got under way several times during the night but 
 hardly worth while. 
 
 Sunday, September 12. — Foggy. Barograph go- 
 ing up like a stepladder. 
 
 2 :30 A. M. Breeze springs up from S. and after 
 a while settles to W. x S. Course due S. 
 
 8:50. Strange ketch rigged craft looms up 
 through fog, dead ahead, bound E. — a husky 
 double-ender like some of the Scandinavian craft, 
 with white top strake and brown sides. Carrying 
 everything she has — dirty white sails wing and 
 wing, topsails and brown square sail. Soon lost in 
 fog. 
 
 9:10. Fox on watch yells "Land on starboard 
 bow!" As we approach cautiously this proves to 
 be a rocky promontory with the swell breaking into 
 fantastic lace work along the base, which is abrupt 
 and apparently without outlying rocks. As we ap- 
 proach, a plateau takes form with the silhouette of 
 a solitary horse grazing on the skyline and on be- 
 yond to port, a cove with romantic yellow sandy 
 beach, just visible through the fog. Off farther 
 to port a small rocky island and later high moun- 
 tains beyond. Stood in to about 300 yd. from point 
 and came about on port tack, to beat along within 
 sight of the coast till we identify something to give 
 us our position. No large scale charts. Not an 
 advisable way to explore a foreign coast but lots 
 of fun. 
 
 10 :oo. Pass close to another headland, a moun- 
 tain much larger than the first. Beyond it stretches 
 a yellow beach, behind which are sandy hills with 
 strange trees standing out along the skyline. More 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 121 
 
 like a picture by Zoloaga than sunny Spain as 
 SoroUa would paint it. Three little boats put out 
 from some hole in the rocks. They seem to be 
 rigged with lateen or dipping lug rigs. 
 
 10:10. Rain and increasing wind but sea smooth 
 in the lee of the land. Mountains visible to the east- 
 ward over our first headland make it look tiny in 
 comparison. 
 
 12 :oo noon. Log 430.75 miles. Day's run 67.25 
 nautical miles. Rounded a headland 1000 ft. high 
 and stood into another little cove. Beautiful patch- 
 work of cultivated fields stretching up to the sky 
 behind sandy beach with a group of people, tiny 
 and motionless, evidently astonished at apparition 
 of foreign craft. 
 
 2:00 p. M. Stood in again to another sandy 
 beach, rounding a tall mountain the sides of which 
 are cultivated down to the very cliffs and the tops 
 lost in drifting clouds of fog. Ahead of us several 
 stucco buildings with red roofs, and on a ridge a 
 silhouetted line of tall trees with slender trunks and 
 full tops like palms. Even phlegmatic Charles is 
 moved to enthusiasm by the sight. 
 
 3 130. Slow work tacking around point. Several 
 big seagoing yawls,, topsail schooners and a steam- 
 ship rounding the cape, cutting it close as if coming 
 from a harbor on the other side. 
 
 4:45. Cleared the point — a tall rocky promon- 
 tory with a lighthouse perched up 300 ft. above the 
 sea. The top of the mountain is serrated into 
 shapes like the proverbial castles in Spain. In all 
 probability it is Cape Prior, and if so our landfall 
 was practically perfect. 
 
122 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 5 :oo. More small fishing craft with dipping lug 
 rigs and red and white sails. 
 
 As the night was likely to be thick we put into a 
 small bight and anchored in the lee of another rocky 
 headland, where a couple of fishing boats were hard 
 at work hauling nets. Had a difficult hour trying 
 to find out where we are. Ferrol seems to be farther 
 along the coast, but how far we were unable to de- 
 termine by the sign language. 
 
 In the evening a dozen fishermen and boys came 
 aboard with all sorts of interesting tributes, includ- 
 ing gigantic lobsters and crawfish as long as a man's 
 arm and a curious sort of shell fish that grows in 
 clusters on the rocks ; also some viiio, which is simi- 
 lar to the French vin rouge. These well-meaning 
 visitors insisted on our boiling the shell fish, which 
 are funny little heart-shaped, clam-like creatures 
 with long necks by which they attach themselves to 
 the rocks or to the bottom of your boat if you stay 
 for any length of time at anchor in Spanish waters. 
 We boiled and ate them according to instructions 
 which were given in pantomime. Since we could 
 not understand their Spanish, they assumed that 
 we were hard of hearing, and all carried on a 
 running fire of conversation at the top of their 
 lungs. 
 
 Knowing Casey would have approved such hospi- 
 tality, we treated our visitors to some of his Cana- 
 dian rye in exchange for the viiio tinto, but had 
 occasion to regret this exceedingly, for the entire 
 company, not being used to concentrated beverages 
 of this kind, over-estimated their capacity and went 
 to sleep, necessitating considerable physical and 
 
Slipping out of Roscoff Harbor at high tide 
 
 Dorsett and Fox scrubbing the bottom at low tide 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 123 
 
 moral persuasion to get them safely aboard their 
 own boats at midnight. 
 
 Monday, September 13. — Wind S. W., foggy, 
 with occasional showers. 
 
 8:30 A. M. Get under way and beat down the 
 coast past several groups of small fishing boats, 
 each with its sail furled on the long yard that is 
 hoisted up on the stocky mast above the heads of 
 the fishermen. The boats seem to be anchored and 
 are constantly disappearing behind the long swells. 
 
 12:00 M. Log 448.75. Fog shuts in thick and 
 blots out clififs. Wind dies, leaving us slatting again 
 on a glassy swell. 
 
 2 :oo p. M. "San Carlos" of Santana, a trim little 
 steam packet, comes up out of the fog, exchanges 
 salutes and offers us a tow in to Ferrol, which we 
 refuse with thanks. A light breeze from the west 
 gives us steerage way and the tops of the cliff, and 
 later the surf breaking 50 to 60 ft. up the bases of 
 them, are visible through the fog. This is the 
 "Death Coast" and it's well named. 
 
 3 :oo p. M. Fog shuts in again, but finally we get 
 a steady westerly breeze and round a tall rocky point, 
 half way up which clings a little lighthouse evi- 
 dently marking the entrance to Ferrol. Beyond the 
 point a wonderful fiord opens out ahead of us 
 with gently sloping mountains on either side, the 
 tops of which are still shrouded in clouds of fog 
 which follow down some of the valleys almost to the 
 water's edge. 
 
 Gaining speed before a freshening westerly 
 breeze,, we sailed for several miles through the most 
 
124 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 picturesque body of water any of us had ever seen. 
 Cultivated patchwork fields extended up the less- 
 barren slopes and were lost in the clouds and on 
 either side, at points of vantage, were the remains 
 of ancient Spanish fortresses. We overhauled sev- 
 eral of the little fishing craft bound home after a 
 day outside and had a chance to study them at close 
 range. They are double enders with a pronounced 
 reverse curve to the sections at either end, giving 
 them very fine hollow waterlines but extremely full 
 deck lines. The curved stem, extends nearly a foot 
 above the sheerline and the rudder is hung on the 
 stern post. As we neared Ferrol we met another 
 of these boats rowed by women singing a rollicking 
 Spanish song as they bent to the oars. 
 
 Racing along past a jolly, rambling old fort, with 
 battlements and stone sentry boxes at the corners, 
 on the port hand and another more modern and less 
 interesting one to port, we shot into the Harbor of 
 Ferrol: — a vast basin sparkling in the sunlight, alive 
 with a myriad craft, all save the fighting ships busy 
 on some useful errand. Passing the Spanish Navy 
 close aboard, we dipped our ensign, roused the sleep- 
 ers into life and received a belated salute from both 
 (I should say all) of the ships, for His Majesty's 
 Navy, while it isn't much to look at, still numbers 
 several vessels of assorted periods. And Ferrol is 
 the home of the Spanish Navy. 
 
 Beating smartly up to the town we dropped the 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 125 
 
 hook near the quay and right under the walls of the 
 ancient dockyard where Philip the Second built the 
 ill-fated Spanish Armada that sailed from Ferrol 
 in 1588 and met disaster at the hands of Drake off 
 the Isle of Wight. The log showed that we had 
 traveled 455 nautical miles from Roscoff. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 "Typhoon" in Sunny Spain 
 
 IF Ferrol were typical of all Spain, we'd be per- 
 fectly content to let the week we spent there 
 suffice for the rest of our lives; but it isn't. Ferrol,, 
 like all other naval and military posts the world over, 
 is provincial, stupid and complacently benighted. 
 About the only virtue that the place possesses is its 
 picturesqueness ; in this respect it lives up to the 
 back drops of the Metropolitan Opera. In every 
 other respect it leaves much to be desired — except 
 for its harbor which ranks among the finest of all 
 Europe. 
 
 No sooner had we dropped the hook between the 
 quay and the ancient walled dockyard than a boat 
 put out from the landing stage bearing a young man 
 who proved to be the amateur sailor of the town. I 
 say the amateur sailor for, while there were several 
 other men in the place who owned sail and motor 
 craft and used them occasionally just for the fun of 
 the thing, they were unique in a town in which there 
 seemed to exist no interest in sport, at least of the 
 outdoor variety. The young man's name was Mar- 
 tin. He is the son of the British Vice Consul and 
 
 126 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 127 
 
 was educated in England which may account for his 
 interest in boats. He and his father and the Vick- 
 ers engineers, who build the battleships, needed no 
 further explanation from us than that we were 
 cruising because we liked that sort of thing. Most 
 everyone else in town, including the "Pinafore" 
 naval officers seemed to consider us either liars or 
 fools. I've been thought a fool in a good many dif- 
 ferent languages "including the Scandinavian" and 
 I don't mind it at all. In fact it is a relative sort of 
 term implying a difference of opinion and therefore 
 is more or less of a compliment coming from some 
 quarters; but I still object to having my veracity 
 .impugned. 
 
 Following on the heels of Martin came the cus> 
 toms officials in a steam launch — a benighted bunch 
 with an interpreter who seemed to have great diffi' 
 culty in explaining to them that we were merely one 
 of those incomprehensible yachts that occasionally 
 descended on them to disturb the even tenure of 
 their existence. Our Canadian rye seemed to be 
 the only thing on the ship that was perfectly under- 
 standable and when they appeared reluctant to leave 
 I thought it a subtle compliment to the liquor. It 
 seemed, however, that I had neglected a very im- 
 portant part of all such formalities. I had not come 
 across with the usual gratuity — an oversight that 
 was corrected after I had been delicately reminded 
 by one of the officials. Whether grafting is inher- 
 
128 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 ent in the temperament of these people or is a neces- 
 sary result of the inadequate pay that everyone in 
 the government employ receives, I can't say, but 
 since the art is practically universal, I imagine that 
 both explanations apply. 
 
 The interpreter, Senor Tome, very decently vol- 
 unteered to pilot us about the town which proved to 
 be much larger than it appeared from, the water, 
 numbering something over 32,000 souls. The nar- 
 row streets, which are paved with flagstones extend- 
 ing to the buildings on either side, ramble along pic- 
 turesquely except in the newer part of the town 
 which is more systematic and consequently less in- 
 teresting. The buildings, even the shops which are 
 dwellings above the first floor, are all balconied in 
 the true Spanish fashion and from many of these 
 balconies black-eyed sefioritas leaned and bridged 
 with their eyes the barrier that convention main- 
 tains between the sexes. In this rather backward 
 part of Spain the assumption seems to be that 
 women are characterless creatures that must be kept 
 virtuous by coercion. Therefore the respectable 
 ones are carefully guarded until they are safely mar- 
 ried and then, after a few weeks of social equality, 
 they again retire into oblivion until their daughters 
 are old enough to be taken out. The men, on the 
 other hand, flout the laws they make for the other 
 sex and seem to recognize no restrictions. They are 
 a soft lot as a whole without a vestige of sporting 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 129 
 
 spirit; they are puny both mentally and physically 
 and seem to spend most of their time telling of their 
 decidedly unromantic adventures. 
 
 That first evening we all had dinner at a quaint 
 little sailors' restaurant where native fishermen sat 
 and smoked over their mno tinto or sang to the ac- 
 companiment of a guitar and violin. These Galle- 
 gos, as the natives of the ancient province of Galicia 
 are still called, are a hardy, honest, industrious lot. 
 They work with their hands and work hard and 
 they were more to our liking than the gentlemen of 
 the restaurants and cafes. And so as the food was 
 plentiful and the viiio was likewise we began to feel 
 more reconciled to Spain. 
 
 Before going aboard that night we took another 
 turn about the town which like most Latin cities 
 began to liven up at nightfall. Here and there we 
 came upon public fountains where crowds of women 
 gathered with huge jars on their heads to obtain 
 the next day's supply of water. It seems that but 
 few of the houses in Ferrol are provided with mod- 
 ern plumbing and the water must be carried in this 
 way. I can see now how it is that the majority of 
 the populace,, not being particularly energetic, feel 
 that the effort necessary to keep clean is too great a 
 one and let it go at that. 
 
 There was the usual following of small boys wher- 
 ever we went, who begged for pennies or cigarettes 
 and many of whom seemed to be soliciting patron- 
 
1 30 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 age for the demi-monde. At the cafes along the 
 principal thoroughfare naval officers and languid 
 scions of Ferrol's best families sipped coffee or 
 liqueur at tiny tables set in the street under cheer- 
 fully striped awnings, and pensive senoritas with the 
 ever present duenna or watchful parent minced their 
 way along the flagstones. It was all very romantic 
 on the surface, but rather medieval to western eyes 
 accustomed to a degree of independence and equality 
 of the sexes. 
 
 The next day was spent largely in cleaning up 
 ship. We never seemed to be able to catch up with 
 this job while under way, due to the fact, I presume, 
 that the skipper is a rather shiftless sort of person 
 himself and fails to impart a spirit of industry to 
 his crew. And then there was an article to get off 
 and shopping to do which was engineered by our 
 friend of the day before, Sefior Tome, who insisted 
 on providing the crew with a combination guide and 
 beast of burden in the form of an amply propor- 
 tioned lady of middle age. Through the good 
 offices of this shrewd person all sorts of interesting 
 provisions were bought at the municipal market at 
 fair prices. They were carried to the ship in a 
 huge basket on her head. In the evening having 
 had enough of the town for one day we staged an 
 elaborate dinner on the "Typhoon" which, as it 
 proved, was most appropriate, for this day, Septem- 
 
A lug-rigged fisherman of the Death Coast of Spain 
 
 Out of the fog came the little steam packet "San Carlos" 
 
■■■■■■■MMil 
 Our track along the coast of Spain to Ferrol and Coruna 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 131 
 
 ber 14th, was the skipper's birthday, a fact that 
 dawned on him the following morning. 
 
 As we worked our way into the harbor we had 
 noticed several shipbuilding establishments along the 
 shore, with husky wooden trawlers under construc- 
 tion, and on the following day, at the invitation of 
 Mr. Martin, who owns one of these yards, "Ty- 
 phoon" sailed across the bay to witness a launching, 
 which proved to be quite a social event and attracted 
 the flower of Ferrol. On the way across we en- 
 countered a boatload of ravishing sefioritas having 
 some difficulty in managing their craft with the aid 
 of a single youthful male, and so mustering what few 
 phrases of Spanish we could remember, bolstered up 
 with elaborate pantomime, we offered them a tow 
 which was gratefully accepted. 
 
 Dropping the hook we rowed ashore to inspect the 
 trawler. In model she was a decidedly interesting 
 little vessel with pronounced sheer, quite hollow 
 waterlines at the bow and a gracefully modeled 
 stern. The construction was unusually heavy and 
 while the joiner work was not of the finest finish, it 
 showed considerable skill on the part of the local 
 boatbuilders. The cost of the job, we learned, was 
 about a quarter of what it would have been in this 
 country. 
 
 In launching the ship a method entirely new to us 
 was employed. There was no cradle and no ways, 
 except a short track for the keel ending at the water. 
 
132 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 which was a fathom or so deep right up to the bank. 
 There were bilge blocks to support the hull until it 
 got way on, but once started she just slid down on 
 her keel and before she had time to list over she was 
 water borne at the stern and slid off the bank as 
 gracefully as a seal. It was the prettiest launching 
 I have ever witnessed and it proves that someone in 
 Spain is using his brain for the purpose that the 
 Lord intended. 
 
 After the launching there was a reception at the 
 home of Mr. Martin, and it was here that we met 
 our friend Ashburn, a young lawyer from New- 
 foundland, who was spending the summer pitting 
 his wits against the red tape of Spanish officialdom 
 in an endeavor to have one of his father's schooners 
 released from some legal entanglement. It was 
 through Ashburn that we met the members of the 
 English club, the personnel of which is that of the 
 Vickers organization, and from then on, due to the 
 kindness of these gentlemen, Mr. Ashburn and Mr. 
 Martin, our time was well taken up. 
 
 An interesting afternoon was spent inspecting the 
 dockyard where the Spanish naval vessels are built, 
 the same establishment in which Philip II built the 
 Armada in the sixteenth century. Modern machin- 
 ery had been installed in the ancient stone buildings 
 and, while the volume of work turned out was not 
 large, the two vessels then under construction, a 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 1 33 
 
 battleship and a cruiser^ stacked up favorably with 
 the most up-to-date naval practice. 
 
 Over at one side of the navy yard basin there was 
 a British ship, the S. S. "Grangetown," whose skip- 
 per we had met at the English club. She was dis- 
 charging coal, not a particularly interesting process 
 ordinarily, except in Spain, where the work is done 
 by women. A hundred or so disheveled females of 
 assorted ages formed a continuous line up and down 
 the gangplank carrying the coal in baskets on their 
 heads with the breakneck speed of a funeral proces- 
 sion. The coal was shoveled into the baskets by 
 men, who received twice the wages paid to the 
 women and who seemed to play favorites, as some 
 of the baskets were but a third full. At the shore 
 end the laggers were exhorted to greater effort by 
 an energetic matron chosen, I presume, because of 
 her facility in juggling the Spanish swear words. 
 The demurrage on a few jobs of this kind, which 
 seem to take forever, ought to be sufficient to install 
 a modern system. What hope is there for a coun- 
 try that totes the coal used for its navy on the heads 
 of women ? 
 
 Captain Oliver of the "Grangetown" proved to be 
 a most unusual man. A Canadian by birth, he had 
 served throughout the war and his record was an 
 enviable one. He had been aboard the "Vindic- 
 tive" and was one of the twenty-eight survivors of 
 that heroic landing party of two hundred and twenty 
 
1 34 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 men that stormed the Zeebrugge Mole and wrote one 
 of the most brilliant pages in naval history. One 
 of Captain Oliver's first commands was the ill-fated 
 submarine "E-13," that ran aground ofif Copen- 
 hagen in an endeavor to reach the Baltic in the sum- 
 mer of 1915. Some of the readers may recall an 
 article on this dramatic event by the writer, who 
 was on his way from Russia to Copenhagen when it 
 occurred. While lying helpless on the Island of 
 Saltholm, which was in neutral territory, the unfor- 
 tunate craft was shot up by a German cruiser and a 
 number of her crew were killed. When the little 
 Danish gunboat, that had tried to intervene, ap- 
 proached to rescue the survivors, Captain Oliver had 
 presence of mind enough to jump into the sea, and 
 because of this fact had to be treated as a distressed 
 seaman, escaping the internment which was the fate 
 of the remainder of the survivors. He returned to 
 England on a Danish battleship with the bodies of 
 his dead. 
 
 It was strange that I should have met up by acci- 
 dent with the very man whom I would have risked 
 my neck to interview in those early days of the war. 
 
 It was on Sunday, September 19, that "Typhoon" 
 finally got under way again, but whether to put in at 
 Coruiia or to make directly for the Azores was still 
 undecided. Coruiia, from what we could gather 
 in Ferrol, was not much of a place. To be sure, 
 Coruiia did have railroad facilities and a bull ring, 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 135 
 
 obvious advantages that even the civic pride of Fer- 
 roU could not dispute. But other than that there 
 seemed to be little virtue to the place. 
 
 At two o'clock in the afternoon we weighed the 
 hook and started a long beat out the narrow passage 
 against both wind and tide. Several of the small 
 fishing boats were going our way and when we 
 found that it required all we had to overhaul them, 
 our respect for these little craft went up another 
 notch. Not all of these boats have the dipping lug 
 rig as we first thought; some of them use the 
 straight lateen with a long yard extending prac- 
 tically to the stem head and with the reef points 
 along the top of the sail. They are not only fast but 
 seem to sail almost as close to the wind as a sloop. 
 
 It took us two solid hours to beat out the fiord, 
 for the wind coming down the ravines was erratic 
 and the tide was strong. By the time we reached 
 the fortified point where the fiord joins the bay the 
 wind died, leaving us slatting about in rather too 
 close proximity to the rocks. At 5:30 a light 
 nor'west breeze sprang up and by 6 o'clock we had 
 crossed the middle bight and cleared the eastern 
 point of the large bay on which Corufia is situated. 
 As we skirted this rocky promontory, the hills ahead 
 of us were purpling in the evening shadows and the 
 heavy swell coming in from the sea broke in fan- 
 tastic designs sixty to eighty feet up the rocks. 
 And then just as the lighthouse began to flash and 
 
1 36 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 the lights of Coruiia opened up across the bay, the 
 wind died again and left us wallowing amid a school 
 of porpoises. 
 
 By 8 o'clock it was pitch dark and as we made our 
 careful way into the harbor, a big liner, all lit up 
 "like a grand hotel," got underway and bore down 
 upon us with both red and green lights showing. 
 We were in an awkward situation, with only about a 
 knot steerage way, and it took a bit of quick work 
 to get our port light in place in time to prevent being 
 run down. (We had been conserving our precious 
 kerosene supply, which we had been unable to re- 
 plenish at Ferrol.) When the big fellow was 
 nearly on top of us, he changed his course and 
 passed within twenty yards of our stern. 
 
 With a light sou'west breeze we felt our way in 
 with the lead and anchored ofif a brightly lighted 
 waterfront on which there seemed to be some sort of 
 an amusement park like a miniature Coney Island. 
 There was great excitement as Jim sighted a tram 
 car. It must have been designed after Fontaine 
 Fox's "Tooneryille Trolley," but it was still a tram 
 car and it stood for progress — and we began to feel 
 that Corufia was not the insignificant place that 
 Ferrol considered it. Lying quietly at anchor 
 among the shadowy shapes of all sorts of interesting 
 craft, we resisted the temptation to row ashore, 
 prepared a good dinner and turned in. 
 
 Our stay at Coruiia was a short one; eighteen 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 137 
 
 hours after we dropped the hook we were again on 
 our way, but in this short time we saw enough of 
 the town to neutraHze the bad impression of Spain 
 we had formed during the previous week. A sail 
 about the harbor that had seemed so mysterious as 
 we felt our way in at night, gave us a pretty good 
 idea of the place even before we went ashore. Sev- 
 eral sizeable ships gave evidence that it was a port 
 of considerable importance, an intimation of which 
 fact had been conveyed to us rather forcefully the 
 night before by the liner that had nearly run us 
 down. To make up for the rather inadequate dock- 
 ing facilities there were scores of heavy lighters 
 lying at anchor and looking far less romantic by 
 daylight than they had at night. An ancient bat- 
 tleship returned our salute promptly and the crew 
 of a trim little coasting vessel with a sort of lateen 
 schooner rig waved us a cordial greeting as we 
 gained headway under jib and mizzen for a look 
 around. Over at the north end of the harbor, near 
 the cigarette factory, scores of trim, trawlers of the 
 type we had seen launched were berthed along the 
 piers with nets slung up to dry. Tugs and work- 
 boats steamed or putted their busy way in all direc- 
 tions. 
 
 We had never had much opportunity to 
 maneuver "Typhoon" in tight places and it was good 
 sport, this picking our way about among the craft 
 of the harbor with a good fresh breeze. She 
 
138 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 handled beautifully. Completing the circuit of the 
 harbor, we shot into the inner basin through a nar- 
 row opening in the outer pier and lufifed up along- 
 side the quay, lost headway and had our lines oyer 
 the bollards with a snap that seemed to meet with 
 the approval of the crew of a little coasting vessel 
 moored just ahead of us. And then, of course, 
 there gathered the usual curious throng. 
 
 Wherever you go in your own little ship you are 
 pretty sure to find someone who "speaks your lan- 
 guage." Why bother, then, with letters of intro- 
 duction when the only people you really care to see 
 are the ones that are most likely to see you coming? 
 This time it was Seiior Jose Pan Naya, a gentleman 
 in the shipping business who had lived for twelve 
 years in New York and consequently did literally 
 speak our language. Under his guidance we did 
 the town, or rather Fox, Dorsett and I did, for 
 Charles, having run the spout of an oil can through 
 his foot, was compelled to stay on the ship. 
 
 Now Coruna is really a remarkable place. It is 
 the capital of that subdivision of ancient Galicia, 
 now known as the province of Coruna, and numbers 
 between 40,000 and 50,000 inhabitants. While its 
 early history is shrouded in legend, it is pretty gen- 
 erally believed that originally the town was a 
 Phoenician settlement. At any rate it is mentioned 
 under an earlier name by the historian, Pomponius 
 Mela, who wrote in the first century. Its churches 
 
A lighthouse perched high up on one of the cliffs of the Death 
 Coast of Spain 
 
 <1. ^ 
 
 Fox goes overboard and retrieves a pufBn 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 1 39 
 
 and some of its fortifications date from the twelfth 
 and thirteenth centuries and its later history is most 
 interesting. In 1588 Coruiia sheltered the Invinci- 
 ble Armada on the eve of its departure for England. 
 In 1598 the city was captured and burned by the 
 British under Drake and Norris, and in 1747 and 
 again in 1805 it was the scene of a naval victory of 
 the British over the French. While knocking about 
 the tl^wn we found in the Jardin de San Carlos a 
 statue to Sir John Moore, who was mortally 
 wounded in an engagement between the French and 
 English during the Peninsular War in 1809, and 
 was buried in the ramparts. 
 
 As may be gathered from the photograph of the 
 water-front, Coruiia is as up-to-date as any town of 
 its size in Europe, with an added picturesque quality 
 that stamps it immediately as a part of Spain. The 
 streets are clean, the parks are well kept and the 
 people have a healthy, intelligent look in contrast 
 to the provincialism of Ferrol. Over on the 
 ocean side of the little peninsula on which the town 
 is situated there is a beautiful beach where Sorolla 
 might have painted his famous bathing group ; in the 
 outskirts of the town there is an athletic field (a sig- 
 nificant feature), and of course there is the bull 
 ring without which no city in Spain would be worthy 
 of the name. 
 
 As none of us had ever seen a bull ring, Sefior 
 Naya looked up the caretaker, or whatever he's 
 
I40 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 called, who piloted us about the works. We found 
 him in a quaint little shop adjoining the amphithea- 
 ter, busily engaged in building — of all unexpected 
 things — a modern motor cruiser. The little boat,, a 
 30-footer, I should say, was of the raised deck type 
 and, except for a bow that reflected extreme origi- 
 nality on the part of the builder, and huge bulging 
 portlights like the lenses of those old-fashioned 
 buUseye lanterns, she might have stepped bodily 
 from the pages of Motor Boat. 
 
 The bull ring was a modern concrete structure 
 capable of seating half the population of Coruna. 
 There had been a bush league fight the day before 
 and the grewsome evidences of it were everywhere 
 apparent. Behind the scenes it was much as if we 
 had penetrated the training quarters of an Ameri- 
 can ball park, except that the paraphernalia had a 
 more sinister look than the bats and gloves and other 
 gear of the diamond. Here was the sword with 
 which yesterday's bulls had been dispatched, bent 
 and black with blood, the handle wrapped with tire 
 tape like Babe Ruth's favorite bat ; there the broken 
 gaudy remnants of barbed banderillas that are 
 thrust into the neck of the bull to enrage him. Con- 
 venient to one of the exits from the ring was an 
 efficient looking sort of a butcher shop where the 
 carcasses of the bulls are cleaned for market, and 
 out behind there was a repair yard or service sta- 
 tion where the gored horses are patched up and sent 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 141 
 
 back to the ring to satisfy the blood lust of the multi- 
 tude. Everything was there just as Blasco Ibanez 
 told of it in his novel "Blood and Sand." There 
 is an undeniable fascination about a bull ring, but 
 you go away rather ashamed to look a horse in the 
 eye. 
 
 A stroll back through town, a dinner at Senor 
 Naya's favorite restaurant, and we were ready to be 
 off for the Azores. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 "Typhoon" Picks up the Azores 
 
 IT is about eight hundred and fifty nautical miles 
 from the northwest corner of Spain to the 
 Island of San Miguel, the largest and nearest of the 
 Azores, and we figured that "Typhoon" could make 
 the run in from eight to nine days. One hundred 
 nautical miles a day is a pretty fair average for a 
 long passage, taking into consideration calms and 
 head winds,, but to be on the safe side we had pro- 
 visioned for a run of something over two weeks. 
 This may seem to be figuring it a bit too closely, and, 
 as a matter of fact, it was, but the sort of food we 
 wanted to stock up with was difficult to obtain and, 
 furthermore, our finances by this time were so low 
 as to allow of no riotous expenditures. Having 
 made a good landfall after the run across the Bay of 
 Biscay, I was sufficiently confident of my naviga- 
 tion to ignore the possibility of missing the islands 
 altogether, and as we felt reasonably certain of good 
 weather and favorable winds, we took a chance, 
 looking to the Azores as the logical place to cash a 
 check and to take on our final food supplies. I must 
 
 confess that we were inclined to think a bit too 
 
 142 
 
"Typhoon" at Ferrol, Spain, under the walls of the dockyard where 
 Philip the Second built the Spanish Armada 
 
 On our way to the launching we took in tow a cargo of senoritas 
 
3 
 
 o a 
 
 s 
 
 CIS 
 
 J3 
 
 a 
 o 
 o 
 j: 
 
 iC 
 
 3 
 
 o 
 U 
 
 J3 
 
 J3 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 143 
 
 lightly of a run of eight hundred and fifty miles at 
 sea. 
 
 At 3 140 p. M., September 28th, we cast off from 
 the quay at Coruna with our friend and benefactor, 
 Senor Naya, aboard for the run out of the harbor. 
 It was our plan, after rounding Capt Hercules, to 
 put in to the little cove on the other side of the penin- 
 sula opposite Coruna and set our friend ashore in a 
 fishing boat, but as we were tacking out of the har- 
 bor, we encountered some acquaintances of his in a 
 little sloop who offered to take him back to town 
 with them. After several unsuccessful attempts they 
 luffed up alongside "Typhoon," he jumped aboard 
 and we said good-bye to a real Spanish sportsman. 
 
 At 6:00 P.M., after several short tacks, we 
 rounded Point Hercules with its ancient lighthouse 
 standing nearly 400 feet above the sea and squared 
 away almost due west to clear Sisargas Island, just 
 visible twenty miles away. As we passed the sandy 
 cove on the seaward side of Coruiia great masses 
 of cumulous clouds, piled in fantastic shapes, hung 
 above the town, all afire with the horizontal rays of 
 the sun as it sank into the sea behind a wall of cold 
 blue clouds. All about us we could see rain squalls 
 hanging like black, trailing curtains from the sky, 
 and just before dark we encountered one of these 
 with a vicious kick to it. Then as night came on, 
 the wind died down to a light breeze, a half moon 
 broke through the clouds and the sky cleared. At 
 
144 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 eleven o'clock, as we came abreast Sisargas Light, 
 the flash of Villano, farther down the coast, jumped 
 above the horizon and soon after the flash of Her- 
 cules dropped below the sea astern of us. 
 
 Once past Sisargas, our course took us farther 
 off the land, which from this point bends down 
 toward Finisterre, and I turned in, feeling that our 
 second crossing of the Atlantic actually had beg^n. 
 
 I 
 
 Tuesday, September 21. — Bright and clear. 
 Wind E.NE. 
 
 Our speed during the night had been only about 
 three knots, and in the morning the mountainous 
 shore in the vicinity of Cape Toriiiana was still 
 plainly visible over the port quarter. Several 
 steamers passed betweeen us and the land, one of 
 them about a mile off, shipping water with every 
 sea, while we were perfectly dry. During the 
 morning we were surrounded by countless por- 
 poises, and, thinking that a porpoise steak would 
 help to conserve our food supply, I got out the old 
 Winchester Express, the 50-95 that George Kennan 
 had carried in Siberia and put aboard "Typhoon" 
 at Baddeck, and prepared for action. Trying out 
 the old cannon on a shark that swam leisurely a foot 
 or so beneath the surface, without success, I went 
 forward and plugged a strapping young porpoise as 
 he jumped clear of the water. The mushroom bullet 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 145 
 
 tore a hole clean through him, leaving the sea crim- 
 son for a yard around, but we were running free, 
 and by the time we had come about and got back to 
 the spot he had sunk. They are nice, friendly fel- 
 lows, these porpoises, and we should never have 
 thought of shooting one except for food. 
 
 By noon Charles was down and out from the 
 swell, and Fox also felt it necessary to part with his 
 lunch, which he did cheerfully, as usual. He is the 
 only man I have ever known who could actually sing 
 while seasick. The wind had risen and it was neces- 
 sary to be on the alert for the rain squalls that hit 
 us occasionally. These sudden blows are the most 
 dangerous thing with which the man who cruises 
 has to contend, no matter where he sails. In the 
 daytime you can see the black cloud long before it 
 reaches you, but at night you must literally keep a 
 weather eye open, for if one of them strikes before 
 you have time to shorten sail you are in for a knock- 
 down or some torn canvas. A hard one hit us about 
 five o'clock, while I was below cooking the dinner, 
 but Jim and Fox got the mainsail off in time and 
 we came through it nicely. 
 
 Neither of the English contingent was successful 
 with his dinner, but Jim, thus far, had shown no 
 signs of distress and seemed at last to be getting his 
 sea-legs, much to my delight, for there is nothing 
 quite so lonesome as being the only well person in a 
 crew of dead and dying. Why it was I didn't get 
 
146 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPriOON" 
 
 it, except for about five minutes during that blow 
 off the Newfoundland coast, when pretty well tired 
 out, I don't know, but the fact is that no amount 
 of motion or oil or tobacco had the slightest discour- 
 aging effect on my appetite. 
 
 After dinner, just about dusk, another black 
 squall bore down on us and, while Jim nursed her 
 through at the wheel, I lowered the mainsail, sheeted 
 it in and muzzled it with the end of a halyard. 
 While I was busily engaged in the process, Fox shot 
 out of the companionway, clad only in a rubber 
 poncho and the determined expression of one who is 
 endeavoring to catch a train. Reaching the lee rail 
 he wilted in the waterway, soaked by the rain and 
 the seas that tore along the deck, but in five minutes 
 he was below again, singing and laughing at the 
 ridiculous spectacle he had made. 
 
 We really needed a couple of reefs in the main- 
 sail, for it was blowing\half a gale, but we decided 
 to risk it and carry on. Whenever it was necessary 
 to raise and sweat up the mainsail single-handed, I 
 was thankful that "Typhpon" was ketch-rigged, for 
 this would have been impossible on a yawl or a 
 schooner of the same size. Reefing, too, was much 
 easier kneeling along the cabin trunk or standing 
 in the lee waterway than it would have been on a 
 schooner, with its longer main boom, extending over 
 the quarter, where there is less protection and more 
 chance of interfering with the man at the wheel. 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 147 
 
 Wednesday, September 22. — (Equinox.) Wind 
 E. N.E. Course W. by S. Glass rising. Several 
 more squalls hit us during the night. At 2 ".oo A. m. 
 Jim,, who was at the wheel again, called me and I got 
 on deck with oilies over my pajamas just in time to 
 get the mainsail down before an unusually severe 
 one overtook us. The squall lasted but a few 
 minutes, but it was still blowing hard and, as I had 
 experienced some difficulty in getting the sail low- 
 ered even when Jim luffed her a bit, we decided to 
 leave the mainsail down and run for the rest of the 
 night under jib and mizzen. The motion was easier 
 and we were able to get a good rest. In the middle 
 of the morning we put the sail on her again, and for 
 the rest of the day bowled along in the bright sun- 
 shine with a fine wind still over the starboard quar- 
 ter. 
 
 12 :oo Noon — Log 206.3. Day's run 1 34 nautical 
 miles. 
 
 Meridian altitude sight 48° 07' 00"; latitude 41° 
 50' 35"- This put us a bit too far south and we 
 changed our course from W. S.W. to W. by our 
 steering compass, which is W. by S. magnetic. 
 Took two afternoon sights for longitude, neither of 
 which was satisfactory, as the result placed us in 
 about the same longitude as the coast of Portugal. 
 If we get an unsatisfactory result to-morrow we 
 shall assume that the rate of our chronometer has 
 changed and bend south a bit in order to strike the 
 parallel of San Miguel and follow it until we make 
 a landfall. We cannot risk missing the islands, 
 
 The skipper cooked a late dinner, which was eaten 
 by candlelight and was more successful than our 
 
148 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 recent meals have been. Charles took a little nour- 
 ishment and held on to it; Fox, playing safe, had 
 his at the wheel, and Jim, for the first time since 
 leaving Baddeck, took his sitting upright at the table 
 — quite a victory, for there was a heavy sea running, 
 requiring considerable juggling. We celebrated the 
 victory with our last can of pears,, the peaches al- 
 ready having been exhausted. 
 
 By this time our kerosene supply was finished, 
 except for enough to fill the running lights in case 
 we made a harbor at night. Instead of the cabin 
 lamps we had been using candles for several days 
 and, since leaving Spain, we had burned aeroplane 
 gasoline in the primus stove — not a very successful 
 fuel, as it continually blows out. Even in the bin- 
 nacle lamp we used candles cut into three-inch 
 lengths which had to be renewed at two-hour inter- 
 vals. Of course, there was no.real need of the run- 
 ning lights, well out of traffic as we were, for you 
 can always see a vessel long before she can make 
 you out. 
 
 A threatening cloud bank that we had watched 
 approaching blew over without a kick and we sailed 
 the rest of the night in bright moonlight with just 
 enough wind to make it interesting. We appreci- 
 ated such nights as this, after the hard, thick 
 weather of the northern run, and it was the rule, 
 rather than the exception, throughout our entire 
 western passage. The barometric high spot of the 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 149 
 
 entire north Atlantic lies just south of the Azores 
 and the glass is seldom, much below thirty. Even 
 during the heavy blows, until we got well through 
 the Gulf Stream, the weather was clear and there 
 was no fog at all. 
 
 Thursday, September 23. — ^Wind N.E., light; 
 barograph rising steadily. 
 
 II :oo A. M. — Set spinnaker and lower mizzen, as 
 wind is too nearly astern to gain anything from it' 
 
 12:00 Noon. — Log 329.8; day's run 123.5 miles. 
 Set clocks back one hour, as we are about fifteen 
 degrees west of the meridian of Greenwich. 
 
 Meridian altitude 48° 21' 30". Latitude 41° 
 22' 39". 
 
 Took two afternoon sights for longitude. The 
 first put us somewhere near the Azores, which 
 wasn't any better than the position on the Portu- 
 guese coast obtained yesterday. But the second 
 gave us 14° 49' W., which stacks up about right 
 with our dead reckoning. 
 
 After a good dinner, I took the wheel at 9 :oo p. m. 
 It was another wonderful moonlight night, and, 
 comfortably propped up acgainst the mizzen crutch, 
 there was nothing to do but enjoy the beauty of it. 
 "Typhoon," running straight before the wind under 
 main and spinnaker, practically sailed herself. Al- 
 though we carried a squaresail and yard, we never 
 actually used it throughout the entire cruise. The- 
 
1 50 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 oretically, it is a good sail for running before a stiff 
 wind, for it eliminates the possibility of tripping 
 the boom when the boat rolls, but the problem of 
 setting it without a jumper stay on the mainmast or 
 some special fitting had never been satisfactorily 
 worked out, and,, consequently, whenever the wind 
 was too strong for the light spinnaker, we depended 
 on the mainsail, altering the course a point or so and 
 taking the wind over the quarter. 
 
 At midnight Jim came on deck all doubled up with 
 an attack of acute indigestion, not altogether com- 
 plimentary to the skipper's cooking, and was forced 
 to go back again to his bunk. The following com- 
 ment appears in Fox's diary : "Jim woke me up at 
 I :oo A. M. with one of his shoes, which caught me 
 on the nos^. I got the castor oil and the instruc- 
 tion book from, the Red Cross cabinet and then took 
 the wheel, and W. W. N. took Jim in hand. Jim 
 improved wonderful as W. W. N. advanced with 
 the castor oil." 
 
 Friday, September 24. — ^Wind E. by N., dying. 
 Course W. 
 
 Another passage from Fox's diary : "5 :oo a. m. 
 Sun still down under cold, blue bank of clouds, then 
 orange streaks that turned into vivid red later, ex- 
 tending from east to north. Red sky in morning 
 may be the sailors' warning, but I enjoy it. Dawn 
 and sunset are the most beautiful parts of the day. 
 I rout out Charles, whose glum face spoils the pic- 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 151 
 
 ture. I point out the dawn, but he can see no beauty 
 in it. Just asked me to get him a biscuit ! 'Breathes 
 there a man with soul so dead!* He moans about 
 our speed, wants to go 24 knots. Told him he was 
 almost dead when we did six knots, and asked what 
 state he would be in if we did 24. Pointed out that 
 one knot (which is about our present speed, as wind 
 is almost dead) is much better than riding out a gale 
 and going astern wet through, cold, hungry and 
 sick. Turned in on deck, as one hour's sleep there 
 is worth two in cabin." 
 
 12:00 Noon — Log 386.5 miles. Day's run 56.7 
 miles. Wind practically dead. Noon sight; ob- 
 served altitude 48° 23'. Latitude 40° 5/ 33''. Jim, 
 Fox and the skipper had a swim ; water fine. 
 
 4 :oo p. M. — Flat calm, but not so exasperating as 
 others we have experienced. With mizzen doused 
 and in crutch, jib flattened down, spinnaker set and 
 a foreguy on the main boom, there is none of the 
 usual slatting and clattering of blocks on travelers. 
 An occasional breath of air fills the light sail and 
 gives us steerage way. 
 
 5 :oo p. M. — Fox cooks a good dinner of boiled 
 spuds, fried corned beef, spinach, onions and tea. 
 The days are now very short. 
 
 Saturday, September 2^. — Becalmed. 
 
 10 :45 A. M. — Charles, who was on deck washing 
 the breakfast dishes,, shouted for me to come up. 
 His enthusiasm was alarming, for Charles is not 
 given to such emotional outbursts. Rushing up the 
 companionway, we found, not the man-eating shark 
 or the approaching twister we had expected, but 
 a little land bird, somewhat like an American oriole, 
 
153 THE TRA-(:K of THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 running about the deck within a few inches of 
 Charles's toes and apparently much interested in 
 the process of dish-washing. We guessed that he 
 was thirsty, which proved to be the case, for he went 
 forward, flew down to the chain bobstay and tried to 
 drink the sea water as the boat plunged into the 
 swells, ducking himself in the process. We fed him 
 biscuit crumbs and gave him fresh water and then 
 he set out on a tour of inspection, visiting the 
 lazarette, the cabin, the forepeak and nosing about 
 every nook and corner of the ship. He displayed 
 no fear of us and allowed us to hold him in our 
 hands. It would be interesting to know how he got 
 400 miles offshore — possibly blown off in a gale or 
 carried to sea on a ship. 
 
 1 1 :45 — Light breeze from N. N.E. Lowered 
 mizzen and jib and set spinnaker. 
 
 12:00 Noon — Log 389.1 miles. Day's run 2.6 
 nautical miles, the worst yet. Noon sight ; observed 
 altitude 47° 59' 20". Latitude 40° 47' 59". 
 
 I :oo p. M. — Porpoises sighted ahead. Ran for 
 Winchester, as we need the meat. While approach- 
 ing them another and much larger school was 
 sighted off to starboard,, coming directly for us and 
 jumping out fifty or sixty at a time. There must 
 have been two hundred of them, but they were 
 headed south on urgent business and passed two 
 hundred yards ahead of us without coming near the 
 ship as they usually do. Probably they were fol- 
 lowing a school of fish, as there were a number of 
 gulls above them. 
 
 Took afternoon sight for longitude. Observed 
 altitude 20° 50' 30", Chronometer 4 hours 56 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 1 53 
 
 minutes 33 seconds. Longitude from above 16° 06'. 
 As I work up the sight our little mascot is investi- 
 gating things below decks. He has been walking 
 over my books and over Charles's prostrate form 
 and is now taking a bath in a teacup in the galley. 
 
 6 :30 p. M, — Charles was lying down at sunset and 
 our sociable little friend turned in beside him, his 
 head under his wing, not three inches from Charles's 
 face. Later on we put up an empty oatmeal box for 
 him, placed him in it and he went to sleep immedi- 
 ately. Most remarkable bird. 
 
 Sunday. September 26. — Cloudy. Occasional 
 breeze from S. by E. Course W. by S. Our mas- 
 cot died during the night and was given a fitting 
 burial in a jam bottle. Fox heart-broken. 
 
 12:00 Noon — Log 437.1 miles. Day's run 48.0 
 miles. Too cloudy for noon sight. Becalmed 
 again. 
 
 Longitude sight; observed altitude 16° 33'. 
 Chronometer 5 hours 23 minutes 25 seconds. Lon- 
 gitude 17° 17'. 
 
 An exasperating day. Saw nothing to break the 
 monotony but a barrel covered a foot thick with 
 sea growth. 
 
 Monday, September ^7. — Fine, sunny day, but 
 flat calm. 
 
 8:00 A. M. — Had bully swim. Water fine. Lay 
 about the deck taking sun-bath and watched strange 
 sea life over the side. Water wonderfully clear. 
 
 12:00 Noon. — Log 446.5 miles. Day's run 9.4 
 nautical miles. Noon sight; observed altitude 47° 
 53' 20". Latitude 40° 17' 12". Spent the after- 
 noon on odd jobs about the ship and all had another 
 
1 54 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 swim, Relaced foot of mainsail, painted bitts, 
 spider bands, cleats, etc., and scraped and varnished 
 part of rail. Fox finally weakens and submits to 
 having his head shaved, as Jim and W. W. N. did 
 a couple of days ago; but Charles still holds out, 
 true to his traditions of propriety. 
 
 2:00 p. M. — Sighted masts over horizon on star- 
 board bow,, evidently coming our way and changed 
 course to W. S.W. to intercept her, as she is the sec- 
 ond ship we have seen in a week. Occasional cats- 
 paws give us steerage way. Glass falling sharply. 
 
 5:15. — ^Vessel we have been heading for, a three- 
 masted schooner, evidently an American, close- 
 hauled on starboard tack. Changed course to N. 
 and luff up ahead of her. 
 
 5:30. — Spoke the schooner. She proved to be 
 the "Marjorie McGlashen" of St. Johns, bound for 
 Malaga with a load of salt fish from the Canadian 
 Labrador. Asked the skipper whether there was 
 any wind where he came from and he said he hadn't 
 had any for six days. Asked him, if convenient, to 
 report us. He dipped his ensign and we acknowl- 
 edged the salute with ours. 
 
 6 :oo. — Schooner is hull down over our port quar- 
 ter, disappearing entirely between the long swells; 
 the sun sets, big and red, right over our bowsprit 
 and the full moon rises directly astern of us. 
 
 8 :oo. — We are doing between one and two knots ; 
 too slow for the log to register. 
 
 8:20 — Wind freshening a bit and backing, so 
 that we can now hold due W. Full moon and per- 
 fectly clear, 
 
 Tuesday, September 28. — Sun rises astern as full 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 1 55 
 
 moon drops in west, reversing last night's sunset. 
 
 "Typhoon" sailed herself during Jim's and Fox's 
 watches, from 9 :oo p. m, to 3 :oo a. m. When I came 
 on at three we were doing about three knots. Wind 
 increasing from S.W., with big seas and the glass 
 falling. 
 
 6 :oo A. M. — Took double reef in mainsail. 
 
 9 : 1 5. — Lowered mainsail. 
 
 12:00 Noon. — Log 495.8 miles. Day's run 49.3 
 nautical miles. Rain squalls in afternoon. Blow- 
 ing hard with big seas coming over occasionally. 
 Running before it would be a cinch but close hauled 
 the motion is fierce. Cooking impossible. Nothing 
 to eat to-day but a can of chicken and some beef 
 broth. WindS.W. Course about W. N.W. 
 
 Just before dark decided that we had better heave- 
 to rather than fight it out under jib and mizzen all 
 night. Crew sick and skipper in need of rest. Got 
 out Thomas Ratsey's trisail and Fox and I bent it on 
 with some difficulty, Fox gamely sticking to the job 
 between sick spells at the rail. Doused jib and I 
 had my first sousing on the bowsprit. She rose to a 
 tremendous height and then fell and I thought the 
 whole bow would go under, but she fetched up with 
 the stick awash and all I got was a splashing and a 
 boot full of water. Doused mizzen and wore ship 
 to get back to port tack. Took the wheel for a while 
 to try her out, then went below and let her take care 
 of herself. 
 
 Wednesday, September .?p.— This has been a de- 
 cided improvement over yesterday. During liie 
 night "Typhoon" rode well under the trisail varying 
 from close hauled to wind abeam, occasionally tak- 
 
1 56 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 ing a crashing sea aboard that I thought would 
 smash the dinghy, which is lashed bottom up over 
 the port waterway. At 6 a. m. Charles took the 
 wheel and kept her f uU-and-by and she made a knot 
 or so but at 8 A. M. there was another rain squall and 
 after that the wind that had been from S.W. grad- 
 ually dropped. 
 
 8 130. — ^Wind sprang up from N. and by 9 o'clock 
 was blowing hard. The seas picked up to a tre- 
 mendous size in a remarkably short time, much 
 larger than they were yesterday although the wind 
 seems to be no stronger. 
 
 10:00 A. M. — Lowered trisail, lashing it to main 
 boom and raised mizzen and jib and squared away 
 on W. S.W. course with wind abaft beam,. 
 
 12:00 Noon. — Log 517.5 miles. Day's run 21.7 
 nautical miles. The noon sight was taken under 
 great difficulty with broken water coming over and 
 the tremendous seas making it impossible to see the 
 horizon except for an instant at a time. One sea 
 came completely over me while taking the sight on 
 the bridge deck. Observed altitude 47° 16'. Lat- 
 itude 39° 57' 52". 
 
 We are doing only about 3.7 knots under jib and 
 mizzen due to the heavy seas, which is not enough. 
 W. W. N. takes off trisail which had been left 
 stopped to the main boom and sets double-reefed 
 mainsail which gives us a decent speed. 
 
 Longitude sig"ht taken under difficulties. Ob- 
 served altitude 19° 32'. Chronometer 5 hrs. 9 min. 
 24 sec. Longitude 19° W. This puts us still 300 
 miles from San Miguel, a rotten showing, thanks to 
 calms and bad weather. 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 157 
 
 6:00 p. M. — ^Jim and Charles under the weather. 
 Fox takes wheel till 9 p. m. while W. W. N. cooks 
 a supper with the blow torch. 
 
 7 : 15. — Wind dropping. 
 
 10:00. — Beautiful night. Moon still almost 
 full. 
 
 Thursday, September 30. — Wind N.W. Course 
 S. W, by W.^W. Barograph straightening out 
 after long rise. This is a bully day with bright sun 
 and fine breeze. The sea is comparatively smooth, 
 but the long sweeping swells run about 800 feet 
 between crests. Everyone feeling good after a 
 breakfast of porridge and tea and a lunch of chicken 
 and rice. Even Charles is waxing talkative and 
 cheerful. We were becalmed for a while this morn- 
 ing from eight to ten and poor old Fox at the wheel 
 said : "They were the worst two hours I ever spent 
 in all my bloody life." These long swells with prac- 
 tically no wind are the worst thing we have to con- 
 tend with. Fox had her hog-tied to prevent slat- 
 ting, but when I came up at 10 a. m. we got a N.W. 
 breeze, shook out the reefs and squared away under 
 full sail. 
 
 12:00 Noon. — Log 609.3 miles. Day's run 91.8 
 nautical miles. Noon sight; observed altitude 45° 
 53' 30". Latitude 38° 57' 16". 
 
 4:00 P.M. — Breezing up and clouding over. 
 Longitude sight; observed altitude 23° 8' 30". 
 Chronometer 4 hrs. 54 mjn. 18 sec. Longitude 20° 
 14' w. 
 
 6 :oo p. M. — Tied a single reef in mainsail as it 
 looks bad to windward. 
 
 Friday, October i. — 2 :30 a. m. Wind N. W. 
 
1 58 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 Just came down after five hours at the wheel. The 
 weather has been an interesting study. Early in 
 the evening we could see several rain squalls at a 
 time to windward of us with the streaks of rain 
 plainly visible beneath the patches of dark cloud. 
 Since 9 :30 the wind has been up and down a half 
 dozen times. Once during a rain squall it was so 
 strong that I got Fox up to lower the main peak till 
 it blew over. Barograph went up v^ry high and 
 started down again a couple of hours ago. Over 
 here a rising glass may mean more wind from the 
 north, but to-night's squalls would hardly come with 
 a high glass at home. 
 
 9:45. — Wind dropping a bit and we shook out 
 reef from mainsail. 
 
 12 :oo Noon. — Log 609.3 miles. Day's run 102. i 
 nautical miles. Noon sight: observed altitude 48° 
 32' 40". Latitude 38° 4' 36". This puts us within 
 ten miles of the latitude of San Miguel and we 
 change course to W. by N. to counteract current 
 which sets to south'ard just east of the Azores. 
 
 Longitude sight gives us 21° 50' W., about 150 
 miles from the eastern end of San Miguel. As 
 usual, we are without adequate charts of the islands. 
 San Miguel, the largest of the Azores, is about 
 three-eighths of an inch long on our north Atlantic 
 chart. A town marked Fayal is shown on the east- 
 ern end, but there seems to be no harbor. 
 
 Saturday, October 2. — Wind about N. N.W. 
 Course W. N.W. Barograph dropping. Another 
 bright sunny day. 
 
 12 :oo Noon. — Log 71 1.4 miles. Day's run 123.9 
 nautical miles. Noon sight 48° 28^ 40". Latitude 
 
Wives of Galego fishermen at Ferrol 
 
 Senor Naya, Dorsett and the skipper in the Bull Ring at Coruiia 
 When hard pressed the toreador ducks behind the target and the bull hits the 
 
 bull's eye 
 
3 
 O 
 
 u 
 
 3 
 •a 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 1 59 
 
 37° 45' 16", which puts us on the parallel of the 
 town of Fayal. 
 
 3 :oo p. M. — Clouding up ; take longitude sight 
 earlier than usual. Observed altitude 39° 29' 00". 
 Chronometer 3 hrs. 26 min. 23 sec. Longitude 24° 
 9' — forty-eight miles east of San Miguel, which we 
 should see before sundown if chronometer rate is 
 correct. 
 
 4 :oo.— Log 850.6. LAND HO ! Charles at the 
 wheel sights land a point or so ofif the starboard bow 
 — a high, faint silhouette partially visible through 
 a bank of clouds. Everyone greatly elated, as our 
 food is very low. As we rounded Point Hercules, 
 Coruna, at 6 p. m., September 20th, the time of the 
 landfall is 1 1 days, 22 hours. The logged distance 
 from Point Hercules is 846.3 miles. 
 
 6 :oo. — As the sun sets the volcanic peaks of San 
 Miguel are completely shrouded in a black bank of 
 clouds,, evidently raining. Charles picks up land 
 off port bow, a small island about twenty miles off, 
 probably Santa Maria, as Formigas, though nearer, 
 is a mere rock. The wind is heading us and, as San 
 Miguel is broad off starboard bow, we shall have to 
 beat all night to get in. By way of celebrating the 
 landfall, Fox, Charles and the skipper made baking 
 powder biscuits for supper, the skipper directing op- 
 erations with cook book in one hand and rolling pin 
 (whiskey bottle) in the other. 
 
 9 :oo. — Close hauled and practically hove-to wait- 
 ing for the moon which will be up in about an 
 hour. We are southeast of San Miguel and some- 
 where in the neighborhood of Formigas Rock. Jim 
 goes on deck occasionally while Fox and Charles 
 
i6o THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 turn in and the skipper reads Conrad's "Arrow of 
 Gold." 
 
 9 :40. — Moon rising. Must be in the lee of San 
 Miguel but can't tell exactly where we are, as there 
 are no lights visible, not even the glow of a town. 
 You'd think they'd put up a decent lighthouse to 
 keep their islands from being rammed by a liner. 
 
 12:00. — ^Jim and I turn her over to Fox and 
 Charles. Full sail, wind freshing. 
 
 Sunday, October 5. — This has been an exciting 
 day, the most exciting one thus far,, and I suppose 
 we should be discouraged if we allowed ourselves 
 to indulge in such feelings. Here we are hove-to 
 again under Tom Ratsey's trisail in a howling gale 
 that has left us with a broken mizzen, all messed up 
 below, and thoroughly tired out. At 12 130 a. m. 
 Fox and Charles tied a double reef in the mainsail 
 and by 1:15 the wind was so strong that it was 
 necessary to lower the mainsail entirely. Occa- 
 sionally, when the moon broke through the clouds, 
 San Miguel was visible ten miles or so to windward 
 and at 3:30 we picked up a flashing light on the 
 island. The wind strengthened steadily but we 
 pounded into it throughout the night under jib and 
 mizzen and it was impossible to sleep below because 
 of the racket and the ever present danger of being 
 pitched out of the berths. 
 
 At 6 :oo A. M. Jim and I took her over and drove 
 her for two hours longer and then, working into the 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" i6i 
 
 lee of the island, where the wind seemed a trifle 
 lighter, we raised the double reefed mainsail in order 
 to beat up close under the land, as we were unable to 
 make much progress to windward under jib and 
 mizzen. 
 
 By this time we were within five miles of the land, 
 a mass of mountains, the tops of which were lost in 
 clouds. The eastern end seemed to be a sheer cliff, 
 on the top of which was perched a row of tiny toy 
 houses, probably the town of Fayal, but there was 
 no sign of a harbor. In the lee of the land the 
 water was a confused tumbled mass like a giant tide 
 rip, caused by the seas from the north and south 
 sides of the island coming together, the steepness 
 and irregularity of the waves making them much 
 more difficult to negotiate than those of the open sea. 
 Once, in trying to tack, we missed stays and received 
 a knockdown that nearly buried the companionway 
 and we were forced finally to take off the mainsail 
 entirely. She was easier under shortened rig, but 
 the wicked seas and the wind, now a full gale, made 
 it impossible for us to come about. We missed 
 stays as often as we attempted it and the slatting of 
 the canvas was terrific, but if we hoped to make the 
 shelter of the island it was necessary to get her on 
 to the starboard tack. In order to do this I finally 
 decided to jibe rather than risk slatting the canvas 
 to ribbons. We should have dropped the mizzen 
 peak before attempting the jibe, but we neglected 
 
i62 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON' 
 
 this, and under 
 the terrific strain 
 the mast cracked 
 at the deck. 
 The shoulder 
 cleat at the miz- 
 zen head had 
 carried away 
 just as it had 
 when we were 
 approaching the 
 English Chan- 
 nel. Lowering 
 the mizzen im- 
 mediately, w e 
 improvised a 
 forestay from 
 the throat hal- 
 yards so that 
 the pitching of 
 the ship would 
 not carry away 
 the stick en- 
 tirely. 
 
 W e consid- 
 ered raising the 
 double-r e e f e d 
 mainsail in a 
 last attempt to 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 163 
 
 make the lee but finally gave it up, as it most cer- 
 tainly would have meant losing the sail. It was hard 
 to give up the chance of making the land when we 
 were so close. We could see the green slopes and 
 the houses and the fields very plainly now and the 
 smoky smell of the land was like that of a Harris 
 tweed on a rainy day. 
 
 Lowering the jib we found that she rode easily in 
 the trough with her head a couple of points up to the 
 wind and after great difficulty from the seas that 
 were coming over, we got the trisail up. When this 
 job was completed Fox and I turned our attention 
 to securing the jib, which could be completely low- 
 ered only after the outhaul on the boom had been 
 released. As we were doing this a staggering sea 
 hit us and both started away from there. I got the 
 life line and Fox went clean over it, but fortunately 
 caught the main shrouds. Not seeing that he had 
 caught the rigging, I got a death grip on the seat of 
 his oilskins and he came back with a jerk and the 
 characteristic remark: "Safe again in the arms 
 of a Bobbie." At the same time Jim, who was aft 
 trimming the trisail, stopped a flying block with his 
 forehead and Charles jolted himself pretty badly in 
 falling down the companionway. 
 
 Lying out on the bowsprit, I got the gaskets 
 around the jib to save it, as the bowsprit and in fact 
 the entire bow was going under every time we dove 
 into the steep ones. The forestay seemed to have 
 
i64 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 loosened up and every moment I thought the main- 
 mast was going too, but we rigged up a back stay 
 and nothing carried away. That experience on the 
 bowsprit was the most convincing argument for a 
 knockabout rig that I have ever encountered. 
 
 At 2:30 after sweating in the trisail we went 
 below and cooked up a makeshift meal in the mess 
 that once had been a fairly presentable galley. The 
 experience had been a trying one, but in spite of the 
 buffeting they had received and the disappointment 
 of being blown out again when almost within touch 
 of the land, the crew took it all like Spartans. Al- 
 though ready to hang over the side, they were not 
 beyond appreciating the rather grim humor of the 
 trick fate had played on us. I admired them. To 
 carry on with a joke in your teeth, in spite of hell 
 and sickness, is the real test of a sailorman. 
 
A little old Spanish fortress in the harbor of Coruiia 
 
 l.S r' ■ 
 
 Dorsett hauls in our first mackerel 
 
cii 
 
 bo 
 c 
 
 ^« 
 MS 
 
 •- c 
 
 .5 rt 
 ^~ 
 
 3 
 O 
 
 lao 
 
 c 
 
 « 
 
 J3 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 ;>. 
 
 J3 
 
CHAPTER X 
 From Sanfa Maria to San Miguel 
 
 WHEN we left "Typhoon" in the last chapter 
 she lay hove-to in a gale that drove her to sea 
 again after she had almost reached the protecting 
 lee of the island of San Miguel. The passage to 
 the Azores had been a much slower one than we had 
 expected and it was then Sunday, Oct. 3, the thir- 
 teenth day after leaving Coruna. Our mizzen mast 
 had been broken while endeavoring to make the lee 
 of the island, our food was almost exhausted and 
 the crew were sick. In taking an account of our 
 situation about the only thing I 'could find to be 
 thankful for was the fact that we actually had made 
 a landfall and therefore were relieved of any uncer- 
 tainty about our navigation. At worst it could be 
 only a few days until we should make the islands 
 again. 
 
 The last entry in the log for Sunday reads: 
 4 130 p. M. Fox lying on the floor mixing a batch of 
 baking powder biscuits with the last of our flour 
 while the skipper reads the instructions from 
 Horace Kephart's "Camping and Woodcraft." A 
 big sea just came clear over us, partially filling the 
 
 16S 
 
i66 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 cockpit, pouring in the companionway and drench- 
 ing the stove through the Liverpool head. Nothing 
 seems to have carried away on deck. Outline of 
 San Miguel faintly visible over port quarter. 
 
 Monday, October 4. — All last night and all to-day 
 we have been hove-to under the trisail,, letting 
 "Typhoon" work out her own salvation, which she 
 is doing nobly. Tonight I have been reading Con- 
 rad, while Jim, Fox and Charles, tired out from a 
 day of idleness, are asleep after a sketchy meal pre- 
 pared with difficulty due to the erratic motion of 
 the boat. There is a certain fascination about our 
 predicament, blown far oflf our course after we had 
 almost reached our goal ; our food is low, the kero- 
 sene practically gone, the last candle used last night 
 between twilight and moonrise (we are splurging 
 with a cabin lamp to-night) and there is nothing 
 left to smoke. 
 
 The night was strenuous with now and then a 
 crashing sea all over us that caused a tremendous 
 noise below and shivered the ship as though she had 
 hit a rock. She varies from close hauled to beam- 
 to and we could avoid the crests to some extent by 
 keeping a man at the wheel. We could not dodge 
 them, there is not steerage way enough for that, but 
 we could hold her pretty well into them. And such 
 seas they are — by far the most impressive I have 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 167 
 
 ever seen. Unlike the steep erratic ones we encoun- 
 tered in the lee of the island, they are long swinging 
 hills and valleys of water, made up of a succession 
 of lesser seas, and the distance between the main 
 ridges must be from a third to a half a mile. They 
 blot out the horizon except for an occasional glimpse 
 from the top of one of them and to watch these big 
 fellows, towering like snow-capped mountains, bear- 
 ing down upon us and then to feel the little vessel 
 rise easily over the crests is fascinating indeed, but 
 it is best to do so with but a head out the companion- 
 way and a hand on the slide, for once in every few 
 minutes we get a thorough drenching. The water 
 is all dark and ruffled by the wind, with long streaks 
 of white — ^the shredded remains of broken seas 
 — and just astern of us all day long two little 
 Mother Carey's chickens have skimmed the surface 
 of the water, sometimes actually dragging their toes 
 in it, waiting for scraps of food, a trick they must 
 have learned from the gulls. And then there is the 
 singing of the wind in the riggings, the regular tap, 
 tap, tap of the halyards on the masts, the roar and 
 hiss of the breaking crests, and the constant swish 
 of our own bilge water. 
 
 This noon Fox took the wheel to steady her and 
 Charles, with his arms about my body, held me 
 against the mizzen mast for a latitude sight. The 
 altitude of 47° 15' puts us in latitude 38° 12' 26", 
 
1 68 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 which is about thirty miles north of San Miguel, 
 but we are not sure of our longitude, as conditions 
 were too bad for a sight this afternoon. 
 
 We decided not to attempt to make sail. She 
 might carry the double-reefed mainsail alone but 
 we can't afford to risk losing it now that our mizzen 
 stick is broken. If we could run before it the risk 
 would not be so great,, but close-hauled or reaching 
 with a ten ounce cross-cut sail in a wind like this, 
 even double-reefed, would be tempting providence ; 
 furthermore, it would require a man on deck. We 
 are making less leeway than if we had put out the 
 sea anchor, but we are getting pretty far to the 
 north. 
 
 Rotten sunset behind gray clouds with wicked 
 yellow edges and a yellow reflection in the sky. 
 
 Tuesday, October 5th — Another day hove-to. 
 There must be gales — interminable ones — as well 
 as glassy swells in hell. 
 
 Got the crew up early and shifted the trisail to 
 the port side and have been on the starboard tack 
 all day. The crew have been sick but feel better 
 this evening. Fox, who has not sung much to-day, 
 was performing the solemn rite from the cockpit 
 when a big solid one came over, filling the well and 
 taking him with it. From the cabin I could see him 
 disappear over the coaming and, rushing up the 
 companionway, I found him, a limp, pathetic figure 
 in the waterway; he had caught the lifeline. An- 
 other big sea came clear over us this afternoon 
 
m X 
 
 
 ^^i 
 
 After nearly reaching the protecting lee of San Miguel, "Typhoon" 
 was blown out to sea and reached Santa Maria several days 
 later with her food supply exhausted. 
 
Portuguese fishermen of Ponta Delgada 
 
 The leading resident of San Laurenco shows us his wine press 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 169 
 
 while I was trying to bring the sun down to an im- 
 possible horizon. Although we tried several times, 
 we were forced again to go without a longitude 
 sight. We did manage to get an observation at 
 noon of 46° 50' 00", which places us in latitude 
 38° 50' 14" and this, if correct, means that we are 
 about forty-eight miles north of San Miguel. 
 
 8:00 p. M. — The seas are coming over a bit more 
 frequently, but the motion below is not so bad and 
 the crew have regained their sea legs. Fox is sing- 
 ing again. The sunset was not promising — ^behind 
 gray clouds with whitish yellow light in the sky — 
 but the barometer has been going up slightly. To- 
 day we used the last of our rice and condensed milk. 
 
 Wednesday, October 6th. — Wind dropping at 
 last and barograph still rising. At 8:00 A. M. we 
 took in the trisail and set the double-reefed mainsail 
 and soon after we were able to shake out the reefs. 
 We are headed S.W. and although in doubt as to 
 our exact longitude we ought to pick up San Miguel 
 before dark. 
 
 10:00 A. M. — Set jib and put over the Bliss log. 
 
 11:00 — Sighted steamer approaching broad off 
 port bow. 
 
 1 1 :30 — Crossed her bow and found that she was 
 headed N.W. x N. 
 
 8:00 p. M, — Sighted island off port bow — ^high 
 and mountainous and of somewhat the same char- 
 acter as San Miguel. Probably it is Santa Maria, 
 although Jim is confident he can recognize our first 
 landfall. 
 
 4:15 — Charles sighted what appears to be land in 
 a low lying mass of clouds far off on the starboard 
 
170 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 beam. If this is actually San Miguel, the land we 
 are approaching must be Santa Maria. 
 
 By nightfall the wind had died and we lay for 
 the rest of the night in a flat calm waiting for a 
 wind to determine which island we should make for. 
 
 Thursday, October ph. — All morning we lay be- 
 calmed hoping for one of the squalls which we could 
 see in progress all around us. Occasionally a light 
 air sprang up from one quarter or another and 
 finally, about noon, we set the spinnaker to a north- 
 east breeze, which gave us steerage way. Gradually 
 the wind backed to the northwest and taking in the 
 spinnaker we set it as a balloon jib and were able 
 to make a knot or two toward Santa Maria. A 
 diligent search through the food lockers produced 
 a smoked herring and one and a half pilot biscuits, 
 which were consumed straightaway with a can of 
 chicken soup, as there seemed now but little chance 
 of our failing to make the land. Our progress 
 throughout the afternoon was exasperatingly slow 
 and by sunset we were still three or four miles off. 
 
 As the sun sank behind the mountains we were 
 able to get a perspective of the island, which till 
 then had been but. a flat mountainous silhouette. 
 Behind the rocky cHffs that formed most of the 
 shoreline the land rose in gentle slopes to the higher 
 peaks. Here and there a windmill, with gaunt arms 
 outstretched like those of a crucifix, stood out 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 171 
 
 sharply against the yellow sky, and, nestled in what 
 appeared to be coves near either end of the island, 
 were little towns with tiny red-roofed, stucco houses 
 like those we had seen on the cliffs of San Miguel. 
 As darkness came on we headed for the town near 
 the northern end, expecting that its lights would 
 guide us in, but by eight o'clock, although we could 
 not have been more than a mile off, we lost the land 
 entirely and there was not a light visible. We had 
 not seen a fishing boat or any sign of life and it 
 seemed that we must be approaching a deserted 
 village. Slowly and carefully, with only a breath 
 of air to help us, we held our course and finally 
 picked up what appeared to be a small blinker light 
 in the direction of the town. Then another light 
 appeared far up in the hills and still another — a 
 moving one that wandered about the hillside, prob- 
 ably a lantern carried by someone walking along a 
 road. We waved a lantern, hoping that someone 
 would see it and guide us in, but there was no re- 
 sponse. And then, as the black form of the cliffs 
 loomed up against the scarcely lighter sky, the lights 
 entirely disappeared and a strange sound, like that 
 of a phonograph or some strange musical instru- 
 ment, came out to us. Drawing in closer we could 
 hear the dull rumble of the surf and the mysterious 
 noise we had heard grew louder and proved to be 
 the mingled cries of thousands of night birds in 
 some rookery along the cliffs. 
 
172 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 Knowing nothing of the character of the shore, 
 we came about and made a number of short tacks 
 along the coast, hunting for the little cove we had 
 lost, which finally appeared as a low spot in the 
 skyline of the cliffs that towered above us. It was 
 all quite mysterious, working our way in with the 
 lead line, with no lights, no charts, no moon — much 
 like the gun-running expeditions that Conrad tells 
 about. We kept the lead going until we got four 
 fathoms and could see the phosphorescence of the 
 surf breaking on a point to starboard of us and 
 then let go the hook. The faint, ghost-like forms 
 of the houses were just discernible, but in all the 
 place there was not a single ray of light. It re- 
 minded me of that eventful night when Matey and 
 I anchored the "Nereis" in Miquelon Roads and, 
 as we had done then, we turned in wondering what 
 sort of a place we should find by daylight. There 
 was a difference though, for on that night we had 
 a bull bird stew with dumplings, whereas this time 
 we turned in empty. It had taken us seventeen days 
 to make the run from Corufia, longer by a day and 
 a half than our passage across the Atlantic from 
 Cape Race to the Scilly Islands. 
 
 Friday, October 8th. — Turning out early we 
 found that we were anchored in the middle of a nat- 
 ural amphitheater, the beauty of which made us for- 
 get that we were hungry. The shore of the cove was 
 lined with a row of little stucco houses — blue, pink. 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 1 73 
 
 yellow, all with red tiled roofs. Back of the houses 
 tiny rockbound fields extended ladder-like to the 
 very sky. A single road stretched from a pink and 
 white church on the right through the village and 
 lost itself far up in the hills to the left. It was one 
 of those bully roads for which the Portuguese seem 
 to have a passion. 
 
 But best of all, the village was alive. A donkey, 
 almost hidden by his load, minced his way along 
 the waterfront and at a little shingle landing beach 
 a knot of people already had gathered to meet the 
 strange little vessel that had dropped in on them 
 so mysteriously in the night. 
 
 Fox and I rowed ashore in the dink and were 
 welcomed by a most hospitable and picturesque 
 crew, who shouted instructions to us as we made 
 our way in among the rocks and surf. As we 
 touched the shingle a dozen willing hands grabbed 
 the little tender, carried her far up the beach, and 
 then welconied us most heartily in perfectly good 
 old slangy American. Out of the noise and con- 
 fusion that ensued we gathered that we had made 
 the town of San Laurence and that most of the 
 inhabitants had served their time in the shoe fac- 
 tories of Massachusetts. 
 
 After seventeen days at sea our legs were a bit 
 wobbly and then, too, we were ravenously hungry, 
 a fact that these good people seemed to take for 
 
174 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 granted. One hospitable soul,, Agustinho de Laura, 
 giving up all thought of his day's fishing, led us 
 to his own little home and insisted that we eat and 
 drink before there could be any further parley or 
 sight seeing. After a dinner of salt fish, wonderful 
 bread, and what we recognized immediately, even 
 after weeks of estrangement, as eggs, and many 
 glasses of the local vinho, Fox was dispatched for 
 Jim and Charles, and I was led to the home of the 
 most prominent citizen, who had heard of our ar- 
 rival and had requested "the honor" of a visit. Our 
 host proved to be one Albino Augusto Pereira, a 
 distinguished citizen of Villa do Porto, on the other 
 side of the island, who spends his summers here 
 among his grapevines. A table was set with cakes, 
 fresh figs, oranges, bananas, apples and other 
 things, the names of which were strange to me, and 
 as we ate and drank countless glasses of vinho, he 
 sat and enjoyed it all while the other members of 
 his family and neighbors, hat in hand, crowded the 
 doors and windows and lined the walls. 
 
 Realizing that the state of our finances would not 
 permit us to stock up as we should have liked to do, 
 we explained to our host that we needed a few 
 simple supplies to take us as far as Ponta Delgada, 
 possibly some dried fish, flour and potatoes and a bit 
 of vinho, and he dispatched a runner to the nearest 
 town up in the hills for a special dispensation, for it 
 was against the law to. trade with foreign vessels. 
 
The forward end of the cabin showing the barograph, chronometer, 
 and mascot from the old "Nereis" 
 
 The companionway steps removed showing the motor, rotary bilge 
 pump, and a corner of the galley 
 
^^^H 
 
 1 
 
 ■liH 
 
 ■ 
 
 ifeB 
 
 :;^ 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 w»^ 
 
 i^lS^h' "^m 
 
 H 
 
 
 g 
 
 ?^^^M 
 
 n 
 
 The home of our friend, Albino Augusto Pereira 
 
 The little cove of the terraced grape vines at San Laurenco. The 
 tiny spot on the right is the "Typhoon" 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 1 75 
 
 When we could eat and drink no longer, the entire 
 company went for a tour of inspection about the 
 town. The place seemed to be devoted to the raising 
 of grapes and the ladder-like fields on the slopes 
 back of the town were green with vines — and each 
 little house had its own wine press. That of Senor 
 Pereira was the most pretentious one in the village, 
 consisting of a huge stone basin in which the grapes 
 are pressed by means of an immense lever and 
 wooden screw. 
 
 Not the least important of our company was the 
 priest, an impressive looking gentleman, with white 
 shoes and a black and white checked suit which 
 would have looked more at home on Broadway than 
 in this out-of-the-way corner of the world. At our 
 request he led us to the little pink and white church 
 we had seen from the boat. It had been, built a 
 couple of hundred years ago, but was in a remark- 
 able state of preservation, due to the mild, almost 
 tropical climate of the island. Although but about 
 twenty feet by twenty-five feet inside, the room was 
 large enough to accommodate all of his little flock. 
 It was bare of furniture except for an elaborately 
 carved and painted altar at one end, and the floor 
 was carpeted with long pine needles. In a sort of 
 anteroom or confessional, separated from the main 
 room by a wooden grill, our friend had a collection 
 of curious stalactites which he had gathered from 
 
1 76 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 a cave on the island and he insisted on our taking 
 some of them for souvenirs. 
 
 Like all the islands of the Azores, Santa Maria 
 is of volcanic origin and the lava is used in the con- 
 struction of the houses, the building of roads and 
 for the fences of the tiny fields. Except for the 
 small trees, suitable only for firewood, thatching 
 and the like, there is little timber on the island and 
 the heavier beams of the houses, the doors and the 
 shutters with which the windows are all closed at 
 night, are all made of driftwood picked up along the 
 shore. This wood is brought to the islands from 
 the tropics by an offshoot of the Gulf Stream and 
 it is all honeycombed with the borings of the teredo,, 
 as large as a man's finger, giving a curious decora- 
 tive effect to the woodwork, Along the water front 
 great thickets of bamboo grow wild and in the little 
 protected valleys we found orange and banana trees. 
 Instead of matches these people still depend on the 
 flint and steel and for tinder the pith of the big 
 central shoot of the century plant is used. There 
 are no stoves, the cooking being done in the most 
 primitive way, over a fire of sticks on a stone slab 
 or shelf built into the side of the kitchen. The bread 
 is baked in stone ovens, which are brought to the 
 required heat by first building a fire in them, just as 
 our ancestors did a century or so ago. 
 
 In our tour of the town we dropped in at the 
 home of Manuel Perry, another progressive towns- 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 177 
 
 man, who owned the only still in the place, with 
 which he made brandy from the local vinho. The 
 result is a white liquid of extreme potency, much 
 like vodka or the Scandinavian schnapps, and for 
 quick and sure results it is far ahead of anything 
 we can boast even now that the late Constitutional 
 Amendment has flooded our fair land with liquid 
 dynamite disguised as whiskey. We learned from 
 Senor Perry a thing that made us wish that 
 "Typhoon" were a tanker, instead of a modest little 
 yacht, namely: that since the Portuguese escudo, 
 which before the war was nearly on a par with the 
 dollar, is now worth only about sixteen cents, it is 
 possible at present to buy seventeen and a half gal- 
 lons of vinho or three and a half quarts of brandy 
 for the equivalent of a single American dollar. At 
 the risk of over-populating this delightful place we 
 might add that one of the quaint little houses might 
 be rented for an entire summer for about twenty- 
 five dollars. 
 
 By this time the courier had returned with per- 
 mission from the authorities to let us have anything 
 we required and we found that Senor Pereira, an- 
 ticipating this permission, had prepared a stock of 
 provisions for us of such generous proportions that 
 we began to worry about our ability to pay for them. 
 But it seems the kind old gentleman expected no 
 remuneration and at the suggestion of our English- 
 speaking friends, we carefully avoided any mention 
 
1 78 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 of the matter. There were gifts from the other 
 townsmen of bread and vinho and brandy and as no 
 one would accept a cent we gave the money to the 
 kids instead. On the way back to the tender we 
 found an old lady selling herring that the fishermen 
 had just brought in and offered her an English shill- 
 ing for a mess of them. She gave us a peck, which 
 was all she had, and seemed to feel a bit conscience- 
 stricken that she hadn't more to offer us. 
 
 Before we left we took the opportunity to inspect 
 the little fleet of half a dozen fishing boats which 
 in many respects were like those we had seen in 
 Spain. They are double-enders with fine water- 
 lines but full deck lines, due to the reverse curved 
 sections at the bow and stern. Each boat was 
 equipped with what at first glance seemed to be a 
 tiny tender about 5 ft. long but which proved to 
 be a sort of live well in which the herring are towed 
 home alive after they are taken from the nets. They 
 are miniatures of the larger craft with open seams 
 to permit the circulation of water, and the wood in 
 their construction is sufficient to keep them afloat 
 even with a load of fish. 
 
 All of our friends gathered on the little beach to 
 see us off and their genuine friendship would have 
 been impressive indeed to most dwellers in cities 
 where such attachments are not made in a day. It 
 seemed unbelievable that we had been there but a 
 few hours and it was only after many promises to 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 179 
 
 write to them that they would permit us to leave 
 so soon. It was just another instance of the hospi- 
 tality that is the rule rather than the exception 
 among people who live close to the sea. 
 
 After presenting our friends with our spare 
 American ensign we got under way at 3 p. m. 
 with double-reefed mainsail and jib, and headed 
 for Ponta Delgada, which is situated toward the 
 western end of San Miguel and is about fifty-five 
 miles northwest of Santa Maria. The strong S.W. 
 wind with which we started died early in the eve- 
 ning and we spent the remainder of the night rolling 
 about in a flat calm with everyone below. 
 
 Saturday, October pth. — St. Miguel is about 
 forty miles long and at sunrise the island lay 
 stretched out ahead of us in plain view, except for 
 the western end, which was lost in haze, and the tops 
 of the tall volcanic mountains which were shrouded 
 in clouds, as they always seem to be. Occasionally 
 parts of the island were obscured by rain clouds. 
 We could see several towns, one of which we took 
 to be Ponta Delgada until the western end of the 
 island took form and finally the city itself. A light 
 breeze from the SW gave us steerage way for an 
 hour or so and then a breath from the SE came, only 
 to die as its predecessor had done. 
 
 Disgusted with our slow progress we slatted about 
 for several hours in the middle of the day, swim- 
 
i8o THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 ming occasionally to break the monotony, until a 
 strong breeze from the land sprang up, allowing us 
 just to fetch Ponta Delgada on the starboard tack. 
 As the sun set we were still several miles from the 
 town, which seemed to be a big place with a forest 
 of masts rising above a stone breakwater. Several 
 little coasting vessels farther inshore either were 
 getting a stronger breeze or else were extremely 
 smart sailers, for we found it difficult to hold our 
 own against them. One little vessel in particular, 
 with an odd rig, that we found later to be a three- 
 master with tremendous lateen sails, put it all over 
 us and anchored in the harbor long before dark. 
 
 On none of our charts was the island of San 
 Miguel more than about an inch long, so we were 
 totally in the dark as to the layout of the harbor. Be- 
 fore long we were literally so and were forced to 
 make our way in carefully with the help of the lead. 
 Guided by the clock tower and the lights along the 
 water front we reached the inner harbor without 
 difficulty and anchored off what appeared to be a 
 public landing. We had been told at Santa Maria 
 that Ponta Delgada was under quarantine for bu- 
 bonic plague and that no vessels were allowed to put 
 in there, but we got in without so much as a chal- 
 lenge and were not discovered until the following 
 morning. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Ten Days at PontaDelgada 
 
 THERE is something romantic about an 
 island — any island. Islands have figured 
 prominently in tales of adventure since the begin- 
 ning of time; the idea appeals to the imagination. 
 If the island happens to be hundreds of miles from 
 anywhere and if, besides, it happens to be a strange 
 volcanic place with ragged cliffs, mysterious valleys 
 and peaks rising in fantastic shapes to the very 
 clouds, the romantic picture is complete. Such are 
 the Azores. This little archipelago far out in the 
 Atlantic — a link, you might say, between the Old 
 World and the New — rears its ragged shapes from 
 the ocean floor, two and a half miles below, to a 
 height in the case of the island of Pico of over seven 
 thousand feet above the sea. 
 
 For centuries these islands have attracted ven- 
 turesome mariners. From the ancient coins that 
 have been dug up from time to time, it is supposed 
 that they were first discovered by the Carthaginians, 
 but whether or not those hardy seafarers actually 
 ventured this far, the fact remains that they were 
 known to the geographers of Europe long before 
 
 America was dreamed of. Mentioned first by an 
 
 181 
 
i82 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 Arabian writer in the twelfth century as a group of 
 nine islands lying far out beyond the Canaries, they 
 remained the western outpost of the world until 
 Columbus and the sixteenth century navigators 
 pushed on across the Western Ocean, They were a 
 natural rendezvous for the early Spanish and Eng- 
 lish expeditions to the New World and it was off the 
 island of Flores that the famous fight occurred be- 
 tween the British ship, "Revenge," under the com- 
 mand of Sir Richard Grenville, and a Spanish fleet 
 of fifty-three vessels. Skipping lightly over the in- 
 tervening centuries, it was at Ponta Delgada, the 
 metropolis of the Islands, that the "NC-4" dropped 
 in out of the sky on her historic trans-Atlantic 
 flight, and it was here that the "Typhoon" came to 
 anchor on the night of Saturday, October 9. And . 
 there you have the history of the islands from soup 
 to — well, let us say, "nuts." 
 
 When we dropped the hook off the clock tower, 
 after our run across from Santa Maria, we imagined 
 that we were in for serious complications, for we 
 had understood that Ponta Delgada was under quar- 
 antine for the bubonic plague and that no vessels 
 were allowed to put in there. And so it was with a 
 feeling of guilt, as a perfectly sober man might feel 
 at a Lloyd's Harbor dinner, that we responded to 
 the hail of the customs officers and the harbor doctor 
 the following morning. But these gentlemen 
 seemed perfectly satisfied with our papers, though a 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 183 
 
 bit surprised, and welcomed us to the town, explain- 
 ing that while there were a number of cases of the 
 plague, no actual quarantine had been declared. 
 
 We lay not far off a stone seawall which seemed 
 to enclose a tiny basin where bumboats and little 
 coasting vessels congregated. Beyond the basin 
 tinted stucco building, balconied and red-tiled like 
 those of some Mediterranean port, rose pic- 
 turesquely, and partially seen through a triple arch- 
 way on the left stood the cathedral, whose lighted 
 clock tower had guided us in the night before. On 
 the other side of the harbor a dozen steamships were 
 moored to huge buoys or lay along the breakwater, 
 and at the farther end were crowded a heterogene- 
 ous assortment of fishing boats, little steam tugs and 
 sailing craft. 
 
 The small fishing boats were much like those we 
 had seen in Spain and at Santa Maria — double-end- 
 ers with the characteristic lateen rig, but the coast- 
 ing vessels were a distinctly new type to us. It was 
 easy to see that they were a development of the small 
 boats, for they retained the pointed stern and the 
 lateen rig, but they were different in model. Sixty 
 feet or so in length, they were fairly narrow, with 
 parallel sides turning in rather abruptly, producing 
 a bluff bow. The waterlines at bow and stern were 
 fuller and there was less dead rise to the midship 
 sections. All of the craft of this type that we saw 
 were three-masted, with long bowsprits and huge 
 
i84 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 lateen sails, the yards of which, when hoisted, ex- 
 tended far above the rather short masts. 
 
 One of these vessels, probably the one that had 
 beaten us to port the night before, was discharging 
 her cargo at the quay, and, as soon as the customs 
 officials were through with us, we put the dink over 
 the side and rowed across for a visit. The skipper, 
 a prominent townsman from some place along the 
 coast, showed us about his little packet with justi- 
 fiable pride, but he seemed to be more interested in 
 our ship, which was unlike anything he had ever 
 seen. His crew, a dozen of his fellow townsmen, 
 were at mess when we arrived, squatting about the 
 deck, each man with his own individual chest of 
 food. It seems that these coasting vessels are sel- 
 dom away more than three or four days and, conse- 
 quently, are not equipped with a galley, each man 
 bringing his own supply of grub and zdnho prepared 
 by his wife at home. 
 
 After the skipper and most of the crew of the 
 schooner had been shown over the "Typhoon," in 
 every feature of which they showed a lively interest, 
 we went ashore for a look at the town, which proved 
 to be larger than it had appeared from the water. 
 During the war our Government had maintained 
 quite an establishment here, consisting of a battery 
 and a flying station, but all that now remained, so 
 far as we could see, was a solitary marine and his 
 dilapidated flivver. There were numerous cafes, 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 185 
 
 now closed, that bore names which suggested that 
 they had sprung up to take advantage of the golden 
 opportunity presented by the spendthrift Yankees, 
 and these gave silent testimony that for a while, at 
 least, Ponta Delgada had had its fling. Since the 
 exit of the lucrative Americans the town had settled 
 back into a monotonous existence, depending for its 
 support largely on the vessels that put in there on 
 their way back and forth across the Atlantic. In 
 the case of the American Shipping Board vessels the 
 income must be considerable, for there is seldom a 
 time when there are not several of them in the har- 
 bor. We found that eight of these ships, besides 
 several of other nationalities, had been driven into 
 Ponta Delgada for repairs by the gale that we had 
 weathered in comparative comfort. One concern, 
 the only one with facilities for making such repairs, 
 has every reason to be grateful to heaven and a tol- 
 erant American public for the existence of the Ship- 
 ping Board. They are centainly making hay while 
 the sun shines, and the sun shows no indication of 
 setting. 
 
 The town of Ponta Delgada is composed largely 
 of two-story, balconied, stucco houses, closely packed 
 along narrow, cobbled streets, with here and there 
 an open space with a cathedral or public building to 
 break the monotony. One street is pretty much like 
 another, and, after we had done a few of them, we 
 returned to the ship tired out. Our legs had nor 
 
i86 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 yet become accustomed to the ways of the land, and 
 at first we attributed our fatigue solely to our lack 
 of training, but we never really became rested while 
 we were in the Azores, and the explanation is the 
 enervating climate. It is not only warm, but ex- 
 tremely humid, a condition caused, I imagine, by the 
 clouds which seem to cling continuously to the 
 mountain tops. And then, too, there were the pine- 
 apples. It was the height of the pineapple season, 
 a,nd if there is one thing that looks better than a can 
 of peaches to a salt-encrusted mariner it's a fresh 
 pineapple. We went in rather heavily for pine- 
 apples, and they produced a condition inside us that 
 was decidedly detrimental to physical exertion. 
 The whole crew lost its pep. 
 
 My first official act on Monday morning was to 
 call on the American consul. Major Drew Linard, 
 who received me cordially, in spite of the fact that I 
 arrived an hour before the office opened, due to some 
 confusion with the local time. 
 
 "Are you a captain?" inquired the butler, 
 
 "Yes, in a small sort of way," I replied, and he 
 disappeared, to return shortly with the information 
 that the Consul would see me, in spite of my uncon- 
 ventional calling hour. 
 
 Major Linard, expecting another tale of woe 
 about rotten boiler tubes or engines wracked loose 
 from their beds by the recent storm, seemed relieved 
 at finding merely a social caller looking: for human 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 187 
 
 companionship. I explained that we had dropped 
 in on him on our way across the pond, and didn't 
 want anything except, possibly, an introduction to 
 someone with sporting instinct enough to cash a 
 check. 
 
 "What kind of ship are you in?" he queried. 
 
 "A yacht," I replied; "the 'Typhoon.' " 
 
 "How big is she?" 
 
 "Forty-five feet." 
 
 "I mean how long is she; what's her tonnage?" 
 
 "She's forty-five feet long, thirty-six on the 
 waterline, and her displacement is about fifteen 
 tons." 
 
 "Crossing the Atlantic in a forty-five-foot cockle- 
 shell! Well, you are a nut," he said good- 
 naturedly. 
 
 "Nutshell, then, if you like," I corrected. " Ty- 
 phoon' is not a cockleshell." 
 
 And then Linard went on to tell me of his meet- 
 ing with Peters and Griswold and the other Har- 
 vard chaps who had been there six weeks earlier 
 in the "Lloyd W. Berry," on their way to Europe, 
 and how they had haled Peters to the consulate and 
 started proceedings against him for cruel and in- 
 human treatment of his crew. The "Berry" was 
 registered as a commercial vessel (she carried a 
 cargo of flour for the fun of the thing), and Peters, 
 inexperienced in the intricacies of Admiralty law, 
 sweating under Linard's gruelling cross-examina- 
 
i88 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 tion, had just about concluded that he was in for 
 serious complications for violating something or 
 other, when cocktails were served and the whole 
 crowd had dinner at the consulate. 
 
 It was the first I had heard of the "Berry" since I 
 had left Griswold in New York, in June, with the 
 tentative plan that we should meet at Cowes, and I 
 was glad to hear that the little schooner was making 
 good. I learned later that she reached Southamp- 
 ton some time after we had left the Solent, and, after 
 undergoing some repairs, had proceeded to the 
 Mediterranean — still, I suspect, with her cargo of 
 flour. 
 
 Armed with a letter of introduction to an Ameri- 
 can by the name of W. W. NichoUs, and with a 
 promise that Major Lihard would visit the "Ty- 
 phoon" that afternoon, I left the consulate and went 
 forth in search of funds. Mr. Nicholls, who is in 
 the shipping business, is one of those rare souls who 
 seem to derive great pleasure from helping other 
 folks out of difficulties. He not only cashed the 
 check, but he offered to help us in obtaining such 
 rare provisions as salt pork and salt beef, which are 
 unobtainable in the Azores except from visiting 
 ships. 
 
 For my $ioo check I received a sheaf of paper 
 money that would make the proverbial cow blue in 
 the face. And right here I must say a word about 
 the money of the islands, for it is the most remark- 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 189 
 
 able that I have ever encountered. The unit of the 
 currency is the looo-reis note, or milreis, which cor- 
 responds to the "escudo" or milreis of Portugal, but 
 is not so valuable. The ratio is five island milreis 
 to four escudos or Portuguese milreis, and to dis- 
 tinguish between them the island money is called 
 "weak" money and the money of the mother country 
 "strong." And then there is the matter of the ex- 
 change. Before the war the escudo was nearly on a 
 par with the American dollar, but when we were 
 there it was worth about 16 cents, and consequently 
 I received 750 milreis or 750,000 reis, "weak 
 money," for my hundred-dollar check. 
 
 To try to do any shopping without an experienced 
 mathematician to help you is hopeless, unless you 
 are content to put yourself at the mercy of the shop- 
 keepers. You ask the price of an article and decide 
 to take it without a struggle (which, of course, is 
 wrong), and, seeing you are a soft creature, the 
 shopkeeper tells you that the price is in strong 
 money, whereas yours is weak. By this time, becom- 
 ing hopelessly confused, you call him something un- 
 complimentary in the sign language and hand him a 
 milreis note and trust to luck. Going on the suppo- 
 sition that humanity is about 50 per cent honest,, you 
 take only about a fifty-fifty chance of getting short- 
 changed. There's really no other way, for you 
 could never hope to count the strange paper things 
 you receive, all sizes, colors and denominations in 
 
I90 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 both weak and strong money. But, then, you get 
 such a wad of it back, and feel so disgustingly 
 wealthy, that you oughtn't to kick if he does hold out 
 a little. Anyone who can juggle such money really 
 deserves a commission for his skill. Who was I 
 that I should kick, anyhow? Don't we do the same 
 thing over here? The only difference is that we 
 don't like the term petty larceny, so we stick it on 
 the bill under "cover charge" or "service." 
 
 In the afternoon Major Linard and George Cohh, 
 the vice-consul, came aboard the "Tj^jhoon" and 
 seemed much impressed with her, especially with her 
 living quarters. They considered our accommoda- 
 tions much more comfortable than those of the 
 "Berry," which, though a considerably larger boat, 
 had her best space taken up with her cargo hold. 
 And then they dragged me off to the consulate for 
 dinner and a delightful evening — the first of several 
 I was fortunate enough to spend at this hospitable 
 place.. 
 
 In the morning we busied ourselves aHbut the 
 ship. Fox and I took care of the work on deck, 
 while Charles cleaned up below and Jim started in 
 seriously on the motor. We had not used the power 
 since leaving the French coast, although Dorsett 
 had spent some time in a fruitless endeavor to rem- 
 edy the trouble while we were at Ferrol. We were 
 determined to get the motor going if possible, for, 
 with our longest leg still ahead of us, we could not 
 
One of the swift little lateen rigged coasting vessels of San Miguel 
 
 Until the middle of November we hung over the side for our 
 morning bath in tropical water 
 
•a 
 
 !? 
 bo 
 
 c 
 o 
 
 P-, 
 
 
 
 < 
 
 u 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 a 
 o 
 o 
 
 J3 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 191 
 
 risk slatting about in any more flat calms if we were 
 to be sure of reaching New York before Thanks- 
 giving. Already we had wasted too much time 
 whistling for a wind, and every hour's delay in- 
 creased our chances of encountering bad weather. 
 This time we were successful and before long the 
 motor was performing faultlessly. As to fuel, we 
 still had the greater part of the oil with which we 
 started. 
 
 In the evening, when I returned to the ship after 
 another visit ashore, I found her close to the rocks 
 off the seawall, moored stern-to and slapping with 
 her broad transom the seas that were being kicked 
 up by a rising wind from the southeast. She had 
 been lying to the 60-lb. anchor and it seemed that 
 her one-inch manila line had chafed through on the 
 ragged bottom and that she had fetched up on the 
 rocks. But the boys had acted quickly, placing the 
 big hook out to windward with the tender and haul- 
 ing her off with the windlass before any damage had 
 been done. They had pulled her off stern-to and, 
 as she seemed to ride comfortably, had left her in 
 this position, a thing we had occasion to regret, for 
 it blew a living gale during the night and the pound- 
 ing in the short seas was terrific. Of course, we 
 should have anchored farther up the harbor orig- 
 inally, but it was then too late to do anything. The 
 shoal, rocky bottom was so close to loo'ard that I 
 didn't dare to attempt to lead the line forward and 
 
192 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 let her swing around, for fear that she might strike 
 with her deep heel, and there was so little line out 
 that to work her ahead with the windlass might 
 result in breaking out the hook. And so we en- 
 dured the discomfort throughout the night. 
 
 The next day we got her around bow to the wind 
 without difficulty, and thus encouraged I decided to 
 try to beat out of our predicament under sail — a' 
 thing that we should not have attempted in such 
 close quarters without the mizzen, which, of course, 
 was out of commission due to the broken mast. 
 Raising the mainsail, we worked her up to the hook 
 with the windlass, sailed over it, broke it out with- 
 out losing headway, raised the jib and got away on 
 the port tack. We came about nicely the first time, 
 but missed stays on the second tack, dropped off and 
 tried it again, only to miss a second time. With 
 the mizzen to help us about, the maneuver would 
 have been simple enough. We were out of the har- 
 bor now, but we were dropping steadily down 
 toward the rocks and, not knowing the depth of the 
 water, we were forced to anchor again. One of the 
 little steam tugs, seeing our predicament, was hover- 
 ing about us and, suppressing our pride, we threw 
 him a line and were towed to a safe berth farther 
 up the harbor. 
 
 We had not been here long when an officer ap- 
 peared on the stern of the "Independent Bridge," 
 one of the crippled American ships, and semaphored 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 193 
 
 over requesting that I come aboard to discuss re- 
 pairs, which I did straightway. The officer proved 
 to be W. J. Huber, the first mate. He grasped the 
 difficulty at a glance and agreed immediately with 
 the suggestion to run "Typhoon" alongside the "In- 
 dependent Bridge" and lift out the broken stick with 
 a cargo boom, a much simpler solution than taking 
 her to the ship repair people, who were already 
 crowded with work. 
 
 Warping "Typhoon" alongside and lifting out the 
 mizzen was the work of but a few minutes, and the 
 ship's carpenter, a Dane by the name of Anderson, 
 hereinafter referred to as "Chips," got busy im- 
 mediately on the repairs. 
 
 The mast was cracked at the point where it passed 
 through the deck, and the first idea was to shrink 
 a long bronze collar around the bad spot, but after 
 this was made it was spoiled in attempting to drive 
 it home while hot, and the idea was abandoned. 
 Since the mizzen is stepped in a bronze socket in the 
 cockpit floor, there was a length of only about two 
 feet below the break and, as there was plenty of 
 room between the throat halyard block and the gaff 
 jaws, we decided to cut two feet off the butt of the 
 stick. Then new shoulder cleats had to be made for 
 the masthead and Chips made a good job of them, 
 mortising them deeper into the mast and riveting 
 them right through the stick. The wire shrouds, of 
 course, had to be shortened and respliced, and this 
 
194 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 job was simplified by taking all the slack off one end 
 of each pair and then changing the position of the 
 eye for the mast and reseizing it. 
 
 "Typhoon" and her benefactor became fast 
 friends. The "Independent Bridge" and the other 
 cripples in the harbor were undergoing repairs of 
 one kind or another — interminable repairs — and 
 consequently the officers had plenty of time for 
 social activities. Captain Wingate, Second Officer 
 Rodowsky, Third Officer Bell, and Glazier, the chief 
 engineer, took a fancy to the little ship, and when 
 we were not aboard eating their bully meals, they 
 were swapping yarns in our cabin. They rerated 
 our chronometer for us and supplied us with a light 
 list and a couple of charts that seemed to be missing 
 from our stock. 
 
 With the repairs completed, the problem of sup- 
 plies confronted us, and this proved a problem, in- 
 deed. There happened to be a food shortage in the 
 islands and an embargo had been placed on certain 
 articles. Consequently it was necessary to smuggle 
 a number of things past the little soldiers on the 
 quay. Dear reader, if you have ever attempted to 
 smuggle a dozen eggs in an ordinary business suit 
 you will appreciate our difficulty. With an egg or 
 two in every pocket of coat, vest and trousers you 
 have a terribly aloof, touchy sort of feeling as you 
 gingerly pick your way through the crowd at the 
 landing and take your seat in the tender. You may 
 
Preparing to lift out the broken mizzen with a cargo boom 
 
c 
 o 
 
 bo 
 
 c 
 
 s 
 ,0 
 
 
 c 
 o 
 CM 
 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 195 
 
 get through the ordeal with but a small percentage 
 of breakage, but the embarrassment caused by even 
 a single broken egg is most disconcerting. We took 
 but a few dozen eggs. 
 
 Through the good offices of Mr. NichoUs we were 
 able to connect up with a hundred pounds of salt beef 
 and a big sack of flour on the "West View," another 
 American cripple, whose skipper, Hillary Williams, 
 lieutenant-commander, U. S. N., retired, instructed 
 his steward to let us have it at cost. Even this had 
 to be smuggled from the ship at night, for it seemed 
 to be against the law to transfer supplies from one 
 ship to another, and there were serious-minded lit- 
 tle soldiers stationed on each vessel to enforce the 
 law. Most everything else we needed was obtain- 
 able from the principal ship chandlery and supply 
 store, and we laid in what I thought would be a suf- 
 ficient supply for five or six weeks. 
 
 It was about this time that we met Manson Dilla- 
 way, who was stopping at Mrs. Brown's Pension, 
 where lived our benefactor, Mr. NichoUs, and my 
 friend, David Vaughan, an American artist with 
 whom I had spent a number of pleasant hours in dis- 
 cussing the things which to me are almost as vital 
 as the sea and its ships. Dillaway, an ex-Army 
 flier and an admiralty lawyer of Boston, had come to 
 Ponta Delgada to see to the disposal of a schooner 
 that had been dismasted and towed into that port. 
 While not a sailor he is, nevertheless, a mighty 
 
196 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 good sort, and, as he was ready to leave for home, 
 we suggested that he make the run with us on the 
 "Typhoon," an ofifer which he accepted with alac- 
 rity. 
 
 Most of the repair work on the disabled ships 
 that always seem to crowd the harbor of Ponta Del- 
 gada is done by one big concern with a reputation 
 for charging like sin. This company owns the tug 
 that had towed us out of our awkward predicament 
 and also the water boat from which we had filled our 
 tanks and breakers. One morning a boat with a 
 diver and full equipment came alongside the "Ty- 
 phoon" with the information that the captain had 
 been instructed by his company, the same one, to 
 recover our light anchor which had been lost when 
 the line parted several days before. With the as- 
 sistance of Fox, who showed them about where it 
 lay, they succeeded in finding the hook, and I began 
 to feel tliat my bill with the concern in question was 
 mounting to gigantic proportions. Steeling myself 
 for the ordeal, I called at the office to settle the ac- 
 count. I feared that they might consider towing 
 the "Typhoon" out of her difficulty as a salvage job 
 and charge accordingly, and I sort of felt that divers 
 were an expensive luxury. Introducing myself, I 
 explained that I had come to settle up and then 
 waited for the jolt — ^but it never came. These gen- 
 tlemen explained that, since "Typhoon" was not 
 engaged in trade, they could not think of charging 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 197 
 
 for services which it had been a great pleasure to 
 them to be able to perform. They admired the 
 "Typhoon," they said, and only wished that they 
 might have been of greater help to her. Ashamed 
 of my fears, I thanked them and left with a great 
 and glowing confidence in the human race. 
 
 As I was leaving the place with my guide, a bare- 
 foot youngster with a complimentary admiration for 
 all Americans, we had an adventure. There was a 
 great noise of shouting and clattering from up the 
 street, or, rather, the shouting came from numerous 
 excited gentlemen standing in doorways and other 
 points of vantage and the clattering from a runaway 
 that had the street pretty much to itself. It was a 
 warm day and we needed a lift, my friend and I, 
 and so, exercising as much care as I could, for the 
 horse was a small, delicate-looking animal, I stopped 
 it, vaulted into the little cart, got my companion 
 aboard and drove smartly back in the direction from 
 which the thing had come, assuming a casual sort of 
 expression, as though we always did that sort of 
 thing in America when we wanted a ride. The 
 effect on the doorways was delicious. Presently we 
 came upon a crowd of breathless people led by a very 
 red and very rotund person with a whip, who seemed 
 on the point of apoplexy. Assuming that he was the 
 bereft proprietor, we alighted smartly, turned his 
 property over to him and left him, gasping and sur- 
 
198 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 prised that we had not charged for salvaging the 
 outfit. 
 
 After going through the formality of paying our 
 harbor dues, I called at the consulate for our health 
 certificate, and to say good-bye to the Major and 
 Mrs. Linard, whose hospitality will live in my 
 memory along with that of Les Capucins and my 
 friends of Cowes. After a dinner at a cafe with a 
 name reminiscent of the American occupation, the 
 U. S. Club, the entire crew of the "Typhoon" 
 dropped in at our little rendezvous in the back room 
 of the ship chandler's, where seafaring men congre- 
 gate to, as the Scriptures say, "Look upon the wine 
 when it is red," although I must say that their inter- 
 est in the beverage was somewhat more than ocular. 
 When it was learned that we were actually pulling 
 out that evening, our friends, who had been improv- 
 ing the opportunity offered by an unlimited stock of 
 local and imported beverages, started in to ransack 
 the entire place for suitable gifts to bestow upon the 
 crew. Glazier appeared triumphant with a box of 
 Dutch cigars and a bottle of Black and White, some- 
 one else discovered chocolate and cigarettes, and 
 Captain Wingate, totally disregarding the imporr 
 tunities of numerous clerks and the proprietor, 
 nearly precipitated a riot by mounting a stepladder 
 and sweeping off the entire contents of a shelf of 
 fancy canned goods which he ordered delivered to 
 the "Typhoon." 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 199 
 
 Then all hands repaired to the "Independent 
 Bridge," where another dinner was served and, 
 after receiving a final tribute of medicines, a large 
 saucepan and saltpeter for our pickle barrel from 
 the steward and taking aboard a couple of dozen 
 pineapples which Dillaway had ordered, we were 
 ready to cast off. 
 
 So far as I know the noisiest moment in the his- 
 tory of Ponta Delgada up to that time was when the 
 American collier "Orion" beat off a German sub- 
 marine while the local artillery officers were hunting 
 for the key of their ammunition locker — or possibly 
 it was when the Armistice was signed. But these 
 demonstrations could not have surpassed the uproar 
 that broke loose as the little black ketch slipped her 
 moorings and sailed out the harbor in the gathering 
 dusk. Every ship in the place, regardless of na- 
 tionality, broke out her siren and blew salute after 
 salute, which we returned on our foghorn and with 
 many dips of the ensign. It was a tribute from big 
 ships that plow the Seven Seas, to a tiny craft that 
 played their game for fun — a tribute that blurred 
 the eyes of her crew and brought strange lumps into 
 their throats as she rounded the breakwater, met the 
 heave of the open sea and squared away out into the 
 path of the moon. 
 
 It was Thursday, October 19, ten days after we 
 had come to anchor at Ponta Ddgada. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 Off on the Last Leg 
 
 THE send-off was an inspiriting one, but after 
 the excitement was over it was a relief to sit 
 at the wheel and feel the little ship alive again after 
 her period of inactivity. For hours I stayed on 
 deck enjoying the poetry of it alone in the moon- 
 light — ^the easy rhythmic motion as she lifted to the 
 seas and dipped into the hollows — the regular swish, 
 swish of the bow wave — the occasional dash of 
 spray. It was one of those nights when one loses 
 all sense of time and worry and feels in harmony 
 with the scheme of bigger things. 
 
 We had been advised to run clear down to the 
 20th parallel in order to make sure of the northeast 
 trades, but it was then so late that we decided to try 
 a middle course. It was obvious that our best 
 chance for favorable wind even at this time of the 
 year lay to the south'ard, but I figured that if we 
 went down to the tip of the horse latitudes, say to 
 the thirtieth parallel, our chances for a good slant 
 would be reasonable and we should not have to cover 
 anywhere near so great a distance. Our course for 
 the first week or so, therefore, would be about south- 
 west. 
 
 200 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 201 
 
 This plan worked out fairly well. It was not 
 many days before we picked up an easterly slant 
 which though it varied from N.E. to E. may have 
 been the tip of the trades, for it stayed with us an 
 entire week and enabled us to log 1031 nautical 
 miles, which was within six miles of our best week's 
 run on the record passage from Cape Race to the 
 Scilly Islands. Nothing but an occasional squall 
 or a school of flying fish broke the lazy monotony of 
 this southern run. One day was pretty much like 
 the next with almost constant sunshine and tropical 
 temperature. In fact, until nearly the middle of 
 November we swam during periods of calm or hung 
 over the side of the mizzen rigging for our morning 
 bath. Even the nights were so warm that blankets 
 or sleeping bags were out of the question. The 
 water was filled with gulf weed like that encoun- 
 tered in the Gulf Stream, sometimes in windrows 
 miles in length, and in fact so far as appearances 
 were concerned we might have been in the Gulf 
 Stream almost from the time we left the Azores. 
 There was no way of telling when we actually hit 
 the Stream, and things went smoothly until the thir- 
 teenth of November when we must have been about 
 in the middle of it. It was on this day that we en- 
 countered that spell of unusually severe weather that 
 worried shipping along the entire Atlantic Coast and 
 furnished the copy for those harrowing press ac- 
 counts which led people to believe that "Typhoon's" 
 
202 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 westward passage was a continuous round of danger 
 and hardship. 
 
 But before telling of our experiences in the gales, 
 let's look back over a brief synopsis of the log. 
 While this makes pretty dry reading, the facts may 
 be of value to those who may be planning to make a 
 similar passage. 
 
 Once clear of San Miguel we found the wind 
 almost due west, so that the best we could do was 
 S SW >4 W (magnetic). Close hauled "Typhoon" 
 behaved better than she had ever done, for antici- 
 pating head winds we had trimmed her accordingly. 
 On the run from Nova Scotia "Typhoon" had been 
 trimmed by the stern for running before the wind 
 and while her behavior was all that could be desired 
 when the wind was abaft the beam, she showed a 
 tendency to pitch when close hauled. With the 
 greater part of a ton of coal in the lazarette and 750 
 lbs. of chain aft of the engine, her bow was so light 
 that she pivoted about a point three-quarters of the 
 way aft or approximately at the cockpit. This was 
 comfortable for the man at the wheel, but when 
 close hauled in a rough sea and a light wind the re- 
 sult was that she slatted the wind out of her main- 
 sail. 
 
 While at Ponta Delgada we had shifted the chain 
 from its position aft to a temporary bin just forward 
 of the mainmast and this weight forward brought 
 "Typhoon" more nearly to her designed running 
 
Hookey, Dillaway, Fox and Dorsett 
 
 The skipper feeds the little visitor 
 
 Fox, the Sir Galahad of the crew, carries his motto, "Aim High,'' even 
 to his photography — he missed the bird and hit the skipper 
 
Shooting the sun was frequently a two-man job 
 
 Running before it in a bit of a bubble 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 203 
 
 lines, causing her to pivot about a point somewhat 
 farther forward and consequently in'proving her 
 sailing qualities. 
 
 Wednesday, October 20. — Barograph rising. 
 Strong wind from W kicks up big sea, putting Jim, 
 Fox and Dillaway under the weather, although 
 Charles shows no sign of weakening. At i a. m. 
 we were forced to lower the mainsail, sailing under 
 jib and mizzen for the rest of the morning. 
 
 12:00 noon. — ^Log 62.5. The island of Santa 
 Maria just visible over port quarter bearing E NE. 
 
 I p. M. — Hoisted mainsail and let "Typhoon" sail 
 herself throughout the afternoon. Course SW 
 X S. 
 
 4 :oo. — Sighted ship off port beam. 
 
 Thursday, October 21. — Barograph still rising. 
 Wind backs in morning from W to SW x S. Course 
 W. Unusual condition of rain, backing wind and 
 rising barometer. 
 
 12:00 noon. — Log 123.2. Day's run 60.7 nautical 
 miles. 
 
 4:00 P.M. — Rain. Barograph dropping. No 
 seasickness, but everyone feeling listless, due to the 
 weather. Flies particularly tenacious. 
 
 7:30 p. M. — Wind dropping, finally dies com- 
 pletely. Flattened in all sail and all turned in. As 
 the crew have not yet got back their sea legs, 
 thought they had better have a night's sleep, which 
 would have been difficult had we driven her under 
 the motor. Another argument for an enclosed mo- 
 tor room. 
 
 Friday, October 22. — Wind W SW, strong. 
 
204 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON"' 
 
 Rain in morning, clearing in afternoon, glass steady. 
 Course NWxW. 
 
 12:00 noon. — Log 169. Day's run 45.8 nautic?,l 
 miles (bad showing due to calm). 
 
 3 :30 p. M. — ^Wind backing. Changed course to 
 WNW. 
 
 3 :5o. — Wind hauling aft. Rain squall. Changed 
 course to W SW. 
 
 P. M. Longitude sight. — Chronometer 5 hrs. 8 
 min. 13 sec. Observed altitude 19° 31' 00", longi- 
 tude 27° 00' 00" W. 
 
 6:30. — Started motor, which ran perfectly, but 
 found the clutch slipping. After working an hour 
 gave it up till daylight. 
 
 Saturday, October 2$. — Glass high. Bright 
 sunny day. 
 
 10:00 A.M. — Started motor after adjusting 
 clutch. Log 221. Wind light, scarcely enough to 
 keep sails full, but with motor running slatting is 
 eliminated. 
 
 1 1 :oo A. M. — Log 225.9 (doing 4.8 knots at 455 
 r.p.m.). 
 
 12:00 noon. — Log 231 (5.1 knots.) Day's run 
 62 miles. Noon sight: observed altitude 42° 56' 
 00", latitude 35° 27' 42". 
 
 3 p. M.— Log 245.2. 
 
 3:10. — Stopped motor, as stuffing-box is hot. 
 Light breeze from NE. 
 
 P. M. sight. — Chronometer : 6 hrs. 18 min. 37 sec. 
 Observed altitude 7° 29' 30". Longitude 27° ^8' 
 00". First dinner of stewed salt beef (pretty 
 bad), with dumplings, biscuits, potatoes, tea and 
 pineapple. Cabin looks like a tropical jungle 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 205 
 
 with our cargo of pineapples hanging from the 
 roof. 
 
 5 :oo. — ^Log 245.6. Started motor. 
 
 6:cx).— Log 249.6. Heavy swell. Lowered 
 mainsail to prevent slatting. 
 
 7:00.— Log 254.5 (4.9 knots under motor alone). 
 Ran all night under motor. Faint NE breeze, 
 hauling to SE. 
 
 12:00. — Log 275.7. 
 
 Sunday, October 24. — 6:00 a.m. — Log 301.5. 
 Barograph high. Dropping slightly. Course W. 
 
 6:20. — ^Light breeze from SW. Stopped motor 
 and hoisted mainsail. Course W. 
 
 12:00 noon. — ^Log 332.3. Day's run 101.3. 
 Noon sight: observed altitude 43° 18' 20". Lati- 
 tude 34° 44' 28^. 
 
 P. M. sight. — Chronometer 4 hrs. 52 min. 31 sec 
 Observed altitude 24° 8' 30". Longitude 29° 
 
 31' w. 
 
 9:30. — ^Wind strengthening. Tied two reefs in 
 mainsail. 
 
 1 1 :oo, — ^Lowered peak of mainsail during squall. 
 
 12:00. — ^Lowered mainsail and sailed under full 
 jib and mizzen. 
 
 Monday, October 25. — Glass rising after slump 
 diwing the night. Bad night with seas coming over. 
 Motion below made it difficult to stay in bunks, 
 which were wet, due to leaks around cabin trunk. 
 
 3 :30 A. M. — Raining hard. Moon hidden by 
 dense clouds. So dark we can't see jib. Rain 
 knocked sea down somewhat and after it deared the 
 wind fell. 
 
 9:00. — ^Fox and I started to hoist mainsail, but 
 
206 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 by the time we had shaken out reef it was blowing 
 half a gale from the north with a dreary cold rain 
 and we doused it again and went below. The skip- 
 per attempted a sort of synthetic bread, which fin- 
 ished up as pancakes — ^terrible. 
 
 12 :oo Noon. — Log 417.2, Day's run 84.9. We 
 are doing under four knots with jib and mizzen and 
 should have mainsail up, but peak halyard got adrift 
 and blew out of block and there is too much motion 
 to attempt to go aloft and reeve it. 
 
 4 130 p. M. — Got out and set Tom Ratsey's trisail, 
 which adds considerably to our speed. 
 
 5 :oo. — Log 437.9. Course W. Wind N x E. 
 
 6:00. — Log 444.3. Doing 6.4 knots under jib, 
 trisail and mizzen. About this time we began to 
 notice Gulf weed, which became more frequent until 
 we got through the Gulf Stream. 
 
 Tuesday, October 26 (seventh day from Ponta 
 Delgada). — This has been an ideal day, and we hope 
 it will be t3^ical rather than the exception from now 
 on. The barograph, already high, has been rising 
 and the wind at last is from the NE, just where we 
 want it for speed, and although strong, the motion 
 is much easier than when close hauled. All night 
 and until 4 : 00 p. m. we ran under jib, mizzen and 
 trisail, and then after splicing the topping lifts and 
 reeving the throat halyard we set the mainsail and 
 by 5 :oo p. m. were doing 7.4 knots, the mainsail 
 adding 2 knots to our speed. 
 
 12:00 Noon. — Log 538.2. Day's run 121 nauti- 
 cal miles. Noon sight: 43° 21'. Latitude 34° 00' 
 
 P. M. sight.— Observed altitude 18° 20' 50". 
 
. o 
 
 •a 
 
 a 
 O 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 207 
 
 Chronometer 5 hrs. 37 min. 19 sec. Longitude 
 3i°48'W. 
 
 7 :oo p. M. — Wind hauled a bit east, necessitating 
 gybing to port tack. New course, W SW. 
 
 8 :oo p. M. — Rain squall. Doused mizzen — not 
 much good anyhow running so nearly before the 
 wind. We left Ponta Delgada just a week ago and 
 have done but 564 nautical miles — a poor showing. 
 
 Note: Unusual activity in galley to-day with 
 following results: Breakfast: porridge and tea; 
 lunch: soup, baking powder biscuits, baked sweet 
 potatoes and pineapple ; dinner : salt beef, boiled po- 
 tatoes, fried onions, biscuits, cocoa, cheese and mar- 
 malade. As conditions are favorable we baked six 
 dozen biscuits and a pot of beans and cooked enough 
 salt beef for hash in case of bad weather. (We 
 find that salt beef is least objectionable when pre- 
 pared as hash with potatoes and onions.) 
 
 Wednesday, October 2^. — Clear and sunny. 
 Glass high. Strong breeze from E. Course 
 WNW. 
 
 During the morning we averaged as high as 7 
 knots under mainsail alone. 
 
 12:00 Noon. — Log 667.1. Day's run 128.9 '^'^^- 
 tical miles. Noon sight: 43° 18'. Latitude 33° 
 
 42' 41".. 
 
 2 :oo p. M. — Set spinnaker with considerable dif- 
 ficulty, due to strength of wind, and almost lost Fox 
 overboard during process. 
 
 2:25. — Spinnaker tack lets go and sail is recov- 
 ered and stowed only after a fine display of comic 
 acrobats. 
 
 Thursday, October 28. — Fox, who is displaying 
 
2o8 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 alarming devotion to the galley these days, goes on 
 deck at 7 :oo a. m. and returns proudly with a 4 in. 
 flying fish which he picked up on the bridge deck. 
 Charles finds two more on forward deck. 
 
 12 :oo Noon. — Log 807.0. Day's run 139.9 ^^U" 
 tical miles. Latitude from noon sight 33° 56'. 
 Longitude from p. m. sight 36° 46'. Running un- 
 der mainsail alone. 
 
 1 1 :oo p. M. — Squall during skipper's watch. 
 Friday, October 2g. — Glass high. Wind strong 
 
 E SE (magnetic) . Day devoted largely to cooking. 
 
 12:00 Noon. — Log 963.0. Day's run 156.0 nau- 
 tical miles. No noon sight. 
 
 2 :oo p. M. — Schooner five miles S, headed NE. 
 First ship we've seen in a week. 
 
 P. M. sight, — Observed altitude 12° 29' 30". 
 Chronometer 6 hrs. 34 min. 12 sec. Longitude 
 
 39° 36'. 
 
 Note : Although the first week's run from Ponta 
 Delgada logged only 564 nautical miles, the good 
 showing of the last three days has brought our mile- 
 age up to 994.2 which gives us a daily average for 
 ten days of 99.42 nautical miles. 
 
 Saturday, October 30. — Another ideal day. 
 Crisjp and sunny. Wind E SE. Course W x N. 
 Glass high but dropping slightly. 
 
 1 2 :oo Noon. — Log 1 1 2 1 . 5 . Day's run 1 58, 5 nau- 
 tical miles. 
 
 Took careful noon sight, starting early to make 
 sure of getting sun at highest point. Observed alti- 
 tude 44° 16' 30". Latitude 31° 42' 21". It seems 
 that I have been careless with the noon sight lately 
 and have been getting latitude too far north. Set 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 209 
 
 clocks back one-half hour to local apparent time. 
 Everyone energetic, due to good meals and fine 
 weather, and considerable work done both above and 
 below deck. 
 
 Sunday, October 31. — Weather continues bright 
 and warm. Glass dropping slowly. Wind still 
 south of east. Course W NW. Thermometer be- 
 tween 70 deg. and 80 deg. During my watch 
 (12 :oo-3 :oo a. m.) got a smart thump on the head 
 caused by a small flying fish which I caught and kept 
 alive in a pail. 
 
 12 :oo Noon. — ^Log 1257.8. Day's run 136.3 nau- 
 tical miles. Noon sight: 44° 38' 20". Latitude 31° 
 01' 10". 
 
 12:25. — Raised jib and mizzen as wind is enough 
 on quarter to fill all sails. All had bath holding on 
 to mizzen rigging. 
 
 Rigged up fish line as there are a lot of what seem 
 to be bonito chasing the schools of flying fish, but as 
 usual far out to sea we caught nothing. The little 
 fliers are quite common now. They leave the water 
 singly or in schools, a few rods ahead ot the 
 "Typhoon," and fly for as much as a hundred 
 yards generally to windward before plopping 
 into the sea, their filmy wings glistening in the sun- 
 light. 
 
 Took two p. M. sights for longitude and got 43° 
 39' and 43° 40' respectively which is hard to ex- 
 plain since it indicates that we have traveled only 
 about half the logged distance since yesterday's 
 sight. 
 
 Monday, November i. — Bright sunny day. Bar- 
 ograph high and steady. Temperature 78 deg. 
 
2IO THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 Wind drawing more to the south. Course W N W 
 (practically true west). 
 
 With wind slightly abaft beam and all sails pull- 
 ing we averaged above 7 knots during the morning. 
 
 12 :oo Noon.— :Log 1408.8. Day's run 151 nauti- 
 cal miles. Noon sight : 44° 34' 40". Latitude 30° 
 44' i/-. Passing through great windrows of Gulf 
 weed. 
 
 P. M. sight: Chronometer 6 hrs. 48 min. 16 sec. 
 Observed altitude 15° 31' 30", which gives us 45° 10' 
 longitude W. This again puts us way under our 
 logged distance and as there is no adverse current 
 in this section of the Atlantic, either the sight is in- 
 correct or the chronometer has changed its rate. 
 
 Tuesday, November 2 (fourteenth day from 
 Ponta Delgada). — Cloudy. Barograph high and 
 steady. Thermometer, maximum 84 deg., mini- 
 mum 74 deg. Night sultry. Wind S SW. Course 
 NW, full sail. 
 
 Dillaway finds 9 in. flying fish on deck. 
 
 Awkward beam sea makes it unpleasant below 
 and floods companionway several times. 
 
 12 :oo Noon. — Log 1570. Day's run 161.2 nauti- 
 cal miles. This is the best day's run of the western 
 passage, bringing the total for the second week up 
 to 1 03 1. 8 miles, which is within 5 miles of our best 
 week on the eastern passage. 
 
 Noon sight: 43° 41'. Latitude 31° 19' 32". 
 
 Large whitish cumulous clouds on the windward 
 horizon with ominous gray sunset behind hazy 
 clouds. 
 
 6:45 P- M. — ^We expected something to happen 
 and it did. About dark Fox at wheel called me just 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 2 1 1 
 
 in time to reach the deck before the worst squall we 
 have had hit us. It was one of those fierce jolts like 
 the one that knocked "Nereis" down on her way to 
 Newfoundland. Just had time to let go throat and 
 peak halyards when it struck, flattening out the sea 
 and putting us almost on our beam ends. The rain 
 and wind were so strong that you could not tell 
 where the surface of the water was. Jim and 
 Charles got the mizzen down and we ran off under 
 jib alone. Nothing seems to have carried away ex- 
 cept the lazy jacks and the gaff jaw band. Squall 
 lasted but a few minutes. Got main boom in crutch 
 and hoisted mizzen., 
 
 Wednesday, November 5. — Cloudy with succes- 
 sion of rain squalls. Wind S SW. Course NW x 
 W. Jogged along through the night and all morn- 
 ing under jib and mizzen. Repaired lazy jacks and 
 other slight damage caused by the squall. 
 
 12:00 Noon. — ^Log 1658. Day's run 88 nautical 
 miles. Latitude 32° 06'. Raised mainsail. 
 
 Elaborate cooking operations under supervision 
 of J. Dorsett occupy most of day, although the mo- 
 tion is bad, requiring skillful juggling. Among 
 other things Jim accomplishes two pies which bore 
 quite a resemblance to the genuine American article. 
 They were made from dehydrated apples supplied 
 by Mr. Gilbert Fairchild and were voted excellent 
 even by the conservative English contingent. The 
 Shipmate range is working its passage these days. 
 
 P. M. sight: Observed altitude 11° 48'. Chro- 
 nometer, 7 hrs. 20 min. 13 sec. Longitude 52° 46'. 
 
 Nights terribly long now — dark about 6 :oo p. M. 
 and sunrise at 7 a. m.. 
 
212 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 Thursday, November 4. — Still cloudy although 
 first night watches were clear and starry. Wind 
 half a gale, hauling ahead of us and is about NW x 
 W. Shifted course from NW to N. Barograph 
 rising slightly. 
 
 10:30 A. M. — Staggering under full sail, lee rail 
 buried continuously, heavy seas coming over fre- 
 quently. Fox and the skipper reef the mainsail in 
 the nude. 
 
 10 ^45. — ^Wind still rising. Reef jib and mizzen 
 for the first time; mizzen reefs easily but jib was a 
 fierce job. While working forward and especially 
 on the bowsprit we were continually washed by the 
 sea. Worked without a stitch of clothes and the ex- 
 hibition was one that would have graced "A Daugh- 
 ter of the Gods." "Typhoon" behaves nicely with 
 all sails reefed. 
 
 12 :oo Noon, — Log 1778. Day's run 120 nautical 
 miles. Noon sight: Observed altitude 41° 43'. 
 Latitude 32° 39' 55". 
 
 P. M. sight gave us 52" 40', and a second observa- 
 tion gave the same longitude, which seems to prove 
 that our very encouraging position of yesterday was 
 wrong. 
 
 Wind gradually hauling. Best we can hold is N 
 (magnetic). Hope we shall soon be able to take 
 starboard tack for my bunk, although protected by 
 a poncho which is rigged up as a sort of lean- 
 to, is suffering from drips from the cabin 
 trunk. 
 
 Friday, November 5. — 12:00-3:00 a.m. My 
 watch. Steered herself for two and one-half hours 
 close hauled while I read below. Wind still hauling 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 213 
 
 and I brought her about on starboard tack. Now 
 holding W>^S. 
 
 7 :oo A. M. — Wind dying. 
 
 9:35. — Started motor (44or.p.m.). 
 
 12 :oo Noon. — ^Log 1827 (not reliable, due to Gulf 
 weed continually fouling log rotator ) . Noon sight : 
 Observed altitude 40° 41' 42". Latitude 33° 
 23' 16". 
 
 I :oo p. M. — Motor stopped but was restarted im- 
 mediately (possibly caused by water in fuel). All 
 had swim and Dillaway was left behind when motor 
 started. 
 
 Came about and picked him up none the worse ex- 
 cept a bit winded. 
 
 1 :20. — Motor speeded up of its own accord from 
 440 to 480 r.p.m. Cause not apparent. 
 
 1 :50. — Shut off motor as cooling water had 
 stopped circulating (sticking check valve). A light 
 westerly breeze springs up and we set all sail again. 
 Course N x W. Rig up line as we are passing 
 through school of bonito chasing flying fish. Had 
 one strike but failed to land him — a disappointment 
 as we have about exhausted all the variations on salt 
 beef. 
 
 P. M. sight. — Chronometer 7 hrs. 21 min. 2 sec. 
 Observed altitude 12° 24'. Longitude 53° 06'. 
 
 8 :oo p. M. Picked up the lights of a ship to star- 
 board. 
 
 Saturday, November 6. — Barograph high and 
 steady. When I went on watch at 4 :oo a. m. sky 
 was clear, wind light W hauling to W NW. 
 Clouded up at 5 a. m. with rain squalls. Doused 
 mainsail, raising it again a half hour later. 
 
214 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 1 2 :oo Noon. — Log 1 875.8. ( Readings from now 
 on are inaccurate due to impossibility of keeping 
 rotator clear of Gulf weed.) Noon sight: Ob- 
 served altitude 39° 29'. Latitude 34° 17' 20", 
 
 12 145. — Wind died and veered to N x W. Came 
 about and held W x N but confused sea detrimental 
 to progress. 
 
 Jim produces biscuits and apple tarts, using last 
 of our sugar supply. 
 
 Sunday, November 7. — Wind NW x N. Course 
 W X N. Barograph high and steady. Cool enough 
 for clothes. 
 
 2:30 A. M. — Usual squall. Lowered mainsail. 
 
 12:00 Noon, — Noon sight: Observed altitude 
 39° 36'. Latitude 33° 52' 38". Close hauled and 
 plunging into it. Motion below fierce. 
 
 3 :45 p. M. — Wind veers to N ^ W, allowing us 
 to ease sheets and make much better weather of 
 it and more speed. Sight for longitude gives 55° 
 40'. 
 
 4 :oo p. M. — Footing it again at 6 knots. Banks 
 of cloud passing over throughout the night, but al- 
 though puffy, there were no serious squalls. Burned 
 out wick of binnacle lamp, necessitating candles. 
 
 Monday, November 8. — First completely cloudy 
 day since leaving Ponta Delgada. Cooler and more 
 like fall at home. Wind NE to E. Large swells. 
 Barometer high but falling. Course W x N to 
 WNW. 
 
 12:00. — ^Too cloudy for noon sight. 
 
 2 :oo p. M. — After taking down and cleaning air 
 line valves, pumped air to 100 lbs. by hand and 
 started motor (457 r.p.m.)« 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 215 
 
 2 :45. — Drained water from Colador strainer and 
 motor speeded up to 463 r.p.m. 
 
 3 :oo p. M. — Wind E, light. Speed 4.8 knots. 
 
 3:10. — Water stopped circulating, necessitating 
 loosening check valve in water pump which had 
 jammed again. 
 
 3:13. — ^Started motor. P. M. sight: Chronom- 
 eter 6 hrs. 35 min. 25 sec. Observed altitude 22° 
 20' 30". Longitude 57° 43'. 
 
 7 :oo p. M. — Shut off motor and doing 5.5 knots 
 without it. Grateful silence ! 
 
 Tuesday, November p (21st day from Ponta Del- 
 gada). — Wind died during night and although light 
 northerly breeze held throughout morning, rest of 
 day practically flat calm except for heavy swell. 
 
 9:15. — Started motor. Course W NW. It ran 
 irregularly, showing a range in revolutions from 
 355 to 473. 
 
 12:00. — Noon sight: Observed altitude 39° 07' 
 30". Latitude 33° 46' 21". Stopped motor for 
 ten minutes in afternoon for swim. Noticed some 
 of those funny long necked barnacles like those the 
 Spanish fishermen eat growing under "Typhoon's" 
 counter. 
 
 With to-day's biscuits the last of the baking pow- 
 der was used and since we have no soda for sour 
 dough we tried to ferment some batter for salt ris- 
 ing bread. Our meals now consist usually of coffee 
 and oatmeal without sugar at 7 a. m. ; a heavier meal 
 of salt beef, onions and potatoes at about 1 1 :oo 
 A. M. ; soup or tinned ham and biscuits at about 3 
 p. M., and cocoa or tea and biscuits with molasses 
 about 6 :oo p. m.. Potatoes and onions almost gone. 
 
2i6 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 Started last keg of water, but main tank seems to 
 be holding out well. 
 
 p. M. sight: Chronometer 6 hrs. 51 min. 40 sec. 
 Observed altitude 20° 22' 30". Longitude 58° 43'. 
 
 7:00 p. M. — Motor hitting off 470 r.p.m. No 
 wind, booms in crutches. 
 
 Wednesday, November 10. — Bright, sunny and 
 cool. High glass. 
 
 I :io A. M. — Motor stopped. 
 
 2:15. — Light air from S SW. Hoisted sail and 
 made about 3 knots. 
 
 10 :45. — Started motor. 
 
 II 155. — Motor stopped. 
 
 12:00 noon. — Noticed partial eclipse of sun while 
 taking noon sight. Observed altitude 38° 49' 30". 
 Latitude 33° 48' 02". 
 
 2 :25 p. M. — Started motor. 
 
 4:55. — Motor stopped for sixth time during 
 afternoon and rather than fuss with it further we 
 decided to call it a day. 
 
 I declined to make a stab at bread. The batter 
 which we tried to keep warm all night had fer- 
 mented a bit but had an evil look. Mixed up dough 
 and set it aside to rise. It rose sideways some but 
 not upwards. Baked it and the result was a sort 
 of synthetic hickory nut with insides like a rubber 
 shoe. Jim suggested breaking them up and frying 
 them which we did. 
 
 p. M. sight: Chronometer 6 hrs. 38 min. 15 sec. 
 Observed altitude 23° 15' 2/'. Longitude 60° 05' 
 
 15". ■ 
 We are about 800 miles from New York as the 
 
 crow flies and should do it in a week but our luck 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 2 1 7 
 
 seems utterly to have gone back on us. However, 
 We are drawing up from the region of 3-4 per cent 
 gales to 12-17 P^r cent and will surely get some 
 wind soon. We are bending up now and I shall 
 be glad when we get out of the neighborhood of 
 Bermuda and beyond the temptation to put in. Our 
 supplies, although low, should hold out if our luck is 
 fair, and we have decided to chance it. 
 
 Thursday, November 11. — ^Wind W SW. Course 
 NW. Clear and sunny. Barometer falling. 
 
 II :io A. M. — Started motor, which is on its good 
 behavior and ran beautifully until we shut it off at 
 9 :45 p. M. There was no recurrence of yesterday's 
 trouble. 
 
 12:00 noon. — Noon sight: Observed altitude 38° 
 22' 20". Latitude 33° 09' 02". Probably not cor- 
 rect as it puts us 39' south of yesterday's latitude. 
 Did as much as 6.2 knots under both motor and 
 sail, although wind light. There is considerable 
 swell but motor seems to steady the boat and keep 
 her from pitching. 
 
 P. M. sight: Observed altitude 13" 17'. Chronom- 
 eter 7 hrs. 41 min. 35 sec. Longitude 61° 02'. 
 Experimented with unleavened bread. Wicked stuff 
 but slightly less deadly than yesterday's effort. Also 
 attempted pancakes with batter of oatmeal and flour. 
 Not altogether successful due to lack of baking 
 powder, molasses and sugar. 
 
 9 :45. — Stopped motor as wind has strengthened. 
 
 Friday, November 12. — Wind W SW. Course 
 NW. Heavy sea. Barograph dropping. Wind 
 strengthened to half a gale during night and when 
 I went on at 6 :oo A. m. we were under full sail and 
 
2i8 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 taking it continually over the cabin side. Had diffi- 
 culty getting crowd started with the breakfast and 
 in hungry rage gave vent to some choice cattle ship 
 language for which I am duly sorry. 
 
 9:30. — Decided to start motor as it seems to 
 steady the ship when we are beating into it. 
 
 12 :oo. — Rain. No noon sight. 
 
 P. M. sight: Chronometer 6 hrs. 12 min. 25 sec. 
 Observed altitude 27° 12'. Longitude 63° 17'. As- 
 suming that we were in practically the same latitude 
 yesterday, we have done 130 nautical miles since the 
 last longitude sight. 
 
 Dreary below without fire in range. Cooking 
 done on Primus hung in gimbals beneath bridge 
 deck, whenever the motion is so great that contents 
 of pans on range would be spilled due to angle of 
 heel. Jim camping right on his job, wedges himself 
 in oilskin locker where he can watch motor. Never 
 saw anyone who could get quite so greasy. He 
 has the color and general appearance of an East 
 Indian. 
 
 5:00 p. M. — Motor stopped. (Never ran again.) 
 
 5 :30. — Glass falling and weather looks threaten- 
 ing. Reefed mainsail. 
 
 9:30. — Lowered mainsail and stowed boom in 
 crutch. Topping lift parted during operation; 
 messy job. Course NW under jib and mizzen. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The Gales in the Gulf Stream 
 
 IT was on Saturday, November 13th, the twenty- 
 fifth day from Ponta Delgada, that things really 
 began to happen. With this day came the first of 
 a series of gales which culminated in that of No- 
 vember 17th during which "T3rphoon" came tri- 
 umphantly through as severe a drubbing as a small 
 boat ever experienced without disaster. During 
 the night we had plunged along under jib and miz- 
 zen to a W SW blow, holding about a NW 
 course and making fairly good weather of it. But 
 the barograph curve had been dropping for two 
 days and consequently we were not surprised when, 
 at seven in the morning during the skipper's watch, 
 a terrific rain storm hit us so suddenly that there 
 was scarcely time to lower the mizzen before we 
 were in the midst of it. In a remarkably short 
 space of time the wind hauled around from W 
 SW to N and for two hours and a half we reached 
 along under jib alone, heading a little north of W. 
 By 9:30 the wind had got around to the NE and 
 was blowing a full gale with the seas already grown 
 to enormous size though confused due to the sud- 
 den shift of wind. Raising the mizzen we took a 
 
 219 
 
220 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 WNW course and "Typhoon" behaved beauti- 
 fully with the wind and seas slightly abaft the 
 beam. With the wind abeam or slightly forward, 
 she is likely to slap the seas with the flat of her bow, 
 but with it anywhere aft of this point, her perform- 
 ance in rough water is superb. 
 
 After a rest below during which Fox was on the 
 wheel, I took her again from one o'clock until four. 
 The character of the sea and the rain had ma:de a 
 noon sight impossible but by the middle of the after- 
 noon the atmosphere had cleared and dead ahead I 
 picked up the masts of a vessel still hull down below 
 the horizon. Feeling that the ship was coming our 
 way, we awaited the meeting with the excitement 
 that such a break in the monotony of a long pas- 
 sage always causes. Slowly the sticks came up — 
 much too slowly for a vessel under way — and as 
 they grew they seemed to be absolutely without 
 canvas. Then as the hull finally came above the sea 
 we saw that the ship, a fine three-masted schooner, 
 was practically hove-to under half a mainsail and 
 two headsails. She was almost directly in our path 
 and as we bore down on her at nearly six knots we 
 could see that she was making bad weather of it, 
 wallowing and pitching a third of her length out of 
 water with every sea. She was not hove-to in the 
 sense that her head sails were aback but was headed 
 in the same direction we were going and making 
 not more than a knot or two. Bending our course 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 22 1 
 
 to pass within fifty yards to windward of her, 
 Charles took the wheel and, assisted by Jim and Fox 
 who held me to the main crutch, we photographed 
 her twice shielding the camera with our bodies from 
 the seas that were coming over. Three figures in 
 yellow oilskins on the quarter deck of the schooner 
 stood at the rail and seemed too stupefied at the 
 apparition to return our salute as we waved them 
 good-luck and continued on our way. 
 
 This first gale marked the culmination of the 
 long barometric drop and as the glass had started 
 to rise rapidly by nightfall, we decided to carry on 
 for the night under jib and mizzen instead of re- 
 sorting to the trisail, for we were doing nicely and 
 could not aflford to cut down pur speed. 
 
 By Sunday morning, November 14th, the wind 
 had moderated although the weather was still cloudy 
 and so cool that we felt that we must be drawing 
 out of the Gulf Stream. By nine o'clock we were 
 able to raise the single reefed mainsail and were 
 doing a good seven knots when the wind hauled 
 from N NE to E, back again to N NE and 
 then settled down to a light easterly, giving us about 
 four knots on a W NW course. It was a great 
 relief to be rid of the rain, the breaking seas and 
 the tiring motion, and we took advantage of the 
 opportunity to rebuild the fire in the Shipmate and 
 prepare a good meal from our rapidly diminishing 
 food supply. A noon sight through a rift in the 
 
222 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 clouds gave us an altitude of 36° 20' which placed 
 us in latitude 35° 11' 22". 
 
 On Monday morning the wind, which was still 
 moderate, hauled to E x S and we changed our 
 course to NW x N as the Gulf Stream had not 
 set us to the north as much as we had expected. 
 Although cold enough to be out of it entirely, our 
 calculation put us not much beyond the middle of 
 the Stream. A noon sight through the clouds gave 
 us a latitude of 36° 05' 42" and another snapshot 
 of the sun for longitude in the afternoon worked 
 up to 68° 33', rather a disappointing showing as 
 it indicated that we had done but about 300 miles 
 during the last three days of strong winds. 
 
 Realizing that our progress was too slow we en- 
 deavored to increase our speed with the spinnaker 
 which we set at 4:00 p. m. lowering the mizzen, 
 which is worthless under the circumstances. But 
 it was really blowing too hard for the light sail 
 and at 10:00 in the evening the tack of the spin- 
 naker carried away and it was taken in and we 
 ran throughout the night under full mainsail on a 
 NW x N course with rising E SE wind. 
 
 The moderate weather that we had had during 
 Sunday and Monday proved but a breathing spell 
 between gales for by the morning of Tuesday, No- 
 vember 1 6th, we were overtaken by another blow 
 from the same quarter and even stronger than the 
 one of the 13th. At 6:00 in the morning the lacing 
 
o 
 
 o 
 rt O 
 
 S " 
 
 Mi; 
 
 s 
 
 O 
 O 
 
 o 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 223 
 
 on the main gaff carried away and ten minutes later, 
 during a severe rain squall, the wind backed from 
 E SE to E NE and increased in intensity. 
 Half lowering the mainsail to keep our steerage 
 way, we hoisted the jib, finally lowering the main- 
 sail entirely, stowing the boom in the crutch and 
 running before it under jib alone for two hours. I 
 took the wheel at ten o'clock and drove her for a 
 while longer with now and then a sea coming clear 
 over me, filling the cockpit and thundering on the 
 cabin trunk. 
 
 By this time the wind was so strong that we were 
 in constant danger of losing the jib entirely. It 
 was, of course, impossible to keep the wind exactly 
 on the quarter and to steer an absolutely true course, 
 due to the big seas, and if we jibed again, as we 
 already had done twice, I felt that the jib would 
 be blown out of the bolt ropes. And so at 10 130 I 
 had the boys bring up the trisail, lace it to the mast 
 and partially raise it to keep our steerage way and 
 to blanket the jib, which was then lowered, muzzled 
 and lashed to the bowsprit with considerable diffi- 
 culty. While raising the trisail, one of the crutch 
 tackles which we used to sheet it, got adrift and it 
 took a few minutes of strenuous work, in which the 
 nude form of the elongated Charles figured con- 
 spicuously, to get the sail in hand again and sheet it 
 in. 
 
 While we are on the subject, I wonder how many 
 
224 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 yachtsmen in this country know the proper way 
 to lace a trisail to the mast. I must admit that I 
 didn't until old faithful Harry Speed at Cowes ex- 
 plained the method to me. If the sail is laced spirally 
 round and round the stick, you will find it well nigh 
 impossible to raise the sail and to lower it again. 
 But if you lace it zig-zag fashion, passing the line 
 from the eye in the sail around the forward side 
 of the mast to the next eye each time, instead of 
 completely encircling the mast, you will find that 
 there will be no difficulty in raising the sail with 
 the throat halyard, and that it will come down with 
 a rush when the halyard is cast off. 
 
 By this time we could see that we were in for 
 something more serious than anything we had yet 
 encountered, but any feeling of concern was entirely 
 dispelled by the fine behavior of the ship. After 
 putting some additional lashings on the tender,, I 
 took the wheel and thoroughly enjoyed the exciting 
 experience. At times like this we had occasion to 
 thank "Typhoon's" long keel for it was this feature 
 that made it possible to keep her from either yaw- 
 ing or broaching-to as we ran before it. Even so 
 it required careful steering every minute for if 
 we took the seas too squarely astern there was that 
 uncertain feeling, when coasting down the big ones 
 at tremendous speed, that "Typhoon" might trip 
 and actually pitch pole and if we took them too 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 225 
 
 broadly over the quarter there was an equally dis- 
 concerting feeling that she might broach-to. 
 
 At three o'clock Charles took the wheel and the 
 rest of us went below. Jim and Dillaway were in 
 the starboard berths, I was resting on the lee tran- 
 som and Fox was on the companion steps. No 
 sooner had he drawn the companion slide than 
 there was a tremendous crash which gave us the 
 impression that we had been run down. I remem- 
 ber most distinctly that Jim who had removed all 
 his wet clothing and was absolutely naked, dropped 
 with a mass of books, boxes aild other gear from a 
 point directly above me, missed the table entirely 
 and fell on top of me, presenting a most grotesque 
 spectacle. Then for the moment everything was 
 blotted out by hot, dense steam caused by solid 
 water coming down the Liverpool head and into the 
 Shipmate range. As the steam cleared, I remem- 
 bered feeling greatly surprised that the weather 
 side of the cabin and even the port lights were still 
 intact after the shock. But otherwise the cabin 
 seemed a total wreck. The oily bilge water had 
 actually come over the deck clamp and down onto 
 the transom where I lay and everything movable 
 was a jumbled mass on the lee side. Fortunately 
 the boards had been placed in the companionway, 
 as they always were in rough weather, and we were 
 completely battened down except for the two swing 
 
226 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 ports in the after end of the trunk, through which 
 considerable water had poured. 
 
 Our first thought was of Charles. We jumped 
 to the after ports to see whether he was still with 
 us and there he was, clinging to the wheel, up to 
 his waist in the water that had filled the cockpit 
 and was still almost to the level of the coamings. 
 Dazed by his experience and in the midst of a float- 
 ing mass of waterbreakers, ropes and the pathetic 
 remains of our spoiled salt horse, he made a ridicu- 
 lous spectacle. But he was still there, which was 
 cause for general rejoicing. 
 
 It seemed that "Typhoon" had been allowed to 
 broach-to and had been knocked flat on her beam 
 ends with both mast heads in the water and al- 
 though the experience was by no means a comfort- 
 able one, it was worth while in that it proved that 
 she would come back. In the rush of building the 
 ship I had suggested to Baldwin that to avoid the 
 delay of having an iron keel cast and shipped to 
 Baddeck, it might be advisable to put all of the 
 ballast inside as the fishermen do, but Baldwin, 
 good old sailor man that he is, insisted on putting 
 a three thousand pound lead shoe on the keel and 
 this, while it is really lighter than she needs, was 
 sufficient to right the ship. She had come back 
 slowly but she had come back. 
 
 Three days before when we met the schooner 
 hove-to, we thought that it was blowing. But that 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 227 
 
 gale had been a mere curtain raiser to what we 
 were now experiencing and we felt that at last the 
 limit had been reached. However it was not until 
 the following day, November 17th, that we met the 
 real test. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 The Knockdown 
 
 IN looking over Fox's diary the other day I ran 
 across some amusing entries he made during 
 the gale of Tuesday, November i6th, with the de- 
 scription of which we concluded the last chapter. 
 These fragments give a pretty good idea of what 
 was happening aboard "Typhoon," and at the risk 
 of shattering the dignity of the skipper, I am put- 
 ting them down in the interests of veracity. 
 
 "Tuesday, November i6th, 6 a. m. — Lacing of 
 main gaff carried away. Blowing hard. Charles 
 at, wheel calls me. 
 
 "6:io. — Wind backs to E NE, blowing harder. 
 Half lower mainsail to keep steerage way and hoist 
 jib. Blowing and raining like Old Nick. Jim came 
 up to lend me a hand and went below to get dry and 
 warm when we had half lowered mainsail. W. W. 
 N. just woke up as Jim was casually dressing. He 
 heard the wind whistling and mainsail flapping and 
 got wild (we all do when hungry). He chewed 
 Jim up and then rushed up forward to me and 
 banged me on the nose with his elbow. Good job 
 I was there, as he might have gone overboard 
 (motion of ship pretty bad) but my nose brought 
 him up. I asked him : 'Have you hurt your elbow ?' 
 
 228 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 229 
 
 He said: 'A bit.' He thought it was the mast he 
 had hit until I explained afterward. We doused 
 and secured mainsail in crutch. 
 
 "10:00 — Been running under jib only since 6:10 
 A. M. W. W. N. at wheel thinks wind too much for 
 jib and that it may carry away. Heavy sea. 
 
 "10:30 — ^Jim, Charles and I got out and half 
 hoisted trisail and doused jib. Oil skins no good 
 as every now and then I went under. Usually up 
 to my waist as standing on bobstay and leaning on 
 whisker shrouds. Jim asked me once if I hurt my- 
 self as I got banged against bowsprit. I replied, 
 'No, but I must have given myself a hell of a twist,' 
 as I noticed that my oil skin trousers were on wrong 
 side around. Then I told him and Charles the tale 
 about the chap who had a similar experience. They 
 were holding on to the mast and I was put on the 
 bowsprit so I had to shout the story. Don't know 
 if Jim heard it or not. He laughed at the right 
 time anyway, but this may have been only his polite- 
 ness. W. W. N. at wheel getting impatient so take 
 my time to hoist trisail. Would like a penny for 
 every time I have answered 'Nothing broke, only 
 a wheel come ofF to his questions when anything 
 breaks or carries away. That is one of my bad 
 habits, trying to rub people up the wrong way. It 
 is rotten of me as W. W. N. owns the ship and is 
 responsible for irresponsible kids like Jim and me. 
 
 "Sheet tackle got adrift as we were hoisting tri- 
 sail so Charles held on to my feet and I leaned over- 
 board for it. Charles has altered wonderfully 
 since the gale off San Miguel and now is the busiest 
 man on the ship. 
 
230 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 "After we finished lashing tender I undressed in 
 cockpit and stood up in rain and bathed with real 
 soap. W. W. N. was amused and said, 'Well, you 
 intend to go to your Maker clean anyway.' Heaviest ' 
 wind we have had, also sea. W. W. N. at wheeHs 
 having a strenuous time. She is a good little ship. 
 Wonderful the way she can stand it. Sincerely 
 hope schooner we passed is O. K. 
 
 "3:10 — Charles relieved me at wheel. Seas 
 worse, which seemed impossible five hours ago. 
 Everything can be worse but still it is not very com- 
 forting when you lose thirty bob and a friend tells 
 you it is better than losing sixty. 
 
 "We got knocked down, our masts in the water. 
 I had just taken off my oilies and was standing at 
 the end of the table when BANG ! and over to port 
 we went. I grabbed the table and Dillaway's bunk. 
 He just managed to stay in it. Jim dropped from 
 his bunk on to W. W. N. who was lying on the port 
 seat. Jim had an amazed expression on his face as 
 he cleared ditty box on dresser. I wanted to laugh. 
 Hadn't time to get frightened before she came up. 
 I suddenly thought of Charles and looked through 
 the port and was relieved to see him sitting at wheel 
 with a very worried expression on his face. There 
 was the cockpit full of water and our empty water 
 kegs floating about with the last of our salt beef. 
 Charles looked exactly like Robinson Crusoe on his 
 raft just leaving the wreck. He looked so funny 
 that I laughed like hell which made W. W. N. wild 
 as he had just discovered his pajamas all covered 
 with fuel oil. Then we had a heated argument, 
 the skipper and I (raised voices but could not wave 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 23 1 
 
 our arms as we had to hold on to either end of the 
 table) about boats' sterns. I believe in a double 
 ender and the skipper in a broad stern. She is a 
 wonderful boat but I think she'd be more wonder- 
 ful if she had a stern like a Scotch fishing nabbie." 
 
 After the knockdown I took the wheel at about 
 dusk. Things looked pretty bad and I considered 
 rigging up the sea anchor, but finally decided to 
 take a chance with the trisail rather than experi- 
 ment with something untried. In order to make the 
 steering easier and to check her speed as she shot 
 down the seas we trailed two long lines over the 
 stern, which had a decided steadying eflfect, check- 
 ing us just at the right time and easing that wobbly, 
 uncertain feeling that you always have when run- 
 ning before a heavy sea. The wind was so strong 
 that we were unable to keep the binnacle lamp 
 lighted, and we rigged up the riding light instead. 
 
 At 9:30 the wind died rapidly, followed by a suc- 
 cession of squalls from several directions, and conse- 
 quently we were all able to get a bit of sleep during 
 the night, which was providential, as the worst was 
 yet to come. 
 
 When I went on deck at 3 :oo a. m,, Wednesday, 
 November 17th, the wind had hauled around nearly 
 to SW and it was again blowing hard and raining. 
 It was Dillaway's trick, and, before taking the 
 wheel, I got Fox up and we lowered the trisail and 
 
232 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 shifted it to the starboard side. There were several 
 wicked rain squalls during the four hours I was at 
 the wheel, but not expecting another gale, I hauled 
 in one of the lines which were still trailing astern. 
 
 At 7:00 o'clock Jim relieved me at the wheel, 
 turning it over to Fox at 9 :oo and taking it again 
 from 1 1 :oo until i :oo. During these six hours the 
 wind strengthened, and by one o'clock, when I 
 went on again, we could see that we were in for 
 something even worse than the northeaster of the 
 day before. A new and bigger sea had made 
 up over the remains of the old one, causing a con- 
 fused condition that was worse than anything we 
 had yet encountered. The wind, unlike the steady 
 blow of Tuesday, came in a succession of hard 
 punches, howling and cold and carrying with it the 
 tops of seas that stung like bird shot. The effect 
 was that of a driving blizzard, and the hills and 
 valleys of water were gray and streaked with the 
 foam of broken crests. 
 
 Bending a heavy iron pail to the end of our sec- 
 ond line, we put this over the stern again. This 
 checked us a bit and helped the steering, but it was 
 only a temporary help. As the wind increased, it 
 was clear that we could not carry the trisail much 
 longer without losing it. I shouted to the boys 
 below to break out the sea anchor and the storm 
 jib, which I thought we might need as a trisail on 
 the mizzen to hold her head into it. While I steered, 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 233 
 
 Jim and Fox rigged up a bridle and lashed the 
 shears in the mouth of the bag, which Charles kept 
 from going overboard by the weight of his body. 
 The %-inch line to be used with the sea anchor 
 was already rove through the hose on the end of 
 the bowsprit and the two parts of it had been led 
 aft, one outside and one inside, and lashed to the 
 shrouds to act as a lifeline. When these lashings 
 had been cut and a pig of ballast had been made 
 fast to one of the arms of the sea anchor, all that 
 was necessary was to watch our chance, lufT up 
 into the wind, lower the trisail, throw the bag over- 
 board, pay out gradually from the coil in the cock- 
 pit with a couple of turns about a quarter bitt, and 
 then trust to luck. If we found that the sea anchor 
 was unable to hold her head into it, then we planned 
 to rig the storm jib to the mizzen and flatten it hard 
 down to act as a weather-vane. I don't think it 
 would have stayed there long, but we meant to try 
 it, anyhow. 
 
 After carefully rehearsing our parts, Jim and 
 Fox were instructed to go forward, put lifelines 
 about their waists and lower the trisail as I luffed 
 her into the wind. Fox had already reached the 
 mainmast and jim had jumped out of the cockpit 
 into the lee waterway when a big sea came over the 
 port quarter, going completely over me at the wheel, 
 taking my sou'wester with it, and burying Fox, who 
 clutched the mast with his arms and legs, up to 
 
234 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 his shoulders. Jim had caught the mizzen rigging, 
 and, shouting down to me through the racket : "That 
 was a hell of a big one, Skipper," he started for- 
 ward again, clawing his way along the hand rail. 
 
 It was just at this moment that the big crash 
 came. Possibly we broached-to. I can't say, and 
 it doesn't really matter, for the big, unstable brute 
 that came down on us would have swamped us no 
 matter what position we had been in. Clutching 
 the wheel, I crouched in the lee corner of the cock- 
 pit. I remember going down under tons of solid 
 water, with a last impression of Dillaway's face 
 framed in the porthole as he pumped out the oily 
 bilge-water to form a "slick." There was no sense 
 of direction or time, only a terrible helplessness and 
 a feeling that possibly at last the cruise was over. 
 It is hard to convey any appreciation of the power 
 of such a sea — of the absolute insignificance of any 
 human effort to withstand it. 
 
 Choking and somewhat surprised that everything 
 was not over, I came up and as the masts lifted 
 themselves out of the water I looked instinctively 
 to loo'ard, sensing what must have happened, and 
 there 75 ft. or so from the ship was Jim's close- 
 cropped head bobbing in an acre of froth, his sou'- 
 wester hanging from its cord about his neck and 
 the air still puffing out the yellow oilskin above his 
 shoulders. 
 
 At a time like that you don't think consecutively. 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 235 
 
 Your thoughts come in flashes like pictures on a 
 movie screen. Jim was gone, but we could not leave 
 him. I remembered the request as we left the dock 
 at Baddeck that I look out for him, for he was all 
 his father had left after the influenza epidemic. I 
 remembered the near tragedy at Drum Head in 
 19 13 and jumped to the waterway to go after him, 
 but with my heavy sea boots and strapped into a 
 long oilskin coat over a number of thicknesses of 
 clothing, I could not have stayed afloat, and there 
 was no time to take things off. Then I thought of 
 the lines astern and yelled and waved to Jim, who 
 evidently got the idea at the same time, for between 
 the crests I could see that he was making for them. 
 There was no possibility of maneuvering the ship 
 in such a sea. 
 
 Fox, with the presence of mind of a real sailor- 
 man, had doused the trisail. It seems that he, too, 
 had been torn from his hold on the belaying pins 
 and had gone overboard, but had actually regained 
 the ship by way of the mast, which he had caught 
 as it came down on top of him. 
 
 We were under bare poles, and as we drifted 
 down past Dorsett he succeeded in catching one 
 of the lines. But our headway was still too great. 
 Every time he came to the surface he was farther 
 from the ship. I could see that the line he had was 
 not the one with the bucket, and with every second 
 I felt that he must reach the end of it. Finally, 
 
236 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 turning on his back with the line over his shoulder, 
 he was able to hold fast, sort of planing along with 
 his head out of water, but we could see that he was 
 tiring. If he slipped again one of us would have 
 to go down the line after him, but only as a last 
 resort, for we should all be needed to get him 
 aboard. 
 
 Gradually, and with the utmost care, so as not 
 to break his hold, we hauled in on the line, and as 
 we drew him close under the counter he looked 
 up with a half-choked grin and said, "Well, Skip- 
 per, here I am." I think it was the most beautiful 
 display of downright courage that I have ever seen 
 and it would have brought the tears had we had 
 time for any such emotion. 
 
 And then we found that the combined strength 
 of the three of us was inadequate to the task of lift- 
 ing him aboard. Clutching his oilskins, we held 
 on, lifting him far out of the water as the stern 
 rose, only to souse him again with every passing 
 sea. We were choking him, but we dared not loosen 
 our hold. I got the boathook, caught his oilies with 
 the barb and finally succeeded in prying a leg over 
 the gunwale. Grabbing it with both arms I lay 
 exhausted in the waterway, determined that at least 
 we'd have that leg. The work of the last few hours 
 and the effect of a recent diet, composed largely of 
 fried flour paste, had weakened us, but we got him 
 aboard at last and passed him down to Dillaway, 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 237 
 
 who was still trapped in the cabin. Then we turned 
 our attention to the sea anchor. 
 
 Wallowing in the trough, with the seas breaking 
 over us, we threw the bag overboard and waited 
 anxiously for the line to tighten. We felt that 
 possibly it was our last chance. As the strain came 
 on the line we could see the bag fill just beneath the 
 surface off our starboard beam, but it seemed to 
 have no effect on our position relative to the seas. 
 The line stiffened like an iron rod; still no effect. 
 And just as we were about to rig the storm jib on 
 the mizzen, the rope parted — ^and left us still wal- 
 lowing in the trough. 
 
 But we had been in this position for at least a 
 quarter of an hour, and, although we were severely 
 pounded by the seas, nothing had happened. I felt 
 that the deckhouse would stand the drubbing, and 
 if we could keep the water out there was still a 
 chance. And so we went below and drew the slide. 
 
 It was not until then that I realized just what had 
 happened to the "Typhoon." The companionway 
 steps lay athwart the cabin; the floor boards were 
 up and great chunks of slag ballast lay against the 
 chart case. Everything movable was in an oily 
 mess on the lee side and the place looked a total 
 wreck. We had been knocked down, there was no 
 doubt about that; but it was not until we found a 
 stove lid in Dillaway's bunk and discovered ashes 
 from the bottom of the stove and the remains of 
 
238 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 food that had been in the sink sticking to the trunk 
 above the charts on the starboard side, that we 
 realized that we had actually gone down approxi- 
 mately 1 20 degrees from the vertical. 
 
 Judging from the ashes above the chart roll we 
 had gone down 120° from the vertical 
 
 In reading over the log I find several paragraphs 
 written the following day by the members of the 
 crew, giving their impressions of the knockdown. 
 Here they are: 
 
 DORSETTS STORY 
 
 "When 'Typhoon' went under I was on my way 
 forward to help Uf lower the trisail. I only had the 
 hand rail to hang on to. I felt myself going — in 
 fact, I thought the old ship had rolled clear over. 
 I tried to grab the mizzen mast as it went by, but 
 missed it, and the next thing I knew I had come to 
 the surface seventy-five feet astern of 'Typhoon.' 
 The first thing that popped into my head was to 
 make for the ropes I knew we were towing astern. I 
 struck out and managed to grab one of them but 
 which one I did not know. (One of them had a 
 bucket tied on the end.) I thought of sliding down 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 239 
 
 to the end and getting a foot in the bucket as the 
 strain was so terrific I nearly lost my hold more 
 than once. The strain eased up, however, when the 
 ship lost headway and I hung on and after a struggle 
 was pulled safely aboard by the skipper, Charles 
 and Uf, a little wet and fagged but otherwise no 
 worse off for the experience. I am certainly glad 
 I didn't slide down to the end of that rope as it hap- 
 pened to be the one without the bucket. I would 
 like to say right here that I owe my life to the cool- 
 headedness and quick work of my friends. 
 
 "James H. Dorsett." 
 
 FOX'S STORY 
 
 "I was forward clearing the trisail halyard. One 
 wave came aboard up around my shoulders but I 
 managed to hang on. I had just cleared the halyard 
 when with a roar IT came. I grabbed a belaying 
 pin with each hand and put my legs around the 
 mast but I was swept overboard. As soon as I lost 
 hold I saw the mainmast coming down. I hung on 
 to it and was dragged under with it and then we 
 came up and I sort of fell on the cabin top. I looked 
 aft and was surprised to see W. W. N. and Charles 
 still there, and realized that they were shouting to 
 Jim, who was overboard. I let go the trisail halyard 
 and gave the trisail a hell of a pull down and it came 
 with a run. Then I ran aft. Jim had managed 
 to hang on to one of the ropes we were dragging 
 astern so I lent a hand in hauling him aboard, yell- 
 ing to him to hang on all the time. Poor Jim ! He 
 looked like a small girl who had fallen overboard, 
 with his sou'wester trailing astern of him. I was 
 
240 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 afraid he would not be able to hang on long enough 
 for the strain must have been terrific and he was 
 under most of the time and it was hard work for 
 us to haul him along. At last we got him so that 
 we could catch hold of him and the three of us 
 hauled for what seemed hours on his wrist and 
 oilie. He gasped once that we were choking him, 
 but personally I preferred to bring him aboard 
 choked than lose the hold I had, so went on pulling. 
 We got him aboard at last. Then we let go the sea 
 anchor which held about five minutes, when the 
 hawser broke, so we lay broadside to the sea all 
 night and slept soundly, as we were all of us almost 
 dead beat. We are all of us bruised and I have 
 broken or sprained a toe. Hope I will never experi- 
 ence a thing like seeing a fpencr so near death 
 again. 
 
 "Uffa Fox." 
 
 HOOKEY'S STORY 
 
 "Mr. Nutting was at the wheel and we were called 
 out to rig the sea anchor. It was blowing so hard 
 at the time that the sea was whipped off and blow- 
 ing the crests like snow. At the time we had the 
 knockdown I was sitting on the sea anchor to keep 
 it from blowing overboard. I looked to windward 
 and saw a very large wave coming and grabbed the 
 mizzenmast with my left arm. I heard the wave 
 hit, being blinded with water. The next thing I 
 saw she was beaten down with her mizzenmast 
 under. I was not surprised to see her knocked 
 down, having experienced somewhat the same thing 
 the day before when I was at the wheel. Then I 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 241 
 
 thought all was up. When she came up I saw Jim 
 About 50 yards away, and I thought all was up with 
 him. It was lucky we had the ropes astern, one of 
 which he got. I pulled in on both ropes for all I 
 was worth, not knowing which one he had hold of. 
 It took us about ten minutes to get him to the ship, 
 having as much as we could do to get him aboard 
 having sea boots and oilskins on. I have never 
 been so pleased as when we got Jim aboard safely. 
 I helped put the sea anchor over, which parted, and 
 then we all went down in the cabin leaving her to 
 look after herself. It was a great experience which 
 I would not have missed for the world. 
 
 "Charles W. Hookey." 
 
 DILLAWAY'S STORY 
 
 "While the sailors were outside preparing to put 
 out the sea anchor I remained below and took charge 
 of the bilge pump. While standing at the pump and 
 gazing out of the starboard porthole, there was a 
 roar, the port was filled with water pouring in and 
 the boat was suddenly flat on her starboard side. 
 Because of our earlier experience I knew instantly 
 that she had been knocked down and stupidly won- 
 dered if she was coming up this time. She failed 
 to move for an instant and I had a fleeting feeling 
 of being trapped. Then she slowly sagged up and 
 I turned to survey the damage. It looked like a 
 wreck; flooring heaved up and mixed with ballast, 
 everything from the port side in a confused mass. 
 I had some thought of starting to clear up but I 
 could not seem to see any place to begin. I then 
 turned and looked out of the port and saw Mr. 
 
242 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 Nutting, Charles and Fox tugging at a rope over 
 the stern and Jim way back in the water. The sit- 
 uation flashed over me and my first thought was, "I 
 wonder if anyone released the trisail." The stairs 
 were on top of the heap so I jumped on the engine 
 flywheel and tried to open the hatch but it was stuck 
 tight. Pounding with my fists and head failed to 
 move it. I looked out again. They were still pull- 
 ing and Jim was nearer but it was a hard pull and 
 I realized that another hand was needed. I renewed 
 my attack on the hatch when I heard them shouting, 
 'Hold on, Jim.' During successive views and 
 frenzied attacks on the hatch, I saw them reach oyer 
 for Jim and they seemed unable to get him aboard. 
 A feeling of unutterable despair came over me at 
 the thought of my inability to lend a hand and I 
 tried a lump of ballast on the slide, but with no re- 
 sult. When I next looked out Jim was in the water- 
 way and I felt as weak as a rag. 
 
 "Manson Dillaway." 
 
 When we went below after the sea anchor had 
 carried away we were surprised that the motion was 
 not nearly so bad as we might have expected, con- 
 sidering our position in the trough of the sea. Every 
 now and then, of course, there was the crash of a 
 sea, but such things had long since ceased to be a 
 novelty. When a crest flopped down on us the 
 shock actually seemed less severe, probably because 
 we had no way on and consequently yielded to the 
 force of the blow. After a superficial cleaning up 
 of the cabin we ransacked the food locker and pre- 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 243 
 
 pared a sketchy meal from the last small can of beef, 
 the last can of vegetables and the few remaining 
 crackers. There was also a little soup left, and this 
 combination, the items of which we had been hold- 
 ing out for an emergency, was a grateful change 
 from our recent monotonous diet of fried flour and 
 water. A bottle of Domacq cognac from Spain, 
 which I was saving for some sufferer from the con- 
 stitutional amendment, was broken out and we sang 
 everything we could think of out of sheer joy at 
 having Dorsett back again As I think back onit 
 now it was a wonderful picture — the dimly-lighted 
 cabin, the wreckage, the songs punctuated by the 
 crashing blows from breaking seas and through 
 it all the constant humming of the steel shrouds 
 sounding through the fabric of the boat like the 
 drone note on a bagpipe. 
 
 We lighted the new hurricane-proof riding light 
 we had obtained in England, pulled the slide and 
 tried to lash it to the main boom, but it was blown 
 out immediately by the force of the wind. Again 
 and still again we tried it without success and finally 
 Jet it go at that, for, after all, the chance of being 
 run down in a sea that must have forced the largest 
 liner to heave-to was very slight. Then we all 
 turned in and slept soundly.* 
 
 ♦Note. — Our experience in lying qafely in the 
 trough during the storm on November 17th opens 
 
244 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 up an interesting line of speculation on the best 
 method of handling small boats in a heavy sea. _ If 
 you are running before it the strength of the wind 
 naturally seems less and this fact may cause you to 
 carry on longer than you should. The right time to 
 heave-to is a question and just how to heave-to is 
 another. My experience with sea anchors leads me 
 to believe that if the boat's head can be kept into 
 the wind it is more comfortable and safer to lie to 
 a sea anchor than to heave-to say under a trisail. 
 Even under a trisail the tendency is to work to wind- 
 ward, whereas lying to a sea anchor the boat gives 
 with the seas and gradually goes to loo'ard. But if 
 there is any difficulty in keeping the boat's head to 
 the wind I think the safest move is to do as we did, 
 and allow her to take care of herself. It is surpris- 
 ing how well a boat will come through if left to her 
 own devices. This would be dangerous, of course, 
 with open boats, although dories have been picked 
 up at sea, their bottoms encrusted with sea growth, 
 indicating that they had been adrift for months and 
 still showing no evidence of having taken water 
 aboard. Capt. Tom Day speaks of having allowed 
 the "Detroit" to lie broadside to the seas during his 
 trip across the Atlantic in her and, while this prac- 
 tice would be dangerous with a lightly constructed 
 boat without ballast and with light deck structures; 
 it seems to be thoroughly practical with a strong, 
 ballasted craft so designed that the water may be 
 kept out. The discomfort due to the motion seems 
 to be less in this position than it is when hove-to, due 
 to the fact that the boat yields to the breaking seas 
 easily instead of resisting them. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 Land Ho! 
 
 IT was broad daylight and bitter cold when we 
 awoke on Thursday, November i8. The wind, 
 while still blowing a gale, had moderated somewhat 
 and the sea, though still high, seemed to have gone 
 down a bit during the night. Charles, who had been 
 doing a lot of mighty good work below deck since 
 leaving Ponta Delgada, got a fire in the Shipmate 
 and we were able to fry some porridge that had been 
 cooked some time before and had been salvaged 
 from the wreckage in Dillaway's bunk. This, with 
 more fried paste or doughgods, as we called them, 
 and a little soup, added to the effect of a good night's 
 rest, put the entire personnel into high spirits again. 
 Except for his experience at the bilge pump dur- 
 ing the ordeal of the day before, Dillaway had been 
 confined to his bunk for several days and, due to 
 his inability to recuperate on our limited fare, he 
 was still down, although no longer suffering from 
 seasickness. 
 
 A noon sight gave an altitude of 31° 56' 20", 
 which put us in latitude 38° 35' of. 
 
 By two o'clock conditions had moderated so that 
 
 245 
 
246 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 we were able to work on deck again, and, after 
 hoisting the jib and mizzen, we relaced thfe head 
 of the mainsail, and by four o'clock we were able 
 to carry it. An afternoon sight put us in longitude 
 70° 44', which meant that we were exactly two hun- 
 dred miles southeast of New York with the wind 
 directly against us. The best we could do was a 
 W by S course, but the wind seemed to be dying 
 and we hoped for a shift before long. A small land 
 bird, probably driven offshore by the recent storm, 
 came aboard during the afternoon, but, unlike our 
 little friend from Spain, he left us, after resting for 
 an hour or so. By 5:30 the wind had died and, 
 after flattening in all the sails, we went below until 
 7:30, when a light breeze sprang up from W NW, 
 allowing us to take the port tack and hold due north 
 (magnetic), which was better than our earlier W 
 by S course. 
 
 All night "Typhoon" sailed herself close hauled. 
 As we were drawing in toward the shipping lanes, 
 we kept our usual watches, but it was unnecessary 
 for anyone actually to be on deck. The man on 
 watch sat in the warmth of the companionway with 
 only his head exposed while the rest slept soundly. 
 The lights of two vessels were seen during the 
 night. 
 
 On Friday morning, November 19th, the wind had 
 backed nearly to the west, and the intense cold left 
 no doubt that we had drawn well out of the Gulf 
 
Photograph by Levick 
 
 'Typhoon" under jib, mizzen and storm trisail working her way 
 through Hell Gate at the end of her cruise 
 
Capt. Francisco Soler, at right, pelted us with canned peaches 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 247 
 
 Stream. In fact, it was cold enough for snow, and 
 blowing so hard that it was a hardship to stay 
 at the wheel for any length of time. Frequent 
 drenchings with the icy spray added to the discom- 
 fort. We tried to stick it out under full sail, but 
 at 8 130 in the morning we were forced to reef the 
 main and at i :oo p. m. we had to tie in another reef. 
 Even thus shortened down, "T)rphoon" staggered a 
 bit, but we were now racing with hunger and we 
 held her to it. A noon sight gave us latitude 39° 1 1' 
 51" and an afternoon sight 71° 04' longitude, which 
 put us about 150 miles from Sandy Hook and about 
 115 miles from Montauk Point, confirming our de- 
 cision to make for the eastern end of Long Island 
 Sound. 
 
 At 3 :oo p. M. a ship bound NE passed us within 
 a quarter of a mile and, seizing upon the opportunity 
 she afforded, Fox jumped to the main rigging, 
 armed with the log book and a frying pan, and, held 
 there by Charles, he semaphored "Please report 
 'Typhoon' from Azores." She repeated the mes- 
 sage, and must have forwarded it, as we found later 
 that it had been picked up by the Navy stations, 
 which already had been trying to find us. 
 
 At 4:40 p. M. we were forced to lower the main- 
 sail entirely in order to avoid the risk of losing it, 
 but we made nearly as good time under jib and 
 mizzen with considerably less fuss. Taking advan- 
 tage of the opportunity we got out the last sack of 
 
248 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 coal from the lazarette for the cabin was a dreary 
 place without a fire in the Shipmate. It was still 
 impossible to do any cooking on the range, because 
 of the ever-present danger of spilling the contents 
 of the pans, but we managed to fry the usual dough- 
 gods on the primus which is hung in gimbals. It 
 was a three-man job. Fox, propped between the 
 companion steps and the oilskin locker, held the 
 batter, while Charles steadied the Skipper, who 
 was lashed in place with a line about his waist. The 
 result was scarcely worthy of mention. At 9:00 
 p. M. the boys turned in, dead tired, and I sat out 
 the first watch enjoying the heat of the stove, while 
 "Typhoon" sailed herself, actually beating her way 
 to windward under shortened sail. 
 
 Saturday, November 19th, the thirty-first day 
 from Ponta Delgada, was the best day of the whole 
 cruise. Sailing herself through the night, the entire 
 crew took advantage of the opportunity to get an- 
 other good sleep. Even the man on watch dozed com- 
 fortably in the warmth of the companionway. At 
 7 :oo o'clock we all turned out, except Dillaway, who, 
 still a bit weak, was instructed to keep to his berth, 
 as there was no need of his getting up. After re- 
 pairing the clew of the mainsail, which had been 
 torn out, we shook out the reefs, hoisted it, came 
 about on the starboard tack and held a W by N 
 course, the wind having hauled during the night 
 from W to N. A morning sight gave us a longitude 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 249 
 
 position of 71° 18', and by holding a W by N 
 course we should pick up Montauk Point possibly 
 during the following night. 
 
 At 1 1 :oo A. M. we sighted a ship off the port bow 
 headed on an easterly course, and, as it looked as if 
 we should just about meet her. Fox took his posi- 
 tion in the rigging armed with log book and frying 
 pan. As she passed a quarter of a mile or so ahead 
 of us he whipped out the message : "Please report 
 yacht 'Typhoon,' New York, thirty-one days from 
 Azores." But evidently our friend could not read 
 the message, for he stopped his engines and stood 
 by while we came about and luffed up under his lee. 
 
 The ship proved to be the "Guillem SoroUa" of 
 Valencia and, while we had merely intended to 
 request him to relay our message by radio, the op- 
 portunity was too great a one to miss, and I decided 
 that, since he was good enough to stop, we'd brace 
 him for a little food. With some difficulty and with 
 the help of willing interpreters, I explained to the 
 Skipper, a grizzled old Spanish sea dog, that we had 
 left the Azores thirty-one days ago and were prac- 
 tically out of food. There was some mention of 
 the gale, and the interpreter shouted down some- 
 thing that I could not entirely make out, but which 
 sounded like "Five ships lost — ^Jamaica — in that 
 storm." 
 
 After complying with their suggestion to come 
 alongside and heave up a line, I sent up a card on 
 
250 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 the boathook, and the Skipper handed me his by the 
 same vehicle. It read "Francisco Soler Aragones, 
 Capitan del Vapor 'Guillem SoroUa,' Barcelona." 
 By this time most of the ship's company, including a 
 Jersey calf, had appeared at the rail and were gazing 
 down on us, and there were many questions in most 
 of the modern languages, from which I gathered 
 that they were anxious to know whether we did this 
 sort of thing for pleasure. I smiled, pointed to the 
 burgee of the New York Canoe Club and then 
 waited awkwardly while the skipper gave orders to 
 his steward. Someone pitched down a few sea bis- 
 cuits, and I think the alacrity with which Charles 
 and Dillaway, who was again on deck, went after 
 them must have convinced our friends that we were 
 indeed hungry. But nothing further seemed to 
 happen. 
 
 And then up from one of the hatches a caravan 
 appeared, bearing bags and boxes which they 
 brought to the rail and prepared to lower away. 
 The first item to come aboard was a huge bag of 
 sea biscuits. Then a big chunk of a hind quarter 
 of beef, weighing at least thirty pounds, came down 
 on the cabin trunk with a thud, followed in rapid 
 succession by a large sack of rice, another of Span- 
 ish peas, ten loaves of fresh bread, fifteen pounds 
 of sugar, a quarter of a keg of lard, a number of 
 those big slabs of dried codfish called "bakala" by 
 the Spaniards, bunches of onions, cabbages, salt 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 25 1 
 
 pork, soup meat and a leg of mutton. I held up 
 my hands, explaining to the kind old gentleman that 
 we were coming from Europe, not bound there, and 
 that all we wanted was enough food to take us into 
 port. The situation amused the skipper immensely 
 and, paying no attention to my protest, he stood at 
 the rail and pelted us with apples, pears, peppers 
 and canned fruit. When the barrage finally sub- 
 sided our stock was increased by six large tins each 
 of peaches, pears, milk, salmon and sardines, and 
 then, just to do the job up in proper style, two bot- 
 tles of cognac were lowered aboard. As each missile 
 hit the deck our spirits rose, and by the time the 
 cognac came aboard the crew of the "T)T)hoon" 
 were cavorting and babbling like a Sunday school 
 picnic, all of which seemed to delight our friend 
 immensely. 
 
 The ethics of the sea demanded certain courtesies. 
 We could not rush below straightway and eat, al- 
 though the temptation was great. As we cast off 
 we gave the "Guillem SoroUa" three lusty cheers, 
 dipped our ensign and saluted with the foghorn, to 
 which she replied with much cheering, blast after 
 blast of the whistle and many a dip of her Spanish 
 ensign as she got under way again for Europe. 
 And then, letting "Typhoon" sail herself, we rushed 
 below and prepared the greatest meal that we had 
 ever eaten. To the Skipper fell the privilege of 
 cutting off huge steaks which we cooked and served 
 
252 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 between slices of wonderful Spanish bread. For 
 hours we ate, finishing the repast with the fruit 
 which we had craved for days. The effect on the 
 crew was miraculous. Dillaway was again him- 
 self and, with our belts fitting snugly once more, 
 we felt capable of going back the way we had corne. 
 At least we had food enough for the passage. That 
 night we had a real roast of beef, cooked in the oven, 
 with brown gravy, fresh vegetables, more fruit apd 
 cognac, and we turned in with a glowing charity 
 for each other, the world in general and especially 
 for the skipper of the "Guillem SoroUa." 
 
 Months later, in reply to a letter I had written 
 him to express our gratitude, I received one from 
 Captain Soler, which shows the spirit of the man 
 far better than I can do it. It reads : 
 
 COMPANIA TRASMEDITERRANEA, 
 
 BARCELONA VAPOR "GUILLEM 
 
 SOROLLA" 
 
 Barcelona, 12th de February de 192 1. 
 Mr. William Washburn Nutting, F. R. G. S., 
 
 New York, N. Y. 
 Dear Sir : 
 
 I am very much pleased to acknowledge receipt 
 of your favor of January 8th, 192 1, informing me 
 your happy arrival to the great city of New York. 
 
 Since our departure, after that interesting scene 
 in the high sea, I tried to advise to the Radiotele- 
 graphic station of Arlington your situation, which 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 253 
 
 with great anxiety were asking for the "Typhoon's" 
 fate, and what I could not reply till to find another 
 ship's station to serve me as intermediate, because 
 mine was insufficiently strong. 
 
 I am very much grateful to the "Typhoon's" crew 
 for the salute rendered to the Spanish flag, which 
 as you know was turn back by all the crew of my 
 ship, with sympathetic demonstrations to the flag 
 of the powerful country of the United States. Hip, 
 Hip, Hurrah ! 
 
 During our trip we remembered and spoken with 
 admiration of these five brave Americans, who 
 thinking nothing of their life faced the danger to 
 pass through the Atlantic in November in so a little 
 boat. Should I form part of the Washington Gov- 
 ernment I would propose you for a great insignia 
 as a reward to the valour and merite. 
 
 Referring to the value of the food supplied to you, 
 I wish you know that I consider me greatly paid 
 with the honor to auxiliate five heroes, who by their 
 proper will form a part of the great family who 
 pass through the immense sea, to whom I consider 
 as my brothers. It is the best lieu for the humani- 
 tary suggestion. About this, allow me a Spanish 
 proverb, "To-day for you, to-morrow for me." 
 
 All as regretted very much that due to the strong 
 storm should not be possible to you to remain longer 
 at our side, for I had ordered to prepare some poul- 
 try, tobacco and some things more that I was desir- 
 ous to furnish you. 
 
 I am heartily sorry that one of the members of 
 your crew be sick and I send my best wishes for a 
 speedy recovered. 
 
254 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 I will be greatly pleased in receiving a copy of 
 your Motor Boat Book, which I will read with 
 my best attention and interest and same with 
 "Typhoon's" photographs. 
 
 I will be always at your disposition and if some 
 day I return to New York I will be glad to have the 
 pleasure to shake hands with you. 
 
 Your sincerely friend as ever, 
 
 (Signed) Francisco Soler, 
 
 Master. 
 
 Through the quaint phraseology of that letter 
 shines the soul of a true veteran of the sea — a mem- 
 ber of that brotherhood in which petty barriers of 
 nationality or creed or wealth are forgotten in a 
 closer bond of true fellowship than ever existed 
 among the people of the land. Capt. Francisco Soler 
 has the undying gratitude of the crew of the 
 "Typhoon." 
 
 Before casting off from the "Guillem SoroUa" we 
 obtained from the First Officer his latitude and 
 longitude, which differed from our estimated posi- 
 tion by several miles. Assuming that our position, 
 after thirty-one days at sea was probably incorrect, 
 we changed our course a bit to the west to fetch 
 Montauk Point, planning to enter the eastern end 
 of Long Island Sound. At six o'clock on Sunday 
 morning, November 20th, Dillaway, who was at the 
 wheel, reported a light off the port bow just where 
 we figured that Montauk Point should have been. 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 255 
 
 But instead of the ten-second flash of Montauk it 
 showed a group of three flashes. Feeling that we 
 were, if anything, to the eastward of Montauk, the 
 next most probable guess was Block Island, but re- 
 ferring to the light list we found that the light on 
 the southern end of the island was a fixed one. The 
 only light possible on this section of the coast show- 
 ing three flashes was Shinnecock, which is on Long 
 Island, thirty-two miles to the westward of Mon- 
 tauk. By this time the growing daylight had 
 dimmed the flashes so that we could no longer time 
 them, but as soon as it was light enough I recog- 
 nized the shaft of Shinnecock. Had we taken our 
 own position instead of that of our friends we 
 should have come very near hitting Montauk, a fact 
 that is difficult to explain, since we claim no particu- 
 lar skill in navigation. 
 
 The wind was from the northeast, and to avoid 
 the long beat necessary to make the eastern end of 
 the Sound, we decided to run before it along the 
 Long Island coast. Attracted by the first land we 
 had seen in over a month, we drew in close to the 
 beach, enjoying the panorama as we bowled along 
 at a good six knots. At i :20 p. m. Fire Island Light 
 was abeam. Drawing still closer in toward the 
 beach to drink in the unusual sight of sunlight on 
 the yellow sand, the deserted cottages, the life-sav- 
 ing stations, we gave no thought to the chart, spend- 
 
256 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 ing our time rather in concocting wonderful things 
 to eat. 
 
 At about 4:30 I noticed some strange-looking 
 waves ahead of us, of a kind we had not had outside, 
 and before I realized what we were getting into 
 we came down in the hollow of a sea and hit the 
 hard bottom with a thump. Looking seaward, I 
 saw two buoys a mile or so off the beach and realized 
 instantly that we had cut over the shoal that makes 
 out from Jones Inlet. Throwing the wheel hard 
 over, we actually got out of it without hitting again, 
 but it was a close call and a warning that coastwise 
 sailing requires constant attention to business. 
 
 When well out in deep water again we jibed to 
 the starboard tack, but the wind by this time was 
 nearly astern of us. To keep it on the starboard 
 quarter caused us to work in again too close to the 
 land, necessitating another jibe. Lowering the peak 
 and hauling in the sheet, we eased her over, but the 
 shock was too great for our^ weatherbeaten main- 
 sail, which let go with the crack of a pistol shot and 
 tore completely across from leech to luff. 
 
 Things were happening to us with a vengeance. 
 We had escaped stranding on our own threshold, 
 only to lose our mainsail, but nothing much mat- 
 tered, except that we were actually almost within 
 sight of the Woolworth Building. Darkness came 
 oh, and one after another the rows of lights that 
 mark the boardwalks of the deserted beaches all too 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 257 
 
 slowly dropped astern. At ten o'clock we picked up 
 the red flash of Norton Point, and keeping well out 
 so as to avoid the shoal which lies oflf Rockaway 
 Point, we made for it, and, after an unsuccessful 
 effort to beat up the bay against the tide under jib 
 and mizzen, we gave it up and anchored off the old 
 Atlantic Y. C. in Gravesend Bay, a few hours over 
 thirty-two days from the time we had left Ponta 
 Delgada. 
 
 On the following day we beat up the narrows 
 against the tide and a strong northwester and tied 
 up in the slip at St. George, Staten Island, where we 
 were forced to spend the night, for the simple rea- 
 son that the wind blew a gale and we were unable 
 to get out of the slip. And then the reporters and 
 the movie folks descended upon us, and we learned 
 that Mr. Harding had been elected. 
 
 But our tribulations were not yet over. After a 
 strenuous night of pitching in the slip it still re- 
 mained to take "Typhoon" up the East River, 
 through Hell Gate and into Long Island Sound, and 
 to do this under shortened sail proved more of an 
 ordeal than taking her across the Atlantic. Await- 
 ing a favorable tide we got under way late in the 
 afternoon with the assistance of our good friends, 
 W. P. and Koke Stephens and Henry Frisch, and all 
 went well until we got into the lee of the big build- 
 ings on the lower end of Manhattan. By this time 
 it was dark. With no skyline visible, the huge 
 
258 THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 
 
 shapes of the skyscrapers were shown only by the 
 myriad lights from the office windows — a fairy 
 scene that moved even the English contingent to 
 frank admiration. 
 
 Suddenly we found ourselves blanketed with 
 about one knot steerageway in a four-knot tide, and 
 before we could work out into the middle of the 
 stream we were caught among a lot of barges tied 
 up on the Long Island side, splintering the corner 
 of our counter and one side of our rail. Thinking 
 that we were doing this sort of thing because we 
 liked it, an irate tugboat captain bawled us out for 
 blundering into his berth. This was the last straw 
 and, vying with each other in our command of the 
 language of the cattle ship, Koke Stephens and I an- 
 swered him in kind so effectively that he must have 
 thought that we were thoroughly initiated members 
 of the marine truck driver's union. At any rate his 
 attitude changed perceptibly, and he threw us a line 
 and jerked us out into midstream with a cheery 
 "Good luck" as we cast off. I suspect that by this 
 time he had recognized the little ship as most of the 
 other craft seemed to have done by daylight, judg- 
 ing by the tooting that marked our passage up the 
 river. 
 
 In order to do Hell Gate in daylight and with a 
 favorable tide we pulled in near the New York 
 Y. C. station for the night and the next day shot 
 through the Gate under jib, mizzen and storm tri- 
 
THE TRACK OF THE "TYPHOON" 259 
 
 sail, successfully negotiating the whirlpools, and 
 anchoring off Whitestone Landing. 
 
 And so it was that the idea that had its birth in 
 the cabin of the "Elsie" on the Bras d'Or Lakes 
 thirteen months before — ^the idea of building a boat 
 that should cross the Atlantic — was realized. 
 
AFTERTHOUGHTS 
 
 I HAVE been asked by many people whether. the "Typhoon" 
 proved as successful a boat as we had expected and whether 
 we would make any changes in her design if we were to build again 
 for a similar cruise. The answers are: She did and we would. 
 The. jact that she made a phenomenal run across the Atlantic and 
 on her return passage weathered a storm which wrung the S. O. S. 
 from many a big ship, proves, I think, that "Typhoon" was a suc- 
 cessful boat for deep sea cruising — as successful a one as we could 
 have expected considering her many rather experimental features. 
 There were, however, a number of things which might be improved. 
 
 Let's start with the rig. While my experience with the schooner 
 for long passages at sea is meagre, I feel that the ketch rig for a 
 short-handed vessel of this size is as good or possibly better than 
 any other. The sloop rig with its mast well forward is out of the 
 question, although the cutter with the mast stepped farther aft has 
 the advantage over a two-sticker of a less divided sail plan and 
 consequently might be faster for the same area. With the mast say 
 two-fifths the distance from the bow, the cutter-rigged craft will 
 lie-to under her forestaysail or under a trisail, but, of course, the 
 combinations of sail are limited compared to a two-sticker, and the 
 labor of handling the larger mainsail is greater. The yawl, with its 
 small mizzen and boomkin extending over the stern, possibly has a 
 slight advantage over the ketch in the matter of speed because of 
 its larger mainsail, but the mizzen, while a convenient sail to aid 
 in steering or under which to lie to a sea anchor, or at a mooring, 
 is too small to be of any actual good when sailing with the mainsail 
 doused and the fact that it extends far over the stern is an obvious 
 disadvantage. 
 
 The schooner is the t3T)icaI American rig and needs no other 
 recommendation than its popularity on the Grand Banks to prove its 
 efficiency on sea-going craft at least of any considerable size. The 
 schooner-rigged vessel lies-to nicely under the foresail alone, which 
 on a modem craft is smaller than the mizzen of a ketch, and sails 
 well under headsail and mainsail, but the long main boom is likely 
 to be a nuisance when running before the wind and when it is neces- 
 sary to reef. In considering the success of the schooners on the 
 
 36l 
 
262 AFTERTHOUGHTS 
 
 Banks, it is well to remember that they carry a fishing crew of 
 twenty-odd men. 
 
 The ketch rig with the mainsail in the middle of the boat has most 
 of the advantages of a schooner and I believe some additional ones. 
 The mainsail is smaller in proportion than that of the schooner, with 
 a shorter main boom which gives less trouble when running before 
 the wind and makes the job of reefing easier. Two men or in fact 
 one man kneeling on the cabin roof can reef the mainsail of a ketch 
 without interfering with the man at the wheel, while the boat is 
 kept jogging along under jib and mizzen. Under mainsail alone a 
 properly designed ketch will balance perfectly and the area of her 
 mizzen, which is greater than that of a yawl, makes possible a decent 
 speed under jib and mizzen with the mainsail doused. One difficulty 
 with the ketch rig is that of properly securing the mizzen, it being 
 impossible, except with a jib-headed mainsail, to tie the two sticks 
 together as on a schooner. 
 
 If we were designing another "Typhoon" I think we should use 
 a leg-o'-mutton main and mizzen much like those of the bugeye. 
 There is no question as to the efficiency of the leg-o'-mutton sail, 
 the only difficulty being the additional height of mast that it requires 
 in order to get sufficient sail area, and the necessity of using a track 
 instead of hoops for the mainsail if double headsails are used, with 
 a forestay leading from the hounds. 
 
 The single jib proved perfectly satisfactory. On a few occasions 
 it might have been convenient to be able to douse the jib and use 
 the forestaysail alone, had we had double headsails, but the advan- 
 tage of the simplified /gear and the fact that the sail required no 
 attention when coming about more than made up for this. The full 
 length boom for the foot of the jib is not a bad feature, although 
 it necessitates casting off the outhaul ' before the jib can be com- 
 pletely lowered and adjusting the loose lacing frequently to obtain 
 the proper draft. I doubt whether we should use this feature again. 
 I think it would be better to use a loose-footed jib or a shorter 
 club even at the risk of tearing the jib in bad weather, which was 
 the principal reason for adopting the full length boom. 
 
 Our sails were of ten-ounce duck, which is too light for such work. 
 They should have been heavier and should have had the cloths run- 
 ning parallel to the leech instead of cross cut. The cross-cut 
 method gives a slightly better "setting" sail and allows it to be cut 
 with a roach, but it is not nearly so strong, and when it lets go it 
 is likely to tear from leech to luff, as we found off Fire Island. 
 With the cloth running vertically, the reef points can be put at 
 the seams and there is not nearly the danger of a serious tear that 
 there is in the cross-cut sail even with the reef points reinforced. 
 
AFTERTHOUGHTS 263 
 
 No matter which type of sail is used, it should have a bolt rope along 
 the leech. 
 
 We did not use our square sail. Theoretically this is an excellent 
 sail for running before the wind in heavy weather. The area of 
 the sail is well up and there is no possibility of tripping its loose foot. 
 However, it requires proper fittings and a jumper stay on which 
 to raise it and consequently we never bothered with rigging it up. 
 Our storm jib was provided with a wire rope in the luff so that in 
 heavy weather it could be set flying to the eye in the stem head 
 without the necessity of a forestay, but we didn't use this either. 
 In fact in weather that would permit us to carry any of our regular 
 sail we used the full jib. We reefed it only once or twice. 
 
 There was a great deal of discussion pro and con, mostly con, 
 regarding "Typhoon's" hollow waterlines forward, and her broad 
 stern. These features were not nearly so bad as had been predicted 
 and caused us no trouble when running before the wind, which it 
 was claimed would be their worst point of sailing. However, I be- 
 lieve that "Typhoon" could have been considerably fuller forward 
 without materially cutting down her speed. Such a hull as 
 "Typhoon's" would be better suited to the schooner rig with the 
 mainmast at the point of greater power instead of at the V-shaped 
 section. In a ketch where the big stick is forward there should be 
 plenty of "bearing" at this point. But the' principal reason for filling 
 her out would be to gain room inside. "Typhoon" was so fine 
 forward that there was but little room in her fo'c'stle. Had her 
 sections been fuller we could have had as much accommodation on 
 a 40-ft overall length as we had on 45 ft. 
 
 The stern gave us no trouble whatsoever, but I think it was 
 broader than necessary. To be sure, it gave us long running lines 
 when heeled, but in a boat of this kind with a maximum speed of 
 say nine knots, this feature is not really of such great importance. 
 Many a double-ender of the same length could sail nearly if not 
 actually as fast and, while I have never been an advocate of the 
 double-ended model, it has many advantages. The deck space, of 
 course, with the pointed stem, is cut down somewhat, but there is a 
 great gain in depth at the stern, which is an advantage where an 
 auxiliary motor is installed. If we were redesigning "Typhoon," I 
 think we should give her more deadrise aft and either a square stern 
 with the rudder hung outboard or else a counter with a short over- 
 hang, just enough to permit the use of a screw steering gear which 
 is a great advantage on a cruising boat. The Englishmen are strong 
 for the tiller and there is no question of its advantage on a racing 
 boat, but for long passages the screw type steering gear is not only 
 easier on the helmsman but permits him to leave the wheel when 
 the boat is balanced on her course, without securing it, which is 
 
264 AFTERTHOUGHTS 
 
 necessary with a quadrant type steering wheel or with a tiller unless 
 a "comb" is fitted. 
 
 "Typhoon" should' have had more than three thousand pounds of 
 lead on her keel. She was so heavily constructed that she could 
 have stood all of her ballast outside without making her too quick 
 a roller. The lead was sufficient to bring her up after her knock- 
 down, but the great amount of inside ballast required to give her 
 proper stiffness caused a dirty bilge without giving her quite as 
 much stability as she should have had. Her nudship section, I think, 
 is about right. It shows plenty of deadrise and a pronounced though 
 not a hard turn at the bilge. The additional stiffness could be 
 obtained by putting a greater percentage of the ballast outside 
 rather than by hardening the bilge and giving her more stability of 
 form. 
 
 The cockpit was larger than necessary. In leaving it open for the 
 full width between the coamings we felt that it would be possible 
 to gain protection from the wind and sea by crouching in the lee of 
 the coaming and we had in mind also storage space for the water- 
 breakers. But the cockpit would have been more comfortable had 
 we extended the deck inside the coamings as a seat, with merely a 
 foot-well. This would have given us a more comfortable place to 
 lounge and additional storage space inside and still would have 
 allowed room for a couple of waterbreakers. Furthermore, the 
 cockpit was too deep and this feature, together with its breadth, 
 made it necessary to keep the lee scupper plugged when heeled down, 
 to prevent the water coming in. Time and again we had the cockpit 
 flooded to the tops of the gunwales, but there was never any danger 
 from such a visitation, the large scuppers carrying the water off 
 quickly and the bridge deck preventing it getting into the cabin to 
 any extent. 
 
 When we laid out "Typhoon's" interior I was strong for keeping 
 it open and undivided, but I think it would have been better to have 
 had one separate sleeping compartment or main cabin forward and 
 to have enclosed the engine and possibly the galley. There is no 
 other way to keep the sleeping quarters clean and pleasant. Fur- 
 thermore, in rough weather an occasional bulkhead is desirable. 
 When you are skidding about on a slippery, rolling floor in sea 
 boots, it is nice to be able to come up short against something before 
 gaining inertia enough to break an arm. 
 
 In the matter of motors in general and fuel oil motors in par- 
 ticular, we might say a great deal. The early prejudice that existed 
 among sailormen against any kind of a motor has largely given 
 place to a more tolerant attitude and a realization that power is a 
 mighty valuable thing to have aboard a cruising boat. Whether the 
 boat should be first of all, a sail boat with merely auxiliary power. 
 
AFTERTHOUGHTS 265 
 
 a fifty-fifty outfit divided equally between sail and power, or a 
 motor boat with auxiliary sails, is a question that can be decided 
 only after thorough consideration of the sort of cruising for which 
 the boat is intended. 
 
 In designing the "Typhoon" we leaned to the first idea and I believe 
 that for long passages at sea we were right. She could have had a 
 larger motor and in fact we had planned to use a two-cylinder model 
 of the same type which would have given us 15 instead of 7]^ h.p. 
 The greater cruising radius possible with the smaller power was 
 one argument in favor of it, but we have found, and I think Jack 
 Kelley and others who have made long passages of the kind have 
 found, that it is seldom that you want the motor for more than a 
 few hours at a time and that when you do want it you are likely 
 to want it badly. Sufficient power to handle the boat in any condi- 
 tion of wind or tide is essential, but there is little need of going 
 beyond that point. 
 
 Our experience with fuel oil was not by any means a pleasant one, 
 but with proper isolation of the engine compartment this disadvan- 
 tage might be overcome. And there was the argument of absolute 
 safety. We could have used kerosene, as safe a fuel as fuel oil, 
 and possibly we could have avoided much of our trouble had we 
 used this fuel. Our oil cost twenty-one cents a gallon (Imperial) 
 and there was little advantage, in the matter of cost, over kerosene. 
 
 Recently we installed a Buffalo two-cylinder 10-12 h.p. heavy-duty 
 gasoline motor in "Typhoon" and the results obtained from it were 
 most satisfactory. It drove the heavy hull nearly 7 miles an hour, 
 ran faultlessly all day long when necessary, and consumed astonish- 
 ingly little' fuel. I think this general type and size of motor well 
 nigh ideal for such a hull. 
 
 To the landsman, I imagine the matter of navigation must seem 
 as formidable as any problem in connection with a long ocean cruise, 
 but while this should not be considered too lightly, there really is 
 nothing about it beyond the reach of a person of ordinary intelli- 
 gence. My friend, John Kelley, who sailed the little schooner 
 "Diablesse" to England this summer, did so without the use of a 
 chronometer. In fact, he took but two noon sights for latitude and 
 neither of them was accurate. He followed closely the track of the 
 steamships and on several occasions obtained his position from them, 
 picking up the Scilly Isles without difficulty and in good time. I 
 had never worked up a longitude sight before leaving Baddeck and 
 while Baldwin had a casual knowledge of the subject, I don't think 
 he ever had been called upon actually to find his position at sea. 
 We carried all the profound works on navigation, including Lecky 
 and Norrie, but when the weather actually permitted us to take a 
 sight, I found Baldwin in the cabin with Henderson's little handbook 
 
266 AFTERTHOUGHTS 
 
 in one hand, working out the problem. In the course of ten or 
 fifteen minutes he said, making a pencil mark on the chart, "We're 
 here." I wasn't in any position to question his conclusion and let it 
 go at that. A day or so later I took a sight and worked it up with 
 the aid of Mr. Henderson and the position obtained seemed to jibe 
 fairly well with the dead reckoning from the Bliss log. And so we 
 went from day to day, taking a noon sight for latitude and a morn- 
 ing or afternoon sight for longitude. We made no attempt at fancy 
 navigation, sticking to the old Merchant Marine method that lias 
 taken many a ship around the world. It proved perfectly satisfac- 
 tory in our case. 
 
GLOSSARY 
 
 Abaft— Aft of. 
 
 Aft — Toward the stern of the vessel. 
 
 Belay — ^To make fast a line on a cleat, bitt or pin. 
 
 Belaying pin — ^A pin fitting into the spider band or pin rail about 
 the mast to which the halyards are belayed — not solely a 
 weapon, as a reader of sea fiction might believe. 
 
 Bilge — The space beneath the floor of a vessel, occupied by ballast 
 and bilge water. Turn of the bilge — the more or less pro- 
 nounced comer where the bottom joins the side of a vessel. 
 
 Bob stay — ^The stay that extends from the end of the bowsprit 
 down to the stem of the vessel. 
 
 Body plan — Sections taken at equi-distant points and superim- 
 posed to give an idea of the shape of a vessel. 
 
 Breaker — ^A water cask frequently suspected of containing vin 
 rouge, vino tinto, St. Pierre rum, etc. 
 
 Burgee — Club flag. 
 
 Buttock lines — Lines on the design of a vessel which show where 
 imaginary vertical planes parallel to the center line would 
 intersect the hull. 
 
 Chain plates — The iron or bronze straps on the sides of a vessel 
 to which the shrouds are attached by means of turnbuckles 
 or lanyards. 
 
 Chronometer — A clock used by navigators which is set to con- 
 form to Greenwich time. 
 
 Clew — ^The after lower corner of a sail. 
 
 Close hauled — Sailing vessel is close hauled when she is sailing 
 as close to the wind as she will go. 
 
 Cutter — ^A fore-and-aft rigged vessel with a single mast usually 
 stepped about two-fifths of the distance from the bow with 
 two head sails, viz: a jib and forestaysail. Ordinarily the 
 cutter carries a topmast. 
 
 Deadrise — ^The vertical height from the point where the bottom 
 joins the keel to the turn of the bilge. 
 
 Deviation — ^The amount of error in a compass due to the influence 
 of iron on the ship. It varies with the direction of the ship's 
 head. 
 
 267 
 
268 GLOSSARY 
 
 Diagonals — Lines on the drawing of a vessel that indicate where 
 imaginary diagonal planes would intersect the hull. 
 
 Drogue or sea anchor — Any device, such as a canvas bag that is 
 put overboard during a storm to keep the vessel's head to the 
 wind. 
 
 Forefoot — The forward part of the keel where it joins the stem. 
 
 Freeboard — That part of a vessel's side which extends above the 
 water. 
 
 Full-and-by — A sailing vessel is said to be fuU-and-by when she 
 is sailing as close to the wind as possible with her sails draw- 
 ing well. 
 
 Gybe — To come about from one tack to another without heading 
 into the wind, a dangerous operation if carelessly done or if 
 the wind is strong, as the wind striking the sail from aft 
 throws it over with a jerk. 
 
 Gripe — ^The tendency of a vessel with excessive weather helm to 
 come up into the wind. 
 
 Halyard — The rope used to hoist a sail. Two halyards are re- 
 quired for a gafif-headed sail, viz. : the throat and peak. 
 
 Heave to — ^To trim a vessel's canvas in such a way that she will 
 lie comfortably -without much headway. Strictly speaking, 
 this implies that the forestaysail is backed to neutralize the 
 drive of the mainsail, but when a small vessel is "Hove-to" 
 it is generally understood to mean that she is under trisail 
 alone or reduced storm canvas to ride out a gale without the 
 necessity of steering her. 
 
 Irons, caught in — When a vessel heads up into the wind and her 
 bow cannot be thrown off. 
 
 Ketch — A fore-and-aft rigged vessel with two masts, the larger of 
 which is forward. It is distinguished from a yawl by the fact 
 that its mizzen mast is stepped forward of the rudder post. 
 
 Lee — The side of a vessel away from the wind, opposite to the 
 weather side. Leeward, or loo'ard. — The direction toward 
 which the wind is blowing. 
 
 Leech — The after edge of a sail. 
 
 Liverpool head (Alias Charlie Noble) — The fitting on the top of 
 a stove pipe. It is designed to keep the rain and spray out 
 and to cause a draft no matter in which direction the wind is 
 blowing. 
 
 LulT — To head a boat into the wind to relieve the pressure on the 
 sail; also the forward edge of a sail. 
 
 Meridian altitude — An observation of the height of a heavenly 
 body, taken by means of a sextant, when it is at its highest 
 point. A noon sight is an altitude of the sun at local apparent 
 noon. 
 
GLOSSARY 269 
 
 Miss stays — ^When a vessel fails to come about when headed up 
 into the wind for a tack. 
 
 On the wind — ^A vessel is said to be sailing on the wind or by the 
 wind when the wind comes from a direction forward of the 
 beam. 
 
 Point — The unit of division of the compass card. The card is 
 divided into thirty-two points, each of which is subdivided 
 into quarter points. Most modern compasses are also divided 
 into degrees and one point, therefore, is the equivalent of 
 11.25 degrees. 
 
 Reach — ^To sail broadside to the wind. 
 
 Roach — The convex curve to the leech of a sail. 
 
 Running rigging — Ropes that are used in raising, lowering and 
 trimming sails. 
 
 Schooner — A fore-and-aft rigged vessel with the larger or main- 
 mast aft. 
 
 Sections — ^The lines produced by the intersections of imaginary 
 planes cutting the vessel crosswise. 
 
 Sextant — An instrument for measuring angles used most fre- 
 quently in determining the altitude of the sun or stars above 
 the horizon. 
 
 Sheet — ^The rope used to trim a sail. 
 
 Shrouds — The parts of the standing rigging that support the mast 
 laterally, extending from the mast head or hounds to the 
 chain plates at the sides of the vessel. 
 
 Sloop — ^A similar rig to the cutter except that the mast is farther 
 forward. A sloop usually has a pole mast and a single jib. 
 
 Standing rigging — Shrouds and stays, usually wire, used to sup- 
 port the masts. 
 
 Stays — The parts of the standing rigging that support the masts 
 in a fore-and-aft direction. 
 
 Tack — The lower forward corner of a sail. 
 
 Tacking — The operation of sailing a vessel against the wind on a 
 zigzag course. A vessel that can sail right angles into the 
 wind, that is, sail within four points or 45° of the wind, is a 
 smart sailer. 
 
 Tumble home — A vessel is said to have her sides tumbled home 
 when she is narrower at the deck than at the waterline. 
 
 Traveler — The rod across the deck of a vessel on which the sheet 
 block travels. 
 
 Variation — The difference between magnetic and true north vary- 
 ing with the locality. A compass without deviation points to 
 the magnetic north which does not coincide with the North 
 Pole. 
 
270 GLOSSARY 
 
 Waterlines — The lines on the design of a vessel that indicate 
 where imaginary horizontal planes would intersect the hull. 
 The load waterline, or L. W. L., is the one at the surface of 
 the water when the boat is in running trim. The others are 
 at equal distances above and below it. 
 
 Waterways — The side decks between the rail and the cabin side 
 or cockpit coaming. 
 
 Weather — The side of a vessel toward the wind, opposite to the 
 lee side. 
 
 Weather helm — A boat is said to have weather helm when, on 
 ordinary points of sailing, she tends to come into the wind 
 and needs the tiller to the weather side to keep her ofiE. Lee 
 helm— the opposite condition— is a dangerous condition, for the 
 vessel tends to sag off instead of luff up when hit by a gust 
 of wind, presenting a greater sail area and consequently put- 
 ting her in danger of being knocked down or dismasted. 
 
 Whiskers or whisker shrouds — The shrouds that extend from the 
 end of the bowsprit to the sides of the vessel. 
 
 Windward — The direction from which the wind is blowing. 
 
 Yawl — ^A similar rig to the ketch, but with a smaller mizzen 
 stepped abaft the rudder post.