The Last Grain Race. Eric Newby

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СКАЧАТЬ me right out on the bowsprit. Into the tip of it several nails had been driven, to which some dried horny fragments adhered.

      ‘Shark’s fins,’ said Vytautas. ‘Good luck, not much of it left now.’ We were facing one another on the footrope. ‘Very dangerous here,’ he said happily. ‘No netting under the bowsprit. If she runs heavily she may dip and wash you off. If you are sent to furl the “Jagare”, that’s the flying jib, look out for the sheet block, it can easily knock you into the water. Remember, please,’ he added a little more wistfully, ‘if you fall from here the ship will go over you and by the time she can heave-to it will be too late to find you.’

      I was suitably impressed by these observations and had reason to remember them on many occasions during the voyage.

      We worked our way down the bowsprit to the white-railed fo’c’sle head deck, the raised part of the ship at the bows. To port and starboard were Moshulu’s bower anchors, of the old-fashioned kind with stocks, lashed down to the deck. Their stocks prevented them being hauled close up to the hawse pipes, and there was a small crane to lift them on board. Beneath the crane was a teak pin rail with iron pins in it to which the downhauls of the headsails were belayed. The sheets led to pin rails on either side of the fo’c’sle head just above the well deck. In addition there was a capstan with square holes in it to take the heads of the wooden capstan bars. At sea this capstan was used for hauling down the tack of the foresail when the vessel was beating into the wind, but it could also be geared to the anchor windlass beneath the fo’c’sle head. On both sides of the capstan there were massive bitts to which the tack of the foresail could be made fast.

      At the break of the raised deck were the two lighthouses which protected the port and starboard navigation lights; each could be entered through a hole in the roof of the lamp rooms under the fo’c’sle head. In port, the copper domes of these lighthouses were neglected and bright green from exposure, but at sea, unless the weather was very bad, they were kept brightly burnished. Two companion ladders led to the well-deck below, and between them hung in a sort of gallows the big bronze bell with Kurt, Hamburg (the name given her by her German owners), engraved on it.

      Lashed up next to the bell, with its heel on the deck, was the spare sheet-anchor. Immediately below the lighthouses on the well-deck were the pigsties, built solidly of steel but for the present untenanted.

      Underneath the fo’c’sle head-deck were the lavatories, ablution rooms, blacksmith’s stores, the boatswain’s store, and the port and starboard lamp-rooms. It was a draughty, smelly part of the ship. The lavatories were very gruesome, with no locks on the doors and no flushing arrangements. I had spent a memorable half-hour on the first morning cleaning them with a long iron rod and innumerable buckets of dirty dock-water. This was the most disgusting task I have ever been called upon to perform in peace or war. In war not even the pits beside the railway tracks so thoughtfully provided by the Germans for our convenience when we were being moved westwards in chains from Czechoslovakia equalled the lavatories in Moshulu.

      Between the two washrooms stood the anchor windlass with its massive cables, and the salt-water pump, a very rickety affair with a pipeline aft to the main deck.

      Immediately aft of the pump was No 1 hatch, a tiny thing eight feet square, leading down into the tween deck space and also to the forepeak where the bulk of the coal for the galley was kept. Forward of the coal store were the chain lockers, two vertical shafts in which the anchor cables were faked down link by link as they came in over the windlass pawls above. In the forepeak were great coils of wire strop, mooring springs and towing hawser, and for some distance aft in the ’tween-deck the space was filled with a pell-mell of bundled sail. The ’tween-deck was really an upper hold eight feet high, extending the length and breadth of the ship as far as the after peak, or lazarette, beneath the poop. This deck was pierced through by tonnage openings of the same size as the hatches above them. At sea both the hatches above and the tonnage openings below were battened down, cutting off the upper and lower holds. There was no artificial light below and because of this there was to be a nasty accident quite soon.

      Next to No 1 hatch the great trunk of the foremast rose up through the deck from its roots on the keelson of the ship. By the mast was a teak fife rail with iron belaying pins to which the headsail halliards and the sheets of four square sails above the lower topsail were belayed; the lower topsail and foresail sheets were belayed to cleats on the fore part of the mast itself. Not far distant from the fore mast were the halliard winches for raising the upper topsail yards and topgallant yards when setting sail. The royal halliards rove through blocks and were belayed to the pin rails. It took ten men to raise a royal yard. The square sail halliards were so placed that with the yards raised they became in effect additional backstays.

      Abaft the foremast was the donkey boiler room with a hinged funnel on top where Jansson and his even more savage-looking superior tended their charge, which was intended to raise the anchors. On very rare occasions it provided power for sending aloft the heavier sails. Here the Donkeymen kept the tools of their trade, which included a blacksmith’s forge, spares for the winches and, an important item, a blow-lamp with which they were always brewing cocoa, happily independent of the irascible cook. On either side of the donkey house was a capstan to which the sheets of the great foresail were brought through fairleads in the bulwarks. They were also used to send sail aloft by manpower.

      Between the donkey house and the raised bridge deck amidships was No 2 hatch with Jansson’s dismantled winch beside it. Here the Belfast stevedores, using shore cranes, were unloading with an almost ritualistic deliberation, like figures in a slow-motion film of a coronation ceremony. To port and starboard were the pin rails for the forebraces which controlled the final angle or trim of the foresail and upper and lower topsail yards after they had been roughly braced round with a Jarvis brace winch. Only the course and topsail yards on each mast were operated by winches. The hand braces for the topgallant and royal yards came down to the deck still farther aft on the midships section, and were belayed to the fife rail at the mainmast.

      Next to the mainmast was the Jarvis brace winch for the foremast yards with which four men could brace round the course and upper and lower topsail yards according to the direction of the wind, the wire braces playing out on cone-shaped drums on one side of the winch, whilst the slack was taken up by a similar set on the other side. There were three Jarvis brace winches in Moshulu, which eased what would otherwise have been an almost impossible task in so large a vessel for a crew as small as ours. The remaining yards, the two topgallants and the royals, were braced round with long rope braces. In the same way those operated by the winch had also to be trimmed properly by hand.

      The forepart of the raised bridge-deck was painted white and had brass scuttles set in it. These portholes shed some light into the port and starboard fo’c’sles and into the galley where the Cook, that most wretched of men, lived in a stifling atmosphere filled with escaping steam, looking very much like ‘the Spirit of the Industrial Revolution’ in a Nursery History of England. The bridge deck, sixty-five feet long, forty-seven feet on the beam, was connected with the fo’c’sle head and poop decks by flying bridges over the fore and main decks which enabled the Mates to move about more quickly when issuing orders. On the bridge-deck was the charthouse, a massive construction where the charts, sailing directions, log-book, barometer and navigational instruments were housed. A companion-way led below to the Officers’ quarters.

      Right amidships were the two massive teak wheels connected with the steering-gear aft by well-greased wire cables running through sheaves in the deck. These cables would sometimes break when a heavy sea was running. In a big gale three men would stand on the raised platforms to assist the helmsman who checked the more violent movements of the wheel with a foot-brake set in the floor. In front of the wheel was the big brass binnacle and behind the helmsman was the ship’s bell on which he echoed the striking of the clock inside the charthouse. On a brass plaque below the bell was engraved: Wm. Hamilton, Shipbuilders, Port Glasgow.

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