The White Squall: A Story of the Sargasso Sea

by John C. Hutcheson

Chapter Seven.

Amongst the Islands.

In spite of all Captain Miles’ endeavours to effect an early start from Saint Vincent, we were not really able to weather the island that evening until many hours after our anchor was tripped and all plain sail made.

This was not due, however, either to the delay caused in hoisting the obstreperous cow on board or to the embarrassing episode that occurred after she was shipped. It was entirely owing to the failure of our moving spirit the wind; for we lay becalmed until morning under the lee of the giant Souffrière, whose dark shadow prevented the land breeze from reaching the vessel, while the next day was far advanced before we could gain an offing so as to take advantage of the light airs that then sprang up from seaward. But, then, the Josephine, bellying out her canvas, bore away on her voyage.

The wide gulf of sea which we were traversing—named after the aboriginal Caribs who ruled over its domain lang syne, and hedged in from the Atlantic Ocean by the semicircular group of the Lesser Antilles, or “Windward Islands” of the West Indies—presents great difficulties to the navigators of sailing ships; as, while the wind throughout its extent blows almost constantly in one direction, a series of cross currents set in another, making it a hard task for even experienced seamen to preserve a straight course towards any particular point when going to windward, the result of which is that “the longest way round,” as in other matters pertaining to shore life, is frequently “the shortest way home!”

Taking up the chart casually, a novice would imagine that our direct route from our port of departure to the English Channel would be indicated by a line drawn between the two points and passing through the Azores; but, a sailor accustomed to tropical latitudes would know that, however feasible this might appear in theory, we could not possibly have adopted such a course. It would have presupposed, in the first case, our possessing the ability to sail straight in the teeth of the north-east trade wind, and, in the second case, that we took no account of the influence of the equatorial current, the stream of which setting westwards into the Caribbean Sea, would have drifted as so far to leeward that at the end of the day’s run we must have been pretty nearly where we started from, any progress we made ahead being neutralised by the action of the stream carrying us in a lateral direction.

For these reasons, all navigators up to their work, when making the passage home from the West Indies and vice versa, instead of fighting against the forces of nature as some old seamen of the past used to do, now make both winds and tides run harmoniously in their favour by meeting them half-way, so to speak. Captain Miles, in our instance, therefore, did not wear out his crew by trying to beat to windward in order to get to the open Atlantic immediately. On the contrary, he kept his vessel well away to leeward, shaping a course for Saint Christopher’s, so as to pass afterwards through the Anegada Channel, between the Virgin Islands, and reach the ocean in that way. In other words, following the example of the ready-witted Irishman who drove an obstinate pig to market by pulling him back by the tail, he deliberately steered to the north-west while really wanting to go to the north-east. But, circuitous as such a route looked, the captain was in the end a gainer by it; for, not only did he keep the wind well abeam of the ship all the way on the starboard tack, but he had the additional advantage of having the strong north-westerly current in his favour in lieu of trying to work against it.

During this portion of our voyage the weather was beautifully fine, the sky being of a clear transparent opal tint without a cloud and the sea of the purest ultramarine blue, with little merry dancing wavelets occasionally flecking its changing surface into foam.

The air, too, was balmy, and not unpleasantly warm, a fine healthy breeze blowing, which filled our good ship’s sails, so that they expanded to the furthest limits of the bolt-ropes, speeding her on her way at the rate of some eight knots an hour, as rising and falling she surged through the sparkling water and left a foaming wake astern that spread out in the shape of a fan behind her track, widening until it was lost in the distance.

When I mentioned my going to visit the Josephine as she lay at anchor while taking in cargo at Grenville Bay, I think I said that I had never before been in a vessel. This, however, was not strictly accurate, for when dad came out to the West Indies from England with my mother and sisters some few years previously, I, of course, accompanied them; and as we had to cross the Atlantic in order to reach Grenada, and there was no other mode of overcoming the three thousand odd miles of ocean that lay between us and our destination except by our adventuring the passage in the ordinary way, I was then really for the first time taken on board a ship. But it must be remembered that I was only at that period a tiny baby about the size of my little sister Tot; and, therefore, my recollections of the time being rather hazy, my first real experiences of the sea and all the incidents of the voyage came upon me with all that novelty and interest which unfamiliarity alone can produce. It is, nevertheless, only right that I should make this correction of my former mis-statement, for I wish to give a true and impartial account of all that happened to me from first to last. I am not “spinning a yarn” merely, as sailor’s say, but telling a true story of my life with all its haps and mishaps.