Alone at Sea : The Adventures of Joshua Slocum (9780385674072) (15 page)

He did, however, sail with loaded guns and rifles, mindful of the port captain’s advice to shoot at the first sign of trouble, but to try not to kill any Fuegians in doing so. Slocum was worried, and later reflected, “It was not without thoughts of strange and stirring adventure beyond all I had yet encountered that I now sailed into the country and very core of the savage Fuegians.” In Fortescue Bay he saw his first signs of trouble: native signal fires burning all around him. He anchored in a bed of kelp for two and a half days to wait out a heavy gale. On sailing out, he noticed he was not alone — canoes manned by “savages” were gaining on the
Spray
, but this time it was not to terrorize. They yelled out to Slocum the word “yammerschooner,” which, he thought, was their term for begging. His reply to them was negative. What worried Slocum was the opportunity the encounter had given the Fuegians to study his situation. He could not afford to let them know he was sailing alone, and his mercurial mind arrived at an ingenious solution. He ran “into the cabin, and passing through the hold, came out at the forecastle changing my clothes as I went along. That made
two men.” He also fashioned a crude marionette from a sawed off piece of bowsprit, dressed it as a seaman, stuffed it on the lookout, and attached lines, so that he could manipulate the puppet as needed. Three on board was the message the Fuegians would get. However, this did not deter them. Slocum fired his first shot when the nearest canoe was about eighty yards from his boat. The incursion ended, but only for a moment. He fired a second shot close enough to one of the paddlers that they would think he had been aiming for him. The Fuegians took off for an island, leaving Slocum to write, “
So much for the first day of savages.”

On those days on the strait when he was forced to take shelter from storms and gales, Slocum was alert: “I reasoned that I had all about me the greatest danger of the whole voyage — the treachery of cunning savages.” When he collected firewood, he carried his rifle, and always chose shores that seemed to be free of natives. He read the signs of the land as he did those at sea. The presence of birds and seals on the rocks gave him some assurance there were no cruel men about, but he was determined never to be surprised.

Early March found him in the Cockburn Channel, with time to reflect on the nautical excitement of the preceding days. He anchored on March 8 off Thieves Bay, where he was unable to shake the tormenting feeling that he was not alone. Even after a hot and comforting meal, he felt uneasy about giving in to his physical exhaustion.
Perhaps it was his stew, made from venison that Captain Samblich had given him, that reminded him of the good Austrian’s other gift. Before allowing himself to fall asleep, Slocum sprinkled the carpet tacks over the
Spray
’s deck. He minded where he set foot, as the tacks were standing “
business end” up. Around midnight, Slocum was jolted from his sleep by a cacophony of wild howls, “like a pack of hounds.” The Fuegians had tried to sneak aboard in the dark; being barefoot, they had gotten the point (literally) that they were unwelcome aboard the
Spray
. Slocum looked up through the companionway to witness a frantic sight: “They jumped pell-mell, some into their canoes and some into the sea, to cool off, I suppose, and there was a deal of free language over it as they went.” Slocum added to the spectacle by coming up on deck and firing his guns. Another calamity was averted, but the captain knew that unless he moved on, retaliation was only a matter of time.

Slocum would have yet another round with the Fuegians, just off Port Angosto. Working on the deck, he was spooked by the sound of something zipping through the air. He looked up to see an arrow sticking in the
Spray
’s mainmast, not far from where he was working. Slocum started firing to smoke the natives out of hiding. There were three of them, and Slocum aimed under their feet as they ran, to encourage their hasty retreat. They would never return, but while Slocum stayed in those waters he never slept without a liberal sprinkling of carpet
tacks above him on deck. As for the arrow, he dubbed it “
a Fuegian autograph.” Once fairer weather arrived, he sailed away from the treacherous scene, noting that “had I been given to superstitious fears I should not have persisted in sailing on a thirteenth day.”

Slocum recounted in
Sailing Alone Around the World
that he survived several other bizarre encounters with the hostile natives of Tierra del Fuego. At one point they appeared in what was obviously a stolen boat. Two of them stood up defiantly, and Slocum noticed that they were wearing sea boots. Quickly he pieced together the murderous story: not only had they attacked and pillaged a ship passing through the strait but they were warning Slocum that his carpet tacks were now useless as a means of defense. The captain was becoming unnerved. When he noticed natives armed with bows and spears hiding among the bushes on shore, he began working furiously to free the
Spray
from the mass of kelp her anchor had become tangled in. He worked until his fingers bled, in the hope of making a quick getaway from lurking native treachery. All the while he kept “one eye over my shoulders for savages. I watched at the same time, and sent a bullet whistling whenever I saw a limb or a twig move.”

On another occasion he recognized one of the members of the boat party. It was none other than Black Pedro, the leader of many of the bloody massacres reported and a man, Slocum wrote, who was considered to be “the worst murderer in Tierra del Fuego.” Officials had been
hunting him down for over two years. Slocum was to meet the unscrupulous leader face to face during the days he was stuck in the strait. Throughout that encounter Slocum would keep his gun ready in hand.

Slocum may have embellished his tales of the native Fuegians; but the stories he told of his incredible seamanship through the waters off the tip of South America were, if anything, modest and self-effacing. He was blown back into the Strait of Magellan; for over two months he battled elemental forces. When the
Spray
first entered the Strait of Magellan on February 11, 1896, her captain would already have known full well that extreme weather was the norm in that desolate region. Squalls, gales and downpours were constant, and any wind not much over thirty knots was considered moderate. Even without a horrendous squall, the days could be tough going, and Slocum had to be ready at any time to shorten sail. He immediately observed the unruly nature of the waters he was about to venture through. He caught sight of two tide races and calculated that the
Spray
’s best hope was to charge through the channel between, under close-reefed sails. The tactic paid off. On a rare day when the sailing was smoother, he had almost relaxed when he spotted a steamer wrecked on a beach. He took the sight of it as a stern word of warning, and in fact he was not to be let off easy. During an especially bad rain squall, he found that all he could do was reef sail, and sit below in the
Spray
’s cabin to rest his eyes and wait out the conditions.
“
I was so strongly impressed with what in all nature I might expect that as I dozed the very air I breathed seemed to warn me of danger. My senses heard
‘Spray
, ahoy!’ shouted in warning.”

What he saw in the pitch-black of night was a white arch, which he gleaned immediately was “the terror of Cape Horn.” What gave the experienced captain such a start was that he was nearing it at alarming speed, driven forward on a strong southwest gale. Without hesitation he downed sail to reduce the chances of catastrophe when the gale struck full force. For Slocum, who had sailed through many a wild gale, the first half-hour of this storm was an almighty blow, one to be long remembered. Diminished but wild winds nonetheless continued blowing for well over a day. Slocum fought to keep the
Spray
from being blown back, and was relieved when he cleared the narrows three days later.

But as he left Punta Arenas, he was barely off on his second leg of the trip through the strait when he met up with williwaws, which he described as “compressed gales of wind that Boreas handed down over the hills in chunks.” These fearsome winds arise when cold descending air masses follow the elevated coastal topography and then hurl themselves out to sea. These extremely strong gusts off the land are challenging for even highly experienced seamen, and Slocum knew their awesome power: “A full-blown williwaw will throw a ship, even without sail on, over her beam ends.” He rested from their numbing blows
whenever he could. Finally he anchored at Port Tamar and looked out on Cape Pillar. Although he thought of Cape Pillar as “the grim sentinel of the Horn,” he also perceived it as a sign that he would soon be clear of the strait. He mused, “
Here I felt the throb of the great ocean that lay before me. I knew now that I had put a world behind me, and that I was opening out another world ahead.” It was only early March, and he was to be in a furious limbo for another six weeks in this hellish four-hundred-mile passage.

As he neared Cape Pillar in the heavy rains, Slocum remained optimistic. The
Spray
even got her first “bath” in Pacific Ocean water, from seas tossed up in the building storm. He responded to the moment and fought to keep his boat sailing before the colossal winds. He crowded on sail, but there was a sudden shift from southwest back to northeast. Now the fierce winds demanded that Slocum sail with bare pole — a testimony to their terrifying force. The boat was at the complete mercy of the wind. Simply by pushing on the cabin, the hull and the exposed masts, it was driving the
Spray
at top speed. For good reason, Slocum was afraid of the waves crashing sideways down on the deck, with their potential to roll the sloop over and break its masts. Far worse even than this was the possibility that he might “pitch pole” — that is, that the
Spray
might go down the face of a wave so fast that it turned over, stern over bow.

Slocum resigned himself to turning eastward to keep
ahead of the wind. This route was unsettling and unnerving, for he was now sailing in the direction he would take if he were intending to round Cape Horn. Four days of wind found the
Spray
nearing the pitch of the Horn. By this time the mainsail was so battered and Slocum so tired that he actually welcomed the prospect of re-entering the strait and working his way through again. Even at this distance from the Horn, the exposed coastal sailing was demanding. He went to sleep that night wondering exactly where his sloop was in these dangerous waters. When darkness descended he was still “
feeling his way in pitchy darkness.” He was startled and puzzled by the sound of breakers where there shouldn’t have been any. He awoke the next morning to a frightening discovery: the
Spray
was making its way straight through the dreaded Milky Way of the Sea.

During this treacherous passage, just to the northeast of Cape Horn, Slocum found himself engulfed by churning, furious seas crashing everywhere over slightly submerged rocks. These rocks have always been navigational hazards, for in the whipped-up foam of the Milky Way, it is unclear to sailors just where the jagged dangers lie. Slocum had read an account of this phenomenon by Charles Darwin, who had observed the fury of these seas from aboard the
Beagle
. “Any landsman seeing the Milky Way would have nightmares for a week,” Darwin had written. Slocum called his adventure through this maze of rocks and crashing seas “the greatest sea adventure of
my life.” He was alone in horrendous weather, terrible visibility and the most treacherous of seas. He had no choice whatsoever except to keep on sailing till he was through the rocks. His face was bleeding from the assault of spray, hail and sleet, but he kept changing sail around the clock. He had set his sights on and steered for Fury Island. He simply kept going, and when he had made it, he could only wonder, “
God knows how my vessel escaped.”

Just as the captain was starting to breathe easy, he found himself back in the Cockburn Channel, whose waters would lead him back into the Strait of Magellan. It is no surprise he had gotten confused. Because of all the yawing and pitching, his measurements with the sextant had gone awry. He was determined not to return to Punta Arenas for repairs, and at the first small stretch of quiet, he set to work mending his ripped sail with scavenged bits of canvas.

Moving through the Cockburn Channel meant few anchorages, plenty of opportunities to get trapped, and tacking through narrow passages with adverse currents. Perhaps the most taxing aspect of this passage was that it offered little in the way of rest or sleeping time. His only relief came in the lee of a mountain or in a snug cove or inlet. He had to stay alert for hours on end and retain the stamina and the smarts to react wisely. He sailed through a gale and a snowstorm en route to Port Angosto. Having reached it, he had great difficulty leaving it. Finally, on April 13, 1896, on his seventh try, he put to sea and was
able to sail free of Tierra del Fuego. He stayed at the helm the whole time, “
humoring my vessel.” A final wave broke over the sloop; it would be the last of the treacherous Cape Horn waters to hit the
Spray
’s deck. Slocum speculated optimistically, “All my troubles were now astern; summer was ahead; all the world was again before me.”