North. 4°45’ West. The spot is marked by a circled cross—our last ascertained position. Nothing could be less parochial than this navigator’s way of saying where he is. He sites himself in global terms, even universal ones, measuring the angles between his ship and the equator, the sun, the stars and the hypothetical meridian which stretches north and south from Greenwich to the poles.
On that particular afternoon at that particular point on the earth’s surface, the water was as calm and full of mercurial color as a pool of motor oil. Earlier on there had been a wind—a steady draught from the northeast which plumped up the sails and pushed
Gosfield Maid
south with the tide. For the sea was going my way, for once. The Irish Sea is like a shallow pudding basin: twice a day it empties and fills up, the water streaming through the narrow channels at its northern and southern ends. That afternoon it was emptying out, and the sea on which I was moving was itself moving invisibly at a comfortable two and a half knots. Riding the tide is exactly like being on a moving walkway: you have only to amble for the world to whistle past.
So when the wind died I let the sails hang in useless creases from the masts, reluctant to start the engine for fear of spoiling the afternoon. The sea was empty of shipping. I went below and made coffee in the galley. I sat out in the cockpit listening to the chuckle of the wavelets against the hull and feeling something of that pride of possession which a great landowner must feel when he looks out from his window, proprietor of everything he can see.
For the moment, at least, this sea was legally mine. In territorial waters, the most one has is a meager concession called “the right of innocent passage”; but at 53°47’ N, 4°45’ W, you enjoy “the freedom of high-seas navigation”—a freedom with a happy multitude of entailments. You arefree-floating in your own freehold. Weather permitting (the one major snag in this otherwise ideal bargain), you have absolute freedom. Out at sea, no one can prosecute you for sedition, blasphemy, or being a public nuisance. Seeing what you like, saying what you like, sailing along on any damn-fool course you choose, you are—weather permitting—as liberated a spirit as any human being on the face of the globe, with the full weight of international maritime law to back your amazing license.
That afternoon the weather did permit. My sky was wide open, and my miles of colored water were coasting companionably alongside. Two and a half knots may not sound very fast—an old lady on a sit-up-and-beg bike could easily double that speed without running short of breath. But it is a good pace for an observant free spirit; and at two and a half knots you could encircle the earth in a year, with five days to spare.
Contentedly out of reach of any of their local laws and customs, I was floating through an archipelago of distant islands, watching their indefinite dark shapes change configuration on the horizon, and taking bearings on them each half-hour to keep a check on where I was. They wobbled, fading and sharpening, over the enlarged, reflected numbers in the compass lens. One small pointed atoll showed clearly at 158°; another, lumpier one at 232°, or maybe 234°; there was a definite smoky pimple in the sea at 046° and a smudge at about 012°. Much the biggest of the islands lay almost dead astern at 358°; a commanding mass of black alps with a shallow coastal basin littered with still-just-visible towns and cities.
For almost as long as I’ve been able to speak, I must have been using the phrase “The British Isles” as a careless political abstraction. I had never actually seen the British isles in life until that clear-skied afternoon in September when they arranged themselves around the boat in just as tangible and diminutive an archipelago as the Cyclades. The pointed atoll on the port beam was Mount Snowdon in Wales; the irregular lump
On that particular afternoon at that particular point on the earth’s surface, the water was as calm and full of mercurial color as a pool of motor oil. Earlier on there had been a wind—a steady draught from the northeast which plumped up the sails and pushed
Gosfield Maid
south with the tide. For the sea was going my way, for once. The Irish Sea is like a shallow pudding basin: twice a day it empties and fills up, the water streaming through the narrow channels at its northern and southern ends. That afternoon it was emptying out, and the sea on which I was moving was itself moving invisibly at a comfortable two and a half knots. Riding the tide is exactly like being on a moving walkway: you have only to amble for the world to whistle past.
So when the wind died I let the sails hang in useless creases from the masts, reluctant to start the engine for fear of spoiling the afternoon. The sea was empty of shipping. I went below and made coffee in the galley. I sat out in the cockpit listening to the chuckle of the wavelets against the hull and feeling something of that pride of possession which a great landowner must feel when he looks out from his window, proprietor of everything he can see.
For the moment, at least, this sea was legally mine. In territorial waters, the most one has is a meager concession called “the right of innocent passage”; but at 53°47’ N, 4°45’ W, you enjoy “the freedom of high-seas navigation”—a freedom with a happy multitude of entailments. You arefree-floating in your own freehold. Weather permitting (the one major snag in this otherwise ideal bargain), you have absolute freedom. Out at sea, no one can prosecute you for sedition, blasphemy, or being a public nuisance. Seeing what you like, saying what you like, sailing along on any damn-fool course you choose, you are—weather permitting—as liberated a spirit as any human being on the face of the globe, with the full weight of international maritime law to back your amazing license.
That afternoon the weather did permit. My sky was wide open, and my miles of colored water were coasting companionably alongside. Two and a half knots may not sound very fast—an old lady on a sit-up-and-beg bike could easily double that speed without running short of breath. But it is a good pace for an observant free spirit; and at two and a half knots you could encircle the earth in a year, with five days to spare.
Contentedly out of reach of any of their local laws and customs, I was floating through an archipelago of distant islands, watching their indefinite dark shapes change configuration on the horizon, and taking bearings on them each half-hour to keep a check on where I was. They wobbled, fading and sharpening, over the enlarged, reflected numbers in the compass lens. One small pointed atoll showed clearly at 158°; another, lumpier one at 232°, or maybe 234°; there was a definite smoky pimple in the sea at 046° and a smudge at about 012°. Much the biggest of the islands lay almost dead astern at 358°; a commanding mass of black alps with a shallow coastal basin littered with still-just-visible towns and cities.
For almost as long as I’ve been able to speak, I must have been using the phrase “The British Isles” as a careless political abstraction. I had never actually seen the British isles in life until that clear-skied afternoon in September when they arranged themselves around the boat in just as tangible and diminutive an archipelago as the Cyclades. The pointed atoll on the port beam was Mount Snowdon in Wales; the irregular lump
Similar Books
