Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale by Robin Lloyd Page A

shrouds for speed and then up the rope ladder to the topsail area where the boys were dangling. The taller Icelander was right behind him, carrying a thick hemp rope. Morgan’s head was now facing downward, his hands clutching at thin air. He was attempting to grip the ratlines with his feet and legs, but to no avail. The Spaniard climbed up above the two boys, wrapped his legs around the topsail yard’s foot rope, and then like a monkey swung upside down to grab one of Morgan’s feet with both his hands, allowing Hiram to let go of his belt. At the same time, Icelander tied a bowline at one end of the rope and tossed the knotted loop to Morgan’s outstretched hands. He then passed the other end of the rope over the topsail yard and wrapped the line two or three times around the mast to secure it.
    “Put both your hands through the loop and hold,” he yelled. Morgan did as he was told and wrapped his wrist in and around the loop, grabbing the area above the bulging bowline knot. At a signal from Icelander, the Spaniard let go of his hold on Morgan’s foot, and his body catapulted downward toward the deck. His free fall was quickly arrested by the rope, leaving him dangling, swinging back and forth, hanging by his wrists and hands, but safe. Icelander slowly lowered him to the safety of the deck to the cheers of the onlookers down below.
    Captain Champlin came over to check on the condition of his second officer. Jack Brown’s pride was the gravest injury. He made sure that Morgan not only holystoned the decks but scrubbed the pigpen. This punishment went on for days until Brown’s wrath was eventually redirected to another greenhand.
    Because of Morgan’s miraculous escape from almost certain death, some of the more superstitious men now saw him as a lucky sailor. Sighting a pod of dolphins was considered a harbinger of good fortune. A black cat on board ship was good luck, and now young Morgan was finding himself accepted as a member of the crew because he was viewed as a good omen.

    Days later, Ely and Hiram were down on their knees, holystoning the cold decks late one morning when the cry came out from aloft that land was in sight. Earlier they’d already seen some black-and-white seabirds, their stiff wingtips dipping from one side to another as they skimmed the water in search of schools of herring or other small fish. They had been twenty-five days at sea.
    “Can’t be long now to Mizen Head,” cried out one old sailor who was pointing to the northeast. The man was tall and skinny, his bony shoulders drooping like the broken wings of a bird. Morgan couldn’t see anything but a white haze on the horizon. He looked at the man’s craggy features. His long, gray beard hung down like strands of Spanish moss from the limbs of a tree. The scarred and furrowed face and well-defined crow’s-feet at the corners of his light blue eyes were all a testament to a man who had been at sea for most of his life. His name was Jeremiah Watkins. Most of the sailors just called him Old Jeremiah. He was one of the veteran sailors on board who was both superstitious and religious. In his youth, he had attained the rank of a harpooner on one of the Nantucket whalers. He had traveled as far as China and Bombay. At night, when some of the men were off watch and spinning yarn in the forecastle, he would tell tales about the East India trade and “them Oriental monkeys in Bombay who don’t wear no togs, nothing but a white bandana around their privates.” Because of his knowledge of Scripture and legends, good and bad omens, the sailors on board the Hudson looked to him for guidance.
    “Why do you say we are close to Mizen Head?” Morgan asked respectfully.
    “See those black-and-white birds darting about?”
    Morgan nodded as he followed the direction of the sailor’s long extended arm and pointed finger.
    “Those are shearwaters, and they’re the first to welcome us across. They nest on the rocky cliffs of Ireland.