To understand what colonists suffered in an Atlantic crossing 400 years ago, you must start in Maine.
DANA HUNTLEY
Two teams haul in unison and then on command as the mainsail rises into place along the mast and billows to catch the breeze
The colonists of the Great Migrations who settled New England, built Williamsburg and Philadelphia and tamed the Appalachian wilderness spent weeks and sometimes months aboard crowded, tiny, fragile vessels bobbing at the mercy of the wind and waves atop the cold, dark North Atlantic waters to get here. From Bristol and Plymouth, Liverpool and London, they trusted themselves to skilled mariners, uncomfortable living conditions, unpredictable weather and God.
What was it all like? I went up to midcoast Maine, where they still build and sail wooden ships, to find out. That is where the replica Godspeed was built last winter, at Rockport Marine on the shores of Penobscot Bay. It is just down east of where Bartholomew Gosnold made landfall on his pioneer northern crossing in 1602 on Concord. In the winter up there, they build new wooden boats; in the summer, they sail old ones. There are 14 ships in the Maine windjammer fleet, sailing from the Penobscot Bay harbor towns of Rockland, Rockport and Camden.
I sailed for three days aboard one of those windjammers, the schooner Isaac H. Evans, with its owner and captain, Brenda Walker. Built in 1886, Isaac Evans is one of the old ships; since 1991 it has been listed as a National Historic Landmark, among only a handful of vessels so honored. With a 65-foot deck and 19-foot beam, Evans is 1 foot longer and 2½ feet wider than Godspeed. Fifty-two people were on and below the decks of Godspeed for the five-month transatlantic crossing to Virginia in 1607. With 22 passengers aboard Isaac Evans for a few days’ sailing among the Maine islands, wherever the wind and tides suggested, my conditions were rather more comfortable.
The amenities of our 21st-century world that were available aboard Evans, though, only served to emphasize what the experience of that long Atlantic crossing under canvas must have been like for generations of our English, Scot, Welsh and Irish forbears. There is a finality about getting under sail. As Captain Brenda reminds us, once you leave the dock, your world is closed and complete. There is no stopping by the store for something you’ve forgotten. This is really getting away.
There is no engine on a windjammer; it is remarkably quiet aboard. It is amazing how accustomed we have become to a noise-polluted world. Forget the CDs, the television, the video games, the road noise. Apart from the conversation of passengers and the four-member crew, the lambent noise consists of the wind in the sails, the flapping rigging, the water, the seabirds and the groaning of the ship itself.
DANA HUNTLEY
There is no engine on a windjammer; it is remarkably quiet aboard. It is amazing how accustomed we have become to a noise-polluted world. Forget the CDs, the television, the video games, the road noise. Apart from the conversation of passengers and the four-member crew, the lambent noise consists of the wind in the sails, the flapping rigging, the water, the seabirds and the groaning of the ship itself.
On a ship like this, there is little privacy. Compared with the fetid below decks of the immigrant ships, our quarters are luxurious indeed. Passenger cabins aboard Evans, however, can hardly be compared to those of a cruise ship. Bunks are tucked up under the ship’s oak ribs and the deck flooring, and there’s barely space for a single soul to stand erect. Among the thoughtful travel supplies that equip each berth are earplugs. Bulkheads and doors are a plank thick, and a full-throttled snore can echo the length of the quiet ship.
Tug & Grunt, a little yawl, pushes the schooner through the maze of lobster boats and pleasure crafts in Rockland Harbor out toward the breakwater. Besides the captain, the schooner is crewed by first mate Shawn Melillo, mess mate Bob Bickford and ship’s cook Eileen Worthley—master sailors all. When it comes time to raise the schooner’s mainsail, however, it is truly an all-hands-on-deck experience, taking 12 to 16 pairs of hands to hoist the heavy canvas mainsail into place. On either side of the boat deck, the pressed but eager crew mans the lines.
“Ready on the throat?” Captain Brenda calls from the helm. “Ready on the peak?”
Two teams haul in unison and then alternately on command as the sail rises into place along the mast and billows to catch the breeze. Each time we hoist the mainsail, the process is repeated. When the sail is furled, we line the yardarm and tuck the reef points into the folding canvas. There is no shortage of volunteers from our ranks to lend a hand on the mainsail, on the foresail or on the anchor winch. We tack sails to the wind, coil the lines or take the helm. Less glamorously, I do the dishes.
Down in the galley, ship’s cook Eileen prepares all meals the same way they did below deck for centuries. Everything that comes out of the galley is cooked on a wood stove that stays always alight (and, with a bit of 21st-century plumbing, heats water for showers and cabin sinks). Blessedly, with that wood stove, the culinary similarity between sailing in the 17th century and aboard Evans ends. On oceangoing voyages in time past, fresh fruit and vegetables ran out quickly. Without refrigeration or resupply, the diet was bleak and unhealthy. Anything eaten was dried, salted or pickled.
Eileen, on the other hand, was written up this summer in Bon Appétit magazine, and we eat very well indeed. From the cramped below-deck galley, Eileen turns out three huge meals a day for a board of 26, and as many snacks and baked goods between as the most ravenous swabbie could desire: mango chicken, couscous with fresh spinach and sundried tomatoes, seafood quiche, maple-glazed butternut squash and pecan pie baked in a castiron skillet. In the morning, wild Maine blueberry pancakes emerge from the galley with warmed maple syrup and whipped butter.
One early evening, we drop anchor amidst a cluster of pine-rich, uninhabited islands—in itself a luxury that our Atlantic-crossing forbears couldn’t have known. And what sail on the Maine coast would be complete without a Down East lobster bake? We ferry ashore, with kayak and rowboat and in Tug & Grunt, and soon a giant tub of lobsters and corn in its husks all swathed in seaweed is cooking on a blazing fire. We drink champagne; there are lobsters left over. As the air cools on the water at sunset, we roast marshmallows in the embers before heading back to ship.
Even in summer, the North Atlantic is a chilly ocean. With all aboard, at Captain’s Call the night before we sail, Captain Brenda briefs us on life aboard and safety procedures. After a predictable introduction to life vest and floatation devices, she merrily advises: “Don’t worry if you fall overboard. Just hang on, we’ll be back to get you.” I remember that advice a couple of evenings later at anchor when several of our hardy comrades take a swim from the ship. In late summer the water temperature is 53 degrees. It is a short swimming party.
At night a salty mist settles across the black, briny water. In the quiet darkness, the old oak ribs and joists of the ship creak with rheumatism in the constantly moving water. For chilled bones and the damp night air, however, Evans has an anodyne—soapstone bed warmers heated in the dampened wood stove oven after supper.
Sleeping and stowing gear are about all folks do below deck in any event. Life is lived quite communally on deck with the constant motion of the ship. With a fair breeze, Evans cuts the water at 6 to 8 knots (1 knot equals 1.15 miles per hour). No wonder it took months for the early settlers to cross the Atlantic expanse of more than 3,000 miles. Under sail, though, there is no escaping the wind’s coaxing a ruddy complexion from the palest of faces. If it gets a bit too chill, we huddle around the chimney of the galley stove. When the ship’s bell announces mealtime, food is served and eaten in the open air—propped against the belaying pins or lounging in the bow.
DANA HUNTLEY
Brenda Walker has owned and skippered Evans for eight years now. Before that, she spent four seasons crewing in the windjammer fleet. “It’s not a job,” she confesses, “it’s a way of life.”
“Some people come aboard and think I’ve got a wonderful summer job. They think I’ve got eight months off to go south and lie in the sun,” she laughs. What Captain Brenda actually does in the long off-season, though, is take care of the ship. Keeping a 120-year-old historic schooner in tiptop condition for its four-month sailing season is a year-round job indeed.
“Everything comes off the ship in the fall,” Brenda explains. “We work on the ship under wrap in the water into December. Then, in January and February, when it’s too cold, we work in the boathouse. Every spring, Evans is hauled into dry dock for a Coast Guard inspection. That’s when we work on the hull.” Rigging, tackle, planking, sails and equipment: There is always something to be repaired, varnished, painted or replaced.
Schooners such as Isaac H. Evans were not purposed, however, to carry passengers, but as freight vessels. Built in Mauricetown, N.J., in 1886, Evans spent its first generations of life as a cargo ship on Delaware Bay, carrying oysters when they were America’s biggest fishing industry. In 1971 the ship came up to Maine and was retrofitted for its present pleasant task in a shipyard that is now part of the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath.
It takes more than seamanship and loving care of the vessel to captain a windjammer. There are plenty of sailors who could handle the ship, but not the passengers. After all, whether on Godspeed, Mayflower, Arbella or Evans, the captain is also both the cruise director and the law. Captain Brenda has the humor and the smile, the patience and the personality to make it all a pleasure. In fact, the entire crew of Evans is personable, helpful and skilled. I’m sure sailing with Captain Gosnold would not have been nearly as much fun.
For a few days’ holiday, the quiet and serenity of shipboard life is extraordinary. No wonder people come back to Maine to sail among the islands on these windjammers year after year. It doesn’t sound too hard to take: lying out on deck with a book; training binoculars on the harbor seals, seabirds and the odd pod of porpoises; singing together under the stars with a boat drink in hand. Such a jovial, relaxed experience would turn stark indeed, however, during unknown weeks on the open ocean. For crew and passenger alike, the enveloping feeling must have been one of monotone days on a monotone Atlantic Ocean—monotony.
None of us today can re-create the experience our colonial and early American kin shared in an open ocean crossing under canvas. I actually had wanted to go aboard Godspeed under sail. Ironically, it probably would have been a less authentic experience. Replica though it is, Godspeed has twin diesel engines and a modern galley, concealed though they be from public display.
Between the lobster bake, gastronomic delights and the picturesque seascape of the protected islands of Penobscot Bay, it would be pretty disingenuous to claim that sailing Isaac H. Evans much resembled bouncing over the treacherous North Atlantic waters for unforeseeable weeks or months. Little privacy; no MTV or SportsCenter; no lounge bar, swimming pool or casino; silence and cold salt air may be as close as we can get. Coming to America the old-fashioned way would have been dangerous, uncomfortable and boring. Trying to recapture that experience 400 years later, I’ll have to confess, is a glorious adventure.
DANA HUNTLEY