The Munich Dilemma
by Sinbad

Chapter 12

Across the dock a gaggle of little ships were moored against the dock and against each other, so that some crews would have to clamber across someone else's boat to get onto theirs. Ricky wondered how well that worked, whether it could result in arguments. They found the little ship the captain had pointed out, and hailed it. “Pieter van Kemp?”

There was no response so Chris called again. “Mr van Kemp?”

There was a man working on the deck of the boat nearest to them. The black sailing ship was moored to the other side of it. He looked up at them. “You won't make Pieter hear you from there. He's a bit deaf. You'll have to go to him. Here, climb aboard!”

The boys looked at each other, hesitant, but clambered down from the dock onto the deck of the boat, a fishing vessel, and worked their way across the deck, avoiding coils of rope, a bit capstan winch in the centre, buckets and a broom, all lying haphazard around on deck. The sailor saw them looking at the chaos around them and called: “It's not always untidy on the Dulcie Belle – I'll have everything shipshape by teatime!” They smiled at that, and looked over the side at the little black sailing ship. Its deck was a good bit lower than the fishing boat, but they could swing over the side and dangle from the rail until their feet made contact with the rail of the black boat. Chris went first, being the taller, and from the deck of the sailing boat he helped Ricky whose feet only just reached the rail. Chris guided Ricky's feet to a firm foothold and in no time both boys were on deck. Looking around, everything was tidy. Very tidy, even to the extent that coils of rope had a little decorative loop taken from the coil and wrapped around it as a fastening, holding it in place but quickly releasable when needed. Ricky was impressed. Chris was walking forwards to the little deckhouse. He knocked and called “Mr van Kemp?” - and this time he heard movement below decks and then the door opened and a face appeared, at waist height. There was a flight of steps, on board ship called a companionway, beyond the door, and the man was half-way up the steps. He continued climbing and presently stood in front of them. He impressed Ricky as being just what a sailor ought to be. He wore a thick woollen jumper tucked into his trousers which were sturdy jeans held up with a leather belt. The trousers in turn were tucked into a pair of wellington boots with the tops turned over about five centimetres. He had an unruly mop of curly hair the colour of sand and a very rosy round face mostly hidden behind a bushy beard and moustache. A moustache that was sufficiently long that you couldn't see his mouth at all.

“I am Pieter van Kemp. You are English, I think. I am Dutch, so you should say Herr van Kemp, not Mister van Kemp. But for now we let that pass, and we talk in English. Who are you and what are you doing on the Sea Horse?”

“Herr van Kemp. How do you do?” The boys took turns to shake hands. Mr van Kemp's hands were rough like sandpaper.

Now that the time had come to ask for their passage home, the boys became tongue-tied. They's asked it of several other people already, but this seemed different, perhaps because the captain of the big vessel across the dock had let them to believe they might be successful here. And they didn't want to blow it.

The sailor looked from one to another, expectantly.

It was Chris, finally, who broke the ice. “Herr van Kemp, we need to get to England, to our home. We don't have money for a ferry ticket but we're willing to work our passage. We've been asking around the docks, and on that ship over there,” and he pointed across at the big shape tied up to the opposite side of the dock, “we were told you might be prepared to take us.” Chris was so nervous he found he was shaking a little.

Whether the sailor noticed Chris's nerves or not, he didn't let on. Instead he poked his head back down the stairwell and called out “Gloria!”

More noise below decks and another head appeared at the top of the companionway. The head was bowed, concentrating on footholds and handholds, and at first all they saw was a gaily decorated headscarf, tied back around a cascade of iron grey hair which fell down the back of a sturdily built woman, wearing a jersey much like Pieter's. As she clambered on deck, puffing slightly, the boys got to see her better. No wonder she struggled up the narrow stairwell – she was very wide around the middle, making her look like a cartoon. She wore trousers under a voluminous skirt and just like Pieter she wore wellington boots. Rosy cheeked like Pieter, but unlike Pieter her face was lined with age and weatherbeaten nut-brown. But her eyes sparkled and her smile was welcoming and the boys liked her immediately.

“Gloria my dear, these two young men have had the temerity to trespass on board the Sea Horse, and are demanding a passage to England. What do you think we should do about it?”

The boys looked at each other in alarm, until Gloria spoke: “Pieter, enough of that. You can't tease our guests, we don't yet know them well enough. Who knows what brought them to us, what trouble they may be in, or what they might be fleeing from? I'm looking forward to hearing all about it and I'll never get to hear their story if you frighten them off! So, you silly Dutchman, enough of your blather, show the boys around and I'll get something to eat!”

She disappeared back down the steps and Pieter turned to the boys, shrugged his shoulders in an expansive gesture and said: “I am Dutch, as I said, but my wife is Scottish. We will take you to Ipswich. Will that be satisfactory? Our journey will take us to Oslo in Norway, but we can call in at Ipswich. It will be a pleasant detour for my wife, she likes to buy things when we go to England that cannot be had in other countries.”

“Thank you, sir. Thank you very much,” said Ricky. “We are very grateful. We can work our passage, we know a bit about sailing.”

“Oh, do you indeed? That is interesting. Tell me, what sailing experience have you had?”

Chris took over. “We sail Enterprise dinghies at school, and we have just spent two weeks as part of the crew of the Malcolm Miller, one of the tall ships of the Sail Training Association. It was a wonderful experience.”

“I should think it was. Well, sailing the Sea Horse will be another experience for you. She's a bit like a very large dinghy so you should get along fine. First, though, come below deck and I'll show you around our home.”

He led the way, moving a little gingerly down the companionway and the boys realised he was probably older than he looked. The boys followed him, and once down stairs took a while to get used to the gloom. They were in a long narrow room, with a long narrow table down the middle. The table had folded leaves like a domestic gate leg table, which was just as well because otherwise it wouldn't have been possible to walk past it. Either side of the table were long benches with comfortable-looking upholstered cushions. Above the benches were lockers mounted high on the walls, running the entire length of the room. To one side of the companionway was the galley, the tiny kitchen with a cooker mounted in gimbals, like a swing so it would stay upright even when the ship was heeling over. Mrs van Kemp was busy there doing something inexplicable. On the other side was a tiny compartment behind a door, and Pieter opened it to show them the head – the lavatory and shower unit. They all squeezed past the table and forward to the front of the cabin, where there was a door which Pieter explained led to the stateroom, the bedroom for himself and Gloria.

“This little ship is designed for a crew of two, I'm afraid, so we don't have any extra beds. But that doesn't mean we can't accommodate you for a short voyage. We've taken passengers before. You'll find the benches here make pretty good beds, and we've got sleeping bags in the lockers above. You'll be fine for a couple of nights, which should be all it takes us to hop across the channel and up the English coast, unless we get becalmed. Do you think you'll be comfortable with us?”

“Oh, yes, sir, I'm sure we will. Thank you!” said Ricky on behalf of them both.

Pieter stood looking at them for a minute and the boys began to feel uncomfortable under his stare, wondering if somehow they'd said something out of place.

“Boys, this 'sir' thing. I'm not used to being called 'sir', not by anybody. In Dutch it would be 'Mijnheer' but I never liked that either. Can you just call me Pieter? I would be much happier with that.”

The boys both nodded.

“Right. That's sorted out, then. I suggest we sit and drink coffee, which I see Gloria has ready for us.”

Ricky wasn't keen on coffee, but he didn't like to say so. Chris liked it so he enthusiastically grinned. Pieter raised one of the wings of the table in time for Gloria to pass mugs of hot brown liquid along to each of them. They took a sip and found that it was already sweetened, in fact very sweet. There must have been about three spoons of sugar in each mug, and a good bit of creamy milk too. It tasted more like coffee flavoured cake icing than just coffee. But both boys liked it, especially Ricky, who decided he would try sweetening coffee at home and see if he liked it more that way.

Next came sandwiches, thick white bread slices, spread generously with butter and with chunks of roast beef and lettuce inside. They ate hungrily and gratefully. They had forgotten to be hungry, with all the excitement, but their stomachs soon remembered.

“Now, unless you would like more to eat, we're going to set sail now. I would like to get out to sea before dark. Are you ready?”

The boys nodded, and they all trooped up on deck. Pieter pointed out various ropes to them and explained what they would have to do with them. The tall mast was stepped well forward, almost right at the front of the ship, and Pieter explained that The Sea Horse was designed as a cargo vessel, and putting the mast right at the front (in the bows) meant there was more room in the hold because the mast ran right through the deck down thorough the ship to the keel below. That made it very strong, but it would have been awkward having such a mast in the middle of the hold. Ricky pointed out that although the mast was well forward, the boom was quite short. About a metre above their heads was a long wooden spar with the sail bundled around it. The front of the spar was attached to the mast with a metal ring with little rollers all around, and the back of the spar was held in place by a rope that ran up to the top of the mast. The spar stretched only about halfway down the ship, not nearly as far as the tiller in the stern.

“Ah, yes, the boom. Well, you see, that is not a boom. We don't have a boom. You are used to dinghies, aren't you? And your sails, they are triangular? With three corners?” The boys nodded.

“A boat with that shape of sail is known as Bermuda rigged. The mainsail is relatively tall and narrow and in order to get plenty of power, the mast must be very tall. On a boat this size the mast would have to be very tall indeed, and we wouldn't be able to sail under bridges. There are some boats like us with a hinged mast, that folds down flat onto the deck for navigating bridges, but I don't like the idea of that, the hinge makes the mast weak and that is a danger in storms.

“The Sea Horse is Gaff rigged. That spar doesn't run along the bottom of the sail, it runs along the top. When we set sail, we haul that spar, which is called the gaff, all the way up the mast to the top, and the sail hangs from it like a curtain. When the sail is properly set, the front of the gaff will be about two metres below the top of the mast, and the outer end will be pointing upwards at about a forty-five degree angle. So the highest point on the sail isn't attached to the mast but to the gaff. That way we can have a bigger sail without such a tall mast.”

“But where's the boom?” both boys asked, together.

“We don't have one. The sail is what is called loose-footed. The main sheet, that's the rope that controls the angle of the sail, just like on your dinghies, is attached to the lower outer corner of the sail directly. It works fine. The only disadvantage of not having a boom, really, is when you're running before the wind and you want the sail to stick right out on one side of the boat to catch all the wind coming from behind. With a boom the lower edge of the sail picks up a lot of wind and pulls strongly. The Sea Witch running before the wind has her sail out like that but the lower edge twists back and the big drawing surface is higher up the sail. Now, boys, do you know the names of the parts of a sail?”

“Um, I think so,” said Chris, “but there are differences so I'm not sure now!”

“Well, lets have a test. Now, what do you call the front edge of the sail, the edge attached to the mast?”

“The Luff.” said Chris.

“That's right. Most of what you know is just the same on the Sea Witch. What do you call the bottom edge of the sail?”

“The Foot?”

“Yes. Now what about the corner of the foot at the mast?”

“The Tack.”

Yes! Now this is where things get a little different. What's the name of the corner of the sail at the top of the mast?”

“The Peak?”

“No. The peak is at the top of the gaff. That's the highest point on the sail. The corner at the top of the mast is the Throat, and the edge of the sail that's attached to the gaff is the Head.

“Now, what is the name of the rear edge of the sail?”

“The Leech.”

“That's right. And the rear corner at the bottom of the leech?”

“The Clew?”

“Excellent! So all the parts of our sail that are the same as the sails on your dinghies are named the same, it's just the bits at the top and the gaff that are new to you. Now, I expect when you want to set your sail, you have a halyard, to pull the sail up the mast? What do you call that?”

“The main halyard.”

“Ah, yes, of course you have a second sail as well, don't you. The jib?”

“Yes.”

“ - and so you have two halyards, the main halyard and the jib halyard, one to haul each sail up into position. Well, we only have the one sail. There's no jib, no genoa, no spinnaker, and as you see we have only one mast so there's no mizzen sail either. But we still have two halyards!”

The boys were concentrating like fury and didn't interrupt, although Pieter stopped at this point in case they wanted to.

“That's because of the gaff. The two halyards are the throat halyard, which pulls the front end of the gaff up the mast on its sliding fitting, and the peak halyard, which pulls the loose end of the gaff up until the sail takes its proper shape. You have to set the sail by pulling both halyards together initially until the throat halyard is tight, which means the luff of the sail is tensioned up the mast, and then you pull the peak halyard further until the sail is set correctly. We'll have to do that shortly, do you think you can do it?”

The two boys looked at each other before nodding their heads.

“Excellent. Sailing Sea Horse is really quite easy. There's only one sail and she's very stable. There is one thing about sailing her, though, that is more complicated than a dinghy. Now, you tell me, boys, when the wind is coming from the side of the boat, how do you stop the boat from sailing sideways?”

The boys looked at each other doubtfully, not sure what answer Pieter was expecting. It was Ricky who suddenly got the point. “We lower the centreboard!”

“Yes, exactly. The centreboard acts like the fixed keel on a bigger boat and guides the boat to go forwards not sideways. But the Sea Horse doesn't have a keel like that, and she doesn't have a centreboard either. Why do you think that might be?”

Thinking of the big obstructive centreboard casing in the middle of the dinghy, and how awkward it was to have to manoeuvre past it all the time, Ricky suggested: “It would take up space in the hold? The same reason the mast isn't further back?”

“Yes, that's one reason. Ship design is always a matter of compromise and when you step the mast so far forward you find you can't have a foresail unless you install a bowsprit. But having only one sail means you can get by with a smaller crew. And not having a centreboard means you can have an uninterrupted cargo hold, but then you have to find some other way of stopping the boat slipping sideways in the water. Modern yachts have fixed keels but they can't moor in tidal water because when the tide goes out and they sit down on the mud they don't sit upright, they lie over on their side. The Sea Horse needs to be able to sail in quite shallow water, and to lie on mud upright. So a centreboard would seem to be very necessary. But instead she has Leeboards. Very common on Dutch sailing ships, you don't come across them very often elsewhere. Come and look!”

The boys followed him forward along the deck and about two thirds of the way forward he leaned over the side and pointed downwards. Chris and Ricky came up either side of him and leaned over. There, hinged with a vast bolt through the hull of the ship, was an enormous wooden plate, tear-drop shaped and with the bolt through the narrow end. There was a rope attached to the lower edge of this plate, leading quite a way forwards slackly to a cleat on the gunwale, and another rope attached to the upper edge, leading to a cleat on the gunwale just above it. Ricky realised this rope was holding the leeboard in place, and that if it were released, the board would swing downwards on its bolt, and the wider end of the teardrop would sink into the water, and act like a centreboard but on the side of the boat instead of in the centre.

“We have two centreboards, one on each side. Because of the leverage, we can only use the one on the lee side of the boat. That's why they're called leeboards. So every time we go about we have to haul the new leeboard into position. The windward board swings up, mostly out of the water, on its own, but we then haul it up neatly until next time it's needed. Of course when the wind is coming from behind us, when we're running before the wind as we say, we don't need either of them because the wind is not trying to push us sideways. And they just drag in the water.”

This was all new to the boys and they hoped they had learned properly.

It was Chris who asked: “So how many people do you need to sail the Sea Horse?”

“Ha! Good question. In the days when she carried cargo, she was sailed by a crew of two. She's designed to be sailed by two. The helmsman handles the tiller and the mainsheet, and the crew raises and lowers the sail, the anchor, the leeboards. And cooks!

“My wife and I have sailed the Sea Horse together for years, but we're getting older and hauling the sail up the mast, for instance, is a long and heavy task. Gloria used to do it, but now she takes the helm while I do it. Our last voyage we had a young man on board who did a lot of the heavy work, and now we have you two for the first leg of our journey! So you see we are glad to take you! I think we will have to decide one day to take a permanent crew member, or to give up sailing altogether. Maybe we'll moor her somewhere and she'll become a houseboat. Or maybe we'll go ashore and live in a house. It will be a wrench, but that is what old age does to you. You two must remember that, and make good use of your youth while you have it!

Now, enough of my musings. Here's a question for you: how do you think we get away from the dock?”

Ricky thought about this. In the Enterprise at school, they would get in the boat while someone held it against the wooden quay, and they would set the sails, hauling the halyards until the sail was tightly set, but leaving the sheets loose so that the sail flapped and didn't draw. Then when they were ready, the helper on shore would push them off and at the same time they'd haul in the sheets to make the sails draw and hope that they begin to make headway so that the rudder would steer. He realised that it couldn't work quite the same on such a big ship. Chris looked just as puzzled as he felt, so he turned to Pieter and replied: “I don't know. Is there an engine?”

“Ha! Yes, there is an engine and we could use the little donkey, as I call it, to drive us out into open water and then set the sail once we're clear. But I think we can do better than that. These boats used to carry all the cargo around the coasts of Europe. The Sea Horse is a Dutch Wherry and there are other similar designs which were used a hundred years ago, and the crews of these little ships were very proud of their seamanship. They used to try very hard never to use their engines, on principle. They didn't like the big steamships that were gradually taking away their trade, and their little engines were often very unreliable so it seemed like a defeat to use them.

“So, they took it as a challenge to be able to negotiate any manoeuvre without resorting to engine power. So, what do you think, boys? Can we do it? Can we sail away from our mooring under sail power alone?”

The boys gave the problem some thought. The wind, a gentle breeze in the dock, (although they knew enough to know that it would be a lot stronger beyond the shelter of the harbour) was blowing head-on, from the bows of the boat. If they set sail now, like on the gravel pit at school, the sail would flap harmlessly, hanging more-or-less along the boat. And they would get someone to push them off at the bows, and pull the sheets in so the sail would draw as the boat turned away from the wind. The trouble, Ricky thought, with trying to do it like that with the Sea Horse, was that there wasn't someone to push them off, and he imagined that pushing off would have little effect on such a big and heavy vessel. So he said so.

“You are right. But everything else you suggest would work. But we use the wind! Everything on the Sea Horse is driven by the wind. You don't need someone to push us off, you just need a little patience. If we cast her loose at the bow but don't cast her loose at the stern, what do you think will happen?”

“The wind will try to push her backwards, and the stern mooring will hold her. But the bow mooring is no longer there, so she will swing out at the bow!”

“Yes exactly. Then we need to cast off at the stern at exactly the right moment, when the ship is pointed in the direction we want to set off at, and we've pulled the sheet in so the sail is beginning to draw. Let's do it!”

And they did. It all went like clockwork. The boys worked together to raise the sail. It was very hard work but they used the neat technique they had learned on board the Malcolm Miller, to pull the halyard as tight as they could first, then take a turn around the cleat, then pull the taut halyard before the cleat to make an angle, and then take up the slack through the cleat as they released the angle. They did this a few times to get a good set in the sail. Setting the peak halyard was new to them and they got it wrong at first, pulling the peak too high, and putting a crease in the sail. Pieter told them to back it off a little.

The big sail flapped in the breeze and Chris was sent forward to set the port leeboard, the one furthest from the dockside. That turned out to be easier than he had expected, the board splashed down into the water, and then he hauled it deeper and forward using the forward rope and then fastened it in place on its cleat.

Then they were all ready and the two boys were assigned to a mooring rope each. Chris in the bows cast off first, hauling the rope on board and trying not to let too much of it dangle in the water and get wet, which of course brought all that wet onto the deck as he hauled it in.

Very slowly the Sea Horse swung outwards away from the dock. The flapping sail was now not flapping above the boat but out above the water on the port side. Once the boat was at about forty-five degrees to the dock, Pieter hauled in the sheet and the flapping stopped. The big boat heeled over just a little and he called to Ricky to cast off at the stern. The boat began to move and Pieter had steerage, which meant he could direct the boat using the tiller. They were on their way.