The Munich Dilemma
by Sinbad

Chapter 3

Ricky's mother lived in the Westcountry, near Bristol, where she had settled after she and his father had split up. His father had re-married but his mother had not, she'd taken a job as a librarian and Ricky spent alternate school holidays with her and with his father. This holiday was scheduled to be with his father, but because of the sailing cruise he was going to spend a few days with her first. He loved train travel and enjoyed the slow train down from Milhampton into London, the change at Liverpool Street onto the Circle Line underground train to take him from North London to West London and Paddington, and then the change to the fast inter-city train westwards on the old Great Western Railway line as far as Bristol. Although he rode trains to school as often as home again at the end of term, for some reason rail travel always felt like an adventure, and a happy adventure at that.

At Bristol Temple Meads station he got off the train, and caught a bus across town to the university campus where his mother worked, and waited around until she finished work and she drove him home. Home was the house where the family had lived before they moved to Jordan. It had been rented out to tenants while they'd been abroad, and now Shirley Taylor lived there alone except when Ricky was home for school holidays. She loved having him home and Ricky guessed that it was a wrench for her, having him for just three days before putting him on a tall sailing ship, after which she wouldn't be seeing him until half way through the following term. He tried to make their time together special, and Shirley saw what he was doing and appreciated it.

So, three days after the end of term, Ricky put his rucksack into the back of his mother's red Beetle car and set off for the docks at Southampton, where they were to meet the ship, the Malcolm Miller, and of course Chris. At the age of seventeen Ricky could drive legally, but he hadn't taken a driving test so he could only drive with a qualified driver in the passenger seat, and he wasn't allowed on motorways. The trip to Southampton was ideal, then, because there were no motorways involved and Shirley would be with him. He loved driving, even though she kept telling him what he was doing wrong, and this was a much longer journey than he had driven before, and by the time they got to Southampton he was very tired. They were two hours early, though, and they took the opportunity to doze in the car. By the time Chris and his father met up with them Ricky was rested and excited to get on board.

The boys said goodbye to their respective parents, and, following directions in their information pack, they made their way to the quayside where they saw the magnificent ship with her three tall masts, not moored at the quayside but out in the harbour, at anchor. A small motor launch was at the quay, taking boys half a dozen at a time onto the ship. Chris and Ricky clambered on board and sat with their bags on the bottom boards between their knees and the launch took them across the water to the ship, which looked much bigger once they were against the side of the ship with the metal hull towering above them. There was a rope ladder with wooden rungs slung over the side and they had to climb up it, then reach over the side so that someone below could pass the bags up. There seemed to be only one older man around, who introduced himself as Jacquard the bosun in a strong French accent, and then took them below to their accommodation. It turned out they didn't have cabins, just a large open area below decks, with tables and benches in the centre and bunks around three sides. The fourth side of the big room was taken up with doors. Two led to stairwells up onto the deck, and another four led to the bathroom facilities, known as heads. The boys were shown their bunks and stowed their bags and then they had time to explore before their introduction lecture. The ship, once they'd wandered from one end of the deck to the other, turned out to be rather smaller than they'd expected. Forty people were going to be living in pretty close proximity for two weeks.

It was the captain who delivered the lecture, telling them the safety rules and explaining that they would be on duty in watches of four hours at a time except in the early hours of the morning there would be two two-hour watches. And there might be times when the call would go out: 'All hands on deck' which meant whether it was your watch or not, something was happening which required everyone to help.

The system of watches was going to take some learning. Starting at eight o'clock in the evening, the watches were four hours each and they had names: The First Watch ran till midnight, then the Middle Watch till four in the morning, the Morning Watch till eight, the Forenoon Watch till midday, the Afternoon Watch till four in the afternoon, and then the First Dog Watch from four to six and the Second Dog Watch from six till eight and it all started again. On board ship the progress of the watches would be marked by bells: every half an hour a bell would be rung. Half an hour into each watch it would be rung once, then half an hour later twice, and so forth until eight bells when the watch was over and the next watch began. The chiming was done in pairs – ding-dong, ding dong, to make it easier to count. For the dog-watches, the bell would ring once, twice, three times, four times for the first dog watch, then once, twice, three times, eight times for the second dog watch.

The crew of thirty-nine were, as they'd been told before, split into three teams which were also called Watches, named Fore, Main and Mizzen, after the names of the three masts on the boat. Chris and Ricky were in the Main Watch. With three teams taking turns to be on duty and seven watches per day rather than six (that's why the dog watch is split in two) the teams wouldn't be on duty the same periods each day. The dog watches also meant that the whole crew could have a main meal at five pm except the team who were on the first dog watch who would eat at six when they came off duty.

Chris caught Ricky's eye and pulled a face. Ricky understood: how were they going to remember all that?

The captain continued, explaining that they would be visiting the Channel Islands of Guernsey and then Sark, before calling at Brest in Brittany and Boulogne before arriving at their destination of Bremerhaven. It seemed they were going to get an opportunity to go ashore at each of these places, which sounded fun. On Sark, apparently, there were no motor vehicles. Everyone travelled by bicycle or horse-drawn carriage.

The ship set sail at four in the afternoon just after the bosun had rung the big bell near the helmsman's wheel (they quickly learned not to call it a steering wheel) eight times. The duty watch was the Fore watch so Ricky and Chris would be on duty from six for two hours – the second dog watch.

Like everyone else, they were on deck watching what happened. The anchor was raised, six members of the fore watch turning the big capstan like a fairground roundabout, winding the anchor chain up and depositing it down a hatch in the foredeck. The boat began to move, and for the first time the boys realised it had a motor as well as sails. Not until they were outside the harbour, clear of land, did the bosun give the order to set sail. The crew had to climb the foremast and the mainmast, wearing safety harnesses, and edge their way out along the yard arms to untie the furled square sails and let them fly. Then down on deck they had to adjust the positioning of the sails by pulling at ropes, known, like on dinghies, as sheets. As well as the square sails, the fore watch set the foresail and the jib, and the enormous fore-and-aft sail, on the mizzen mast. That involved hauling it up the mast just like the way Chris and Ricky did it in their little Enterprise dinghy, using the mizzen halyard, but it took the whole watch pulling together like a tug-o-war team, and one of them, the assigned watch leader, calling out “Two six, heave! Two six, heave!” to keep them all pulling together. Once the sail appeared to be set correctly, the bosun ran the halyard just once around the belaying pin and set two boys to pull sideways on the taut downhaul of the rope until they had pulled it out into an angle, and then to release the angle as the rest of the team take up the slack by pulling it past the belaying pin. They did this several times, and the huge mizzen sail tightened up the mast and began to take on an unwrinkled taut shape. Eventually the bosun declared he was satisfied and took three more turns around the belaying pin, and then making a loop and twisting it once before hooking it over the pin, trapping the free end under the captive end. Then the remainder of the rope he told a boy to coil neatly and hang it over the top of the pin, and showed him how to pull a loop from the coil and wrap it around the coil and hook it over the pin so that it wouldn't come adrift but could quickly be released when necessary.

Once the sails were set, the ship heeled over slightly and the wind drove her a little faster through the water. The engine was stopped and for the first time the boys got the sensation of being on a large sailing ship. Without the engine's low drone, the only sound was the sibilant slicing of the ship through the sea. Looking around them, everyone felt the same: they were all wearing broad smiles.

The bosun had assigned two of the fore watch to lookout duty and they were up in the bows of the boat watching for any hazards in their path, and he gathered the rest of the watch together to tell them some more about the ship they were sailing. Ricky and Chris and several of the other off-duty crew members, gathered around too, to hear what the bosun had to say. They learned that 'bosun' was a corruption of 'boat-swain' – the oldest title on board ship, going back a thousand years. It means young man, or, follower, in charge of a boat, and the bosun is like the foreman of the watch teams – he organises them and assigns them their tasks. He also told them where the 'Two six, heave!'originated. There used to be six sailors assigned to each cannon on a warship, and the gun had to be pulled back into the ship after firing, so that the barrel could be cleaned out and re-loaded for the next shot. Then it had to be hauled back into place and aimed before firing again, and the process would be repeated throughout a battle. The six men were given numbers, and it was numbers two and six who had the job of hauling the gun back into firing position. In the case of a big gun each would be pulling a rope attached to the gun through a block and tackle and the man in charge would give them the order 'Two, six, heave!' once the gun had been made ready to fire again. One danger in the heat of battle was that the re-loaders would be killed or wounded, when they loaded charge and shot into a gun barrel that was still too hot after its recent firing, and the charge blew up in their faces.

Ricky and Chris knew they were going to enjoy this holiday. Both were enthusiastic about anything to do with sailing. Chris had introduced Ricky to the Swallows and Amazons books by Arthur Ransome when they were thirteen, and more recently they had devoured all the Hornblower books by C.S.Forester – and this trip was going to be the nearest a boy in the twentieth century could come to living the life that Horatio Hornblower did in the books.