Reval to Helsingfors

On August 30th, when we had our new gaff jaws and had put the battens into the sails, we were impatient to be off. The Cook remained in Reval, making room for my friend Mr. Wirgo, who at one time represented Estonia in London and had arranged to make the passage with me to Finland. In early youth he spent some time in a sailing ship, and now owns the Condor, a little Swedish yacht, delightful in sheltered waters, but not fit for the crossing to Helsingfors. We had sailed round the harbour in Condor the preceding night, when Wirgo managed to tumble into the water while getting into a dinghy. The unfortunate effect of this was that when we had already started for Finland he complained of feeling ill, and after being dosed with aspirin from Racundra’s medicine chest, had to spend most of the passage in his bunk. At the start, however, he was most impatient to be off, and was anxious that we should use the engine, which, however, was determined not to be used. He explained that, whatever happened, he must be back the day after tomorrow in order to take his wife to a ball in honour of the British Fleet, a squadron of which was expected. In his hurry, he actually towed us out of the harbour in the dinghy. That was at seven o’clock in the evening, and when he came on board again after a magnificent piece of work, for Racundra is a heavy little ship, the illness began which lasted until we were already within sight of the Finnish coast.

We started in the evening in the hope of getting a land breeze through the night, and this we did, though the breeze was so slight that when morning broke we were still close to the island of Wulf, which protects the Bay of Reval from the north. I steered all night until the dawn, which found us clear of the bay. It was pleasant work with the admirable leading lights of Reval as a guide, and I took a number of bearings which confirmed the deductions made already about the gigantic character of our compass deviation. By half-past six we had passed Nargon and Wulf, and at eight we could see Wrangel island, east by north, and on the horizon the Revalstein three-masted lightship a little north of N.W. The wind dropped to nothing. It had only needed the dotting of an i and the crossing of a t to make it nothing before. We were simply drifting.

And then, quite suddenly, came the fog, and with it the slightest possible breath from the north, veering now and again. We steered, or rather pointed, for the ship could hardly be considered as under sail, N.E., E. by N., and E.N.E. The fog was a white, cool fog, and hid everything but the water within a few yards of the ship. The Ancient Mariner brought up the foghorn, and at the proper intervals we made the noises prescribed by law. Wirgo came up, looked about him, wondered rather dismally what his wife would say to him if she had to go to the ball alone, and retired to his bunk. The Ancient and I drowsed at the wheel in turns. There was something uncanny in being unable to see in a fog so white, so luminous in itself. Yet there it was, sure enough fog, as Huckleberry Finn would say, and we began to be worried by noises. Once or twice there were good recognizable noises made by other vessels: to these we cheerfully replied, proud of the fact that we could do as much ourselves. The worrying noises were the regular ones, signals from lighthouses, lightships and similar things, which we ought to have been able to identify and could not. The fog lasted until four in the afternoon. For some time before that the wind had been easterly, such as it was, and we had been pointing north. We had heard one particular noise which had disturbed us very much indeed. Hoots on a foghorn and then the clear ringing of a bell, repeated accurately at three-minute intervals. Now, when a ship moves at all, the desires of those on board tend to make them believe that she is moving faster than she is in fact. Although, until we heard these signals, somewhere to the south of us and seemingly quite near, we had supposed Racundra was about halfway across the Finnish Gulf, yet when we heard them, it never for a moment occurred to us that they could be anything but signals from some lighthouse or lightship standing far out from the Finnish coast. We accordingly searched the Baltic Pilot, and examined the Finnish coast in both English and German charts, trying to find a place alleged to make such noises during fog. We could find nothing of the kind, and were actually beginning to be afraid that we had already come too near the land, when the fog rolled southward as swiftly as it had come, disclosing a horizon absolutely naked to the north and bare to the south except for a three-masted ship without sails and with curious swellings about the masts: the Revalstein lightship, which we had thought to be quite twenty miles astern. It was not until long afterwards that, idly looking over the chart of the Estonian coast, I realized that the three-minute bell we had heard when wrapped up in that blanket was from the Kokskar Lighthouse, a few miles east of Wulf.

With the lifting of the fog came a wind from the N.E. which allowed us to sail northwards, humbled as navigators but renewed in hope as human beings. We knew now where we were, and the wind was taking us, not quite in the direction in which we wished to go, but pretty nearly in that direction. The only thing remaining uncertain was the deviation of our compass, and even with regard to that, we had a good deal of definite knowledge in place of the complete ignorance with which we had started from Riga. Later on our confidence was increased by the sight of a three-masted schooner also sailing north. She had her sails full and was going at a great pace, rapidly overhauling us, but when she passed us it was obvious that she was making much more leeway than even the generous Racundra allowed herself. We were sure that she too was bound for Helsingfors, or at any rate for a sight of the Aransgrund light-vessel, which is the outermost mark to show the way in. When she was almost hull down beyond us she went about and came sliding back again, and we decided that she had tacked on getting a sight of the light-vessel, which we knew must be somewhere a little east of our course. In this way, navigating very much from hand to mouth, we took the schooner as our guide and stood on as she had done, until at the same moment the Ancient sighted land ahead and I saw the light-vessel about five miles distant on our starboard bow. We stood on till we thought we could fetch the vessel on the other tack and then went about, just as dusk was falling, when we received an extremely disconcerting shock.

“It’s the Aransgrund light-vessel sure enough,” I had said, inspiriting myself, and added, by way of giving the crew and passenger some confidence in my knowledge to replace that which they had lost owing to the unfortunate reappearance of the Revalstein: “She will show two red lights, one from each masthead.” I had just got this information from the Baltic Pilot.

Dusk fell. We were all on deck, looking for those red lights. And then the vessel showed no red light of any kind, but a white light that vanished and reappeared, one of those called “occulting” on the charts and in the light lists.

“It isn’t the Aransgrund, after all,” said the passenger, but the Ancient supported me out of esprit de corps, and I, for our very honour, held to it that it was, in spite of the visible fact that it showed a white light instead of two red ones. I plunged down below and looked it up once more in the Baltic Pilot. “Two red lights.” I searched the German chart. Red. The English chart that I had bought in the spring. Red again. And then, just as a sort of last hope that was really no hope at all, I looked at the only other chart I had, which was a small sketch of the minefields attached to a little book of Notices to Mariners given to me by Captain Whalley of the Baltabor. This little sketch chart in general showed no details, but one detail that it did show fairly glowed before my eyes. “Aransgrund Lt.V. White occ.” The lights had been changed. It was the Aransgrund light-vessel after all, and I returned on deck with the book in my hand, my authority as navigator triply reinforced by the printed word of the British Board of Trade. It was a proud moment, but I had no time to enjoy it, for with the dark which fell suddenly upon us came a great wind out of the east, and Racundra, who had moved all day upon an even keel, was suddenly getting as much as she wanted. We could not fetch the light-vessel with that tack, so we stood on beyond it, then went about again, and fairly surged towards that white occulting light, which had become as it were a personal possession.

I suppose it was near eleven o’clock when the question of the colour of Aransgrund’s eye was finally settled. At midnight we were within a cable’s length of it, rushing through the dark without sidelights, dependent, as usual, upon the riding light which I carried in the well. I had hoped to go into Helsingfors by daylight, for I did not know the channel, and, more important, not only did not know the way to the Nylands Yacht Club, but did not know where to look for it, having been told vaguely that it was on an island. There are several hundred islands about, and the Club is not marked in German, English or Finnish charts. I therefore decided to take a pilot, and, having no flares, waved the riding light. For a long time there was no reply, when, thinking that perhaps he took our riding light for the ordinary white light carried on the open fishing-boats, we hooted at him with the foghorn. This may have been extremely incorrect, but it had an instantaneous result. Figures moved on the light-vessel’s decks. We heard shouts, and presently someone began swinging a lantern round in circles. They had understood, and all we had to do was to keep Racundra near the light-vessel while they launched a boat and put the pilot on board. This was not so easy as it might seem. Remembering the experience of Baltic Port, we had feared to take sail off her in spite of the wind, and, hove to, she was knocked about considerably, and drifted too near the vessel or else slipped off into the outer darkness. All this was probably due to our lack of knowledge of her. On later occasions I had her hove to under full canvas in the most decorous and ladylike manner. Anyhow, there was one horrid moment when we thought we were coming into violent contact with the light-vessel, the great bulk of which was heaving up and down in a most portentous manner right above us. The business of getting their boat out seemed very long, and we learnt afterwards that the pilot had been in his bunk and had to get up and dress.

“Who are you?” they shouted at us.

“English yacht,” we yelled back, and after that, perhaps because the Fleet was expected next day and might avenge us, they did at last seem to get busy. There was the splash of a boat in the water, a bobbing lantern appearing and disappearing in the waves, a bump, and a large Finnish pilot tumbled on board with: “Where do you want to go?⁠ ⁠… Nylands Club?⁠ ⁠… Right. Keep Grohara light so. Now, Captain⁠ ⁠…” And with that, as pilots do, he expressed hunger and thirst.

I fed him and poured Riga vodka into him, while he asked me, “Did we not see you just as night fell, close by a three-masted schooner?”

“You did.”

He laughed. “Do you know, we reported you by wireless to Helsingfors as a likely smuggler and told them to look out for you! Yours was the very last boat we thought would need a pilot.”

I suspect that the reason why they had been so long in answering our signals from the lightship was that they supposed that, being smugglers, we were playing some new trick on them. The Estonian smugglers, of whom there are many, make it their sport to tease the Finnish coastguards. I had heard much about it on the other side of the Gulf, where the smugglers are, as in old times in England, the heroes of the longshore population. One man in particular makes it his boast that he gets his cargo into Finland by a different method every time, and each time takes care to let the coastguards know the way they have been tricked. On one occasion he arrived at evening with a cargo of spirits covered with a thin layer of potatoes, and the Finns sealed up the hold of his vessel for examination in the morning. During the night he broke the seals, took out the spirit and disposed of it, and then woke the Customs officers while it was still dark and in a great state of perturbation asked them what he was to do, as in clearing up the deck he had accidentally broken their seals. “Fined two hundred marks for breaking the official seals.” He paid the fine. Then, when he left, he sent a small keg of spirits to the Customs officers, with a note expressing his gratitude for having been allowed for so small a sum to bring in such and such a quantity of spirit. After many such exploits he was actually caught and imprisoned, and it was announced in the newspaper that he had been captured with fifteen hundred litres of spirit. He wrote indignantly to the editor to say that he had been captured with three thousand litres of spirit, not fifteen hundred, and wanted to know what had become of the rest. The Censor, he complained, did not allow his letter to be published.

When the pilot had finished his meat and drink we went on deck again, where Wirgo, recovered from his illness, was steering. I had left the matches on the cabin table and went down again to get them. Responsibility gone, the pilot in charge, and Racundra already safely across, I thought I would lie down for a moment. Out of the last thirty-two hours I had been twenty-eight in the steering-well. I lay down, just as I was, the box of matches in my hand; and three hours later, matches still in hand, rushed on deck in a panic, to find lights all about us, smooth water, the Ancient forward ranging the anchor chain, Racundra already brought to the wind and losing way, and the pilot on the point of saying “Let go.” The chain rattled out. The pilot went below with me to drink more vodka and collect his fee. I paid the money and uncorked bottles half-asleep and wholly angry. Twenty-eight hours of steering in calm and fog, and then to sleep like a log during this last three hours of good sailing weather, just when I had meant to use the pilot in order to learn for myself how not to need him again!