Helsingfors: Swinging the Ship

Next morning I came on deck to find Racundra in the delightful anchorage of the Nylands Yacht Club. The Club House is itself on an island, and with other islands of pink and grey rock and a cliff on the mainland close above the water, gives perfect shelter to the little fleet that lie to mooring-buoys in this southern corner of Helsingfors harbour. The harbour proper lay before us, with white steamships along the quays, on which were the low Customs houses, the booths of a busy market, blue trams slipping swiftly by⁠—a lively, comfortable scene⁠—while over all were the great domed church and the cathedral spires that I have often admired from the sea when in ships bigger but not better than Racundra. Wirgo and I went ashore in the dinghy, he to hurry back to Reval by steamship and I to look for the friends who, after waiting for us last night in the Club House, had supposed that the fog had kept us on the other side of the Gulf.

In comparison with Riga and Reval, Helsingfors seemed not to have suffered from the war. The shops were full of all the things which for the last few years most Baltic towns have had to do without. With its clean white steamers and blue trams, it seemed more Swedish than Finnish. Finland, real Finland, is to be found in the country, not in the capital; and walking through the streets of this modern Western town, with its restaurants and taxicabs, I kept thinking of the simple country life I had tasted in Finland years ago. Near Hittola, by Lake Ladoga, paddling with a friend in a canoe-shaped boat, I remember finding a little ancient steam-yacht lying covered in on the reedy bank of a river. I was told that in its day it had made a voyage to Edinburgh and back. It was dropping into decay, that aged little steamer; those who had sailed in it were dead; the elk snuffed round it in the winter snow and wandered north to tell the reindeer, who perhaps, on the shores of the Arctic, had seen similar strange things. Looking north from that place to the Pole was nothing but wild country, lake, marshes, ragged forest and ice-infested seas. The little steam-yacht did not seem more foreign to it than this trim stone-built capital.

So far as Racundra was concerned, I wasted all that day in friendship. But early next morning there was a coughing and spluttering and spitting alongside, and I tumbled out to find that by that friendship Racundra was to profit after all. Commander Boyce had brought his little motorboat, Zingla, to take me for a run round the harbour to show me the way through the buoys and out into the fairway, which I had missed by falling asleep as we were coming in. We ran out one way and ran in another through well-marked channels between the uncompromising rocks. The Finnish coast is not a coast on which to make mistakes, and I was glad I had not attempted the foolishness of trying to find the Club for the first time in the dark. Once you know where it is, however, it is easy enough. There are shortcuts for small boats, but any yacht coming in here for the first time can do so safely by following the sailing directions for big ships until she is well into the southern harbour. Once there, she has but to follow the quay round into the southern corner of that harbour and, if she cannot find a spare buoy, drop anchor until morning.

After introducing me to a score or so of spar-buoys, eloquent in the language of upturned and down-turned brooms, Boyce brought the Zingla back to Racundra, and the Ancient, for the first time⁠—indeed, for the only time on the whole cruise, except for getting water⁠—made up his mind to come ashore. He wanted a special size of sailmaker’s needles, besides some scrubbing brushes and mops which he did not trust me to buy. He was not in the least interested in the town. “Towns,” said he, “are all one and all dirt.” This was a manifest libel on the spotless Helsingfors, but the Ancient had been a little embittered by the thick fringe of black grease which our waterline had acquired while lying in the harbour of Reval.

We spent an exciting and expensive morning. We bought new brass rowlocks for the dinghy which the builder had disfigured with coarse, badly galvanized iron rubbish which chafed the oars and did not fit. We bought rope fenders. We bought every block we could find that would fit our ropes, and regretted that we had not tried to buy them the day before, for we could only find half a dozen and could not wait while the shops sent to Äbö for more. We bought mops, woolly and stiff. We bought needles, shackles, hooks for the staysail, hooks for a hoisting strop for the dinghy, a vast hook with a strong spring clip for picking up a mooring-buoy, a tin of colza oil for the binnacles, brass clips for the main and mizzen peak halyards, besides bread, butter, cheese, apples, Swedish oatcake, tobacco, stocking-caps, and a Finnish sheath-knife, a gorgeous piratical thing with a horse’s head for a hilt, a handle inlaid with red and blue and yellow, and a curved sheath of black and scarlet leather. Finally, with full pockets and empty purses, both of us laden like pack animals, we staggered back to the quay, signalled to the Club boatman and were put on board our ship.

Then I went ashore again to inquire about a compass-adjuster, for I had seen a steamship being slowly shifted round and round a big wooden dolphin close astern of us. I had seen the white painted marks on the cliff and on buildings, so that I had no doubt as to what was being done. I was anxious to get our own compass corrected and a table of deviations drawn up, so that the homeward voyage might be made with a smaller proportion of guesswork. The Ancient, as always, was for starting at once.

“The compass is right enough,” said he. “You found the way here with it and you’ll find the way back.”

I showed him the list I had made of observed inexactitudes, some of them as much as two and a half points (for the compass was immediately over the motor), but he was unconvinced, and I left him hauling up the sails, “to dry,” as he said, but really, as I well knew, in hopes that, seeing them up, I should myself be persuaded that Helsingfors had done enough for us and that we might put to sea. When I came back from the harbour office he had already fixed the hook and strop on the fore-halyard and was prepared to haul the dinghy on board. He said nothing, but could not hide his disappointment when I told him that at eight o’clock next morning we were to be tied up to the dolphin and ready for the compass-adjuster who was to swing the ship.

I spent that evening in the Nylands Club. The Finnish six-metre boat, Stella, was there, back from racing at Cowes, and looking at her slim body, built for speed and nothing else, and then over the water to the stout, imperturbable Racundra, I thought how differently men take their pleasures on the sea. I would not have her as a gift, and I am sure that Mr. Donner, her owner, would turn in disgust from my comfortable cruiser. After dinner I went into the Club library and found there a really wonderful collection of sailing-books from all the countries of the world. I read over again that excellent little book by Thomas Fleming Day, the American; and then, for the first time, settled down to read McMullen. Few books on sailing fail to quote McMullen, but his own book is rare, and I was glad enough to read, out here, on a Finnish island, the story of Orion’s return from France and of McMullen’s enviable death, sitting in the cockpit of Perseus, the tiller under his arm, in mid-channel on a starlit night. I observed that McMullen, even in our temperate climate, laid up his ships early in September, and, looking at the calendar, remembered that we were far from home. It was after midnight before I put the book back on its shelf and, dropping over the pierhead into the dinghy, threaded my way in the dark through the little fleet to Racundra’s gleaming portholes, for the Ancient, long asleep, had thoughtfully lit the cabin lamp.

I remember, in reading the logs of other people, experienced mariners, my disgust and annoyance when in a single sentence they dismissed the swinging of their ships. “Swung ship and drew up table of deviations.” That is the professional manner of recording the event, and, if you are not such as they, you are left wondering how they did it. At least, that was so with me. I was left wondering and was ashamed to ask. But the business of ship-swinging is an interesting one, and whereas experienced mariners may skip the next few paragraphs, I am sure there must be inexperienced mariners, and even people who are not mariners at all, who will be glad to know how the thing is done and, in place of the cabalistic words “swung the ship,” to have an actual picture of the ship being swung, or rather being lugged by main force round a wooden dolphin until she headed in turn on each one of the thirty-two points of the compass.

There was a hard N.E. wind blowing in the morning, and letting ourselves swing by a long line from the mooring-buoy to which we had made fast, we paid out line slowly as we worked stern first towards the dolphin, the anchor hanging deep in the water ready to hold us up. When near the dolphin, we loosed the buoy and held with the anchor while I got into the dinghy and took a warp across to the dolphin. Then we hauled up the anchor, and, shortening the warp, were swinging close by the dolphin while waiting for the arrival of the stout, red-faced, English-speaking Finn who spent every day of his life in the swinging of big ships.

The dolphin is a stout wooden erection, built of piles and so fixed in the bottom of the sea. Above water it is shaped like an inverted cone, on the top of which is a smaller cone with the narrower end uppermost. The lower cone, being bigger than the upper, forms a platform on which a man can walk. Round the upper cone is an iron belt working in a groove. At opposite sides of this belt are rings, and from these rings warps are taken to the bow and stern of the ship. The ship presses against the lower cone and, in whatever direction it may point, is kept in position by the warps to the revolving ring. A steamship is swung by simply steaming round the dolphin and in contact with it, stopping for a moment at each compass point.

The principle of the thing is simple enough. The dolphin may be taken as a fixed point. On the land, at a considerable distance from it, are marks so placed that when the ship is in contact with the dolphin and heading directly on one of these marks, it is heading towards a known point of the compass. By observing at this moment the compass to be corrected, it is easy to discover exactly what its error is on that particular point.

Just as we were making fast a small boat was rowed out to us carrying the red-faced Finn, who was a little disconcerted to find that the ship he was to swing was so very much smaller than the big vessels to which he was accustomed. However, he paid her a compliment or two when he heard where she had come from, and set very seriously about his business, after hurting our feelings a little by asking:

“Will I put my foot through if I stand on the cabin roof?”

“You will not,” I replied.

“Ye can dance on her,” said the Ancient, and with that the work began.

On the top of the cabin roof the Finn set up a heavy tripod carrying a sighting apparatus. At his command we pulled Racundra round that dolphin till he had one of the marks in line with his instrument. The dolphin was built for the swinging of big ships, and we had trouble in adjusting things so that we could use it for Racundra. The edge of the platform pressed against our shrouds and we had to take them down on one side. We decorated her side with all our fenders, and finding them insufficient, used our spare mattresses. However, in the end we got the thing to work. The Finn would call out the actual bearing, N., N. by W., or whatever it was, while I, darting to our steeling compass, called out the bearing indicated by the card and the lubberline. We had in no way exaggerated the inaccuracies. The Finn had brought with him two magnets brightly painted, which he screwed down in the steering-well in positions found by experiment. These magnets roughly compensated for the effects of the mass of iron in the motor, so that the compass became more or less correct. Then, point by point, with the help of a couple of sailors borrowed from another yacht, we pulled Racundra round and held her steady on each one of the thirty-two points, noting at each point the difference between actual and compass bearing. It took a long time, for the wind was strong, Racundra heavy, and the Finn conscientious. However, it was done at last, and down in the cabin, over a bottle of vodka, the expert worked out his results, drawing up a table on the Continental plan, while I translated them into a form readier for actual use, in one column writing the course, and in another the course to steer by our compass. By noon the work was done. I put the Finn ashore and hung up the completed table in the cabin.

With that we were both for starting while the wind held, late in the day though it was. I took in water, made my farewells at the Nylands Club, and, without anchoring again, cast off directly from the dolphin and tacked out of the harbour.