GREAT SEAMANSHIP
A PAINFUL ROUNDING OF THE HORN FOR WARWICK TOMPKINS ON THE REDOUBTABLE SCHOONER ELBE 5
The German pilot schooner Elbe 5, built in 1883, has had a remarkable life. Afew years ago, she was in the news after being sunk in a collision with a container ship, ironically in her native river after a significant refit, but it is in the interim period that she had her glory days. After working the difficult waters of the outer Elbe off Hamburg for many years, she retired and ended up with a youth club who renamed her Wandervogel, or Wander Bird.
She was bought in the depths of the depression by Warwick Tompkins and his redoubtable wife, Gwen, to sail under the Stars and Stripes. And sail she certainly did. After crossing the Atlantic seven times, including one passage of 16 days, a record for a sailing vessel under 100ft, the Tompkins shipped a doubty crew which included their small children, and took the schooner from Gloucester, Mass, to San Francisco via Cape Horn.
Tompkins’ book, Fifty South to Fifty South – the classic definition for ‘doubling the Horn’ from east to west – describes this passage. It is an absolute classic. To complete the 1,000-mile rhumbline trip, they sailed 2,125 brutal miles. Nonetheless, they made the passage to the Golden Gate in a time that many an 1850s clipper ship captain might have envied. We join them in 1936 as they beat ever westwards south of the Horn, wondering if it will ever end.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8
Last night’s gale has set us back 54 miles, all we’ve won in the past four days. We have lost westing as well as northing, but are in no more hazardous a position than before, thanks to the curve of the coast.
The squalls average three an hour today. They are careering through a wind already blowing gale force and outstrip it with ease. Some we can avoid, not many. Their cumulus heads are miles high, pompadoured and silvery. They look disarmingly soft and fluffy up there but underneath they show metallic, gun-metal blue, flat and hard. Each is a pillar of hail, a mile and more in diameter. They sweep over the western edge, envelop us with sleet and screaming wind and are gone so quickly it seems not unreasonable to believe they are making 60 knots.
The entire morning watch we sail northeast-by-north, then gybe to the west until nine. We once more swing to north-by-east as a gale makes up at noon.
Noon Position: 51°49’ S., 76°12’ W. To 50° South in the Pacific: 109 Miles. Made Good: Minus 54 Miles. Sailed by Log: Log scarcely carried at all this day.
The patch on the foresail clew cringle has started to rip and we have lowere
