Zealand

41. The Way Onward

After Captain had finished addressing the crew, he bade me go below to attend my duty. As I dusted and polished, I imagined all the activity aloft, remembering my wonderment at the sails changing on ships arriving and departing below the bridge. A fleeting minute with so much change – not near enough time to figure how. But here, the crew has a whole day of doing it, so I might find an occasion to watch and to learn.

A while later, as I rearranged his bed, I saw through the windows two long lines of men, one empty-handed, the other carrying bags, bales and bundles from waggons. On another waggon, men attached tackle to straps on a barrel, much as we had done to hoist his firkins of ale and casks of wine into and out of Bessy.

Food and drink for eighty-eight crew for four months. My mind spun at the amount when I had cyphered. Over thirty-two thousand meals, and with what Captain had paid for our dinners at the Globe, sixpence each, over eight hundred pounds. But that was dinner, the biggest meal. And part of that would have been to pay for them to cook and serve it and to make a gain.

Better that I use the prices he pays in the market – but even there, the merchants make a gain. Like when we bought all those bushels of fruit and vegetables with Bessy. Captain gained when he sold it to Mister Stourton, who gained when he sold it to the market merchants, who gained when they sold it from their stalls. I looked again at the waggons. This would be much less than at the market. But still a lot.[1]

I had not long turned from the window to finish arranging when Captain descended and called, "Boy!"

"Aye, sir. In here at your bed."

"I now have a few minutes to further assuage your curiosity. Hie thee here, and I will show you our route downriver."

I hastened out and across the great cabin to what he had called the chart table. Above it hung two lanterns with reflectors, and he had lit the candle in one.

"This chart represents the River Thames from London to the sea and thence into safer waters."

"Safer waters, sir?"

"Aye, Boy. The danger in sailing is not the sea; rather, it is the land." He traced a finger across the parchment. "The river has eighteen big bends and some smaller ones from London to the sea. We are past four here, so fourteen remain in the next thirty miles before we enter this broad area of constantly shifting sandbanks, some seen but many a few feet beneath the water's surface."

"Oh! So too shallow for Zealand to sail across."

"Indeed. We require sixteen feet plus the height of the waves and the sea swell."

"Sea swell, sir?"

"Somewhat like the wind waves we saw on the river, but these have no crests. Rather, they are long, slow rises and falls of the sea, much like ripples running far across a pond from a thrown rock. In the case of sea swells, the cause is distant storms, rather than thrown rocks."

"Are they dangerous?"

"Only in shallow water, Boy. Remember, the greatest danger is not the sea, but the land. And to a ship, shallow water is nought but wetted land."

"So, we will pass the shallows at high tide, then."

"Nay, boy. At low tide."

I shook my head in confusion. "What? Why?"

Captain chuckled, then he tapped a finger on the chart. "Through the shoals run deep channels, scoured over the ages by waters from the river. Their edges are hidden at high tide, but at low, they guide us, thus one of our reasons to sail at the beginning of the ebb. Tell me another reason."

"To have the tidal current assist us downriver."

"Exactly, Boy. And there is a third reason. Though it is never good to happen upon the bottom, the best time to do it is at low tide, so when it rises, we will float free. A ship that fetches bottom at the height of the tide is as well as lost."

He again tapped the chart. "Here at Deptford, we have up to twenty-four feet of tide, but down here in the approaches, in the area of sandy shoals, the range is little more than half that. Why would this be?"

I puzzled for a long while, then I shook my head. "I cannot reason it, sir."

Captain swept his hand across the chart. "The tide floods from the east here, and the approaches gradually narrow as it comes in."

"Oh, of course. With the narrowing, the water has nowhere else to go but to rise even higher."

"Exactly, Boy. And the amount of rise increases all the way up the river to beyond London."

I nodded. "This would be another reason why the current flows faster downstream than up. So, when we are past the shallow shoals, where do we go?"

Captain lit the other lantern and adjusted the reflectors. Then he opened a broad drawer, took out a huge book, set it atop the chart table and leafed through its pages, selected a place and said, "Here! These gray[2] patches show the shoals of the Thames approaches. Once we have cleared them, we will round this headland at Margate, and if the wind continues from the west, tack southwest toward the Normandie coast of France."

I leant in to read the names, then shook my head. "They have misspelt many words. Here, an extra e in England, and here France starting with a v and no e on the end. With all these errors, can the chart be trusted?"

He chuckled. "Nay, Boy, not errors. This was drawn in Amsterdam by Pieter Goos, one of the finest cartographers of our time. We are fortunate to have drawers filled with the latest Dutch charts to compare to our English ones."

"Oh!"

"Remember this well, Boy – charts are depictions of observations, sometimes even guesses; they are not reality." He pointed out through the stern windows. "Reality is out there, and charts serve to guide us in what to look for and where."

I nodded while I ran my gaze across the chart. "How long will it take to be in safer waters?"

"If the morrow's winds are the same as we now have, we should be around the headland and settled on a tack toward France before nightfall."

"And sail toward land in the dark. Is that not dangerous?"

"Without measure, yes. But we will measure our speed, our course and the time to know when to tack northeast toward England's Dorset coast."

"How do we measure, sir?"

"In its time, Boy. In its time. We will look at this once we are at sea. But now, I must be ashore to get the final account from Mister Pett."

Notes:
[1] An analysis by Gregory King looked at the types and quantities of food eaten in England in the late 1600s, and he found the annual average spent per person was £3.85. This would come to tuppenny ha'penny – two and a half pence – a day, less than half what Captain had paid for dinner at the Globe.
[2] The English change of the spelling from gray to grey didn't happen until the early 20th century.