Dawn brought no diminution of the storm. As the new day wore on, everything below decks not wedged in or tied down came adrift and went soaring and smashing about. Murray wisely sought refuge in his bunk – and was twice tossed out of it. Things were better up above, although the decks were awash most of the time, and when Angus tried to ease Bonnet’s frantic motion by taking in the staysail, his crippled right arm failed him and he nearly went overboard – to be saved by the lifeline around his waist.
Although we yearned to be in some sheltered harbour, there was no prospect of finding one along that gale-lashed coast where every rock and reef must have been breaking white. There really was no choice but to again turn seaward and try to ride out the storm with deep water under our keel. (We would later learn that a hurricane was spiralling northward, making the eastern shore of Nova Scotia virtually unapproachable even to large, full-powered ships.)
Because we had no sea anchor with which to keep Bonnet’s head pointing into the wind, we started the engine to give us steerage way, and the old brute redeemed itself by never missing a beat through the rest of this long night.
It was the wildest night I have ever known. Neither Angus nor I was able to stay at the tiller more than an hour at a time. When he relieved me, it was all I could manage to crawl below for a mouthful of cold water laced with rum, and for what seemed like only a few moments’ sleepless rest, before having to tie my sou’wester back on and face the storm again.
Bonnet’s motion as she laboured up the slopes of great combers and slid down their backsides became so violent that it snapped one of the inch-thick steel turnbuckles that secured a mizzen stay. Fortunately the other stays held firm, or a mast would certainly have gone overboard.
By dawn the worst was over. Wind and seas slowly moderated until we were once again able to set course for Nova Scotia – or where we assumed it to be. Overhead the storm scud blew away and flashes of sunlight illuminated the still-frothing surface of the ocean.
Hours dragged by, but still no sign of land appeared. I was at the tiller when, just before noon, I decided to stand up and have a pee over the side. Glancing ahead then I saw something the helmsman could not normally have seen because his view was blocked by the Carley Float lashed to the cabin trunk.
A few hundred yards away, in the middle of nowhere, a massive black buoy was bobbing about. Had I not seen it when I did, Bonnet might have run right into it. Painted in huge letters around its swollen belly was EGG ISLAND, which according to the chart meant it was stationed six miles offshore and just thirty miles distant from the entrance to Halifax harbour.
Alerted by my shout, Murray and Angus swarmed on deck. Angus was grinning with delight – until he swept the western horizon with the binoculars and failed to find any sign of land. Our hearts sank. Perhaps the buoy had broken from its mooring during the gale and was now off on its own deep-sea voyage?
Refusing to entertain such doubts, I scaled off the compass course from the charted position of the Egg Island buoy to the Sambro Light Ship off Halifax – a course that, according to the chart, would take us right through two air force and navy target ranges strictly prohibited to mariners. I did not mention these impediments to Angus, who was now at the tiller. I simply gave him the bearing to steer by and put my faith in the Old Man of the Sea to look to our interests.
We ploughed along for two tense hours when, quite suddenly, the shore fog lifted to reveal the jaunty, toy-boat shape of Sambro Light Ship, and Halifax sprawling in the haze behind it.
Once we were “inside the land,” the temperature shot up thirty degrees, allowing us to strip down to bare essentials as we idled happily through coveys of trim little sailboats filled with pretty girls and dapper yachtsmen out for an afternoon’s spin on these protected and salubrious waters. We felt very salty and superior.
We were received at the anchorage of the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron by a uniformed attendant who politely directed us to a mooring buoy next to a beer baron’s glittering yacht. Scotch Bonnet’s voyage ended here for Murray and me, although not for my father, who, after delivering his speech to the librarians, sailed on to New York with a new crew aboard, thence back to Lake Ontario via the Inland Waterway.
This was the last voyage Angus and his Dark Lady would make together. Two years later, for reasons still obscure to me, he sold her – and never sailed again.
Angus had made his eastern passage while mine had only just begun.
My love affair with the ocean and with seafaring people would flower and continue through the next decades and would carry me into many distant places.
And other lives.
* The B-50A was an updated version of the B-29, Superfortress workhorse heavy bomber of the USAF during the closing years of World War II.
Farley Mowat, Memoir
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