Ancestral Acres: Down to the Seas
The Sir Winston Churchill and the Herzogen Cecilie
By James Arnott
On the Sir Winston Churchill
The Sail Training Association [now the Tall Ships Youth Trust - ed] has two schooners: The Sir Winston Churchill [sold 2000, now a private yacht - ed] and the Malcolm Miller [sold in 2001, now laid up in the River Fal - ed], both of which are used for training young men from 16 to 24 years of age. Both ships normally go into dock from overhaul or re-fit at the end of the year and in November 1971 I read that applications were invited for those over the age of 24 who might be interested in taking part in a shake-down or Post-refit cruise.
So I applied and was accepted, and on Sunday 13th February 1972, I reported to the West India dock where, getting on for 52, I signed on as a member of the crew of the Sir Winston Churchill.
The Joining Instructions, which I received prior to being accepted as a member of the crew read;
1 You will be part of the ship’s company and as such you will take an active part in the care and maintenance of the ship and the standing and running rigging, as well as your watch duties as look-out, steering, galley work and ship cleaning.
2 Life at sea in a sailing ship is traditionally one of the hardest that a man can take.
The Port of London Authority seemingly does not allow large ships to sail on the Thames so we motored down to Southend where we then set sail and headed off across the North Sea to Amsterdam.
The crew consisted of 3 groups or watches, each of 13 members plus a Watch Leader, each being named after the three masts of the ship: Fore, Main and Mizzen. One watch would be on duty at a time, normally for four hours, one Watch would be off duty and the third Watch would be on standby. In the early hours of Monday morning we were all on duty, a force 8-9 gale, having overtaken us. There are lights along the upper yard arms of each mast so that the deck was all lit up and we could see the sea rushing past, the deck at that time being at an angle of about 45 degrees. There was an air of unreality about it all.
About 4 o’clock in the morning, I found myself at the wheel of the ship trying to steer a course for the entrance to the North Sea Canal, which leads to Amsterdam. Fortunately, whilst at sea, I never had to go aloft and out along the upper and lower Yard Arms, which was some relief. In dock we did climb up onto the crows nest, but that was comparatively simple.
Our stay in Amsterdam, included the almost mandatory meander down Canal Street where alluring ladies sit at the windows of their front parlours in a rather obvious state of undress. When the time came to set sail for our return voyage no one was missing…
“To love the seas is not well” wrote Joseph Conrad and considering the vast number of lives lost at sea, one can understand such a comment. But St John the Divine, banished by the Roman government to the island of Patmos, had a vision in which he saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away – and there was no more sea.
It is presumably difficult to imagine the world without the sea. Presumably one might walk from Dover to Calais, although the way would no doubt be littered with the wrecks of sunken ships. And a vast expanse such as the Atlantic Ocean would be an unhappy sight of stranded whales, dying dolphins and other denizens of the deep doomed to extinction when suddenly deprived of their natural habitat. Such an idea is not easy to understand.
But to return to Sir Winston…
Coming back home, I think it rained heavily all the way so being on deck for four hours at a stretch was not at all comfortable. But we arrived safely back at West India Dock after what had undoubtedly been a most exciting, exhilarating, and at times uncomfortable experience. To have had the opportunity to “sail before the mast” is something for which I am most grateful. A change from sitting at a desk all day…
Some years later, staying with friends in Holland, I stood on the banks of the North Sea Canal at Velsen and watched a succession of sailing ships taking part in the Tall Ships Race wend their way towards Amsterdam. It was a marvellous sight, so many ships from so many nations, so graceful, so majestic, all of them splendid to behold.
The Herzogen Cecilie
The Sir Winston Churchill was not the first sailing ship on whose decks I trod. When I was fifteen I cycled with a friend from Streatham in London down to Cornwall. It was a glorious summer and although we had a small tent I think we only pitched it once. The weather was so fine that we were able to sleep in the open with only a ground sheet and a blanket. On our arrival at Falmouth, to our surprise and delight there was a windjammer in the harbour: The Herzogin Cecilie, which somehow we managed to go aboard – an unexpected treat, which we thoroughly enjoyed.
The Herzogin Cecilie was a four-mast barque of 3100 tons and 337m length, built at Bremerhaven in 1902 as a sail-training ship carrying 75 cadets for the Norddeutscher Lloyd Line but later used for trading all over the world and was considered one of the finest windjammers ever built – a worthy successor of the 9th century clipper, this beautiful ship made many a brilliant run from Australia to Europe with cargoes of grain. But in April 1936, soon after leaving Falmouth she ran aground and was wrecked on Bolt Head on the South Devon coast near Salcombe. Seven weeks later she was re-floated and towed into Starehole Bay near Bolt Head, but later, in a gale, broke her back and now lies on the sea-bed where the sea is calm.
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