68 Against the Sea

Carl B. Wall

More than a thousand recorded hurricanes have been spawned over the flat,
dead reaches of the Sargasso Sea.  Last year one of these fearful storms
struck a small ketch carrying a group of Estonians fleeing from Communist
domination to America.  This dramatic account of the refugees' terrifying
experience is based on extensive talks with two of those courageous folk -
the captain of the craft and Albert Tischler, 36, former Tallinn lawyer.

Friday, September 10, 1948, 4 PM

              In the pilothouse of the Prolific, 38-year-old Captain Berndt
Anderson uneasily watches the thunderheads massing along the horizon.
According to his latest calculations, his vessel is 1300 miles southeast of
Jacksonville, Fla.  He knows that at this time of year these are dangerous
waters.  But there is no way for him to check on his fears.  The Prolific's
radio batteries have failes;  she has no barometer.  Of all vessels plying
the Atlantic on this day, she is perhaps least able to cope with the
approaching hurricane.

The Prolific carries a strange company - 68 men, women and children,
political refugees from Communist-occupied Estonia.  Captain Anderson, a
rangy six-foot Finn with balding head and bland blue eyes, is the only man
on board who knows navigation.  A graduate of Finland's famed Turku Marine
Academy, he has brought the clumsy 69-foot ketch over 5000 miles of sea with
a wrist watch for chronometer, a battered sextant, a compass and a Rand
McNally map of the Atlantic.  As his glance roves from the threatening skies
to the deck of his craft, he thinks of the words of Captain K., who withdrew
from command of the Prolific just before she sailed from Sweden;  "To talke
so many people to sea in a rotten old boat like this is criminal.  If you
want to go, get another captain."

So Anderson had taken over.  He had a stubborn belief in this 67-year old
boat and the purpose of her voyage - to bring these men, women and children
from the tyranny of the Soviet to a new life.

Today, as usual, the Prolific's deck offends the orderly seaman's eye.
There is a long queue before the single toilet, a crude boxlike affair.
After use it is flushed with a pail of water dipped from the sea.  The
drinking water, stored in uncemented tanks, has caused dysentery.

Lashed to the railing along the port and starboard quarter are four huge
crates of half-rotten potatoes.  Since the Prolific left Sweden 50 days agao
these potatoes have been the chief staple in the diet of all hands.  The
bodies of five of the infants are covered with a red rash.  One of the
children, 15 months old Jaan, has been running a fever of 105 for three
days.  Another, six-months old Paul, is unable to open his eyes because of
sores about the eyelids.  The lips of two-year old Virve are so swollen she
cannot eat.

Whether this sickness is caused by poor food, scarcity of water for proper
bathing or the bite of the black, hard-shelled bugs which swarm through the
Prolific's dank hold is the subject of much debate among the mothers.  The
water in the tanks is dangerously low;  there has been no rain for eight
days.

The crescent of the horizon is burnished with the silent play of lightning.
The wind strikes in hard, uneven gusts.  Out of the gathering blackness com
whitecaps to crash in endless succession against the Prolific's side.

Now, above the pounding of the waves, comes the low rumble of thunder.  Rain
begins to fall and the mothers of the sick children try to catch it in
buckets and saucepans.  But the deck is heaving and it is difficult for them
to keep their footing.  As the blackness of storm and night closes in,
Captain Anderson orders everyone below but the four men necessary for the
watch.

Saturday, September 11, 3 a.m.

The Prolific now is battered by winds of 40 miles an hour.  A fierce gust
tears the patched, half-rotten mizzen sail from the mast.  The tattered
remnants of the canvas crack like whips across the deck.

Young Voldemar S., one of the few men on board with seafaring experience,
climbs the mizzenmast to loosen the tangled ropes.  A rotten ratline breaks
and he falls 15 feet to the deck.  The knife he has used to free the ropes
cuts into his arm.  His ankle is painfully twisted.  The storm has taken out
of action one of the most useful of the crew.

11 a.m.

The decks are almost continuously awash and the hatches must be kept closed.
To supply air for those below, Eduard R. Holds a skylight ajar between
waves.  At the midship companionway, leading to the hold, which serves as
cabin, Walter S. guards the door, opening it up when someone knocks.  If it
is a woman he escorts her on a round trip to the toilet in the port bow.
The waves are now flowing freely through the booth's crude planking and it
is no longer necessary to flush the toilet with a bucket of water.  With the
mainsail closely reefed and the single cylinder auxiliary engine straining
to the limit, Captain Anderson manages to quarter the pounding seas and keep
his little ship on a northwesterly course.  The cook, attempting to boil
water in the galley, painfully scalds his hands and feet.  A second man is
out of action.

7 p.m.

The sun dies, obscured by the whirling veil of rain, the spindrift of the
now mountainous seas.  As though hit by bomb blast, a window in the
pilothouse caves in, and glass is hurled in countless jagged pieces against
the wall.

Captain Anderson summons all male hands to lower the mainsail.  The men -
who in Estonia were clerks, farmers, mechanics, lawyers, bookkeepers - fight
their way on deck.  The driving rain, which has suddenly turned cold,
strikes like buckshot against their half naked bodies.  The salt water
drives into their eyes until they are nearly blinded.  Clinging to each
other, to the mast, to the rigging, they struggle with the 200 square feet
of canvas, the tangle of whipping lines.  Thunder rolls now without
interruption.  Purple lightning bolts trace blinding patterns across the
night, some streaking out to sea only a few feet away.

At last the canvas is furled tightly around the boom and the exhausted men
go below, bodies raw from the lashing rain and from being hurled against the
rail.  Two have fractured ribs.  The wrist of a third is sprained and
swollen.  At the helm Captain Anderson, peering at the compass card through
the salt-crusted binnacle, sees that his course is now northeast.  Control
of the ship has left his hands.  All he can hope to do is try to stay afloat
and with the help of the auxiliary run before the sea and the wind.

Sunday, September 12, 6 a.m.

In Bermuda, warned of the approaching hurricane, planes are sent off to the
mainland to avoid the fury of the winds - now officially estimated at 130
miles an hour.  In the hold of the Prolific, where 60 persons are packed in
a space 30 by 17 feet, the air is almost unbearable with the stench of
sweat, excrement, seasickness and the unchanged clothing of infants.  But
they do not dare open the skylight; even with it closed, the sea seeps
through in such volume that nothing is dry.  In the boxlike bunks, built in
double tiers along either side of the hold, sick infants cling to their
mothers.

There is no sunrise in the back heart of the hurricane.  Only a slow change
from utter darkness to a weird, grayish twilight.  An unceasing blizzard of
spune and rain sweeps over the deck.  Unseeing, the helmsman must steer by
the feel of the boat as she rises and falls in the grip of the sea.  So
exhausting is the strain that the men of the watch relieve each other at the
wheel every 20 minutes.  Captain Anderson, without sleep for more than 50
hours, remains constantly at the helmsman's side.

The waves, towering like mountains above the 56-foot mainmast, roar by at
more than 60 miles an hour.  The interval between waves is a quarter of a
mile.  Every 15 seconds the ship must rise before them or be buried.

It is shortly after daybreak that the Prolific is pooped for the first time
by a huge following sea.  Tons of water bury her deck to a depth of three
feet.  Below in the hold the tremendous pressure of the water mass creates
an unearthly stillness.  Even the crying of the children ceases.  The
laboring throb of the Diesel falters like an ailing heart.  For long seconds
it is as though death has come.

At the helm Captain Anderson grasps the wheel in his great hands and waits
for the next wave.  If the Prolific fails to rise before it she is lost.
Was the captain who refused to sail right, after all?  As Anderson waits,
during those long seconds, he finds himself saying aloud: "Is this my crime,
God?  Is it?"  The other men in the wheelhouse, all with wives and children
below, wait silently.  The ancient planks of the Prolific shudder under the
horrible strain.  At last she frees herself from the burdening tons of
water, rises sluggishly to meet the onrushing sea.

But the pooping has done great damage.  Tons of water have flooded the hold.
The automatic pump fails, broken beyond repair.  Below there are nine inches
of water above the bilge boards.  A few more inches and the Prolific may
founder.

The emergency hand pump on deck is manned, but the spongy leather washer
crumbles.  Eight men form a bucket brigade and laboriously begin bailing
water from the hold.  The buckets must be liften through the skylight.  Two
men secured with ropes to the mainmast open and shut the skylight in the
brief intervals between the waves.  Jacob O., an ex-cobbler who has been
seasick almost constantly, is meanwhile cutting a new washer for the hand
pump from the heavy leather top of a work shoe.

3 p.m.

Despite the repair of the hand pump, there is still more than six inches of
water sloshing above the floor boards of the hold.  A five-months old infant
tumbles from his fainting mother's arms and nearly drowns.  For hours the
women have been praying aloud, their voices steady in the chant of the Meie
Isa: "Our Father who are in heaven. Thy will be done"

8 p.m.

The Prolific survives a second pooping, then a third.  A pile of 40 trunks
lashed to the deck amidships has disappeared.  The potato crates have
vanished.

The hatchway to the hold has become so weak that two of the younger men
fasten themselves across it with ropes in an attempt to break the rush of
the sea with their bodies.  Within 20 seconds half conscious, they are
hauled below.

In the pilothouse the helmsman discovers the rudder is no longer responding
properly to the wheel.  Crawling deep into the stern, August T., a
carpenter, finds that the iron pipe which encases the rudder post has
cracked.  He winds bailing wire tightly around the pipe and forces the
cracks together by driving wedges under the wire.  If the ship broaches to,
even for minutes, she is lost.

Monday, September 13, 8 a.m.

The battering has so loosened the Prolific's stem and planking that she is
now leaking below the water line.  Despite the efforts of the bucket brigade
and constant manning of the hand pump, the sea gains steadily.  In the
engine room water laps against the overheated metal of the diesel, filling
the small space with steam.  Grimy, exhausted men, all without sleep for
more than 72 hours, bail doggedly to keep the water from killing the engine.
In the hold men and women place blankets and bedclothes between the ships
ribs, press against them with their bodies in an attempt to stem the
invading sea.

For three days no one has eaten anything but hard bread soaked in sea water.
The feverish children have had nothing.  The water in the tanks, now a thick
compound of rust and sludge, is undrinkable.

3 p.m.

To Captain Anderson and the others in the pilothouse the low rumble of
praying voices below tecomes audible, for the first time, above the roar of
the wind and the seas.  The hurricane is waning.  Slowly the curtain of rain
and spindrift fades, revealing the mountains of gray-green sea and then the
horizon.

As the wind moderates, the wave crests no longer crash over the deck.  The
hatches are thrown open and the bucket brigade, able now to work more
swiftly, gains on the sea.  Women with pots and pans scoop water from the
hold.  Blankets and clothing are used as sponges.  Within a few hours the
bilge is dry enough the calk the sprung planking with tarred rags.  The
Prolific still leaks, but the hand pump at last keeps the flow of water
under control.

Tuesday, September 14, 9 a.m.

The Prolific, her mainsail filled with a fresh northeaster, plows steadily
westward.  Driven by the hurricane to a point some 190 miles southwest of
Bermuda, she is now on a course for Wilmington N.C., the nearest U.S. port.

Water sieved through cloth is boiled on the galley stove.  The ships cook
prepares a broth from the only food left - sea soaked flour and sugar.  He
believes that with careful rationing there will be enough of this for
another seven days.

Most of the ship's company are sprawled out on the sunlit deck.  Below the
children, bundled in dry clothing, are recovering from their fevers.  One of
the young men brings out a harmonica and softly plays an Estonian folk song.
The voices of men and women join in the chorus.  In the pilothouse Captain
Anderson turns and looks eastward over the ground sell of the rolling sea in
the general direction of the U.S.S.R.

"Do you see Josef?" he asks with a grin.  "Do you see?"

Six days later on September 20th the Prolific made port safely in
Wilmington, N.C.  After months of investigation the passengers were released
by immigration authorities.  The men are now working at various jobs in the
United States and Canada.  Many are on farms.  All hope to become citizens.
The Prolific, for which the Estonians paid their life savings of some
$18,000, was so damaged by the hurricane that she was sold for $1004 at a
public auction.

The end

This article appeared originally in

Argosy (September, 1949), copyright 1949 by Popular Publications, Inc.

205 East 42nd Street, New York, NY

An article appearing in Reader's Digest, October, 1949.

Condensed from Argosy.