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Memories of sailing with TilmanFour months in the North Atlantic with one of my heroes

Jonno Barrett

‘The skipper was in a good mood yesterday – still is. He was telling us a story about when he used to swim in the Serpentine in the mornings. In Winter, before 8am, you could bathe naked. One foggy morning he got lost in the middle. He ended up on the far side and had to run round over the bridge to get his clothes – it must have been a sight, he sat giggling about it for ages.’

My diary noting Tilman’s achievement of the first metropolitan streak is 7 August 1973, as we sailed north through the fog of the Davis Straight on the west coast of Greenland. I was 19 years old, painfully enthusiastic and verbose. I’ve done a fair bit of sailing and sailing teaching since then and offer these thoughts of someone who remains a hero to me.

‘The skipper is talking a little more – 2 or 3 words a day sometimes. We think he is in a good mood, despite the holdups.’

Baroque was bought in a hurry after the loss of Sea Breeze. She was not in a great state and the trip was a war of attrition with leaks and breakages. We did a lot of pumping, and I’m sure the skipper was very concerned about the boat.

Bill Tilman was an extremely tough man – the

Jonno, then and now.

Major Harold William (Bill) Tilman CBE, DSO MC and Bar

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stories are many; he’d fought in both World Wars, twice been awarded the Military Cross for bravery and had become famous as a mountaineer, explorer and sailor. Yet at 75 he was getting a bit deaf and his sight was pretty iffy in bad light.

‘As soon as he took over the watch, he let her swing about 90 degrees (he can see the points but not the numbers in the dark). When he asked what course we were on I said SE. He asked me accusingly after 5 minutes “how did we get on south?” I bloody nearly told him…

If you can see something which he can’t, it’s not there.’ This led to a couple of tangles with drift nets, made worse by the loose section

of keel band. We got so caught in one that we had to cut ourselves (and a delicious salmon) free so thought it right to contact the fishing boat, using pyrotechnics left over from Baroque’s previous owners. And so the myth was smashed, Tilman set off a distress flare:

‘There was a little jostle for the privilege of striking the flare, the skipper pulled rank. It went up about 20 feet, wobbling, then powered down releasing the red about 2ft above the water. Hysterics all round.’

By the second occasion we’d cracked the technique, using a stick cut from some spare wood and launching from the exhaust stack as the ‘bottle’.

‘…they certainly work very well. The mark 2 is very Saturn V. No-one seems to be paying any attention, but that is detail. It’s the fun of setting them off that counts. The skipper let off the third, as excited as a kid on Bonfire Night.’

We carried round a large lump of net tied between keel and rail for the next month. Hove too in a gale among the brash ice of the

broken up Middle Pack, it floated off; compensation for the coldest night I’ve yet had at sea.

There was the Baroque Bastard Tart. Our amazing cook Ilan Rosengarten mastered the primus, offering all sorts of alternative to the skipper’s cherished duffs. One was Butterscotch Tart. ‘the skipper, seeing the tart, asked what it was. “Butterscotch tart” replied Ilan. “What?” “Butterscotch Tart” (more loudly) “What did you say it was called?” “Butterscotch Tart!” …. Pause while he finished it. “Well it was very good Bastard Tart anyway.’”

Crew member launching flares from the exhaust stack, used as a bottle. The skipper is in the background

Jonno Barrett

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Baroque in Lawerence Cove, Bantry Bay

Ilan made another a couple of weeks later. “What are you making?” “Butterscotch Tart.”....The skipper looked at him strangely “Asparagus Tart?!...”

These frustrations were one reason for what I saw as the skipper’s tetchiness. Another perhaps lay in the gulf between an Edwardian upbringing and we sixties’ products. I’m not sure how much he could read us - me most of all since I was quite talkative, in part trying too hard having joined the crew after the voyage had started – which made me even more annoying. Yet I was very keen, quite useful and totally committed to boat, voyage and skipper but I’m not sure he ever realised that.

In terms of running a happy ship the skipper was not among the greats, yet we worked as a team through some challenging times – mainly holding the boat together.

Setting off from Cork, we were disconcerted to see the topsides from the galley. We headed for Lawrence Cove in Bantry Bay. Here the splendid Finbar at the boatyard extended the chain plates to pick up more of the not very sound frames, sharing the load across more with a steel strapped beam shelf of noble proportions.

After a bit of wear and tear, planks opening in the topsides became planks opening below the waterline. I’m sure the skipper knew Baroque was pretty tired when he bought her, but had no idea of the problems we’d have. He knew, though, a lot about how people can rise to a challenge; I’m very glad the voyage didn’t end at Bantry.

He was a very competent, practical bosun, splicing wire and rope, repairing sails and carefully setting up the rig to minimise chafe. He saw baggy wrinkle as a failure of rig configuration and, due to his careful, detailed attention we had almost no chafe damage in four months of North Atlantic sailing. He nursed a tired rig, sails and spars with great sympathy, so these problems slowed but never stopped us.

Sights were snapped from a glimpse of sun through scuddy cloud in a gale sea. It was sextant, log and compass – whose heroic variation impressed me greatly. Astro offered iffy horizons – due to various arctic visibility effects – and there was a lot of misty fog in the Davis Straight.

‘Great Day today! We’ve crossed the Arctic Circle. Or not. Anyway we probably will have done by tonight.’

Gothaab fjord (now Nuuq) took a bit of finding, but find it he did. I’d love to have

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found out more of how he did it, but he was uncommunicative when navigating. He knew that it doesn’t matter too much where you are, as long as you aren’t going to hit something solid, you’re going in the right(ish) direction and you have the

skills to pick up the pieces when you do find a position line. It may be a bit different these days.

He was a very conservative sailor. We didn’t carry a topsail which, given the state of the boat, was a good thing. He’d not carried one on Mischief or Sea Breeze, preferring to leave the topmast ashore and

with it the problems of chafe. We averaged 60 miles a day over the voyage, which he said was in line with all his voyages. I suppose, if you’re there for the doing of it, what matter? Yes and no. There is the old problem of getting off lee shores: particularly if you have unreliable engines. Tilman lost Sea Breeze the previous year because they couldn’t sail out of the way of an island when pushed onto it by ice. Whether more light weather sails would have helped, I don’t know. Certainly he regretted being there without an engine – Baroque sported two large sweeps.

Tilman was a terrific spirit, a fine seaman, but not a great sailor. For him the voyage was the thing. The companionship, the challenges and the self-reliance. But I don’t remember him being turned on by great sailing.

At Godthaab: ‘a lot of boats have their names painted on the rocks of a low cliff here. Mischief is there from 10 years ago and when the skipper saw it he said it nearly made him weep (in fact tears were visible). He is terribly affected still and doesn’t like to talk of Jan Mayen …’

Mischief was lost off the island of Jan Mayen. We repainted the name at the skipper’s request but didn’t add Baroque’s; an indication of how he felt about his new boat. The only other time he expressed these sort of feelings, at least to me, was a couple of years later when he wrote to me how knocked sideways he’d been by his sister’s death.

Above all, a requirement for greatness, he was indomitable. He showed what that meant on the seven week voyage home with lots of pumping, the boom scarph springing and the tiller developing about 30 degrees of play (fun when broad reaching). We were all tired and fractious. It was often horrible and sometimes scary, but you can do more than you thought you could; at least you can when led by that dogged example. We were 20 odd, the skipper was 76 (which seemed ancient then). Nurse an old boat or not go at all? Look to yourself, don’t ask others for help getting out of scrapes you’ve got yourself into (unless you’re pinching a

Among the bergs

Jonno Barrett

18Jonno at Igdlorssuitt

salmon). We knowingly took responsibility for ourselves and the ship, wanted and expected no help.

But you don’t need to live like a king: ‘Funny thing about the skipper. Whenever Ilun cooks he says “marvellous, very

good” and he’s right. But unless it’s a curry, he smothers everything with Tabasco. It’s on the table as a condiment and he uses a lot. It does help cover up the dried cabbage; however prepared, it’s horrible stuff. I never thought I’d feel ‘Oh God for a real cabbage.’”

The Tabasco found another use added to the Saturday gin – on the basis that the colour was vaguely pink.

‘I don’t follow his values at all. They seem to be: get cold, wet and uncomfortable for its own sake and feel tough as a result. Mine are: if it’s necessary to be cold, wet or uncomfortable, fair enough, but if you can do it warm, dry and comfortable – or less uncomfortable, better still – as long as the object is achieved.’

Forty years on, I find myself more sympathetic to attempts to fight bodily decline; and the skipper had done stuff that needed ‘tough’ in buckets full.

Six weeks out from Greenland we came into the Channel. We were a week beating up to Lymington; tacking off Fowey with its warm lights and pubs galore was hurtful – particularly following a two day beat from the Lizard. Bits were falling off left and right. Was it focus on objectives or fear we’d all jump ship? I don’t think he knew how this crew, at least, revered, respected and even loved (if not always liked) him.

Eventually, engine broken and bedraggled we anchored off Lymington River: how to get to the Berthon for a tow? Famously, the skipper was smuggled from a wartime Italian village encoffined in a mock funeral. I think that he was more daunted climbing aboard an outboard powered trailer sailer. He faced two hours against a Spring Ebb among a very chatty midland family

When at last we turned up at the pub, we raised a few eyebrows: “Gin and What? Tabasco??”