Wayside street libraries are a feature of today’s suburbia, courtesy (usually) of some generous householder and a bit of innovative carpentry attached to the front fence. Open the door, rummage through the books on offer, select, and take. All for free, but with one caveat: please leave a swap for each volume you remove.
It was something of a surprise to find a street library in the north-westerly Victorian town of Charlton; not a surprise that the library existed, but that it was located in the car park of the Travellers’ Rest public facility – its existence presumably due to initiative, not at the household, but at the municipal level. The logic of the particular location is somewhat problematic for users of the close-by toilets. Moreover, there’s the likelihood that the typical traveller will not have an available volume to leave behind. But, when among the preponderance of latter-day crime and romance fiction I found a Great Pan paperback, I could not resist. And be damned if I was observed taking but not giving. Anyway, I shall pass that way again and, hand on heart, I intend to replace what I took.
My acquisition has more than repaid any risk of naming and shaming. It is Kicking Canvas, author Captain A.A. Bestic. The book was published by Evans Brothers in 1957, this Pan edition dating from 1960. Bestic recounts his 1910 voyage as an apprentice seaman aboard the 3-masted sailing ship, Denbigh Castle – so he had waited nearly 50 years to publish his story, and had long since completed his career at sea, and retired as a ship’s master.
Bestic recounts his journey on Denbigh Castle as one of adventure and travail. One of the most notable features is that the annals record it as the longest ever time at sea by a sailing ship, somewhat more than a year. For some reason, The Flying Dutchman is not regarded as a contender. During the journey the globe was circumnavigated, but at around 40 degrees south. This voyage is difficult to envisage without a globe atlas. The below sketch-map from the book pictures the “underneath” of Earth as imagined looking up from space beneath Antarctica and the South Pole.
Lusitania, of 44060 tons, although a non-armed non-combatant in the War, was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine about eleven miles off the coast of Ireland. This was on 7 May, 1915. The German response to the world’s outrage was that Lusitania had in its cargo some “war materials” (true: 173 tons, declared in the manifest), that Lusitania was an armed warship, and that it was carrying Canadian troops (both claims false), and that the rule of the sea prohibiting the sinking of ships without warning was “obsolete”. Moreover, the Germans had issued a general warning to all shipping in the Atlantic, and they asserted that that was sufficient. There was more than a modicum of international outrage at the loss of 1197 lives. More than 100 were American citizens. The United States did not declare war on Germany until 6 April, 1917, two years later, demonstrating a diffidence not evident in the present era.
Reverting, now, to Bestic’s time on Denbigh Castle: the principal picture the author paints is one of continuous labour. He doesn’t suggest that the boat was short-crewed, but there was little time for leisure. Clearly, the rough seas that stymied the westward passage around Cape Horn were exceptional, but there were numerous occasions when conditions required all hands to be on deck, and saw seamen fall into their bunks, too exhausted to remove their drenched clothes.
The voyage of Denbigh Castle was impacted by the presence of a stowaway (Kemp) – not your fictional runaway child, but a grown man, and a seaman to boot! The captain resolved the problem of keeping the man imprisoned for the duration by seconding him to the crew, subject to the discipline of the courts upon arrival. This decision proved to be fraught because, notwithstanding his precarious position, the stowaway became an agitator and a troublemaker with other crewmen.
The author describes life on board in great detail, for instance the change-over of the entire set of sails, that is eighteen square sails and eleven fore-and-aft sails. This process took all hands two days.
And his description of the giant wave that ended weeks of being stymied short of Cape Horn, and its culmination, is memorable. “Instinctively we knew that no wind, not even the tearing fury we were now experiencing, could be responsible for such a stupendous hill of water and foam. Possibly it had originated through some disturbance thousands of miles away, and had grown to its immensity during its unhindered journey around the base of the world. Maybe a ‘burg’ had turned over. Who could tell? What did it matter? It was almost upon us.” The ship survived, but with considerable above-deck damage. Cape Horn had won; and after running repairs, and with a seriously-shifted cargo, the captain ordered an about face - east to Australia.
The reversal of direction lengthened the voyage by several months, and necessitated a call into Fremantle for supplies. And effected good news/bad news for the ship’s owners: the Denbigh Castle was safe, but the voyage had become a financial disaster. The response of the owners to the news that they still had a ship, and that their cargo was secure, was to dismiss the master at the next port of call.
Meanwhile, led by the agitator, Kemp, there was a rebellion: ten of the crew seized the tugboat that had brought supplies to the anchored Denbigh Castle, and declared a mutiny. On shore the mutineers walked to the police station…..except for Kemp, who quietly slipped away, never to be heard of again. The nine remaining malcontents were summarily dismissed by the Justices at the Fremantle Police Court, and were returned to their boat. But they persisted with their revolt, and later were removed by the police in handcuffs, and feature no further in Bestic’s narrative.
Word was out about the revolt, and about Denbigh Castle’s fraught passage, and recruits were hard to find in Fremantle – at least, if not hard to find then hard to persuade. Adding further pain to the captain’s woes, the situation had significantly boosted the going pay rate. But not by enough to tempt seafarers: when the ship left Fremantle, the hands replacing the mutineers included four fishermen, four sheep farmers, and two “who kept chickens”!
The remaining voyage, although generally through temperate seas, still held plenty of incident, including Denbigh Castle almost being wrecked off the coast of Chile, only to be rescued by a tugboat that sensed its distress and steamed out from port. And, when they arrived in Mollendo the captain was dismissed and replaced. And there was a second mutiny. Enough!
Returning home, and one hundred and twenty-six days from Mollendo, and Denbigh Castle had rounded Cape Horn (from west to east), crossed the southern Atlantic, and berthed at the West India Docks in the Thames. The ship was made ship-shape as the cargo was being unloaded. Members of the crew were being discharged - although Bestic and other apprentices were conditionally on shore leave until recall for the next voyage.
Then on dockside Bestic was accosted by one of his former crewmates, Paddy, who had lingered out of general earshot. Paddy implored Bestic to transfer to another ship for his next voyage. Paddy claimed to be prescient, and warned that Denbigh Castle would not return from the sea. He was persistent, so persistent that Bestic was persuaded to give his promise. And, so they parted. Bestic kept his word, much to the consternation of his parents, who were subsequently obliged to travel to Liverpool to give assurances to the ship’s owners prior to Bestic’s transfer being approved.
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On the evidence of wreckage discovered on the Dorset coast a Board of Trade enquiry concluded that on or about 26 December, 1912, Denbigh Castle, with a cargo of guano bound for Antwerp, had, near the end of its journey from Peru, foundered in a sudden squall in the English Channel with loss of all 28 hands.
Gary Andrews
