In the acknowledgements for his seminal travel memoir ‘In Patagonia’, the author Bruce Chatwin included this note at the very end to thank the merchant sailor Captain Charles Amherst Milward and his daughter Monica Barnett.
‘I could not have written this book without the help of Charley Milward’s daughter, Monica Barnett, of Lima. She allowed me access to her father’s papers and the unpublished manuscripts of his stories in her possession. This is particularly generous since she is writing her own biography in which they will appear in full. My sections 73, 75 and 86 are printed from the manuscript with minor alterations. His other stories, from sections 72 to 85, have been adapted from the original.’
I have looked for books by either Captain Milward or his daughter Monica Barnett and have found nothing. I have, more fortunately, discovered the records of Milward’s life. He was born in Paddington in London in 1859 and became a merchant navy Captain with the New Zealand Shipping Co. Ltd. He married Janet Beckett Rutherford in 1891 in Christchurch, New Zealand and they had three children together. After his wife died in Cape Town, South Africa in 1897, Milward married for a second time in 1916 to Isabella Burns Barr. They had two daughters, the oldest of whom was Monica Barnett who was born in 1917. She died in Santiago in 1982. This was their family home in Punta Arenas, Chile.
The crenellated towers are quite a distinctive architectural touch! Captain Milward died, quite possibly in this house, in Punta Arenas in 1928.
In Patagonia was published in 1977 so I, unfortunately, can assume that these tales of the high seas were never published. Like Chatwin, I regard Milward as a very fine storyteller, just on the basis of this one story. This story was titled section 73 so it is the personal recollections of the old sailor. There are quite a lot of obscure nautical references that I could only guess at but the story is vivid and rather poignant. Milward wrote in a very simple and straightforward style, almost reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway. As Bruce Chatwin made no claim on it and as it has not appeared in its own anthology, I thought it was worth sharing again. Captain Milward certainly experienced immense hardships whilst at sea to have gained the knowledge and wisdom to share this tale in the way he has. It’s quite an insight into a lost world.
We were close to the Horn, running with all plain sail set to a spanking breeze on the starboard quarter. It was a Sunday morning. I was walking up and down the main hatch with Chips the Carpenter and he said: “The girls at home are pulling with both hands.”
It’s an old sailor’s idea that every ship has a rope with one end made fast to her bows and the other held by the loved ones at home. And when the ship has a fair wind sailors say the girls are pulling hard on the rope. But when the wind is foul, some say there’s a knot or a kink in the rope, which won’t go through the block; and others say the girls are sparking round with the soldier chaps and have forgotten their sailor laddies.
Just then four bells struck. It was 10 a.m. and my turn to relieve the wheel. I had hardly got the middle spoke to my satisfaction, when the breeze backed northwards a couple of points, so that the squaresails took some wind out of the fore and aft canvas. The carpenter was still walking up and down when the ship rolled heavily to port. There was no wind in the main royal staysail and the sheet hung slack in a bight on the deck. The carpenter lost his balance in the roll and, by mistake, laid his foot on the staysail sheet. With the next roll to windward, the sail filled again and tightened the sheet like a fiddle string and caught Chips between the legs and dropped him in the sea.
I saw him go. I left the wheel a second and threw him a lifebuoy. We put the helm down and threw the ship into the wind, letting the top-gallant and royal halyards fly. While some hands cleared the accident boat, the rest began to get in the kites (as the small sails are called), and in less than ten minutes the boat was on her way to pick up the carpenter, whom we could see swimming strongly.
At the cry ‘Man Overboard!’ the whole of the ‘watch below’ had come on deck. First into the accident boat was the apprentice Walter Paton. The Second Mate, Mr Spence, knew Paton couldn’t swim much and told him to get out, and Philip Eddy, another apprentice, jumped into his place. Walter was not to be put off though and got in over the bows. The boat was in the water before Mr Spence saw him, and I heard a few remarks as they passed under the stern of the ship. Then we lost sight of them in the heavy sea that was running.
The boat left the ship at 10.15, all the crew with their lifebelts on. We were busy for some time getting the ship shortened down. The Captain was aloft on the mizzen cross-trees watching the boat. They had a long pull to windward and it was not till 11.30 that they were close to us coming back. But we couldn’t see if they had the carpenter or not.
The Captain gave the order to ‘Up Helm’ for the purpose of wearing ship, to bring the boat’s davits on the lee side and so hoist it aboard, and we all saw Mr Spence stand up and wave his arms. Whether to say they’d got the carpenter, or whether he thought we hadn’t seen them, will never be known. But in that one fatal second, his attention was off the boat, and she broached to and capsized. She was close to us, not more than two cables, and we saw them all swimming in the water.
We put the helm down again and brought the ship into the wind. We hurried to get out the second boat, but in a sailing ship this is a very different matter from getting out first. One boat was always ready, but the others were all bottoms up on the skids; and not only bottom up, but stuffed full of gear. The Captain’s fowls were in one. All the cabbages for the voyage were in another, and firebuckets and stands were stowed there to prevent them being washed overboard.
The men turned over the port boat first. But just as they had her over, a big wave struck the ship and two of them slipped, and she came down heavily and was staved in the bilge. Meanwhile I was watching the men in the water with glasses. I saw some helping others on to the bottom of the overturned boat. Then I saw Eddy and one of the Able-Seamen leave and swim towards the ship. They swam so close we could see who they were without glasses. But we were drifting faster than they could swim and they had to go back.
After turning over the starboard boat, we had to put a tackle on the main royal backstay to lift it over the side. And I don’t know whether the man who put the stop on the backstay was incapable or hurried, but, time after time, the strop slipped and each time the boat came down. And the ship was drifting, drifting to leeward, and we lost sight of the boat and the poor fellows clinging to the keel. But we knew where it was by the flights of birds wheeling round the spot – albatrosses, mollymauks, sooty petrels, stinkpots – all circling round and round.
The second boat, with Mr Flynn in charge, got away, but it was nearly 1 p.m. when she passed under the stern. She had a longer pull to windward and the men were hindered by their lifebelts. And she had a much longer pull back as the ship was drifting to leeward all the time.
We lost sight of her after twenty minutes and there began a weary wait for us, knowing five of our comrades were doing their level best to cling to the upturned keel. The Captain put the ship on one tack and then another, but finally decided to remain hove to and not lose ground. So we lay there straining our eyes for the return of the boat.
At 3.30 we saw her coming back. She came in under the stern but the wind and sea had risen and it was some time before she dared come alongside. By then we had realized the worst and locked the tackles on in silence and hoisted the boat inboard. Two or three of the men were bleeding about the head, those whose caps and sou’westers were not fastened. When the ship was back on course, we were able to ask questions and the gist of what we heard was this:
They had found the boat. They had brought back the lifebuoy I threw to the carpenter, and three of the five lifebelts, and had seen the other two in the sea, but not a sign of anyone. Then the birds attacked and they had to fight them off with stretchers. They swooped on their heads and took their caps off, and the men who were bleeding were struck by the cruel beaks of the albatrosses. When they examined the lifebelts and found all the strings untied, they knew what had happened. The birds had gone for the men in the water and had gone for their eyes. And the poor chaps had willingly untied the strings and sunk when they saw that no help came, for they couldn’t fight the birds with any hope of winning. The lifebuoy proved they had rescued the carpenter before the second accident occurred. It made us all the sadder to know that they had accomplished their mission.
After six and a half hours they relieved me from the wheel. It was the longest trick I ever experienced. I went down to the half-deck to get something to eat, but when I saw Walter’s and Philip’s bedclothes turned down and their pants lying on their chests, and their boots on the floor, just as they had left at the cry ‘Man Overboard!’, I lost control of myself, thought no more of being hungry and could do no more but sob. Later the Skipper told the Third Mate to take me away and let me sleep in his cabin.
‘It’s enough to drive the boy mad, in there with all those empty bunks.’
Wow. A great sea story!
Yes absolutely! As a sailor I can vouch for that!