A
MODERN SEA BEGGAR
by
being
the story of his cruise from Newlyn to
in
the yawl `Inyala', with letters telling
of
his life in the
edited
by
FREDA
AND EMILY UTLEY
Illustrated
with Photographs
PETER
DAVIES
Published
in 1938
PRINTED
IN
THE UNlVERSITY
PRESS, GLASGOW
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
TO
AND TO
HIS
FRIEND, RAB BUCHANAN
PREFACE
This
book has been compiled from three sources: from
manuscripts
prepared for publication by
Utley
(some of which have appeared in The Yachting
Monthly),
from his log-book, which he frequently kept as
a
private notebook, and from his letters.
The editors have drawn from
these sources and com-
bined
them. This explanation is necessary because they
know
that
lished
in this form some of the observations and thoughts
which
they have included. As far as possible, however,
they
have avoided altering his words. The letters have
been
printed with the permission of their owners,
Utley's
mother and Rab Buchanan.
The editors desire to
express their appreciation and
thanks
to E. Warington Smyth, whose nautical know-
ledge
was of great assistance in revising the text, and who
gave
much time and care in helping with the actual
work
of editing. They owe much to her many suggestions.
Their
thanks are also due to Rab Buchanan for assistance
in
deciphering the MS. and for his encouragement
throughout.
F.
U.
E.
U.
CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE -
- - -
- - -
7
PART
I
The
Cruise: Adventures:
(September 1930 to September 1931)
I. NEWLYN TO
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII. THE GALAPAGOS:
1.
2.
3.
A Visit to Dr. Ritter- - -
- 129
4.
5.
With Brun on the Norge - -
- 150
6.
Disaster -
- - -
- - 160
7.
A Desperate Journey - - -
- 175
8.
Salving the Norge : and Departure- - 195
IX. THE GALAPAGOS TO THE MARQUESAS -
- - 204
CONTENTS
PART
II
Life
in the
Page
I. THE MARQUESAS -
- - -
- - 225
II. THE MARQUESAS TO
III.
INTRODUCTION WILFULLY MISPLACED, BEING
A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF
UTLEY
- - -
- - -
- 333
LIST
OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The
yawl Inyala - -
- - Frontispiece
Page
Rab
Buchanan and
The
Inyala, lee rail awash - -
- 208
PART
I
THE CRUISE: ADVENTURES:
(September
1930 to September 1931)
`.
. . I often say to myself when I take the wheel
at
night, the sky a blaze of stars and the ship
cutting
a phosphorescent track through the
black,
"Where would I sooner be? Who would
I
change places with" I tell myself, "Nowhere
and
no one." One lives fully like this-doing
things
and dreaming.'
(In
a letter from
to his mother)
I
NEWLYN
TO
When
I was a small boy the first books which made a
vivid
impression on me were Nansen's Farthest
North
and the back numbers of the Boy's Own Paper,
with
tales by Ballantyne and
Coral
Island.
There
were two things I wanted to do; one was to go to
the
North Pole, and the other was to sail to the South
Seas.
I had a great fleet of model yachts, and in my sum-
mer
holidays I used to sail a dinghy with my father, and
sometimes
I would get twenty-four hours on a fishing
boat.
Whilst
still a medical student I spent a holiday in
where
I made friends with an Englishman who was
stranded
in
French
crew and could not ship an Italian one, I offered
myself
to him as crew, and I had a delightful week sailing
on
the
While
I had been away a great friend of mine, called
Rab,
had heard that one could spend wonderful holidays
on
the west coast of
idea
being just day sailing with safe anchorages every
night,
and to spend much of the time walking, shooting
and
fishing. So with this very modest idea of sailing Rab
bought
a beautiful little ten tonner called Temptress, and
the
following spring four of us went up to the
her.
None of us knew much about it, but each of us tried
to
bluff the others that he was a salt-encrusted old shell-
back.
But before we ever sailed, before I even saw the
Temptress,
the stimulus was given to us which eventually
landed
Rab and me in
16
A MODERN SEA BEGGAR
the
Temptress, Mr. J. S. Douglas Dixon of
found
that he had sailed her round
way,
and also round the west coast of
seilles.
Our adventure in the Scotch lochs seemed a very
poor
thing after that.
We
sailed about the lochs for a fortnight; by then
we
were fired with ambition to go to sea, and Rab and I
thought
we would like to sail to
seemed
a great adventure, and we were amazed at our
own
daring.
One
who afterwards comes into the story, called
Walter,
had to leave us, so three of us set out. The first
night
we spent at sea we got a bit of a dusting, and we
left
another member of the crew on the Isle of Man. So
Rab
and I sailed by ourselves to
more
heroic. But then I had to go home. Nevertheless
two
months later we tried it again. We sailed back to
to
The
following summer I had very little time, but was
invited
to go with four strangers on a fifteen-ton cutter
from
I
was mate, and pretended to be the complete deep-sea
sailor.
I would like to tell the story of that cruise. The
boat
was very old; and the hull and rigging were com-
pletely
rotten. The skipper, who was a very fine sailor,
had
been to sea before, but the others were complete
novices
and all were inclined to sea sickness. It was on this
voyage
that I learned what the sea could be like when it
really
turned nasty. We got to
ing
back ran into a ‘strong’ gale, an official number 9
Beaufort
Scale; we carried away the bowsprit and the
boom,
and eventually got into
bare
poles, pumping like mad. The boat was sold there for
twenty-five
pounds.
NEWLYN
TO VIG0 17
In
the winter of 1929 to 1930 Rab decided that we
would
go to the
money
and started looking for a boat. He first thought of
buying
one of the smaller Brixham trawlers called `mules,'
which
had the reputation of being splendid sea boats.
The
Brixham smacks are some of the few sailing fishing
boats
left in
with
a surveyor, and found every one of them rotten, as
they
had been built in a hurry after the war from green
wood.
Then Rab tried to buy the Asgard, Erskine Chil-
ders'
old boat, a Colin Archer ketch of the Norwegian
pilot
boat type, but after a lot of negotiation her owner
decided
not to sell. It was while he was inspecting the
Asgard
that Rab first saw the Inyala, and the surveyor
advised
him to buy her.
The
Inyala was built in
special
survey. She is an old-fashioned boat of the plank
on
edge type, very strongly built, with oak frames and
pitch
pine planking, and the surveyor passed her as per-
fectly
sound. She is yawl rigged and her dimensions are:
fifty-one
feet overall; forty-five feet on the waterline;
eleven
feet beam; nine feet six inches draft. There is a
1906
Parsons engine giving a speed of two knots, and she
carries
twenty gallons of petrol.
Below
from forward aft there is, first, the forecastle
and
galley, then a passage with cupboards and shelves to
port,
and a small cabin to starboard, once the owner's
cabin
but now holding two fifty-gallon water tanks and
the
ship's stores. Next comes the saloon, then aft of
that
the companion ladder with a W.C. to starboard and
another
cupboard containing another fifty-gallon tank
to
port. Aft again is my cabin, and then the engine-
room
and sail locker combined, and there is another,
fifty-gallon
tank in the lower part of the forecastle
floor.
18 A MODERN SEA BEGGAR
We
could get no information about the Inyala's qualities
as
a sea boat, as her last owner had never taken her out of
the
said
that she was just the boat for the purpose; others that
a
boat with so little beam would be a death trap. Also, an
enormous
deck house completely spoiled her looks. But we
had
seen nothing better that Rab could afford to buy, and
both
Rab and I have a prejudice in favour of deep draft
boats.
We feel vaguely they cannot turn over. So Rab
bought
her. We got our old Scotch hand Willy down from
Oban,
and with my sister Freda as additional crew sailed
her
to Brixham to fit out.
As
we originally planned the cruise to the
the
crew was to consist of four amateurs: Rab, skipper;
myself,
mate; Walter, and a doctor friend of mine, whom
I
will call `G.' About the middle of May I went down to
Brixham
with G to try her out. I found Rab busily engaged
in
cutting four feet off the main mast and six feet off
the
top mast before I could stop him. After I had told
him
what I thought of him we set sail for
Then
Rab had to go home, so G, Willy and I set off
for
boat,
but she was rather slow and much too tender, and
we
decided to put an extra three tons of ballast into her.
We
agreed then that Rab was right in shortening the
main
mast; but I have since regretted the cutting down
of
the spars.
We
four met in a pub in
about
the middle of July. There was great enthusiasm.
We
toasted one another again and again. We were all
convinced
that town life was just silly: we said that all it
amounted
to was earning enough money to buy enough
beer
to deaden the memory of how one earned the money
to
buy the beer. We damned all civilization, and swore
that
we would never come home again, that we would
NEWLYN
TO
find
some obsure atoll and settle, and there spend our
lives
waiting for the coconuts to drop off the trees. Then
the
first flow fell. G resigned his job, but the
local
authorities
immediately offered him a better one at a
thirty-three
per cent increase. He was still firm about his
atoll,
but when they made him an even better offer and
then
as there were only three of us we decided to take
Willy,
and eventually met in Brixham about the middle
of
July 1930.
We
spent a hectic ten days. Willy, Rab and Walter
each
had his sweetheart or his wife staying with him,
and
the women were all convinced they would never
see
us again. The Brixham fishermen shook their heads
gloomily
and foretold disaster, saying that no boat
with
so little beam was fit to go to sea. They worked
on
Willy, who felt that way himself, and, worse, they
worked
on Willy's wife. To make matters even worse,
the
weather was very bad, the wind blew persistently
from
the south-west, and there was gale after gale. When
everything
was ready we kept on putting off the day of
departure
because the weather was so bad.
At
last at the beginning of August we set sail, saying
our
destination was the Canaries. The wind was light
leaving
Brixham, but as soon as we got out of the shelter
of
the Start we met a strong breeze dead ahead with a
very
unpleasant sea. Rab, who is a bad sailor, was very ill;
and
I, who never actually had been sea sick, was feeling
none
too good. I steered the boat until about eight in
the
evening and then went below, leaving her to Walter
and
Willy. She was then on the starboard tack, but when
I
came on deck again at
port
tack heading for Bolt Tail; the jib outhaul had
parted,
the jib was half up and half down, and Willy at the
wheel
did not appear to have noticed that anything had
20 A MODERN SEA BEGGAR
happened.
We secured the jib, and I left Willy again in
charge
and tried to cook a meal. There was an awful mess
in
the forecastle. Willy, on whom we had always de-
pended
before, had not stowed anything, and he had also
left
the forecastle hatch ajar. Everything was swamped
and
I could not get the stove to light for about an hour,
but
eventually having done so by dint of soaking it with
paraffin
I managed to warm up a stew, which only I and
Willy
were able to eat. Then Rab from his bed of agony
ordered
us to heave to for the night, which we did; but I
made
the mistake of not lowering the mizen, so she did
not
lie to very well.
In
the morning it was blowing much harder and
Rab
decided to put back. We had a furious argument, but
Willy
when appealed to also thought it was advisable, so
we
shamefully ran back to Brixham. The worst part was
that
no one was surprised to see us back.
Rab
decided that he would not start with us from
find
another amateur and that he would join us later.
Then
Willy said that he would not go, so that left Walter
and
me.
For
nearly a month Walter and I stayed down at Brix-
ham
trying to arrange something. We advertised in The
Times
and all the yachting papers, but found no one. At
last
we got Whitney, a friend of the secretary of the
Little
Ship Club, so the only thing we wanted was a paid
hand.
We could get no one in Brixham, where our name
was
mud, but my sister, who was staying with me for a
few
days, and who spends most of her holidays in fishing
boats,
was sure she could get me a Cornish fisherman.
After
a lot of telephoning, I engaged Richard Jenkins, on
the
recommendation of another fisherman friend of hers,
and
I arranged for him to arrive two days later. But the
day
after I had fixed this up Whitney got a telegram to
NEWLYN
TO
say
that his brother had got badly injured in a motor
accident
and was not likely to live, so he left us.
The
following day Richard Jenkins arrived, and then
Rab,
not knowing that Whitney had left us, came to see
us
off. By this time I was getting desperate, and I per-
suaded
Rab to let me go with Walter and Jenkins and
another
paid hand if we could find one. But then Walter,
whose
morale had been slowly ebbing away through the
weeks,
suddenly decided that he would not go, and he,
too,
left me. Finally it was decided that I should sail from
Brixham
to Newlyn with my sister and Jenkins as crew