The Maritime Letter

Disclaimer: The following is an outcome of a 'nautical research'  about an imaginary maritime journey and not a piece of literature. It doesn’t hold several properties of a literature. It is not meant to be on this blog, as it deviates from the purpose of the blog, still, it is here because of certain reasons.

(Refer glossary for nautical terminologies)

Recently I ran into an interesting piece of writing; a maritime letter.

I was scuba diving on behalf of our latest marine, archaeological survey; specifically, a study on shipwreck remaining, around the Kona coast, Hawaiian islands -one of the active coast with several bays, in the North Pacific Ocean, from the ancient times itself. Kona coast always reminds me of the dramatic story of James cook, who was murdered in the Hawaiian Islands, in the 18^th century. We have seen ships from 19^th and 18^th century, with exceptional architecture, which probably had drowned deep into the ocean in some dreadful cyclones. From some ships we had got nautical charts, partially modified with the depth profile of ocean; they might have gone on a journey merely to study the geographical properties of the ocean and eradicated by storm or seamounts. Imagine a situation, HMS Beagle; Darwin’s ship drowned and all his studies about the Galapagos Island were lost! Are you startled? What if there is so much information that the world has never seen so far... deep in the seabed... hidden in some ship debris…

The sea voyage is comparatively safe nowadays... We own several means of communication to contact the land with not much delay, latest navigational instruments make the journey easier... Also, the division of seafarer's profession has made it more relaxed one. For example, the duty of the first mate is to make sure if everyone else is doing their job. He will communicate only with the captain of the ship. Going a bit back, about one or two centuries itself make the voyage a perilous one, in terms of multiple tasks, less efficient navigational instruments, moreover, there is no way to communicate with the land!

This ship is the oldest among the shipwreck remaining we found from the Hawaiian region, containing a wide variety of ancient writings and objects; probably from the 17^th century (well, according to the letter the beginning of 17^th century! you’ll know it as you read along with the navigator). It had a collection of writing on sea winds, direction, season –it seemed to be a kind of weather analysis-, a collection of astronomical data, elephant tusks, and spice -possibly from India. In brief, it must have been a remarkable merchant vessel, with intelligent explorers and valuable commodities…

The following is a few pages we got along with the ship's log we found from it. As the 17^th century English is incomprehensible, we have paraphrased it in the modern English.

The maritime letter

I'm writing this to you as I think this is an anomalous experience in my nautical life. Hopefully, we are about to study a submarine volcano! Can a volcanic eruption create a sudden ocean current? I want you to go through each and every event I've experienced this day. Or probably I'm extremely eager about the envisioned study and hence I want to write everything to you.

This was a pleasant day till the afternoon. I was playing cards with a few travelers before my duty time, the afternoon section. Even under the hot sun, it was literally cool and peaceful atmosphere; as I have got used to the sea breeze. <char name> handed me the ship wheel after lunch, around 4 O’clock and went to take rest. As I said earlier the weather was perfect for a fine travel and it’s indisputable that a nautical chart and compass are more than enough to travel across a sea on a pleasant day if you are aware of the sudden change of ocean currents and direction of winds (still I admire the rutter...). I sympathized our telescope and compass that they were going to be workless that day. Telescope indeed is marvelous especially when we travel in an ocean… Have you happened to use it? It had been recently made and imported by the Dutch's, we can see far away things as if they’re next to us.

It is wonderful to navigate a ship in a pleasant day, all that you have to do is mast tuning and rigging according to the wind, and adjust the ship according to the ocean currents, with the help of nautical chart and compass. Also, one must take care of the angle at which ship enters to an ocean current as well as should provide enough force to overcome the thrust when we move out of an ocean current. The marine scenery remained still almost for the next one hour… the ship kept on moving forward in the steady wind. As the cozy hour had gone, a group of whales was seen on the sea surface, the largest whales I ever have seen those makes a peculiar sound. I knew that they used to migrate in groups from Alaska to Hawaii sometime around this season. They make use of the sun for navigation, the weather change seldom affects them. Whales seemed to deviate a bit from their usual direction. That is impossible unless there was an unexpected, fierce ocean current present, from where they come. But, an ocean current was not supposed to be there in this area, by the nautical chart, and from my past experience! Or probably they changed their path due to some other obstacles in their usual path or else they had been chased by some marine being, like killer whales…

Well, a voyage is not about speculations but about records. I called out one of the crews who keep the record of distance traveled, and speed of the ship. I always have a feeling that both the speed tracking and the timekeeping are tiresome, as they do the very same thing throughout the journey and need full concentration. Timekeeping is even more tedious; especially to track the speed of the vessel in a bad weather. I divert from the topic! I wrote down the direction, approximate speed, time, latitude and longitude of the group of whales. Not more than half an hour passed a flock of Arctic tern passed by our ship, at a high altitude. In general, seabirds fly at a medium or low altitude over the sea, unless there is a tailwind –wind blowing in the direction of their travel. So, if any flock is flying high, there must be the wind in the direction of their travel, and we were headed towards the same direction…

Despite the pleasant weather, I started expecting something terrible to happen. Still, all those could’ve been signs of nothing at all, yet, we can’t neglect them. We were thousands of miles away from our destination, Honohokau. Uselessly I recalled the saying, ‘the farther the sight, the nearer the rain’. The pleasant weather lasted not more than the next half an hour, rainbow marks were seen on the horizon... The weather changes vividly appeared in the sail…They started quivering... We had to get ready to welcome a fierce storm that was capable of deviating, the migratory path of the whales, I thought…

Unlike story books, in which a ship run into a peril unexpectedly, and everyone run around hurriedly to find a solution; a voyage becomes adventurous when we wait for an agonizing stormy night, which was about to start within a few minutes! Loud noises of approbation and denial were heard from the spar deck at once; the reefing must have started, I imagined. Roller reefing would be the best then, to avoid even a small effect of wind. I relied on their expertise. The voyage was no more possible at that time, as we were expecting a sudden ocean current in our path. I prepared myself to tame the rudder.

Within minutes the surface became turbulent with billows; or did I feel a few seconds longer than that! A heavy wind, blown across our path, and the sky became cloudy. It started lightning… Still, it wasn’t that strange, we used to face such unexpected storms. I kept on directing our vessel, and elegantly it was surpassing the huge tides molded by the heavy wind… clouds made big castles in the sky, the world around me started fading out, just a dim foggy layer left. By then <char name> came back to the wheelhouse to assist me; the turmoil woke him up. A few reckless travelers were also there on the deck enjoying the lightning and thunder. They were ordered to go inside. Compass was showing a direction about one degree away from our desired path. I wanted to make sure if the crew did roller reefing. As we can’t raise our voice over the thunder and stormy atmosphere <char name> went up to the crew, to make sure if it was done. I kept on observing the compass and noted down the readings. The compass must have shown an oscillation within a few degrees since the ship was being floated on the turbulent sea. Yet it was showing a trend as if we were being dragged by some force. It must be due to the inertia of motion; I tried to calm me down. It worked none; the angular variation was increasing enormously. The last reading I wrote down was, the ship was moving 13 degrees towards the southwest away from the desired path. That was more than enough to conclude we are being drawn by ocean current…

By then the storm came closer to us and the apparent magnetic field started fluctuating due to lightning, the compass needle was spinning about its axis… The only thing that I could do was to turn rudder back to the path; it may or may not work. <char name> didn’t come back yet, he didn’t seem to be aware of the deviation, he must have considered it as any other stormy evening, otherwise would’ve come back by then… The deviation must have been increasing; may be 25 degrees or more than that. The rapid surface cooling would have contributed a complex turning which would take us to some other direction or a shipwreck itself! Still, the only idea I could think of was turning the wheel to a direction to get rid of the current at the least. How about the turning radius then; once we turn below the critical radius no one can save any vessel. How about the seamounts! We knew very few of those away from the navigational route. Would any navigator want hiser ship to sink forever?

<char name> came back. As he came I yelled ‘we are trapped in an ocean current, a spontaneous one’. The ship could go any direction. He ran back. Tow lines were paid out with conical sea anchors to get equilibrium. I was so much aware then such that I could imagine the rattling sound of the chain, or I might have heard it in real. Chip logs were thrown into the ocean to measure the speed; it must have been too difficult to handle the sand-glass! I was extremely worried about the turning angle, what if the current itself was about to turn less than the ship’s turning angle? We weren’t even able to know the direction of the current. I decided to turn the rudder away from the apparent ocean current direction; at each point. I also had to take care of center of gravity and the storm’s eye…

There was no delay to get the atmosphere pitch black, the sun must’ve set. We were moving closer to the storm, it had ear- piercing whistling. I barely believed we all were together. There was no sign of a human present in the vessel unless he or she touched me. I repeatedly envisaged that everyone else was dead on the ship or taken away by the tides. Sometimes I doubted if I was in the vessel itself or was thrown away from it along with the ship wheel. I gaped as we always do when we get alone in the black, in a strange place when we know nothing about what to expect in the next step; a pit that leads nowhere? Sometimes I felt like I was lying down on the sides. I was afraid if the ship was about to flip over in some instances. The ship wheel was moving by itself as it was alive. I didn’t want to lose my control over it, as ship wheel was the only thing I could rely on then. I held the wheel tightly, at the same time the rudder must not break. Whenever I ‘felt’ there was a turning, I turned the wheel to avoid a steep curving. There had been a quiver at some point; the ship must have hit some seamount. All I wanted was the rudder to remain undamaged or else we would get trapped amid the waves. Somehow we managed not to get into the storm’s eye. Probably it took hours for the ocean to calm down.

As any other stormy night, we survived it except about the ocean current. We had no idea where we were, and there was the unknown ocean current with us. We lit the beeswax candles and kept on tracking the directional change of the ocean current, literally we were writing an adventurous sea voyage story in the rutter. Those are the moments one would admire a compass from the depth of ‘brain’, for its exceptionally excellent measures. Analyzing the readings, it seemed that we were near a maelstrom! Finally, we got a picture of the current so does to which category it belonged, and we had an excellent weather explorer with us to help me with it. With not much effort we sidestepped from the current. Still, it was a rough approximation. Also, we are doubtful about the possibility of a submarine volcano in there, depending on the map of the current. I believe you will be interested in it. I insisted on checking the rudder. For that, we need to wait for a dawn and to anchor it somewhere. We traveled for a few more hours to find an anchorage. Delightedly a small island like structure was seen under the candle light. A few of us got down. It seemed to be some kind of coral reef structure felt by our legs. We didn’t spend much time then, as we planned to visit there tomorrow morning, and I'll add geographical details I collect about this island with this letter. So far no water leakages were found in our vessel. It’s going to be a pleasant night, with bright stars, I suppose.

Since we are lost in the sea, it may take up to a few weeks to find a route and reach there. Will meet you at Kilauea within three days since you receive this letter after I finish the trading at Honokohau. Then we shall decide further study about this strange current or we shall go to your symmetric volcano, in the Catherine Archepalego...

It ends like this. Probably one might not be aware why this ship was so special, as long as hesher is ignorant of maritime history… Say, ancient trading in which the Aleutian Islands were involved are found seldom. Then, towards the end, it is written, ‘Finally, we got a picture of the ocean current so does to which category it belonged’. The oceans current studies became popular in the beginning of 19^th century whereas this voyage is in the beginning of 17^th century, and they did categorize currents into different types already (we will investigate what was the criterion for such a categorization; let the rest of the writing collection come up from the ship!).

This shipwreck remaining found not more than a few hundred kilometers away from the Kona coast, where there is no atoll or reef found. Also, there were no more updates in the rutter past their mooring. I wonder what would’ve happened to this wonderful ship. Had there been any island in the past which disappeared later? Did they sink into the sea with the swallowed island? We need to investigate on it that if there is any evidence for the rudder examination or repair. And if there is evidence for repair they must have restarted the voyage. But none was found so far about such a restart. I do not know much on the ancient Hawaiian cannibalism.

Definitely, I’ll come back to you with valid pieces of evidence and proofs to complete the story.




Glossary

Anchorage - an area off the coast, suitable for anchoring ships. 

Atoll - a ring-shaped reef, made of coral.

Chip log - a tool that was used to measure the speed of a ship.

Conical sea anchors - assumed to be 'Drogue': used to slow down a ship (which never have recorded being used before the 1800s).
The whale- We assume it to be the humpback whales based on the description about where, when did they saw it and the description about the size and 'peculiar' sound. (They also make use of the earth's magnetic field for migration)

Merchant vessel - a ship that carries cargo/passenger for hire.

Maritime - concerning sea, or navigation(especially trade/naval).

Nautical - see maritime.

Nautical chart - a map that depicts shorelines, seafloor, depth for navigation.

Reefing - reducing an area of a sail by folding or rolling one edge of the canvas.

Roller reefing - rolling the sail to spar or wire.

Rudder - a flat piece vertically hinged at the bottom of a ship to control the fluid flow hence the direction of navigation.

Rutter - a mariner's handbook of written sailing directions, before nautical charts.

Seafarer - sailor, mariner.

Seamount - a submarine mountain.
Ship's log - record of speed, course, operation and other navigational information.

Spar deck - a light upper deck of a ship.

Turning rudder - controlling rudder by ship wheel.

Turning radius - the radius of the smallest circular turn a ship can take.

Vessel - a ship.