Whatever Floats Your Boat
Friday, Dec. 30, 1870: “Stormy with wind from southwest… carried away our fore top mast sail and the sailors (could not take it off) until it was in ribbons. At noon, wind changed to northwest and a very heavy sea coming over her… the sailors were up to their knees in water nearly all day. One of the passengers fell and got his arm and his ankle cut.” – Diary of James Berry, aboard the Calabria, bound for America.
By DAVE BERRY
I love boats; but boats don’t always love me.
I wrote once about our first boat. Even with the nearest lake a half-day away, we spent a lot of time in that little yellow Sea King trying to ski, attempting to fish, fighting whitecaps and searching for fun on that flatland lake in western Kansas.
Later, behind a powerful inboard-outboard, I found no better meditation than that experienced on a glassy lake at sunset, slalom ski whispering, muscles taut, mind at rest but remarkably sharp.
I always believed that, like my Berry ancestors, I would have made a good sailor. The Berrys abandoned Ireland during the potato famine for a new home on the Isle of Man, a tiny speck in the Irish Sea, where the ocean rules. Two great-uncles were mariners. Joseph was lost at sea at the age of 32. His brother Thomas died five years later aboard another ship. Five sisters worked at the sailcloth works, weaving flax into giant sheets that propelled Great Britain’s fleets.
My great-grandfather and his brother worked their passage on the three-masted steamship Calabria, setting sail for America in the winter of 1870. Their storm-tossed ship survived rough seas that washed over the decks, ice that kept them in their hammocks below and powerful winds that left one of their sails in tatters.
I once dreamed of signing on for a barefoot cruise, but that fantasy fled before I made it a reality. Owning a boat never really worked out, and cruises weren’t our cup of tea. So, an occasional canoe ride on a quiet river and a fishing trip on my brother-in-law’s bass boat were the limits of my investment in a life of yachts and leisure. Only two trips qualify as adventures on the high seas.
In the early 80s, on the Texas Gulf Coast, I let our environmental writer talk me into an offshore fishing trip. His friend would take us way out in the Gulf, past the surf and offshore rigs, beyond the brown shallows to where the waters are clear and blue. We would drop our lines, open the beer cooler and wait. It sounded like a party, and I talked my wife – who has no love whatsoever for boats – into going.
Gordon’s friend wasn’t a regular fishing guide. He was a shrimper. It was the off-season, he was available, and our craft for the day was a boat from his shrimp fleet.
As we cleared the Surfside jetties, a storm swept in from offshore. The captain held his course, the wooden boat vibrating as it pounded through already high seas. Rain poured in sheets, lightning crackled and those on deck crowded into the wheelhouse for safety. We met a stream of boats returning to port, and radio traffic was unanimous in urging our captain to turn around. But his radar convinced him that beyond this line of squalls awaited calm seas, sunny skies and a balmy day of fishing, drinking and fun.
We were turning green when someone from below announced the head was out of order. Let’s not go into that. We were seasick, and the tablets we took only made us groggy. We slumped where we could on the slippery deck, too sick to care, resigned to our misery, closing our eyes on this seaborne nightmare.
Hours later, Marti and I woke to the reality of people stepping over us as they fished. Sprawled on the deck, sun burning our faces, a tiny bit less miserable, we rejoiced to be among the living. The waters, as the captain promised, were perfect.
I don’t remember dropping a line in, much less catching a fish. As the sun tilted toward the horizon, we returned on calm seas, seasickness disappearing as the horizon appeared. My wife has since been content to let others do the sailing. But I hadn’t learned my lesson.
I worked with another fellow who was a sailboat enthusiast. Glenn enjoyed the science of sailing, the intricacies of navigation, the joy of controlling the wind. One day, in the dead of winter, he talked me into helping crew his new Laser in an offshore regatta. It was a balmy Texas day, and a small group of friends were setting out to sail down the coast to Matagorda Island.
A veteran and a novice, we held our own as we knifed through the swells, but a “blue norther” forecast to stay north of Houston dipped down and caught us. In choppy waters, with winds whip-sawing our sail, we capsized a mile offshore. We weren’t alone. Others in the small-boat regatta were also flung into the drink. Glenn was unflappable and treated me to a lesson in righting a sailboat while bobbing in open water.
Once righted, we headed with the other shivering sailors for the uninhabited Matagorda Island. We had intended it only as a turnaround spot, but before we could face that cold north wind, we needed to dry out and warm up.
Everyone fanned out on a desperate hunt for driftwood… anything to get a fire going. One woman produced a cigarette lighter that had gone into the water with her, but it worked. Soon, in a tight ring around the bonfire, we shucked outer layers and turned like chickens on a rotisserie until the fire worked its magic. The trip back up the coast went without a hitch.
I still love boats. Feeding the seagulls with my girls from the bow of the Galveston Ferry is a great memory, as was the ferry crossing of Ireland’s River Shannon with my mother, brothers and sisters a decade ago. The daily parade of barge traffic on the Ohio River was fascinating to watch, and I could be talked into another float trip on the Illinois River in northeastern Oklahoma.
But, realistically, these days my affair with boats is mostly photographic. I could have spent hours more aboard the steam ferryboat Eureka and the square-rigger Balclutha berthed in San Francisco Harbor. Aboard the U.S.S. Olympia at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia, I didn’t fully appreciate the history of a steel warship that saw action in the Spanish-American War. I immersed myself for hours alone in the cramped confines of the submarine U.S.S. Batfish in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
Nearer home, I’ve explored the tall ship Elissa in Galveston Harbor and spent an evening aboard the WWII aircraft carrier U.S.S. Lexington at Corpus Christi. But it’s been too long since I went below deck on the Battleship Texas outside of Houston. Some of my favorite photos are of boats large and small.
I’ve written about photographing the “Blue Boat in the Rain” on Ireland’s Kenmare River. That and the “Wreck of the Lady Carol,” a shrimp boat sunk off the Surfside jetties, are two of my favorite photos.
Despite getting soaked and seasick, I still like boats. If my great-grandfather had known beforehand of the heavy gales he would endure on the Calabria, would he have crossed the Atlantic? I’m pretty sure he would have.
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Dave Berry is the retired editor of the Tyler Morning Telegraph, Tyler, Texas. His Focal Point column ran weekly for four years until his retirement from newspapering. This piece ran Jan. 21, 2015.
Top photo: Blue Boat in the Rain on the Kenmore River in the Republic of Ireland in 2011. Second Photo: The shrimp boat Lady Carol rests in the shallows after going aground off the Surfside jetties in 1978. (Photos by Dave Berry)