Historical Setting: 793 C.E. The North Sea
Sailing east across the North Sea toward the Northumbrian islands where Christians huddle with their riches, each wind gust comes stronger and more southerly than the last. With the lifting of the clouds comes the rougher sea. Ever larger waves are racking us broadside. Everyone is seasick though we’ve hardly started on this journey.
We look across the waves. Some ships of our fleet are on top of the crests, while others are hidden in the gullies between, all of us bobbing up and down as we are at the mercy of this random roiling sea.
Advice to the novice sailors — don’t focus on the other ships of this fleet moving as they are with the waves — waves — ever moving, rising up at our broadside, large enough to hide the next ship, then buoy it back into view. It is hard not to become mesmerized by each longship bobbing up and down and the rhythm of the waves lifting and dipping then taking us, always unprepared, for the next. I try to keep a steady focus and not dwell on the churning water as I have often sailed and I know of this sea sickness. But, like most everyone else here, the churning of the ocean has found a home in the middle of me, and I too, am retching over the side. If I could just sit here a moment… The North Sea is well fed on morning oats this day. Tomorrow I’ll be the experienced sailor who watches the horizon and knows each day at sea will be different from the last. For better or worse, it will be different.
I’m assigned the second oar, port-side at the bow. Now, with each dive and pitch, the winds seem stronger and a full span of the sail is more than we can manage. Soaked and salted by the sea spray, I’m called now to help with the lines.
When we catch some glimpses of other ships, some are already reefing their sails. The ship nearest us has dropped the beam, draping the extra fabric of the sheet and tying it down, all the while fighting to keep the lowered, draped sail from gulping the sea. It is the bow slave there who climbs out on the beam to loosen the tangle of the lines for the hoisting back of the sail. May our reefing go more smoothly. [footnote]
[footnote] In these times the internet gives a blogger like me the opportunity to see videos of Viking longship replicas and a reconstruction of a warship ruin actually sailing. My source for this blog, a Youtube video (BBC TimeWatch, 2008) showing a voyage of “the Sea Stallion” a larger and later ship than would have been in the fleet in this story, but the North Sea is the same. To me, the calm voice of the BBC narrator seems incongruous with the hazards. A note in memorial to my brother Jack, who also loved sailing wooden boats, and my own experience going along on Long Island Sound when the wind shift surprised us, he took control with the same calm demeanor as a BBC narrator.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 