food, first-aid kit, the hurricane lamp, even the ship’s bell, which looked like a large Swiss cowbell but was in fact a copy of the chapel bells that in Saint Brendan’s day had hung outside the monks’ oratories and called their congregations to prayer. How much easier it had been, I thought to myself, for SaintBrendan and his monks all those years ago. They would have simply put to sea with spare leather and currying fat; the woollen clothes they used for everyday wear, especially the hooded gowns of heavy wool; a supply of water in leather flasks; wooden dippers for bailers; dried meat, cereals, and roots for their food; and—most important—a sublime faith that God would take care of them.
They were men accustomed to extraordinary hardship. From the other side of the Dingle Peninsula one could see the twin pinnacles of the Skellig Islands, thrusting out of the Atlantic. Out there it was so exposed that spray from the waves broke the lighthouse windows four hundred feet above the surface of the water. Yet, in Saint Brendan’s day, a community of monks chose to live on those bleak rocks. With devoted labor they had cleared a ledge and built six beehive huts and two oratories of rough stone. Here they had lived huddled together in Christianity’s most lonely outpost. Flailed by the great winds of winter and early spring, they were cut off from contact with the mainland when no skin boat, however skillfully handled, could have reached them. Yet somehow they survived, and clung as stubbornly to their faith as their hemispherical homes clung like housemartins’ nests to the rock. They were so constant and so isolated that long after the Church calendar was amended, the monks of the Skelligs still celebrated Easter on its original date.
To try to emulate such hardy men would prove little. They had shown their fortitude for all history to see; and now for
Brendan’s
crew to set out wearing medieval clothing or eating a medieval diet would teach us nothing new. It would only make our modern task more difficult and uncomfortable. We were embarking on the Brendan Voyage not to prove ourselves, but to prove the boat.
Brendan
was what mattered. No wonder I envied the monks their simplicity. They had not worried where to stow camera equipment so that it kept dry, nor how to find space for the pair of twelve-volt car batteries that powered our small radio telephone. As for the radio itself, it was still in its carton. The radio had arrived so recently that there was no time to unpack it, let alone install or test it properly. Like many other items of our equipment, our radio was an unknown quantity. Radio manufacturer after manufacturer had been approached for help in supplying a suitable set, but most of them were appalled at the thought of exposing their radios to conditions in an open boat. Even the makers of military radio setsdesigned to be dropped by parachute had doubted if their equipment would survive aboard
Brendan.
Only at the very last minute was a set offered.
The rest of our equipment was relatively basic. We had a life raft and a box of distress flares, jerry cans of water and paraffin, a small radio direction finder, a sextant and tables, and a bundle of charts. Most of our drinking water was stored in soft rubber tubes—the modern equivalent of the leather flasks of the monks—tucked under the slatted floor of the boat where it would also serve as ballast. Our food was packed in plastic bags, one bag to be opened each day and, if my calculations were correct, containing sufficient food for five men for twenty-four hours. The food itself was a gourmet’s nightmare. There were the usual tins of meat and fish and baked beans; packets of dried soups and vegetables; dried fruit and bars of chocolate; and an apparently endless supply of Scots oatmeal cake, which I hoped would prove a substitute for bread. On our past record, George and I doubted if we would catch many fish to supplement our diet, and looking
They were men accustomed to extraordinary hardship. From the other side of the Dingle Peninsula one could see the twin pinnacles of the Skellig Islands, thrusting out of the Atlantic. Out there it was so exposed that spray from the waves broke the lighthouse windows four hundred feet above the surface of the water. Yet, in Saint Brendan’s day, a community of monks chose to live on those bleak rocks. With devoted labor they had cleared a ledge and built six beehive huts and two oratories of rough stone. Here they had lived huddled together in Christianity’s most lonely outpost. Flailed by the great winds of winter and early spring, they were cut off from contact with the mainland when no skin boat, however skillfully handled, could have reached them. Yet somehow they survived, and clung as stubbornly to their faith as their hemispherical homes clung like housemartins’ nests to the rock. They were so constant and so isolated that long after the Church calendar was amended, the monks of the Skelligs still celebrated Easter on its original date.
To try to emulate such hardy men would prove little. They had shown their fortitude for all history to see; and now for
Brendan’s
crew to set out wearing medieval clothing or eating a medieval diet would teach us nothing new. It would only make our modern task more difficult and uncomfortable. We were embarking on the Brendan Voyage not to prove ourselves, but to prove the boat.
Brendan
was what mattered. No wonder I envied the monks their simplicity. They had not worried where to stow camera equipment so that it kept dry, nor how to find space for the pair of twelve-volt car batteries that powered our small radio telephone. As for the radio itself, it was still in its carton. The radio had arrived so recently that there was no time to unpack it, let alone install or test it properly. Like many other items of our equipment, our radio was an unknown quantity. Radio manufacturer after manufacturer had been approached for help in supplying a suitable set, but most of them were appalled at the thought of exposing their radios to conditions in an open boat. Even the makers of military radio setsdesigned to be dropped by parachute had doubted if their equipment would survive aboard
Brendan.
Only at the very last minute was a set offered.
The rest of our equipment was relatively basic. We had a life raft and a box of distress flares, jerry cans of water and paraffin, a small radio direction finder, a sextant and tables, and a bundle of charts. Most of our drinking water was stored in soft rubber tubes—the modern equivalent of the leather flasks of the monks—tucked under the slatted floor of the boat where it would also serve as ballast. Our food was packed in plastic bags, one bag to be opened each day and, if my calculations were correct, containing sufficient food for five men for twenty-four hours. The food itself was a gourmet’s nightmare. There were the usual tins of meat and fish and baked beans; packets of dried soups and vegetables; dried fruit and bars of chocolate; and an apparently endless supply of Scots oatmeal cake, which I hoped would prove a substitute for bread. On our past record, George and I doubted if we would catch many fish to supplement our diet, and looking
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