In these Notes on Chapter 1 of The Voyage of the Aegre, you can learn more about my uncle, who went to sea in a boat with calico skin; the family home I mention; the choir at Kings College School Cambridge; early singlehanded sailors; cycling in Lapland; the yacht Mollihawk IV; and competitive rowing in Cambridge.
The Iona Curragh Voyage – Chapter 1
The curragh voyage: Early in the story, I mention that my uncle went to sea in a boat with calico skin. This traditional Irish curragh was built to re-enact the voyage of St Columba from Northern Ireland to Iona, a small island off the West Coast of Scotland. You can learn much more about it here.
My Family Home – Chapter 1
In Chapter 1, I write about my childhood home. This was in Cottenham, a village seven miles north of Cambridge, England. The house was probably built in the late 1670s. It had a wooden frame made, they said, of old ships’ timbers, filled in with lath and plaster in between. At night, as a child, I would lie in bed, frightened of (imagined) wolves in the bleak misty Fenland out the back, while staring at the colossal, strangely shaped wooden beams. I’d wonder about their previous life, the seas they’d sailed, the places they’d visited and the stories embedded in their very grain.
Much of Cottenham parish lies on a ridge around 8 metres above sea level. Until the 17th-century draining of the Fens of northern East Anglia, Cottenham was the only dry land between Cambridge and the Isle of Ely, about 12 miles to the north-east of the village. As part of an extensive Fenland region, Cottenham is drained by a system of ditches and lodes believed to have been built by the Romans.Â
On 29 April 1676, a fire destroyed over half of the buildings in the village. The current house at 60 Denmark Road was probably built soon after this most famous fire of 1676. It may be even older, as it’s a little outside the centre of the village and may have survived that fire. At the back of the house was a vast old farmyard, a wonderful playground for me, gradually civilised by my parents into a beautifully landscaped garden. Learn more about the history of this village.
The Fenland
King’s College Choir School
As I write in Chapter 1 of the book, my parents sent me to King’s College Choir School in Cambridge when I was seven. Travelling there and back alone daily from when I was 7 till 12 years old fostered my independence. The School is most famous for its choir, who sing in King’s Chapel, Cambridge (pictured). Their Christmas Carol Service has been broadcast nationwide by the BBC in the UK on Christmas Eve every year since 1928. But no, I wasn’t in the choir. I wanted to be an explorer, not a singer. Having no ability might have had something to do with it. But you can listen to them here. Simply divine.
Single-handed sailing
My father introduced me to single-handed sailing. Sadly, not as a practitioner, but at least as an avid follower of the first single-handed yacht race across the Atlantic in 1960. I was ten, and in the book, I wrote about how I caught his interest.
The five intrepid yachtsmen who entered that first single-handed yacht race across the Atlantic were not the first single-handed ocean sailors. But they were the first in the modern age and certainly the first to compete in a single-handed sailing race across an ocean. Their example has inspired generations of sailors since. See https://rwyc.org/club-history/ostar-history/ostar-1960/
But they weren’t the first. In 1895, Joshua Slocum, then a 55-year-old ex-sailing ship captain, had rebuilt an 11.2m (36’9″) oyster sloop, Spray, in Massachusetts and then sailed her around the world over the next three years.
Slocum stopped in many ports along the way. He’d solved the essential difficulty of how to steer the vessel all the time by selecting a boat and rig that was so well balanced that it could reputedly sail itself in a straight line when set up carefully on most points of sail. He did it all the time. But despite the apparent benefits of such a design, boats as well-balanced as Spray are still rare today, perhaps because speed is often compromised. The skill to set up the vessel appropriately to sail by herself is even rarer.
Slocum may not have been the first, but he was the first to write his story in a sufficiently engaging way that it is still popular and in print today. He also claimed the best title, ‘Sailing Alone Around the World.’
Howard Blackburn
Following Slocum, one other early recorded account of single-handed ocean sailing is Howard Blackburn, a dory fisherman from Gloucester, Massachusetts. Blackburn completed two single-handed ocean voyages across the North Atlantic in the early 1900s. See Garland J E, 1964, Lone Voyager—Hutchison of London.
Francis Chichester: I write about the inspiration of Francis Chichester’s single-handed voyage to Australia. For more about that see Chichester F, 1967, Gipsy Moth Circles the World. Hodder and Stoughton, and the autobiography of his wife Sheila, Chichester S, 1969, Two Lives Two Worlds. Hodder and Stoughton, in which she writes at length about the complications of meeting sponsor expectations.
The 1967 Lapland Cycling Adventure
Young people develop intrepid adventurousness and initiative through unpredictable travel experiences. As I tell in the book, for my 17-year-old school friend Tim and me cycling in Lapland, 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle in 1967, life was anything but predictable.
The first yacht – Chapter 1
In Chapter 1, I mention Mollihawk IV, the first yacht I worked and sailed on. The experience transformed an idea and interest into a love and ambition. Ultimately leading to The Aegre voyage and many others
Subsequently, my friend’s family took her across the Channel and through the European canals to the Mediterranean, where they cruised extensively.
Julie
Julie, a central character in the story, and I met while living in Cambridge. She was 15, and I was 18. See How Julie met Nick.
Competitive rowing in London
In Chapter 1, I briefly mention taking up competitive rowing in London as a student how the experience hardened me. I joined Furnival Sculling Club, located by Hammersmith Bridge on the Thames in London. Like many amateur rowing clubs on the Thames tideway, it was steeped in history. Founded in 1896 by Dr Frederick Furnivall as a Ladies Sculling Club. Learn more here .
I loved the sport of competitive rowing. The sense of brooding power released in split-second bursts 30 times a minute. I joined a committed crew. It was extraordinarily demanding. Being part of a two, four or eight-person crew, there was no letting up in a race just because you felt a bit tired. Many of the races are as if engraved in my brain, never to be forgotten.
