Chapter 11 of the book, The Voyage of The Aegre, is about the Trans-Atlantic passage.
Departing from the Canary Islands, we headed southwest to pick up the NE Trade Wind. Then headed west to make a landfall on Barbados, 44 days later.
Being a little early in the season, the Trade Wind was fickle. Over the passage we had a mixture of strong following winds, head winds, and complete calm. For the full story of how the square sail performed, later being becalmed in the path of supertankers, and how we fared on this longest passage so far, see the book. But here are a few extra photos we couldn’t include in Chapter 11. (Click to enlarge).
When writing Chapter 11, long after making this passage, I thought about the many early voyagers in small boats who had crossed these same waters. Some are well known; Slocum, E F Knight and so on, but others less so. For instance in 1880, three Italians completed an Atlantic crossing, inspired by a deep love of their country.
Vincenzo Fondacaro from Bagnara Calabra, Orlando Grassoni from Ancona and Pietro Troccoli from Camerota, who had all emigrated to Uruguay, built a 10 metre flush decked schooner, Il Leone di Caprera. They sailed her from Montevideo to the Canary Islands. Then went on into the Mediterranean aiming for Italy, but ran out of money in Malaga, Southern Spain.
It’s an epic story of individual determination, Italian nationalism, and institutional rivalry and disinterest, that continues today.
There’s an interesting summary of the story on the website of Studio Faggioni Yacht Design who were involved in the restoration of the vessel.
The partially restored schooner and the story is in in Milan’s Science and Technolgy Museum (Museo Nazionale Scienza e Technologia Leonardon Da Vinci), where I came across it in 2018. However searching online (in 2024) it doesn’t seem to be there anymore. Back in 2018 I took a few photos of the vessel and the display:
Online the story of the voyage of the Il Leone di Caprera and her restoration seems best told in the links below.
- The story of Il Leone di Caprera
- The Lion of Caprera ‘Yesterday’.
- The restoration of the Lion of Caprera
- The Lion of Caprera in Milan for the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy
- The Lion of Caprera returns to Milan
- The museum launch, Livorno 9 June 1881 – 9 June 2009
- The Polytechnic of Milan joins ARIE for the restoration of the Lion of Caprera and FIV gives its patronage
Sorry, that’s nothing to do with The Aegre voyage, but for lovers of sea stories I think it’s interesting, and little known outside Italy. I found it remarkable to see the boat built in 1890 and still in an apparently largely unrestored state, despite the restoration efforts detailed in the above links, as shown in my photos.
Back to the List of Chapter Notes.
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