AN ADVENTUROUS CRUISE

Southland Times, Issue 19173, 18 February 1924, Page 9

AN ADVENTUROUS CRUISE

19-FOOTER IN ENGLISH CHANNEL. The following account, of a small boat cruise in the English Channel is from a Home paper : “Where are you from ?** “Dundee.” “Where are you bound to?* “Calais.” Questioner holds in his breath and stares. “Calais—in that thing?” ‘Tee.” And at Amble, on the way home after a successful voyage, some fishermen repeated the question, “Where are you bound to?” “Dundee.” “What! Dundee? You’ll never reach Dundee in that craft!” But Skipper the Rev. William Forwell reached Dundee and home all right after 14 weeks’ voyaging from Broughty Ferry to France and back. And if he had cared to do it, Skipper Forwell and his 19-fool yawl could have crossed to New York as well as the Frenchman who did it the other day. When sitting aboard an English ship in Calais harbour detailing his course across the mouth of the Thames in a fog, a Thames captain told Forwell that, although he hail sailed as master in and out of the river for 30 years, he would not have attempted the Dundonian’s feat for £lOO. Two English skippers present promptly gave Forwell the title of captain. Ln Calais itself he mounted the social scale at an alarming rate, the Customs officers giving him a passport (cost, 10/-), in which he was duly designated Lord Forwell. The Silver Cloud was built by A. Burns, Montrose, in 1876 to Forwell’s own design, and proved herself an excellent sea boat. Although only 19 feet long she sailed the North Sea to France and back practically without shipping a sea. The only accident occurred in Calais, when Forwell and his son,, a boy of 14, were at Paris. The water had been allowed to run off the deck, and the yawl was left aground on a steep slope, with stern downward. When the tide rose the craft was submerged, and the whole contents of the cabin either destroyed or damaged—biscuits baked specially in Dundee for the voyage; provisions, clothes, bedding, nautical books, charts, an expensive bagster Bible, sermons (“my best, as far as I could learn”), log, sextant, barometer, etc. But the indefatigable skipper soon restored order and comfort. This glorious trip and no small feat of seamanship was begun on Friday, May 18, when the wind blew from the west for the first time in seven weeks. Taymouth was rough, but St. Andrew’s Bay was soon crossed, and good progress found them off Berwick. But they could not make the harbour owing to a spate in Tweed, a heavy tide, and the wreck of a steamer in the channel, so they kept on past the Longstone Lighthouse, Holy Isle, the Coque with the wind rising to a gale, and finally made land for the first time at Warkworth, “where we spent the Sabbath,” and incidentally got their dinghy stolen, only finding it after a day’s search away up the river, with the fine sculls and galvanised rowlocks gone for ever. They called at 20 ports during the voyage, but this Warkworth or Amble was the only place they had anything stolen. Warkworth is 140 miles from Dundee. Down the coast they made their way, calling in at the chief places to see the sights and meet friends and get Dundee letters. The craft and the voyage everywhere excited the greatest interest. A hurricane is encountered at Whitby, heavy sea at Scarborough; at Yarmouth an old boatbuilder tells them lugubriously, “Four young men built a boat ami rigged her. I told them she’d be their coffin. Well, just as I said it, they went out, there, a squall upset them, and they were all drowned. And, look ’ere, it will be the very same with you!” For days fishermen gathered on the piers discussing “Dundee to France in a thing like that.” “How will you get across the Wash?” had been the cry of the Broughty fishermen, but the dreaded Deeps were passed without trouble, and anchor cast at Orford Haven in Suffolk. The Yarmouth Independent, in a longish notice, said: “The boat, not larger than a shrimper. .... A wager is depending on her reaching Dunkirk at a certain lime,” but the skipper never heard of it. Some fishermen declared it must be for £2OOO. The Silver Cloud left Yarmouth at 11 in the forenoon, and was in Dover Harbour, over 100 miles, by 3 pan. next day, without touching land. This was a big feat itself. Crossing the Channel a heavy breeze was met, and some monster waves rolled after them round Cape Grisnez, but the crossing was made in four and a-half hours actual time. Julius Caesar took 10. After a pleasant rail trip to Paris, Forwell resumed the homeward voyage, which became a kind of mild triumphal procession, the fishermen along the coast hailing him with rounds of applause and hearty bandshakes wherever he went. Broughty was reached on a Friday, so that the- Silver Cloud sailed on a Friday and got safe home on a Friday.