Voyage of The Paper Canoe [37]
of the great marshes as possible, so as to be near the land in case an accident should happen. Mispillion Creek and a light-house on the north of its mouth were passed, when the wind and seas struck my boat on the port beam, and continually crowded her ashore. The water breaking on the hard, sandy beach of the marshy coast made it too much of a risk to attempt a landing, as the canoe would be smothered in the swashy seas if her head way was checked for a moment. Amidships the canoe was only a few inches out of water, but her great sheer, full bow, and smoothness of hull, with watchful management, kept her from swamping. I had struggled along for fourteen miles since morning, and was fatigued by the strain consequent upon the continued manoeuvring of my boat through the rough waves. I reached a point on Slaughter Beach, where the bay has a width of nearly nineteen miles, when the tempest rose to such a pitch that the great raging seas threatened every moment to wash over my canoe, and to force me by their violence close into the beach. To my alarm, as the boat rose and fell upon the waves, the heads of sharp-pointed stakes appeared and disappeared in the broken waters. They were the stakes of fishermen to which they attach their nets in the season of trout-fishing. The danger of being impaled on one of these forced me off shore again.
There was no undertow; the seas being driven over shoals were irregular and broken. At last my sea came. It rolled up without a crest, square and formidable. I could not calculate where it would break, but I pulled for life away from it towards the beach upon which the sea was breaking with deafening sound. It was only for a moment that I beheld the great brown wave, which bore with it the mud of the shoal, bearing down upon me; for the next, it broke astern, sweeping completely over the canoe from stern to stem, filling it through the opening of the canvas round my body. Then for a while the watery area was almost smooth, so completely had the great wave levelled it. The canoe being water-logged, settled below the surface, the high points of the ends occasionally emerging from the water. Other heavy seas followed the first, one of which striking me as high as my head and shoulders, turned both the canoe and canoeist upside-down.
A Capsize in Delaware Bay (100K)
Kicking myself free of the canvas deck, I struck out from under the shell, and quickly rose to the surface. It was then that the words of an author of a European Canoe Manual came to my mind: "When you capsize, first right the canoe and get astride it over one end, keeping your legs in the water; when you have crawled to the well or cockpit, bale out the boat with your hat." Comforting as these instructions from an experienced canoe traveller seemed when reading them in my hermitage ashore, the present application of them (so important a principle in Captain Jack Bunsby's log of life) was in this emergency an impossibility; for my hat had disappeared with the seat-cushion and one iron outrigger, while the oars were floating to leeward with the canoe.
The boat having turned keel up, her great sheer would have righted her had it not been for the cargo, which settled itself on the canvas deck-cloth, and ballasted the craft in that position. So smooth were her polished sides that it was impossible to hold on to her, for she rolled about like a slippery porpoise in a tideway. having tested and proved futile the kind suggestions of writers on marine disasters, and feeling very stiff in the icy water, I struck out in an almost exhausted condition for the shore. Now a new experience taught me an interesting lesson. The seas rolled over my head and shoulders in such rapid succession, that I found I could not get my head above water to breathe, while the sharp sand kept in suspension by the agitated water scratched my face, and filled my eyes, nostrils, and ears. While I felt this pressing down and burying tendency of the seas, as they broke upon my head and shoulders, I understood the reason why
There was no undertow; the seas being driven over shoals were irregular and broken. At last my sea came. It rolled up without a crest, square and formidable. I could not calculate where it would break, but I pulled for life away from it towards the beach upon which the sea was breaking with deafening sound. It was only for a moment that I beheld the great brown wave, which bore with it the mud of the shoal, bearing down upon me; for the next, it broke astern, sweeping completely over the canoe from stern to stem, filling it through the opening of the canvas round my body. Then for a while the watery area was almost smooth, so completely had the great wave levelled it. The canoe being water-logged, settled below the surface, the high points of the ends occasionally emerging from the water. Other heavy seas followed the first, one of which striking me as high as my head and shoulders, turned both the canoe and canoeist upside-down.
A Capsize in Delaware Bay (100K)
Kicking myself free of the canvas deck, I struck out from under the shell, and quickly rose to the surface. It was then that the words of an author of a European Canoe Manual came to my mind: "When you capsize, first right the canoe and get astride it over one end, keeping your legs in the water; when you have crawled to the well or cockpit, bale out the boat with your hat." Comforting as these instructions from an experienced canoe traveller seemed when reading them in my hermitage ashore, the present application of them (so important a principle in Captain Jack Bunsby's log of life) was in this emergency an impossibility; for my hat had disappeared with the seat-cushion and one iron outrigger, while the oars were floating to leeward with the canoe.
The boat having turned keel up, her great sheer would have righted her had it not been for the cargo, which settled itself on the canvas deck-cloth, and ballasted the craft in that position. So smooth were her polished sides that it was impossible to hold on to her, for she rolled about like a slippery porpoise in a tideway. having tested and proved futile the kind suggestions of writers on marine disasters, and feeling very stiff in the icy water, I struck out in an almost exhausted condition for the shore. Now a new experience taught me an interesting lesson. The seas rolled over my head and shoulders in such rapid succession, that I found I could not get my head above water to breathe, while the sharp sand kept in suspension by the agitated water scratched my face, and filled my eyes, nostrils, and ears. While I felt this pressing down and burying tendency of the seas, as they broke upon my head and shoulders, I understood the reason why