I have been reading English mysteries for quite awhile. I have also tried to read many English sea stories. What is amazing is how long I have missed this book, a classic spy thriller set in a very real sea story.
The book is The Riddle of the Sands, A Record of Secret Service, by Erskine Childers. Originally published in 1903, this edition was published in 1976 by Dover Publications, Inc.
Erskine Childers was a British writer, government clerk, soldier and amateur sailor. He was with naval intelligence during the First World War and left service as a major with the Distinguished Service Cross. In his later years, up to his execution in November of 1922, he was an advocate of Home Rule for Ireland, going so far as to smuggle guns before the Easter Uprising of 1916.
It is Childers’ yachting skills and his ability to write a readable account of shallow water sailing that hangs this book together. The story concerns two young men, Davies the yachtsman and Carruthers the narrator. Davies is spending the tail end of a summer sailing in the North Sea Islands of Germany. He invites Carruthers to join him in the Baltic Sea to finish the summer and perhaps get in some duck shooting.
Carruthers joins him, thinking of former yachting trips on other boats, large varnished ones, with crews and sun awnings over wicker furniture on the aft deck. He arrives after dark, to find out that Davies is a cruiser, not a yacht owner.
His boat is a 30 foot converted lifeboat, heavy, ungainly looking and very cramped. Carruthers’ comments on the appearance of the boat, the definitely used look of the gear and the great strength of all the rigging is terrific as a view of what Childers thought of a good, seagoing boat.
The first morning aboard, Carruthers sees the Dulcibella, and describes her: “She seemed very small ... something over thirty feet in length and nine in beam, a size very suitable to week-ends ...; but that she should have come from Dover to the Baltic suggested a world of physical endeavour of which I had never dreamed. ... An impression of paint, varnish, and carpentry was in the air; ... But all this only emphasized the general plainness, reminding one of a respectable woman of the working-classes trying to dress above her station, and soon likely to give it up.”
Carruthers knows nothing of sailing, all of his previous boating experiences being of the stand around in flannels and blazers while a hired crew ministered to his every wish. Davies is a sailor, one of those intrepid souls who loves nothing more than a stiff breeze, a comfortable heel, and a coast to be explored, experienced, and enjoyed.
Carruthers’ time on the Dulcibella is spent learning the ropes, learning to steer a straight course, learning how to change the sails, how to read the sky, how to judge a narrow channel with no markers. He admits to learning these skills while at the same time realizing how well Davies knows them.
In Davies, we see the author, Childers. Childers spent many sailing seasons in the Frisian Islands of Germany. It was to them that he came as an intelligence officer during WWI .
During the course of the story Carruthers tells of Davies’ suspicions of the Imperial German Navy in the North Frisian Islands. How the two yachtsmen outwit the plotters is a great story, one of the first, possibly the first practical spy novel. Davies is the practical, knowledgeable sailor of the shifting, shallow sands of the German coast. Carruthers supplies the cautious collaborator, the German speaking sidekick to Davies’ drive.
The best part of the story is the sailing. Through shallow channels, mighty canals, innumerable groundings, storms, pleasant days and nights at anchor, Childers describes a wonderful cruise, marred only by the dark plans of the German plotters.
Carruthers makes a comment midway through the story that tells a great deal, simply. “As for me, the sea has never been my element, and never will be; nevertheless, I hardened to the life, grew salt, tough, and tolerably alert ... cut off from all distractions, moving from [anchorage] to precarious [anchorage], and depending, to some extent, for my life on my muscles and wits, I rapidly learnt my work and gained a certain dexterity. I knew my ropes in the dark, could beat economically to windward through squalls, take bearings, and estimate the interaction of wind and tide.” “... Depending ... for my life on my muscles and wits ...”
Carruthers was shortchanging himself. He had, under Davies’ tutelage and the conditions of the coast, become a cruiser. He would never again walk on a polished, varnished, crewed, spotless yacht and play the pampered guest.
I hope you enjoy this book as much as I have.
Hunter Davis, Puffin