Charming the Swan

Sydney, Australia
18 June

As part of researching The Lime Tree, I arranged to sail out through the Port Jackson Heads on a 3-masted sailing ship—just as my characters did this very week, 217 years ago. I would help crew, climb the riggings & everything. Now that's the kind of research I like.

Then a powerful storm system causing high troughs, torrential rain & cyclone force winds blew through & cancelled the voyage. Clearly the rain gods have followed me from Jakarta (though drought-stricken Australia is celebrating.)

On the next dry day I walked down to the Svanen (‘the Swan’), a different 'tall-ship'. The sodden vessel nodded along The Rocks at Circular Quay. Its dock was fenced & latched with a heavy chain. I hung an arm on the gate & looked through.

“Just go in,” waved the proprietor of a nearby gift shop, appearing at my shoulder. She was not associated with the Svanen in any way. She just looked at it all day from work.
As she figured it, this gave her rights.

“It’s chained.” I indicated the latch.

“It’s not padlocked,” she said exasperated, as if I were a little slow. “Lift the chain.”

Beside the chain was a big red sign reading: Closed: No Trespassing.

I didn't answer. Maybe I was in the middle of a vendetta. Maybe she avenged herself on her floating neighbors by encouraging gullible strangers into acts of piracy, to break & enter their ship.
I did want to get onto the dock, to get on board.

"I'll give them a call," I said finally.

She gave me a look: I was too law-abiding; she thought less of me.
Obviously I didn't know the first thing about talking to sailors.

“You want the Swan? Go in there & shout at them until someone comes up on deck & sees you.” That was her advice.
Finished with me, she went back to arranging postcards.

It started sprinkling again.
One moment you’re minding your own business, the next you’re wet & an inadequate pirate.

Maybe she was right: if I couldn’t take the ship on my own,
I didn’t deserve the Swan.

Boarding the Svanen

I looked around. There was no one on the dock or the ship’s deck or anyone very close by. Just quickly, I tried the chain. But it was tight & the gate was heavy. It didn’t move. To force the chain over the peg I’d have to push on one side of the gate with my legs & pull with all my might on the other side, then pry up the chain with my thumbs. It couldn’t be done quickly or gracefully, or maybe at all.

I could feel the vicarious pirate woman watching me from her gift shop with growing disgust. Suddenly four tourists were staring at me. I tried to look casual. I have a couple characters (convict characters actually) who would be really smooth about all this, but not me.

Just then, from nowhere, a friendly-looking woman my age appeared out of nowhere & flipped the chain off its peg with one hand.
Hm. How'd she--?
“Hi,” she said amiably & strolled off toward the ship.

She was the owner’s daughter. We chatted. Pretty soon, we were standing by the Svanen’s rail. Was the vicarious pirate lady looking?

The Svanen had taken on water from the storm & it wasn’t heading out to sea anytime soon, not for charm or money. Instead, they were going to spend the week pumping the bilge & scraping the hull. I told her about my project & volunteered to help. Either way, I’d learn something worth knowing about travel on a masted ship.

It wasn’t up to her. But she seemed interested.

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, searching for something she could grant right away, something within her power to bestow: “If you want to experience some seasickness, I can promise you that. People go green down there [below decks]. Literally green." Then, encouragingly: "You’ll probably get real sick. Would that be helpful?”

The captain's daughter asked me this question with a tone of complete sincerity, which made me fall briefly in love. This complete stranger, this charming sailor girl: she understood.

After all, my characters (she suggested correctly & more knowledgeably) are going to be seasick, some of them for all 6 months of the journey. It’s occurred to me many times as I’ve researched the conditions of the Second Fleet that I myself would probably not have survived that voyage. As it stands, I’ve never slept below decks on a masted ship & I’ve never been all that seasick. Maybe, she suggested, it would help me describe it?

We made some plans.
Then she said she had to ask her father & the spell broke.

You know it's gotten dire when sailors pumping the bilge aren't sure if they want your free labor.

Worse, I saw that I’d negotiated myself from a day boldly standing at the wheel, sailing through the Heads, to charming someone into letting me scrape the hull & turn green for free. By the time I got home, I’d changed my mind.

Do I actually need to make myself vomitously sea sick in order to convince a reader that a character is sea sick? No. I can ask a someone. I can read an account. I can make it up.

After all, I’m writing about aged characters, male characters, mothers of four, 18th century British citizens of a variety of classes & occupations, none of which I will experience first hand.
Many of which no one alive today has experienced.

"Write what you know" does not mean "Write what you have experienced first hand".

Convicts rowing out to the Lady Penrhyn,
prison transport of the First Fleet