A fellow kayaker, Mo Fridlich, posted this story on another forum. I
thought that some of you folks who don't know the story of Captain Romer's
voyage would be interested in this mind boggling adventure.
Rick Langer
M15 #337
Bluebird
>From The Sea Canoeist June 1983.
Romer's Kayak
A 1928 crossing of the Atlantic (An extract from a book called "Madmen of
the Atlantic".)
Almost everyone has seen kayaks: however well the canvas is stretched, in
the frame's gaps it produces hollows which impede progress and also make it
more susceptible to blows from the water. On a river this is not very
serious. At sea the incessant banging's and creakings can be imagined.
Like other kayaks, Captain Romer's craft, which he named Deutches Sport, was
of waterproof canvas on a wooden frame in sections; she was 191/2 feet long,
just over 3 feet in beam, and when loaded had a draught of not quite 10
inches. She was thus a little more stable than a Rob Roy canoe, but only a
little. Like all kayaks she had her bows and stern covered (hardly 'decked',
for 'deck' implies you can walk on her); the water collecting on these
covered parts was thrown into the sea (or should have been) by a tiny
breakwater. As a rule, kayaks also have a canvas round this breakwater, so
that it and the occupant's body are together completely watertight. On paper
this seems an excellent device; you may have read stories of Greenlanders
doing an 'Eskimo trip', half submarine, fitted out in this way, without
letting in a drop of water - below the waist, of course. In practice, on the
high seas, things are a bit different. If you 'pack yourself in' like this,
here is the result:!
the kayak contains, in a strictly closed vessel: 1. A certain (very small)
quantity of air, 2. Half a human body which breathes and perspires, 3. Gear
and stores including food and water in receptacles.
Now a man's body breathes through his whole skin (the pores), not only
through his lungs; and the air contained in a kayak is soon vitiated. The
lower half of his body perspires heavily, especially the feet, as will be
appreciated by anyone who knows the smell of a barrack-room. And the air in
that is purer than the air inside a kayak.
The stores? At sea they are bound to be damp; in a closed vessel they rot.
The food 'breathes' like a man, except when it is in soldered tins:
resulting in damp, mould, smells. The water in its receptacle varies less in
temperature than the matter round it, so it acts as a condenser of damp on
the walls of the receptacles.
The half of the body in this confined air is liable to every sort of morbid
condition, and so, therefore, is the whole man. So the idea of being
completely 'watertight' must be given up; you cannot stay long strapped by
the waist to the canvas apron. So the kayak must remain open.
But we are at sea. However small the opening, rain and dew will get through,
also sea water periodically, not to mention the damp of the surrounding
atmosphere. All this water will get in, and won't come out again. It won't
dry off in the air, because the air is not circulating; nor can the man in
the boat easily evacuate it. Ever tried emptying a kayak beneath you?
Romer had installed a little pump which could be moved by foot or hand. It
did not work satisfactorily, and for weeks he had to do contortions to carry
out the essential evacuation of water with an empty food tin.
It was the only exercise he could take: he couldn't stand, let alone walk.
He was seated, permanently seated. To sleep (we shall see later on how he
slept) he could never stretch out completely nor completely lose
consciousness while sleeping, since the kayak might have turned turtle. She
might do that even in average weather if allowed to get into the trough of
waves.
Altogether this was far worse than the galleys, it was the most fiendish
torture any sadist could ever have conceived; and it was self imposed.
Captain Romer had only made very slight modifications to the usual kayak.
Having made no claims that he would cross the Atlantic by oar alone, he had
rigged the boat as a yawl: a main-sail, not very large, forward of the
breakwater, in the normal place where the small masts are put in craft of
this kind, and a small sail behind his back. To be able to steer while
rowing or trimming his sails, he had fixed up a rudder control worked by his
feet. Finally, as a safety measure in case of being waterlogged, he had
tubes of air, or rather carbon dioxide, which inflated.
Then he had to load the kayak with food and water for the voyage: for nearly
three months at least, and therefore nearly four, to give him a safety
margin. Nearly four months' food and drinking water in a kayak?
In the tropics a man can't do with much less than four pints of water a day.
Romer loaded 55 gallons, which is about 550 pounds, plus the weight of the
receptacles (soldered tins), say 650. The food, not counting fruit, weighed
nearly 500 pounds, plus packing, say 550. Add two small spare sails, some
rope, some clothes, a compass, a sextant, 'tables', a year-book, 50 pounds
of paraffin and a stove etc. Altogether he certainly cannot have been
carrying less than 1,300 pounds (the dead weight given in the loading
prospectus), and with his own weight included about 1,470. It was the
uppermost limit - and the prospectus was talking about river water.
I spoke of the tropics, for Romer was not in fact taking the same route as
all those we have watched so far, except Bombard. He was making the crossing
exactly like Bombard: westwards, with the trade-winds.
He left Europe from Portugal (Cape St Vincent near Lisbon). In the
remarkable time of eleven days he reached the Canaries, from where, like
Bombard, he was to make his 'real start'. But even on that first stage he
could realize the terrifying nature of the adventure he had committed
himself to.
Having found quite a lot of wind and sea, and wishing to take advantage of
the wind to make greater headway, he had to watch that sea constantly, for
the smallest wave could overturn him and the crests of the waves hid the
horizon from him. He had to watch night and day. This is how he lived and
'slept'.
He had lashed the canvas 'apron' to his waist. Despite this the kayak still
made water, so badly that the stores began to float inside .One wave even
penetrated the apron. Luckily the automatic carbon dioxide tubes worked, the
gas inflating the buoyancy pockets so that ejected some of the water and
ensured the boat's stability. The little foot-pump did not work, however, or
at least not satisfactorily. He had to set about baling out along his thighs
with a large empty food-tin, a square one-gallon can which just passed
between his body and the side! He held out like this for three whole days.
'The fourth night without sleep,' he related afterwards, 'I had to steer
with a big stern sea. I couldn't let my attention relax for a single wave. I
also had to watch for land (the Canaries), which would soon be appearing.
But thirdly, I had to sleep, for this is man's most essential need; I was at
the stage where sleep becomes a matter of life and death. So a strange
compromise was worked out, a "balance" of these three necessities. Between
one wave crest and the next I slept. On the crest I woke, made the
appropriate steering adjustment, and looked at the horizon. That lasted two
seconds, 'on watch'. Then I slept for three seconds. Then I woke myself
again for another two seconds, just enough time and in a state just lucid
enough to be ready for any action necessary. I carried out such actions
automatically, not caring what happened; and I'd completely lost the sense
of danger.
'Towards midnight a breaking wave got me in its grip, turned the kayak right
round, passed right over me. I came out the other side more or less
unscathed, and realized at once: that the wind was not so terrible that it
could cause waves like that on the high seas; that land must be near; and
that I might well be dashed against it. I thought I could hear shingle being
rolled on to a beach, but could see nothing. Suddenly I heard a voice
shouting to me in English to go south instead of south-west. An
hallucination? Undoubtedly, because I didn't find land till the afternoon of
the next day. Still I must have passed near an island; and the little bit of
south I went, before heading south-west as before, had perhaps saved my
life. It couldn't have been a man's voice, though (who would have bothered
about me or could have shouted so loud from the shore?) Why did God call to
me in English? Perhaps to show me it was He, speaking to a German, near
Spanish-speaking islands.
'When I was under the lee of the island, I noticed that barnacles and all
sorts of marine growth had formed and spread so fast in the warm waters that
in these twelve days they had covered the canvas of the kayak with a coat
four inches thick and stopped her completely. In fact, in the middle of the
Canaries' harbor of Arecibo, when I was getting no more help from the wind,
I almost foundered!'
This crossing had been 580 miles. The next stage would be 3,570 to New York,
or 3,000 to the West Indies, where (remember Bombard) he would be driven by
the trade winds. In the end he did head for the West Indies.
He returned to sea on 3rd June 1928, knowing what to expect, on a voyage of
at least three months. Three months sitting or half-lying, unable to move,
relax, bend his legs, or satisfy the body's humblest needs. Three months
with the lower half of the body mouldering in damp and the upper part half
sweltering in the terrible sun which burnt his neck, his arms and even his
head - after the loss of his last hat, which occurred at the end of the
first month. At that point he was obsessed by the idea of sunstroke sending
him mad.
Three months without really going to sleep or stretching full out, without
being able to turn round or even forget for a moment where he was. Nearly
three months without any hot food, any food even cooked or heated; for the
paraffin stove played tricks on him too. But on board a kayak such tricks
may prove catastrophic. To do his meager cooking, Romer put the stove
between his legs. One day it caught fire, and he had to throw it overboard
immediately, so as not to be burnt alive.
Three months of a horrible buffeting, being shaken and hit by each wave.
Three months of terror too, for various mammals and big fish, sharks,
whales, sword-fish, and porpoises, were continually scraping on the frail
canvas hull to eat what was growing there. A special device had been fitted
to warn him in such cases; not only was it futile, because he had no way of
defending himself properly, but it soon became an extra torture, appalling
for the nerves. To frighten off his assailants he beat on an empty food-tin,
and at night lit his torch - but this attracted the flying fish, which shot
out of the sea and struck him in the face in full flight.
One day a gigantic shark and its three cubs attacked the boat. Romer beat on
his tin several times without succeeding in scaring them off. The big shark
swam furiously towards the boat, dived at the last moment, and got its back
under the boat's bottom, so that Romer felt himself being lifted in the air
and could see the delicate rubberized canvas swelling up under the imprint
of the shark's back.
The shark seemed unwilling to give up the promising breakfast, and dived
again. Romer grabbed the first thing that came into his hands, which
happened to be the staff of the American flag, and hit out at the back as it
went under. In the fray the flag unfurled in the sun; the shark gave a leap,
dived, and disappeared for ever. 'Victory for the American colors all along
the line,' wrote a reporter in all seriousness.
Romer did not go mad, but appallingly painful ulcers sprang up all over his
body, which was corroded by salt. This hardened into crusts under the
merciless sun of the trade wind zone; his hair turned white with it. At long
last the big tropical showers came to wash it out. But he couldn't even get
on his feet to enjoy them, and his legs were still mouldering in the brine.
He had said: I'll be at the West Indies before the end of August. He landed
there on the last day of the month, at the island of St Thomas, one of the
furthest north. After eighty-eight days at sea, eighty-eight days as a sort
of marine 'mummy', eighty-eight days of an ordeal which must have been more
frightful even than Bombard's, one of the most 'super-human' ordeals that a
man has ever born.
His face, covered with three months' growth of beard, was something like
Robinson Crusoe's. He managed to stagger out of the boat, and collapse on
the quay. He was taken to a hotel, where he slept 'like the dead' for
forty-eight hours. By the time he was awoken, all the inhabitants of the
island knew his story, and would have liked to f?te him. But the deep
ulcers, though they were drying on the upper half of his body, were not
healing on his thighs, swollen and eaten away simultaneously by sea-water.
He had to be kept in hospital for several months. The British governor of St
Thomas awarded him the decoration specially created for Lindbergh, the first
airman to cross the Atlantic alone in a non-stop flight.
In Boston and New York, sailors and journalists were all talking about him,
including my old friends Jobig and Tom (both now seventy), who of course
were not in agreement.
I parted them before they were really at each other's throats, and in any
case realized that for all his pretended scorn Jobig was as impressed as
anyone by this latest 'madman'. He was also one of the first to grow anxious
about Romer's fate.
The captain had left the West Indies for New York at the beginning of
October. It was very late in the season. The first autumn cyclones had
appeared; on land they hadn't been too violent, but several ships at sea had
already been driven badly off course.
The days passed. It was 1,500 miles from St Thomas to New York, 1,200 to
Cape Hatteras, near which he was bound to pass, and where he ought to have
been a month at the latest after leaving the West Indies. Half way through
November there was still no news of him.
At the beginning of December a terrible cyclone came up from south to north,
following exactly the track of the kayak. If Romer had survived till then,
which was more or less impossible, this would have sealed his fate.
