Simon Winchester - Atlantic - A Vast Ocean of a Million Stories

ATLANTIC

A VAST OCEAN

OF A MILLION STORIES

Simon Winchester

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperPress in 2010

Copyright © Simon Winchester

Maps by Nick Springer © 2010 Springer Cartographics LLC

Simon Winchester asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Political, physical, exploration, and commerce maps on pages viii, ix, 113, and 319 were created by Nick Springer / Springer Cartographics, LLC.

Pangea and Future Pangea maps on pages 41 and 446 were created by C. R. Scotese, PALEOMAP Project ( www.scotese.com) Please note that the pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created.

Some images were unavailable for the electronic edition

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Source ISBN: 9780007341375

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2011 ISBN: 9780007341382

Version: 2018-08-22

Cover

Title Page ATLANTIC A VAST OCEAN OF A MILLION STORIES Simon Winchester

Copyright

Dedication THIS BOOK IS FOR Setsuko AND IN MEMORY OF Angus Campbell Macintyre FIRST MATE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN HARBOUR BOARD TUG THE SIR CHARLES ELLIOTT WHO DIED IN 1942, TRYING TO SAVE LIVES AND WHOSE BODY LIES UNFOUND SOMEWHERE IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

PREFACE THE LEAVING OF LIVERPOOL

PROLOGUE THE BEGINNINGS OF ITS GOINGS ON

Chapter One FROM THE PURPLE ISLES OF MOGADOR

Chapter Two ALL THE SHOALS AND DEEPS WITHIN

Chapter Three OH! THE BEAUTY AND THE MIGHT OF IT

Chapter Four HERE THE SEA OF PITY LIES

Chapter Five THEY THAT OCCUPY THEIR BUSINESS ON GREAT WATERS

Chapter Six CHANGE AND DECAY ALL AROUND THE SEA

Chapter Seven THE STORM SURGE CARRIES ALL BEFORE …

EPILOGUE FALLS THE SHADOW. FADES THE SEA.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GLOSSARY

INDEX

Keep Reading

Also By Simon Winchester

About the Publisher

THIS BOOK IS FOR

Setsuko

AND IN MEMORY OF

Angus Campbell Macintyre

FIRST MATE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN HARBOUR BOARD TUG

THE SIR CHARLES ELLIOTT

WHO DIED IN 1942, TRYING TO SAVE LIVES

AND WHOSE BODY LIES

UNFOUND

SOMEWHERE IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon, as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic Ocean.

DIONYSIUS LARDNER, IRISH SCIENTIFIC WRITER AND LECTURER, 1838

The ocean romance that lies at the heart of this book was primed for me by an unanticipated but unforgettable small incident. It was a clear cool dawn on Sunday, 5 May 1963, and I was eighteen years old. I was alone, on passage aboard a great ocean liner, the Empress of Britain, and we were unexpectedly stopped in a remote corner of the northern seas to the east of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. We were floating quietly above a small submarine plateau some miles off the first headlands of America, an area known to oceanographers and fishermen as the Flemish Cap.

It was there that something rather curious happened.

We were five days out from Liverpool. The voyage had begun on the previous Tuesday afternoon, a wild and blustery day that had sudden gusts chasing the River Mersey’s waters with filigrees of spindrift. This was when I first spotted the ship on which I would make this first-ever crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.

It was her flanks that were most noticeable, looming massive and blinding white—the Canadian Pacific’s three sister ships were known collectively as the White Empresses — at the end of the lanes running down to the Liverpool waterfront. She was fastened securely to the Pier Head, just beside the old Princes Dock, a dozen hemp ropes as thick as a man’s arm keeping her quite still, aloof to the weather. But from the bustle of last-minute activity around her and the smoke being torn urgently from her single yellow funnel, it was clear she was already straining at the leash: with her twenty-five thousand tons of staunchly riveted Clydeside steel, the Empress was readying herself to sail three thousand miles westward, across the Atlantic Ocean, and I had a ticket to board her.

It had taken six months for me to earn enough to buy it. I must have been on slave wages, because passage all the way to Canada had not cost much more than a hundred dollars, provided I was willing to settle for one of four bunks in a windowless cabin on a deck situated so far below the waterline one could almost hear the slopping in the bilges. But though it was to be an economical crossing, one step up from steerage, in the Canadian Pacific offices off Trafalgar Square - more cathedral than bureau, all teak, marble, and hush, and with scale models of famous ocean liners from the old days illuminated in the windows - even this most modest of transactions was handled with dignity and circumstance.