THE CANNON'S ROAR

(From Magic Harbor by Don Berry)

 

 

 

About four in the afternoon I heard the characteristic rumbling of a 6-71 GMC diesel, a sound that seems to throb in the water and be transferred to my hull, rather than coming to my ears. When I looked out, I saw the bright gold and blue of the little 36' workboat RESOLUTE bearing down on my starboard, a bone in her teeth and her massive steel hull churning the water like a miniature landing craft.

This was not, in itself, alarming. I know RESOLUTE well, as she belongs to my son David; part of his construction company's fleet of boats, barges and cranes whose home port is Eagle Harbor.

Today, however, was Memorial Day, nobody was working, and RESOLUTE was clearly in the hands of pirates. The two worst pirates in the harbor, in fact, Phil of FAVORITE and Mark of CALYPSO. I had a pretty strong idea David had no idea what company RES OLUTE was keeping (or rather, what company was keeping RESOLUTE.)

Mark stood on the foredeck with a line in his hand, his graying hair tied back with a bandana and his long, salty beard blowing in the wind of RESOLUTE's passage. Mark has a characteristic one-eyed squint that makes him look like Wallace Beery in an exceptionally evil mood. Phil -- big, black-bearded, aggressive tugboat skipper -- was hunched over the wheel grinning in the pilot house. Seeing those two guys together on the deck of a boat, you irresistibly expect Maureen O'Hara to be brought on deck in manacles.

I had clearly been cast in a scene from a 1940s pirate movie. And reinforcing the impression, mounted on the foredeck of the doughty RESOLUTE was a polished, black, immaculately gleaming cannon. As RESOLUTE got closer, Mark yanked on the line in his hand, which turned out to be the firing lanyard of the cannon. A thumping blast echoed out over the harbor, and a gout of white smoke spurted from the cannon muzzle.

A shot across my bow, and I was about to be boarded. The best I could hope for was a minimum of rape and pillage.

Phil reversed RESOLUTE's engine with a roar and a big rush of white water at the stern, swinging around to parallel my hull. He leaned out of the pilot house, watching the massive stern of RESOLUTE relentlessly sweep toward my white, virginal hull.

"Hit it! Hit it!" he said, with more glee than the occasion warranted.

The hit was, of course, a gentle tap at the end. Just enough to leave a black mark on my hull from the tires that serve RESOLUTE as fenders. There are quite a few of these love taps on my hull; for some perverse reason Phil likes leaving them whenev er he ties a tug up alongside me. He doesn't have to. He doesn't hit anything with his boat he doesn't want to hit. But he always taps me. I think he believes he is educating me in humility.

Mark was grinning as he bent down to reload the cannon. Phil came out on deck and scowled at me. The boats were now side by side.

"C'mon, Donald," he said impatiently. "Let's get going."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I said.

"Just come on," he said. "We're going to go harass the LADY WASHINGTON when she comes in."

My attention had naturally been focussed in the near foreground, and only then did I lift my eyes to look beyond RESOLUTE and the cannon.

There, in the channel just at the mouth of Eagle Harbor, was the most marvelous, miraculous sight -- an 18th century fully rigged traditional brig with her topsails and topgallants just being furled by a scrambling crew. Her massive rigging stood aga inst the sky like spider webs of tarred hemp, and at her stern she flew a colonial flag that looked the size of a football field.

Around her in the water a crowd of small boats began to gather, fluttering like lovesick moths, darting back and forth around the brilliantly painted reds, blues, gold and brightwork of the brig's hull.

This was the LADY WASHINGTON, a perfect replica of the vessel that had accompanied the COLUMBIA REDIVIVA on her exploration of the Northwest Coast in 1792. She had been built down on the Washington coast in Gray's Harbor, a private historical venture .

A couple of years ago some of us, including me and Phil, had gone down to Gray's Harbor to witness the launching of the completed hull, a moment that always sends chills down my back. We got our picture in the local paper with the caption OLD SALTS O BSERVE LAUNCH.

At the launching I also found I had an unexpected personal connection with the building of the brig. One of the shipwrights told me the crew had made a big banner of a quotation from one of my novels, and it had served as their motto during construct ion. It was from my book TO BUILD A SHIP, and it said BUILD IT OR DIE

At that time the LADY WASHINGTON had neither masts nor rigging of any kind, and to see her completed was a wonderful exuberance. Now she was complete, and sailing around Puget Sound as a kind of living museum, giving tours of the vessel at the dock, and short day sails.

I was spellbound, seeing her really alive, and entering the harbor, until Phil snapped me out of it with a gruff "C'mon, move it!"

I have found through careful study that the only satisfactory way to deal with pirates is to join them immediately. They obviously figured if they had the legal owner's father on board as cannoneer, it would somehow take the sting out of the theft of RESOLUTE. I thought they were right. I didn't think David would agree, but what the hell. If you choose to associate with pirates you're going to lose a vessel now and then. Perhaps it was even my duty to impart this valuable lesson to my son.

I scampered back into my boat, threw a pair of pants and some shoes and a jacket over on RESOLUTE's deck. I jumped aboard the tug, and while I hastily pulled on clothes, Phil swung away from my boat and we headed up toward the mouth of the bay, where the LADY WASHINGTON was just beginning to make her way into the crowded harbor under power.

Shively's tug RELIANT was also paying court to the LADY WASHINGTON, and he, too, had a cannon. His was a brightly polished brass barrel, which had no permanent mount on the RELIANT, and was fired from a position in a coil of towing line. RELIANT's c annon was a muzzle loader, that had to be loaded, powdered and fired with great difficulty. Phil's cannon fires blank cartridges like 10 gauge shotgun shells, and we had a whole box.

I fired off a couple of rounds as we approached the brig, and by the time we got there LADY WASHINGTON's crew was furiously loading and priming their own swivel guns to return our salute.

So we proceeded in joyous convoy down Eagle Harbor to the public dock, with volleys of cannon fire echoing back and forth from the surrounding hills, and little boats skittering about and around the newly come queen like troops of chittering courtiers .

Flanked by the cannonading tugs RESOLUTE and RELIANT the stately LADY WASHINGTON had immense dignity as she led her troop of admirers down the bay. At the helm stood her dignified black bearded skipper in a long black coat, a ruffled white shirt fron t, black knee britches and white hose. The crew was in various states of period dress, with climbing britches and tunics made of old sail cloth, knee hose, and bandanaed heads.

 

She was an immaculate reconstruction of a different world, a different way of looking at the world, a different way of being in the world. A relic from a different time.

And I suppose the three pirates aboard the cannonading RESOLUTE are, in our own way, relics of a different time, too. Not in as good shape, perhaps, as the LADY WASHINGTON, but then our launching was farther back than hers. Every year it gets a litt le harder to refasten our planks, our rigging wears a little thinner, and there are more patches in the sails of our souls.

Still, there may not be so much difference after all. In the era of LADY WASHINGTON, when men spoke of liberty and independence, they had something definite in mind. And so have the pirates of Eagle Harbor.

Let me hear the cannons roar in praise of liberty.

 

 

end

 

 

The Cannon's Roar
©1995 Don Berry