RADIO NETHERLANDS WERELDOMROEP
“Bark EUROPA: In the Wake of the Ancients”
Part One: The Voyage
Written By: Todd Jarrell
SUGGESTED INTRO: The tall ship EUROPA soon returns to her homeport in The Hague from a forty thousand-mile, two-year grand tour. The three masted bark will have twice crossed both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to participate in tall ship events in Europe, Asia and North America.
Rather than return from Pacific waters via the Panama Canal, EUROPA chose a rare tall ship “doubling” of stormy Cape Horn. Journalist Todd Jarrell served as part of EUROPA’s crew from California to Cape Horn and sends this first of five weekly reports chronicling EUROPA’s adventure.
JARRELL – The tall ship bark EUROPA, is moored alongside San Diego’s famous Embarcadero. She nods on the swell in warm California sun like a haltered thoroughbred, poised for her run down the blue Pacific and deep into the Southern Ocean to notorious Cape Horn.
SHIP ATMOS – Begin at “She nods on the…” and cross fade with PASSPORTS for mask
SFX – SFX – PASSPORTS -“Does everybody have their passports?” “Yea, passports?” “Last call for passports.” Fade out by “The ship’s cook…”
JARRELL – The voyage is a classic: fat with promise and filled with a heady mix of expectation and apprehension. Though planning for months, even this morning spare parts and provisions continue to arrive. The ship cook’s lading order includes, in part: One and one-half ton of flour; three-quarter ton of meats; one quarter ton of potatoes and of sugar; and 1,700 liters of good Dutch beer. It requires a stunning array of goods to stock a seventy-day sail to the globe’s farthest reaches from land.
By noon the crew is on deck, “milling about smartly”, considering the weather and departure rumors. Conjecture on hurricane delays ends when Captain Klaas Gaastra calls all hands on deck.
SFX – KLAAS 1– “Okay the plan is like this… We leave in half an hour. Uh, the tropical cyclone is slower as they thought before (REMOVE …and moving a little bit more north so its going northwest nearly now), so we go over the top and then to its right side. (REMOVE…All things are clear only some fuel for the boats that we have to get and then we can go out and to sea and have a good sail, yeah?) The wind is from the right direction – southerly – and we want to go westerly so that’s what we want. Any questions? … Oh… It was a clear story then!”
JARRELL – Dutch merchantman Willem Schouten discovered the southerly passage around the Americas in 1616—an attempt to break the Dutch East India Company’s monopoly on the Straits of Magellan. He named this nether tip of two continents after his hometown of Hoorn, in northern Holland.
Since that time over eight hundred vessels have been lost to the Horn. They sprang planks and foundered, lost their rigging, ran aground, shifted loads and capsized, or had cargo spontaneously combust to suffer the irony of burning down in an ocean. It is anyone’s guess the actual number of ships that never arrived or the number of souls upon them.
We sail in the wake of those windjammers that once challenged Cape Horn as a matter of business, delivering the world’s cargos. Our wish is to honor them; our goal is to survive, and any question of our chances or our sanity are covered by Klaas’ simple assessment that, “This is what sailors do…” But sailors, by and large, do not “do” Cape Horn—tall ships are quite rare there, and with reason. Notably, thirty thousand men died building the Panama Canal to provide an alternative route.
In the next half-hour the gangway is shipped, the lines slipped, and fenders are hauled aboard. We await the word to sheet home EUROPA’s canvas palisades and shape the course of our adventure.
SFX – KLAAS 2 MIZZEN- -Klaas-“Okay, you can set the mizzen… Mizzen.”
JARRELL – The ship’s head slowly turns for the open sea as we haul and brace the yards.
SFX –RAISING YARD 1 — Hands on line block running as yard is raised. Jorne in Dutch, “How far until the mark?” “How does it look, Seth?”
JARRELL – The ten-story masts fill with bright sails—the main and fore courses, topsails, topgallants and skysails.
SFX –SHIP’S HORN 1 – Ship’s horn x 3 “Dooey!”
JARRELL – Klaas salutes San Diego with EUROPA’s sternum-rattling foghorn, virtually blowing the dust off the dock. Traffic slows and passersby gather in knots to watch our graceful exit from North America. We will next see land in six weeks on Easter Island.
Thus begins our adventure to “double” Cape Horn and deliver EUROPA into southern waters for subsequent runs to Antarctica—that is the official reason for the voyage.
But the individual motives for putting it all on the line to challenge the Horn differ greatly. Some are here for the simple love of sailing or a maritime CV stiffener. Some seek the danger-quest or “trophy-travel” bragging rights and some just wish pay their respects to the place. But all aboard appreciate the reputation of the Horn and the bald fact that we sail headlong into harm’s way.
SFX –WAVES 1 – Begin fade in at “ and will be enclosed within…” and run troughout end of piece.
JARRELL – The ship’s officers are from Holland—as is most of the crew—but we also come from England, Australia, Canada and the United States. We are thirty-two in number, and will be enclosed within these steel bulwarks for the months to come. The delicate lace of personalities that will form the fabric of our tiny community has begun its warp and weft already. By Easter Island there will be no strangers here.
With the sails filling, we stroll through the ship making certain all is lashed and stowed for sea as the last of the familiar world glides by. The sea dissolves the continent into our wake like so much sugar, and by dinnertime there is a satisfying swell beneath us—the pleasing sensation of an adventure begun.
Harko, also from Hoorn, notes that our bodies swaying at table seem captivated by some symphony—which is true. The waves swish and gurgle on the riveted steel hull and this plangent duet between the ship and the sea will accompany us to our journey’s end, months from now, and far to the South.
© Todd Jarrell, 2002
NARRATIVE on tracks #1, #2 & combined on #’s 10,11,12,13 (This last may be best)
ACTUALITIES:
SHIP ATMOS – #14
PASSPORTS – #15
KLAAS 1 – #16
KLAAS 2 MIZZEN – #17
RAISING YARD 1 – #18
SHIP’S HORN 1 – #19
WAVES 1 – #20