The jason voyage, p.8
The Jason Voyage, page 8
'Go in peace! Kalo taxidi, good voyage!'
Now we were rounding the tip of the jetty, steering to pass the main waterfront of the town as close as possible to the land. The quay was packed with people, mostly children brought by the coachload to witness the departure of a boat from their country's distant past. 'Kalo taxidi! Kalo taxidi! Kalo taxidi!' The children were roaring the chant in a steady rhythm, like a crowd of football supporters. The new Argonauts waved back, rowing with one hand and waving with the other. A racing four came slicing past us. In the bow position was an oarsman as splendidly shining bald as Mark. 'You two must go to the same hairdresser,' Miles remarked.
According to Apollonius Rhodius, the departure of the Argonauts 3000 years earlier had been rather more fraught. There had been rumours that King Pelias had bribed Argo, the boatbuilder, to sabotage the boat by making her with weak fastenings, so that she would break up and sink during the voyage. But presumably Argo had no intention of such treachery, because he himself had decided to be a member of Jason's crew. On the evening before their departure, following tearful farewells with their families, Jason's volunteers gathered on the beach. Jason sent for two oxen to be driven down to the shore from the family herds. Hercules and the mighty Ancaeus killed the beasts, one with a single blow from his legendary club, the other chopping through the animal's neck with a bronze axe. The sacred morsels from the thighs were wrapped in fat and burned ceremonially on the flames of an olivewood fire laid on an altar of shingle. This sacrifice was to Apollo, the God of Departures. Idmon, one of the two seers on the crew, peered at the dancing flames and watched the spiral of smoke rising to the sky. He pronounced the omens good, but added gloomily that he himself did not expect to return alive from the expedition. His destiny had been revealed to him, he said. He would die in some lonely spot on the Asian shore.
The rest of the evening was not much more of a success. Idas, the braggart member of the crew, got drunk on too much undiluted wine and began to mock Jason, who was sitting apart from the rest, having last-minute doubts about the wisdom of the expedition. When rebuked by Idmon, Idas abused him too, and the quarrel would have led to blows but for the tactful intervention of Orpheus the musician, who struck up a tune on his lyre and embarked on a long song about the creation of the gods. That night the crew slept on the beach, and in the morning it was Tiphys, the crack helmsman, who roused them from their sleep and got them started in good time. They already knew their oar bench positions, every man having drawn lots for them the previous day. Only Hercules and Ancaeus were excluded from the lottery. The two biggest and strongest men in the boat, they were automatically allocated the central bench, where their greater strength would be of most effect.
Aboard our modern Argo we had made a similar decision: Mark and Miles were our best oarsmen, each man having rowed for his university, and it was natural that they should occupy the stroke position, the sternmost bench, where all the other crew members could watch them and try to copy their style and timing. We did not have a full crew of twenty aboard – there were only fourteen men that day; and what with one man to steer and one to cook it left only twelve oars in action. But it was enough. The trick was to keep the galley moving steadily through the water at all times, nibbling away the miles at about 3-3.5 knots. So sleek was Argo’s design that she slid steadily along at this pace even when there were only ten men at the oars. This allowed two of the crew to rest for a fiveminute interval, and when their break was over they changed places with two others who could then take their turn to relax. Thus Argo did not lose momentum, but kept plodding along, southsoutheast across the Bay of Volos towards the little town of Afissos.
Afissos was said, in one tradition, to have been the first stopping point for Jason and his men on their journey. The reason, according to this version of the legend, was that Argo herself refused to carry Hercules' massive weight. The ship's magic speaking bough had groaned aloud when the huge Hero first stepped aboard, and she soon insisted that he had to be put ashore as she was not prepared to carry his bulk any farther. As a result, the people of Afissos are still said to be taller than other villagers in the district because they are descended from the mighty Hercules. Certainly there was a Mycenaean settlement at Afissos in the late Bronze Age – pieces of Mycenaean pottery have been picked up near the beach – but the real reason for Argo's halt may be rather more mundane. Bubbling down to the shore at Afissos runs a fine spring of excellent drinking water. Today it has been channelled and captured so that it supplies the taps in the central square, but as we filled two earthen amphorae for the new Argo we could hear the water rushing under the paving stones. It was entirely logical that Jason would have put in here to water his ship before going on the first stages of the long voyage. Logically, too, any crew members who might have been rethinking their commitment to the expedition could have taken this chance to jump ship and make for home – including Hercules, though, as we shall see, in most versions of the legend he remained on board until the Argonauts reached the Sea of Marmara.
There were no runaways from modern Argo's crew. The 15 miles from Pefkakia to Afissos was a very convenient first day's run – far enough to stretch the muscles but not too far to exhaust the crew. As we came ashore, we found Uncle John ahead of us. He had driven round the bay to meet us, and naturally he had a friend in the area. This friend had a vineyard, and Uncle John was brandishing a plastic jerry can of home-made wine. Beside him stood the schoolteacher of Afissos with two little girls clutching bouquets of roses - ' Kalo taxidi, ' they intoned solemnly as they handed over the flowers. Our journey had begun.
4. Across the Aegean Sea
The Lord of Departures must have heeded the Argonauts' sacrifice, for Jason and his men had the benefit of a heaven-sent wind for the first days of their quest. Scarcely had they left the beach before a fair wind arose and they were able to hoist sail. 'They stepped the tall mast in its box,' wrote Apollonius, 'and fixed it with four stays drawn tight on either bow; then hauled the sail up to the mast head and unfurled it. The shrill wind filled it out; and after making the halyards fast on deck, each round its wooden pin, they sailed on at their ease...'
The twentieth-century Argonauts had no such luck. Our first three days of the voyage were made either in absolute windless calm, or against awkward gusting breezes which scuttled round the headlands and ambushed the labouring galley. Turn and turn about, the crew had to slog on, rowing Argo forward across an expanse of unrelenting sea, like men trudging across the desert. The first blisters appeared within an hour, blisters which were not to heal until the voyage ended. The oarsmen had expected the blisters, and each had his own theory about the best remedy or prevention. Some rubbed the palms of their hands with alcohol, others wore cotton gloves or wrapped a protective towel around the oar handle. But it was little use. Nothing cured the problem. Blisters formed, swelled, broke, reformed, broke and hardened. Then, just as the hands seemed toughened, the first exposure to seawater would soften the callouses, and the dead skin peeled away to leave raw patches which were painful to the touch. If, by great care, the blisters were kept dry after they burst, they simply split again under the constant abrasion of rowing, and then another blister swelled beneath the first.
Gradually the crew began to mould together, learning to row as a unit. Mark went up and down the central gangway coaching the novices. He showed them the best way to time their stroke, how to relax the body during the swing forward and how to control the oar blade as it moved through the water. But rowing a twenty-oar galley was very different from rowing a light river-racing shell. The galley's oars were heavier and more unwieldy, and there was no chance to use the leg muscles fully. Rowing Argo was largely a question of swinging the weight of the body, pivoting forward and back, forward and back, hour after hour, until repetition dulled the senses. By common agreement, the rowing stroke was kept short. The worst crime of all was to swing too far forward with the oar handle at the beginning of a stroke, and a trifle too late. When that happened, the man in front could be struck in the middle of his back with an oar handle and its 7lb lead counterweight as he leaned into his next stroke with his full weight. It was like being hit with a sledge hammer, and in those first, less expert, days it was not unusual for oarsmen to come off the benches with telltale black stripes of lead scored between their shoulder blades.
Yet our slow progress had its compensations. On the second evening we found an idyllic mooring on a small island tucked just inside the mouth of the Bay of Volos. The cove where we anchored was enchanting. Rows of olive trees grew on the hillside above us; the ground was covered with wild flowers; a small stone jetty provided easy access to the small beach. A dozen bottles of Argo wine were quickly plunged up to their necks in the water to cool, and Peter Moran prepared a barbecue. As he cooked, a small fishing boat came nosing into the bay, its crew curious to inspect the galley. They presented us with fresh shrimps to add to our supper.
It was the time of the spring festival, and down from the hillside above us came a grandfather, a grizzled veteran leading his two grandchildren by the hand. He had retired to a tiny whitewashed cottage above the point, from where he could look across to the mainland. His grandchildren had seen Argo arriving, and had been gathering wild flowers for us. Now they brought their offering – an intricately woven wreath of leaves and bright flowers which we hoisted to Argo's masthead as a symbol of May. The old man searched around inside the cuddy of his own small fishing skiff and handed across a great white ball of mutton fat from his own sheep. He had seen us greasing the leather oar strops on Argo, and made this simple and practical gesture. It was one of those small deeds, little acts of kindness, which linger. A thousand miles farther on, along the far north coast of Anatolia, we would still be using smears of that mutton fat, and each time I would recall the old man as he sat with us that evening beside the embers of the camp fire, quietly chatting with the Greek crew members.
Next morning we rowed out of the Gulf of Volos and into the Aegean Sea. Our course lay coastwise, hugging the rim of the fishhook shape of the Magnesian peninsula. Again there was scarcely a breath of wind, and by midday the heat was decidedly oppressive. Sweat poured off the men's bodies, forming damp patches on the oar benches and staining the seats of their trousers. It was easy to understand why the classical Greeks often rowed naked, for this must have reduced the risk of boils and skin rashes which came from sitting in sweat-soaked clothes. Peter Dobbs donned an Arab headcloth, a relic of the Sindbad Voyage, and a variegated assortment of hats and headgear came into use to prevent the sweat from pouring into the rowers' eyes, where it was actually painful.
When the wind did come, it was from the wrong direction, a light breeze out of the east which strengthened in the evening so that the crew had to struggle hard to row Argo to a safe anchorage by dusk. That headwind was a sobering experience. Ten men pulling steadily could drive Argo forward at 3-4 knots, moving her between 20 and 30 miles a day by muscle power. But it had to be in calm conditions. The merest whisper of a headwind, a scarcely perceptible breeze blowing against the prow of the boat, cut down her speed alarmingly. It was not just like walking uphill, but like walking uphill through shifting sand. Every stroke forward was eroded by the boat trying to slither back. Few occupations are more disheartening than trying to row a boat under such conditions, struggling under oars against a contrary wind, losing half a yard for every yard made good. Argo's rowers had every reason to grow discouraged.
Worse still, if the headwind arose when Argo was between anchorages, the helmsman found himself left with only two choices, both of them bad. Either he turned back at once and sought shelter downwind, so losing all the precious ground that the crew had accomplished with such sweat-stained effort, or he had to ask the crew to battle on, watching them grow increasingly weary and hungry, hoping to claw forward those last few miles to the next safe anchorage ahead. There was always a painful balance between the crew's reserves of strength and enthusiasm, and the counterforce of the wind. One never knew how long the ordeal would endure, whether the wind would stealthily increase in proportion to the ebbing strength of the crew, whether the sea state would deteriorate so that the crew could no long row effectively in the rising waves, or – worst of all – whether finally the wind would prove too much, and after a couple of hours of gallant effort you would have to put the helm over and abandon the struggle, throw it all away and run downwind to port.
The truth of the matter was that moving a twenty-oared galley into a headwind by oars was a futile exercise in nine cases out of ten. Galleys were not designed to operate in adverse weather, and this was a caution that I had to bear in mind for the entire voyage. It affected every decision whether to push on or turn back. In two of the three seas we were to sail, the Aegean and the Marmara, the weather is notorious for the speed in which it can change from calm to gale. In the third, the Black Sea, there is more warning from the sky and swell when bad weather is on its way, but the adverse conditions can last longer. And to a wind-driven galley a lee shore is murder.
Cape Sepia, which our Argo passed on the fourth day, was vivid proof of such a danger. In 480 BC almost an entire fleet, sent by Xerxes to invade Greece, had been smashed here in a single storm. The armada, galleys and transports, was caught by an unexpected gale after the captains had rashly anchored on the nearby coast. More than 400 ships were lost when their anchors failed to hold and the vessels were blown down onto Cape Sepia, presumably with their crews trying desperately to get out their oars and dig their blades into the water and heave their ships into the channel running past the cliffs. As the raging waves on the base of the cliffs grew closer, the galley captains must have tried again and again to cast anchor and hold their vessels off the land. But the water was too deep. Their anchor stones failed to hold and the ships were shattered, with appalling loss of life. Argo must have passed over the bones of those galleys as she too rowed past those deadly cliffs, not 50 metres from the wall of rock, with the swell growling and booming in the sea caves. It was impossible not to invoke the memory of all those early shipwrecks, and to remind oneself that any rock-bound coast was the finish for an early ship caught in an onshore gale. No small galley was strong enough to row herself out of trouble, and if the water was too deep to anchor then your ship was lost, and probably the crew with her.
We had negotiated the Cape and turned north, still hugging the shore, when we ran into the first strong wind of the voyage. It came out of the north, a headwind straight down the coast, and I immediately sought temporary anchorage in a little bay called Paltsi, where the fishermen pulled their small boats well up the beach and even had sets of wooden rails to drag them clear of the worst storms, since by no stretch of the imagination could Paltsi be considered a safe anchorage for a modern boat. For Argo under these conditions, however, it was shelter enough. Her draught was so shallow, less than 3 feet, that we could lay out two anchors to seaward, run a long line ashore to keep her stern square to the beach, and warp her into the shallows in the very back of the bay to find a degree of shelter. A deep-keel yacht would have had to abandon the bay and put out to sea, but Argo clung on, pitching and swooping within 10 yards of the shore, the waves breaking just under the upsweep of her stern as a gull would settle on the water and ride close to rocks and backwash.
As for the crew, they were learning that for a galley crew patience was just as important as physical strength and stamina. The only safe way to sail a Bronze Age ship is to wait until the weather turns fair. Sooner or later, we all knew, Argo was sure to be caught offshore in bad weather; that was a crisis that would be dealt with at the time, and the last thing I wanted during the first week of the voyage was to risk the morale of the crew with a useless battering. For the remainder of that day and well into the night we stayed where we were in Paltsi Bay, just as hundreds of galleys must surely have done in the millennia before us, all waiting for a change in the weather before dashing out along the rock-bound coast of Magnesia. Jason and his Argonauts had known the same delay, and along the same treacherous coast. For two and a half days they had been forced to lay up at a place called Aphetae, waiting for a break in the weather. Aphetae's exact location is impossible to identify, because Apollonius does not give enough details, but probably it lay farther north than Paltsi, perhaps near the mouth of the Pinios River.
When the wind does turn, a galley must seize her chance to move. So just after midnight, when the north wind ceased, it was time to rouse the crew. They came aboard half-drenched. Nearly everyone had chosen to sleep on the beach, rather than on the pitching, anchored boat, so there was much scurrying and shouting and shaking to wake the shore party. In the darkness they had to wade out through the breaking waves to come aboard, toss their sleeping bags and rucksacks on the stern deck and climb half-naked and shivering to take up their rowing positions. Typically, Peter Dobbs volunteered to stay ashore and cast off the stern line as the galley rowed out, so he came last of all, towed into the bay by the stern warp like a drogue.
For an hour or so it was heavy going. Although there was no wind, there was still a choppy sea, and in the dark it was difficult to row steadily. The boat went lurching this way and that; oars were tossed about like spillikins; the men cursed; and poor Theodore hung over the side, heaving with seasickness. But dawn rewarded the effort. A breeze moved in from the south, with the sun, and we could set sail at last. It was the first time that Argo had spread her canvas since leaving Volos.
