No longer one of Captain Papa’s lessons, this was the moment she’d dreaded—and dreamed of—in equal measure.
The chance to prove that she was worth her salt.
But the responsibility of the task hung far heavier than she’d ever imagined. Eight souls, a hundred tons of dried cod, and an eighty-foot coastal schooner—hers to keep safe as they cut blindly through treacherous waters. She saw the crew’s sidelong glances—questioning, doubtful—their discomfort as palpable as the damp air that clung to her cotton dress.
With a pencil stub, she marked her last three-bearing fix and frowned. They were far too deep into the hazards to stand off and await better conditions. They’d be more likely to wreck by turning around than by holding course.
But the shoals covered two-thirds of the bay’s opening, and to reach the safety of the Sears, she’d need to make two precisely timed course changes. Both of them inside ‘The Devil’s Cauldron,’ the area of deadly rips and swirling eddies that could spin a vessel like a child’s top.
If she calculated wrong and they hit a shoal, they’d rip the keelson right out of the bottom of the boat and sink her in mere minutes.
Ellen shivered and wished for a coat, but it was too late to leave the deck. Blinded by the fog, she’d have to navigate the dangerous passage entirely by mathematics. To even guess their current position from moment to moment, she’d have to rely on evolving estimates of deduced reckoning—shortened as all sailing language was inevitably condensed, to dead reckoning.
This meant calculating the schooner’s speed and direction against the current’s speed and direction.
“Remember, Ellie,” Captain Papa had said on the last run, “The Hen and Chickens don’t play fair. If the ebb runs hard against an easterly, you’ll face eight different streams in a quarter mile braiding themselves through those shoals.”
· · ·
“All hands!” Mr. Gannett bellowed, the first mate’s voice carrying the authority Ellen knew hers lacked. “Reef the mainsail!”
The crew scrambled to grab the tarred hemp lines with calloused hands, their movements quick and precise despite the tense set of their shoulders.
Reefing was a practical choice—they had enough speed for steerage and if they were going to hit a shoal, they’d best do it slowly—but it deviled her calculations and robbed her of the men she needed to run the log and the lead.
Ellen closed her eyes, summoning the tables she’d created over the past two years—each page in her neat hand. Countless nights she’d stayed awake, measuring, recording, and memorizing data, while gritting her teeth at Mr. Gannett’s endless jokes over her efforts.
“Ain’t seen numbers sail a boat as yet, Miss Ellen.”
But what he called her ‘remarkable luck’ at fixing their position was her certainty, distilled into figures and formulas.
Now, those same tables told her what would happen to their speed as they reduced sail, and how long it would take them to complete the maneuver. She ran the calculations in her head—no time to use the slate—and penciled a dashed line onto the chart to estimate where they’d be in a quarter hour.
If she’d estimated correctly, it would put them right at the mark for the first course change. If she was wrong, the first sign would be a thunderous crash.
