Natasha de Chroustchoff: 'When Abercastle met Alfred' (2021)

Description

Lede
Sixty six days after leaving his home port in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Alfred Johnson set his shaky feet on the Welsh shore, to the amazement of the villagers of Abercastle.

Story
The inhabitants of Abercastle, Pembrokeshire were much surprised on Saturday [10th August 1876] by the arrival on their coast of a seaman named Alfred Johnson in an open boat in which he left Gloucester Massachusetts on the 15th June. The boat is called “Centennial” and is only 15ft 6ins keel...After partaking some refreshments at Abercastle he again put to sea, directing his course for Liverpool.

This short report in a local newspaper is Pembrokeshire’s only contemporary record of an extraordinary event, the landfall of the first person to cross the Atlantic singlehanded. We can only guess their thoughts when a gaunt, weather-beaten and dishevelled man stumbled up the beach. Although Welsh was their mother tongue some would have spoken English too. The sailor’s Danish-American accent must have sounded odd and when he said he’d sailed from Gloucester they may have assumed he’d come from the Bristol Channel.

Danish-born Alfred Johnson was ever a man of few words and it’s unlikely he would have had the energy to do much explaining. But we know that he had left his home port in Massachusetts determined to perform a feat worthy of his adopted country’s century of independence that year of 1876: thus he named his boat Centennial. He was a fisherman by trade and although not yet 30 he had already spent years catching cod and halibut on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. His job was an especially gruelling one: he was a dory man.

Dories were small boats taken along on the schooners and set down with a two-man crew to catch the fish. With one man rowing and the other baiting the lines the catch had to be hauled in and taken back to the mother ship day in, day out, in all weathers.

Back on land in a fisherman’s tavern Alfred may have boasted about his seamanship for it seems he was bet he couldn’t cross the Atlantic on his own. If his acceptance of the 3000 mile challenge was impulsive his preparations for the voyage were meticulous. He had a dory built to his specifications, based on his experience at sea. The mast could be folded down for rough weather, there were sealed hatches for basic provisions, a water tank, and a stove, only useable in dry weather. There was no cabin just a small open cockpit which meant that Alfred would be exposed to the elements at all times. The ballast was pig iron (a bad choice, the metal skewed his compass).

Rough weather delayed Alfred’s departure until 15th June. The small crowd who waved Centennial off from Gloucester harbour bound for Liverpool docks were not optimistic: they had seen many lives lost to the waves. Ahead lay the perilous North Atlantic where icebergs and freezing fog were year-round hazards; it was also a busy shipping lane. This meant Alfred had always to remain alert at night to avoid being run down by larger vessels.

Two weeks and 800 miles into the crossing Alfred foresaw a storm brewing. He lowered the mast and roped himself to the deck. He had no alternative but to sit it out while the waves tossed the little dory to and fro. He had no shelter and could not reach his food supplies. All he could do was take the occasional nip of whisky and hang on for dear life. After 36 hours the storm abated: Alfred was alive but wet, cold and hungry. This was only the beginning. Two more storms were to follow. In the second, Alfred was knocked unconscious and rolled around the seething deck for three hours, waking with a gashed head and earache. The third storm was the most severe.

Centennial had travelled 1700 miles when the wind turned to gale force and the dory capsized, flinging Alfred into the water. With superhuman strength and determination he managed to clamber on to her upturned hull and then, using his own weight and the force of the waves, right the boat, climb back in and start baling out. At this point a shark rolled up and had to be fended off.

By now off Cape Clear in Southern Ireland, he soon spotted the lightbeams of Kinsale and Tusker Rock followed by the beacons on The Smalls and South Bishop off the Welsh coast. His strength failing, Alfred searched for somewhere to put in. The tides took him to Abercastle bay, its bright white cottages visible from afar. Dismissed by The Admiralty as ‘affording no shelter even for the smallest vessel’, Abercastle’s long inlet leads to a cove without a harbour or quay, just a sandy beach where boats hauled out.

We don’t know what sort of reception Alfred received but the Abercastle folk were seafarers too and they recognised an exhausted man. It’s very likely they led him to the inn, The Blacksmith’s Arms, and sat him down with a mug of ale, a bowl of cawl (soup) and a chunk of bread and cheese.

The tired mariner did not stay long. He had an appointment to keep in Liverpool and keep it he did, arriving on 15th August to a hero’s welcome and a grand reception. Johnson never visited Abercastle again and it was not until 2003 that a plaque commemorating his landing was set in the wall beside the beach, in a ceremony attended by his grandson.

Factoid
- Alfred “Centennial” Johnson never visited Abercastle again and it was not until 2003 that a plaque commemorating his landing was set in the wall beside the beach, in a ceremony attended by his grandson.

- Following a few months' stay in England, Johnson returned home aboard a passenger ship, with Centennial in tow.

- The tidal island in Abercastle Bay that gives the place its name is thought to have been used defensively in prehistoric times.

- Centennial now resides in the collection of the Cape Ann Museum in downtown Gloucester, Massachusetts.

- Carreg Samson, a 5000-year-old neolithic dolmen tomb, is located half a mile West of Abercastle.

• https://perma.cc/9HP8-9B55 (link opens in new window)