All Hands on Deck

There’s a pounding of feet up the companionways and across the windswept decks. Rain is lashing at the masts, the rigging, the wooden decks and the crew. It’s the early hours of the morning on the Bay of Biscay. Only minutes before, each member of Sedov’s off duty crew had been fast asleep in their berths. A stentorian voice bellowing through the ship’s public address system changed all that.

“Parusnj avral! Parusnj avral! All hands on deck! All hands on deck!”

The order, in Russian and in English, spurs officers, regular crew, cadets and trainees, to action. From the bridge deck the commands are passed to the bosuns [petty officer in charge of riggings, boats and anchors], they pass them onto the men.

“Square the yards!”

Lines are run out and muscles take the strain as the eighteen yards (the horizontal beams hung from the centers of the masts to support square sails) are rotated through fifteen degrees. There is no fuss, no idle chatter. A job has to be done and, despite the inclement weather, it will be done as quickly as possible.

Sedov is the largest operational windjammer, or square rigger, in the world. She’s a colossal four-masted barque reaching 117.5 metres from bow to stern. Her steel hull was launched in the German port of Kiel in 1921. A product of the renowned Krupp’s ship yard, she was first owned by merchant Karl Vinnen and named Magdalene Vinnen for his daughter.

For fifteen years, Magdalene Vinnen carried cargoes between European ports and South America, Australia and exotic islands in the South Pacific. In 1936 she was sold and became the Kommodore Johnsen. Under the North-German Lloyd house flag she doubled as a cargo ship and a training ship. In company with the Padua (later to be re-named Kruzenstern) and eleven other tall-ships, the Kommodore Johnsen took part in the last grain race from Australia to Europe in years before WWII. But, by the time that war came to a close, she was a sorry looking mess, with most of her rigging and yards piled on her scruffy decks. Under the war reparation scheme, she was handed over to the Soviets. For five years she decayed at the Latvian port of Liepaya until a deep sea captain with a sense of history took charge of her.

Since 1952, the majestic old sailing ship has proudly carried the name of Sedov, in honor of Georgy Sedov, the Russian sailor and Arctic explorer who died in 1914. Even so, Sedov’s problems were not over. By the mid-1960s, she was once again in urgent need of repair, and was laid up for a decade. A six year overhaul and refit followed at the Kronstadt shipyard before she could return to sea.

Today the Sedov is owned by the Murmansk State Marine Academy and is employed by the Ministry of Fisheries, sailing under the Russian flag. Since the early 80’s she has been a romantic sail-training school for up to 5,000 cadets from the Academy. Many of Russia’s ocean navigators and marine engineers of the near future will have had their first taste of life at sea on board this grand old vessel.

Sedov is expensive to maintain and operate. To assist the Academy financially, her regular crew of 65 men and 114 cadets share their voyages with up to 50 foreign trainees. Through the auspices of Tall-Ship Friends, trainees pay for the privilege of working in partnership with crew and cadets on long and short ocean voyages. All revenue generated is intended for the ship’s upkeep.

A typical voyage takes place early in the season. Sedov winters in the Black Sea port of Novorrossissk. To reach her summer cruising grounds, and to take part in an annual tall-ship’s race, she must pass through the Mediterranean Sea. West of Gibraltar she will sail north on Atlantic waters, past the Iberian peninsula and cross the notorious Bay of Biscay. Some trainees fly to the Black Sea; most meet Sedov one week later off the coast of Malta.

Thirty six raw recruits from six countries, speaking a mixture of European languages, watch in awe as the great white hull of the stationary windjammer shimmers in the haze. Behind them, the Grand Harbour of Valletta fades from sight. As their shuttle boat closes the distance, the towering masts and bright yellow yards become visible. Tightly-furled sails cling to the yards, disguised by a geometric spider’s web of lines, sheets, halyards and braces.

In the shrouds and lining the deck rails, the crew watch the new arrivals curiously. Most of the trainees come from Germany. One is from Switzerland, another from Luxembourg, two are from Holland. An old English sailor has come to fulfil a lifelong dream and a Canadian journalist to write a story.

Trainees are organized into three teams of twelve and assigned to a mast crew. Days at sea follow a set pattern of ship’s work, interspersed with meals and rest periods. Everyone takes their turn at the helm. Two cadets and two trainees work in tandem on the twin, mahogany wheels, sometimes in bright sunshine, sometimes in rain. When there is little or no wind, Sedov runs under engine power. When the wind finds the ship, the soon to be familiar “parusnj avral” echoes through the corridors.

Cadets scramble into the rigging. High up the masts they climb, then out on the yards to unfurl the sails. At first the trainees are kept on deck under bosun’s orders. “Hands to braces” (simplified to “brassen” by a stentorian Russian voice bellowing through a brass megaphone), causes some confusion initially. Following the crew’s lead, the trainees heave on the lines when ordered. They hold the strain until “brossili” is called, then let go as experienced hands make up on the pins. Later, once they have learned the ropes, the trainees will be allowed into the rigging and out onto the yards.

up

As the work progresses and confidence increases, friendships are formed. It’s not long before all conversations are taking place in a babel of Russian, German and English. Pocket dictionaries appear and are thumbed through countless times as each nationality strives to understand the other.

Off-duty, there is much visiting between kubricks, the living quarters below decks. Cadets and crew are eager to learn as much as possible about their western companions. The Europeans and the Canadian are just as keen to discover and study a new culture. The trainees are an eclectic group; the cadets are not so different. Not only Russian youth studies at the academy in Murmansk. Among the cadets on this voyage there is a Bangladeshi, a Mauritanian, an Algerian and a Senegalese.

Sedov and her crews of professional seamen, cadets and trainees, has crossed the Atlantic to visit the USA and Canada. She has sailed the Baltic and visited most north European and Scandinavian ports. She regularly participates in the annual Cutty Sark Tall-Ship’s Race; winning the Cork to Belfast sector in 1991, the Weymouth to La Coruna and the Oporto to St. Malo sectors in 1994. Sedov inevitably finishes among the leaders.

Sedov is not alone. The former Soviet Union, particularly present-day Russia and Ukraine, maintains a fine fleet of stately square-riggers. Each year they go to sea and each year, it seems, their voyages become more ambitious.

The world’s second largest tall-ship is the Kruzenstern, also Russian. She set sail from Baltisk in the Baltic on October 28, 1995, to sail around the world. Her voyage is to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Russian fleet (June 1996). Kruzenstern’s course will follow the route taken by Baron von Kruzenstern’s voyage in Nadezhda, between 1803 and 1806. A total of fifteen foreign ports was on the Kruzenstern schedule and an east to west passage round Cape Horn.

Not to be outdone, the much smaller and much newer Ukrainian tall-ship Khersones is also reported to be planning a voyage round the Horn. Latest reports claim that Sedov’s owners are now planning their own voyage to double the Horn.

These are exciting but demanding voyages for officers, crew and cadets. Their pay is low: as little as $1 per day for a cadet and $2 per day for a regular crew member, according to one multi-lingual cadet. Foreign trainees will be given the opportunity of taking part in these major voyages, but the cost, when it is announced, will be considerable.

Russia has a fine sea-faring tradition, one that is being kept alive, not only by the sail training academies, but also by other adventurous citizens.

,, while retracing the route of Danish explorer Vitus BeringWC oints south. Encountering Hurricane Calvin, one of the three, St. Gabriel, the coast of , near Guatemala  the other two vessels,St. Peter, -- they had last been heard from in Costa Rica,

Another unusual vessel to visit European ports in recent years was a replica of a traditional Ukrainian chaika. These craft, in use between the 15th and 18th centuries, were a type of light warship. No more than twenty metres in length, they were exceptionally seaworthy and usually manned by thirty or forty rowers. This latest chaika, Presviata Pokrova, was built in Bruchovitchi. With a crew dressed in Cossack national dress, she sailed along the Dnieper River to Istanbul. The voyage continued through the Mediterranean Sea to Italy and eventually to France’s Atlantic Coast.

Finally, this June, Aira II, a 49-foot dual-masted sailboat owned by the southern Russian city of Volzhsky will set sail from St. Petersburg with a crew of six on a round-the-world voyage. Interestingly, the voyage will include navigation of the US’s Midwest waterway through NY to the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi.

meanwhiletheir creations at the noted, bi

Sedov and others of her vintage are not wooden boats. They are of steel. Even the masts and yards are steel. Only the well scrubbed decks, varnished interiors and some mechanical items, such as pulley blocks, are of wood. In 1995 Sedov spent some time in the Naval dockyard at St. Petersburg, where there is a highly-skilled section which specialises in working with wood.

The summer of 1996 will see Sedov back on the high seas. In addition to a comprehensive training schedule, she is also expected to compete in some part of this year’s Cutty Sark Tall-Ship’s Race. Unlike previous year’s, the 1996 Cutty Sark Races will take place in two separate bodies of water at roughly the same time. July and August will see the magnificent fleets of sailing ships challenging each other in the north and in the south. One fleet will sail the Baltic, from Rostock to St. Petersburg, Turku and Copenhagen. The other will take a triangular course from Genoa to Palma de Majorca and back to Naples.

Sedov’s current certification is valid until 1999. One can only hope that she will be granted a further certificate to take her into the next millennium. The year 2000 will be a special year at sea. ‘Tall Ships 2000’ is a planned, double crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. Starting from Southampton, the fleet will race to Genoa, Agadir, Puerto Rico, New York, Halifax and back to Amsterdam.

Sedov, pride of the Russian marine, and the greatest windjammer in the world, must surely be among -- if not at the head of -- that modern day armada.

Tall Ship Friends offers training voyages to different destinations on tall ships. For more information, their address is: Houseboat Sabamati, Scotland Bridge Lock, New Haw, Addlestone, Surrey KT15 3HJ, phone +44-1932-344-084.