NYCkayaker Captain Romer's 1928 Trans Atlantic crossing

[Rick Langer]

Wow!  What a story.  Eighty-eight days sitting in a water?  Sleeping for 3 
seconds out of five?  What ever gave Romer the idea that he could make this 
voyage?

Thanks for sharing it with us, Mo.  I'd like to get the book " Madmen of the 
Atlantic".  Is the author Jean Merrien?

Rick Langer

> Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2006 12:57:57 -0500
> From: Mo  Fridlich <mofrid at optonline.net>
> Subject: NYCkayaker Captain Romer's 1928 Trans Atlantic crossing
> To: MidHudsonKayaker at mail-list.com, NYCKayaker
> <nyckayaker at rockandwater.net>
> Message-ID: <02cd01c72204$e30a11d0$1a01a8c0 at mofrid>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Just ran across this story about Captain Romer and his 1928 Trans Atlantic 
> crossing in a kayak.  It's just mind boggling!
> I thought those not familiar with his story would enjoy reading about it.
> .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
>>From The Sea Canoeist June 1983.
> Romer's Kayak
> A 1928 crossing of the Atlantic (An extract from a book called "Madmen of 
> the Atlantic".)
> Almost everyone has seen kayaks: however well the canvas is stretched, in 
> the frame's gaps it produces hollows which impede progress and also make 
> it more susceptible to blows from the water. On a river this is not very 
> serious. At sea the incessant banging's and creakings can be imagined.
>
> Like other kayaks, Captain Romer's craft, which he named Deutches Sport, 
> was of waterproof canvas on a wooden frame in sections; she was 191/2 feet 
> long, just over 3 feet in beam, and when loaded had a draught of not quite 
> 10 inches. She was thus a little more stable than a Rob Roy canoe, but 
> only a little. Like all kayaks she had her bows and stern covered (hardly 
> 'decked', for 'deck' implies you can walk on her); the water collecting on 
> these covered parts was thrown into the sea (or should have been) by a 
> tiny breakwater. As a rule, kayaks also have a canvas round this 
> breakwater, so that it and the occupant's body are together completely 
> watertight. On paper this seems an excellent device; you may have read 
> stories of Greenlanders doing an 'Eskimo trip', half submarine, fitted out 
> in this way, without letting in a drop of water - below the waist, of 
> course. In practice, on the high seas, things are a bit different. If you 
> 'pack yourself in' like this, here is the result:!
>  the kayak contains, in a strictly closed vessel: 1. A certain (very 
> small) quantity of air, 2. Half a human body which breathes and perspires, 
> 3. Gear and stores including food and water in receptacles.
>
> Now a man's body breathes through his whole skin (the pores), not only 
> through his lungs; and the air contained in a kayak is soon vitiated. The 
> lower half of his body perspires heavily, especially the feet, as will be 
> appreciated by anyone who knows the smell of a barrack-room. And the air 
> in that is purer than the air inside a kayak.
>
> The stores? At sea they are bound to be damp; in a closed vessel they rot. 
> The food 'breathes' like a man, except when it is in soldered tins: 
> resulting in damp, mould, smells. The water in its receptacle varies less 
> in temperature than the matter round it, so it acts as a condenser of damp 
> on the walls of the receptacles.
>
> The half of the body in this confined air is liable to every sort of 
> morbid condition, and so, therefore, is the whole man. So the idea of 
> being completely 'watertight' must be given up; you cannot stay long 
> strapped by the waist to the canvas apron. So the kayak must remain open.
>
> But we are at sea. However small the opening, rain and dew will get 
> through, also sea water periodically, not to mention the damp of the 
> surrounding atmosphere. All this water will get in, and won't come out 
> again. It won't dry off in the air, because the air is not circulating; 
> nor can the man in the boat easily evacuate it. Ever tried emptying a 
> kayak beneath you?
>
> Romer had installed a little pump which could be moved by foot or hand. It 
> did not work satisfactorily, and for weeks he had to do contortions to 
> carry out the essential evacuation of water with an empty food tin.
>
> It was the only exercise he could take: he couldn't stand, let alone walk. 
> He was seated, permanently seated. To sleep (we shall see later on how he 
> slept) he could never stretch out completely nor completely lose 
> consciousness while sleeping, since the kayak might have turned turtle. 
> She might do that even in average weather if allowed to get into the 
> trough of waves.
>
> Altogether this was far worse than the galleys, it was the most fiendish 
> torture any sadist could ever have conceived; and it was self imposed.
>
> Captain Romer had only made very slight modifications to the usual kayak. 
> Having made no claims that he would cross the Atlantic by oar alone, he 
> had rigged the boat as a yawl: a main-sail, not very large, forward of the 
> breakwater, in the normal place where the small masts are put in craft of 
> this kind, and a small sail behind his back. To be able to steer while 
> rowing or trimming his sails, he had fixed up a rudder control worked by 
> his feet. Finally, as a safety measure in case of being waterlogged, he 
> had tubes of air, or rather carbon dioxide, which inflated.
>
> Then he had to load the kayak with food and water for the voyage: for 
> nearly three months at least, and therefore nearly four, to give him a 
> safety margin. Nearly four months' food and drinking water in a kayak?
>
> In the tropics a man can't do with much less than four pints of water a 
> day. Romer loaded 55 gallons, which is about 550 pounds, plus the weight 
> of the receptacles (soldered tins), say 650. The food, not counting fruit, 
> weighed nearly 500 pounds, plus packing, say 550. Add two small spare 
> sails, some rope, some clothes, a compass, a sextant, 'tables', a 
> year-book, 50 pounds of paraffin and a stove etc. Altogether he certainly 
> cannot have been carrying less than 1,300 pounds (the dead weight given in 
> the loading prospectus), and with his own weight included about 1,470. It 
> was the uppermost limit - and the prospectus was talking about river 
> water.
>
> I spoke of the tropics, for Romer was not in fact taking the same route as 
> all those we have watched so far, except Bombard. He was making the 
> crossing exactly like Bombard: westwards, with the trade-winds.
>
> He left Europe from Portugal (Cape St Vincent near Lisbon). In the 
> remarkable time of eleven days he reached the Canaries, from where, like 
> Bombard, he was to make his 'real start'. But even on that first stage he 
> could realize the terrifying nature of the adventure he had committed 
> himself to.
>
> Having found quite a lot of wind and sea, and wishing to take advantage of 
> the wind to make greater headway, he had to watch that sea constantly, for 
> the smallest wave could overturn him and the crests of the waves hid the 
> horizon from him. He had to watch night and day. This is how he lived and 
> 'slept'.
>
> He had lashed the canvas 'apron' to his waist. Despite this the kayak 
> still made water, so badly that the stores began to float inside .One wave 
> even penetrated the apron. Luckily the automatic carbon dioxide tubes 
> worked, the gas inflating the buoyancy pockets so that ejected some of the 
> water and ensured the boat's stability. The little foot-pump did not work, 
> however, or at least not satisfactorily. He had to set about baling out 
> along his thighs with a large empty food-tin, a square one-gallon can 
> which just passed between his body and the side! He held out like this for 
> three whole days.
>
> 'The fourth night without sleep,' he related afterwards, 'I had to steer 
> with a big stern sea. I couldn't let my attention relax for a single wave. 
> I also had to watch for land (the Canaries), which would soon be 
> appearing. But thirdly, I had to sleep, for this is man's most essential 
> need; I was at the stage where sleep becomes a matter of life and death. 
> So a strange compromise was worked out, a "balance" of these three 
> necessities. Between one wave crest and the next I slept. On the crest I 
> woke, made the appropriate steering adjustment, and looked at the horizon. 
> That lasted two seconds, 'on watch'. Then I slept for three seconds. Then 
> I woke myself again for another two seconds, just enough time and in a 
> state just lucid enough to be ready for any action necessary. I carried 
> out such actions automatically, not caring what happened; and I'd 
> completely lost the sense of danger.
>
> 'Towards midnight a breaking wave got me in its grip, turned the kayak 
> right round, passed right over me. I came out the other side more or less 
> unscathed, and realized at once: that the wind was not so terrible that it 
> could cause waves like that on the high seas; that land must be near; and 
> that I might well be dashed against it. I thought I could hear shingle 
> being rolled on to a beach, but could see nothing. Suddenly I heard a 
> voice shouting to me in English to go south instead of south-west. An 
> hallucination? Undoubtedly, because I didn't find land till the afternoon 
> of the next day. Still I must have passed near an island; and the little 
> bit of south I went, before heading south-west as before, had perhaps 
> saved my life. It couldn't have been a man's voice, though (who would have 
> bothered about me or could have shouted so loud from the shore?) Why did 
> God call to me in English? Perhaps to show me it was He, speaking to a 
> German, near Spanish-speaking islands.
>
> 'When I was under the lee of the island, I noticed that barnacles and all 
> sorts of marine growth had formed and spread so fast in the warm waters 
> that in these twelve days they had covered the canvas of the kayak with a 
> coat four inches thick and stopped her completely. In fact, in the middle 
> of the Canaries' harbor of Arecibo, when I was getting no more help from 
> the wind, I almost foundered!'
>
> This crossing had been 580 miles. The next stage would be 3,570 to New 
> York, or 3,000 to the West Indies, where (remember Bombard) he would be 
> driven by the trade winds. In the end he did head for the West Indies.
>
> He returned to sea on 3rd June 1928, knowing what to expect, on a voyage 
> of at least three months. Three months sitting or half-lying, unable to 
> move, relax, bend his legs, or satisfy the body's humblest needs. Three 
> months with the lower half of the body mouldering in damp and the upper 
> part half sweltering in the terrible sun which burnt his neck, his arms 
> and even his head - after the loss of his last hat, which occurred at the 
> end of the first month. At that point he was obsessed by the idea of 
> sunstroke sending him mad.
>
> Three months without really going to sleep or stretching full out, without 
> being able to turn round or even forget for a moment where he was. Nearly 
> three months without any hot food, any food even cooked or heated; for the 
> paraffin stove played tricks on him too. But on board a kayak such tricks 
> may prove catastrophic. To do his meager cooking, Romer put the stove 
> between his legs. One day it caught fire, and he had to throw it overboard 
> immediately, so as not to be burnt alive.
>
> Three months of a horrible buffeting, being shaken and hit by each wave. 
> Three months of terror too, for various mammals and big fish, sharks, 
> whales, sword-fish, and porpoises, were continually scraping on the frail 
> canvas hull to eat what was growing there. A special device had been 
> fitted to warn him in such cases; not only was it futile, because he had 
> no way of defending himself properly, but it soon became an extra torture, 
> appalling for the nerves. To frighten off his assailants he beat on an 
> empty food-tin, and at night lit his torch - but this attracted the flying 
> fish, which shot out of the sea and struck him in the face in full flight.
>
> One day a gigantic shark and its three cubs attacked the boat. Romer beat 
> on his tin several times without succeeding in scaring them off. The big 
> shark swam furiously towards the boat, dived at the last moment, and got 
> its back under the boat's bottom, so that Romer felt himself being lifted 
> in the air and could see the delicate rubberized canvas swelling up under 
> the imprint of the shark's back.
>
> The shark seemed unwilling to give up the promising breakfast, and dived 
> again. Romer grabbed the first thing that came into his hands, which 
> happened to be the staff of the American flag, and hit out at the back as 
> it went under. In the fray the flag unfurled in the sun; the shark gave a 
> leap, dived, and disappeared for ever. 'Victory for the American colors 
> all along the line,' wrote a reporter in all seriousness.
>
> Romer did not go mad, but appallingly painful ulcers sprang up all over 
> his body, which was corroded by salt. This hardened into crusts under the 
> merciless sun of the trade wind zone; his hair turned white with it. At 
> long last the big tropical showers came to wash it out. But he couldn't 
> even get on his feet to enjoy them, and his legs were still mouldering in 
> the brine.
>
> He had said: I'll be at the West Indies before the end of August. He 
> landed there on the last day of the month, at the island of St Thomas, one 
> of the furthest north. After eighty-eight days at sea, eighty-eight days 
> as a sort of marine 'mummy', eighty-eight days of an ordeal which must 
> have been more frightful even than Bombard's, one of the most 
> 'super-human' ordeals that a man has ever born.
>
> His face, covered with three months' growth of beard, was something like 
> Robinson Crusoe's. He managed to stagger out of the boat, and collapse on 
> the quay. He was taken to a hotel, where he slept 'like the dead' for 
> forty-eight hours. By the time he was awoken, all the inhabitants of the 
> island knew his story, and would have liked to f?te him. But the deep 
> ulcers, though they were drying on the upper half of his body, were not 
> healing on his thighs, swollen and eaten away simultaneously by sea-water. 
> He had to be kept in hospital for several months. The British governor of 
> St Thomas awarded him the decoration specially created for Lindbergh, the 
> first airman to cross the Atlantic alone in a non-stop flight.
>
> In Boston and New York, sailors and journalists were all talking about 
> him, including my old friends Jobig and Tom (both now seventy), who of 
> course were not in agreement.
>
> I parted them before they were really at each other's throats, and in any 
> case realized that for all his pretended scorn Jobig was as impressed as 
> anyone by this latest 'madman'. He was also one of the first to grow 
> anxious about Romer's fate.
>
> The captain had left the West Indies for New York at the beginning of 
> October. It was very late in the season. The first autumn cyclones had 
> appeared; on land they hadn't been too violent, but several ships at sea 
> had already been driven badly off course.
>
> The days passed. It was 1,500 miles from St Thomas to New York, 1,200 to 
> Cape Hatteras, near which he was bound to pass, and where he ought to have 
> been a month at the latest after leaving the West Indies. Half way through 
> November there was still no news of him.
>
> At the beginning of December a terrible cyclone came up from south to 
> north, following exactly the track of the kayak. If Romer had survived 
> till then, which was more or less impossible, this would have sealed his 
> fate.