We crossed the Equator at 1:45pm GMT yesterday, February 4, 2009 CE!
At about 2:00 pm local time a great hail came from below the bowsprit asking the Captain’s permission to
come aboard.
As we mustered midships we saw the Captain standing on the bridge, dressed formally in a crisp white
shirt, navy blue epaulets with 4 gold bars and an officers peaked cap with the Picton Castle surrounded by
gold laurel leaves on the front.
“Captain Davy Jones you are welcome aboard!” he says calmly but in a voice capable of being heard in a
gale!
There then appeared from over the focsle rail an apparition, a haggard and ragged seamen draped in rusty
chains and tattered canvas with strands of oakum in his hair, great dark circles beneath his eyes and the
look of one who has seen many gales and hurricanes in his time.
The Captain greeted Davy Jones and offered him a cold beer served in great china tankards with Sailingfishing boats on them. It was 30c under bright Sun and fairly calm so the sight of two frosty bottles being
opened and poured was like watching gold being poured into those tankards!
There followed a very interesting conversation in which the Captain apologized to Davy Jones for taking
so long to arrive at the line this time. (Normally they would cross the line much sooner on a World
Voyage). Davy Jones fixed us with his baleful stare and sniffed dramatically saying “You have a lot of
smelly pollywogs here how did you stand it?”.
“With great difficulty” said the Captain, “They are making progress however they are not all hopeless. I
should mention however that there is a new concept called Mercy that needs to be kept in mind.”
“Mercy? What be that?” says Davy Jones with a laugh.
Not a good sign thought I :-)
After much such banter back and forth the Captain orders the ship to be hove to to receive Neptune and
his retinue.
We back the main yards and hove her to and then there arises a great shout from the focsle and the
Shellbacks dressed in various costumes herd us all below into the salon and close and lash the hatches.
What followed I am oath bound not to reveal to non shellbacks (as befits all such powerful rites) and so
alas I cannot give you the gory details :-) however I did escape with my pony tail, beard and hair intact
I am now part of a tradition handed down ship to ship since ships first sailed out of sight of land. The
Captain says that he has traced the way we do it back Captain to Captain, all the way to the Captain of a
full rigged Royal Navy ship who fought at Trafalgar!
While each ship has unique elements and the events are personalized for each polliwog the core is as it
was done to the Captain on his first crossing and his Captain’s first crossing and so on back up the line into
the past.
I am now the member of a community of seafarers that stretches back in time but also encompasses all
those who sail the seas now and who have crossed the line in both civilian and naval vessels. It also encompasses those who will follow in the future. It is like a four dimensional club.
It is also very cool that I actually SAILED across the Equator in a Tall Ship powered by canvas sails and
manila ropes. The number of Shellbacks who have done it that way and are alive today are a significant
minority I suspect!
It took two hours to get the ship, and us, to rights after things were done and Neptune had returned to his
watery kingdom :-)
We had a small marlinspike in celebration and then a simple dinner of pasta and fresh bread on the hatch
under the evening sky. The sky was an amazing range of colours. There were high white clouds and lower
grey ones in many shades of blue to almost black. The sky itself was bright blue and the sea that
amazingly luminous dark blue that seems unique to equatorial waters. Sinking in the West was a bright
golden equatorial Sun, a bright silvery half moon was high in the sky above us.
I had the helm at the end of our watch and as I steered the ship in the moonlight (the rest of the watch was forward) and the Captain came and stood beside me. He asked me the course I was steering and then "What is your Shellback name?" I told him. Then he said "It's a beautiful night" to which I replied "It is indeed" and he moved over to the Windward side of the deck. Then he said quietly "Remember it" and left me alone at the wheel in the moonlight. I felt a great sense of contentment and connection with the sea and it’s traditions. I am no longer a smelly pollywog but a true oak shellback!
A fine rite of passage indeed.
Thanks for reading
KJ
2015 Postscript
Looking back over the six years to this day in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean I can safely say that it marked a turning point for me in many ways.
It was the mid point of my six months on the ship, from this point on I felt like I was a sailor. Odd that such a bizarre ritual, with its humiliations, laughter and shared ordeals, could so strongly mark a change in ones life.
We not only cross a "line" on a map, marking a physical location on the Earth's surface that we can measure by the position of the Sun in the sky above our heads, we also cross a line in time, a place in the course of our lives. The "line" marks a division between what we were, a Polliwog, a poser, an amateur, a dabbler, and what we have become, a Shellback, a sailor, a shipmate, a crewman. It marks a passage from a place of fear to one of confidence, a stepping across from one plane of time to another.
There are many points in our lives where we mark similar passages. Some we have no choice in, our births, our deaths, the births and deaths of those we love. Some we have a choice to participate in , marriage, graduations, retirements. All are attended by rituals in one form or another.
But for me the magick, the laughter, the power of ordeal and ritual performed on the deck of a sailing ship under the bright equatorial Sun will forever stand as a true milepost, a place and time that marks a before and an after. A place now receding into the past ,but one still bright in memory and imagination.
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