A fellow kayaker, Mo Fridlich, posted this story on another forum. I thought that some of you folks who don't know the story of Captain Romer's voyage would be interested in this mind boggling adventure. Rick Langer M15 #337 Bluebird
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.