The Brendan Voyage Read Online Free PDF Page B

Newfoundland. As a practical sailor, I knew that it was awkward to sail by a direct route from Ireland to North America. This track is contrary to the prevailing southwesterly and westerly winds that blow across the Atlantic. It would have been easy enough to sail from the Promised Land straight home to Ireland with the wind behind the oxhide boat. But outward bound, Saint Brendan would have had a more difficult time. Unless he was very lucky with the wind, he would have been forced to go around the westerly wind belt, either to north or south. And on the way out he would experience great difficulty, battling his way from island to island and working his way west by stages.
    Excitedly I consulted the navigation charts that marked the winds and currents of the North Atlantic. The logical route leaped off the page. Using the prevailing southwest winds, one could sail north from Ireland and up to the Hebrides. Then north again, slanting across the westerly winds to the Faroes. From there lay a tricky passage to Iceland, but after that the currents were all favorable, helping the boat across from Iceland to South Greenland, and then sweeping down to the coast of Labrador, Newfoundland, or beyond. On the map thisroute looked very roundabout, but that was an illusion of map projection. It was very nearly the shortest way between North Europe and North America and, above all, it was the Stepping Stone Route, the same route taken by early aviators in short-range aircraft, also by the Vikings, and earlier still … perhaps by the Irish.
    It dawned on me that the Brendan Voyage was going to be a detective story. I had the clues before me in the text of the
Navigatio.
One by one they might lead toward a solution, providing I could find out how to follow them. But how? Again, the obvious answer was with a boat exactly like the one Saint Brendan had used. Such a boat would take me to inspect the places along the Stepping Stone Route that might conform to the places recorded in the
Navigatio.
At the same time it would also show whether such a boat could survive an Atlantic voyage. But what exactly did the
Navigatio
mean by a boat made of oxhides stretched on a wooden frame? Could such a vessel make an Atlantic crossing? The Stepping Stone Route is comparatively short, but it is notoriously stormy. Few modern yachts would attempt this northern passage, and to try it in an open boat seemed suicidal. It would take a strong sea boat to complete this route. A boat of leather certainly did not sound very promising.
    So it was one March day that I found myself walking down a steep track leading to the spot from where Saint Brendan was said to have set out for the Promised Land. I was deeply affected by my surroundings. This was Saint Brendan’s own country, the Dingle Peninsula of County Kerry and the farthest point of Ireland reaching out into the Atlantic, a place where the sweep of green hills and moorlands ends in the blue-grey ocean, and the air is so clear that one almost has a sense of vertigo as the land seems to tilt toward the distant horizon. Here Saint Brendan is still commemorated in almost every natural feature. His name is spelled by the older version of Brandon, and one has Brandon Head, Brandon Bay, Brandon Point, the little village Brandon, and Mount Brandon itself, to whose summit on Saint Brendan’s Day a pilgrimage is made in honor of the Saint, and in past years strong young men carried on their shoulders the altar table to the peak as an act of worship.
    Brandon Creek lies on the north side of the Dingle, a cleft in the line of massive cliffs that guards the coast. To reach it one crosses bog country, marked by clumps of brown peat stacked for drying and occasional tiny fields rimmed with walls of loose rock. It is a place of few inhabitants, though where the road finally runs out on the lip of the creek I found two houses, one on each side of the narrow road. The second house could have been cut from a picture postcard.