It’s sailing time. The Royal Clipper is ready: she twists her lines. The giant ship is humming itself some low-octave song. A hum that comes from wind? It might be that. Or sounds from a sail that’s not yet unwound.
Ropes that, seconds ago, were asleep—coiled like boas in the deck’s hot sun—start spinning and unspooling. Passengers scatter. Sailors crank and pull. The Captain moves to his wheel.
I should be watching Bridgetown, Barbados, get smaller, little by little. Instead I am staring up at just-hatched squares of canvas, diagram in hand. “Is that the Mizzen-Topgallant-Staysail?” I say, as a wedge-like sheet comes down.
A man in a green Star Clipper cap takes a look at my chart. “Might be a jigger,” he says. “Might be a jigger up there.”
I notice a woman inching away from us. This type of talk could be contagious.
I’m at the start of my Grenadine-island cruise aboard Star Clipper lines’ Royal Clipper. Although the line has two smaller vessels, Royal Clipper—inspired by a 1902 tall ship and built in Rotterdam by a Swedish firm—is the largest full-rigged sailing ship in the world.
With five masts and 42 confusing sails, the 439-foot-long ship can hold 227 passengers and allow them to watch and help out (a little bit) as the crew raises and trims sheets and as the Captain or mates turn the oak wheel on the always-open bridge.
I’d expected quarters to be pretty tight inside but as we roll toward our next port, Union Island, I discover that my cabin looks a lot like those I’ve had on larger cruise ships with its varnished wood paneling, twin beds, and marble-trimmed bathroom.
When the dinner bell rings, I find out that the ship has a three-deck atrium and multi-level dining room at its core. Eerie shadows from above show off the fact that the atrium’s ceiling skylight doubles as the bottom of the swimming pool up on deck.
“Nice, isn’t it?” says one of my table mates, 73-year-old Gray Furey of Cincinnati, who, as a birthday present to himself has signed on for his third Royal Clipper cruise. Furey has a pocket watch (“I just like them”) and a penchant for Stella Artois beer.
Asked why he’s come back again, Furey doesn’t hesitate. “I remember watching the head bartender in the ship’s talent show,” he says. “He made the assistant bartender disappear. I’d never seen something like that so close.”
Union Island’s Chatham Bay doesn’t look like much beyond a stretch of white-sand beach, but heading ashore on the tender I notice a few of the ship’s French passengers bent over the railing peering closely at the shallow turquoise water.
“Une tortue!” one shouts, and suddenly we can all see swimming turtles, heads bobbing up so they can catch their breath.
When we reach Tobago Cays, the crew gets ready to barbecue lunch for us in the shade of some oleanders down on the sand. The Royal Clipper’s cruise director, Ximena C. Dipp, knows five languages and she is using at least three to handle questions about the menu and pathways along the beach.
During sail-aways, we passengers stand in clusters on the Royal Clipper’s open bridge. If it is nighttime, we can see how stars can make a chart to steer by. At sunset we look out at planets, scattered island lights and silhouettes of far-off ships.
When we’re allowed, we take our turns behind the wheel and try to spin it subtly enough to keep the ship on course. The Gloucester Fisherman could do this, but for us, with tentative hands, it’s hard. Keel and hull behave like they can sense their short-lived freedom: The huge ship kicks like a bull, or bucks to the side until a crew member steps in.
On the day we are allowed to climb to one of the Crow’s Nests I do not go first. It’s a gusty morning and the ladder up the main-mast is swinging like a bell. I watch some German passengers climb. They hop from rung to rung. They don’t look down.
“Not so difficult,” says Christina Drewes of Hanover, Germany, after she’s done.
Were you nervous? I ask.
“Never,” says Drewes. “I’ve never climbed a mast before, but I dream about it. I read some books about sailing. Horatio Hornblower. Do you know that one?”
I do, I say.
Drewes stands back as I click to the safety belt and step on the lowest rung. I move my hands and think that legs and feet will follow. Passengers are staring which helps to make them go.
It is maybe halfway up that I hear it again. A kind of hum.
Maybe it’s the wind. A wind that’s strumming lines. That’s making a ladder swing.
Or maybe it’s the sail stretching out from the Crow’s Nest, now only a few feet above. Definitely not the Mizzen-Topgallant-Staysail, I think. Could it be a jigger? I’m just not sure.
When my hands feel wood instead of rope I get some help from the crew to pull up onto the little platform and look around. Bow and stern. Starboard and port. All are perfectly arranged in what must be some detailed model of a ship far below.
The hum is louder here. I hear a crack from a flag. Something about a thump of sail sounds wrong.
I realize this: I am a better listener than before. I could learn this song.
Peter Mandel is the author of the read-aloud bestseller Jackhammer Sam (Macmillan/Roaring Brook) and other books for kids, including Zoo Ah-Choooo (Holiday House) and Bun, Onion, Burger (Simon & Schuster).