Shipmate: A Love Story

I am now of an age where the past is wondrously long and the future fearfully short. Regardless, I just went into the galley of Ganesh on my 65th year of living aboard. I put the kettle on our Force Ten stove. I switched on the solenoid, twisted the burner knob, and lit the propane. 

…while thinking of all the stuff that we’ve gained and lost as cruising sailors. 

My core memory of growing up aboard in the chilly, windy Great Lakes, is of the cheery red glow of our cast-iron, coal-fired Shipmate stove in the 1950s.

We revolved around. It was Ground Zero of our family love—it literally thawed our hearts; literally allowed our watery home to warmly embrace us. 

Marie the Sea Siren, aka my mother, was its maestro. And, alas, often its soot-covered victim. She’d carefully bank the Shipmate before bed—and adjust its combination of stove and chimney flues just so—as if fine-tuning a cast-iron fiddle. And an hour before dawn she’d awake in the fore cabin, and creep into the main cabin of our wooden schooner (Elizabeth, Alden design #213, LOA 64 feet, LOD 52 feet) —and open its flues. 

She’d get it to roar as the sun peaked over the horizon to the east across Lake Michigan. 

This Shipmate spoke to her in many ways—the rushing of the air induction, the crackle of the burning coals, the snap of the warming plates, the occasionally soft tumble of the burning coal. It somehow vibrated with warmth and welcome. It also clinked and groaned while cooling. It was a symphony of warmth, comfort, and safety. 

We never went to marinas or yacht basins—because they hardly existed in those days. (Not that we could afford them if they did.) Instead, we hung with the fishing, cargo, ferry, and tugboats—with the real people. The salt of the earth. Not the dilettante yachties. 

Chicago is the Windy City. It’s cold. We’d invite those around us aboard—and each would glow with happiness while warming their grateful cold hands at our Shipmate Stove. 

Nobody had any money. Everyone had to work hard. Life on the chilly waterfront was difficult. But occasionally, we could share our Shipmate’s warmth—and bathe in the warmth of our new-found friends. 

My father once told me, while warming his hands over our Shipmate, “Son, never trust a man without calluses.” 

I never have. 

John G. Alden, our illustrious designer, designed the entire interior around that particular model of coal stove. 

Since the cast-iron became very hot—hot enough to glow an orangish red, even in daylight—it had to have a lot of air around it. Thus, it was about eight inches from the tin-covered layers of asbestos all around it, sides and back. (I used to play with the asbestos all the time as an inquisitive boy, attempting to get it to ignite.)

At its base its short legs sat on some kinds of thin stone—perhaps granite, slate, or just concrete, I can’t remember. 

It was held in place firmly and well—because many crews died in those days from their coal stoves coming adrift in blow—and the spilled coals igniting the boat in the middle of a storm. 

Double-damn!

Ours had special pads that the legs fit into and was held down by two oversized galvy (and greased with tallow) turnbuckles, which could be tightened in a blow if the slightest movement was detected. 

The tall snaking chimney served a number of purposes: it helped heat the boat, its length cut down on the burning embers on deck, and it provided for a flue on the outflow. 

These numerous flues, controlled-air-vents, on the stove—in conjunction with the ability to control the ‘suction of the chimney—was what allowed the stove to either roar at full throttle or just idle with a bit of banked warmth. 

Above decks was our spinning, fluted Charlie Noble. It, too, served many purposes other than its primary one of keeping the rain out as it spun. 

Flying embers were a real problem: in the shipyard, on a dock, and even in the anchorage. Don’t forget, our cotton sailcovers were only about four feet from our spinning chimney. Boats were often covered in canvases that would ignite at the smell of a match!

Our Charlie Noble spun on an old-fashioned, non-lubricated bearing—and that bearing continuously sang to us and the anchorage—not only the temperature of our coal but also the strength of the wind. 

Think of it as a crude, audio windspeed indicator. 

During a winter gale Charlie wailed and wailed—a loud beacon for anyone with wet seaboots in need of a friend. 

People would continuously drop in on us—to warm their rough hands and our welcoming hearts. Alcoholics, criminals, drug addicts—sure, but good people nonetheless. 

I’ve never had a use for men with ties—visible indicators that they can be yanked around at the neck by their corporate greed. 

And, if one of our guests discovered we had no sugar for their coffee, a five-pound bag would appear in our cockpit—where from, we didn’t ask. Fishmen, of course, always brought fish. Rummies always brought rum. And the criminals—well, they’d quietly honed their oratory skills in prison—and could tell a first-person story that would make your blood run cold. 

I’ve always been more comfortable around misfits, malcontents, and lay-abouts than church folk. If I see a cross, I button my wallet instinctively—from many lessons learned in life, learned the hard way. 

But the less money people have, the more they’re in tune with sharing, with bartering, with lagniappe. 

Our Shipmate was like a lighthouse of warmth, calling all the wayward sailors, the wonderful waterfront wackos, and dastardly societal deadbeats… they the ebb-and-flow of our ragtag society of friends. 

I’m 73 years old and still shun anyone wearing nice shoes—rightly or wrongly wondering how they stole their money, whose hide those shoes came from. (My current hope is that IKEA puts their new portable, flat-pack guillotines on sale soon—we, the new downtrodden, need them now more than ever. Hint: the French manufactured ones are the most dependable.) 

On a wet night passage, of course, the Shipmate—so close and yet so far—filled your thoughts at the helm. There was nothing better, after a long trick at the wheel, than to come down below and feel its warmth flood into your damp, chilly bones—to just stand there in your thick, sticky oilskins, sou-wester hat, and clunky seaboots and know that your own suffering, where ‘the wind’s like a wetted knife’, is over. 

But my memory of my mother in front of our Shipmate was of a whirling dervish. She was in constant motion—slamming down the pots, shifting the skillets, clamping the Percolator in place with huge, cast-iron dogs. 

And she spoke to it—sometimes pleadingly, other times beseechingly, and always with demands. Occasionally, she’d scream at it—for luck, with incantations, faint prayers, violent swear words, encouragements, threats, and a ton of careful, careful coaxing. 

Marie never allowed it to go out. The stove or our passion for sailing. She wouldn’t allow it to go out any more than she’d allow our hearts to stop. Even at dawn on the darkest, coldest, longest day, there’d always be at least one glowing ember under all the thick ash—just enough, with the sudden influx of air, to reignite the anthracite coal. 

Actually dear readers, I’m surprised at the rush of emotions I feel concerning this stove—even though I’ve banked them and suppressed them for six-plus decades—they’re suddenly reigniting within me. 

It didn’t just cook our food and heat our vessel—it was our living focus, the magnet of our family’s seagoing love. 

…the hearth that made the Elizabeth our blessed home.

Each of us worshipped that stove—coaxed and complimented and prayed to it in our own private way. It wasn’t inanimate to us—it was like our boat’s wooden hull, alive in a way that was just beyond the ken of a landlubber’s understanding. 

The top surface of our Shipmate had a number of removable heavy iron plates. My mother would lift these with a detachable handle with the chrome coil around it—the coil so she wouldn’t burn her hands. Inside, the glowing coals would burn and spark like Satan’s soul—and she’d muscularly stir the coals with a long iron rod. 

Running point on the glowing beast was as much art as science. 

One of the plates wasn’t solid but a series of angled concentric rings that sat flat and could be individually removed—so that, depending on skillet or pot size, the actual bottom of the pan would be getting the full heat of the glowing coals. 

Occasionally, during a downdraft, if she had a plate out—sparks would fly all over the cabin and she’d have to swat them out with a wet dishtowel amid the escaped smoke—otherwise, the boat would catch fire. 

The very best part of the Shipmate was its spacious oven—room for a roast, a pie, and a loaf of bread (because of my mother’s placement of heat baffles within the oven so that items could cook for hours at different temperatures. 

My favorite pie was apple cinnamon. My father was a rhubarb man. Carole, my oldest sister, voted for pumpkin. Gale, aka Gigi, sang the praises of pecan pie. 

The aroma of the bubbling pies, and the baking bread, and the simmer roast meats would fill the whole boat with food ambrosia! 

I’m not sure if, in the ensuing 70 years, I’ve smelled anything better. 

Yes, the beast ate coal—but coal was common and cheap and sold by the ton in those days and we had a hatch in the starboard side deck that led down the chute to the coal bin at the side of the stove. The coal truck could pull up to the quay, swing its half-pipe trough over—and fill us up within minutes for mere pennies. 

Often, the drivers would be amazed to be delivering to a funky ole schooner with a family dressed in rags aboard—so amazed that they wouldn’t charge us. 

The stovetop was big—and fringed by a rail with various adjustable rails protruding across the stove—to keep the pots and pans clamped in place as we heeled under sail. 

Of course, it wasn’t gimballed—and thus all the pots and pans had to be large and tall enough not to spill at 45 degrees of heel.  

But part of the beauty was that, depending on the placement and arrangement and depth of the burning coals, each part of the top was a different temperature. To boil water, you placed the kettle here; to simmer the soup, there; to keep the coffee warm but not so hot as to be bitter, the coffee pot went precisely there, in that corner.

Wet socks? No problem, clip them to the stove pipe just under the flue. Want your foulies warmed? Just put them on the wooden hanger (iron hangers rusted) by the forward bulkhead—the temp was Goldilocks-perfect there, not too hot, not too cold. 

Sure, the Shipmate was a royal pain in the ass at times—but it was a family member. Who wasn’t? And it was a different era—where the God of Convenience hadn’t yet reared its ugly head. 

All our light came from kerosene lamps. One of my first jobs as a liveaboard lad was to fill and trim the wicks—even our running lights were kerosene (because it was so much more dependable than our 6-volt electrical system, believe it or not). (Years later, on Carlotta, I had dual-source Perkins running lights with heavy glass Fresnel lens… if the wind blew out the kerosene, I could flip on the 12-volt bulb which might, or might not, work.)

I refilled our lamps daily from a ten-gallon kerosene tank that had a deck-fill, plus a brass spigot that made pouring highly controllable, and a tiny drip tray. 

And, yes, we tarred our manila anchor rode every few years. We made baggywrinkle. And we’d regularly “worm and parcel with the lay, turn and serve the other way” to prevent our running rigging from chafing. Our sails were Egyptian cotton. We lofted and sewed the foresail and jib ourselves, on a treadle sewing machine we’d found in the garbage. And there was no compass light because that’s what stars were for. 

It was a different era. And, while I’d never have a coal-fired stove aboard today, that Shipmate stove still has a tender place in my memory. The galley is the heart of any good ship—and, back in the day, if that galley had a glowing Shipmate stove, all the better!

 

Fatty and Carolyn are currently anchored on the equator in SE Asia—with a wind-scoop deployed and no coal barge in sight. 

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