Left: George Martin (back to the camera) with his paid hand and close friend, Brixham fisherman and smuggler John Blackmore on the Amaryllis, which Martin had found sunk in the Devon mud and restored for a circumnavigation – instead he sold her to George Muhlhauser who did it instead. It being 1919 Martin renamed the boat Conquest… one of the most famous naval heroes of the war, Muhlhauser swiftly changed it back. Now in her second decade Jolie Brise (above) shows off her lines in Falmouth prior to leaving
hoops and put a strop around its head to the staysail halyards. Then the resourceful skipper smothered it with ties as he came down the rigging to ensure ‘the brute was subdued’. Briggs, the ex-bargeman, knew and
loved big sails and the new Yankee was his favourite, so much so that the crew named it Briggs’s Pet. Apparently his face posi- tively beamed when it first came aboard, and he carried it away to his bunk to sew the hanks on it until two in the morning. Under optimum conditions their best day’s run was 180 miles, and one week they averaged 160. For 18 days there was no sign of a sail,
not even a steamer’s smoke on the horizon. They went right down into the Tropics (latitude 19°10’). The beef went off and the remaining 150lb went overboard… but fortunately the all-important bacon and eggs which were packed in salt remained splendidly fresh! They survived well on potatoes, onions and Board of Trade tinned goods when their other stores ran low. Green, the young cook, was prone to occasional seasickness, and Briggs would fill in for him, producing excellent curries and rock buns in the compact galley, always with plum duff on Sundays. In between watches George made sure
he used the time to practise his violin. There is a story that he attempted to take his piano on the voyage but was prevented by Warneford (in all probability nonsense, as the source was well-known for her fanciful anecdotes!). In his real life he was very accomplished, playing both piano and violin to a high standard, often with close friends who were professional musicians.
He was brave to have taken his Ruggieri
fiddle on the voyage, for it was a beautiful but fragile instrument (one sold in 2015 for £250,000). He said later that he some- times wondered what Bach, Tartini, Corelli, Purcell and the other old Baroque musicians would have thought had they heard their music played in the middle of the ocean, but he hoped they would have been flattered at his purpose, if not at the performance. Briggs was also musical and wrote a Jolie Brise song that, alas, has been lost to living memory. The boat fought her way through two
major gales, one off the coast of Portugal and the second, a very strong one, in the Gulf Stream, south and west of Bermuda. Warneford said ‘it made up the devil of a sea so they snugged her down with a storm jib, reefed the trysail and generally prepared for a dose!’ George wrote later that the seas were wonderfully beautiful, with immense breaking ones following each other in a tremendous procession, and a tearing wind. But he knew they could be dangerous if
not handled properly, so he took the helm for most of the 12 hours the storm lasted; later he told his mother he was glad to have seen the ‘real deep sea’. He wrote that rain- clouds swept towards them like cataracts, roaring as they came, but were soon gone; sometimes Jolie Brise was carried bodily astern when a big sea broke on the weather bow, but ‘she seemed to look after herself in a curious way, dodging the heaviest seas to come through unhurt.’ In quieter moments it was wonderful to
sit upon the rail at night and look down into the still water which was literally ablaze with life. The ship was sometimes
moving so slowly that it was like gazing into another sky – ‘the clear, dark sky of a moonless night studded with millions of stars of every shade of brilliance and every shade of colour, but almost in perspective, as if the sea was immeasurably deep. At night every living and moving atom of life blazed with fire, and in these water-stars was every colour to be found in the whole range of precious stones. The most beauti- ful of all were little discs, or oval-shaped bodies, which burned like fire opals – if you dipped them up from the sea they would shine as brightly on the deck or in the palm of your hand. By daylight they were little morsels of colourless jelly…’ After Warneford guided them to land-
fall, exactly where he planned, they soon encountered a US destroyer which asked where they had come from: it took quite some explaining that ‘Plymouth’ was ‘Plymouth, England’, not ‘Plymouth Mass- achusetts!’ Somehow the tension of the long voyage had been broken, and meeting their first calm in Long Island Sound brought a wonderful feeling of security. After so many nights of double watches,
when George went below to check some- thing and the exhaustion finally told he fell asleep with his head on the chart. Come morning ‘a fair air came stealing across the water from the south’ and by breakfast time they were sailing merrily up the Sound on a close reach, keeping to the weather shore, always seeking calm water. Rations were low but spirits were high. When they had Larchmont well under
the lee they ‘bore away for it’, and about 7pm ran into the harbour to let out their anchor in front of the yacht club. Their
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MARTIN FAMILY
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