Lord Matsudaira interrupted the captain’s warnings: “Those who cling to life, die, and those who defy death, live.” He was quoting the daimyo Uesugi Kenshin, the “Dragon of Echigo,” who had died, in bed, almost half a century earlier. “Full speed ahead, and damn the rocks! Keep your eyes forward!”
The captain ordered that the extra canvas be added. And added a quick prayer, barely audible, to Kwannon the Merciful. The Sado Maru picked up a little speed, and Lord Matsudaira noted this with a smile of approval. The Golden Gate proper, the narrowest part of the strait, was getting ever nearer.
Offshore, the swells, like the wind, had come from the northwest. However, as they passed Point Boneta, the inshore edge was slowed by the shallows, causing the waves to sweep around and approach the Golden Gate from the west.
As the tide swept outward, it collided with the wind-driven waves heading eastward, the two crashing together like great armies meeting on some battlefield. The incoming waves were squeezed together and steepened. The Sado Maru bucked, like a horse trying to unseat its rider.
The helmsman of the Sado Maru stood on the quarterdeck, his hands on the whipstaff and his eyes on the compass. The whipstaff, a European innovation, was a long lever, hitched belowdecks to the tiller, so that the helmsman on a large ship could steer and also see where the ship was going. Or at least see the feet of the sails. The whipstaff could only move the tiller a little bit and some steering had to be done by appropriately setting the sails.
The whipstaff vibrated violently. “Someone, help me!” cried the helmsman. Another sailor ran over, and grabbed the whipstaff from the other side. Together, they brought the rudder under control. But only for a time.
The seas were at their most vigorous and confused in the narrow throat of the Gate, between Lime Point and Fort Point. It was there that the first disaster struck. They were heading east-northeast, and they buried their bow into the wave before them. The sails were braced to take best advantage of the northwest wind, and that meant that the wind not only pushed the ship forward, it also tried to force it leeward. This side force was normally resisted by the keel. With the bow buried, the resistance was greater forward than aft, and the stern surfed, pivoting the ship around to face northeast. The wind was now striking the sails more obliquely, enough to shiver the sails but not fill them. The ship was rapidly losing headway, and that in turn was making it more difficult to steer.
“All hands to braces!” the captain yelled. The braces were the lines that turned the yards, the horizontal spars that carried the sails. “Slack Windward Brace and Sheet! Haul Lee Brace and Sheet! Make All!” The captain was trying to regain control of the ship, by turning the yards to face the wind more directly.
But the Sea Hag of the Golden Gate still had the Sado Maru in its talons. Like a cat batting a mouse to-and-fro for its amusement, the waves buffeted the ship, which the swerve had left at a forty-five-degree angle to the waves. When the bow was on a crest and the stern in a trough, the ship turned to port. When the crest came amidships, it turned back to starboard. The first movement was stronger, so the ship progressively turned more and more counterclockwise. This brought the bow closer and closer to the wind.
Like a piece of driftwood, the ship gradually turned until its keel was parallel to the incoming waves. With its bow pointed northward, it was too close to the wind for the sails, even with the yards turned as far as the standing rigging would allow, to be effectual.
* * *
The waves were now violently rocking the Sado Maru. Belowdecks, Iroha-hime’s maid, Koya, was whimpering in terror.
Iroha-hime wrapped her arms around her. “Easy, Koya. Don’t be afraid. Join me, we will pray to Deusu.” Koya nodded, tears streaking her face. “Repeat after me. Eternal and Almighty God, creator of the heavens, the earth and the sea, have mercy upon us. Be our Pilot in this, our time of need. Subdue the waves and the winds . . .”
They finished the prayer that Iroha-hime had composed. “Feel better, Koya?”
She nodded. At that moment they were thrown by a sudden movement against the side of their cabin.
When they recovered their footing. Iroha pointed upward. “Come with me.” She didn’t explain, but she had decided that if she were to die, she would rather be flung off the deck, than drowned like a rat in the darkness below.
When they came above, the second mate saw them. He hurried over, cursing, and quickly had them sit down on the deck. “It will be wetter, but you are less likely to be washed away.” He lashed them to a deck projection, but left their hands free so they could hold on as well. “Do you have knives?” he asked.