Swordwhale Walking: Illustration, scrivenings & photography

My cameras, sketchbooks, and notebooks go everywhere, and this is the result: enough PDFs to sink a very large website (wear your PFD!). Below are the logs of various expeditions, adventures, and opportunities for sunburn, being sucked dry by the vampiric flying hordes of the salt marsh, for fleeing before a storm in a forty foot Viking longship (we made it to the marina bar), for squeegeeing the gunnels of an 1812 privateer, for driving the boat Owen Wilson couldn't (the Woodwind, in the Wedding Crashers), for braving the sog to smash through waves on the Chesapeake (1768 style), for learning to drive a ship from someone who walked the same planks as Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom, (just not at the same time). Life is weird, adventure, as they said in "UP", is out there. Go find one. But read these first.

The mainmast was, technically, just slightly aft of my guest cabin (the Teacher Aboard cabin) on the Pride of Baltimore II. The crew, traditionally, is quartered in the forward part of the ship (Pride's crew is mainly forward of the foremast), and the officers are quartered aft, which makes sense if you consider that's where the ship is steered from. Pride (if you've seen the other photos I have here, or visited her website through my links, you know) is a reproduction of the wicked swift and agile "Baltimore Clippers", the privateering vessels of the War of 1812. She has two mighty backup engines, modern navigational and safety equipment, and cabins the size of officers' quarters in the old days. Above deck though, she is a "schooner, pilot boat built" of the early ninteenth century, and requires the coordination and skill of a dozen crew when she spreads her canvas wings and flies on the wind.

"Viking" is both a noun (the occasional Norseman who left his farm and family...) and a verb (...and went a-viking). They were the pirates, or perhaps, privateers, of the 8th to 11th centuries. Their ships were the jet fighters of the time period, and they were the first Europeans to sail out of sight of land. Sae Hrafn is the latest in a line of Viking ships owned by the Longship Company of Solomon's Island, Maryland. She's not quite forty feet long, has one mast and a square rigged sail (making her, technically, a class A "tall ship"(all square rigged vessels and anything over 40m)), Here, you can see her steerboard, on the starboard side (steerboard/starboard, yes there's a connection); this was before the age of the rudder. The steerboard is turned by a tiller, the yard (holding the sail) is managed by one crewperson on the braces, and usually one crewperson holds each sheet (the lines to the corners of the sail). Our "backup engine" is a number of 14 ft. oars (there's no way to put an engine in a Viking ship). We also have a small "push boat" (it worked for skipjacks) "Ihor's Chaika" which we are testing for longer voyages up and down the Chesapeake Bay. The Longship Company encourages all and sundry to come out and have a row with us: our brains are stuffed with knowledge of the Viking Age, other bits of history, Monty Python trivia, bawdy sea chanties, and experience gained from "archaeological sailing" (hey, what happens if we do this...?). We do follow modern Coast Guard regulations, and have approved and skillful captains. For a look at our adventures: check these PDFs...and, if you sail with us, bring a PFD, or borrow one of ours. 

Assateague Island stretches like a dragon along forty miles of the Maryland/Virginia coastline; a sandbar rolled up out of the sea by wind and wave, home to wild things. The round egg-shape of Chincoteague lies inside the "dragon's tail" at the south (Virginia) end of Assateague, home to watermen, artists and craftsmen, and the only wild horse roundup on the east coast. I discovered these islands the last year Misty (of Marguerite Henry's famous kids' books) yet lived on the island. I've come back again and again, with tent, pack, and kayak, to slow down to island speed, to breathe the salt air, to lug home a ton of sand and shells, to watch the sun sail west over the continent, to watch a skimmer unzip the bay for breakfast, to go eye to eye with a stingray, to paddle in the company of dolphins, or watch the seahorses come up out of the sea.

Sultana sails out of Chestertown MD on a mission: to reconnect people with the Chesapeake Bay's ecology and history. Mostly, she carries middle grade students on learning adventures of a few hours, or a few days. She's not the largest ship in the fleet (in fact, she's a reproduction of the smallest ship in His Majesty's navy), or the fastest (she dates from a time when strength and volume: translate "tank", were important), but she time travels with us, carrying us to a place where cell phones didn't interrupt the sound of wind singing in the rigging, where you paid attention to the shape of clouds on the far horizon, where the storm clouds of revolution were brewing.

In 1977, a wild black mare was born on the high desert of eastern Oregon (I'd meet her, and she would train me, in 1985), another "wild black mare" was launched at Inner Harbor Baltimore (I'd sail on her sister, on Halloween of 2007), Star Wars hit the screen, and a fellow fan dumped a pile of reading material into my hands. "You must read this," she intoned. I stared at the stack of verbiage and paled. Lo!, in my copious free time, somewhere in the next millenium. The epic tome was J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

Somewhat later, I borrowed a tent from a second cousin twice removed, so I could spend a week on a desert island called Assateague. He told me about this game they played: D&D. I showed up, rolled up a character, waved the paper at the DM and said, "What do I make of this?"

"Play an Elf."

"What?" You mean like Hermie, in Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer?

"Read Lord of the Rings."

I did, in 1978. Thirty years, many fantasy illustrations, several "fanfics", essays and re-readings later, I'm still a fan of the original fantasy epic that spawned the rest (born the same year I was). The guy in the illustration above is not from Middle Earth, he's one of my original characters, but he'll lead you to the fanfics and essays inspired by my favorite author.