I would like to warmly thank the French NATIONAL NAVY for producing this report.

I would also like to warmly thank all the crews who took part in these shots.

 

IN SEARCH OF THE PASSING TIME 

PLOUEZEC Pointe de Bilfot Bay of Paimpol (1950s)
 

At the foot of the Mez Goëlo lighthouse, a small green boat pitches and rolls with the waves, the surf and the cry of the cries of the gulls nesting here and there in the rocks of the neighboring island. On board an old man and a child….
 

Job Le Hoguillard pulls on a rope with his big calloused hands and with a sweeping gesture pushes pots full of lobsters overboard. I was that child who loved so much to go fishing with that tough, soft-hearted man of the sea.
 

With the same sweeping gesture, he had saved my life on the first day of our meeting, when stuck in a pool of mud and quicksand I was about to disappear. Leaning overboard, waiting for the contents of the lockers to appear, I was surprised by the movement of the white sails of two tall ships overflowing the Mez Goélo lighthouse to enter the passage that separates it from Bilfot point. I was fascinated, ….
 

A few meters from us, the noise, the whispering of the wind in the rigging, the gurgling of water on the hull... the orders, the whistles, a diesel engine starting, the voice of a man punctuating the efforts of other ho! ho! ho! We stayed a long time watching the schooners. Like coming out of another era, the Etoile and the Belle-Poule have disappeared into the channel of the port of Paimpol just as the last fishermen in Iceland did a few decades earlier.
 

Job then began to tell an incredible story which sparked in me a real passion for the two training sailboats of the French Navy. A story of giant, icy, roaring, man-eating waves that swallowed the boats with their crew of a single blow of breaking! man-sized fish galore, lights blazing with snow, a sun that never stops setting, birds by the thousands, whales and porpoises, intense marine life, freezing cold, icebergs in the mist and convict work…. fishing days of 15, 20 or even 24 hours without rest or at best 3 to 4 hours of sleep.
 

A beautiful faraway land where welcoming people wore blond hair… jagged coastlines full of sharp rocks and dotted with coal-black sand beaches. Volcanoes, a land of fire and ice. A story that had to have a sequel...
 

The child that I was did not suspect that day that his destiny was going to take him for several years on an aircraft carrier and that he was going to see these two schooners again in the bay of Brest from above this time. a floating mountain of iron and steel.
 

Brest year 1970
 

“Attention to port!”

…. whistle ! …

Impeccably lined up at attention, the crews of the sailboats salute the Arromanches and quickly return to their maneuvers. The vision of another age that paraded before my eyes touched my heart doubly. My childhood and all the details of that day of truancy with Job Lehoguillard resurfaced in my memory. My soul as a sailor did not belong to the iron navy of this aircraft carrier where I was. Sailing was my passion.
 

Prisoner of a world that was not mine, I watched with emotion the Etoile and the Belle-Poule maneuver to tack and move away with grace and elegance…..
 

About twenty-six years since my first contact with schooners, in the freezing air of a January evening, I put my bag on board the Belle-Poule.

BREST January 1981
 

- "Good evening, Mr. Guillou I presume"
- "Yes, good evening Sir, Commander Cadudal, please?"
- "It's me, welcome aboard the schooners".

That year I embarked several times on the Belle-Poule and the Etoile… dreaming of Iceland… realizing thanks to Captain Bernard Cadudal and the complete complicity of the two crews a very beautiful series of photographs during a cruise to Kiel in Germany.

I went back again on the schooners during Brest 92 and Douarnez 98 with always so much pleasure and happiness...

BREST June 2000

The dream comes true: I'm going to Iceland with the schooners!

- "Drop ahead!" 
- "Before dropped!" 
- "Drop behind!" 
- "Rear dropped!"
- "The bar on the right 5!"
- " On the right 5 the bar! " 
- "Forward slow!" 
- "Forward slow!" 

…. Majestically the Star overflows (deviates). 

- "Attention on the port side!" 
- "Attention starboard!"

The two crews greet each other in the greatest military and maritime tradition. Standing on the roof of the aft coachroof of the Belle Poule, Michel VEYRON-CHURLET known as "Mitch" First Master Chief of the Watch issues the orders for departure and steers the boat towards the port exit 

No sooner had we left the pass than the Etoile and the Belle-Poule let them come head to wind. 

- "Ready to hoist mainsail and foresail!" 

A group of men rush to the maneuvering post …. 

- "ready!" 
- "To hoist mainsail and foresail!" 

The muscles get to work, someone in the effort takes hold of the halyard, shouting ho! hey! hey! rhythms that coordinate and regulate the movements of the whole team. The two sails rise along their respective masts.

The horns must rise horizontally and the order is timely to correct a small lack of synchronization:  

- "Easy pick! Hold on to the mast!" 
- "Turn off the outriggers!" 
- "Shock the starboard backstays!" 
- "Hold on the peak! Tighten the mast!" 
- "Tear the peak!" 
- "The bar on the left 10!" 
- "The bar is 10 to the left!" 

La Belle-Poule fell gently. The mainsail and the foresail come back to life and gradually inflate. 

- " From the world to the topsail arm! " 
- "Port topsail!" 
- "Tack the topsail!" 
- "Zero the bar!"

The helmsman turns the wheel with a dexterity that shows the force of habit. With inertia and delay, the mass of the boat stops its downstroke…. 

- "The bar is at zero!" 

On the deck, the crew runs from one station to another, pulls, toils with muscle strength and elbow grease…. The hands hook in the ends, the movements heat up, a light wind sweeps the deck... 

- " Hoist the topsail! " 
- " Hoist jibs and staysail! " 
- "ready to send boom and forestay!"

Four topspins rush into the ratlines of the foresail and the mainmast… about twenty meters above the deck: 
- " Ready for the arrow! Stay ready! " 
- "To hoist the jib and forestay!"

On their way to their rendezvous with the sea breeze, according to a sacrosanct ritual, the twin sisters finally dress in their most beautiful dress. These sisters have their own way of showing off their curvaceous hips by bowing gracefully to the light caress of a puff. This is not without a line of creaks, creaks and a whole range of sighs and small noises which from the bowels of the Belle-Poule at the head of her mainmast quickly become familiar._cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b- 136bad5cf58d_

Of course, as soon as the big pass has been passed, La Belle-Poule showcases her dancing skills thanks to an insistent chop. Without asking for his rest, the Star replies to him. 

Les Goélettes were built in 1932 in the port of Fécamp. They still look like well-preserved damsels. A tour of the edge is most eloquent regarding the original use of this type of boat. We find in the post before the space and the atmosphere so well described by Pierre Loti in his novel Fisherman of Iceland. The middle position is impressive in terms of its volume. It was once the fish hold where the Icelanders piled up cod transformed into salted cod. For the time being, the salted meats of yesteryear have given way to "guests" settling into the routine of their shifts. Behind the post of the "oxen" was also a fish hold. The post of the oxen, (an expression less and less used these days), is the post of the petty officers. At the origin of this expression, on the tall ships of the past, the accommodation of the petty officers was always near the small room reserved for food on legs. 

Further aft, the engine room separates the ox station from the quarters of the captain and second in command. Everywhere we find varnished wood, copper. In the trophy square, commemorative plaques retrace the career of the Belle-Poule and the various meetings of tall ships in which she has participated since her launch in 1932. Space is limited and each volume is put to good use._cc781905- 5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_

Still below deck, and even further aft, there is the sail locker and the on-board cooperative. Schooners are the culmination of sailboat technology still in use for fishing at the beginning of the last century. Their big advantage is their marine quality and a size that is still on a human scale. In heavy weather men and boats live to the same extent. Their very efficient roller topsail system made it possible to avoid sending crewmen up the mast.

It is not the same on these enormous three or four masted boats or during storms, the maneuvers sometimes took on proportions that could exceed the physical capacities of an entire crew together. Cut for the sea, they faced abominable storms. Only for Paimpol the number of sailors missing for a period of about 80 years is around 2000 men swept away by the waves, dead in Iceland during various shipwrecks or strandings on inhospitable coasts. 

You have to walk a few kilometers on the beaches around Dyrholaey, the southern tip of Iceland, to begin to guess and understand what the ordeal must have been for these sailors who survived a shipwreck to fall into the deadly trap of exhaustion. a walk in the sand on miles of deserted beach against an icy wind falling directly from the glaciers. 

Even today it still happens that people who go hiking in good weather die of cold and exhaustion near dwellings because they neglect the advice of caution from the natives. The last sailing of the Icelanders of Paimpol dates back to 1935. 
Three years after the construction of the Etoile and the Belle-Poule in Fécamp. Two boats left for Iceland, the "Butterfly" which was shipwrecked and the Glycine which, returning safely, struck the quay violently by missing a maneuver, thus closing forever ... the epic of great fishing in Iceland._cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b -136bad5cf58d_

At the height of this period, the town of Paimpol had around a hundred schooners which left in February to return to moor in its basins at the end of summer in September._cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b- 136bad5cf58d_

My emotion was great when the Belle-Poule en route to Paimpol entered the passage to touch the Mez Goélo…. I observed from the top of the ratlines of the mainmast where I had climbed to take pictures this precise place where 42 years earlier a little kid was "fishing" in a green canoe with an old man of the sea…_cc781905-5cde-3194 -bb3b-136bad5cf58d_

Jean-Claude Le Hoguillard, his grandson, a childhood friend, explained his story to me. Job's father drowned in Iceland and his mother died of grief a year later. So to feed his brothers and sisters, Job also decided to go to Iceland and took part in all the campaigns between 1912 and 1920. 

I remember outings with Captain Bernard Cadudal, who was passionate about sea shanties and spread out an inexhaustible repertoire of sea songs to hoist the sails that many of our ancestors sang in order to give themselves the heart to work to maneuver their tall ships. These songs in the Breton language are imbued with an unlimited nostalgia explaining that the life of the fishermen of Iceland and other sailors of the time was a real slave existence. The lyrics also recount the harsh life of Icelandic women sometimes overloaded with children to feed and raise who, for 7 to 8 months, waited in uncertainty for the return of their man. 

Can we only imagine then the anguish of these women who ran on the cliffs to scan the horizon, not seeing the long-awaited boat coming. 

On the other hand, it is easy to imagine in September the reunion party on the quays of Penn Poul after a return cruise of 8 to 12 days ... the smell of salt cod that we land, the city that fills the joy of the return, the pardons, the popular balls, these rough men who announce to their wives and their children the quantity of cod in the hold… the cargo could reach some 83,056 cod (Schooner Alcyon 1911) or even La schooner Saint Anne brought back some 81,403 cod in 1922. The cafes in the city were always full. 

After an emotional stopover in the port of Paimpol we went to Iceland on "our schooners".

We sailed the passage between Ireland and England, crossing the channels of the northern islands of Scotland. A short stopover at Stornoway, and we negotiate a depression which, arriving just in time, will bring us wide reach with full sails and on one tack in sight of the white land. 

On the crest of the waves, Fulmar Petrels fly constantly on the surface of the water without ever giving a wing beat. I am fascinated by so much precision and especially to see them exploiting the micro lift which must be right up against the slope of the blade…. myriads of birds pass along the edge migrating to an unknown destination. 

I adore these hours of watch on the foredeck during which, fascinated, I observe the way in which the Belle-Poule powerfully carves its way into the water. … the continuous hissing of the water against the hull, and again this song of the wind in the rigging. The edges of icy spray stream over the Gore-Tex of our raincoats… at the time nothing of that… a big sweater and clothes of a coarse oiled canvas protecting as best they can from the rigors of the polar winters._cc781905 -5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_

As we cruise north, the days get longer and never seem to end…. the land of Iceland is suddenly revealed to our gaze. Far far away on the horizon the Myrdalsjökull glacier shines. 

- "Earth!" 

Between the tip of Portland and the lighthouse of Dyrholaey the schooners under the command of Commander Babey break down. 

A frenzy took hold of the crew who revived the gesture of the Icelanders of "Penn-Poul". Soon a line of cod go overboard to come and wriggle on the deck with their last burst of life. The smell of fish settles everywhere, the deck streams with red blood that flows through the scuppers. 

On the shore not far from there without our knowing it, at this moment, a man observes us very attentively…. it's an Icelandic peasant to whom I rented a house a few days later by chance in order to take photos of this place of breathtaking wild beauty. Discovering that I had come with the schooners, he hastened to tell me that he was the grandson of a French fisherman who had been shipwrecked in these places and who decided to stay there to live.

The history of Icelandic fishermen is part of the historical heritage of this country. Their memory will forever remain in the collective memory of this nation. Under a bright sun we set off again on the way to the Westman Islands named after a Viking who hunted down and put to death his mutinous Irish slaves and assassins of his companion. 

A herd of killer whales crossing nearby brings everyone on deck as surely as an evacuation order issued in the storm: a grandiose spectacle from another world... from Heimaey the port of the Westman Islands. A parade of 4 x 4 cars begins. The inhabitants (there are 5000) give us a warm welcome and despite the late hour an expedition sets off to discover the hospitable charms of the Icelandic population. 

The place is magical, volcanic in every sense of the word. In 1974 on Heimaey the main island, 400 houses were engulfed by a lava flow. The inhabitants know that they have only one day to pack up in case of another eruption. Cliffs of several hundred meters fall steeply into the sea. They are the refuge of a myriad of Puffins whose flesh is a dish of remarkable delicacy. On the grassy slopes falling from the peaks, sheep graze peacefully 

After a day of stopover we set off again on the way to the north. 

The Star which is so often on the other side of the horizon is unfortunately out of reach of my objectives to take full advantage of the breathtaking scenery that we visit. 

As it goes up towards the Arctic Circle, we are fishing in front of the Snaefell volcano (Mont Blanc) whose ice cap sparkles with a thousand sparkles in the … uh … nocturnal light (at two in the morning I was still taking pictures! every photographer's dream!). 

Again the frenzy seizes the crew of the Belle-Poule. A stone's throw away, on the coast, a strange lava rock in the shape of a southern sentinel watches over the ocean. The scenery is wild, lunar and I rediscover the memory of this nature that Job Lehoguillard described to me. 

Arriving in Grundarfjördur an enthusiastic crowd awaits us on the quay….It is the town in Iceland where there are the most children… the quay is teeming with a mass of disheveled little blond heads with mischievous and laughing looks… bursts of laughter… a real bunch of little Gremlins… they're everywhere! 

The Pasha takes the necessary measures to ward off the collision! The welcome is incredibly warm and shows that the "Icelandic people" of Paimpol have left their mark on this country. Soon we are setting sail for Reykjavik where the crews are installing mooring bollards on the quay, gifts from the City of Paimpol to Iceland. Saturday nights are epic in this city invaded by exuberant youth. Receptions, swimming in the volcanic heat of the Blue Lagoon, hiking in a wild nature…. 

life flows, time passes, it is the most precious thing we have … and very quickly, too much for everyone's taste, we cast off to head south … towards Brittany.

Tomorrow I hope to embark again on the schooners always in search of a more beautiful and even more surprising photograph. The subject is infinite.

Copyright Text by Alain Guillou Reproduction prohibited