An anchor is a forged piece of iron, admirably adapted to its end, and technical language is an instrument wrought into perfection by ages of experience, a flawless thing for its purpose. An anchor of yesterday (because nowadays there are contrivances like mushrooms and things like claws, of no particular expression or shape - just hooks) - an anchor of yesterday is in its way a most efficient instrument.
"And shippes by the brinke comen and gon,
And in swich forme endure a day or two."
The Frankeleyn's Tale.
Landfall and Departure mark the rhythmical swing of a seaman's life and of a ship's career. From land to land is the most concise definition of a ship's earthly fate.
A "Departure" is not what a vain people of landsmen may think. The term "Landfall" is more easily understood; you fall in with the land, and it is a matter of a quick eye and of a clear atmosphere. The Departure is not the ship's going away from her port any more than the Landfall can be looked upon as the synonym of arrival. But there is this difference in the Departure: that the term does not imply so much a sea event as a definite act entailing a process - the precise observation of certain landmarks by means of the compass card.
Your Landfall, be it a peculiarly-shaped mountain, a rocky headland, or a stretch of sand-dunes, you meet at first with a single glance. Further recognition will follow in due course; but essentially a Landfall, good or bad, is made and done with at the first cry of "Land ho!" The Departure is distinctly a ceremony of navigation. A ship may have left her port some time before; she may have been at sea, in the fullest sense of the phrase, for days; but, for all that, as long as the coast she was about to leave remained in sight, a southern-going ship of yesterday had not in the sailor's sense begun the enterprise of a passage.
The taking of Departure, if not the last sight of the land, is, perhaps, the last professional recognition of the land on the part of a sailor. It is the technical, as distinguished from the sentimental, "good-bye." Henceforth he has done with the coast astern of his ship. It is a matter personal to the man. It is not the ship that takes her departure; the seaman takes his Departure by means of cross-bearings which fix the place of the first tiny pencil-cross on the white expanse of the track-chart, where the ship's position at noon shall be marked by just such another tiny pencil cross for every day of her passage. And there may be sixty, eighty, any number of these crosses on the ship's track from land to land. The greatest number in my experience was a hundred and thirty of such crosses from the pilot station at the Sand Heads in the Bay of Bengal to the Scilly's light. A bad passage. . .
A Departure, the last professional sight of land, is always good, or at least good enough. For, even if the weather be thick, it does not matter much to a ship having all the open sea before her bows. A Landfall may be good or bad. You encompass the earth with one particular spot of it in your eye. In all the devious tracings the course of a sailing-ship leaves upon the white paper of a chart she is always aiming for that one little spot - maybe a small island in the ocean, a single headland upon the long coast of a continent, a lighthouse on a bluff, or simply the peaked form of a mountain like an ant-heap afloat upon the waters. But if you have sighted it on the expected bearing, then that Landfall is good. Fogs, snowstorms, gales thick with clouds and rain - those are the enemies of good Landfalls.
Part 1 Landfalls and Departures I
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Part 1 Chapter II
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Part 1 Chapter III
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Part 2 Emblems of Hope IV
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Part 2 Chapter V
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Part 2 Chapter VI
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Part 3 The Fine Art VII
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Part 3 The Fine Art VIII
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Part 3 The Fine Art Chapter IX
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Part 4 Cobwebs and Gossamer Chapter X
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Part 4 Cobwebs and Gossamer Chapter XI
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Part 4 Cobwebs and Gossamer Chapter XII
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Part 5 The Weight of the Burden XIII
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Part 5 The Weight of the Burden XIV
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Part 5 The Weight of the Burden XV
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Part 6 Overdue and Missing XVI
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Part 6 Overdue and Missing XVII
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Part 6 Overdue and Missing XVIII
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Part 6 Overdue and Missing XIX
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Part 7 The Grip of the Land XX
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Part 7 The Grip of the Land XXI
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Part 8 The Character of the Foe XXII
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Part 8 The Character of the Foe XXIII
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Part 8 The Character of the Foe XXIV
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Part 9 Rules of East and West XXV
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Part 9 Rules of East and West XXVI
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Part 9 Rules of East and West XXVII
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Part 9 Rules of East and West XXVIII
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Part 9 Rules of East and West XXIX
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Part 10 The Faithful River XXX
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Part 10 The Faithful River XXXI
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Part 10 XXXII
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Part 11 In Captivity XXXIII
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Part 11 In Captivity XXXIV
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Part 12 Initiation XXXV
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Part 12 Initiation XXXVI
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Part 13 The Nursery of the Craft XXXVII
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Part 13 The Nursery of the Craft XXXVIII
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Part 13 The Nursery of the Craft XXXIX
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Part 14 The Tremolino XL
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