Cool timeline. If you haven't made up your mind on where the crew will land yet, the Maritimes would be my suggestion, but that might be my personal bias towards the Mi'kmaq.
If you do decide to go that route, the Mi'kmaq were known to be very welcoming to trade and new technologies during the Age of Exploration, so you could use that to your benefit. There's plenty of resources on the Mi'kmaq language available online as well.
ISTM that such men might be on board, but not as passengers. They would have to be members of the crew with jobs. Reynard may be of noble birth, but not of effective noble status. A younger son of a younger brother of a minor baron, perhaps, reduced to working as a common sailor.
Kees is perhaps even harder to place. Was he broke, working his passage somewhere? What was his business? I.e.what merchandise did he deal in? Did he come to say Bayonne to buy wine for export to Flanders? Or was he based there? As a "merchant" - not just a peddler or pack-trader - he'd have a house and staff.
He's not a wealthy merchant, certainly no patrician type. Let's just say he's down-on-his-luck and there were some economic reasons he decided to go to sea with this particular crew. I plan to explore his (and the others') backstories gradually, so you'll eventually get a glimpse of how he ended up on the Seintespirit.
I wanted to leave this off for later, but if you don't mind a spoiler...
Bayonne is indeed the most probable port, given the history of the place and it proximity to Labourd and other Basque-speaking regions of southern France.
Again, as with the merchant, I'll expand on backstory info gradually.
Thank you. Unfortunately, despite wanting to work on it quite a bit, I've had a busy year so far. Perhaps I'll have more time to relax and write next year. Much of the prologue was already written in spring 2018.
If you haven't made up your mind on where the crew will land yet, the Maritimes would be my suggestion, but that might be my personal bias towards the Mi'kmaq.
If you do decide to go that route, the Mi'kmaq were known to be very welcoming to trade and new technologies during the Age of Exploration, so you could use that to your benefit. There's plenty of resources on the Mi'kmaq language available online as well.
The Mi'kmaq - or more accurately, the Lnuꞌk - are some of my top candidates for first contact, but I'd have to accomodate the circumstances to the fact they traditionally lived a sort of seasonal-migratory lifestyle, depending on the time of the year. Besides the Mi'kmaq, I thought about them landing somewhere slightly more to the south and coming across the Abenaki. I do have plans for them to explore a bit regionally in the future, so coming across the Mi'kmaq later would be one possible route. I could start of with those, though, and then gradually move the story southward.
The Mi'kmaq - or more accurately, the Lnuꞌk - are some of my top candidates for first contact, but I'd have to accomodate the circumstances to the fact they traditionally lived a sort of seasonal-migratory lifestyle, depending on the time of the year. Besides the Mi'kmaq, I thought about them landing somewhere slightly more to the south and coming across the Abenaki. I do have plans for them to explore a bit regionally in the future, so coming across the Mi'kmaq later would be one possible route. I could start of with those, though, and then gradually move the story southward.
The seasonal-migration lifestyle was common among most of the Eastern Algonquian peoples, meaning the Abenaki also had the practice. Unless you have the sailors land much further south (like South Carolina, whose peoples were Mississippian-influenced), the tribes encountered by them will likely be seasonal migrators. Ultimately it is your choice.
Something I promised in the early concept draft of my story from a year ago was that the readers would be able to occassionally influence the narrative. Well, now that I have come across the point of making a major narrative decision, I am willing to briefly turn to you, the readers, to ask for some minor but crucial advice.
Here is a poll on which you can vote on. (One-choice answers only, and please click the caption to verify.)
The question: Where in northeastern North America should the castaways land ?
Options:
- northern New England (OTL Maine, New Hampshire)
- southern New England (OTL Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut)
- Nova Scotia
I myself will refrain from voting, as I only want to hear your own opinions. If possible, you can also follow up your vote with a brief post in this thread, explaining why you chose the option. Why do you find the choice logical, how it could affect the story in interesting ways, and so and so forth. Also, bear in mind that I don't have to necessarily decide for the "winning" option, with the most votes. I'm using this poll more for orienting myself on what decision to take going forward.
If I'll need to decide about any other aspects at this stage in the story, I'll add any additional polls to this post.
Thank you for voting and posting any explanations/suggestions ! I appreciate it.
If they’re fishermen going to the mid-oceanic fishing grounds (it is thought that long before Cabot (up to 70 or more years) the Basques were fishing off Newfoundland and possibly drying their fish over winter and keeping it secret) then it reduces the likelihood of being in the south of New England or the Chesapeake. Being on their way northwest from Biscay and being driven west and north by the storm could put them anywhere between Nova SCotia and Labrador and more likely further north, at least as I picture it.
While being in or near Hudson Bay or Baffin and Ellesmere islands is not ideal (not enough resources or population) and Labrador likewise, Newfoundland might allow for the castaways to have time to make arrangements with the natives and intermittent contact with European fishermen. The Europeans would be unable to take them back home so the castaways would still have to rebuild their boats but their families would at least have contact. From that news would spread in Europe of the new lands. The castaways would also find themselves responsible for mediating between natives and Europeans. If there long enough they’d represent a first colony or some of them even decide to stay in some kind of paradise. There’d be arguments and discussion and friction between differing conceptions of what they should be.
The Europeans would be unable to take them back home so the castaways would still have to rebuild their boats but their families would at least have contact. From that news would spread in Europe of the new lands.
The Basques will not want news to spread in Europe of the new lands. Obviously if they had wanted that, they would have spread the news themselves, or sought favor from their lord (I presume the King of Navarre?) as a quid pro quo for making it the lord's secret to keep or blab.
Clearly they figured they had a good thing going in keeping knowledge of the island (and God only knows what more they knew of North America, odds are fair not much more) and its fishing offshore (that was the main asset I think, the Grand Banks, with Newfoundland as a place to smoke the catch before it rotted a major part of the benefit) quite close to their vests.
I have to admit, much as I personally dislike the idea of the castaways winding up that far north, and @Petike has already expressed dislike of dealing with an island population, the argument from winds and currents seems strong. But if they wind up in Newfoundland with Basque contacts, the story is less of a POD and more of what be a Hidden History footnote, just this scenario could have happened OTL.
I have a hard time envisioning the Basque fishermen as so cynical and calloused as to actually massacre the castaways, but I have little doubt they would be vexed. It must seem awfully hard to them that just because some other fishermen were not weatherly wise enough to avoid the storm, they have to spill their secret and have a great rush of other fishermen to deal with.
Does anyone know if the Basque had any sort of communication with the Native peoples, I believe known as the Beothuk?
Wikipedia is pretty scant on the subject, not surprisingly as the Beothuk were declared extinct as a people in the 1830s!
But the article on the Beothuk does state:
Unlike some other native groups, the Beothuk tried to avoid contact with Europeans; they moved inland as European settlements grew. The Beothuk visited their former camps only to pick up metal objects. They would also collect any tools, shelters and building materials left by the European fishermen, who had dried and cured their catch, before taking it to Europe at the end of the season.
Note that I have found nothing on the pre-Columbian (Cabot's expedition is actually when Newfoundland was rediscovered by Europeans) relations of the Beothuk (or L'nuk--there were also some "Micmac" people living there in historical times) with the furtive Basque fishermen, if any. It could be that the shyness of the Beothuk came from bitter experience of even slight contact with the Basques leading to mass deaths due to European disease pool germs, or simply was fraught with conflict in the same way the Beothuk were problematic for the English/British authorities and colonists. Or conceivably the Beothuk got along OK with the Portuguese, based on tacitly negotiated mutual understandings of limits, and the English and hordes of multinational fishermen who followed Cabot's "discovery" were seen in violation of this silent treaty and thus shunned. We don't know, anyway I don't because I am finding very little historical reference to the Basque fishers beyond some pretty offhand mentions they did dry fish on Newfoundland shores after fishing the Grand Banks, and kept this trade secret of theirs under their hats for perhaps a century.
I believe Columbus was running on vague rumors of this practice, and also on old Norse accounts, in his confidence in his false understanding of the shape and size of Earth, deciding by a logical short circuit that the far shore within reach indicated by both sets of accounts must be the east shores of Asia and overlooking the possibility of major undiscovered lands.
The men were supremely tired, but some of them cheered nonetheless. The mere sight of land, any land, felt like a miracle. One or two of them were so impatient and eager, they took it in their heads they‘d swim all the way to shore, and had to be grabbed and held back by their shipmates.
"No foolishness ! If we‘ve lasted this long, we can wait just a little longer," Arnald, the captain, intoned strictly. He looked at the men, some of them a little shaken by his sudden outburst. He simmered down, and followed up the outburst with a much more calmer adress to the crewmen aboard. "I know it‘s been hard for all of us, but we’ve perservered through worse things already. We‘re getting closer to that coast, with each passing hour.", he turned his head to face the unfamiliar land ahead. "We need to remain vigilant and keep up our efforts until this whole ship, along with us, reaches the safety of that coastline."
Ricard, the ship‘s navigator and main steersman, stood on the deck of the forecastle, watching the sea and surroundings carefully.
"Shipmaster," he spoke up and turned towards Arnald, "At this rate, we might reach shore after noon, maybe by dusk."
"You heard him, men. No reason to get too antsy over getting ashore. We should use the hours ahead to prepare for reaching dry land."
"Prepare we should," opined Ricard, halfway alert, halfway deep in thought. He fixed his gaze on the unfamiliar coast. "Without a mast and with a damaged rudder, we'll be lucky if the currents and winds steer the ship close enough to a beach. Getting stuck further out at sea and forced to swim the rest of the way is not my idea of a successful landing. Especially if we want to repair the Seintespirit in the near future."
"What about shoals or rocks ?" asked Sancho, one of the older crew members, with a hint of worry. "We don’t know it here, of course, but we shouldn’t forget about those."
"Haven’t forgotten about that, friend," replied Arnald. "You’re right, both of you. We’ve gotten this far, no use letting our guard down just yet." He looked around the other faces on the deck. "Men, as we near the coast, we’ll have to be on the lookout for obvious dangers that could lurk near such unfamiliar shores."
"Not an encouraging prospect," sighed Gilem 'the Famished', one of two Gilems onboard. He frowned at the slowly approaching coastline.
"The Almighty takes and the almighty gives," said Pèir, one of the older Gascon fishermen. They knew him under his nickname 'the Apostle'. He liked to tell people that his parents wanted him to become a monk or a priest, "a fisher of men", but he wasn't much into theological and scholarly pursuits. So he became an ordinary fisher instead... Nevertheless, he liked to dispense pious-sounding observations every now and then.
"Pèir's right. We're already lucky we're still alive and the ship is still afloat, and we've gotten this far. After all this miraculous fortune, a little misfortune wouldn't be unexpected..." pondered Oier, one of the Gascon riggers.
For a silent moment, Arnald the shipmaster looked at his crew, then towards the approaching coast. Twenty-four men, including me and the one we saved from the waves, he thought.
One of the younger sailors suddenly voiced an opinion.
"We face uncertainty, indeed we do," proclaimed Enric. "But I think we should take the sight of this new land before us as a good sign."
"So, Enric, not as convinced about the Second Flood now, are you ?" asked Xemen with a sly smile.
Several of the men grinned and looked at the younger deckhand standing among them.
Enric frowned and lowered his head a bit, as if slightly irritated.
"I suppose I was a little too hasty in my judgement, captain..." he admitted, shrugging.
"Not so sure the land ahead is Paradise, but we’ve got to count our blessings, ey ?", said the middle-aged Jordic, a rigger who had previously reassured Enric in his bouts of fear while below deck. He gave Enric a friendly slap on the shoulder. The deckhand replied with a nod.
Dieric, the Flemish rigger, did a subtle cough to get their attention.
"Even though so many things could still go wrong, I'll take my chances with that land ahead. Honestly, I'm looking forward to it. The sooner we get an opportunity to repair the mast, rudder and other crucial parts of the ship, the sooner we can think of attempting to sail home." he explained his thoughts and feelings.
Arnald nodded and proclaimed:
"I think if we are to get out of this... predicament we've all found ourselves in... we'll have to work together. Men, from now on, don't think of me merely as your shipmaster, who'll do all the decisions for you. From now on, we have to truly work together. This isn't about fishing and returning to port safely. This is about finding a way to return home, sooner or later. It might not be possible, or not easily possible, but we'll have to do everything we can to achieve it. That will require all of us working together and putting aside our differences."
He looked at Reynard and John. Though the two of them never bickered, there was occassional tension between them, due to their origins and the ongoing war between England and France. Reynard and John looked somewhat uneasy, but both of them voiced their agreement with the captain's sentiment.
Though the sea was calmer now, the sea shore still looked rather wild and inhospitable. Waves crashing against rocky outcroppings on the coast let out whole constellations of fluffy sea spray. To the crew’s disappointment, it was already evening. A sunset was on its way.
The men made final preparations.
----
It was a strange feeling... They were unable to do much to influence the ship's course. In the last hours of light, with dusk in full swing, they were glad it wasn't night time yet. They were very close to the coast and could already see the shoreline rather clearly. The beach looked flat enough but rocky, there were some boulders and larger stones further inland. Many of the trees in the coastal forests and groves, further away from the seashore, were rather tall. Wherever the crew had arrived, the place seemed uninhabited.
Strangest of all, for a brief moment, one of them could have sworn he saw a brief glimpse of fire, around the height of the tree tops, somewhere in the distance. He eventually revealed this to the other crewmen, but only the morning after they made landfall. On the eve of their landing, he didn't want to distract either himself or the others with vague impressions. It could wait, they had important work to do.
"The tide is still hitting the beach," whispered Ricard to the captain.
He answered with a nod. "Do you think it'll hold for now ? Or is it bound to recede soon ? Getting stuck on shoals would be a royal pain."
"I'm not entirely sure. Let's hope so..." replied Ricard. Despite all their hope, the unease in his voice was palpable.
The life-giving Sun was nearing the horizon above the unknown new land. Ready to hide soon behind some mountain range in the distance...
Barely some thirty eight toise from the beach, the ship a plaything of the local currents and tide, it happened. The thing they feared most. They were already over fairly shallow water, when...
Xemen, one of the men who stayed below deck to watch for any potential leaks, yelled an ugly swearword in his native Basque.
"Dammit, water !" he followed up his previous swear with a milder one, muffled by the planking but still audible.
Bernad ran aboard from the aftcastle, looking worried.
"Not a big one... Not big..." he said, catching his breath. "We have a hole at the bottom, but only about two planks busted."
"Could still float, but we need to..." sighed Diedric, before the captain cut him short.
"The poles. Get to it, men ! Now's the time !" cried out Arnald.
In spite of everyone's expectations, Reynard was the first to join in, grabbing a thick pole before the captain could even finish his order.
"You heard him, get to it ! Like we agreed to," intoned Bernad. He ran over to Reynard and helped him prop the pole over the side of ship and downward against the shallows. Lugan, ever the quiet type, walked over to them and began to help without uttering a single word.
"The pump... We had a pump below deck, does it still work ?" asked Augèr, just in case.
"Busted, sadly," noted Mikel, nicknamed 'the Sea Angel'.
Most of the men were scrambling to pick up the heavy poles as well. They were prepared a few hours ago, in advance, from whatever wooden poles and narrower planks the crew could find lying aboard the ship. Tied or nailed together tight, the poles were meant to partly stand in for the missing rudder as the ship neared the beach, but especially help with any cases if it started getting carried into dangerous shallows. Augèr, Sancho, Kees grabbed a pole, Enneco, one of the Gilems and old Josetxu took another, Arnald, Mikel, Huc manned another one, Jordic, Ricard and the other Gilem another, Arrostanh, Pèir and Dieric one more...
Enric, Aimar and Oier looked unsure, but Arnald commanded that three or four of them run below deck and help Xemen bail out water with buckets. It seemed a fool's errand, but this close to the beach... They still had a chance, however narrow, of dislodging the ship from the shallows and getting to shore relatively safely. If they could just move the ship a bit further from this side of the shallows, in another direction, they could shove it back in the local currents. The tide would take care of the rest, as it had up until now. They had nothing to lose. Either their plan with the poles works, or the Seintespirit has just become stranded.
"Heave, men ! Heave ! Back ! Now forth ! Now back there ! Now forth !" Arnald, Ricard and Dieric rhytmically alternated yelling encouraging commands.
Encouraging as they were, the work was exhausting. Their ship wasn't the biggest hulk, but it still weighed enough that a team of over twenty men needed to exert maximum effort to move it at all. And in the most manual, most primitive manner possible. The once adventurous fishing and trading sailship was now reduced to a huge leaky punt, pushed around by a few cobbled-together puntpoles that might not be up to the task.
It felt like an eternity... And the night was descending fast... The captain was losing patience with the whole challenge. They were so close...
"Heave, dammit ! Put your backs into it ! Just a little bit more ! Come ooonnn !!!" he was yelling encouragements, but so nervously, it sounded as if he was slowly going mad. Maybe he was...
Finally, after a few long moments of struggle, with the sun setting just beyond the horizon, the ship budged.
"Push, push ! Heave !" yelled Josetxu, uncharacteristically loudmouth. "Almost there !"
The ship budged and slid back fully into the current.
"Keep pushing her away from the shallows ! For as long as you can still see !" cried Ricard.
Not only exhausted, by now, they were getting increasingly exasperated. But they knew they had to keep the ship away from the shallows.
The younger crewmen were running with buckets, back and forth, dunking water back into the sea, trying to alleviate the flooding of the hold. The whole effort was almost comical.
Luckily, for all their travails, the current was giving them good speed. And they seemed to be evading the shallows now.
The shore kept approaching...
The tide was beginning to recede, when...
A loud banging at the front.
"The poles ! One more time ! We have to beach her ! Properly !" yelled the captain.
The men felt incredibly tired, but they understood. They kept pushing the ship, now in a purely forward direction. Some felt so exhausted, they were on the verge of collapsing.
With one final combined heave, the ship ran fully aground. Two of the poles snapped, as if on command, sending some of the crewmen stumbling. Two or three of them fell over each other onto the deck, then got up. Xemen, soaked and tired, bucket still in hand, ran up to the deck. "I think you've did it ! We're still taking in water from below, but it's no longer flooding the hold ! It's level !"
Arnald wiped the sweat off his brow, subtly exhaled. He looked around slowly, looking each of his fellow crewmen in the eyes. Without so much as a word, he nodded in acknowledgement.
It was over. Their long voyage, even longer nightmare at sea, their miraculous survival, and now an equally miraculous landfall...
They made it. They were all alive, and seemingly in a safe place. They were here, back on dry land. Wherever "here" was...
Here, on the farthest shore. In an unknown land, a whole new world.
----
After a night of tired, dreamless sleep, they woke up roughly two hours after sunrise. The Sun was already fairly high, its cheerful rays illuminating the waves of the shoreline, the entire beach, nearby cliffs and woods.
The crew checked their supplies of food and water. There was some dry flour and some fairly well-preserved peas and other legumes. Aside from cooking and eating, some of the peas might grow in good soil, if they could find any and were forced to plant the peas. They still had a single small barrel with some salted fish, left over from when they were at sea. And even more importantly, they had at least one medium-sized barrel, about three-quarters full of rainwater. They were hoping they would be able to use their smaller fishing equipment to fish at the coast, but for the first few days, they could live off of their remaining supplies.
"The fish'll be somewhat salty, but should make for a good fish soup and nice, cooked fish meat," opined Gilem the Famished.
The shipmaster, captain Arnald, was allowed to set foot on the unknown beach as the first. They put a few planks to the side of the ship, to serve as a bridge between the deck and the beach. Arnald walked down, while the others watched. Nearing the end, he jumped down onto the pebbles and small rocks of the beach, his boots leaving a rattling sound. The captain walked a few steps away from the ship, then walked around it. He kept looking at the outside of the ship, as well as looking around the beach and nearby area . Finally, he slowly walked back to the "bridge" to state his assessment to the crew. But there was already commotion on the deck...
"Where are you going ?" asked Jordic.
Reynard had walked out of the aftcastle of the ship, wearing his sword belt with scabbard. He didn't mind the others' protestations and walked calmly towards the "bridge", then down towards Arnald.
The captain frowned.
"What's this all about, Reynard ? Hopefully you're not here to challenge me to a duel. I'm unarmed."
Reynard sighed, showing a bit of exasperation.
"Shipmaster, I'm not here to challenge you or ask anything of anyone. But we don't know what's out there. We don't have many weapons. Aside from me and John, not many of you know how to use a weapon. Me and John might be the only men skilled in fighting."
Arnald let out an amused snigger.
"Very high-minded of you Reynard, and I respect your verbum nobile, but I have my doubts your single sword would be of any use if some locals had already ambushed us and started charging us."
"I didn't mean any disrespect. You're a good captain and I owe you my life, even if you and the other men are below my station in rank. Some might think I'm haughty, but it's not so. I'm a man of reason, and with twenty-four of us reaching these shores, I'm certain of one thing: We all need to help each other."
"I understand," replied Arnald. "And as your shipmaster, I tell you: You can wear your sword for self-defence, or if you and other crewmen go scouting soon. But right now ? It wouldn't do us much good. Nor would it do much good for you, if a battle really errupted on this beach."
Reynard replied with an admiring nod.
"Then I understand as well, captain," he said with open sincerity. "You make good points. I'll put my sword away if you insist, but if you don't mind, I'll keep it near enough..."
"...so it'll be handy if someone attacked us. Fair enough."
"Should I ready some more crossbow bolts, sir ?" asked John.
"No, I don't think that'll be necessary either, John," replied Arnald. "I think we have enough carried over from last night to defend ourselves if someone attacked. I know we don't have too many weapons, but we need to value what little we have and use it wisely."
Reynard and John both nodded approvingly. Reynard untied his sword belt and put his sword away in the main room of the forecastle.
"Now, both of you, come down here and join me in my first impressions and cautious little exploration."
He didn't need to say so twice, Reynard and John were already desceding from the ship onto the beach. For all their worries about safety and security, they seemed as curious about the unknown land as anyone else.
"And you, my faithful crew... What are you waiting for ? Follow these two gentlemen and join me on this beach. This place seems fairly inhospitable, but for the time being, this area will have to serve as our home," said Arnald, trying to inject some much-needed hope and optimism into the crew after weeks of stress.
As the morning went on, some of the men were hard at work aboard as well as outside of the beached ship, carrying out basic repairs to stabilize the vessel in place. In the meantime, the other half of the crew was ashore, busy with gathering some basic supplies for an outside camp, or exploring cautiously within the nearest vicinity. They were hoping a fresh water spring would not be too far from their place of landing (or stranding), and beyond that, there would be some edible plants they'd recognize as safe to eat and even cook. They had a fair few bolts for their crossbows. Even though they had almost never used their crossbows for hunting, the weapons could help with acquring at least small prey.
Using some of the axes from the ship, the men started felling a few of the smaller but sturdy trees growing nearest to the beach. Earlier, the crew had agreed to build a few shelters on the beach, further away from the possible tideline. Though they intended to keep using the ship as their home for the foreseeable future, some shelters would prove useful if they'd need a dry place to rest at or store their tools while working in the near vicinity.
Gilem 'the Chandler', put paid to his nickname by being the most skillful fire-starter. The men finished preparing the campfire site on the beach, then set off to focus on other duties, leaving Gilem on his own. He started carefully striking his firesteel and flint against each other, pieces of char cloth in one hand, hoping to ignite a spark. They had several firesteels with them, thankfully. Nevertheless, it was a minor miracle the char cloth they had stored in one or two little boxes had remained dry after the great ordeal at sea. Now it came in handy when they needed to light a fire quickly.
Even though the sun had dried some of their clothes, after many days spent in the storm and sea spray, they were looking forward to properly drying them.
Aimar noticed a few younger birch trees growing not too far from the forested edge of the beach. Enneco and Oier joined him to gather some birch bark. To their surprise, the birch, like several of the local trees, looked somewhat odd. Instead of whole bark pieces, they could easily gather fairly dry bark shavings directly from the tree. These were already peeling off its surface, curling peculiarly.
The tree was certainly a birch, but not quite like the birches they knew from their homeland. The other crewmen were starting to comment on occassional unusual features of some trees and plants. The land seemed familiar enough, and yet... not quite the same as home, not quite... right.
Gilem, busy at work with sparking a fire, finally created an ember and added some of the initial tinder. He was blowing into the small bundle carefully, turning his head away on a regular basis to avoid inhaling the increasing amount of smoke. Aimar, Enneco and Oier brought him a few armfuls of dry wood and the interesting birch bark shavings they were able to easily acquire. Gilem was surprised by the different type of birch bark for only a moment or two, then included it in his smoking tinder bundle. In very little time, the bundle ignited into an even little flame.
Gilem quickly placed it in the shallow little pit they had cleared for the campfire, and surrounded with rocks. The other three crewmen helped him with placing firewood into the campfire pit. The fire was growing steadily. The other Gilem showed up soon, accompanied by Josetxu, both of them carrying the largest cauldron they had on the ship. It wasn't really big, by any means, but they had nothing bigger. They also brought plenty of rainwater in a pot, though they'd have to return a few more times to fill the cauldron. Fish soup and cooked fish would soon calm the hunger and tiredness of the crew.
As Arrostanh was off to gather some extra firewood, he noticed Huc sitting on a flat rock near the beach, further from the others. Huc had fallen rather silent a short while ago and showed signs of wanting to be alone, though he gave no explanation as to why. Walking a bit closer to Huc, purely out of curiosity, he was surprised to notice Huc was sobbing quietly.
"Hey, why're you cryin' ?" jabbed Arrostanh, clearly somewhat bemused by the sight. He ate humble pie shortly thereafter, once he noticed Huc had neither complained, nor stopped shedding tears. "Huh. Wait, are you all right ? Did something bad happen ?" he asked Huc with a regretful, more amiable tone.
Huc sniffled, trying to compose himself and find the words.
"Of course something bad has happened, you nitwit. If you haven’t noticed, we’re marooned in God knows where, on some unknown coast ! And my dear Maria, she’s...", he hesitated, and pointed towards the magnificent ocean. He followed it up with a defeated shrug, then shook his head in resigned disapproval. "My wife. She's somewhere there. On the other side of these vast, vast seas. Who knows how far away from home we are. How far away she's from me, how far away I'm from her."
"In short, your bonnie wife is over the ocean, your bonnie is over the sea…" Arrostanh noted rather thoughtfully, though still hiding some of his previous amusement.
"You laugh... A good wife, damn well she is one, my friend. Maria and me have not had very happy lives when we were younger. She's been my everything for many years now, making up for those bad early times. And the mere thought I might never see her again… Or that she might come to be seen as a widow, and some other men, even foul men, might start courting her… Phooey ! Best not to even think about it. The very thought makes me ill."
Try as he might, Arrostanh felt a shift inside of him, from his initial eye-rolling over Huc's sobbing towards genuine sympathy.
"If all men loved their wives as much as you do !", he smiled. "No joke. You clearly are a husband any lady would probably fight over with other lasses."
Maria's longing husband frowned at the man, but tittered afterward. “The greatest beauties can throw themselves at my feet, for all I care, but I only have one wife. I care for no other woman than her. There you have it, now you maybe understand my sadness. My longing. My worries. Back when we were surrounded by the storm, possibly on death's doorstep, I kept praying. For Maria, for our children, for their health and good fortune. I prayed that I may see them again one day, in this life or the next."
"Well, just don’t swear on your high-minded principles too loudly yet. Look before you leap. For all we know, there might be some hospitable locals in these lands, and among them some mighty fine women. Who knows whether you won't come under temptation once you meet such a lady."
"Well, what do you know, hm ? Maybe the first test was surviving that storm and reaching this coast, and now the Almighty's subjecting us to new trials and tribulations. Sensual temptations, to see if we falter and sin..."
"Ha ! Now you‘re starting to sound like that youngun who keeps rambling about the Second Flood and this being God’s punishment…"
"I‘m just repaying the favour," grinned Maria’s husband. "Don't be too harsh on Enric. He might seem far too fearful at times, but he's a rather bright lad. Skillful enough, once you give him reasonable work. There might be something in him yet, as a person, and as a sailor and craftsman."
"With how things have gone, one would hope we won't all be sobbing sooner or later. Maybe we're alone here and can't rely on locals for help. Or it's the opposite, and the locals will find us sooner or later and might not give us the warmest of welcomes. I can't tell apart which possibility is worse..."
"Well, if some locals ambush us and take us prisoner, make us slaves... You're no doubt hoping the locals are ruled by Amazons or something. The men'd be rather willing to obey such women, especially if they're pretty."
"You're not sobbing anymore, Huc. You and your jokes... And as for longing for local women - if there are any - we should leave that to Kees. He's got a girl in every harbour, as they say..."
"Maybe even on this uncharted side of the great seas..." replied Huc, breaking into brief laughter already mid-sentence.
Arrostanh laughed along with him, bemused again. They knew they needed a good laugh. The whole crew did. Being on dry land had lifted the crew's spirits like few things in the last two weeks, but the immediate future seemed very uncertain. Some levity was necessary to face the potential challenges ahead.
It seemed that whichever direction the crew's predicament would evolve in, they were in for a rough few weeks, but more likely months, at worst maybe even a whole year. Time would tell. Until then, exercising caution and being able to laugh at their own predicament were things that could help them cope.
"That Lugan fellow... How's he doing ?" asked Huc, just out of interest.
Arrostanh shrugged.
"He seems to be all right. He's been with the captain, Dieric and plenty of the others, he listens to orders and suggestions, nods, offers help... But he hasn't really talked much, not even since the storm ended, and our landing."
"After a dunking and soaking in those wild waves, I can't say I blame him for not being in the mood to talk." said Huc.
The girl, at most twelve years old, was headed through a clearing in a hillier part of the forest. She adored taking walks during spring mornings like this. The coast was a bit further from her village, but she didn't mind, as she knew the area well. Carrying the small basket she brought along, she was looking forward to collect some goodies. The patch she found recently, by lucky accident, was not too far from the coast.
She sat down on the clearing to rest for a short while. Soon, a pretty butterfly caught her eye. It was one of the rarer ones. She had seen it before, but it wasn't exactly a common sight. Whether the butterfly was tired or "wanted to make friends", she didn't know, but it landed near her hand. Amazed, she moved her hand slowly towards the butterfly... then froze in surprise.
The butterfly leaped up in the air a bit, fluttering around her a little, then touched down again... landing on her hand ! She smiled, outright grinned happily. But she kept quiet, fearful of scaring the butterfly away... He kept sitting on her hand for quite a while.
Eventually, he took off once more, started flying around the meadow. She already felt reinvigorated and decided to follow the tiny creature. It flew to a more distant part of the clearing, in the direction of the coast.
There, at the edge of the clearing, was a lower cliff, and protruding from it upwards, a rocky knoll. Though there were some outcroppings on its upper part, it was mostly covered in a thinner layer of soil and grass, as green as any of the grass growing on the clearing. There were a few trees growing next to the knoll, but otherwise, it was an excellent natural lookout, with a good view of a nearby beach.
She noticed the butterfly fluttering above the grassy top of the knoll. Flying higher, flying lower, occassionally landing, but taking off again in just a few moments. It was as if the butterfly was very picky and not quite satisfied with where to land.
You're such a daring butterfly, always flying and exploring, she thought and giggled.
Carrying her basket, curious about the butterfly, she was approaching the lookout on the rocky knoll. Walking carefully up its steeper slope, she put the basket down on one of the rocks, then walked further up. She noticed the butterfly. It had just sat down on a rock near the edge of the knoll. Raising and lowering its wings, resting in the sunshine. She smiled and approached, careful to avoid sudden, jerky movements. The butterfly kept resting.
She was finally at the rock, squatted down and smiled at the butterfly. She lowered her hand carefully and waited. The butterfly eventually started fluttering, then sat down again... luckily on the back of her hand ! Two such lucky moments in a single morning. She giggled quietly. She couldn't believe her luck !
"Thank you, butterfly", she whispered. "You're such a pretty little thing."
Then, the butterfly suddenly took off, flying away. She was a bit disappointed that her time with the butterfly didn't last just a little longer, but she was content with the good luck she had already received. She turned her head around, watching the butterfly fluttering around, following its trajectory with her eyes. Fluttering to here, then there, fluttering and flying around, eventually flying ever further, in one direction, then another, then another...
As she kept her eyes on her departing tiny friend, her gaze shifted towards the beach...
...she could see it very clearly from the lookout, as if it was on the palm of her own hand...
Down on the beach, not too far from here, there sat a great unknown shape.
A great wooden shape. One of its ends bored into the side of the beach. Its belly rather rounded, resembling a huge wooden duck resting on the shore, waves lapping at its sides and other end. There was a strange wooden stump at its centre, and at both ends, something that looked either like large houses or the defensive platforms of a fortified town.
It was unspeakably odd. And yet, it was... a boat. A wooden boat. But larger, far larger than any boat she had seen at any point in her life...
There were figures walking on top of this strange, huge boat. Some were also on the shore, wandering around, searching for firewood and working with various tools. A campfire had already been lit. She recognised one of them was probably holding an axe, as he used the tool to strike against trees, felling wood.
Were these figures human ? Most likely. But could they be unknown spirits, visiting the land of her people ? She did not know.
As curious as she was, she was just one girl and the figures around the great boat, on the beach, were numerous. From what she saw, maybe even two dozens of them. She was just one young girl. The knowledge imparted on her by her family, relatives and elders was no doubt not enough for her to understand who these strange people might really be. As curious as she was who these people or beings were, she wasn't going to stay here to find out.
She picked up her basket and started walking back to her village. She wasn't running, but tried to keep a brisk enough pace until the coastline vanished from sight. She didn't turn back nor look back until she arrived home safely.
----
That evening, they ate fish soup and cooked fish to their heart's content. It was a splendid feeling, after the weeks of raw food and hardship.
So far, they had seen relatively few animals in this unknown new land, and no people. No human beings at all. They wondered whether they're the only people in this land... But it seemed so vast... How could they be the only people here ? Surely, a land this big probably had some inhabitants. Just to be on the safe side, shipmaster Arnald ordered the less tired men to do as they did the first night: Keep watch during the night time, taking turns. Each of the two night watchmen tasked with guarding duty were given a crossbow and a few bolts. The men were told to shoot only if there was no other option left and to be careful at not shooting a fellow crewman.
For this second night in the unknown land, they decided to lay their worries to rest. For now, their whole world had shrunken to their damaged ship, the beach and the surrounding edges of the forest. But it had already expanded from an even tinier, even more shrunken world of the last few weeks, the time when their entire world was reduced to only their own ship.
Whatever the future might bring, good or bad, they were content to face it with courage and kindness.
----
Toise is an old French unit of measurement used for centuries during the country's pre-Revolutionary era. 1 toise was 1.949 metres.
The distance mentioned in the chapter is 38 toise, which would be roughly 76 metres, give or take.
I deliberately kept the era vague in the prologue, to avoid giving away the surprise that this is set in the 1420s. Part of that was referring to the captain only as a "captain", but from this chapter onward I'm also using the term "shipmaster" as an interchangeable synonym. Why ? Until the early modern era, a naval captain was like a military captain on dry ground, with the one difference being that he commanded a military ship. In contrast, the civilian equivalent of the term was "shipmaster". Captain only won out as the accepted term for all people in charge of ships in the last four hundred, at most five hundred years (with "shipmaster" still being an occassional synonym or changed into a lower separate rank). Since this is a 15th century story, I feel comfortable using "shipmaster" quite often, given that Arnald commands a civilian ship.
The birch and its birch bark the crewmen encounter seems strange to them. This is because it's the betula papyrifera, the North American paper birch. Unlike the Eurasian birch, its outer bark can be extracted rather easily when it leaves behind dried-up, curl-shaped shavings, which can be easily peeled off. All birch bark anywhere in the world is good for starting fires, even when wet, but the dry shavings from this North American species makes it even easier to use birch bark as tinder, even when you don't have a knife. (The crew have knives, of course, but it's good to know there's a birch species that's highly practical for starting fires, without needing to remove whole bits of bark or chop off branches.)
Char cloth is a many centuries old method of starting a fire, with the char cloth serving as initial tinder that is easy to light with a spark.
The name of the chapter is a reference to the title of one of Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea series works, The Farthest Shore.
I won't reveal the identity of the Native American peoples that live near the place where the ship's crew was marooned. However, you can infer which ethnicity it is by the language used in the native song that appears in this first chapter.
I wanted to keep the return of this story a surprise. Something to liven up this July. Here you have it, our story continues.
Can you guess where they landed and what people they might run into in the near future ? You can guess, you can bet, feel free to do so.
You will find notes at the end of the previous chapter. There is also some optional background music you can listen to in the chapter. I am still finalizing the storytelling and presentation format for this timeline, so please remain patient if you occassionally notice some discrepancies. If you spot any typos or other weirdness, you can alert me about these.
Well, given that the landscape seems familiar but not quite might seems as that perhaps they would have landed in Maine or on some place near in the actual US East coast.
Well, given that the landscape seems familiar but not quite might seems as that perhaps they would have landed in Maine or on some place near in the actual US East coast.
For years, I avoided conceptualizing and writing any sort of "alternate history of Europeans discovering the Americas", because it's already well-trodden ground and because many of these timelines devolve into "the Europeans come, the fate of the natives is sealed, they can't resist European encroachment". Which, while fairly realistic (especially with unknown-in-the-Americas diseases in mind) is also a rather boring setup.
The entire point of this scenario is to ask: "What would first contact between late-medieval Europe and the Americas be like if the European side came in very small numbers and were largelly inconvenienced in every way, but not entirely helpless ?"
Did we talk about this before? It has been a while since your earlier posts.
Would a fishing ship have "castles?" Were they just tacked on to every ship on the theory that just about any boat might be pressed into naval service, or because honest fishermen had to fight off pirates (or enemy navy ships, same thing from a fishing crew's point of view, not much in the way of Geneva Conventions in this day and age, though I suppose late medieval custom might have evolved some norms about not excessively mistreating enemy noncombatants--again though, would such norms have much force on fighting ship crews who want to augment their dried fish stores or seize fresher water and other stores than they have aboard?) Or is it because castles are useful in mundane fishing tasks?
I'd have thought the big distinction between a war-capable nau type ship and a peaceful one, especially a fishing boat (traders are obvious targets for pirates after all) in this time frame would be castles. Not having any advertises you are a low-value, harmless target and not worth many glory or profit points. But if rough customers don't care and want your beer and fresh(er) water and/or catch, or have a nefarious use for the boat itself, perhaps the Roman adage "if you would have peace prepare war" applies to the humblest vessel. Maybe adding castles just doesn't cost much (a little added weight putting the ship a bit lower in the water, a bit more of a hogging hazard) but are so useful (extra storage volume for low density stuff, lookouts, bunk space, etc) that once the basic "nau" design emerged and ships that really needed them forced and demonstrated the basic design requirements, all ships just borrowed this standard design no matter what their intended purpose?
I suppose the answer would lie along lines of "all ships I could get pictures of or detailed descriptions from the era all featured castles, so it is empirically a ubiquitous feature of ships of the age."
Man, I hope so. If any gang of Europeans of this era could make peaceful and mutually beneficial contact with Atlantic coast Native people, I suppose it is this crew.
I'm not even too worried they will give the little girl and her village the galloping mumps or some such, since they've been quarantined on the high seas for weeks, any nasty bug should have torn through the crew and been quelled by now.
I'm nervous that some minor bug to the Basques that just bounces around from crewman to crewman despite immunities might do terrible things, but I suspect the horrendous outcomes of Conquistador ventures had to do with the expeditions being well prepared with supplies--including livestock like pigs or goats, which harbor diseases. The depopulation of the Mississippi valley system versus what DeSoto observed there is blamed on the pigs his men drove with them going feral and spreading germs to various wildlife like deer which carried it far past the horizons either DeSoto's band witnessed or even the damn pigs themselves could see. The way immunology works, no one on the crew should be infectious now--I hope.
Did we talk about this before? It has been a while since your earlier posts.
Would a fishing ship have "castles?" Were they just tacked on to every ship on the theory that just about any boat might be pressed into naval service, or because honest fishermen had to fight off pirates (or enemy navy ships, same thing from a fishing crew's point of view, not much in the way of Geneva Conventions in this day and age, though I suppose late medieval custom might have evolved some norms about not excessively mistreating enemy noncombatants--again though, would such norms have much force on fighting ship crews who want to augment their dried fish stores or seize fresher water and other stores than they have aboard?) Or is it because castles are useful in mundane fishing tasks?
I'd have thought the big distinction between a war-capable nau type ship and a peaceful one, especially a fishing boat (traders are obvious targets for pirates after all) in this time frame would be castles. Not having any advertises you are a low-value, harmless target and not worth many glory or profit points. But if rough customers don't care and want your beer and fresh(er) water and/or catch, or have a nefarious use for the boat itself, perhaps the Roman adage "if you would have peace prepare war" applies to the humblest vessel. Maybe adding castles just doesn't cost much (a little added weight putting the ship a bit lower in the water, a bit more of a hogging hazard) but are so useful (extra storage volume for low density stuff, lookouts, bunk space, etc) that once the basic "nau" design emerged and ships that really needed them forced and demonstrated the basic design requirements, all ships just borrowed this standard design no matter what their intended purpose?
The ship in question is a trade ship that's large enough to survive on the ocean. Typologically, it's a hulk, so essentially a larger cousin to the cog, and slightly more capable of going on oceanic voyages (but still more comfortable in coastal seas). Part of why they ended up in the storm in the first place was because they were pushing their luck with how far west they were, far more than was usual or safe for such a ship.
The Seintespirit's history will be touched upon as the story further develops. You need to bear in mind that many medieval ships, other than galleys, were not built primarily as military ships. Many of the era's ships could be and were used for several different roles, including freighting of goods, transport of people and animals, and also fishing further away from the continent.
The crew isn't entirely Basque, they're majority Gascon and Basque (the captain's Gascon), with a few other nationalities in there (the Englishman having spent a big part of his life in Gascony, since it's under the English crown, the Frenchman's there due to proximity, the two Flemish found work abroad under certain circumstances).
I suppose the answer would lie along lines of "all ships I could get pictures of or detailed descriptions from the era all featured castles, so it is empirically a ubiquitous feature of ships of the age."
Not all medieval ships featured forecastles and aftcastles, but it was a very common feature of commercial ships of the time. You shouldn't forget that many trade ships, while not warships at all, had forecastles and aftcastles and a few archers in the crew, as a precaution against piracy at sea or theft at port. This occured both in the north among the Hanseatic League members and along the Atlantic Coast.
Mediterranean ships of the era did not use these observation-and-shooting platform features as much, since the Mediterranean design tradition had a bit of a different continuity between the Fall of Rome and the pan-European phase of the Renaissance. Cogs were most frequently seen in the Mediterranean during the era of the Crusades, but that was the one heyday they had there.
Cogs were already seen as fairly obsolete by the early 15th century even in Atlantic Europe. If the transition to bigger ocean-going ships had taken longer, you'd see hulks as a distinct type of ship around for longer as well, but within a century, even hulks were already largelly replaced by more modern sailships for both commercial and military purposes.
Part of why the Age of Sail was kicked off in the 15th century was due to increasing experimentation with hybridising "northern" and "southern" shipbuilding traditions. As noted in one of my opening posts and many different articles online, the hulk was one of the influences on the configuration of a "classic" caravel from the second half od the 15th century (what we think when someone says the word caravel).
Man, I hope so. If any gang of Europeans of this era could make peaceful and mutually beneficial contact with Atlantic coast Native people, I suppose it is this crew.
I'm not even too worried they will give the little girl and her village the galloping mumps or some such, since they've been quarantined on the high seas for weeks, any nasty bug should have torn through the crew and been quelled by now.
I'm nervous that some minor bug to the Basques that just bounces around from crewman to crewman despite immunities might do terrible things, but I suspect the horrendous outcomes of Conquistador ventures had to do with the expeditions being well prepared with supplies--including livestock like pigs or goats, which harbor diseases. The depopulation of the Mississippi valley system versus what DeSoto observed there is blamed on the pigs his men drove with them going feral and spreading germs to various wildlife like deer which carried it far past the horizons either DeSoto's band witnessed or even the damn pigs themselves could see. The way immunology works, no one on the crew should be infectious now--I hope.
The story will touch upon these issues as it develops. Note that it's no coincidence I brought a small group of people over, instead of hundreds or thousands, and they don't seem to have livestock aboard. This is partly for storytelling purposes and partly to avoid the obvious issue of animal-transmitted and human-transmitted diseases from the Old World.
The entire point of this scenario is to ask: "What would first contact between late-medieval Europe and the Americas be like if the European side came in very small numbers and were largelly inconvenienced in every way, but not entirely helpless ?"
And that is very nice indeed. The problem is, it is not a long-term consequential "contact" like the discoveries of Columbus or Cabot or Cartier, or what Vinland had the potential to be if only there were a strong motive for the Norse to double down on the settlement. Unlike those chartered explorers scouting out the unknown west for reasons of hoped-for profit by their patrons, Basque fishermen are believed to have been landing on Newfoundland a long time before 1492, annually. They avoided contact with the natives apparently, or perhaps engaged in very limited and apparently silent trade. They had zero interest in their noble and royal patrons back home in Europe getting the slightest wind of their landfall; all they wanted to do was fish the Grand Banks and then smoke their catch for sale. They must have had a very shrewd idea of where they would fall in the hierarchy of noble/royal priorities if the Great Lords ever found out, and I have to wonder if the men ever even told their wives or any sons (until taking one out on his first fishing voyage northwest, and only then once out of sight of land).
The dearest wish of most of the men of Seintespirit is simply to get home again.
I had to read back over prior posts looking for the ship name to write that sentence, I knew it meant "Holy Spirt" but could not quite get the dialect version of that in my memory and I had a hell of a time scanning for it in the latest post text though I know it is in there somewhere. I wound up going back to the first page.
So yeah, we have had occasion to discuss the Basque custom of fishing the Grand Banks, smoking the catch on Newfoundland, and saying absolutely nothing about it to outsiders. However several of the 24 castaways are men of a different class and nationality than most of the crew who have no direct attachments to the fishing villagers' interests, save insofar as common decency leads them to consider their point of view.
So either the castaways manage to get their wish--it seems possible though definitely a big risk for them to get back to known European waters, especially if they are willing to risk letting the Gulf Stream take them where it will (putting them in waters known to Scandinavian and northern British navigators, or even in Irish and other British waters and the Bay of Biscay which is their home waters of course), and then however friendly their relations with the Native peoples, other gangs with rougher intentions will be following as the news spreads.
Or either they try and sadly die, all too likely, or pondering it very thoughtfully decide they had used up all their lifetime supply of luck making it to landfall and to try to sail back would be tempting the devil, and resolve to make a life for themselves right where they are.
Which I am guessing, without fishing for spoilers, might be the likeliest course, which makes the story of the poor guy who misses his wife Maria all the more poignant--although for a Hollywood ending, we could somewhat crazily have a resolution where the majority of the crew rationally decide to stay put and make the best of it, while a handful of incurably homesick men like Huc depart (either with the blessing of the majority or against their will as narrative best demands) probably not with the Seintespirit since modest as this "hulk" is, it is too big a vessel for just 2-4 guys to handle, so presumably they make a little boat and take their chances. And while the odds are worse against some tiny boat making it than the entire crewed Seintespirit, still by Grace of God at least one crewman (Huc, I presume) makes it back to the Basque country and Maria. (His crewmates ought to survive, but as Ben Franklin, butterflied away good and proper in this TL, put it OTL, "Three can keep a secret, if two are dead..." The point of the story seems to be to transplant some serious European knowledge to some Atlantic coastal peoples to make them just a bit of a tougher nut to crack, and I don't think it does them good to have the beans spilled early. So Huc, through no malice and doing his best to save his crewmates, alone survives to tell the tale, presumably his love for Maria keeps him alive longer than his despondent crewmates I suppose. And given the circumstances the majority score of the crew were in (quite possibly more comfortable and better honored than they had ever been in their lives in Europe) Huc just tells Maria about it, and selected sons, but not a soul else and Columbus still gets the credit. But the community on the coast manages to learn and retain a number of European arts and crafts.
And that is very nice indeed. The problem is, it is not a long-term consequential "contact" like the discoveries of Columbus or Cabot or Cartier, or what Vinland had the potential to be if only there were a strong motive for the Norse to double down on the settlement.
Unlike those chartered explorers scouting out the unknown west for reasons of hoped-for profit by their patrons, Basque fishermen are believed to have been landing on Newfoundland a long time before 1492, annually. They avoided contact with the natives apparently, or perhaps engaged in very limited and apparently silent trade. They had zero interest in their noble and royal patrons back home in Europe getting the slightest wind of their landfall; all they wanted to do was fish the Grand Banks and then smoke their catch for sale.
This is something that is still seen as hypothetical and speculative among historians, to this day. A bit of a mystery that might never be adequately answered. I have not heard of any compelling material finds and material evidence that Basque fishermen might have left behind in North America in the 15th century. So I consider a claim like this speculative, at best.
They must have had a very shrewd idea of where they would fall in the hierarchy of noble/royal priorities if the Great Lords ever found out, and I have to wonder if the men ever even told their wives or any sons (until taking one out on his first fishing voyage northwest, and only then once out of sight of land).
I had to read back over prior posts looking for the ship name to write that sentence, I knew it meant "Holy Spirt" but could not quite get the dialect version of that in my memory and I had a hell of a time scanning for it in the latest post text though I know it is in there somewhere. I wound up going back to the first page.
So yeah, we have had occasion to discuss the Basque custom of fishing the Grand Banks, smoking the catch on Newfoundland, and saying absolutely nothing about it to outsiders. However several of the 24 castaways are men of a different class and nationality than most of the crew who have no direct attachments to the fishing villagers' interests, save insofar as common decency leads them to consider their point of view.
So either the castaways manage to get their wish--it seems possible though definitely a big risk for them to get back to known European waters, especially if they are willing to risk letting the Gulf Stream take them where it will (putting them in waters known to Scandinavian and northern British navigators, or even in Irish and other British waters and the Bay of Biscay which is their home waters of course), and then however friendly their relations with the Native peoples, other gangs with rougher intentions will be following as the news spreads.
That might happen, but you are already pre-judging the course of the story waaay in advance, long before anything has even developed.
The crew's main objective is to eventually return home. I never said anywhere they'll succeed in this goal, or that they'll all return and immediately start making grand plans for colonization. Or that they'll even bother to explain where they were, nevermind try to figure out coordinates. These are twenty-four people. For all their variety, it's not at all unlikely they'd decide not telling anyone where they were. If tens of Basque fishermen really did sail to North America and back in the 15th century, and kept quiet about it for the sake of their catch, then I don't see why this crew wouldn't keep quiet about this either. Especially when the crew's economic activities also include fishing.
For all you know, I might end the story in a few chapters, with all crewmen shot dead with native arrows and the natives deciding that strange big boat is an awesome source of wood and other stuff.
Or either they try and sadly die, all too likely, or pondering it very thoughtfully decide they had used up all their lifetime supply of luck making it to landfall and to try to sail back would be tempting the devil, and resolve to make a life for themselves right where they are.
Many of the crew probably feel similar emotions as Huc. I just used him as a good explict example of those perfectly human, perfectly understandable emotions. It doesn't mean he's the only one to carry those emotions.
although for a Hollywood ending, we could somewhat crazily have a resolution where the majority of the crew rationally decide to stay put and make the best of it
while a handful of incurably homesick men like Huc depart (either with the blessing of the majority or against their will as narrative best demands) probably not with the Seintespirit since modest as this "hulk" is, it is too big a vessel for just 2-4 guys to handle, so presumably they make a little boat and take their chances. And while the odds are worse against some tiny boat making it than the entire crewed Seintespirit, still by Grace of God at least one crewman (Huc, I presume) makes it back to the Basque country and Maria. (His crewmates ought to survive, but as Ben Franklin, butterflied away good and proper in this TL, put it OTL, "Three can keep a secret, if two are dead..."
First: I think it's far more likely the crewmen will try to repair their ship, than attempt to build a new one, even a small one. Building a boat takes a lot of effort. And you don't know, maybe the locals will be extremely hostile to them, so they won't have any help other than themselves.
Second: Huc is Gascon, as his very name suggets. I don't know of a lot of 15th century Basques, or Catalonians or Spaniards named "Hugo".
The point of the story seems to be to transplant some serious European knowledge to some Atlantic coastal peoples to make them just a bit of a tougher nut to crack, and I don't think it does them good to have the beans spilled early.
You don't know. Maybe the whole point of the story will be that any attempts at such transfers are futile, whether the crew cares or not.
You don't know what I have planned. Honestly, the only thing in it that will be true to any predictions is that the story will not be all that predictable.
So Huc, through no malice and doing his best to save his crewmates, alone survives to tell the tale, presumably his love for Maria keeps him alive longer than his despondent crewmates I suppose. And given the circumstances the majority score of the crew were in (quite possibly more comfortable and better honored than they had ever been in their lives in Europe) Huc just tells Maria about it, and selected sons, but not a soul else and Columbus still gets the credit. But the community on the coast manages to learn and retain a number of European arts and crafts.
For the last time, I'm not spoiling anything. Oh, and if you think Huc will be some "lone survivor, the sole man left to tell the tale", you really have the impression I'd go for a Hollywood ending like that. I wouldn't. Personally speaking, it's far more likely that several of them make it back to Europe - one day, some day - or none at all. Huc being some lone survivor reunited with his wife is not something I've ever considered, so it wasn't likely to ever happen anyway.
Sit back, enjoy the ride, and comment on the developments of each chapter. Even if you and the other readers like guessing, I will keep you guessing.
The story continues soon. Stay patient and don't post yet.
The girl was nearing her village.
Initially, when she turned back after seeing the unknown boat and people down on the beach, she grabbed her basket and started to run. It didn't take long until she started to slow down to a mild sprint, then to a quicker walk, and finally, to a walking speed. She slowed down her pace not only because running was tiring her, she also did it because she realised running was pointless.
Even if some of the people from the boat had wandered into the coastal forests, meadows and hills, she felt they would be few and not familiar with the land. No one seemed to have noticed her, no one was walking or running up towards the knoll she had stood on. She was small enough and swift enough that she could always hide from any pursuers fairly easily, in the underbrush. The waves of the coast were already becoming a distant echo as she headed further inland. This calmed her down. She was far enough now.
In a short while, she was at the local river and turned to the path following one of the banks of the flowing stream. The road headed upriver, snaking its way through the edges of the forest, groves, meadows, and even next to the occassional crop patch and small field set up by her people. The closer she got to the village, the greater the number of scattered patches and fields near the path.
Her people, the Dawnlanders, preferred to build their more permanent settlements near rivers and lakes. Though they had gradually adopted agriculture a long time agp, and now grew maize and squash in patches in the surrounding land, fishing and hunting remained their main source of food. Now, in the springtime, they were busy with regular fishing at rivers near villages, or rivers and lakes farther away. In the summer, part of the villagers or fishing and hunting camp dwellers would move closer to the coastline, fishing at the seashore. By midfall, they were already moving back inland, to spend the winter hunting, adding to the supplies made during the warm months and surviving until the return of spring.
The settlement was fairly sizable for its type, but not exactly large. This was a village inhabited on a mostly seasonal basis.
----
Arrostanh and Xemen were filling some of the jugs and pots they had with drinkable water from the stream.
Enric came wandering back, rather hurriedly. They could hear his footsteps stomping through the underbrush.
"I've found something, something odd. I'm not sure, but..."
They looked up, their expressions quizzical.
"What's the matter, Enric ? You seem like you've seen a..." asked Xemen.
"No, not a ghost, if that's what you're getting at. A bit deeper in the forest from here, I came across a tree stump. And another tree stump, almost right next to it."
"So ? An old tree broke in half, fell, will rot away..."
"No. Those two trees. The stumps," he hesitated, as if scared to even state the obvious. "They looked like they were cut down. With an axe. They didn't look broken in half, by natural means. They genuinely looked as if someone had felled them with a handaxe."
Arrostanh frowned, not sure what to make of the whole thing.
"Enric, are you sure ?"
"Utterly. If you want to see them, I'll try to lead you there."
"This better not be a joke or a figment of your imagi..."
"Honest. I saw two trees that looked like cut down by an axe. Cut down in such a way, I couldn't mistake it for anything else."
"All right, then," Arrostanh looked at Xemen. "Leave the vessels here, hide them next to a bush. We'll pick them up when we return."
"It's not far from here, so we won't be long," reassured Enric.
"Right," nodded Arrostanh, and picked up their crossbow and a belt quiver with a few bolts. "Hope you're not going mad, Enric. Earlier, you seemed to have believed a new Flood was upon us."
"Leave it be," groaned Enric. "We're alive, we're in a land we don't know. As afraid I was of divine punishment, I think the Lord had truly spared us. I'm not afraid of that now, I'm honestly unsure whether there are people in this land. People we don't know. People who might be friendly, but..."
"...might not be," sighed Xemen, having hidden and covered the pots and jugs full of fresh water. "Let's go then. Arro, you're responsible for the crossbow. Don't shoot us by accident. Let's hope we don't meet any adversaries. Lead the way, Enric..."
They set off.
In a short while, they approached a very subtle, very narrow clearing in the forest. Strangely, it felt to them as if either animals... or people... had frequented this part of the forest, leaving behind a subtle, barely visible footpath.
Enric pointed to two tree stumps near each other.
Arrostanh looked the stumps over carefully, several times. As if secretly hoping he isn't seeing what he's seeing. He sighed.
"Damn," said Xemen, looking over the stumps.
Even a pious young man like Enric didn't mind that brief bit of blasphemy. He overlooked it and didn't react. But he now had the feeling they believe him.
"So, what do you think ? This seems to have been done by human hands, with man-made tools."
"I don't know what sort of axe they used, but this... this was cut down with an axe," opined Arrostanh. "Enric, did you only find these stumps ?" he looked up towards the youngest man. "Have you seen anything like this elsewhere, by chance ?"
"As far as I know..." Enric shrugged and exhaled, clearly somewhat unsure. "As far as I know, these are the only two I've noticed thus far."
"One has to wonder if we're alone right now," noted Xemen quietly. "The nearest locals, if any, living far from here. Maybe the stumps were made years ago and there's no one around here. They look quite old..."
The local woods, though mysterious before to all of the sailors from the Seintespirit, suddenly started feeling even more ominous.
One of the men turned a bit abruptly, hearing the echo of some animal snapping a twig on the forest floor, or some bird flapping its wings while flying past.
Though the trio wouldn't have formulated their thoughts and feelings in exactly this manner, people from later centuries would no doubt have told them that "What is the greatest thing feared by humans ? The unknown.". Few things were more unknown, more enigmatic, than being not only in an unknown land with unknown terrain and unknown nature, but being in an unknown land potentially filled with unknown people.
----
The little girl's father was still away, fishing, but her mother sat in front of their hovel in the village, mending some small items.
Seeing her daughter running to the hovel, the mother was surprised to see her return somewhat sooner than she had expected.
Not only that, but the daughter's face betrayed a strange blend of astonishment and worry she hadn't seen in a good while. Did her daughter see something she didn't recognise ? At this point in her life, she would have surely been familiar with and understood most of the creatures and plants you could come across, especially on an everyday basis.
"Mother, mother... I have something to say to you..."
"What's going on, my dear ?" the mother frowned, gently touching the head of her child. "You seem a little... startled."
"I... Mum, I saw... I saw something near the coast, from one of the knolls above the beach with the small cliffs. I was watching butterflies when I loooked down on the beach. I saw something I can't explain."
"What did you see, dear ? Did you see a big animal and were unsure of what it is ? Did it scare you ?"
"Well... I saw something that looked like a..."
"A bear ? You've seen bears, you know that th..."
"No, no, mum ! It was like a... huge wooden duck !"
"What ?" the mother asked, almost doing a befuddled chuckle. "Oh, child, is this one of your riddles ?" she smiled. "A huge wooden duck ?! Really ?" she gave her daughter's hair a gentle stroke.
"Well, I mean, it was like a boat. But... Much bigger than the ones we have. It was made of wood, I clearly saw so, and its body... It wasn't narrow, like our boats... but as if you had made a big wooden duck. A shape like a duck, but very big and made of wood !" shyly explained the little girl.
The mother listened carefully, then smiled.
"A huge wooden boat shaped like a duck ? And wasn't it made from bark instead ?"
"No, no. I honestly remember it was made from cut-up wood, I didn't see any bark on the outside. It was a big, strange boat."
"Dear, it's a nice tale, but I'm not sure if you're joking or not. Why would anyone build such a big boat ? And why would it be on the beach without..."
"Because ! Because, mum, there were people on it, and around it, on the beach. Someone landed the boat there. I think... I think they were men..."
Her mother's smile froze. She felt unsure, but asked calmly.
"Men ?! You saw people next to the boat ? On that beach not that far from here ?"
"Yes, I saw them from the knoll where I followed the butterfly, and looked down for a moment towards the beach. People and the big wooden duck-boat."
"People... And... Dear, how did they look ?" her mother hesitated, but dared to ask.
The girl fell silent for a moment, as if thinking really hard, trying to remember.
"I was worried and I ran away with my basket almost right away. I don't remember that well, but I think... I think... they were all men. I don't remember seeing any women or children, and I don't remember the men I saw having longer hair. Some maybe had, but most had shorter hair... I think... Oh, and..." she stopped for a moment, as if forgetting an important detail she wanted to say earlier, "They all had clothes. I don't know if clothes like our's, but they were all wearing clothes."
Her mother was at a loss, unsure what to even say. Big boats shaped like ducks ? Unknown men ? Hopefully not enemies or raiders...
"What's the matter ?" asked a somewhat older woman, walking closer to them and their hovel. "Did she get injured or lose something ?"
"Auntie, auntie, I'm telling my mother about the strange boat and strange men I saw on the coast !" the little girl blurted out.
Her aunt was confused enough for three.
"Is this some joke of her's or a story she made up ?" asked her aunt, rather flabbergasted. "My good sister, I know my niece has a vivid imagin..."
"Auntie, I'm not joking ! I'm not lying to you or to mum ! Honest, mum, honest, auntie. I'm not scared either. I just don't understand what I saw."
"Indulge me," sighed her aunt, sitting down next to them. Her husband looked towards her. She nodded at him, gestured that they'll talk soon. "I want to hear what's this all about."
The little girl kept explaining, occassionally interrupted by her mother, who emphasized some details, or how the daughter told them before. The girl was getting a bit frustrated with her mother and aunt, quietly displeased that her relatives weren't probably too keen to trust her word.
After listening to her niece for a while, the aunt nodded, then started a conversation with her sister and her niece. After a short while, she got up and went to get her husband.
"Don't worry, you won't have to explain your story too many times," the aunt said reassuringly to her niece.
"I'd be glad as well," said the little girl's mother, hugging her daughter and kissing her on the hair. "I don't think she's making fun of us. She clearly saw something unusual."
