The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin Read Free Book Online Page B

leather for a tiny airseal, 0.8 mm thick, on a pocket tyre pressure gauge.
    “Saint Brendan is said to have built his boat from leather tanned in oak bark,” I told these experts. “Do you think this was right, and would it have survived an ocean crossing?”
    “Oak-bark-tanned leather is certainly authentic,” said Dr. Sykes. “The normal way of tanning leather in western Europe right up to this century was some form of vegetable tannage, usually oak bark if it was available, and taking as long as twelve months to tan fully.”
    “At Richardson’s we still do a vegetable tannage,” added Carl Postles, “but not in oak bark any longer. It’s too difficult to get and it takes too long.”
    “What about dressing the leather?” asked Harold. “It sounds to me as if the currying or dressing of the leather hull is going to be just as important as the leather itself.”
    “The
Navigatio
merely says that the monks rubbed the skins with a grease or fat before they launched their leather boat,” I told him. “The Latin word that’s employed for grease doesn’t define what sort of fat it was. But the text does add that Saint Brendan took along a spare supply of this fat to dress the leather during the voyage.”
    “Sounds very sensible,” commented Harold. Turning to Dr. Sykes he asked, “What sort of fats would they have had, Bob?”
    “Tallow, or sheep’s fat, beeswax, perhaps cod oil, and for waterproofing …,” and here Dr. Sykes paused, “possibly the grease from sheep’s wool. It’s virtually raw lanolin, and has been known since Pliny’s time; people have used it for waterproofing shoes right up to recent times.”
    For about an hour we talked the problem over, and finally agreed that Carl and Harold would send to Dr. Sykes samples of all the suitable sorts of leather they had in their tanneries. Dr. Sykes would then test these samples at his laboratories. There they would be soaked in sea water, rolled and dried, flexed and stretched, measured and weighed, to see what happened.
    “What about oak-bark leather?” I demanded. “We must have some of that.”
    “Of course,” agreed Dr. Sykes, “but it’s very rare nowadays. In fact, I only know two, perhaps three tanneries who make oak-bark leather. There’s one in particular down in Cornwall in the West Country, a very, very old-fashioned place, almost a farm really. They supplied genuine oak-bark leather to the British Museum when the museum was restoring a leather shield from the Sutton Hoo burial ship. I’ll ask them to send up some of their leather, and we’ll test it in with the other samples.”
    So began a delightful period of work. The British leather industry took the Brendan project to heart, and what splendid people the leathermakers turned out to be. It was a close-knit industry in which everyone seemed to know everyone else in friendly rivalry, but with a shared appreciation of leather. While Dr. Sykes and his technicians exposed various leather samples to every test they could devise, I visited tanneries, saddlemakers, and luggagemakers who still worked with leather. At the Richardsons’ tannery in Derby I found that they even made drinking tankards out of leather, and I noticed small scraps of leather floating in jam jars and saucers of water on several windowsills. “What on earth are those?” I asked Carl.
    “Oh, the tannery workmen have heard about your crazy Saint Brendan idea, and everyone has been testing pieces of leather to see whether they float.”
    “And do they?” I asked.
    “Not for longer than four days,” he grinned. “You are going to need a life raft.”
    Then one afternoon, after ten weeks of tests at the laboratories, I had a momentous telephone call from Dr. Sykes.
    “I think we’ve identified your hull leather,” he said. “You were right. Oak-bark leather is the best.”
    “How do you know?”
    “We’ve done every test we can manage in the time available, including putting the samples on a