Sept 10, 2006 - SMEETONS OF TZU HANG - HOME FROM THE SEA
by Michel & Jane DeRidder

Just where do blue water sailors fetch up after the better part of twenty years afloat and well over 100,000 miles of offshore voyaging? After so many years of deep-sea high adventure on the double-ended ketch Tzu Hang, Brigadier Miles Smeeton (author of the sea classics Once is Enough, Because the Horn is There, Misty Islands and Sunrise to Windward) and Beryl (his wife and co-recipient of the Blue Water Cruising Medal) sold Tzu Hang. Miles' knees had become wonky and were apt to give way. As he said, "If you can't work on the foredeck, it's no use carrying on." The seafarers became landlubbers.

Fellow cruisers and armchair sailors alike were surprised when the Smeetons built a house at the edge of Alberta's Rocky Mountain foothills, thirty miles west of Calgary, on their own 160-acre game sanctuary for endangered species. Fortunately for Smeeton's reading public, when they gave up voyaging under sail Miles was not fated to give up chronicling their adventures. Through his later books we learned that when they moved into the shell of the house, it was "like living inside a giant salmon", and that while they were finishing the interior they shared the upstairs quarters with a lamb "much to the surprise of visitors," and that they first used the lower floor as a barn. Of a female moose calf abandoned by its mother, Miles wrote, "It was like carrying four legs with a head attached, and she tended to slide through my arms as though she were liquid. Bee, straight as a lance, as lithe as a deer, took it for walks, generally behaving as a moose mother would do."

No less extraordinary than its occupants, the Smeetons' house had elements of a hunting lodge, an English country squire's estate and a cruising yacht's cabin, with echoes from various eastern countries where they spent much of their lives: a tiger rug, leopard skins on sea chests, tapestry-covered cushions, a Korean chest, dining chairs made out of barrels, moose horns on the beams, and a plough share seat ("Bee couldn't bear to see anything go to waste,") There were a few unexpected touches such as a fireman's pole for Miles to slide down so as to avoid the stairs, a dumbwaiter to the lower kitchen, and - hanging from chains in the main living area - a bedstead found somewhere on the place and "not even rusty!" And of course, a model of Tzu Hang. Outside was a dinghy full of poppies, zinnias and snapdragons, and a stone rubbish-burning cairn knocked askew by a moose.

After Beryl's death in 1979, Miles continued the work they set out to do together - breeding pairs of swift foxes for reintroduction into the wild. The last ones had been seen in Alberta in 1930. In 1906, 25,000 skins had been auctioned on the Calgary fur market. When we visited the Alberta game sanctuary, Miles and his young helpers on the swift fox release program were notching the foxes' ears to a code, inoculating them, measuring them, taking notes on color and condition of their coats, examining them for parasites and naming the newborns. There was one particularly spirited little fellow, who had made off with two chicks and a mouse before letting himself be captured for his inoculation; Miles named him Magic Dragon after our cruising boat.

At the time of our visit, Miles Smeeton was still a charming man with twinkling blue eyes, an aristocratic aquiline beak of a nose, and the ever-present silk ascot at his neck. He had a thick mane of white hair and was slightly stooped with arthritis, two or three inches shorter than he once was. Michel, at nearly six foot three, no longer had to look up at him. "A Smeeton and a moose are much alike," said Miles. "Long awkward legs and a huge nose." Aquila, an eight-year-old Scottish deer hound (bred to run down stags), shared the house with his master. Almost an animal incarnation of Smeeton, Aquila was long, lean, lanky and grey, and like the brigadier, distinguished and dignified. A bit stiff and rheumaticky, Aquila slept on his side at Miles' feet.

In his books Moose Magic (Collins and Harville Press, 1974) and Completely Foxed (Van Nordstrom Reinhold, Toronto, 1980) Smeeton tells of their life on the Alberta ranch. It is not surprising that Smeeton's metaphors are often salty ones. When a bolt of lightning struck the transformer on its pole a few yards from the house at two in the morning, three cheerful and enthusiastic young men from Calgary Power arrived, rigged a tackle, lowered the old transformer, and hoisted a new one into place, lifting it from outside the pen so as not to disturb the foxes. "Those young men were just the people for a rough night at sea in a small yacht when things start to go wrong," wrote Miles. In the same book: "There are days when the wind will blow ragged clouds over the mountain tops, showing dimly under their torn canopy, row upon row. It is then that I can imagine myself standing on some wild shore and that the rows of mountains are great waves approaching, the snow on the fields a rush of foam across the beach."

Miles and Beryl were not entirely landlocked after selling Tzu Hang to Bob Nance, the Australian who crewed for them when they rounded Cape Horn eastabout. The summer preceding Beryl's death, the Smeetons sailed with Bob on Tzu Hang from New York to Halifax, then on to Newfoundland and across the North Atlantic to the Faroes and the Shetland Islands. From there, they flew to Poland to holiday on royalties earned from a Polish translation of Once is Enough. Later Miles sailed with the Guzzwells on Treasure to Hawaii. John had sailed with the Smeetons on their first attempt to round the Horn when Tzu Hang was pitch poled and dismasted.

Tzu Hang - photo from Once is Enough.

Smeeton continued to be vital and active, interested and interesting. One Arctic summer he traversed the Northwest Passage on a Canadian Naval vessel. Now and then he did a little hot air ballooning with friends. Equipped with two artificial knees and a pacemaker, Miles flew to England to see his twin sister on the occasion of their 80th birthday. Still at work, he was preparing some of Bee's early works for republication. One of them, Winter Shoes in Springtime was Bee's story of how in her twenties she walked and rode alone through China and Burma. The seafaring years were just one chapter in their multifaceted life. A military man until he and Beryl bought a farm on British Columbia's Salt Spring Island, Smeeton attended Sandhurst, saw service in Jamaica, Egypt, Shanghai and India. He spent WWII in Afghanistan and Burma, commanding an infantry brigade. He was written about by Compton McKenzie, who said "horrible things, like how I'd obviously enjoyed the battle. Bee said it was quite true."

As for Beryl, Miles wrote, "Her love of adventure smoulders within her like an eternal flame. If a flying saucer landed in front of us and an insect hand beckoned us on board, she would step inside without hesitation, while I, distrustful and suspicious behind the nearest bush, would watch the door close and Beryl take off for infinity." And indeed, the Smeetons, often at Beryl's urgings, used to cruise the higher latitudes routinely and by preference - Chile, Japan, the Aleutians, Iceland. Miles told us, "Whenever we ran into bad weather, we said it's not nearly as bad as the Southern Ocean!"

Beryl Smeeton at the helm of Tzu Hang in the Southern Ocean. (Freeze frame from film shot by John Guzzwell - excerpted from Surviving the Storm.)

"Do you ever miss your days on Tzu Hang?" I once asked.

"I miss in particular sheltering from a storm in a snug anchorage," Miles replied, "dropping the anchor, lighting the fire, having a drink. Nothing is as cosy as a boat's cabin."

He continued, "I want - can't wait - to go exploring."

"Where next ?" I asked.

His answer was, "Wherever one goes in the hereafter."

We are fortunate to have met the legendary Miles and Beryl Smeeton on many occasions over the years. The first time was on Salt Spring Island, BC. We had just returned from our first offshore cruise - to Hawaii for the winter. We anchored off Musgrave Landing, where we knew the Smeetons had bought a farm. Scarcely was the anchor down when Bee rowed out, threw a fender over the lifelines, and without missing a beat climbed to the masthead, something I've never dared do (I get vertigo just wearing extra thick socks). She told us of how Miles had delighted her by giving her a SS hammer for her 60th birthday. Before we knew what was happening she urged us ashore to meet Miles, found sitting at a bridge table in the garden typing one of his books (A Change of Jungles, perhaps?). We listened to wonderful tales of their adventures ringingly and hilariously told. "We're looking for a suitable crew for another try at the Horn. Can you think of someone?" We mentioned Bob Nance, crewing on Carronade and heading for the Horn. We'd met the lad in Hawaii not long before and liked and admired him very much.

A few months later we were anchored off Sausalito, and learned that Tzu Hang was at the St. Francis Yacht Club, not far away. We hopped on our Honda 90 motorcycle and went to see them, bearing our copy of Once is Enough to be autographed. No one was aboard, though the boat was wide open and a radio playing. While waiting for their return, Michel noticed that the screws were missing from the boom gooseneck. Not long afterward they returned from some formal luncheon, looking typically smart - Miles in his ascot, Beryl in one of her colourful caftans. Michel volunteered to buy some replacement screws, so once again we hopped on our iron horse to find some. We were thrilled when Miles autographed our book. "Thanks for your help. Miles Smeeton, San Francisco 1966." Incidentally, that was where the Smeetons first encountered Bob on Carronade.

A couple of years later we were anchored in Falmouth, Cornwall, when we heard an anchor being dropped nearby in the middle of the night, the chain rattling out. It was the Smeetons with their daughter Clio, her husband Alex, and an owl and a pussycat. The owl resided in the head. They were, as always, very good company. We bumped into them here and there, off and on over the years, always eager to hear more of their anecdotes and adventures. Our treasured copy of Because the Horn is There is inscribed, "For our old friends Jane and Michel in admiration. Miles, Aug 23 85."

SetSail note: For a gripping account of Tzu Hang's pitchpoling in the Southern Ocean, and the seamanship skills used by the Smeetons and crew John Guzzwell to save the boat and their own lives, see Surviving the Storm pages 198-214. This section features an interview with John Guzzwell, exerpts from Once Is Enough, and some impressive heavy-weather images captured from film footage shot during that passage forty years ago.