‘“Wavewalker,” I said, exploring the edges of the word. This boat would walk us over the waves, carrying us around the world and back again’
Aged just seven, Suzanne Heywood set sail with her family on a three-year voyage around the world. What followed turned instead into a decade-long way of life, through storms, shipwrecks, reefs and isolation, with little formal schooling.
Suzanne fought her parents, longing to return to England and to education and stability. This memoir covers her astonishing upbringing, a survival story of a child in dire circumstances deprived of safety, friendships, schooling, occasionally drinking water… At eighteen, through resolve and resilience, Suzanne earned a place at Oxford university and returned to the UK.
From the bestselling author of What Does Jeremy Think?, Wavewalker is the incredible true story of how the adventure of a lifetime became one child’s worst nightmare – and how determination helped her escape.
‘“Wavewalker,” I said, exploring the edges of the word. This boat would walk us over the waves, carrying us around the world and back again’
Aged just seven, Suzanne Heywood set sail with her family on a three-year voyage around the world. What followed turned instead into a decade-long way of life, through storms, shipwrecks, reefs and isolation, with little formal schooling.
Suzanne fought her parents, longing to return to England and to education and stability. This memoir covers her astonishing upbringing, a survival story of a child in dire circumstances deprived of safety, friendships, schooling, occasionally drinking water… At eighteen, through resolve and resilience, Suzanne earned a place at Oxford university and returned to the UK.
From the bestselling author of What Does Jeremy Think?, Wavewalker is the incredible true story of how the adventure of a lifetime became one child’s worst nightmare – and how determination helped her escape.
When we lived in England my days had a familiar rhythm. Each
morning my mother flung open the curtains in my room, and
I tugged my school jumper over my head and pulled on my skirt
before tumbling downstairs to eat cereal with my younger brother Jon.
After school, we’d play on the swing in our garden or crouch by the
stream at its far end to watch dragonflies hovering above the gold green
surface.
By the time we went back inside, my father would be home from
his work managing Warwick Castle, and would often be counting
gold Krugerrands on the kitchen table, packing them away ready for
his next trip to London. He could make a lot of money buying these
when they were cheap and selling them when the price went up, he’d
told us. And the best way to carry them was in a shoebox, because
who would guess that a shoebox was full of gold?
Over dinner, my parents would discuss the latest dramas at the
Tudor House Hotel that they also owned and ran – perhaps the chef
had thrown a knife at a waitress again (though he never seemed to hit
any of them). After that it would be time to clamber back upstairs,
put on my nightdress, find Teddy, my small brown bear, and get into
bed.
I was used to this rhythm, I liked it and thought it would never
change. Then one morning over breakfast, my father announced that
we were going to sail around the world.
I paused, a spoonful of cornflakes halfway to my mouth.
‘We’re going to follow Captain Cook,’ Dad said. ‘After all, we share
the captain’s surname, so who better to do it?’ He picked up his cigarette
and leaned back in his seat.
‘Are you joking?’ I asked.
Next to me, Jon watched Dad, his lips parted.
‘Not at all,’ said my father, puffing out a cloud of smoke. ‘I’m deadly
serious.’
‘But why?’
‘Well, someone needs to mark the two hundredth anniversary of
Cook’s third voyage, don’t they?’ he said, raising his eyebrows at my
mother.
‘Of course, they do, Gordon,’ said Mum. She returned his smile,
covering her mouth with her hand, making it harder to see the tooth
she’d broken while riding Jon’s tricycle at a party a few days before. At
the time my brother had been unhappy that she’d borrowed his bike
– ‘She should have taken yours,’ he’d said – though maybe it didn’t
matter anymore.
‘I’ve told you kids about the captain,’ said Dad, stubbing out his
cigarette in the ashtray, twisting it back and forth before returning to
his coffee. ‘He was an incredible man. The people who were going to
recreate his fi rst and second voyages didn’t get their act together in
time, so this is the last opportunity.’
‘Your father has found six people to come with us and contribute to
the cost,’ said Mum.
‘But what will happen to the hotel?’
Dad turned to look at me. ‘The Tudor House? We’ll sell it to buy
the boat. We’ll have to sell everything to pay for this voyage. It will be
worth it though, won’t it, Mary?’
‘Of course it will.’
My father was talking again.
‘How long will we be gone?’ I asked when he paused.
‘Three years. We’ll leave next July, exactly two hundred years after
Captain Cook. By the time we get back, you’ll have seen more places
than most people will visit in a lifetime. We’ll sail down to South
America, then cross the Atlantic Ocean to South Africa and Australia.
From there it’s on to Hawaii and Russia.’
The clock was ticking on the wall. I looked out the window at the
empty swing. Dad had taken us sailing before, but this was diff erent.
‘But, kids,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘you must keep the trip secret.
I don’t want anyone to know about it, particularly the hotel staff . You
mustn’t even mention it to your friends.’
Mum looked up. ‘Come on,’ she said, pushing back her chair. ‘We’re
going to be late for school.’
I lingered.
‘Sue, hurry up,’ she said, heading towards the hall.
I followed her out, leaving my father reading the newspaper. I was
almost at the car when I turned back, coming to a halt in the kitchen
doorway. ‘Dad,’ I said, ‘can I help sail the boat? I mean, really help if
we go?’
‘Sure you can.’
In the run-up to the summer, Dad kept doing his regular jobs during
the week – working out how to help the owner of Warwick Castle,
Lord Brooke, make more money, organising medieval banquets at the
Tudor House Hotel, and taking Krugerrands to and from London on
the train. During the weekends he searched for a boat.
‘I’ve seen big ones, small ones and some so unseaworthy I wouldn’t
even take them out of harbour,’ he told me after a few weeks of this,
‘but none are right.’
On the last day of school before the holidays, our teacher announced
that we were going to hear the story of Theseus, who’d gone off on a
ship to fight a Minotaur in a maze.
‘Why have you chosen a sailing story?’ I asked, wondering if she
knew our secret.
‘Because it’s famous,’ she said. ‘Do you like sailing?’
‘Sometimes. When the weather is good.’
I sat on the floor next to my friend Sarah to listen to the tale, which
fl owed out of a tape player set on a low cupboard. Theseus promised
his father that if he managed to destroy the Minotaur, he would
change his boat’s black sails to white ones, but on the journey home
he forgot to do this. When his father saw the ship returning still
propelled by black canvas, he assumed Theseus had been killed and
jumped off a cliff to his death.
It was the first story I had ever heard without a happy ending. I
held Sarah’s hand while waiting for the happily ever after that never
came.
That summer there was time to tumble on the grass with Rusty, our
golden-haired water spaniel, to spot insects by the stream with Jon, to
swim at our local pool and to ride Nancy, the chestnut horse I wished
was mine, though she really belonged to the riding school.
I began to think that Dad had forgotten his plan to sail around the
world, but one evening he announced that he’d found a boat. He drew
shapes in the air as he described her raised poop deck and square gaff
sail. ‘She has little portholes down each side,’ he said, jabbing holes in
his imaginary galleon.
A few weeks later, we went down to the Isle of Wight to inspect
Dad’s find. Mum drove, as she usually did on longer journeys because
my father became sleepy in cars. Their conversation was one I’d heard
before – after complaining about the traffic and telling us how lucky
we were that we wouldn’t have to endure this at sea, Dad launched
into a rant about the government’s ‘ridiculous tax rate’, which we
would also be able to escape by sailing away.
I spent the ferry ride across the Solent on deck, sitting with my
arms around Rusty, looking out at the waves. I loved being on the
water. I liked feeling the deck move beneath me, tasting the salt in the
air, and I didn’t get seasick like my mother did. I was looking forward
to seeing Dad’s new boat, but I also knew that if his dream came true,
I would have to leave my old life behind.
At the boatyard, he marched ahead. ‘You’re going to love her, I
know you will,’ he said. Jon and I followed, kicking stones and chattering,
gulls squawking and squabbling overhead. Then Dad said,
‘There she is’, and I looked up to see an enormous boat with a long,
curved bow, two masts and a raised deck at her stern.
We ran towards her, our feet pounding on the jetty, and balanced
across a timber to reach her deck. Behind us, I could hear Mum’s
voice: ‘I don’t like this.’ And then, more accusingly: ‘You know I hate
heights, Gordon.’
As Dad tried to coax her across the gangplank, Jon and I raced
off to explore, ignoring his warnings to be careful, even though
he had a point since there were tools, jutting timbers and bits of
metal everywhere. The interior of the boat was unfi nished, but
bunks and cupboards were already taking shape, half-formed in the
gloom.
After a while, I went up onto the aft deck to sit next to my father
in the cockpit, watching him attach a compass to the binnacle, the
wooden instrument stand in front of the ship’s wheel. ‘She’s called
Wavewalker,’ he said. ‘We were lucky – I was able to buy her because
the man who was building her ran out of money.’
‘Wavewalker,’ I said, exploring the edges of the word. This boat
would walk us over the waves, carrying us around the world and back
again.
‘There’s lots of space down below, isn’t there?’ said Dad. ‘Did you see
the electric lights? There’s even a dressing table in the aft cabin for
your mother.’
‘Are you excited about our trip?’
‘I am,’ he said. ‘I’ve always wanted to sail around the world. I was
supposed to spend my life hacking out coal in a Yorkshire mine. But
here we are, hey?’
I nodded. ‘Will there be enough bunks down below for all your
friends?’
‘Ah.’ He bit his lip. ‘Actually, only four are coming with us now. Two
have decided the trip will be too rough.’
‘Rough?’ I narrowed my eyes.
Dad shrugged. ‘Some of it will be. We’re going to sail across more
than thirty thousand miles of ocean. And we’ll be going the wrong
way around the world, beating into the wind.’
‘Why don’t we go the other way?’
He checked the compass again. ‘We can’t do that because we’re
following Captain Cook. On his third voyage he went looking for a
way for ships to get from the Pacific Ocean back to Europe around
the top of North America. If he’d found a passage, it would have saved
other boats a lot of time, and he would have won a big prize.’
‘And did he?’
‘Well, no,’ said Dad. ‘There isn’t a way through, at least not one that
is free of ice, so he turned back when he reached Alaska. But it was an
incredible voyage.’
I sat for a while, watching my father work. ‘Was Captain Cook’s
boat like this?’
‘A little. The Resolution was over a hundred feet long, which is about
a third longer than Wavewalker. She was also much wider and more
than ten times heavier. But we’re only going to have our family and a
few crew on board, while the Resolution carried over a hundred men
and lots of animals.’
I twisted my hands in my lap. I was thinking of Theseus. ‘What
colour will our sails be?’
Dad frowned. ‘Why, white, of course.’
I smiled, leaning back against the canvas cockpit cover that
provided some shade to the benches in front of the binnacle.
‘But there will be a stag on our mainsail,’ he said. ‘It’s the logo of
the hotel group, Trust House Forte, who are sponsoring us.’
I sat upright again. ‘What colour is the logo?’
‘Black and white.’
Not long after school started again, my teacher brought a guest into
our classroom. ‘David is going to sing for us,’ she said.
David lowered himself into one of our red plastic chairs, his knees
sticking out on either side. He picked up his guitar and played ‘Michael,
Row the Boat Ashore’ while I wondered whether he knew I was going
away to sea. Everyone else, however, was about to find out because that
day Mum was talking to our headmaster about it. After school I ran to
meet her when she pulled up outside in her Mini. This was easy to spot
thanks to the Disney stickers that Jon and I had added: Minnie Mouse,
resplendent in her red and white polka-dotted dress, on the passenger
door, and Donald Duck on the boot.
I climbed in and squashed my school bag down by my feet. ‘What
did the headmaster say?’
‘He wasn’t helpful,’ said Mum. ‘He wouldn’t even give me your
curriculum so I could teach you myself – he said he thought the whole
trip was a bad idea.’ She leaned out the window. ‘Come on, Jon, hurry
up.’ She turned back to me. ‘It doesn’t matter. Your father and I are
both trained teachers, and I’ll find the materials we need. You and Jon
are on the waiting list for a good school you can go to when we get
back, so you’ll need to work hard. But it won’t be a problem. After all,
we’ll only have two students.’
Jon and I dumped our bags in the hall when we got home while
Mum went into the kitchen. ‘Mr Riley said that if they lose more than
a year of school, they’ll never recover academically,’ we heard her telling
Dad.
‘Well, he’s a pompous ass who doesn’t know what he’s talking
about,’ said my father, and Jon and I exchanged grins. ‘It’s another
example of what’s so wrong with this country. If Sue and Jon can read
and write and have a good grasp of basic mathematics, they’ll be fine
until they are older.’
‘But has anyone put that theory to a practical test?’ asked Mum.
‘No, at least not to my knowledge. But I can’t think of a better
education than sailing around the world.’
Mum didn’t mention our schooling again, so I didn’t ask. Instead, I
fell back into my usual routine, and allowed myself to get swept up in
the excitement of Christmas. Dad sailed Wavewalker to Saint-Malo
in France for the festivities, while Jon and I went with Mum on the
ferry to meet him. We then spent several days in the city, going to
restaurants and eating mussels and chips while my parents drank gin
and tonics and laughed.
By then we’d sold our old house, so that winter we got used to our
temporary home, which was in a little building tucked behind the
Tudor House Hotel. After school Jon and I explored the hotel’s secret
passages, staircases and priest hole, and visited the chef who, despite
the tales of his dreadful temper, always welcomed us in, letting us
perch on his cooking table and teaching us to make pastry fl owers.
One day while playing with my dolls in the hall of our new house,
I overheard my parents talking about the trip again.
‘Our last partner has dropped out,’ Dad was saying.
My mother laughed. ‘If it was anyone else but you, Gordon, I’d tell
them to forget the whole business. You haven’t got the money to pay
for this voyage, and it doesn’t look like you will fi nd any more sponsors.’
‘What do you mean “If it was anyone else”?’
‘I know you. Once you’ve made up your mind to do something,
nothing will stop you.’
As winter turned to spring, people started arriving for Mum’s ‘lead
parties’, carrying chunks of old pipe, which Dad planned to melt
down to put into Wavewalker’s keel. On the weekends, she made us
practise wearing flip fl ops, walking around fields with Rusty weaving
through our legs, while our toes went pink with cold and fl akes of
green grass attached themselves to our feet.
‘Are you scared about the trip?’ Sarah asked one night, when I
stayed over at her house.
‘No. Dad’s a fantastic sailor.’
She shuffled into a sitting position in her bed and giggled. ‘He’s like
a pirate captain.’
‘Yes, he is. He says we might get some storms, but he’s promised I
can help him sail. I’m going to miss you and Rusty, though.’
‘Why can’t you take Rusty with you?’
‘I don’t know. Captain Cook took cows, pigs, sheep and chickens
with him, but Mum and Dad say Rusty can’t come. But we do have
some crew. Owen has even crossed an ocean before – he sailed here
from Australia. I met him when we did a practice sail last weekend.’
‘Was that fun?’
I hesitated. ‘It was a bit boring actually. Jon and I used the upside down
rubber dinghy on the deck as a trampoline for a while, but
Mum said we can’t do that again because the algae on it turned us
green.’
‘I’m going to miss you,’ said Sarah.
I got up to wrap my arms around her. ‘Don’t worry – I’ll come back.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And when you do, we’ll still be friends.’
Her father’s original dream was to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Captain Cook’s epic voyage around the globe by sailing it as the captain of his own boat.
Their ship, Wavewalker, left England in July 1976 and arrived at Rio de Janeiro 61 days later. The first months are exhilarating. A smooth run; a whale follows their boat; she sees flying fish and ocean birds of all kinds.
Suzie worships her father and wants to learn everything he knows about sailing. By persevering, she learns how to use the sextant to plot their course.
But life below decks is troubling. Suzanne’s mother behaves strangely. Whenever the weather is rough, her mother stays in her cabin and doesn’t check on her young children. She doesn’t help them with their homework as promised. She expects her daughter to drop anything she is doing to help her first.
Life at sea isn’t a glamorous tale of sunsets and charming pirates. The sea always wins; ignore that at your peril. Sometimes they must tack against the wind, and this puts the boat and crew in great danger.
In the roiling seas of Cape Horn on to the Indian Ocean, Suzie is seriously injured and needs medical treatment. Her father manages to land at Ile Amsterdam where she gets medical treatment.
From the first, apprentice sailors have paid a fee for food and a bunk for the privilege of experiencing a sailing vessel. As the years progress the Captain and First Mate behave more like pirates than teachers and parents.
Suzanne and Jon’s situation is even worse. Their parents have press-ganged them: a term for forced conscription to serve on a sailing vessel in the 1800s.
This story is more than an inspiring memoir. The vivid details of life onboard and detailed recounting of conversations she had with people over the years were unforgettable. Everyone who met her was impressed by her courage and her focus.
This remarkable tale of perseverance is a primer for any young person without support - who needs to read or hear this story. Suzanne’s extreme isolation showed her that an education is worth fighting for. It was the only way she would get off that ship.