By DEBORAH G. SCANLON
When Robert Manry, a copy editor at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, planned his cross-Atlantic trip in his 13-and-a-half-foot sailboat in 1965, he chose Falmouth, England, for his final destination. Falmouth, Massachusetts, would be his starting point.
His departure from Cape Cod was quiet. He shared his plans only with his family, and they stocked his small boat, the 13-and-a-half-foot Tinkerbelle, with supplies as it was tied up behind the Island Queen in Falmouth Harbor.
On the morning of June 1, without fanfare, he sailed off on a beat down Vineyard Sound past Nobska light and the Elizabeth Islands. The next day alone at sea he celebrated his 48th birthday at sea. His adventure that would last 78 days had begun.
Born in India to missionary parents, his fascination with sailing started in 1935 while a student at Woodstock School in Landour, India. He heard a presentation by a German man who had sailed on a “fair-sized boat” from Sweden to the island of Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America. He became “enthralled” and fell in love with sailboats and the ocean, reading every book he could about voyages in small boats.
It wasn’t until 1958 that he bought his own sailboat. As editor on the copy desk of the Plain Dealer, he got a chance to see ads late at night before the paper was distributed. There he finally found a boat he could afford with the listing: “Sailboat, 13-and-a-half-feet, Old Town, needs some repair, cheap.”
He named his wooden Old Town Whitecap sailboat—built by the Old Town Canoe Company of Old Town, Maine—after the fairy Tinker Bell of Peter Pan fame; the name was modified to Tinkerbelle. He and his wife and two children sailed on Lake Erie, with one 250-mile trip to Thunder Bay, Ontario, from Cleveland, but had not yet sailed on the ocean.
In 1964, a friend had proposed that they sail his 25-foot sloop across the Atlantic, but the friend then backed out. Mr. Manry did not. He thought about all the small boats he had read about that had sailed that far, and continued with his plan, this time on the Tinkerbelle.
He spent many hours renovating and repairing the 30-plus-year-old boat, a “nautical metamorphosis” that involved replacing the centerboard with a daggerboard keel (which is slid into place rather than pivoting), installing a cabin, cockpit, running lights, compass and more. The cockpit was made watertight with Styrofoam to make it unsinkable. He had two oars and a bright red-orange sail.
The novice sailor studied navigation skills, bought a short-wave radio, an inflatable raft, a distress-signal transmitter, spare sails, and solar still to convert salt water to fresh, built a spare rudder and assembled a tool kit.
Mr. Manry had requested leave from his job at the newspaper, but when his friend changed his mind about their trip together, Mr. Manry didn’t update his colleagues on the details. The night before he set sail, he mailed his newspaper colleagues a letter telling them the real story.
He chose to sail to Falmouth, England, because it has an “excellent harbor that could be entered without danger.” And he chose to leave from Falmouth, Massachusetts, because he wanted to “embark at a port from which I could sail southeastward handily to get across the shipping lanes out of New York City as soon as possible.”
Mr. Manry arrived in Falmouth (the one at latitude 41 North, longitude 70 West) on May 24, with his wife Virginia and brother-in-law, John Place, towing Tinkerbelle on a trailer behind their station wagon.
The next morning, they had breakfast “at a charming place in Woods Hole and looked over the buildings of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution” where his brother had worked. They later drove to Chatham from where, in 1877, Thomas Crapo and his wife had sailed their 19-and-a-half-foot boat to England.
On May 26, it was time to get ready, and he had Frederick W. (Bill) Litzkow of Falmouth Harbor Boat Sales put Tinkerbelle in the water at the marina, abaft the Island Queen, and began loading his supplies, leaving Tinkerbelle with only eight or nine inches of freeboard.
When Mr. Litzkow asked, after watching the amount being loaded into the small boat, “Where’s he going to sail to, England?” Mr. Manry’s brother-in-law, Mr. Place, grinned and said “How’d you guess?” He asked Mr. Litzkow to keep it a secret until Tinkerbelle sailed off. Even Mr. Place, who worked at the Pittsburgh Press, did not spill the news to his newspaper.
Mr. Manry asked his wife and brother-in-law to leave before he set sail, since it was “an old superstition of the seas that if you wave a ship out of sight you’ll never see it again.”
So off he went, to cover more than 3,000 miles alone.
He had packed enough food and water for about 90 days. His supplies consisted of lots of dehydrated meat and eggs, canned goods, and 28 gallons of water distributed among smaller plastic bottles that he could refill to maintain the boat’s inner ballast.
He eventually established a daily routine, waking up about 4 AM and sailing until 9 PM or even midnight. He would stop for an evening sextant shot to give his navigational position, followed by dinner in bed (rolled-up bags of clothing), since that was the only place in the boat’s cabin to sit.
His family and friends would wonder how he was, and were grateful when freighters would pass by and check on him. In June, his wife heard from the Cleveland Plain Dealer that the Coast Guard reported a Canadian freighter had seen him and he was fine.
On June 8, a horn and the thrum of engines woke Mr. Manry. He poked his head out of the cabin and was greeted by the submarine USS Tench. “Do you need help?” the Navy sailors asked.
“No, thanks,” and American war ship sailed off.
In early July, he looked up to see a 12,640-ton, 492-foot cargo ship, SS Steel Vendor, headed to New York from India. He was able to pull in close and assured the captain he wasn’t lost but did ask for verification of his position—40° 53’ North and 47° 2’ West. He asked the captain to take some letters to post, and they tossed a line over for him to attach a plastic bag of mail. Later, he learned that a member of the crew had taken a video, which was shared with his wife.
Fortunately, his family did not know some of the details of his trip. One day, after being awake for more than 30 hours, he had hallucinations, and fell overboard. He always wore a life line, though, and managed to pull himself back on board the six times he went into the ocean during his trip.
His spirit rarely failed, however, and he and Tinkerbelle were a team, pressing onward.
Meanwhile, the press had jumped in immediately to cover his trip. Bill Litzkow of Falmouth Marina called Falmouth Enterprise editor John T. Hough once Tinkerbelle was underway. Mr. Hough corresponded with the editor of the Falmouth Packet (UK), who wrote he would send a cable with news of Mr. Manry’s arrival and air mail photos and the full story to the Enterprise. He told Mr. Hough about the huge celebration Cornwall’s Falmouth was planning. Mr. Hough then updated Virginia Manry on the information as he learned it.
And even though the Cleveland Plain Dealer staff had been startled to learn of the details of Mr. Manry’s trip, they immediately supported, and extensively covered, his adventure. They sent his wife and children, and several reporters, to England to greet him upon his arrival.
His cross-Atlantic trip was also covered by the New York Times, Editor and Publisher, the Daily Mirror, Washington Post, Life Magazine and others.
As Robert Manry approached the English coast, he heard on a BBC broadcast that his wife was aboard a trawler that was looking for him.
The next morning, as he napped in the cabin, he woke up to hear “Matey, wake up! Yank, are you there?” A crewman from an English trawler was calling to him, asking for his autograph. Then the Royal Air Force circled over him and dropped a canister with a message that they would direct the trawler his wife was aboard to him.
Soon the boat pulled up alongside, and Virginia and Robert reunited, as reporters fired questions at them and photographers asked them to kiss again for the camera.
On August 15, when he finally pulled into the harbor in Falmouth, he was stunned to see 50,000 people there to greet him. He climbed out of Tinkerbelle, hugged his family, and then kissed the ground.
This article could go on for many more pages, so here are sources of more information on this extraordinary voyage:
Mr. Manry wrote extensively about his trip in “Tinkerbelle: The story of the smallest boat ever to cross the Atlantic nonstop.” Published in 1965 by Harper & Row, it is available through the CLAMS network.
“Manry at sea: In the wake of a dream,” a documentary film by Steve Wystrach, created in 2018, is on DVD and can be borrowed at Woods Hole Public Library.
The boat Tinkerbelle is on display at The Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, Ohio.