Mariners' Monk

The little coastal freighter barely made it to the lee of Caldy Island, in the Bristol Channel, one mile off the Welsh coast. Bound out from the Scottish port of Irvine on a 30-hour run to the Welsh port of Milford Haven, the 700-ton St. Angus had run into one of the winter's wildest storms, which raked and pounded Britain from the Hebrides to the Scilly Isles. Off tiny Caldy (pop. 59) the seven-man crew faced a grim Christmas. Their food was running low. and there was little hope of getting more. The men of St. Angus radioed the situation to the mainland, and resigned themselves to riding out the storm on empty stomachs.

Suddenly they saw a sight to make Lord Nelson rub his eye. Out from the island, against 8-ft. waves and a 60-mile-an-hour wind, bucked an old World War II amphibious craft manned by four cowled monks and a coast guardsman. When St. Angus finally got a line to them, the crew hauled up a tea chest of staples. It was no ham or roast goose Christmas dinner, for the monks who brought it were austere Trappists, who eat only bread, butter, cheese and fruit, but there were some cans of beer (kept for monastery guests), for St. Angus men.

"Amazing courage!" said the postmaster of Caldy later. "The sea was pounding with such force that the spray was flying across the island like a flock of sea gulls." And last week, when the storm was even higher. Father Abbot Samson Wicksteed, 36, a wartime radioman in an R.A.F. bomber, led husky Brother Joseph, ex-Barrister Brother Thomas and wiry Father Anthony (an R.A.F. squadron leader in the Battle of Britain and D.S.O. winner) once again into the gale. This time there was also a bottle of rum in the tea chest.

The 39 Trappists of Caldy Abbey work as hard as they pray on the 300 acres. For market on the mainland they raise cattle and chickens, sell eggs, cakes and hard candy. They shuttle thousands of tourists each summer in their two boats. Morning Star and Lollipop, to visit the red-roofed monastery. And they help keep themselves self-supporting by manufacturing a perfume out of lavender, verbena and gorse grown on the island. The scent's unmonkish name: Sybil--for top-rank Irish Couturiere Sybil Connolly, who distributes it in specially made Waterford glass bottles.

Last week's seafaring mercy mission was the worst, but not the first, for the perfumer-monks of Caldy; they have brought help to at least six other storm-beleaguered ships in the past few years. Cracked Brother Thomas last week: "One might say it's a monk's habit."

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