Rum Running a Brigantine in the 21st Century
I rounded the corner of a red brick warehouse and was greeted by a small forest of masts. A brig and brigantine were docked on the quayside, their subtle rigging differences barely discernable. A 100-year-old steam powered tug was tucked in between them. It was the kind of image that one associates with grainy black and white photos, but this was real life. Even at a distance, I could see dozens of people diligently at work from hull to the yards on the smaller sailing vessel.
Weather willing, this ship would embark in 36 hours.
I’d be on it.
How long had I thought of going out to sea in a square rig ship? Probably since I understood the ocean and these ships that sailed upon it. Now faced with the reality, my stomach did a little flip between anticipation and fear.
I’d signed up to be a trainee on Tres Hombres for the next six months. The engineless cargo ship began life as a Kriegsmarine mine sweeper in WWII then became war reparations and ended up as a ferry in Ireland before it found its way to the Netherlands and eventually to three sailors that decided to chase a dream of moving cargo entirely under sail. The ship was refit into a brigantine rig, square sails in the foremast and gaff rig on the main mast—something you might see a lot of in the 19th century. In contrast the formerly mentioned brig has square sails on both the fore and main mast.
Tres Hombres was the first European boat to bring medical supplies to Haiti in the earthquake in 2011. After they delivered their cargo, the captain started picking names from a phone book and eventually found a load of rum. They sailed it back to Europe with little fanfare. The captain, an Austrian named Andreas Lackner, made his way home and ended up telling the story to a local paper and woke up to 300 emails asking to buy the rum that had been sailed across the sea. Fair Transport Shipping was born.
I would sail as a trainee on its 15th voyage across the Atlantic. By then this was no flyby night operation. Tres Hombres’ winter voyage moved fine rums, coffee, and cacao on a clockwise circle taking wine barrels from France and filling them at a half dozen distilleries from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean before arriving back in the Netherlands with 40 tons of cargo. After a tired crew and energetic volunteers helped unload, the summer crew relieves them and they sail around Europe delivering everything from wine, beer, salt, honey, wood, and anything that will fit before heading back to their home port in Den Helder in the Netherlands for a yearly refit of from two to six weeks. Then the next winter trip departs. On each voyage they take on paying trainees to teach them the ropes and have extra hands to sail the ship. With only eight spots per voyage, there is a long line of folks waiting for this opportunity. I signed up 18 months before.
I guess you might call it a rum runner. We broke no laws but sometimes it felt that way. Like the time we dropped anchor at the island of Marie Galante. From the ship we loaded two empty wine barrels into the dingy and drove them to a deserted beach. We rolled the barrels through the jungle to a waiting truck that took us to the distillery. The next day the barrels arrived roadside, this time full of hundreds of liters of boutique rum. It got rolled down to the sandy beach and into the water. Now too heavy and awkward for the dingy, we threw on flippers and swam it a half mile back to the boat while a bewildered customs officer stood in knee deep water, pants rolled up checking off the boxes on her clipboard.
It almost felt like cosplay save for the anachronistic bits of technology and clothing that peppered a largely woolen clad and tar covered crew. There was a navigation flatscreen in the chart house but no refrigeration. The water was all hand pumped—just not from amidships at night because the always squeaky pumps would wake the cook and the bosun.
For the first third of the trip our captain was an Austrian cowboy, Andreas. The last two thirds were with a French Mer-woman, Anne-Flore Gannat, nothing maid about her. Salty and kind, she took no guff, telling some of the crew to “quit shitting in her blue garden” when some personal behavior began to affect the rest of the crew.
where we picked up our wine barrels.
At our first stop in Douarnenez, a village on the coast of Brittany where we loaded our first cargo of empty wine barrels, I climbed to the highest yard, the royal, for the first time. We were at anchor with the sails neatly furled. The late November wind was crisp and I gripped the rigging with a Kungfu hold. Back on deck my legs felt weak. By April, I was up to the top yard in 35 knots putting in a double reef. Each roll of the ship took us out and over a roiling turquoise sea far below. The boson and I bitched and laughed, working to tie the dozens of knots to keep the sails in place, a routine that dated back more than a century. Back on deck there was just time for coffee break and the next job.
I’d sailed with these strangers for five months. By the end of the voyage, I felt as close to them as family. Once the cargo was unloaded and the ship handed off, the bond that held us so tightly evaporated and, one by one, we went our separate ways. The thing we built was ephemeral and too quickly just a memory.
I’m looking forward to the next voyage, big or small, that brings any combination of us together. It might happen, but you never know. What it taught me is that even if you’re over 40, sometimes it’s better to err on the side of sailing on a rum runner for five months when you get the opportunity.
Life is short even if you don’t take that chance.
A flying fish found its way on deck in the North Atlantic.
The crew loads 10 tons of cacao at Boca Chica, Dominican Republic.
The crew lashes down a barrel of rum into place.
The second mate and the bosun at work (but probably just telling a dirty joke) while the seas build on the eastern Atlantic.
The crew takes a moment to take a photo on the yards after the milestone of making La Palma, roughly 25% of their voyage complete.
Sept 5-7, 2025
Come see Jordan recount the whole story at the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend, at 1600 hours Friday September 5. Can’t make it? Read or listen to his book, Rowing into the Son, about his first record setting row across the North Atlantic.
Want to see the full story on the big screen? Stay updated on the documentary in progress.
ACR PLB that Saved Me after a Capsize
Rowing into the Son by Jordan Hanssen
