The Sail from Rendsburg

By 1668, people in Rendsburg recognised Aad Fock by his eel barrels, which came from Fockbek along the Eider whenever he brought his goods to market. His boat was too small. A larger one could carry the growing trade on longer journeys, but it would need a new sail, with more cloth and labour than Aad could pay for that day.

A sailmaker by the harbour had stout cloth and knew how to work it, so Aad explained the broader boat, the barrels it could carry and the routes he meant to travel. Rendsburg was not to be his final market. If the goods remained sound and the passage was safe, he hoped to take his trade as far as Kiel.

The sailmaker listened with one hand on the cloth and then named his price. Aad said plainly that he did not yet possess the money, and he neither asked for a lower price nor pretended that he could wait. He proposed to take the sail at once and pay from journeys still to come.

At this the sailmaker drew his hand away. The tale of the eel court at the Fockbeker See had reached Rendsburg long before, and people at market called after the villagers, “Aalversuper.” (Eel drowners.) Aad had heard them and remained in Fockbek all the same. The sailmaker asked, “Am I truly to give an Aalversuper a sail on credit?”

Aad looked towards his barrels and said that a man who believed an eel could be drowned might perhaps believe in credit without money. He laughed first at the difficulty into which his plan had brought him, and the sailmaker’s mouth moved a little. The answer was still no. Cloth could not be bought with hope, the man said, and good intentions did not pay for work.

Aad did not leave. While goods went along the bank and ropes were cast off, he remained beside the folded cloth and asked what the sailmaker’s household needed regularly. The man named firewood, bread and several other things which had little to do with sails. Then his wife called from the back of the workshop that good eel never remained long in their house. Eels were another matter.

Aad now had something he could offer, though it was more useful than a single supper and more exact than a promise of money he did not have. For one year the household would receive fresh eels from Fockbek with every agreed delivery, while the sail was to be cut and sewn at once. The craftsman would be paid in goods welcome at his own table.

The sailmaker asked what certainty he had that Aad would return after the first journey, and Aad replied that a sail carried a well-handled boat home as surely as it carried one from the bank. On every market day he could see whether the Fockbek barrels had arrived. If they failed, Rendsburg would know that Aad had broken his word, and then the mockery would be deserved.

The sailmaker’s wife came forward, examined one eel and told her husband that the cloth had lain unused long enough, whereas a finished sail would bring work and an eel would provide supper. Laughing, the sailmaker began to ask how long the deliveries should continue and how the goods were to be handed over.

They bargained without haste. Aad promised only what his trade could bear, and the sailmaker asked only what the sail was worth. At last, they shook hands. The sailmaker would supply the cloth and labour before receiving full payment, while Aad would pay with regular eel deliveries throughout the agreed year. The sail was to be finished first, allowing the larger boat to begin its journeys.

While the sailmaker worked on the order, Aad prepared the voyage, took measurements at the boat, brought the fittings and inspected the lines as the cloth was spread, cut and joined with strong stitches. When anything was lacking, he began the task himself instead of waiting for a helper who might not come, and asked to be shown what he did not know.

When the sail was bent on and the boat was ready, the sailmaker stood on the bank while his wife accepted the first delivery of eel. Wind filled the new cloth evenly, and the larger boat drew away from the shore with more barrels than Aad had carried before, taking his trade beyond Rendsburg towards Kiel.

Aad Fock returned. He came in poor weather as well as fair weather, and on days when the market price disappointed him as well as days when it did not. The agreed eels reached the workshop until the year was complete, leaving the sailmaker paid, his wife supplied with the fish she valued and Aad with the sail that had enlarged his trade.

That handshake became the first settled supply agreement of the house of Aad Fock, although it had begun with an undersized boat, a refused request for credit and no full purse. Aad had heard no and stayed beside the cloth. He looked at the goods already in his hands, found what the other household wanted and used it to begin his next journey.