The Disastrous Voyage of the Santa Margarita

by Richard Woodman

  He was laying out a tackle prior to hoisting the extemporized foremast when the sodden and exhausted Olivera staggered up to the half-deck to consult with Iago and was thus within earshot of the two men.

  ‘I have found the trouble, Don Iago, but it will be the Devil to fix, right in the tuck of the stern. So far it has defied our efforts, the pressure of the sea throwing all our plugs back in our faces.’

  ‘What exactly is the cause?’ Iago asked.

  ‘The iron pintle bands, where they run along the strakes and are bolted through the hull, have become loose, the bolts are either strained or drawn . . .’

  ‘So where they are drawn the water is coming in as through a pipe?’

  ‘Exactly so; and where they are strained it is little better.’

  Iago considered the matter for a moment then asked: ‘Could you drive the strained bolts straight out?’

  Olivera nodded. ‘Yes, but then we should double the number of holes letting water directly into the ship.’

  ‘Not if you drew plugs into the holes from outside.’

  ‘I thought of that, and the technique of passing a line out through the holes and picking it up with a grapnel over the stern. The problem is that we should not be able to get a sufficiently watertight fit, even with softwood plugs, for the difficulties of tugging a plug that far down and right under the lower transom—’

  ‘But if you drove the plugs in from outside,’ Llerena said, interrupting the conversation, ‘could you not stop the water?’

  Olivera looked at Llerena with distaste. The two were at odds and the pilot disliked the challenge to his argument. ‘One would have to dive beneath the ship to accomplish that,’ he said shortly.

  ‘I am willing to try, Don Antonio.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes. I can hold my breath and,’ Llerena held up a clenched fist, ‘I have the hand for it.’

  For a moment Olivera considered the proposition and then, burying his distrust of the boatswain, said, ‘If you muster half the strength you used to use to beat the Indians I think perhaps you have. You will need a line about you and you had better come below and see what it is we are trying to achieve.’

  ‘That I will be trying to achieve, I think you mean.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Olivera said curtly. ‘Come,’ and leaving Iago staring after the two of them Olivera led the way below.

  They began by running a line out through the foremost bolt-hole on each side which Llerena would use as a guide to the spot. Then, as the Santa Margarita wallowed and rolled, with the Holy Ones mustered on deck singing psalms and praying that the wind, which showed every sign of getting up again, did not trouble them for the remaining hours of daylight, Llerena went over the side. His shouted instructions and curses as he dived and surfaced under first one quarter and then the other acted as a crude counterpoint to this wailing psalmody.

  One seaman, also on a line, went in with him to help, holding the plugs and the hammer, and calling for more hammers as Llerena dropped the first three. It was he who called up instructions and fished in the bucket which was lowered from the deck on a lizard, carrying down the materials and tools, along with the bottle of wine Llerena demanded. After the loss of the three hammers Llerena got into his stride. He learnt how to anticipate the downward wallow of the ship, and how to kick himself clear of the swell of the stern as it widened out above what had once been the proper waterline so that his gasping breathing was manageable. He found that he could match his dives to each part of the task and that, with his back against the guide-rope, he could drive the plugs in sufficiently. Water pressure would do the rest and, while the first seemed impossible, each successive plug went in a little more easily. The sun had set when the last holes demanded attention and the guide ropes had, perforce, to be withdrawn. An argument had been occupying Olivera and several of the captain-general’s officers – who hung over the stern consumed with curiosity – as to whether it was not better to leave the rope in place. Since it lessened the leak it might therefore be considered sufficient, but neither Olivera nor Iago would have it, arguing that it might easily be chafed through or fouled and there might be no other opportunity to attend to the matter.

  When these impractical and opinionated young men turned to the captain-general himself to arbitrate, Guillestigui having come on deck to see how matters progressed, they were astonished at his reply.

  ‘Leave this matter to the sea-officers,’ he growled, and strode forward to curl a derisory lip at the praying Franciscans and harangue the flagging party at the pump handles.

  ‘That is well,’ Olivera remarked, his relief at being left free of further advice clear on his lined and grubby face. ‘Let him do what he does best.’

  It was a poor jest but it made Olivera smile to himself and Iago chuckled

  It was already dark when Llerena, who had been surfacing and diving for three long hours, finally came to the surface with a bellow of triumph. He had been heard intermittently rather than seen from the high overhang of the poop, blowing like a grampus and spitting and cursing as the hull of the Santa Margarita rose and fell, often pressing him down before he was ready. Now the news of his achievement spread throughout the ship. The parties at the pumps abandoned the agonizing boredom of their task and, by the time Llerena had been towed along to the waist where the freeboard was least and hoisted over the low rail, almost the entire ship’s company was on deck to cheer him.

  As the cheers subsided the chanting of the Holy Ones’ hymns rose and fell to the final, languid amens of Agustin’s fine, vibrant baritone.

  Guillestigui invited Llerena to the poop where the stern lanterns had been lit for the first time in many days. There, against the very last of the twilight, illuminated by the glow of the great lamps, the boatswain and the captain-general shared a bottle of wine. Twenty minutes later, still in his wet breeches, Diego de Llerena lay like a dead hog, fast asleep on a rotting, wet palliasse.

  Olivera, judging his moment, suggested to the captain-general that it would be wise to cease pumping and determine overnight how much water was now entering the ship. Guillestigui agreed and the hands were stood down, issued a paltry ration of food and sent below to sleep. The pilot and Iago stood the night watches as the Santa Margarita lay a-hull, rolling quietly in the trough of the sea with a light breeze reminding her that she could not long remain thus.

  At dawn the ship’s company was roused and the wells were sounded. In due course the pumping resumed. Those at the pumps groaned at the thought of another day’s work, for their muscles ached from their previous endeavours, but word was soon passed that the ship had taken little water during the night, no more, it was asserted, than she might make in any gale and easily managed by intermittent and routine use of the pumps. In one final burst of energy they worked the handles until they sucked air, whereupon their spirits rose and at noon the Discalced Franciscans called them all to a celebration of the Mass.

  But even as Hernando gave the benediction the wind was again rising, the sky clouding over and the sea growing increasingly menacing. An effort was again made to get the ship before the wind. An improvised staysail was stretched forward to the spar lashed in place of the bowsprit end. With half her rudder fastenings lost, she was almost impossible to steer but they ran off, achieving a speed of perhaps two knots.

  Towards sunset Iago came below to warn those who would listen that they would have to endure a further storm. The space beneath the half-deck had been transformed. While most of the men had pumped and the others had attended Llerena and the plugging of the lost bolt holes, the women had cleared the worst debris from what had become the main accommodation in an attempt to reassert normality. There were exceptions; not everyone had risen to the challenge. Doña Catalina had finally lost her nerve at the height of the typhoon when Lorenzo had been lost on the eve of the feast day of the Glorious St Francis. Her depression came not from the loss of the pilot-major, to whom she had never spoken, but from the loss of her own child. At
first rallying after this private tragedy, despair at the future and – it was rumoured – a blow on the head caused her to fall into a decline. This was marked by an intermittent wailing which rose and fell, subsiding entirely only when she slept, but at times rising to an unnerving scream that joined that of Francisco, the bishop’s nephew whose badly broken leg had putrefied and whose pain was so intense that his life was despaired of.

  The Discalced Franciscans did what they could and several of the low women attended Doña Catalina, as did Ah Fong, and even Ximenez was active in fetching and carrying. But it was to Iago that Arrocheros turned for help. All trace of hostility between the two men had long since vanished.

  ‘What am I to do, Don Iago?’ Arrocheros agonized. ‘She is beside herself with grief.’

  ‘Ah Fong says that you should bring her again to child-bed, Don Baldivieso, and I can see the wisdom of her opinion. They do not give much thought to a lost child in China, there being sufficient in a man’s seed to beget more.’

  Arrocheros frowned, anger flushing his face. ‘Do you think that I can do such a thing here,’ he gestured about him, ‘in these circumstances, for God’s sake? Besides, even if I succeed how long is it before the child quickens and removes her anxieties?’

  ‘Try, Don Baldivieso, try. Or alternatively, you may pray for a miracle.’

  ‘A miracle? Huh, we all have need of a miracle and even when we earn a little respite as of now, hark how the damned wind rises again. Are we likely to have another storm?’

  ‘Very likely,’ Iago replied.

  ‘Then what chance have we got . . . and what chance have I of covering my wife.’

  ‘I can think of worse ways of dying, Don Baldivieso.’

  Arrocheros seemed about to speak, thought better of it and turned on his heel. Iago was about to take his own advice and seek out Ah Fong when a loud thumping noise came from forward, sending a shudder through the ship. On deck Iago found the inadequate staysail’s luff sagging and the sail flogging. Olivera and several seamen were forward where the extension to the bowsprit had broken loose and swung back and forth in a web of ropes, driving its inner end against the ship’s side. The damage to the ship was immediate and threatened worse, yet to cut the wild spar loose would be dangerous.

  ‘Get the staysail lowered,’ ordered Olivera, but the extemporized halliard had jammed and clearing it took several agonizing minutes while the bowsprit stump battered at the bow. With the scrap of canvas off the ship, the Santa Margarita fell into the trough of the sea and began again to roll.

  ‘If we can cast it loose, we can move the tack inboard and steady the ship,’ cried Iago.

  ‘Aye, cut that tack-line,’ Olivera told a waiting seaman.

  ‘I have no knife, señor,’ the marinero replied.

  ‘God damn!’ roared Olivera in a needless fury, for Iago had cast loose the end of the line from its belaying pin and in a moment the forward corner of the triangular sail had been drawn back on to the forecastle.

  ‘Get some line and splice in a new tack-line,’ Iago said and a sailor hurried off, glad to be given a task that did not risk his life, for all knew what had to be attempted next.

  ‘Someone has to go over . . .’

  ‘I know, I know, and since it is always Diego de Llerena who does the impossible.’

  A thin cheer greeted the boatswain’s bombast as he came forward, his huge frame braced against the roll of the ship.

  ‘Get out of my way, you milksop dogs.’

  They drew aside good-naturedly, relieved and smiling. At first Llerena descended a little, one hand clinging to a rope’s end and the other wielding an axe, but he failed to cut the complex raffle adrift, almost falling overboard amid the terrifying tangle of trailing lines and scrambling back on deck white and shaken.

  ‘I cannot cheat death more than once,’ he grumbled as the broken spar again crashed against the bow with a blow they could feel through the soles of their feet.

  ‘We must do something . . .’

  By now the entire ship was alive with renewed anxiety. Guillestigui had come as far forward as the half-deck rail and Peralta had been sent to the forecastle for news. Hernando and Agustin arrived, peering over the side as knowledgeably as any seaman.

  ‘Surely we must exert ourselves and remove this,’ Agustin gestured at the ravelled mess of ropes and timber pounding the bow like a battering ram as the ship pitched and rolled.

  ‘We need a fucking angel, Father,’ said a seaman luridly, ‘with wings and a bloody great sword like St Michael. That bugger’s muddle is the very Devil himself.’

  ‘My sons,’ said Agustin, ignoring the crude language, ‘when God calls, all must obey.’

  He drew the crucifix and rosary from his waist and held it aloft. ‘Go and do your duty with Almighty God at your sides!’ he cried. ‘This,’ he drew their attention to his crucifix, ‘and our prayers will protect you!’ He turned to Hernando and commanded: ‘Brother, join me.’

  The two friars held their crucifixes up and elevating their eyes to the stormy skies sent up a Latin chant incomprehensible to the group of goggle-eyed seamen gathered on the forecastle. Despite the heavy roll of the ship, they shuffled awkwardly, the Franciscans’ voices loud and insistent in their ears.

  Olivera caught Iago’s eye and shrugged. Both men looked down at what they hoped would have served as a bowsprit wondering how any man could descend those few dangerous feet for long enough to cut the foul ropes and free the Santa Margarita from its menace. Iago was just thinking that either he or Olivera would have to do it and that Olivera, as the only official pilot left aboard, was indispensable and therefore the burden would fall upon himself, when something remarkable happened.

  The men were moved by a different spirit: their ignorant susceptibility, the chanting of the two Franciscans, their grim reminders of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ held up before them moved them and elevated them beyond reason. Men pressed forward.

  ‘I’ll do it!’

  ‘I’ll help . . .’

  ‘And I . . .’

  Seemingly from nowhere six axes appeared. One was pressed into Olivera’s unwilling hand.

  The voices of Agustin and Hernando grew louder, more insistent, blotting out fear. Now they were joined by Marmolejo and others so that, as one, the armed men threw their legs over the side and, hanging on with one hand, bent and assayed the task.

  ‘God grant us a miracle!’ someone cried and the plea was taken up as those dangling over the side thump-thumped with their axes. Those unable to help fell on their knees, crossing themselves and pleading a grey and indifferent Heaven for a remission. ‘Please, God, a miracle! A miracle!’

  And that evening God granted them several, for with a great cry the bowsprit fell clear and, although it tore a hole in the forward bulkhead under the forecastle and damaged the beakhead rails, and although three men suffered minor injuries, a passenger named Gonzalo Manuel had the sense to be ready below to stuff palliasses and bundles of wet and abandoned clothing into the gap and prevent sea water from once again pouring into the hull.

  Nor was that all, for more miraculous still – and a sure and certain sign that Almighty God had heard their prayers – a shout came up from below that Doña Catalina’s baby had been resurrected.

  The men on the forecastle, breathing from their labours, could scarce believe their ears, yet confirmation came that it was indeed the case. Agustin, Hernando, Marmolejo and the other religious looked from one to another their eyes shining.

  ‘I see now,’ said Marmolejo, ‘that we have been put to these extreme trials so that God might shine His face upon us and humble us to His holy will.’

  ‘Amen . . .’

  ‘Amen!’

  Even Guillestigui came forward as they trooped below to witness a true and holy wonder.

  Under the half-deck they found a transformed Doña Catalina sitting with her back against a futtock. The miserable and suffering face of the past weeks had gone and now she smiled, a re
newed soul. Her left breast was exposed and a dark-haired baby suckled greedily against her soft flesh.

  Marmolejo crossed himself and, saying nothing, thought of the shepherds gathered at the command of the Archangel Gabriel amid the dung and straw of the stable in Bethlehem. He could scarcely breathe with emotion and bent his head as the hot tears streamed from his eyes.

  ‘It is as though our lost Virgin has been restored . . .’ breathed a theologically confused and hungry Agustin.

  ‘And it is miraculous confirmation for those who doubted it that man liveth after death,’ added Hernando. ‘Truly you are right, Fray Mateo.’

  All about them the staring men expressed their awe, muttering half-forgotten prayers, genuflecting as though the nursing mother was indeed the Holy Virgin herself. Iago, standing towards the rear of the jostling and watching crowd as it swayed to the roll of the ship, sought out Arrocheros. The happy father stood beside the futtock, bent over his wife and speaking to her. He straightened up and raised his hand, a mixed expression of bewilderment, wonder and happiness upon his face.

  ‘It is the very same baby,’ he said. ‘My wife is certain. The look of him . . . The smell of him . . . It is the same, God be thanked and praised!’ Arrocheros fell to his knees, weeping and crossing himself; all the assembled company did likewise, Agustin raising his voice in tremulous praise. An hour later, following a hearing of the holy Mass, the child was christened Francisco, the captain-general standing as a godfather.

  The comparison with Moses was inescapable. The baby had been found in a corner of the hold, lying in the remains of a broken packing case as it grounded amid the wet silt left by the retreating bilge water. One of the women had heard its whimpering cry and had brought it up into the half-deck where, with a cry of sublime joy, Doña Catalina had instantly recognized it.