The Wreck of the Mary Deare

by Hammond Innes

  It is difficult to be scared of something that is inevitable. You accept it, and that is that. But I remember thinking how ironical it was; the sea was to me a liquid, quiet, unruffled world through which to glide down green corridors to the darker depths, down tall reef walls with the fish, all brilliant colours in the surface dazzle, down to the shadowy shapes of barnacle-crusted wrecks. Now it was a raging fury of a giant, rearing up towards me, clutching at me, foaming and angry.

  And then hope came suddenly in the graze of my hand against the rusty plates. Blood oozed in droplets from my knuckles, to be washed away by a blinding sheet of spray, and I stared, fascinated, as a flake of rust was peeled off by the upward scrape of my body. I didn’t look up. I didn’t move for fear I had imagined that I was being hauled up. But when the sea no longer reached me as it burst against the ship’s side, I knew it was true. I looked up then and saw that the davits had been hauled in-board, saw the ropes move, taut, across the rail-capping.

  Slowly, a foot at a time, I was hauled up, until at last my head came level with the deck and I looked into the haggard face and the wild, dark eyes of the Mary Deare’s captain. He dragged me over the side and I collapsed on to the deck. I never knew till then how comfortable iron deck plates could be. ‘Better get some dry clothes,’ he said.

  He pulled me to my feet and I stood there, trying to thank him. But I was too exhausted, too numbed with cold. My teeth chattered. He got my arm round his neck and half dragged me along the deck and down to one of the officers’ cabins. ‘Help yourself to what you want,’ he said as he lowered me on to the bunk. ‘Rice was about your height.’ He stood over me for a moment, frowning at me as though I were some sort of a problem that had to be worked out. Then he left me.

  I lay back, exhaustion weighting my eyelids, drowning consciousness. But my body had no warmth left in it and the cold cling of sodden clothes dragged me up off the bunk, to strip and towel myself down. I found dry clothes in a drawer and put them on; woollen underwear, a shirt, a pair of trousers and a sweater. A glow spread through me and my teeth stopped chattering. I took a cigarette from a packet on the desk and lit it, lying back again on the bunk, my eyes closed, drawing on it luxuriously. I felt better then—not worried about myself, only about Sea Witch. I hoped to God she’d get safe to Peter Port.

  I was drowsy with the sudden warmth; the cabin was airless and smelt of stale sweat. The cigarette kept slipping from my fingers. And then a voice from a great distance off was saying: ‘Sit up and drink this.’ I opened my eyes and he was standing over me again with a steaming mug in his hand. It was tea laced with rum. I started to thank him, but he cut me short with a quick, angry movement of his hand. He didn’t say anything; just stood there, watching me drink it, his face in shadow. There was a strange hostility in his silence.

  The ship was rolling heavily now and through the open door came the sound of the wind howling along the deck. The Mary Deare would be a difficult tow if it blew a gale. They might not even be able to get a tow-line across to us. I was remembering what Hal had said about the Channel Islands as a lee shore. The warmth of the drink was putting new life into me; enough for me to consider what faced me, now that I was marooned on board the Mary Deare.

  I looked up at the man, standing over me, wondering why he had refused to leave the ship. ‘How long before you expect help to reach us?’ I asked him.

  ‘There won’t be any help. No call went out.’ He leaned suddenly down towards me, his hands clenched and his jaw, thrust into the grey light coming in through the porthole, showing hard and knotted. ‘Why the hell didn’t you stay on your yacht?’ And then he turned abruptly and made for the door.

  He was halfway through it when I called after him. ‘Taggart!’ I swung my legs off the bunk.

  He spun round on his heels as though I’d punched him in the back. ‘I’m not Taggart.’ He came back through the doorway. ‘What made you think I was Taggart?’

  ‘You said you were the captain.’

  ‘So I am. But my name’s Patch.’ He was standing over me again, a dark shadow against the light. ‘How did you know about Taggart? Are you something to do with the owners? Is that why you were out there . . .’ The wildness went out of his voice and he wiped his hand across the coal dust grime of his face. ‘No. It couldn’t be that.’ He stared at me for a moment and then he shrugged his shoulders. ‘We’ll talk about it later. We’ve plenty of time. All the time in the world. Better get some sleep now.’ He turned then and went quickly out.

  Sleep! Five minutes ago that was what I’d wanted most in the world. But now I was wide awake. I won’t say I was scared; not then. Just uneasy. That the man should behave oddly was not surprising. He had been twelve hours alone on the ship. He’d put out a fire single-handed and he’d stoked furnaces till he was on the brink of exhaustion. Twelve hours of hell; enough to unbalance any man. But if he was the captain, why wasn’t he Taggart? And why hadn’t the ship radioed for assistance?

  I got up stiffly off the bunk, pulled on a pair of sea boots that were lying under the desk and staggered out into the corridor. There was a lot of movement on the ship now. Lying broadside to the seas, she was rolling heavily. A rush of cold air brought with it the battering noise of the wind. I went straight up to the bridge. It was raining and visibility was down to less than a mile; the whole sea was a dirty white of breaking water with the spray smoking from the crests and streaming away before the wind. It was already blowing gale force in the gusts.

  The compass showed the ship lying with her bows to the north. The wind had backed into the west then; almost a dead run to Peter Port. I stood there working it out, listening to the thundering of the gale, staring out at that bleak waste of tumbled water. If Hal made it—if he got under the lee of Guernsey and made Peter Port . . . But it would take him several hours and he wouldn’t realise at first that no distress signal had been sent out. Even when he did, the lifeboat would have to fight the gale to reach us; it would take them six hours at least, and by then it would be dark. They’d never find us in the dark in this sort of weather.

  I turned abruptly and went through into the chartroom. A new position had been marked on the chart; a small cross two miles north-east of the Roches Douvres with 11.06 pencilled against it. It was now eleven-fifteen. I laid off the line of our drift with the parallel rule. If the wind held westerly we should drive straight on to the Plateau des Minquiers. He had discovered that, too, for a faint pencil line had been drawn in and there was a smudge of dirt across the area of the reefs where his fingers had rested.

  Well, at least he was sane enough to appreciate the danger! I stood, staring at the chart, thinking about what it meant. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. To be driven ashore on the rocky cliffs of Jersey would have been bad enough, but the Plateau des Minquiers . . .

  I reached out to the bookshelf above the chart table, searching for Part II of the Channel Pilot. But it wasn’t there. Not that it mattered. I knew them by reputation: a fearful area of rocks and reefs that we call The Minkies.

  I was thinking about the Minkies and how it would feel to be on board a ship being pounded to pieces in such a maelstrom of submerged rocks when I noticed the door at the back of the chartroom with W/T stencilled on it. There was a steep ladder with no door at the top and as soon as I entered the radio shack I knew why no distress call had been sent out. The place had been gutted by fire.

  The shock of it halted me in the doorway. The fire in the hold, and now this! But this was an old fire. There was no smell of burning, and planks of new wood had been nailed over the charred gaps that the fire had burned in roof and walls. No attempt had been made to clear the debris. The emergency accumulators had come through the burned-out roof and lay on the floor where they had fallen; one had smashed down on to the fire-blackened table and had crushed the half-melted remains of the transmitter. Bunk and chair were scarcely recognisable, skeletons of blackened wood, and the radio equipment fixed to the walls was distorted beyond recognition and
festooned with metal stalactites where solder had dripped and congealed; more equipment lay on the floor, black, twisted pieces of metal in the debris of charred wood. Whatever had caused the fire, it had burned with extraordinary ferocity. Water had seeped in through the gaps in the walls, streaking the blackened wood. The wind stirred the sodden ashes, shaking the rotten structure as it howled round the bridge.

  I went slowly back down the ladder to the chartroom. Maybe the log book would tell me something. But it was no longer open on the table. I went through to the wheelhouse and was halted momentarily by the sight of a shaggy comber rearing up out of the murk on the port bow, spindrift streaming from its crest. It crashed down on to the iron bulwarks, and then the whole fore part of the ship, all except the mast and derricks, disappeared beneath a welter of white water. It seemed an age before the shape of the bows appeared again, a faint outline of bulwarks rising sluggishly, reluctantly out of the sea.

  I hurried down the companion-way and made straight for the captain’s cabin. But he wasn’t there. I tried the saloon and the galley, and then I knew he must be down in the stoke-hold again. There was no doubt in my mind what had to be done. The pumps had to be got going. But there was no light in the engine-room, no sound of coal being shovelled into the furnaces. I shouted from the catwalk, but there was no answer; only the echo of my voice, a small sound lost in the pounding of the waves against the outside of the hull and the swirl of water in the bilges.

  I felt a sudden sense of loss, a quite childish sense of loneliness. I didn’t want to be alone in that empty ship. I hurried back to his cabin, the need to find him becoming more and more urgent. It was empty, as it had been before. A clang of metal aft sent me pushing through the door to the boat deck, and then I saw him. He was coming towards me, staggering with exhaustion, his eyes staring and his face dead white where he had wiped it clean of sweat and coal dust. All his clothes were black with coal and behind him a shovel slid across the deck. ‘Where have you been?’ I cried. ‘I couldn’t find you. What have you been doing all this time?’

  ‘That’s my business,’ he muttered, his voice slurred with fatigue, and he pushed past me and went into his cabin.

  I followed him in. ‘What’s the position?’ I asked. ‘How much water are we making? The seas are breaking right across the bows.’

  He nodded. ‘It’ll go on like that—all the time now—until the hatch cover goes. And then there’ll only be the shored-up bulkhead between us and the sea-bed.’ It was said flatly, without intonation. He didn’t seem to care, or else he was resigned.

  ‘But if we get the pumps going . . .’ His lack of interest checked me. ‘Damn it, man,’ I said. ‘That was what you were doing when I came aboard, wasn’t it?’

  ‘How do you know what I’d been doing?’ He suddenly seemed to blaze up, his eyes hard and angry and wild. He seized hold of my arm. ‘How do you know?’ he repeated.

  ‘There was a wisp of smoke coming from the funnel,’ I said quickly. ‘And then all that coal dust; you were covered with it.’ I didn’t know what had roused him. ‘You must have been down in the stoke-hold.’

  ‘The stoke-hold?’ He nodded slowly. ‘Yes, of course.’ He let go of my arm, his body gradually losing its tautness, relaxing.

  ‘If the pumps could keep her afloat coming up through the Bay . . .’ I said.

  ‘We had a crew then, a full head of steam.’ His shoulders drooped. ‘Besides, there wasn’t so much water in the for’ard hold then.’

  ‘Is she holed?’ I asked. ‘Is that the trouble?’

  ‘Holed?’ He stared at me. ‘What made you . . .’ He pushed his hand up through his hair and then down across his face. His skin was sallow under the grime; sallow and sweaty and tired-looking. The ship lurched and quivered to the onslaught of another wave. I saw his muscles tense as though it were his own body that was being battered. ‘It can’t last long.’

  I felt suddenly sick and empty inside. The man had given up hope. I could see it in the sag of his shoulders, hear it in the flatness of his voice. He was tired beyond caring. ‘You mean the hatch cover?’ He nodded. ‘And what happens then?’ I asked. ‘Will she float with that hold full of water?’

  ‘Probably. Until the boiler-room bulkhead goes.’ His tone was cold-blooded and without emotion. That hold had been flooded a long time. The ship had been down by the bows when we had sighted her through the mist. And last night . . . I was remembering the draught marks high out of the water at her stern and the blades of the propeller thrashing at the wave tops. He had had time to get used to the idea.

  But I was damned if I was going to sit down and wait for the end. ‘How long would it take to get steam up—enough to drive the pumps?’ I asked. But he didn’t seem to hear me. He was leaning against the deck, his eyes half-closed. I caught hold of his arm and shook him as though I were waking him out of a trance. ‘The pumps!’ I shouted at him. ‘If you show me what to do, I’ll stoke.’

  His eyes flicked open and he stared at me. He didn’t say anything.

  ‘You’re just about all in,’ I told him. ‘You ought to get some sleep. But first you must show me how to operate the furnace.’

  He seemed to hesitate, and then he shrugged his shoulders. ‘All right,’ he said, and he pulled himself together and went out and down the companion ladder to the main deck. The weight of the wind was heeling the ship, giving her a permanent list to starboard. Like that she rolled sluggishly with an odd, uneven motion that was occasionally violent. His feet dragged along the dark, echoing alley-way; at times he seemed uncertain of his balance, almost dazed.

  We turned in through the engine-room door, crossed the catwalk and descended an iron ladder into the dark pit of the engine-room, the beams of our torches giving momentary glimpses of vast shadowy machinery, all still and lifeless. Our footsteps rang hollow and metallic on the iron gratings as we made our way for’ard through a litter of smaller machinery. There was a sound of water moving in little rushes and heavy thuds echoed up the tunnel of the propeller shaft.

  We passed the main controls with the bridge telegraph repeaters and then we reached the doors leading in to the boiler-room. Both doors were open, and beyond, the shapes of the boilers loomed bulky and majestic, without heat.

  He hesitated a moment, and then moved forward again. ‘It’s this one,’ he said, pointing to the port-hand of the three boilers. A dull red glow rimmed the furnace door. ‘And there’s the coal.’ He swung the beam of his torch over the black heap that had spilled out of the coal-box opening. He had half-turned back towards the furnace, when he checked and stood staring at the coal as though fascinated, slowly lifting the beam of his torch so that the white circle of it shone on plate after plate, all black with dust, as though he were tracing the line of the coal coming down from the bunkering hatch at deck level. ‘We’ll work two-hour shifts,’ he said quickly, glancing at his watch. ‘It’s nearly twelve now. I’ll relieve you at two.’ He seemed suddenly in a hurry to go.

  ‘Just a minute,’ I said. ‘How do you operate the furnace?’

  He glanced impatiently back at the boiler with its temperature gauge and the levers below that operated the furnace doors and the dampers. ‘It’s quite simple. You’ll get the hang of it easily enough.’ He was already turning away again. ‘I’m going to get some sleep,’ he muttered. And with that he left me.

  I opened my mouth to call him back. But there seemed no point. I should probably find out easily enough and he needed sleep badly. For a moment, as he passed through the stoke-hold doors, his body was sharply etched against the light of his torch. I stood there listening to the sound of his feet on the steel ladders of the engine-room, seeing the faint reflection of his torch limning the open doorway. Then it was gone and I was alone, conscious suddenly of the odd noises about me—the murmur of water, the queer booming of waves breaking against the ship’s hull and the sudden little rushes of coal tipping in the chutes as she rolled; conscious, too, of a sense of claustrophobia, of being shut in
down there below the waterline. Beyond the boilers were the baulks of timber shoring the bulkhead, and beyond the rusty plates was water. I could see it trickling down the seams.

  I stripped off my borrowed jersey, rolled up my sleeves and went over to the furnace. It was barely warm. I could put my hands on the casing of it. I found the lever and flung open the furnace door. A pile of ash glowed red. There was no rush of flame, no sign of it having been stoked in hours. I picked up one of the crowbar-like slices that lay about and prodded the glowing mass. It was all ash.

  I had a look at the other two furnaces then, but their draft vents were all wide open, the fires burned out, the boilers cold. There was just that one furnace still alive, and it was alive because the dampers were shut right down. I remembered then how his footsteps had dragged past the engine-room door that first time I had stood on the catwalk calling into the abyss below. He hadn’t been down here—then or at any time. Yet he was covered in coal dust. I stood there, leaning on my shovel, thinking about it until the noise of the waves booming against the hollow hull reminded me that there were other, more urgent matters, and I began shovelling in coal.

  I piled it in until it was heaped black inside the furnace. Then I shut the door and opened all the dampers. In a few minutes the furnace was roaring, the bright light of flames showing round the edges of the door and lighting the stoke-hold with a warm glow, so that the shapes of the boilers emerged, dim and shadowy, from the darkness that surrounded me. I opened the door again and began shovelling hard, the shovel and the black coal lit by the lurid glow. Soon I was stripped to the waist and the sweat was rolling off me so that my arms and body glistened through their coating of coal dust.