A Mile Down

by David Vann

  In the morning, I climbed down into the liferaft with the first mate and one of the crew from Kiribati. My own crew had to stay on board. The captain explained to me that his company was now responsible for the boat, liable for it because of their salvage claim, and my crew was not allowed on board. They were letting me on, though, because they had to have someone who knew the boat. Placed into the raft with us was a hundred-foot bridle of very thick dock line, exactly what I had requested the day before.

  The freighter circled more deftly than it had before and brought the liferaft close. The seas and wind had died down considerably. They had not blown my boat onto land during the night, obviously, which meant that we could have stayed aboard, though in that case the freighter probably would not have stayed with us all night.

  When we came close to the stern rail of my boat, I climbed aboard quickly, the first back on deck. I considered telling the other two to stay in the raft, refusing to let them board, but I hesitated and they climbed up after me. I needed help with the towline, and I needed the tow. I was too tired to think clearly. I wonder now what would have happened. Would they have fought me to come aboard? Would the captain have refused to help me afterward and let me drift? Or would I have won the day, handling the tow lines myself and avoiding the salvage claim? I have no idea.

  What happened was that they came aboard and we tied the bridle to the bows. They even gave me a large shackle so that when the towline was thrown to us we would be able to simply slip the shackle over and screw in the pin.

  I couldn’t steer up to the freighter’s stern reliably with fouled props, and the German captain didn’t want that anyway. He was happy to pull his freighter alongside, close enough to throw a line across our deck. It’s true the seas were much calmer, the wind much lower, but what the captain was willing to do had also changed considerably.

  I called him on the radio. “I see you have all of the equipment you said you didn’t have.”

  “The conditions have changed,” he said. “We were unable to provide other assistance in the sea conditions that prevailed yesterday.”

  “You’re a liar,” I said. “And a criminal. You put my crew and my boat at risk. You went for the salvage claim. You are not going to get away with this.”

  There was a pause, then he came back on the radio. “My instructions are to tow you to Gibraltar. Are you willing to help ensure the safety of the vessel during that tow?”

  “Yes I am, you sonofabitch.”

  “Thank you, then. Please stand by on sixteen.”

  The tow line he used was five times the length he had offered us the day before. It was long enough that the middle section stayed slack in the water the entire time, absorbing shock. It was exactly what we had needed.

  To keep the boat from crawfishing side to side, we dragged dock lines, a sea anchor (a kind of underwater parachute) with a big hole cut in it, and two plastic kayaks, which swamped and darted back and forth under the surface like green lures. With all of this trailing from the stern, the boat sawed back and forth very little, and we were able to reduce the chafing of the towlines at the bows.

  The tow went smoothly for the day and a half back to Gibraltar. The first mate puked a few times, seasick, then sat on the poop deck and smoked. The man from Kiribati puked a few times then slept in the pilothouse. I fixed canned meals and amused myself with the Inmarsat. To get it to stop beeping, I had to cut its power. When I brought it back up, there were finally some response messages, asking me to verify that I had set off the Inmarsat distress alarm and my EPIRB. “Just a bit late,” I typed. “I’m being towed to Gibraltar now.”

  Then I sent an e-mail to Seref. “We’ve lost our rudder near Casablanca. It fell off. I can’t possibly express to you how disappointed I am in this boat.”

  I checked the engine room, then turned off the engines. Everything seemed fine down there. The main salon and galley, however, were a wreck after the night of rolling. The contents of the refrigerator had spilled across the salon floor, which luckily was teak, like the deck outside, and could be cleaned. Dishes had flown out of the dishwasher and broken. Everything we had stowed under the salon desk had come loose.

  The weather had become clear and sunny. The seas had steadily dropped, and by the time we made Gibraltar, they were almost flat.

  I had banged my knee on something during the previous day’s towing attempts, and since then it had stiffened. By the time we began the tow, I was hobbling, and by the time we reached Gibraltar, I basically couldn’t walk. I wasn’t sure how the whole knee thing had happened.

  As we entered the Bay of Gibraltar, the German captain and I were busy on the radio making plans. He would dock first and then a tugboat would moor us alongside. In the meantime, we needed to retrieve the items dragging behind. I hobbled as best as I could to help, but the first mate did most of the cutting, letting the crew member from Kiribati do most of the hauling, and the cutting was indiscriminate. By the time I yelled out, he had cut one of the kayaks free, which now was drifting out of the Bay of Gibraltar.

  “You won’t do anything more on this boat without my permission,” I told him. “This is still my boat, and I’m still the captain.”

  “No you’re not,” he said. “You can fuck off, as you Americans like to say. You’re going to bring me a nice income.”

  “Income?” I asked.

  “The first mate receives five percent, and the captain receives ten percent. That’s from the salvage claim. We also receive a bonus if the towing charges are more than the cargo from Kinitra.”

  “You’re a criminal,” I said.

  “The captain and I are smart,” he said, “and you are not. Poor little stupid American, out on the high seas. It’s a big world, isn’t it?”

  As it turned out, that was to be one of the more pleasant encounters of the day. There is an outer wall of the Gibraltar harbor called Impound Island, which is where the larger arrested ships are kept. Enormous rusting hulks from third world countries, abandoned. Being towed past them by a freighter was like looking at my own failure, perfectly manifested. A dream and the empty hull left over when it dies.

  Once the Birgit Sabban had docked, a tug pulled us close. My crew and Nancy and Barbara waved down at me, looking showered and well-rested. But before I could tie off, the man from Kiribati climbed onto my lifelines and leapt for the freighter. He caught the edge of the deck and dangled from the freighter’s side. I looked down at the thin strip of water sucking between our hulls. If he fell, he was most likely going to die. And I had no control over my boat. The other Kiribati crew and my crew on the deck of the Birgit Sabban rushed to help him, grabbing at his blue jump suit and the backs of his arms. A confusion of movement and yelling, but they pulled him aboard.

  The German first mate standing beside me laughed. “He thinks your boat is cursed. Maybe he is correct.”

  We tied off to the freighter, exchanged crew, and then the German captain informed me that the admiralty marshal of Gibraltar was coming to arrest the boat. My insurance company and the shipping company had not come to immediate agreement, so my boat would be put under twenty-four-hour guard, and I was responsible for paying for the guard. This was becoming so bad so fast, I decided to contact the law firm in Gibraltar that had set up my company and registered the boat.

  We didn’t have a phone onboard, so I would have to wait until after I was arrested. While I was waiting, the German captain came by and handed me his cell phone with a call from my insurance company representative. The woman sounded friendly, but I told her I wanted to consult my lawyers.

  “Why would you need to do that?” she asked. “Did you do something wrong?”

  “No,” I said. “But I don’t like being arrested. I don’t feel well represented.”

  “We are here to represent you. You must cooperate with us if you want us to consider coverage of your claim. We need a full written account of what happened, and we’ll send a surveyor to assess the damage. The boat will need to be haul
ed out. But first you must tell me what happened.”

  “I look forward to working with you,” I said, “after I talk with my lawyers. In the meantime, if you could keep the boat from getting arrested, that would be a plus.”

  Barbara was a lawyer, with her own firm in Colorado, and she agreed with this approach. “You have to be careful,” she told me. The boat was her asset, too, as one of the lienholders. “We’ll get through this, David. It will all work out okay.”

  My crew were only slightly less anxious than the man from Kiribati to leave the boat, but we had to wait for the admiralty marshal. Nancy was the only one who would stay with me in the end, I knew. There’s an enormous comfort in knowing you won’t be left completely alone to wade through unfortunate circumstances. When I’d had problems with Grendel in Mexico, I’d been alone, and that had definitely made it worse. I knew that if and when I sailed out of Gibraltar again to cross the Atlantic, Nancy would be with me.

  At the moment, Nancy was worried about my knee and made me promise we’d see a doctor as soon as possible.

  When the admiralty marshal finally arrived, he was kind and apologetic. I was not personally under arrest, only the vessel. It would be moved to one of the marinas and placed under twenty-four-hour guard, with only the crew allowed to board. The documents I had to sign made it clear the boat was no longer mine, but was in the possession of the admiralty, so I asked about insurance.

  “We will take out a temporary insurance policy today,” he said.

  “And who will pay for that?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid those costs will have to be recouped also, sir.”

  The admiralty marshal could do nothing but apologize, and I didn’t press, since he wasn’t a bad guy. He posted a notice on one of our pilothouse windows saying the boat had been arrested, then left.

  Only Queensway Quay, the crappiest marina in Gibraltar, could take us, and that was along a seawall, not an actual slip. I didn’t have a choice. The boat wasn’t mine anymore, and the marshal had required it be moved immediately. Queensway Quay arranged a tow, and I knew this would be part of my bill, too.

  This towboat was small, about forty feet, with two crew on board. They came alongside and arranged a bridle at the bow, short trucking straps with a shackle. I wasn’t happy about how close the shackle was. It was going to bang against my bow.

  “That’s all we got, mate,” the captain of the tow said.

  I limped back to the pilothouse and hoped for the best. My crew cast off our lines and the towboat captain just took off. He hadn’t judged the wind or current or done anything to help us spring away from the freighter, so we were pulled along its side with our shrouds scraping, then past the bow at about ten knots, missing the next ship, moored directly ahead, by only a few feet.

  “What are you doing?” I asked the captain on the VHF. “I don’t need any more damage. Try taking it easy and thinking a little.”

  “I’ve driven towboats all my life, mate. I know what I’m doing.”

  “You scraped us along that freighter and almost slammed us into the next ship at high speed.”

  “Almost, mate. That’s the operative word here. Almost. No harm done.”

  I was at the helm but couldn’t do anything without a rudder. I had tried to start my engines to assist with the tow, but they weren’t starting for some reason. I suspected the batteries were low, though I wasn’t sure how that could have happened. I would have to worry about it later. No one was allowing any time for it now.

  The captain towed us at high speed, then abruptly stopped. He had to check something, and he and his mate weren’t even looking up as we drifted very quickly.

  “Someone get on the bow and yell at him,” I said. “We’re going to run him over.”

  I tried hailing on the VHF, but the captain wasn’t near his radio, so I followed Matt and the others to the bow. Sinking a towboat would probably look interesting. By the time I had hobbled up there, though, Matt had yelled and the captain ran forward to slam both throttles. He made it out from under my bow just in time.

  “Christ,” I said to Matt. “When does it end?”

  “It never ends, David. It’s a boat.”

  As we entered the tiny marina, we were drifting to the side in current. The captain did a pretty decent job, though, of pulling us in a tight circle to place us against a high stone wall.

  I was not happy about this wall. It looked as if it would smash us if there were any surge. I called Queensway Quay again on the VHF and asked if they had anything else, but they didn’t. Because of the boat’s size, this was the only space available in all of Gibraltar.

  A thin guy came down the dock and warned us about surge. He lived on a sixty-foot tug parked inland from us on the same wall. “It comes in hard,” he said. “For just a short time, but it’ll knock the piss out of you.”

  We were already using all of our fenders and spring lines, so he came back with some old tires that we roped up and hung over the side, too. A very friendly guy. Matt and Emi headed off with him, I think to share a pint. Nick went looking for a phone, and Nancy and I visited the marina office, asking again to be moved or to borrow some larger fenders, both of which they refused.

  When we returned to the boat, Barbara wasn’t back, and the admiralty marshal’s guard hadn’t shown up, and I didn’t want to ignore my knee any longer, so we went looking for the hospital.

  Gibraltar’s a gloomy place, always cloudy because of the rock. Nancy and I had grown oddly fond of it, mostly because of one restaurant pub called the Clipper, which serves heaping portions of comfort food. Chicken pie with mash and peas, that sort of thing. But I felt like an outcast now, unable to pay my bills, under arrest, invalid, brought back under tow when I should have been in the Caribbean.

  We took a taxi up a steep hill and then had several flights of stairs. The hospital was small and grim, as they are everywhere except the U.S., where they are large and grim. The doctor was Indian. He prodded and rotated my knee, which made me yelp more than once, sending sharp pains all through my leg and into my stomach, and then told me it was just a nasty infection from the cut I had on my knee. If I had taken the time to apply a bit of Neosporin during the towing incident, I would have been fine. But of course I hadn’t even noticed the cut whenever it happened. He gave me a topical and an antibiotic and said I’d be walking normally in twenty-four hours.

  We took another taxi back down to the harbor, and as I hobbled out to the dock with Nancy, Barbara rushed up to us. “You’re not going to like what you see, David,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I told the marina, and they’ve brought another fender, but the damage is already done.”

  As we neared the boat, I could see that a twenty-foot section of the port rail had been bashed against the wall so hard the fenders had been ripped off and the steel bulwarks bent in. The teak rail had been smashed to pieces and the stanchions bent at odd angles. Paint had been taken off the hull in some places and bare steel showed through. We had been gone only forty-five minutes, and it was already calm again. It was incredible.

  “Fuck,” I said. There wasn’t much else to say. It was much more damage than we had taken from the towing attempts.

  The other crew came back in the next couple of hours, just after dark, and said similar things.

  “Well at least it’s not my boat right now,” I told them. “It belongs to the admiralty, and the damage should be covered by their insurance policy. They’d better cover it. And where is this twenty-four-hour guard?”

  Nancy and I sat in the pilothouse, which was a gorgeous place, with large windows, dark mahogany, and plenty of comfortable seating around two tables. I just wanted to sit for a while. The crew were gathering laundry and taking care of their own business. I knew I would lose them. It would probably take a month to work out this mess and get a new rudder, maybe longer.

  “There are the engines, too,” I told Nancy. “I have to work on that tomorrow, figure out why they’re not starting.”

&n
bsp; “I want to be back home,” she said. “I mean I’m not going, I’ll stay here with you, but doesn’t this suck?”

  “It does suck,” I said.

  We decided to get dinner at one of the restaurants on the dock. It would cost us at least $10 or $15 each, but what the hell. It had been an awful day. We met Barbara walking back from the phones, and she joined us.

  “This is good,” Barbara said. “We need something normal. Just forget the boat exists. It isn’t there.”

  “What boat?” Nancy asked.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. We ordered and I drank some water and looked at the clean maroon tablecloth, the candles, the white cloth napkins, my water glass.

  Then Nick walked up to us, holding the back of his head with one hand. “David,” he said. “I hit my head pretty bad. I didn’t know the hatch was open in the galley, and I fell down into the engine room.” He removed his hand from the back of his head and showed us the blood.

  It was a bit much to believe, but there it was.

  The restaurant called us a cab, and Nick and I went outside to wait. I told Barbara and Nancy to stay and have dinner. I made sure I had money, and I knew where the hospital was. While we waited for the cab, I kept him talking, making sure he stayed lucid.

  “I’m not dead yet,” he said. “Head wounds bleed a lot. They look worse than they are.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “But we need to be careful. We’ll wake you up every hour or so tonight, or whatever schedule the doctor recommends. And you have to keep talking, so I know you’re fine. Let me know if you feel dizzy or faint or anything happens to your vision or you feel like you’re going to fall.”

  “Keep saying stuff like that and I might.” But he had his lopsided grin that was part of why we all liked him so much.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I won’t let them take your organs until it looks pretty final.”

  “Cheers, mate.”

  I had him sit on the curb, so that if he fell it wouldn’t be far, and we waited. The cab was taking forever. Endless headlights and small cars zooming past on the narrow street, but no cab stopping.