Today we spend some time in the company of Captain Roberts
The Further Adventures of Captain
Danny Roberts
Ship’s Log,
day something or other.
May you live
in interesting times, so the Chinese curse goes. Well life on board the Anna
Livia Plurabelle has certainly been interesting for the last few days. And
goddam noisy.
It’s a
rarity that I sail as far north as the North Atlantic, but reading out a random
page in the Wake (page 310 for anyone keeping count: The harmonic condenser enginium (the Mole) etc.), I happened to
find myself in that part of the world in some version of the summer of 1953 and
some presentiment told me I should sail around for a time and see what I might
find.
It may have
been summer, but it was still raining and spraying sea water all over the shop,
so I sealed the forward section around the instrument panels off from the
elements, lowered and inclined the wheel on its housing, just to the right
height so I could grab a copy of Toni Morrison’s Jazz out of the library, pull
up a chair and rest my feet on the plane of the wheel and steer with my feet as
I read.
The weather
was atrocious, too rough for straight sailing, so I deployed the external
engines port and starboard, the power of their tubular lengths reducing the
pitching and rolling of the North Atlantic waters to mere pitching, which is
more manageable. The hemisphere of holographic sensor displays hung in the air
above my head. The sounds of Count Basie, Billy Holiday and Duke Ellington
pumped through the ship’s speakers. Issy slept on a sofa in the alcove behind
me.
I was fifty
pages into Jazz when the sensors registered the first object in the water. I
calmly finished the chapter I was on then turned hard to starboard. It wasn’t
long before the on board cameras started to pick out the first bodies in the
water.
Wrapped in
an oilskin, I headed out on deck, giving control to Anna and telling her to
bring the ship to manoeuvring speed. The engines retreated inside the ship’s
trunk and we crawled ahead on thruster jets.
There were
bodies everywhere. More than a hundred. Obviously a ship had gone down, but the
was no sight of a wreck above the surface. Sonar was picking up a faint signal.
I ordered Anna to launch one of the remote submersibles to get a fix on its
location, but simply by heading in the direction of the greatest density of
bodies, I figured I could get a rough reckoning. Whatever had happened had
obviously happened fast, but I still wanted to scout around for any survivors
in the water.
I wasn’t
finding any. Everybody in the water had been there for some time and were
starting to bloat. Some had injuries so horrific that I guessed they’d been
dead long before they’d had time to drown. I thought about what Leonardo Da
Vinci says in his notebooks, that drowned men float on the water face up, but
drowned women float face down. I hadn’t really believed him until that point,
but I could see that he was right. I morbidly wondered whether this was
nature’s kindness to women or a cruel joke on those of us that would have to
fish them out of the sea.
The
submersible tracked the wreck to the ocean floor, a couple thousand feet down. From
the video feed I guessed it to be a small passenger liner. Looked pretty
obsolete even for 1953. I ordered it back whilst I brought the ship to as near
above the wreck as possible and then sent out all three aerial remotes in
sweeps of ever increasing circles to see if there was any Ishmael that had
managed to survive by clinging to some piece of flotsam.
Better than
Ishmael, Remote no 2 (I call him Dick) sent back images of one wooden lifeboat.
Whilst the other two remotes (Tom and Harry) increased their sweeps in the hope
of finding anyone else, I steered the A.L.P. north-north-east in the direction
of the lifeboat.
The craft
had drifted fifteen miles away from the site of the wreck, which probably meant
the ship had gone down in the last six to eight hours. I cleared the outer ring
of bodies at a respectful speed then increased to full ahead in their
direction, only slowing down for the last half a mile. Conditions had
deteriorated fast. I could have sailed a couple of hundred yards from their
location and they would never have even known I was there. Thank the maker
(i.e. Andy) for infrared sensors. And thank the heavens for the weather, for I
do love to make a dramatic entrance. I put on my captain’s jacket and hat and
brought the ship abaft of them, where I could open the back doors to the dry
dock.
“Looks to me
like you folks could use some assistance.”
If you can’t
get a cheer as the conquering hero, a woman’s plaintive tears of relief will do
just as well. There were nine of them in the boat, the only nine survivors, as
I was to discover, from the RMS Cairngorm. I threw out a rope to secure to a
ring at the stern, then deployed the winch mechanism to bring the whole boat on
board.
Nine
survivors, two men, three women and four children, three boys and a girl. All
but one of the women consisted to form two families. Clarissa, the one lone
woman, had been travelling with her sister but they’d been separated in the
melee and she feared the worst. Her demeanour quickly deteriorated into one of
hysteria, but they were all suffering from a mixture of shock and relief and I
thought the first thing I should do was get them up to the Ward Room and fix
them all a drink.
Brandy, cognac
is you please, is a great settler of mood and warmer of frozen limbs. The
children aged between eight and fifteen, but I dished out the Remy Martin
nonetheless, despite their parents half-hearted objections, doses given
according to age, the youngest, Peter, receiving two tea spoons worth of bronze
fire. He clacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth like he’d been fed
cough medicine. “Burns.” he said.
“Means it’s
working.” I said, winking.
I was keen
to hear their story, but everyone was soaked to the skin from having spent
uncertain hours being tossed around by the North Atlantic waters, so I thought
it best to get them shown to their quarters so everyone could get cleaned up
and dry their clothes and meet up later for something to eat and hear their
tale.
Ship’s
protocol was easy enough to decipher in this instant (it isn’t always so easy,
even though I made the rules up myself). The two families would take the state
rooms, the Isis and Lucia cabins, Clarissa was given the V.I.P. quarters in the
Barnacle Suite. I made sure the heat in each set of rooms was turned up hot
enough that everyone would feel drowsy. I figured what they most needed now was
a few hour’s sleep.
Clarissa was
the first to emerge a few hours later, the evening light starting to fade. She
took an immediate interest in Issy (it’s not every day that you meet a Jaguar
on board a ship), but was understandably pensive, petting the amenable Issy
with a faraway look in her eye. She wanted to know if there was only the two of
us aboard and how I could sail such a ship all by myself. Given the time
period, I had powered down all of the computer and holographic readouts. Anna
held her silence. I received all on board information projected through a
single contact lens in my left eye and an microscopic earpiece in my right ear.
The families
emerged soon after. There was Malcolm and Agnes, with their son, Peter, and
Terrence and Marjorie, with their sons, Terrence and Clive and daughter, Jane.
I knew Terrence, Snr was going to be a royal pain in my arse right from the
off. His family “had had a gander” around the ship and wanted to know why
Clarissa had been given the much larger Barnacle Suite when him and his family
were crammed into the Isis Cabin. Crammed, I ask you, on any other ship the
Isis Cabin would be the state room. I
explained that ship’s protocol demanded that two families of equal status
receive equal living space. He started on about how it wasn’t fair, he had
three kids compared to one in the other family, and growing bored with his
shitty attitude I matter of factly told him it wasn’t my fault if he couldn’t
keep it in his pants. He made to start afresh, but an angry growl from Issy
brought his gob shutting with a pop. I love that cat. Such a good judge of
character.
As they’d
slept, I’d already set to work preparing a meal down in the main kitchen, a
novelty given that I usually only need to cook for myself and rarely stray away
from the smaller kitchen in my own quarters. I went for something traditional,
roast beef and potatoes, boiled carrots, cabbage and corn on the cob, along
with an excellent batch of Yorkshire pudding that Gaynor taught me how to make
back before the rift. You superheat a glass dish in the oven, coated in olive
oil, then pour the pudding mix into the heated dish and cook for quarter of an
hour for perfect results. Apple crumble and custard or ice cream followed for
desert and as we ate at the Captain’s Table, they told me what had happened.
As far as
anyone could tell, they’d hit a mine. Probably left over from the war.
Actually, there was some disagreement, with Terrence Snr thinking it was a
mine, but Malcolm, Agnes and Clarissa thinking it sounded more like two mines
had exploded. Certainly they had heard two explosions. Loathed as I was to
agree with Terrence Snr, the injuries that I had seen on the corpses in the
water suggested that an engine had exploded, which would have accounted for the
two explosions, one a mine going off in near enough proximity to cause
something mechanical to explode.
It had all
happened so fast, it was only because the two families were at that point
taking some air on the observation deck and Malcolm had reacted quickly in
getting one of the lifeboats deployed (Malcolm had served in the Royal Navy
during the war and been torpedoed by a German U-Boat during convoy duties) that
they had lived to tell the tale. Clarissa, getting lost in the confusion, had
come floundering onto deck just as they’d been in the process of abandoning
ship and been manhandled aboard the lifeboat despite her protestations.
Everyone
became quiet after a while and seeing no right time to bring the subject up, I
asked what was to be done about the bodies. “Leave them.” was Terrence Snr’s
predictable reply. “Sea creatures will take care of them. We just want to get home
to Blighty.”
“You can’t
just leave them.” Malcolm responded. “They’re human beings, they have the right
to simple dignity. Their families have the right to give them a proper
Christian burial.”
“Well what
are we supposed to do about it?” Terrence Snr asked.
“Captain
Roberts, I take it that you would have no objections to retrieving the bodies.
You seem to have the space”
“None at
all. I have a small infirmary on board that’s served as a morgue on more than
one occasion. There’s also a utility room on deck and the dry dock. Any room
can be made a cold as ice or as hot as hell. It’s a grim job, but manageable.”
“This is
ridiculous, I won’t have any part of this.”
“Mr Madden,
I am captain of this ship and I will decide what is to be done. What’s more, so
long as you are on board my ship, you will be treated as guests or crew as I
see fit. If you don’t like that, I can always put you back in your lifeboat and
you can float home on your own. Blighty is about eight hundred miles west of
here, though I’d be happy to loan you the use of a compass and sextant. Do I
make myself completely and unemphatically clear?” He grunted. “I’m sorry, what
was that?”
“You do.”
“Good.”
“Though I
should like to say that I think you are a bully.”
“And I should
like to say that I think that you are a self-centred cunt.” There was a gasp.
“Excuse my foul language ladies, but sometime a Captain has to stamp out a mutiny
before it gets started. Do not test me Mr Madden, or you will discover just how
much of a bully I can be. If you wish, you may try to gain control of my ship,
though I should warn you, she has eyes and ears only for me.”
“If I may
speak at this point. “ Clarissa spoke up.
“Of course.”
I said.
“I should
like to help recover what bodies can be recovered as I should like to find my
sister, if she is out there. Oh I know she may have gone down with the
Cairngorm, but even if we don’t find her, I know that anybody we can recover
will save a family the anguish of never knowing.” She burst into tears at this
point and even the shameless Terrence Snr was sufficiently moved to become
misty eyes. Everyone around the table shed a few tears at least.
“It’s
settled then.” I said, clearing the lump in my throat. “We’ve been treading
water here since I picked you up. At first light I’ll turn the ship around and
head back. I don’t think there’s any need to involve the children and there’s
plenty of entertainments on board to keep them distracted. Yet even between the
six of us, it shouldn’t take more than a day or two to get everyone stowed on
board. Madame et Monsieur, I know that you’ve all had a sleep already this
afternoon, but I think it’s best if you all retire for the evening. We have a
long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
The
following day came and some of what I saw that day will haunt me for years, even
after having travelled to some of the least civilised periods in human history.
I’ve seen hangings and beheadings, poor souls burned at the stake and corpses
left to rot upon high as a warning to others, but there’s nothing quite as
disturbing as body that’s been left in the water for a day or two. I’ve heard
talk of bodies literally falling apart as they’re being pulled out of the
water, but luckily we didn’t have any of that nonsense. I said it was nature’s
cruel joke to let women float face down and the way the facial features start
to dissolve are not something I will soon forget.
It took a
day and a half to get the 126 corpses aboard, deploying the smaller boat,
Issy-la-Chappelle for greater manoeuvrability. Myself, Malcolm and Terrence,
Snr retrievied the bodies and returned them to the A.L.P. for the women to move
into storage. The infirmary above the dock quickly filled up, at which point we
used the utility room. The last forty bodies or so were laid out on the deck of
the dock once the Issy-la-Chappelle was safely back on board. Peter, Clive and
Jane happily played games on deck as we worked, but Terrence, Jnr showed great
fortitude in helping the women with moving bodies. Greater fortitude that his
father, certainly. I lost count of the amount of times we had to stop to let
him be sick over the side. Sea sickness he claimed. Cunt.
A grim task
but we got it done and then it was time to sail for England. The Madden family
were Londoners, the rest of the passenger from Scotland, so I decided to
compromise and head for my favourite port of Liverpool, radioing ahead with
news of our unpleasant cargo. At near full speed, we were able reach port in a
little under a day. The authorities were waiting for us and despite the year,
they did a fine job of continuing the respect we had shown in bringing so many
loved ones home. We never did find Clarissa’s sister, Emily. It’s my one
regret.
Despite our
disagreements, Terrence thanked me for saving his family and offered me his
hand. I gave him a hug instead and apologised for what I had called him. I
hoped that he now saw that it was right what we had done and he agreed that it
was. We left on reasonably good terms.
The family
were put on a train for London and I ended up sailing the Scottish contingent
home as far as Ayr. It was good to be heading back to the country in which I
was born and nice to enjoy the company of my guests without Terrence, Snr’s
bullish attitude. I usually have little patience for children, but I found
Peter to be pleasant company, so inquisitive and full of questions, which I did
my best to answer. After they disembarked, I did some checking. He went on to
be an engineer. Ship design. Excellent career choice.
Well the
ship’s been hosed down and disinfected, but the nightmares are quite bad for
the moment. Apart from having so many dead things on board, I always get like
this when I’ve had company on board. Nothing to do now but get stoned and stare
into space. Maybe watch The Abyss. I’m joking of course. I quite like the
1950s. Bought myself some 50s shirts while I was on Merseyside, waiting for the
inquest to conclude. Heading back across the Atlantic at the moment, heading
for a break in the Caribbean while I figure out what to do next (m’m, black
women). Might head for Cuba, see if Hemingway’s knocking about. If I remember
rightly, he’s either there or in Africa about now.
“Hey Anna,
do we have Michael Palin’s Hemingway series in the data banks? Excellent, be a
love and pull up the entire thing and rout it through the digital projector in
the alcove. Full speed ahead for Cuba.”
Until next
time…
Get it done.
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