The Black Tide

I went through all his charts that showed any part of Africa and in the end I was no better off than I had been with the lighthouse keeper’s atlas. It had to be the last stretch, even as far north as the Bay of Biscay, but more likely somewhere in the neighbourhood of those Spanish and Portuguese islands off the coast of Spanish Sahara and Morocco. And of these the Desertas and the Seivagens, being without water and therefore more or less deserted, seemed most likely. But even then, with the pilot book open in front of me, I didn’t see it. Like the chart, it referred to both groups of islands by their Portuguese names. There was no indication that there might be an anglicized version of the name Selvagen.

A pair of sea boots appeared in the companionway to my right and the owner leaned his head down, peering over my shoulder. ‘Ah; I see you’re reading up on the Madeira-Canaries passage, but I doubt whether your friends would have put into either the Desertas or the Seivagens. No water, no safe anchorage and both of them bloody inhospitable groups of islands by

all accounts. Never been there myself, but our vice-commodore now, he went to the Selvagens I seem to remember — 1980, I think…’ He went past me into the saloon, putting on a pair of half-spectacles and peering along a battened-in shelf of books. ‘Here we are.’ He handed me a carefully plastic-wrapped copy of the Royal Cruising Club Journal. ‘There’s a glimpse of what he calls the Salvage Islands. A little more descriptive than the Pilot.’

It was a short piece, barely two pages, but it was the title that caught and held my attention — A Look at the Salvage Islands. ‘We sailed two days ago from Funchal…’ Averaging probably no more than 100 miles a day, that was in line with the Pilot which gave the distance from the southern-most of the Desertas to Selvagem Grande as 135 miles. The names were the same, too, except for the m where it was singular — Selvagem Grande and Selvagem Pequena and, so that there should be no doubt whatsoever, he had written, ‘I had always hoped to visit the Salvage (Salvagen) Islands.’ He must have got the English name from somewhere and my guess was the Navy — at some time in the distant past British sailors had anglicized it and called them the Salvage Islands, just as they had called He d’Ouessant off the Brittany coast of France Ushant. And looking at the Atlantic Ocean Chart 2127 I saw that there the group were named the Salvagen Is — an a instead of an e.

Was that what Choffel had meant when he talked of salvage? Was it the Salvagen Islands he had been referring to?

There was Selvagem Grande and Selvagem Pequena, and an even smaller one called Fora. And I remembered that a mate I had served under had once described them to me as we were steaming between Gibraltar and Freetown — ‘Spooky,’ he had said of the smaller Selvagem. ‘The most godforsaken spooky bit of a volcanic island I ever saw.’ And reading the Journal, here was this yachtsman’s daughter using almost the same words — ‘Spooksville,’ she had called it, and there had been the wrecked hulk of a supertanker hung on the rocks, her father claiming he had never seen a more dreadful place.

‘They were on their way to the Caribbean,’ the owner said. ‘Just two of them on the leg south from Madeira to the Canaries.’ He gave me another drink, chatting to me for a while. Then a doctor arrived and I left him to the sad business of finding out what was wrong with his wife. There had been just the two of them and it was the finish of their second circumnavigation.

I phoned Forthright’s from the station, making it a personal call on reverse charges. Fortunately Saltley was in, but when I told him about the Salvage Islands, be said he and Stewart had already considered that possibility and had read the piece in the RCC Journal. In fact, they had chartered a small plane out of Madeira to make a recce of the islands and he had received the pilot’s report that morning. The only unker anywhere near the islands was the wreck stranded on the rocks of Selvagem Pequena. ‘Pity you’ve no date for the rendezvous. It means somebody

keeping watch out there.’ He checked that I was at Balkaer and said he’d be in touch when he’d spoken to Michael Stewart again.

It was almost dark when I got back to the cottage and there was a note pinned to the door. It was in Jean’s handwriting. Saltley had phoned and it was urgent. I trudged back up the hill and she handed me the message without a word. I was to take the next ferry out of Plymouth for Roscoff in Brittany and then make my way to Gibraltar via Tangier. ‘At Gibraltar he says you can hide up on a yacht called Prospero which you’ll find berthed in the marina.’ And Jean added, ‘It’s important, Trevor.’ Her hand was on my arm, her face, staring up at me, very serious. ‘Jimmy will drive you there tonight.’

‘What’s happened,’ I asked. ‘What else did he say?’