The Black Tide

Prudence can’t compete with the lethargic urge to leave things as they are, and so I went plunging on into the night, relying on being able to pick up the automatic light on top of the headland, ignoring the nagging doubt in my mind that said it was probably out of order. If I hadn’t been so tired; if I hadn’t had the urgent need to contact the authorities and get a message out to the world about the Aurora B; if the wind had only died — at least, not backed so much into the south where it shouldn’t have been at this time of the year; if the light had been working or I had taken into consideration that with the wind south of west there might be an onshore set to the current… If — if — if! Disasters are full of ifs, and I was a trained deck officer with a master’s certificate — I should have known, even if I wasn’t a sailing man. The sea never forgives an error of judgment, and this was an error due to tiredness. I was so goddam weary, and that

brute of a sail, bellied out to port like a black bat’s wing against the stars.

It came at me when I was half asleep, the roar of breaking waves and a darkness looming over the bows, blotting out the stars. In an instant I was wide awake, my heart in my mouth and the adrenalin flowing as I hauled on the tiller rope, dragging the heavy steering bar over to port. Slowly, very slowly the dhow turned its high bow into the wind. I thought she’d never make it, that she’d fall off and go plunging away downwind and into the cliffs, but she came up into the wind at last, and there she hung. She wouldn’t go through it on to the other tack. And if she had, then I realized the lateen rig required the whole spar to be tipped up vertically and man-handled round the mast. An impossible task for one man with the wind blowing 5 or 6.

I didn’t move fast enough. I can see that now. I should have secured the helm and hauled in on the sheet until the sail was set flat and as tight in as it would go. But even then I don’t know that she’d have completed the tack. Not with just the one sail, and anyway I couldn’t be in two places at once. The wind, close inshore, was so strong it was all I could do to manage the tiller, and when she wouldn’t go through the wind, I just stayed there, my mind a blank, the sail flogging in giant whipcracks, the sea and the waves all contributing to the confusion of noise, and the dhow taken virtually aback, driving astern towards the surf breaking in a phosphorescent lather of light.

And while I crouched there, hauling on the tiller

which was already hard over, I watched appalled as the bows fell away to port, the lateen filling with a clap like thunder and the dhow lying over, driving virtually sideways into a maelstrom of broken water, and the cliffs above me looming taller and taller, half the stars in the sky blotted out and the movement of the deck under me suddenly very wild.

We struck at 02.27.1 know that because I checked my watch, an action that was entirely automatic, as though I were in the wheelhouse of a proper ship with instruments to check and the log to fill in. We had hit a rock, not the cliffs. The cliffs I could vaguely see, a black mass looming above white waters. There was a thud and the rending sound of timbers breaking, and we hung there in a welter of broken waves with spray blowing over us and the dhow pounding and tearing itself to bits.

I had no idea where I was, whether it was the Gwadar Peninsula we had hit, or some other part of the coast. And there was nothing I could do. I was completely helpless, watching, dazed, as the prow swung away to port, everything happening in slow motion and with a terrible inevitability, timbers splintering amidships, a gap in the deck opening up and steadily widening as the vessel was literally torn apart. Years of neglect and blazing heat had rendered the planks and frames of her hull too brittle to stand the pounding and she gave up without any pretence of a struggle, the mainmast crashing down, the great sail like a winged banner streaming away to drown in the boiling seas. Then the for’ard half of the dhow

broke entirely away. One moment it was there, a part of the ship, the next it was being swept into oblivion like a piece of driftwood. For a moment I could see it still, a dark shape against the white of broken water, and then suddenly it was gone.