The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

For a long time we had been conscious of movement, a rising and falling of the steel walls that coincided with the gunfire bursts of the waves crashing against the hull below us. But now there was a shifting and a grating of the keel. It was a sound felt rather than heard, for nothing was really audible except the incredible, overwhelming noise of the sea. And then gradually it lessened. Spray ceased to come in through the window. The door blew open with a crash. The Mary Deare had struggled free of the sea bed and was turning head to wind.

I looked out and saw that Grune a Croc was no longer on the port bow, but away to starboard. The Mary Deare was afloat. The movement was easier now, the noise of the sea less terrifying. The high stern was acting as a steadying sail and she was bows-on to the breaking waves. I could hear them thundering against the bridge deck, see them burst in a great cloud of spray, forcing water through every opening of the bridge housing as the broken tops swept by on either side. And all the time Grune a Croc was fading away.

I shouted to Patch that we were clear and he came out from the cabin and stood looking at the incredible sight — a wreck floating with her decks streaming rivers of water and sloped down so that all the fore part of her was below the waves. ‘We’re clear,’ I cried. ‘If we clear Les Sauvages we’re all right.’

He looked at me. I think he was considering leaving me in ignorance. But then he said, ‘It must be very near high water.’

I nodded. ‘Just about,’ I said. And then it came to me: for six solid hours after high water the tide would be north-and west-going — driving us back on to the Minkies, back on to the Minkies at low water with all the reefs exposed. ‘God Almighty!’ I breathed, and I went back into the cabin and lay down on the bunk.

The hell of it was, there was nothing we could do — not a single damn’ thing we could do to help ourselves.

We struck towards dusk in a maelstrom of white water where there wasn’t a single rock showing. I don’t know whether I was asleep or merely lying there on the bunk in a sort of daze, but the shock of our hitting threw me to the floor. It came like the blow of a mailed fist, a fearful crash up for’ard and then a slow crunching as the plates gave and the rocks disembowelled her; and the thunder of the seas became suddenly louder, more overwhelming.

I lay quite still where I had fallen, feeling the probing teeth of the rocks through my whole body, expecting every moment that the waves would engulf us as she slid under. But nothing happened, except that a thin mist of spray touched my face as it drifted over the ship and the grinding, gut-tearing sound went on so continuously that it became a part of the general uproar of the sea.

The cabin floor was canted over and, as I got to my feet, a sudden shifting of the ship flung me through the door and I fetched up against the bulkhead with a sickening thud that wrenched at my arm and drove the breath out of my body. I saw the ship then, and the pain didn’t seem to matter any more. She was lying heeled over, all the length of her clear against a boiling background of surf. Her bridge-deck was a twisted, broken mass of wreckage, the funnel gone, the fore-mast snapped off halfway up and hanging loose in a tangle of derrick wires. And over all the for’ard half of her the seas broke and rolled and tumbled incessantly.

Patch was lying, half-reclined against the steel plates of the deckhouse entrance and I shouted to him: ‘How long …’ The words seemed to get caught up in my throat.

‘Before she goes?’

‘Yes. How long?’

‘God knows.’

We didn’t talk after that, but stayed there, too cold and tired and fascinated to move, watching as the first jagged points of the reef showed through the foam. The weary half light faded very slowly into darkness. We heard the bows break off; a protracted agony of tortured metal, tearing and rending up there beyond the wreck of the bridge-deck. And then the remainder of the ship lifted slightly as it was freed of their weight, shifting across the saw-edged rocks with a terrible trembling and groaning. We could see the bows then, a black wedge out in the break of the waves to port, with cargo spilling out of a cavern of a hole where the plates had been torn open. Bales of cotton bobbed about in the white water and the waves played with the great square cases that were supposed to contain aero engines, smashing them to matchwood on the reef.

Patch gripped my arm. ‘Look!’ he shouted. A case had been flung towards us and it was splitting open. The contents cascaded into the sea. God knows what it was. The light by then was very dim. But it certainly wasn’t the solid lump of an aero engine.