The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

Slowly Sea Witch righted herself as the water poured off her in a white foam. I still had hold of the wheel and Mike was clutching the backstay runner, shouting obscenities at the top of his voice. His words came to me as a frail sound against the solid thumping of the ship’s engines. And then another sound emerged out of the night — the steady thrashing of a propeller partly clear of the water.

I shouted to Mike, but he had already realised the danger and had switched the Aldis on again. Its brilliant light showed us plates pitted deep with rust and a weed-grown Plimsoll mark high above the water. Then the plates curved up to the stern and we could see the propeller blades slashing at the waves, thumping the water into a swirling froth. Sea Witch trembled, sails slack. Then she slid off the back of a wave into that mill race and the blades were whirling close along our port side, churning white water over the cabin top, flinging it up into the mainsail.

It was like that for a moment and then they flailed off into the darkness beyond the bowsprit and we were left pitching in the broken water of the ship’s wake. The Aldis beam picked out her name — MARY DEARE — Southampton. We stared dazedly at her rust-streaked lettering while the stern became shadowy and then vanished abruptly. Only the beat of her engines remained then, throbbing gently and gradually dying away into the night. A faint smell of burning lingered on for a while in the damp air. ‘Bastards!’ Mike shouted, suddenly finding his voice. ‘Bastards!’ He kept on repeating the word.

The door of the charthouse slid back, and a figure emerged. It was Hal. ‘Are you boys all right?’ His voice — a little too calm, a little too cheerful — shook slightly.

‘Didn’t you see what happened?’ Mike cried.

‘Yes, I saw,’ he replied.

‘They must have seen us. I was shining the Aldis straight at the bridge. If they’d been keeping a lookout-’

‘I don’t think they were keeping a lookout. In fact, I don’t think there was anybody on the bridge.’ It was said so quietly that for a moment I didn’t realise the implication.

‘How do you mean — nobody on the bridge?’ I asked.

He came out on to the deck then. ‘It was just before the bow wave hit us. I knew something was wrong and I’d got as far as the charthouse. I found myself looking out through the window along the beam of the Aldis lamp. It was shining right on to the bridge. I don’t think there was anybody there. I couldn’t see anybody.’

‘But good God!’ I said. ‘Do you realise what you’re saying?’

‘Yes, of course, I do.’ His tone was peremptory, a little military. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it?’

He wasn’t the sort of man to make up a thing like that. H. A. Lowden — Hal to all his friends — was an ex-gunner, a colonel retired, who spent most of the summer months ocean racing. He had a lot of experience of the sea.

‘Do you mean to say you think there was nobody in control of that ship?’ Mike’s tone was incredulous.

‘I don’t know,’ Hal answered. ‘It seems incredible. But all I can say is that I had a clear view of the interior of the bridge for an instant and, as far as I could see, there was nobody there.’

We didn’t say anything for a moment. I think we were all too astonished. The idea of a big ship ploughing her way through the rock-infested seas so close to the French-coast without anybody at the helm … It was absurd.

Mike’s voice, suddenly practical, broke the silence. ‘What happened to those mugs of soup?’ The beam of the Aldis lamp clicked on, revealing the mugs lying in a foot of water at the bottom of the cockpit. ‘I’d better go and make another brew.’ And then to Hal who was standing, half-dressed, his body braced against the charthouse: ‘What about you, Colonel? You’d like some soup, wouldn’t you?’

Hal nodded. ‘I never refuse an offer of soup.’ He watched Mike until he had gone below and then he turned to me. ‘I don’t mind admitting it now that we’re alone,’ he said, ‘but that was a very unpleasant moment. How did we come to be right across her bows like that?’

I explained that the ship had been downwind from us and we hadn’t heard the beat of her engines. ‘The first we saw of her was the green of her starboard navigation light coming at us out of the mist.’

‘No fog signal?’

‘We didn’t hear it, anyway.’

‘Odd!’ He stood for a moment, his long body outlined against the port light, and then he came aft and seated himself beside me on the cockpit coaming. ‘Had a look at the barometer during your watch?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘What’s it doing?’