The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

It was a queer moment. Patch was still standing there at the wheel, still staring out ahead with set face and the knuckles of his hands white with the violence of his grip on the wheel spokes. The wheelhouse looked exactly the same, and for’ard, through the glass windows, the bows remained submerged with the waves rolling across them. The deck under my feet still pulsed with life. Nothing had changed; only that we were now motionless and at rest.

Trembling, I wiped the cold sweat from my fore head with my hand. We were aground on the Minkies now. I felt a sense of finality. I turned and looked at him. He seemed dazed. His face, where it had been wiped clear of coal dust, was chalk-white, his dark eyes staring. He was gazing out across the tumbled waste of the sea. ‘I did what I could,’ he breathed. And then again, louder: ‘God in heaven, I did what I could.’ There was no blasphemy in the way he said it; only the sense of a man in torment. And finally his hands dropped slackly from the spokes of the wheel as though relinquishing at last his command of the ship and he turned away and walked, slowly and deliberately in the manner of a sleepwalker, through into the chartroom.

I pulled myself together then and followed him.

He was bent over the chart and he didn’t look up. A wave crashed against the ship’s side, throwing a solid mass of water against the chartroom window, momentarily blocking out the daylight. As it fell away he pulled the log book towards him and, picking up the pencil, began to write. When he had finished, he closed the book and straightened up, as though he had written Finis to that section of his life. His eyes came slowly round and met mine. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I should have explained what I was going to do.’ He was like a man woken from a dream and suddenly rational. ‘It was a question of hitting the tide just right.’

‘But we should have headed towards St Malo.’ I was still dazed, a little stupid — I didn’t understand.

‘In just over two hours, if we’d lasted that long, the tide would have turned and driven us north across the reefs.’ He slid the chart along the table towards me. ‘See for yourself,’ he said. ‘The only chance was to beach her here.’ And he put his pencil on the spot where the ship was lying.

It was about a mile south of the main body of the reefs in an area showing 2V4 fathoms depth at low water. ‘That rock away on the port bow is Grune a Croc,’ he said. It was marked as drying 36 ft. ‘And you’ll probably find Maitresse He just visible away to starboard.’ His pencil point rested for a moment on the high point to the east of the main reefs. ‘At low water it should be reasonably sheltered in here.’ He threw the pencil down and straightened up, stretching himself and rubbing his eyes. ‘Well, that’s that.’ There was finality and the acceptance of disaster in the way he said it. ‘I’m going to get some sleep.’ He went past me then without another word, through into the wheelhouse. I heard his feet on the companion ladder descending to the deck below. I hadn’t said anything or tried to stop him. I was too tired to question him now. My head throbbed painfully and the mention of sleep had produced in me an intense desire to close my eyes and slide into oblivion.

I paused on my way through the wheelhouse and stood looking out on the grey, desolate sea-scape of rock and broken water. It was queer to stand there by the wheel with the feel of the engines under my feet, knowing all the time that we were hard aground on the worst reef in the English Channel. Everything in the wheelhouse seemed so normal. It was only when I looked out through the windows and saw the rocks emerging from the tide and the ship’s bows no more than a vague outline below the creaming break of the waves that I was able to comprehend what had happened.

But for six hours or more we should be safe; until the rising tide exposed us again to the full force of the seas. I turned and made my way below, moving as though in a dream, like a sleepwalker. Everything seemed vague and a little remote and I staggered slightly, still balancing automatically to the roll of a ship which was now as steady as a rock. As I reached my cabin I felt the beat of the engines slow and stop. Either we had exhausted the steam or else he had gone below and stopped the engines himself. It didn’t seem to matter either way. We shouldn’t be wanting the engines again, or the pumps. Nothing seemed to matter to me then but sleep.

That sleep should have been possible in those circumstances may seem incredible, but having thought him mad and then found him, not only sane, but capable of an extraordinary feat of seamanship, I had confidence in his statement that we should be sheltered as the tide fell. In any case, there was nothing I could do; we had no boats, no hope of rescue in the midst of those reefs, and the gale was at its height.