Read Online Down to the Sea in Ships by Horatio Clare - Free Book Online

green, the sea is green, the air is green . . .’
    Two more whales surface, one briefly close to the ship before it vanishes, and another. Humpbacks, I think at first: they are like two humpbacks I saw once, but how alike? Just as whaley, certainly. At least twenty different species have been seen in these waters. Humpback sightings are not common. They could be fin whales, they have that great length, and give an impression of U-boat-like narrowness, and we saw swept dorsal fins. But they are the eighth and ninth whales I have ever seen, not counting the Blue in the Natural History Museum. I could be quite confident of identifying that. These beasts surface seventy miles south of La Chapelle Bank as we head south west across the Biscay Abyssal Plain, with four kilometres of water below the keel. The sun puts out its flare path and dusk comes on.
    Another whale passes us in a whale-coloured sea, ominous and dark grey. Its singularity recalls Shakespeare’s sketch of a crocodile in
Antony and Cleopatra
. Antony has been drinking when he mocks Lepidus with a description which would certainly go for this whale:
    â€˜It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad as it hath breadth. It is just so high as it is, and moves with its own organs. It lives by that which nourishes it, and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.’
    â€˜What colour is it?’
    â€˜Of its own colour, too.’
    All we see is one long heave of the great beast’s back, heading north. The sight brings two planets into overlap. Only when you see a whale do you catch a glimpse of theirs, given scale by an inhabitant, a huge native; only then does its full wilderness, its wide desolation, strike.
    It is Shubd’s watch. He agrees with Sorin: of all the countries he has visited (excluding India, naturally) New Zealand is the best, for three excellent reasons: ‘It is extremely nice and extremely beautiful and the people there are most friendly, yes, they are extremely helpful, very kind, you know.’
    We look at the moon through binoculars. The seas of tranquillity, the craters and the ridges beyond the shadow line are no stranger than this world we cross. The whole orb of it hangs there, not far above the horizon and huge, so close. Yesterday the crescent was gold; tonight silver-white.
    â€˜Do you like cricket?’ Shubd asks, hopefully.
    Shubd would like to be a District Administrator. He says this is a very good job. He looks as though he would make a wonderful District Administrator, too; round-faced, hair neatly parted, his expression open, ready smiling and fair. We talk about women, about love, about ports, stars and ghosts. Shubd tells tales of thousand-kilometre train rides to see his girl, and of his brother’s encounter with a haunted house where a spectral party was in progress.
    Tonight’s action includes the overtaking of the
African River
. We can see her lights one point (ten degrees) off the starboard bow. The computer gives her course, speed and destination – Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Our next waypoint, the next point at which we will change course, is 260 nautical miles away, off Finisterre.
    We wake to a morning of rains. You see each squall coming a long way away, a lump of darkness like a giant mushroom, black water at its base. As the gloom reaches us Sorin appears suddenly on a walkway below the bridge, checking the reefers. The ship sways; the rain rags down; Sorin concentrates, acknowledging the conditions with the slightest frown as the water streams down his specs. Every other chief officer and bo’sun and first mate who ever crossed this sea looked the same way, you realise, as he stared straight through whatever it threw at him, at whatever had to be done.
    After the rain comes a blue clear and a bright-skied afternoon. Marlon makes tea in the crew mess. Marlon was chased by a pirate. He was on the
Albert Maersk
doing twenty-two knots across the Gulf of