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

Aden.
    â€˜The pirate came up behind so the Captain increase speed – twenty-seven knots. The pirate can’t keep up. He come on the radio and say “Fuck you fuck you!”’
    â€˜You see many in the Gulf of Aden,’ says the Captain. ‘Sometimes they are fishing but they are towing skiffs. They have a dual role.’
    Chris says the skiffs are no good, unstable in swell and frail beside our great mass moving at speed:
    â€˜The lowest part of the ship is the poop but the hull curves inward so they wouldn’t be able to come alongside.’
    â€˜But what if they come over the rail?’
    â€˜We would put the hoses on them and bash them,’ he says, confidently. ‘A Russian ship caught some pirates. He put them in a zodiac and cast them off. Without a motor.’
    You can imagine that Chris, Sorin or the Captain bashing anyone would leave that person insensible, but it is hard to see what use sea-water hoses would be against Kalashnikovs. Besides, my tough shipmates are not fighters in the conventional sense. It is much easier to fight someone else than it is to combat your own desires, whether you crave booze, sex, recognition or advancement. The ship offers none of these. For the duration of the voyage all you have is your job and your bunk – battlegrounds a monk would recognise.
    We ride swells from astern all day as we run south round Finisterre and parallel the Portuguese coast. It is Saturday so there is ‘Special Tea’: a tradition on merchant ships. At the head of the table are the King and Queen of Denmark. They look slightly pained, perhaps at the necessity of wearing traditional ornamentation over contemporary evening dress. The awkward and dutiful air emanating from the portraits is echoed along the table they survey. At Special Tea everyone eats together: officers and cadets at the Captain’s table, and crew at the other, normally unused, table in the same room. There is much less life and noise than when they are in their own mess, round the corner. Avocado and prawns are followed by steak and chips. Everyone plugs away at the food with enthusiasm but there is a definite feeling that many of us would rather be next door, jammed in, forced to accommodate elbows and meet requests for the salt.
    We do our best.
    â€˜Steak, chips, green beans!’
    (For all that I am the company’s official writer in residence, taking no money from them, and working industriously with notebook and microphone, I am a beneficiary of these men’s work, and feel at mealtimes like a guest in an extremely unusual hotel, and find myself praising the meal as one would at a host’s table.)
    Rohan raises an eyebrow, grins.
    â€˜All we need is a good glass of red . . .’
    There is a deal of feeling in the faces responding to this. The Captain was not joking about his plan to go out for a ‘nice fish and a glass of water’ in Algeciras. For the duration of your voyage you cannot even drink on shore.
    â€˜When they brought in the no-alcohol policy they had to put some of the captains and mates through rehab,’ Chris says. ‘They couldn’t afford to lose them but they had to dry them out.’
    We see whales after supper. The Captain hums and says, suddenly: ‘I want to get that whale and take him home to my wife.’
    He offers no further explanation.
    CAPTAIN IS SLEEPING says the sign on his door, the following afternoon. We are arrowing across a glittering paradise of sea. Our wake is the only flaw on its flashing surfaces, our smoke the only stain in the air’s pavilions above. A sailing ship, now that would be the thing! But it is such a day, such a hot afternoon, with the sun bright beyond every doorway, that you imagine we might just be forgiven our pounding diesel. You can believe it as long as you do not look at the long banner, like a burned belch, stretching away behind our funnel.
    Carl-Johann is sleeping too. He