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

is leaving us tomorrow; perhaps he is dreaming of his first meal at home, which he has already planned: crab. His wife will prepare it and they will sit down with their two daughters.
    â€˜One wants to be a navigator,’ he says, proudly. ‘And the other a journalist.’ Because officers may have wives or family on board for up to two months of the year, given a certain length of service, Carl-Johann reckons his daughters have had twenty-four months of sea time.
    â€˜More than most first officers!’ the Captain puts in.
    Cadiz passes somewhere to the north of us; we should see land in an hour and a half if it stays clear. Noon to four is Chris’s watch. I suggest we take a right and go down to Casablanca for some fun.
    â€˜I don’t think I have quite enough credit in the company for that,’ he says.
    Chris is as round as a buoy and he does a fine line in deadpan. He has a not-quite-concealed love of the life. His baggy shorts reveal a tattoo on his calf. In red, green and blue it shows a ship in sail, an anchor, a telescope and the legend ‘Sailors Grave’. The sailing ship means he has crossed the Atlantic, he explains. He could have a red dragon, denoting a stop in a Chinese port, ‘But that’s not so cool any more.’
    He has also earned many gold dragons, for crossing the date line.
    â€˜You could read an old sailor’s whole life in his tattoos. A leatherback turtle for crossing the equator, a blue star for going round the Cape of Good Hope. A swallow is five thousand miles at sea.’
    â€˜I could get one when we reach LA,’ I speculate.
    â€˜I’m thinking about a piece of work,’ he admits.
    â€˜How will your mother feel about that, Chris?’
    â€˜Ahh, my mum doesn’t mind, she’s cool about it. My dad won’t be too impressed.’
    Visibility is twenty-five nautical miles – fifty kilometres – to the horizon, which is notched by the smoke of a ship. It is about the limit of vision on the water, from the bridge of a ship this size (we are forty metres up) though you might see land further off.
    â€˜But we don’t see land too often,’ says Chris.
    We saw the lights of Capo St Vincente last night and this morning at dawn the low hills of Capo di Faro. Day broke ethereal, the hills sandy against a lemon sky. The light began in a rainbow across the dark horizon, a carmine band against the sea. It was Sorin’s watch and he was using the time to study, listening to a training CD about stowaways.
    â€˜Stowaways will use great ingenuity to trick you. They will lie to you and deceive you. Stowaways will attempt to befriend you and manipulate your emotions. Stay professional, stay detached. Stowaways cost the company money. Be on your guard. Prevention is better than cure.’
    This is all recited by an American woman with a voice a shade more humane than the speaking clock. It is quite chilling to picture the world’s law enforcement authorities being programmed with this stuff.
    â€˜I had stowaways,’ Sorin said. ‘In Hong Kong. Seventeen Chinese guys. They come aboard dressed as stevedores – they had help from a crew member. Hid in the bo’sun’s hatch. Hong Kong police came on, dogs and guns, took them all off. But they miss four guys – so many places to hide in a ship. But we were going to China next, so they got them there. Took them away for . . . interrogation. They had jackets with food and water in pockets. Not much, they knew they would be looked after.’
    He remarks that stowaways who choose the wrong ship are thrown overboard.
    â€˜It happens, sure. In northern latitudes you’re dead in ten minutes and no one will ever find the body.’
    No one ever did find the bodies of three Romanian stowaways, Petre Sangeorzan, Radu Danciu and Gheorghe Mihoc, who were discovered on a ship in these waters in 1996. The vessel, the
Maersk Dubai
, was owned by the