The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

He frowned. He had taken his sou’wester off and his grey hair, standing on end, gave his face a surprised, puckish look. ‘I think you’re under-rating yourself as a navigator, but you’re the boss. How much do you want me to bear up?’

‘Two points at least.’

‘There’s an old saying,’ he murmured: ‘The prudent mariner, when in doubt, should assume his dead reckoning to be correct.’ He looked at me with a quizzical lift to his bushy eyebrows. ‘We don’t want to miss Guernsey, you know.’

A mood of indecision took hold of me. Maybe it was just the strain of the long night, but I wasn’t sure what to do for the best. ‘Did you see it?’ I asked him.

‘No.’

I turned to Mike and asked him again whether he was sure it was rock he’d seen.

‘You can’t be sure of anything in this light.’

‘But you definitely saw something?’

‘Yes. I’m certain of that. And I think it had some sort of a tower on it.’

A gleam of watery sunlight filtered through the damp atmosphere, giving a furtive brightness to the cockpit. ‘Then it must be the Roches Douvres,’ I murmured.

‘Look!’ Mike cried. ‘There it is — over there.’

I followed the line of his outstretched arm. On the edge of visibility, lit by the sun’s pale gleam, was the outline of a flatfish rock with a light tower in the middle. I had the glasses on it immediately, but it was no more than a vague, misty shape — a reddish tint glimmering through the golden haze. I dived into the charthouse and snatched up the chart, staring at the shape of the Roches Douvres reef. It marked drying rock outcrops for a full mile northwest of the 92ft light tower. We must be right on the fringe of those outcrops. ‘Steer north,’ I shouted to Hal, ‘and sail her clear just as fast as you can.’

‘Aye, aye, skipper.’ He swung the wheel, calling to Mike to trim the sheets. He was looking over his shoulder at the Roches Douvres light as I came out of the charthouse. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘there’s something odd here. I’ve never actually seen the Roches Douvres, but I know the Channel Islands pretty well and I’ve never seen any rock that showed up red like that.’

I steadied myself against the charthouse and focused the glasses on it again. The gleam of sunlight had become more positive. Visibility was improving all the time. I saw it clearly then and I was almost laughing with relief. ‘It’s not a rock,’ I said. ‘It’s a ship.’ There was no doubt about it now. The rusty hull was no longer blurred, but stood out clear and sharp, and what I had taken to be a light tower was its single funnel.

We were all of us laughing with the sense of relief as we turned back on to the course. ‘Hove-to by the look of it,’ Mike said as he stopped hauling in on the main-sheet and began to coil it down.

It certainly looked like it, for now that we were back on course her position didn’t seem to have altered at all. She was lying broadside on to us as though held there by the wind and, as we closed with her and her outline became clearer, I could see that she was stationary, wallowing in the swell. Our course would leave her about half a mile to starboard. I reached for the glasses. There was something about the ship … something about her shape and her rusty hull and the way she seemed a little down at the bows.

‘Probably pumping out her bilges,’ Hal said, his voice hesitant as though he, too, were puzzled.

I focused the glasses and the outline of the vessel leaped towards me. She was an old boat with straight bows and a clean sweep to her sheer. She had an old-fashioned counter stern, an untidy clutter of derricks round her masts, and too much superstructure. Her single smoke stack, like her masts, was almost vertical. At one time she had been painted black, but now she had a rusty, uncared-for look. There was a sort of lifelessness about her that held me with the glasses to my eyes. And then I saw the lifeboat. ‘Steer straight for her, will you, Hal,’ I said.

‘Anything wrong?’ he asked, reacting immediately to the note of urgency in my voice.

‘Yes. One of the lifeboats is hanging vertically from its davits.’ It was more than that. The other davits were empty. I passed him the glasses. ‘Take a look at the for’ard davits,’ I told him and my voice trembled slightly, the birth of a strange feeling of excitement.

Soon we could see the empty davits with the naked eye and the single lifeboat hanging from the falls. ‘Looks deserted,’ Mike said. ‘And she’s quite a bit down by the bows. Do you think-’ He left the sentence unfinished. The same thought was in all our minds.

We came down on her amidships. The name at her bows was so broken up with rust streaks that we couldn’t read it. Close-to she looked in wretched shape. Her rusty bow plates were out of true, her superstructure was damaged and she was definitely down by the bows, her stern standing high so that we could see the top of her screw. A festoon of wires hung from her mast derricks. She was a cargo ship and she looked as though she’d taken a hell of a hammering.