Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley (29 page)

Read Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley Online

Authors: Kenneth Roberts,Jack Bales,Richard Warner

Tags: #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc., #Nottingham (Galley) - Fiction, #Transportation, #Historical, #Boon Island (Me.) - Fiction, #Boon Island, #18th Century, #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc - Fiction, #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc, #Shipwrecks, #Fiction, #Literary, #Sea Stories, #Historical Fiction, #Shipwrecks - Maine - Boon Island - History - 18th Century - Fiction, #test, #Boon Island (Me.), #General, #Maine, #History

BOOK: Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley
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Page 172
The bow fell off to larboard, and the vessel sickeningly rolled and rose up and up on a monstrous wave.
"Get your helm to
starboard
!
Starboard!
" Captain Dean screamed.
The raucous wet humming all around us deepened to a menacing all-pervasive rumble, overwhelming, stomach-shakingand the enormous comber on which the ship was riding seemed to hurl her forward.
She struck with a crash that threw me to the decka crash so loud that my brain crackled, and among the splinters was a faint hope that if any man lived within a mile of where we struck, he would be wakened by that dreadful sound and hurry to help us.
The rumbling, roaring thunder of which we seemed to be the center was the sound of breakers pounding at the unseen rocks on which the
Nottingham
shuddered and grated; and even in my despairing panic I had quick thoughtsif the disjointed fragments that flutter in a man's mind in an emergency can be called thoughts:
... that Langman's repeated insistence that Captain Dean had all along intended to run the
Nottingham
ashore now seemed to be true, but was in truth more untrue than ever:
... that never, in all our weeks of sailing against adverse winds, had we ever heard anything approaching the deafening tumult that now surrounded us:
... that nothing made by man could withstand the hammer blows that beat upon the
Nottingham's
weather side to pour torrents of icy water and slashing spray across her canted deckand yet that this shore upon which we had struck had been here, unharmed, since the world began,
 
Page 173
in spite of innumerable stormsthat among the crevices of those rocks were living things that would survive these pounding waves ... and that perhaps we ourselves would similarly survive.
The
Nottingham's
stern was higher than the bow, as if bent on thrusting her stern more solidly against the shore, and the waist of the ship seemed filled with struggling figures, striving to reach the after cabin.
I found Neal pushing at Swede's buttocks: found a rope-end to which to cling: ran into Chips Bullock, with an axe and a hammer in one hand and his workbag in the other, making his way along the weather rail.
A breaker curled over the bulwarks, hit him squarely, and sent him sliding down the steep deck and into a gun carriage. My rope-end let me reach him, take his axe and hammer and pull him to his feet.
"My workbag!" he shouted. "Spikes! Nails!" He fell to his knees, scrabbling in the scuppers for his workbag. Another wash of icy foam struck us. By the grace of my rope-end we clawed free of the scuppers and pushed and pulled each other to the cabin companion.
The cabin was like a room insecurely poised on one of its corners, and something about a structure so tilted throws a man off balance, both physically and mentally. Every person in it is dizzy and, unless he holds to something, falls down: his mind, too, is so addled that he thinks he can stand, and so gets to his feet only to fall immediately, like a wounded pigeon.
The dark deck had been bad enough, what with waves, the icy torrents that drenched us, the crunching of the ship as she thumped upon the rocks; but the inside of the
 
Page 174
cabin was worse, and for the first time in my life I knew terror, as I think each of the fourteen of us knew it, even though some concealed it.
A single lamp still burned dimly, shuddering in its gimbals. Only Captain Dean was on his feet, supporting himself by the rudder case. The others were on the floor, some trying to rise, only to reel down again: the others just lying there. Cooky Sipper was moaning.
I found that if I closed my eyes the strange tilt of the room had next to no effect upon me. I could crawl to the cabin wall and pull myself erect by clinging to it. I made my discovery known to Neal and Swede and Chips.
Langman, when we crawled in, was striving to make himself heard by Captain Dean. "You were bound to do it from the very first!" he was shouting. "You've been looking for a chance to run her ashore since the day we left the convoy! You planned it!"
"Don't be a damn fool!" Captain Dean shouted back. "This is no time for such stuff as that! I want every man in this cabin to pray."
"Pray?" Langman demanded, and his voice was a squeal. "You think God's going to come down here and pull us off these rocks after you've put us on them?"
Captain Dean smashed his fist against the rudder case. "All right! All right! I put you here! All I know is there was no land on the course I plotted from Cape Porpoise, and there was no lookout forward when you had the deck. Now pray!"
"Pray?" Langman shouted again. "How's that going to help us? Nothing can help us, now you've gone and run us ashore!"
 
Page 175
"Don't pray for help!" the captain told him. "Pray for the strength to help yourself! Strength!"
The whole ship sagged sickeningly to one side: reeled even more sickeningly to the other: a sea that must have been enormous struck her side with such force that my eardrums felt thrust against my throbbing brain. A splitting sound came from beneath us, and the cabin floor fluttered.
"Oh, God!" Captain Dean said, "give each man the strength to stand upon his feet and stretch out a helping hand to every other man. Say it, every last one of you, and mean it! God give me strength! Say it, Langman."
"God give me strength," Langman said.
"Again!" Captain Dean shouted. "Everyone! God give me strength!"
The men's voices quavered, thin and bird-like through the sounds of the smashing seas.
The whole after part of the ship straightened a little, then seemed to slide downhill.
"Get on deck," Captain Dean cried. "Get up and get out before she breaks in two or slides off." He reached out and pulled Chips to his feet. ''Use your axe! Swede! Miles! Go with him! Cut the weather shrouds and ratlins! If the masts fall toward the land, we may have a chance! If they don't fall, chop the foremast!" He flung Chips toward the companionway. Swede and I followed him.
Behind us Captain Dean stormed among the men, kicking them and hauling them to their feet.
The task of cutting those shrouds and ratlinsof keeping a foothold on that steep and slippery deckwas difficult beyond belief. We couldn't trust ourselves on the chains because of the smashing of the waves against the
 
Page 176
side. For a time Chips insisted he could stand on the bulwarks and swing his axe. We hoisted him up to let him thrust a foot through the ratlins. He hooked his other leg around a stay, but when he swung his axe, one of those roaring towering breakers foamed against him and blinded us. When the foam subsided, Chips was in the scuppers once more, but still clinging to his axe.
We tried holding Chips pinned against the bulwarks with our shoulders; but the unending slash of icy foam and the driving snow numbed me: must have numbed Chips, too, for he couldn't seem to swing the axe.
"Give me that axe," Swede shouted. "We've got to get ashore somehow! Stand under me. When I fall, catch me if you can."
He pushed the axe handle inside his breeches, put an arm around Neal's shoulders, bellowed, "We'll be all right"; then went up the inside of the ratlins like a big spider. We lost him at once in the snow and the flying spray, but felt the jarring of his axe against the riggingand then, suddenly, he came sprawling down among us. Almost in the same moment the foremast went over the side with a splintering crash. Then the mainmast went, and the ship rolled on her side to surge soggily as if agonized by the pounding of those roaring breakers.
"Look for the axe!" Swede said. "I threw it to leeward when I fell!"
"To hell with the axe," Chips said. "Get ashore! Wherever people live we can find another axe."
I agreed with him. We could have hunted forever for that axe or for Chips's workbag in the darkness and on that glacial deck.
 
Page 177
"I'll go first," Swede said. "I want Neal close behind me. I want Miles behind Neal."
He left us, and we felt rather than saw him inching along the mast. We crawled out after him. Ratlins and shrouds were tangled around it. The foretop was like a fence to be climbed, but we climbed it.
The tip of the mast rested against something solid. That something was seaweed, and beneath the seaweed were rockssolid, immovable rocks.
We were safe, I thought, secure from those bellowing breakers; and even as I write the words "safe" and "secure," I feel a sort of shame for those who, like myself, could let themselves think that there is ever any such thing as safety and security.
The seaweed was so slippery that if a person upon it was unable to see where to step, he staggered, he lurched, his feet went out from under him, pitching him upon his face or, even worse, wrenchingly upon his back.
Under the thick mop of seaweed that covered the rocks against which the foremast truck rested there were countless barnacles. When we put out our hands to break our falls, which were constant, the barnacles slashed our fingers, wrists and knees.
Eventually slipping and feeling our way up that treacherous shore, hopeful of removing ourselves from the unending roaring of the breakers, we came to naked ice-covered rocks on which no seaweed grew. To me that meant we were above high-water mark. Now we were truly safeor so I idiotically thought again.
I caught at Swede's wet coat. "Swede," I said, "we'll have to find shelter from this snow and wind." Not only
 
Page 178
was the snow plastering itself against our faces with a force that numbed us, but the snow was mixed with spindrift, so that it seemed twice as cold as anything could be.
"Go to the left," I told Swede. "I'll go to the right. Chips can walk straight ahead. Let's leave Neal here to shout to us in case we're lost. Leave Chips's hammer with Neal, too, so Chips won't lose it when he falls. Hunt for trees or bushesany kind of shelter. Anythinganything at all. Even an old shed, or a pigpen, or an overhanging ledge. Or a fence or a clump of thick grass. Or a hill. If you can find a hill, we can get in its lee. That would be better than nothing."
We blundered off into the thick, roaring dark. The tumultuous sea seemed to thunder from every direction. The footing, in that darkness, was nothing but rockround boulders; sharp boulders; low irregular ledges, all slippery with a half-inch coat of ice.
Rocks turned beneath my feet; spilled me into pockets between them. The pockets had razor-like crushed seashells at their bottoms. The naked rocks were worse than the seaweed-covered ones on which we had landed, for when I fell I had the feeling that a leg or an arm must break.
These rocks, I thought, must lead to some sort of beach, or a marsh, or a field. Instead of that, my groping hands again felt seaweed. Either the coast had turned, or I had become confused and turned myself. I bore more sharply to the left, to escape that damnable seaweed that was even more slippery than ice, though more cushiony.
After all this exertion, this fever of activity, this terror of the pelting snow and flying foamyes, and of the un-
 
Page 179
ending menacing crashing of the seamy mouth and throat were like leather. In desperation I chipped ice from one of the boulders and sucked at it. It was almost fresh, with only the faintest trace of saltiness.
While I stood there, chipping more ice and crunching it to bits, I heard a thin piping aheada faint wailing or squeaking, dim amid all the uproar of the breakers. It might have been a sea bird: it might have been the screaking of one rock driven by a breaker against another.
I held my breath and listenedand heard it again: a faint call.
I crawled even more to my left, feeling for boulders, cutting my hands on barnacles, skirting ledges; easing myself head first to the tops of rocks: then lowering myself feet first on the far side.
On thus mounting a ledge I found myself looking down into a black cavity in which there was noise and movement and from which, as I balanced there, burst a desperate bellow, a prolonged "Hullooo!" from many voices.
"I'm Whitworth," I shouted into that black void.
I heard Langman's voice. "Whitworth makes nine. Where's Captain Dean? Where's Neal Butler? Where's Swede? Where's Chips? Where's Cooky Sipper?"
"I know where Neal is," I said. "I'll get him. I sent Swede to the left to hunt shelter when we got above high-water mark. I sent Chips straight out."
"Shout," Langman said. "One, two, three; Hulloooo!
I joined in their shout with all my heart and strength, realizing horribly, as I did so, that the faint sound I had heard a few short minutes before had been the concerted bellowing of eight men, yet that outcry had carried only

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