Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (3 page)

“We’re in the Gulf now,” one of my mates said when I awoke for breakfast on February 26. The day before, I had felt a little apprehensive about the weather in the Gulf of Mexico, but the destroyer, although it was rolling a little, slid along smoothly. I was happy that my fears had proved unfounded, and I went up on deck. The coastline had disappeared. Only the green sea and the blue sky stretched out ahead. Nevertheless, Miguel Ortega, pale and sickly-looking, was seated in the middle of the deck, struggling with seasickness. It had started sometime earlier, while the lights of Mobile were still visible, and for the last twenty-four hours Ortega had not been able to stand up, despite the fact that he wasn’t a novice seaman.

Ortega had served in Korea, on the frigate
Almirante Padilla
. He had traveled a great deal and knew the sea well. But even though the Gulf was calm, he had to be helped from his station at the change of watch. He seemed
to be in agony. He could not tolerate food, and his companions on watch had propped him up at the stern until they got an order to remove him to his bunk. Later he was stretched out there, face down, with his head hanging over the side, waiting to vomit.

I think it was Ramón Herrera who told me, on the night of the twenty-sixth, that things would get worse when we reached the Caribbean. According to our calculations, we would be leaving the Gulf of Mexico after midnight. At my watch station in front of the torpedo tubes, I thought optimistically about our arrival in Cartagena. The night was clear, and the high, round sky was filled with stars. From the time I joined the Navy, I had made a habit of identifying the stars, and that night I enjoyed doing it as the
Caldas
serenely made its way toward the Caribbean.

I think that an old sailor who has traveled the whole world can determine by the movement of his ship which sea he is sailing. My experience of the place where I had done my first sea duty told me we were in the Caribbean. I looked at my watch; it was half past midnight on the morning of February 27. I would have known we were in the Caribbean even if the ship wasn’t rolling so much. But now I began to feel upset. I had a strange sense of premonition. And without knowing why, I thought of Chief Ortega, who was down below in his bunk, with his stomach in his mouth.

At six o’clock the destroyer began pitching violently. Luis Rengifo was awake, one bunk below me.

“Fatso,” he asked me, “haven’t you gotten sick yet?”

I said no, but I admitted I was worried. Rengifo, who, as I’ve said, was an engineer—very studious and a good seaman—explained why it was unlikely that something could happen to the
Caldas
in the Caribbean. “It’s a wolf
ship,” he said. And then I remembered that during the war the destroyer had sunk a German submarine in these same waters.

“It’s a safe ship,” Luis Rengifo said. And, lying in my bunk, unable to sleep because of the rocking of the ship, I felt reassured by his words. But the wind grew stronger on the port side, and I imagined what might happen to the
Caldas
in those tremendous breakers. At that moment I remembered
The Caine Mutiny
.

But the weather hadn’t changed all day, and our voyage was normal. When I relieved the watch, I kept busy thinking about what I would do when we reached Cartagena. First, I would write to Mary. I thought I would write to her twice a week, because I wasn’t lazy about letters. Ever since I joined the Navy I had written to my family in Bogotá every week and regularly sent letters to friends in my neighborhood, Olaya. I would write Mary when we got to Cartagena—I figured out exactly how many hours it would take us to get there: twenty-four. That was the last thing I did on this watch.

Ramón Herrera helped me carry Miguel Ortega back to his bunk. He was worse. He had had no food since leaving Mobile three days before. He could barely speak, and he looked green and decidedly under the weather.

The dance began at 10 p.m. The
Caldas
had been swaying all day, but not as badly as on that night of the twenty-seventh. As I lay awake in my bunk, fearing for the crewmen on watch, I realized that none of the sailors lying in their bunks had been able to get to sleep. A little before
midnight, I asked Luis Rengifo in the bunk below me, “Haven’t you gotten sick yet?”

As I suspected, he hadn’t been able to sleep either. But despite the lurching of the ship, he hadn’t lost his sense of humor. He said, “I told you, the day I’m sick, the sea itself will be sick.” It was a phrase he repeated often. But that night he barely had a chance to finish what he was saying.

I have said I was uneasy. I have said that I felt something akin to fear. But I have no doubts about what I felt after midnight on the twenty-seventh, when over the loudspeakers came the general order: “All personnel to the port side.”

I understood what that order meant. The boat was listing dangerously to starboard and we were trying to right her with our weight. For the first time in two years of sailing, I was truly afraid of the sea. The wind whistled up on deck, where the crew would be soaked and shivering.

The moment I heard the order, I jumped out of my bunk. Very calmly, Luis Rengifo got up and went to one of the portside bunks, which was vacant because it belonged to one of the men on watch. Holding on to the other bunks, I tried to walk, but at that moment I remembered Miguel Ortega.

He couldn’t move. When he heard the order, he tried to get up but fell back into his bunk, overcome by seasickness and exhaustion. I helped him sit up and secured him in the portside bunk. In a very low voice he told me he was ill.

“Let’s arrange it so you don’t have to go on watch,” I said.

It seems like a bad joke, but if Miguel Ortega had stayed in his bunk he would still be alive.

Without even a minute’s sleep, six of us who were on call assembled on the stern deck at 4 a.m. on the twenty-eighth. One was Ramón Herrera, my companion the whole time. The watch officer was Guillermo Rozo. It was my last duty on board. I knew that at two in the afternoon we would arrive at Cartagena. I thought that I would go to sleep as soon as I was relieved on watch, so that I could go out and enjoy myself on my home ground after an eight-month absence. At five-thirty I went on an inspection tour belowdecks, accompanied by a cabin boy. At seven we relieved those on active duty so that they could go to breakfast. At eight, they came back to relieve us. That was my last watch. Nothing unusual had happened, even though the wind was gaining force and the waves were getting bigger and bigger, crashing on the bridge and washing over the deck.

Ramón Herrera was at the stern. Luis Rengifo was there, too, as a lifeguard, with headphones in place. Lying down in the center of the deck, still in agony with his seasickness, was Miguel Ortega. That was the spot where the ship felt most stable. I talked a little with Seaman Second Class Eduardo Castillo from supply, a very reserved man and a bachelor from Bogotá. I don’t remember what we talked about. All I know is that we didn’t see each other again until he plunged into the sea a few hours later.

Ramón Herrera was collecting some cartons to cover himself with while he tried to get some sleep. With the rolling of the ship it was impossible to sleep in our quarters. The waves, getting taller and more powerful, swept over the deck. Amid the refrigerators, washing machines, and stoves that were tightly secured on the stern deck, Ramón Herrera and I lay down, carefully positioning ourselves to avoid being swept away by a wave. I looked up at the sky.
In this position I felt more secure, certain that in a few hours we would be reaching the bay of Cartagena. There was no storm; the day was perfectly clear, visibility total, and the sky a deep blue. Now, my boots weren’t even hurting me, for I had changed into a pair of rubber-soled shoes after going off watch.

Luis Rengifo asked me the time. It was eleven-thirty. An hour had passed since the ship had begun to list, leaning dangerously to starboard. The order of the previous night was repeated over the loudspeakers: “All personnel to the port side.” Ramón Herrera and I didn’t move, because we were already on that side.

I thought about Miguel Ortega, whom I had seen on the starboard side. But almost at the same moment, I saw him go reeling past me. He bent over the port side, in agony with his seasickness. At that moment the ship tilted frightfully; he was gone. I stopped breathing. A huge wave crashed over us and we were drenched, as though we had just come out of the sea. Very slowly, the ship labored to right itself. Luis Rengifo was ashen. Nervously he said, “What luck. This ship is going down and doesn’t want to come back up.”

That was the first time I had seen Luis Rengifo look nervous. Beside me, Ramón Herrera, deep in thought, completely soaked, remained quiet. There was a moment of total silence. Then Ramón Herrera said, “When they give the order to cut the ropes to release the cargo, I’ll be the first one cutting them.”

It was 11:50. I, too, thought that they would order the
ropes cut at any moment. That’s what’s called “lightening the decks.” Radios, refrigerators, and stoves would slide into the sea as soon as the order was given. When that happened, I thought, I would have to go below to quarters, because we had been using the refrigerators and stoves to make ourselves secure on deck. Without them, the waves would have swept us away.

The ship continued to fight the waves, but it was listing more all the time. Ramón Herrera rolled up a tarpaulin and covered himself with it. Another wave, bigger than the previous one, crashed over us, but now we were protected by the canvas. I put my arms over my head while the wave passed, and half a minute later the loudspeakers barked.

They’re going to give the order to cut the cargo loose, I thought. But it was a different order, spoken in a calm, confident voice: “Personnel on deck, don your life jackets.”

Calmly, Luis Rengifo held his headphones in one hand and put on his life jacket with the other. First I felt a great emptiness, and then a profound silence, as I had after each enormous wave. I looked at Luis Rengifo, who, his life jacket on, had replaced his headphones. Then I closed my eyes. I could clearly hear the ticking of my watch.

I listened to the ticking for approximately one more minute. Ramón Herrera didn’t move. I calculated that it must be almost twelve. Two hours to Cartagena. For a second, the ship seemed suspended in air. I started to raise my arm to look at my watch, but at that moment I couldn’t see my arm, or my watch, either. I didn’t see the wave. I felt the ship give way completely and the cargo that was supporting me slide away. I stood up, and in a fraction of a second the water was up to my neck. Then I saw Luis Rengifo, eyes popping, green and silent, trying to stay
afloat, holding his headphones aloft. Then the water covered me completely and I started to swim toward the surface.

I swam upward for one, two, three seconds. I tried to reach the surface. I needed air. I was suffocating. I tried to grab hold of the cargo, but the cargo wasn’t there anymore. Now there was nothing around me. When I got to the surface, I couldn’t make out anything in the sea. A second later, about a hundred meters way, the ship surged up between the waves, gushing water from all sides like a submarine. It was only then that I realized I had fallen overboard.

3
W
atching
F
our of
M
y
S
hipmates
D
rown

My first impression was that I was utterly alone in the middle of the ocean. Trying to stay afloat, I watched another wave crash against the destroyer. The ship, now about two hundred meters from me, plunged into an abyss and disappeared from sight. I thought it had gone under. And a moment later, as if to confirm what I had thought, all the crates of merchandise that had been loaded onto the destroyer in Mobile began to surface and floated toward me, one by one. I kept afloat by grabbing on to the crates of clothing, radios, refrigerators, and other household goods that bounced around, willy-nilly, battered by the waves. I had no idea what was happening; a bit stunned, I took hold of one of the bobbing crates and stupidly began to contemplate the sea. It was a perfectly clear day. Except for the choppy waves produced by the wind and the cargo scattered across the surface, there was no evidence of a shipwreck.

Soon I began to hear shouts nearby. Through the sharp whistling of the wind, I recognized the voice of Julio Amador Caraballo, the tall, well-built first warrant officer, who was yelling at someone: “Grab hold there, under the life preserver.”

It was as if in that instant I had awakened from a moment’s deep sleep. It dawned on me that I wasn’t alone in the sea. There, only a few meters away, my mates were shouting to one another and trying to stay afloat. Quickly, I began to think. I couldn’t swim in just any direction. I knew we were about fifty miles from Cartagena, but I was not yet frightened. For a moment I thought I could hold on to the crate indefinitely, until help arrived. It was reassuring to know that all around me other sailors were in the same predicament. That was when I saw the raft.