This time the sound did not diminish, but maintained an ugly, throat-clearing cough and the waves created by the explosion caught the boat, lifting it in a series of tiny jogging motions and more water was shipped. Unasked, Goodschall picked up the bail and began tossing the water from the craft.
‘Benjamin!’
Everyone turned, seized by the despair in Sarah’s voice. Sophia had demanded to go to the toilet and the woman was holding the child over the stern of the vessel, so that she was facing back towards the distant outline of Santa Maria. The landfall was almost concealed now, swamped by a great shroud of oil-black clouds that were seeping towards them, so low that in places they almost appeared to be touching the water. Ahead of the clouds came the rain, a fierce, scudding downpour so forceful that it was flattening the sea like metal under a tinsmith’s hammer. And then there was the first of the wind, feeling out for them like cold hands, fighting the rain for a chance to whip the water up.
‘Oh, my God!’ said Richardson, careless of any offence he might cause the captain.
Briggs turned as the first of the rain swept over them, with the suddenness of a swab bucket being thrown into the boat, gazing towards the ship. There was thunder with the squall, making it impossible to calculate which sound was coming from the atmosphere above and which emanated from the Mary Celeste.
‘She’s sails set,’ he said, quietly, in horrified realisation. ‘She’ll run from us.’
‘Oh, God!’ said Richardson, again. This time there was anguish in his voice.
‘Haul for the ship,’ ordered Briggs urgently.
The Lorensen brothers started rowing immediately, aware of what could happen.
The wind was stronger now, churning the waves. Gilling snatched the cup from where the cook was sitting and began scooping the water from beneath their feet in almost timed motion with Goodschall, the movement becoming raster as the sea started gushing over the gunwales. The baby was crying and when Briggs looked back he saw that Sarah had at last broken down, clamping her lips against the sound but with her shoulders pumping with her tears.
‘The line, Mr Richardson,’ he said to the mate. ‘See if you can haul us with the line,’
Richardson clambered to the bow, the movement bringing in more sea, and tried to help the rowers by dragging the boat along its own towline. The rope was wet and heavy and to have given it a chance to work, he would have had to stand with his feet braced against the prow, so that the stem would have been actually forced beneath the water.
They were still about two hundred and fifty feet from the Mary Celeste, completely engulfed in the storm, when the first wind reached the ship. She seemed to start, like a nervous horse suddenly surprised by the approach of a rider. The jib and fore-topmost staysail responded first, slapping and cracking against the yards.
‘Row!’ urged Briggs, leaning forward to encourage the men. ‘The sails are filling. Row!’
‘The rafts,’ shouted Gilling. ‘They are dragging at us,’
Briggs hesitated, realising the importance of the decision. Regaining the ship was the only consideration, he judged. And they still had a chance of doing that.
‘Cut them adrift,’ he said.
For the first time, there was a discernible hesitation at an order. Then Gilling untied the towline to the rafts. Almost immediately, the rowers appeared to achieve more speed.
Briggs strained through the storm-gloom, intent upon the other sails set upon the Mary Celeste.
The foresail still drooped but the upper and lower topsails were gradually moving.
‘Less than two hundred feet now, lads,’ encouraged Richardson.
The two Germans were straining at the oars, eyes bulged and the veins in their faces and necks knotted starkly against their skin. They had got into a regular metronome movement, breath grunting from them. Briggs could see that they were almost exhausted. To exchange with Goodschall and Martens would be time-wasting. The line was no longer taut between them and the boat. It was almost completely submerged, just occasionally visible, curled and flaccid, just below the surface.
The jib filled completely and the stem of the Mary Celeste came up, making the long bowsprit shift in a curious, seeking movement, like a dog sniffing a scent.
‘She’ll move soon,’ warned Richardson.
There was a great deal of water in the boat now. It lapped just below the seats, so that they sat with their feet and legs submerged almost to their knees. Sarah had the baby pulled protectively from her lap and clenched against her chest. Her eyes were closed and her lips were moving in constant prayer.
The Lorensen brothers were flagging, their rowing going out of time, the boat so heavy it was hardly making any way. He would have to change, Briggs knew.
‘Goodschall, Martens,’ he said. There was immediate comprehension. The Lorensens stopped, in unison, and flopped backwards, eyes glazed with near-unconsciousness, just pulling their legs over the seat for the other two Germans to take their places. The new men started with renewed fervency and the boat appeared to move faster through the water.
‘She’s picking up,’ reported Richardson from the prow and for the briefest moment Briggs thought the mate was talking about the craft they were in. Then he looked towards the Mary Celeste.
The sails would never fill completely because she was moving without a helmsman, but the foresail was stretched, together with the upper and lower topsails. Slowly at first, almost as if unwilling, but then gradually with increasing speed the Mary Celeste began to pick up.
‘Row, damn you I Row I’ pleaded Richardson.
Goodschall and Martens were making an incredible effort, oar blades falling and rising, but the distance between them and the ship was becoming visibly greater.
Because he was in the prow, Richardson was the first to realise that the rope that had been lost to sight was gradually emerging from the water again as the gap lengthened, like an obscene taunt at how far away they still were.
‘She’ll drag us,’ shouted Briggs.
Almost immediately the tow rope twanged tight and there was a shudder through the boat. It surged forward, achieving the sort of speed the seamen had been trying to attain, and they stopped, twisting curiously around.
‘In the stern. Get the weight in the stern,’ ordered Briggs, foreseeing the fresh danger. The men scrambled towards the woman, baby and stores, trying to bring the nose up. The two Lorensen brothers flopped completely in the bottom of the boat, only their heads and shoulders clear of the water, supported against the legs of Martens. He squatted over them, chaffing their heads and necks, trying to get some response from them.
‘She’ll yaw soon,’ predicted Richardson. ‘She can’t run on for ever.’
‘We’re being pulled away from Santa Maria,’ said Briggs.
‘So near,’ moaned Richardson. ‘We were so near.’
‘This wind will be scouring her holds,’ said Briggs, seeing the irony. ‘Making her safe.’
He eased around in the crush of people. Sarah still sat with her eyes pressed tight, unwilling to witness what was happening, her mouth twitching in perpetual prayer. She had completely enveloped the child in her protective clothing, so that only a small part of her face was visible. Sophia was trying to press closer to her mother, eyes blank and unseeing with fear. She was making no sounds, but spasms were jerking her tiny body, as if she were fevered. It would be terror, Briggs knew.
He felt out, touching his wife’s shoulder, and she opened her eyes.
‘You’re going to save us, aren’t you, Benjamin? It will be all right?’ she demanded. For the first time that he could ever recall in their married life, there was something like an accusation in her voice.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, honest even now.
‘I don’t want to die!’ she blurted. ‘I don’t want Sophia to die.’
‘The nose is going down,’ said Gilling, fear showing at last.
The rope connecting them to the Mary Celeste was so rigidly st
retched that it could have been a piece of metal. And as relentlessly as a steel bar, it was pushing down against their stem, thrusting it lower and lower, so that the wind-driven waves were pouring in, every fresh gush of water bringing them nearer to becoming completely swamped.
‘Cut the line,’ said Briggs.
There was a hesitation when they realised that there was no axe aboard the boat. It was Gilling who produced the clasp knife, spluttering forward through the water and starting to saw at the painter. The water kept forcing him back, so that he constantly lost the spot against which he was trying to cut, and then suddenly, as abruptly as they had spurted forward, their crazy careering stopped.
‘Snapped,’ said Richardson. ‘It snapped somewhere on the ship.’
The waterlogged boat wallowed in the waves, hardly any freeboard remaining. Before anyone could prevent it happening, one of the seats was lifted out by the force of the water and floated free.
He didn’t know if he could do what Sarah wanted, Briggs thought suddenly. He didn’t know if he could keep her alive. Or any of them. Angrily he cast the thought aside. The despair which had momentarily gripped him and which he knew held the others was almost as dangerous as their predicament, he realised. With the need for the stern weight gone, he shifted back amidships, shouting the orders. The Lorensen brothers were recovering, he saw gratefully.
‘Raise the sail,’ he said. ‘We’ll set course for Santa Maria. Everyone who can, bail.’
Briggs stared back to the heaving water, seeking the life-rafts he now recognised it had been a mistake to abandon.
Richardson and Martens started trying to erect a canvas. Gilling and Goodschall continued with the bailing and the Lorensen brothers stirred. Without any utensils, they slumped in the boats on their haunches, trying to scoop the water back over the sides with their cupped hands. William Head had taken off his reefer jacket and tried to cover Sarah and Sophia with it, Briggs saw. As he looked, the cook began searching for a canister, then dropped into the boat and started to use his hands, like the two Germans. It was difficult to make any distinction between the sea and the gunwales, so deeply was the boat awash. Briggs was trying to bail now, jerking his hands in the sort of splashing movements he’d used the previous year, when they had taken Arthur to the beach at Cape Cod. It had been fun then.
‘No good,’ gasped Head. ‘It’s no good.’
Briggs paused, to stare out to sea. The Mary Celeste was bent fully into the wind, all her sails seeming full. Then a cloud thicker than the rest swept down and she was lost for the last time.
‘Weight,’ shouted Briggs, to the cook. ‘There’s too much weight. Throw the food over.’
Obediently, the man heaved the gunny sacks from the boat. They scarcely cleared the water as he put them over the side. The boat did not appear to rise at all.
Richardson and Martens managed a stud-sail of sorts, trying to get some wind, but the gusts eddied around them, with little direction. The waves were very high now, lurching towards them in great walls of water, and the boat didn’t lift, so that they were completely washed over. Boz Lorensen, emptied by his efforts to row, was the first to go, yelling as he felt himself lifted by a wave and stretching out his hand, which incredibly his brother snatched out and grabbed, preventing him from being carried completely away. He was pushed outside the boat, though, which lifted slightly. For a moment Volkert stayed inboard, pulling his brother to where he could get a grip on the gunwale, then looked towards the woman and child in the rear of the vessel. Without a word, he edged over, putting his body alongside his brother and reaching over, so that one of his arms was over the man’s shoulders, supporting him.
‘It’s going up,’ said Briggs, knowing there was excitement in his voice, but uncaring. ‘The boat is going up.’
Martens was the next over, trying a grip on the side opposite from the brothers, professionally knowing that if she continued to rise in the water they would need to balance.
He shouted to Goodschall in German and the young man hesitated, then slipped over, so that there were two men on either side of the boat. In the troughs beneath the waves, it was just possible to see the edge of the boat. Gilling, Richardson and Head were on their hands and knees, bailing with the ferocity of men who knew there was little hope left but refused to believe it. Briggs tried to trim the stud, seeking the wind.
Richardson sat back upon his heels, nearing collapse, gazing dully up at the captain and the sail he was trying to control.
Awareness suddenly came into his face and he said, ‘Northwest.’
Briggs turned to him.
‘The wind,’ said the first mate, limply trying to indicate the sail. ‘It’s north-west. To get us to Santa Maria, it would have to be south-westerly.’
The man was right, realised Briggs, feeling the hope seep from him.
Now that the wind was set into a quarter, it built up the waves even higher, so that there was no interval in the seas that engulfed them. The weakest of them all, Boz Lorensen, released his handhold first, and trying to save him a second time Volkert let go and they were carried away together, the older man still attempting to keep his brother’s head clear of the water, even though they had been separated from the only thing that could possibly save them. Briggs was tearing at the stud, to bring it down, knowing it had become a greater danger than help, straining through the rain and clouds in an effort to see Santa Maria. There was nothing, just sea and rain and blackness. With no way to keep her into the running sea, the next wave caught the boat broadside, tipping her up and tearing the gunwales from Martens and Goodschall. As quickly as she had lifted, the boat fell away again and there was the dull, slapping sound as the hull came down upon the two men beneath. The blood smeared out and Sarah screamed, an hysterical sound. Neither of the bodies surfaced.
The boat corkscrewed as it came down, throwing them all off-balance, and then in an immediate rush of water Richardson suddenly wasn’t there any more. Briggs came around at the cry for help. As he had been hurled from the boat, Richardson had grabbed out, snatching at the cook’s arm and pulling him overboard as well. Briggs saw them once, and then a wall of water engulfed them and they did not come up. Something else lifted on the waves and Briggs recognised one of the rafts.
‘Make for the raft,’ he shouted, to the men he couldn’t see. ‘There’s a raft on the port quarter.’
‘The baby!’ Sarah suddenly shouted.
She was holding Sophia out towards Briggs, imploringly. The little bundle sagged limply and Briggs realised that, as she had crouched trying to hold the baby against her, Sarah had actually held the baby’s head beneath the water.
He snatched the child, before the woman had a chance to pull at the protective covering to discover what she had done.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘She’s all right.’
It was the first lie he had ever told her.
Sarah suddenly stood up, eyes staring in her hysteria. Gilling grabbed out, to bring her down, so the inrush of water caught him first, lifting him and carrying him bodily into the woman, knocking her backwards over the stern. For a moment they surfaced, about a yard apart. Briggs fell into the stern, reaching out for her and momentarily she stretched her hand towards his, trying to grasp at his groping fingers; and then she went under and he never saw her again.
He still had the baby in his left arm, holding her roughly. He turned, feeling beneath the water for the stern-seat, and then sat with the lifeless bundle in his arms, clutched high against him, the clothes raised around her again, to keep the water off.
He never saw the wave, but was aware of its movement, lifting him from the boat like a giant hand; and then he knew he was going under water and that his heavy clothes were dragging him down. He tightened his grasp upon Sophia.
Everything else had gone. But it wouldn’t take her. He’d promised Sarah it wouldn’t take the baby.
Epilogue
Could this have been the fate of the Mary Celeste and the p
eople aboard?
It was the conviction held, in varying degrees, by nearly everyone most closely involved in the mystery.
In 1886, Captain Winchester told a friend:
The cause of the hurried stoppage of the vessel, of the launching of the boat and of the abandonment was, in my opinion, that the alcohol which formed her cargo being in these red-oak barrels, a wood which is extremely porous, enough of its fumes exhaled through the pores of the wood to mingle with the foul air of the hold and generate an explosive gas which blew off the fore-hatch.
Believing that she was on fire below and considering the inflammable nature of her cargo and mindful of the fact that his wife and child were on board, Captain Briggs, on the spur of the moment, resolved to heave the vessel to, launch the longboat, get into it and remain at a safe distance from the brig awaiting further developments. This was probably done, but the brig’s mainsail being stowed, she had no after-sail to keep her to the wind and she got stem away and backed off until the wind filled her topsail when, like a frightened deer, away she went, leaving her crew behind.
It was a theory supported by Captain Henry Appleby, the man who in Cadiz loaned Winchester the bail-bond money to retrieve his vessel. A minor explosion actually happened aboard Captain Appleby’s Daisy Boynton, with a cargo of alcohol en route for Bilbao, in northern Spain.
And it was the conclusion reached after an exhaustive investigation by Dr Oliver Cobb, of Easthampton, Massachusetts, a cousin of both Captain Briggs and his wife, who was Sarah Elizabeth Cobb before her marriage.
The Mary Celeste Page 20