Catching Thunder

by Eskil Engdal

  Just before dusk begins falling, the Thunder glides past the Bob Barker. One of Sea Shepherd’s officers sees the silhouette of a man on the bridge who is raising a clenched fist at the Bob Barker.

  “Something will kick off tonight. Our nights of peaceful sleep are over,” Adam Meyerson predicts.

  The captain of the Thunder calls up the Bob Barker again and again, but this time it is Hammarstedt who neglects to answer.

  “They have ignored our calls before. I think now we can ignore them,” he says.

  The Thunder draws closer. Hammarstedt presses the alarm that is a signal to the crew that everyone who is not busy doing something is to meet in the messroom. All the bulkheads are now to be secured. He wants to know where each and every member of the crew is to be found, in the event of a collision and if the Thunder breaks open a hole in the Bob Barker’s hull, they must ensure that the water cannot spread throughout the ship. He sees that the bow of the Thunder is headed for the helicopter deck astern on the Bob Barker. Then the captain of the Thunder calls him up again on the radio. It’s a sign of weakness, Hammarstedt thinks.

  “They don’t seem that confident in close quarters,” he says.

  Hammarstedt has been in many close-range battles at sea and is certain that he has more experience in manoeuvring in such duels than the Thunder’s captain.

  “We can do this little rodeo thing,” he says to Meyerson, who has come up onto the bridge again.

  “The Thunder has tried to back into us, turn into us and run us down. I hope they have learned not to be aggressive towards us. Do the right thing. Go into port and face the music,” Meyerson says.

  The Thunder is now perilously close to the quarterdeck of the Bob Barker, but all of a sudden, the trawler changes course and avoids a collision. Then the Thunder stops moving. It is almost as if the captain has decided that the vessel needs to rest. All night long the two ships pitch beside one another, like an old married couple that have argued themselves to sleep.

  The next morning, the Thunder begins moving slowly in the direction of the net. The Norwegian fisheries officer Tor Glistrup has asked Hammarstedt to try to get hold of one of the net floats. If it is from the same brand and the same series as the floats the Sam Simon picked up where Hammarstedt found the Thunder, it is evidence that it was the Thunder that left behind the illegal gillnet at the Banzare Bank. Hammarstedt gathers the crew in the messroom. If the weather is good enough, he wants to try to navigate the Bob Barker between the Thunder and the net floats.

  “We will do what we can to make it difficult for them, but there are different factors that may make it too dangerous for us to intervene. If we have a collision situation, we lose them. If we have a crane going bad, we lose them. I just don’t want you to see it as a failure if they manage to get the gillnet up,” he says to the crew.

  They approach the net floats and the two vessels move into close quarters once again. Hammarstedt positions the Bob Barker between the fish net and the Thunder, but now the captain of the Thunder is navigating more aggressively. The trawler cuts in towards the starboard side of the Bob Barker, and it appears as if the captain has planned to pass right in front of the bow of the Sea Shepherd ship. It is a fatally dangerous manoeuvre. He calls up Hammarstedt again and again, says that he isn’t afraid and that “Peter” is a terrible captain. For a few short minutes he is suddenly on a first name basis with Hammarstedt, who responds with a long blast of the ship’s horn. Then Hammarstedt presses the ship’s alarm again, so the crew of the Bob Barker runs to the messroom.

  The ships are so close together that Hammarstedt can make out the faces of the deck crew on the Thunder who are now standing lined up along the railing. It is clear that they have prepared themselves for fishing. Is it a coincidence that at least a dozen Indonesians are now standing in the exact spot where the Bob Barker will hit the Thunder if they collide? Or has a cynical devil ordered them to stand there?

  Two officers exit the bridge of the Thunder and are both holding something in their hands that resembles a compact camera. One of them is dressed in black trousers and a brown jacket, and he is wearing a black cap pulled down to the frames of his oblong glasses. He leans down behind one of the white containers that protect the life rafts from the wind and weather. Now they are protecting the officers from the telephoto lens of Simon Ager. The officer wearing a dark purple jacket with washed-out patterns, camouflage trousers and a ski mask makes no attempt to hide. He positions himself straddle-legged and almost demonstratively in Hammarstedt’s field of vision and looks toward the bridge. The two ships pitch slowly up and down on the swells that the bad weather left in its wake. If neither ship backs down, they are going to collide.

  “That’s going to be close … Zero pitch. Zero pitch. Let’s go ten astern. Twenty astern!” Hammarstedt calls.

  He guns the engine astern, and when the Thunder passes in front of the Bob Barker headed for the net floats, there is barely half a metre between the two steel giants. At all times the man behind the ski mask is looking in the direction of his opponent on the Bob Barker. It is as if he wants to demonstrate that he will win this battle.

  Hammarstedt knows that he has lost the opportunity to prevent the Thunder from hauling up the nets. Soon the crew of the Bob Barker will be obliged to observe the sight of wriggling marine life dangling along the hull of the pirate trawler. The first thing Hammarstedt does is to beg his officers’ pardon. He backed down; that is unusual for a Sea Shepherd captain.

  “As long as there are crew hanging out on the deck on the Thunder, there is little I can do,” he says.

  The catch was not much to speak of. A few small cod, some crab and lobster and a small shark or two that was thrown back in. The lobster goes straight to the cook who that same evening prepares a feast.

  The fishing captain Juan Manuel Patiño Lampon is in a better mood than he has been for a long time. He has been fed up with the standstill and the monotonous diet of split cod, frozen chicken and rice. He wants to work, he wants to eat fresh seafood and he wants to test how far Hammarstedt is willing to go to prevent him from fishing. And if Sea Shepherd should attempt to pull up the nets that could give them a chance to take off. The officers on the Thunder saw that Sea Shepherd filmed everything they did. They heard the young captain repeating over and over again on the radio that they were fishing illegally and that they were going to stop them but he failed to do so. It was Sea Shepherd’s captain who backed down.

  After the net had been hauled up out of the ocean, a lengthy outburst of expletives poured over the radio. Captain Luis Alfonso Rubio Cataldo told Hammarstedt that they had been given a green light from the ship owner to fish and that they had a permit, but Hammarstedt did not want to listen.

  The next day the Thunder once again begins gliding slowly towards the Melville Bank. The Sea Shepherd crew prepares itself for another confrontation and now they know how the captain navigates the Thunder when they are fishing. The weather is also better. On the foredeck, the tarp is removed from the largest dinghy, the Gemini. While the dirt and salt are being washed off the outboard motors, the third mate Anteo Broadfield navigates the Bob Barker closer to the Thunder. He sounds a blast on the ship’s horn to get the Thunder’s captain’s attention; he wants to show him that the dinghy is ready for launching.

  Then the Thunder stops. The captain calls up the bridge of the Bob Barker.

  “Buenas tardes, Bob Barker.”

  Cataldo says that he has received permission from the government of Nigeria to fish, a lie that will be quickly communicated to Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon.

  “We don’t believe you. If you start fishing, we are going to cut the nets,” Hammarstedt replies.

  “If you cut the nets, you will be destroying private property. I will take photographs and video everything you do,” Cataldo threatens.

  “Tell him that he can take as many photos and videos as he
likes. He can get some great shots of us cutting his nets,” Hammarstedt says.

  The Thunder’s captain does not back down. They have received orders and if Sea Shepherd behaves aggressively towards them, they will behave aggressively in return.

  “OK. Tell him that we are ready,” Hammarstedt says.

  Now the crew prepares the ship for action. They are going to carry out what they failed to accomplish the day before. If they can manage to fish up one of the net floats with an iron hook, they can cut the net. Hammarstedt takes the helm while Meyerson regulates their speed.

  The Bob Barker glides slowly in the wake of the Thunder with its course set for the closest net float, which has just been expelled from the hatch on the Thunder’s stern. On the Bob Barker’s starboard side the crew stands at ready on deck to throw out iron hooks attached to long ropes to capture the floats.

  “Grab it when you can,” Hammarstedt calls over the walkie-talkie to the long-haired, strapping boatswain Alistair Alan.

  The entire net is now in the water, and they both see that the trawler is about to turn around.

  “Hurry up. The Thunder is coming back at us,” Hammarstedt says.

  The first attempt to throw out an iron hook falls short. On deck, Alan urges the deck crew to throw it out again and the next throw is perfect. The hook attaches itself to the ropes, and powerful arms hoist net floats and marker lines up on the broadside of the Bob Barker.

  “Tell us as soon as we are free from the line,” Hammarstedt shouts.

  If they fail to cut the floats away quickly, it could all be dragged backwards and into the propeller. And now the Thunder is headed straight towards them. The marker line is cut with a sharp knife and the net slips out of the danger zone. On the bridge, Hammarstedt and Meyerson clap their hands together in a high five.

  Then they hear the voice of the Thunder’s captain over the radio. He is furious and says that they are coming to save the net floats.

  “I will get it back the good way or the bad way,” Cataldo says.

  “We have to pick up speed. He might hit us,” Hammarstedt says to his officers.

  Anteo Broadfield can hardly believe his eyes.

  “The chase is reversed,” he says.

  On the radio, the Thunder’s captain continues his tirade.

  “This is theft and we want the nets back.”

  “We are collecting evidence for your prosecution,” Hammarstedt answers.

  “We are going to follow you. You were the ones who started this war. I have received an order to retrieve the floats.”

  “Tell him that they can follow us to Mauritius,” Hammarstedt says.

  The captain of the Thunder makes a few desperate attempts to psyche out his opponent. He says that “Peter” can’t navigate, but they both know that it would take an engine breakdown on the Bob Barker for the Thunder to manage to catch up with the Sea Shepherd vessel.

  “So he said that we started this war?” Hammarstedt asks.

  “Yup. Wars to save the planet and the fisheries,” Adam Meyerson replies, who decides to tease the Thunder’s captain. “Let’s keep the speed just a little bit faster so they will continue to chase us and spend as much fuel as possible. They can chase us all day long,” he chuckles.

  Hammarstedt is ecstatic. Can he get the Thunder to chase them all the way to Mauritius?

  The Bob Barker is now doing 10.8 knots and creeps slowly away from the Thunder.

  “So now we know that they can do 10 knots if they want,” Chief Engineer Erwin Vermeulen says.

  “The engine is fine, Erwin?” Hammarstedt asks.

  “Yes.”

  On the Thunder, the delicious lobster meal of the night before is now a distant memory. The first thing Captain Cataldo did when Sea Shepherd hoisted the floats on board and cut the net was to call the ship owner in Galicia in Spain. The order was clear: Follow the Bob Barker, we want the floats back. But they knew that it was futile. Cataldo continues sputtering. He repeats that he didn’t believe that this would happen. Calls Hammarstedt a punk. The fishing captain Lampon is also angry, but is not as communicative as the captain. They can push the engine all they want, but it won’t do any good.

  After a couple of hours they give up the chase.

  24

  MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

  THE INDIAN OCEAN, FEBRUARY 2015

  Although they are trapped in the same hopeless situation, the Spanish-speaking and Asian crews on the Thunder live in two different worlds.

  During the first month of the chase, the Indonesian crew was told to stay below deck. They hung out smoking in the narrow hallways outside the crew cabins. In the evenings they played poker in the messroom or watched motocross videos, action films and recordings of the most recent World Cup football matches. When they finally received permission to move about on deck, they made a football out of a knotted tangle of rags. There was a small library on board with a shelf of books by Isabel Allende and a handful of other Spanish-speaking authors, but nothing in Indonesian.

  For most of the Indonesians, it was their first voyage on the Thunder. Half of them came from the city Tegal in the Central Java province, a traditional fishing community where sailing on a foreign trawler could at best reward them with adventure, a proper income and a higher status than that of the coastal fishermen in their home town. But it could also mean gruelling labour, sudden accidents and racial conflicts. They earned one-tenth of what the Europeans did and were at the bottom of the ladder in the ship’s rigid hierarchy.

  When the Thunder was arrested in Malaysia in 2014, the Indonesians rebelled. They complained about the fishing gear and about racism, and the confrontation culminated in a fist fight and mutiny. After the rebellion, the Thunder sailed out with an entirely new Indonesian crew. Only the Indonesian cook and two deckhands went along on the final voyage. The entire crew was now on one-year contracts and received 350 dollars a month – four times more than they would earn for unskilled work at home.

  Few of the Indonesian crew now dare ask why they are being chased; they speak seldom or never with anyone but each other. Only a minority know the names of the officers on the bridge of the Thunder. The eldest of the Indonesians, a man in his late 40s named Edy, assumes the role of leader. He is the one they gather around now with the question that is weighing on them the most: will they ever be paid their wages?

  The Thunder maintains a speed of four knots northward, very likely to make its way out of “the Furious Forties”, where the weather is a constant threat.

  Every morning Hammarstedt sends a news update to Interpol. He also updates the Dutch and British authorities, but he seldom or never receives a reply. The lack of response bothers him. Had the Thunder been loaded with cocaine or weapons instead of toothfish, the ship would have long since been boarded.

  But if he can add some information about slave labour and human trafficking to the Thunder’s criminal record, Interpol can be forced to become involved.

  In the great cabin, Peter Hammarstedt sits down at the little writing desk and writes a letter to the Indonesian crew. He explains who Sea Shepherd is and that the Thunder is blacklisted, wanted and being monitored by international authorities.

  “We mean no harm and you should not worry, as we are compassionate people who follow the law. We really appreciate it if you can trust us. If you need help we will help you. If you have any problems about pay and your treatment we will fight for your rights under international law. Please tell us how we can help you? Do you need any food, or medical help, or other help?” Hammarstedt writes in the letter.

  He continues with an invitation to join forces in a joint venture.

  “When you see our small boat in the water, you can throw us messages in a plastic bottle, especially messages for your families. We will pass your messages to your families and their replies to you. We understand you are just workers and onl
y do everything according to the orders of your superiors. You may not even know that the company you work for was illegally fishing. Our target is not you and we have no intention of causing you any trouble, that’s why we should work together.

  “As your captain and officers are criminals according to the law, we want to see them prosecuted. We have more fuel and more food than Thunder and will stay with the ship until the Thunder goes into port. The captain and the owner must be brought to court to answer for their illegal fishing but you have done nothing wrong. Any information about the names of the officers and owner of the ship, including their nationalities will greatly help us.”

  Through a contact in Australia he has the letter translated into Indonesian, prints out numerous copies, and inserts the messages into plastic bottles containing rice to give them ballast.

  Then they lower the dinghy from the Sam Simon, which has come from the Southern Ocean to join the Bob Barker for a few days. The dinghy first sails in along the starboard side of the Thunder, and as soon as they see somebody from the Indonesian crew, they fling the messages on board.

  The sight of the plastic bottles pelting down upon the Thunder’s deck is like a spark for Juan Manuel Patiño Lampon’s easily ignited fuse.

  “Bloody punks,” he shouts.

  He grabs one of the black ski-masks on the bridge and pulls it down over his head. Then he runs off the bridge and down the ladder to the deck, where he orders the crew to collect the bottles and deposit them on the bridge. He walks toward the quarterdeck, picks up a bottle, opens it and sits down on a crate under the wheelhouse to read the message. He promptly gets to his feet, tears it up and throws it into the ocean. For a while he remains there, walking back and forth on the deck looking for more messages, until he bends down, picks up a short length of chain and walks towards the railing.

  Peter Hammarstedt has navigated the Bob Barker as close to the Thunder as he can get to gain a clear view of what is now taking place on deck.

  “The Balaclava Man has got something to throw,” Hammarstedt warns on the radio as Lampon moves toward the stern of the Thunder.