Catching Thunder

by Eskil Engdal

  “I don’t know. We will ask the Nigerians. Tell him that Nigeria is coordinating now and that we are taking our orders from them,” Hammarstedt says.

  Cataldo tells Gimeno that the battery in the radio he is using to communicate will soon be dead.

  “Tell him to get off his damn boat. This guy is a joke,” Hammarstedt says.

  While Hammarstedt tries to lure Cataldo into the life raft, the chief engineer Erwin Vermeulen is ready to board the Thunder.

  “It is not the Titanic nor the Kursk. Nobody is going to go down for it,” he says.

  “James Cameron is a supporter,” Hammarstedt responds with a smile.

  The Canadian director behind the two largest box office successes in history, The Titanic and Avatar, in March 2012 was the first to undertake a solo descent of the 11-kilometre depths all the way to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. But nobody on the bridge of the Bob Barker has any particular faith in the idea that Cameron will dive 3,800 metres for a fishing vessel in the Gulf of Guinea.

  Cataldo comes on the radio again and asks how far away the other ship is now.

  “12 nautical miles,” Hammarstedt answers.

  He explains that the ship will arrive in an hour.

  “Illegal, illegal,” Cataldo answers in Spanish. Again he demands that Hammarstedt bring the crew of the Thunder on board the Bob Barker and points out that the law requires that the first vessel to arrive at an emergency situation must rescue the shipwrecked seamen.

  “He’s saying he’s going to sue you,” Gimeno says.

  “I’m so tired of this asshole,” Hammarstedt replies softly so the radio won’t pick it up.

  “He says we can leave if we want,” Gimeno translates.

  “We are not leaving. We are coordinating on orders from Nigeria. Tell him to disembark so he can save his god damn life,” Hammarstedt says and continues: “Just ignore him. And tell him that it is illegal to sink his own ship. I am so tired of this asshole,” he says again, this time loud and clear.

  He feels that he is starting to gain the advantage over Cataldo.

  “He’s not going to be happy when he finds out that the second boat is the Sam Simon,” he says to Meyerson and Vermeulen.

  The bridge of the Bob Barker is filled with laughter.

  “This guy’s a clown,” Hammarstedt states.

  “If he goes down with his own ship, it would be like that scene in Cape Fear,” Meyerson chuckles.

  In Martin Scorsese’s action thriller, Robert De Niro plays a mad rapist who is chained to a burning houseboat and drowns.

  Cataldo stands on the bridge of the Thunder holding a pair of binoculars and staring in the direction of his nemesis on the Bob Barker. Cataldo is not planning to accompany the Thunder to the bottom of the ocean and now it’s high time that he get himself into the life raft. In São Tomé a hotel bed and flight tickets to Lisbon await him. Everything has been arranged.

  At the same time, he knows that Hammarstedt and Sea Shepherd are in contact with Interpol and authorities on all continents. He has received regular updates from his wife in Viña del Mar in Chile, and he knows what’s at stake. If they can just reach Europe, get away from this nightmare. Will the other ship that is approaching offer a solution? He takes the radio with him and climbs down the stairs from the bridge of the Thunder for the very last time.

  While several of the crew are taking selfies in the life rafts, the Sam Simon comes within range of the radio receiver on the Bob Barker. Hammarstedt and Chakravarty discuss the next step. They are still afraid that the officers who remain on the Thunder will sail away as soon as Sea Shepherd begins picking up people from the ocean. Five practised seamen can easily navigate the Thunder alone. Then the Bob Barker will have to resume the chase of the pirate ship while Chakravarty and the crew of the Sam Simon will be left alone with 35 men. That won’t do.

  There is only one solution. Everyone has to get off the Thunder before anyone can be rescued. That is the condition. And then it happens: Cataldo and the last of the Thunder officers climb down into the last life raft and cut it loose from the trawler. Cataldo has the handheld radio with him. He has seen that another ship is approaching and confirms now that everyone has left the ship.

  “Is it the Sam Simon?” he asks.

  “Yes,” Hammarstedt replies.

  “Where is the other ship?” Cataldo wonders.

  “The Sam Simon is the other ship,” Hammarstedt says.

  Again the laughter booms on the bridge of the Bob Barker.

  “You behaved like a coward,” says a dispirited Cataldo.

  “Whatever. Just ignore him. I’m really done with this guy.”

  The duel between the two captains appears to be over. One of them is on the way to the African nightmare of his life, the other to international fame and admiration.

  Hammarstedt asks the officers in the Gemini to do a head count of the crew in the life rafts; he wants to be sure that everyone has disembarked before he sends anyone on board the sinking ship. It is not easy to gain oversight. The sides of the life rafts are high; many of the crew are seated under tarps to protect themselves from the ruthless sun. They count 39. Shouldn’t there be 40? The Thunder officers are dissatisfied. They complain about Sea Shepherd filming them.

  As the Sam Simon sails in towards the site of the shipwreck, Captain Sid Chakravarty prepares himself for how he will handle the shipwrecked seamen. He will help them on board and one by one position them on the quarterdeck. All the doors leading into the ship will be secured and everyone will be frisked for knives and other weapons. He will simultaneously maintain contact with the authorities in Nigeria and São Tomé.

  Both the Sea Shepherd captains believe it would be best if a Nigerian naval vessel picked up the castaways and took them to Lagos, where they can stand trial. And what about São Tomé and Príncipe? Can they send a coast guard vessel? Chakravarty doubts that the authorities of the poor island state have a vessel large enough to transport the entire crew. The most likely outcome is that the Sam Simon will have to transport the pirates into the port in São Tomé escorted by the Bob Barker. Then somebody must be prepared to receive them there.

  The Thunder is now even lower in the water and is listing a few degrees toward starboard.

  Chief engineer Erwin Vermeulen on the Bob Barker and third mate Anteo Broadfield gather up flashlights, GoPro cameras, communication equipment and backpacks. Hammarstedt asks them to remain on the bridge of the Thunder. He is afraid that the radio won’t work other places on board the trawler. Hammarstedt is feeling stressed. He knows that the feat Vermeulen, Broadfield and the ship’s photographer are going to perform now can be mortally dangerous. If they are on the Thunder when the ship goes down, there is nothing that can save them.

  “This is like a weird dream,” he says to Meyerson, who pinches his arm.

  “We’re awake. Right?”

  The three activists dressed in black climb up the same rope ladder that the Thunder crew used to evacuate the ship. Below them, Cataldo sits in the life raft watching everything with an incredulous look on his face.

  The youngest of the three, Anteo Broadfield, is the first to step onto the Thunder’s deck. Vermeulen follows behind him and the photographer Ager, who holds a GoPro camera on a tripod in his hand and another attached to a strap around his head. He is nervous and tense. How much time do they have before the ship becomes unstable and sinks?1

  They find a passageway along the broadside and make their way past the wheelhouse and up to the quarterdeck. The listing of the ship is now so appreciable that they have to lean towards the port side as they run towards the entrance to the officers’ cabins and the bridge. On the first door on the left are the words jefe de máquinas. It is chief engineer Agustín Dosil Rey’s cabin, one of the most trusted employees of the Thunder’s ship owner. It is empty and clean. So are
the other officers’ cabins. The Thunder is well maintained, a great ship, Ager thinks before he climbs up to the bridge. There it is also neat. Broadfield and Vermeulen run into the navigation room, tear open drawers and cupboards, and find a white smartphone and a digital camera which Ager stuffs into a backpack. There is a logbook lying on the desk in the navigation room. Broadfield finds several blank logbooks in a small storeroom in the navigation room, but there is clearly a lot that is missing.

  Where is the fishing log?

  Where are all the laptops?

  “What did you find?” Hammarstedt asks over the radio.

  “Mobile phones and charts. Cartons and cartons of Marlboro cigarettes,” Broadfield answers.

  “Leave the cigarettes. Take the phones.”

  In a drawer in the navigation room there are two dictionaries – Spanish-Russian and Russian-Spanish. On a previous voyage, when Cataldo stayed home in Chile, the Thunder had a Russian captain. There are a couple of computer monitors and a printer in the room and an old-fashioned calculator. All the instruments and electronic equipment on the ship appear to be in good condition, but it is obvious that the Thunder has been in service for a long time. In a drawer in the navigation room Vermeulen finds a stack of nautical charts. Perhaps they can tell them something about the Thunder’s movements before they were chased out of the Antarctic?

  While the trio searches the bridge of the Thunder, Adam Meyerson and the press officer Michelle Mossfield study the captain of the Thunder through a pair of binoculars. He is sitting on the side of the life raft and gesticulating. Cataldo is clearly not happy that Sea Shepherd is now on board the Thunder.

  “It’s pretty good if you can be cocky when your ship is sinking. He runs his mouth like nonstop,” Meyerson says.

  “Blue baseball cap. He’s got like a goatee. Does he look cocky to you?” Mossfield asks.

  “He would be cocky in LA,” Meyerson says.

  “Fuck. Excuse my language,” Mossfield says.

  They also see that a couple of the Indonesians in the life rafts are vomiting. Mossfield has some good Japanese seasickness tablets that she found on the Sam Simon. Nobody wanted to take them because they didn’t understand what was written on the label. Mossfield got hold of a translator and solved the mystery. A guinea pig vouched for them.

  “They’re really, really good,” she says.

  Now the crew of the Thunder can have them.

  The radio crackles again.

  “We have a bunch of charts and a computer,” Broadfield says from the bridge of the Thunder.

  They have found the computer in the communications room.

  “You have five minutes. Then get off the boat. Bring the PC with you,” Meyerson replies.

  Hammarstedt and Meyerson don’t want the three on the Thunder to go below deck.

  “It’s a ship no one knows the inside of. I don’t feel comfortable doing it,” Hammarstedt says.

  But Vermeulen and Ager are already on their way. Ager climbs down onto the quarterdeck and trots one lap around it. He sees that somebody has left behind a blue jacket. The Sam Simon’s dinghy the Echo has also reached the Thunder. Together with the Gemini it circles the sinking ship. The crew is ready to receive the materials from the Thunder and to respond with the speed of lightning should Vermeulen, Broadfield and Ager need help. Ager throws his backpack with the telephone and camera inside down to Lex Rigby in the Gemini. Then he goes back to the hallway leading into the officers’ cabins and the bridge. He is handed a stack of charts and documents, runs out onto deck again and tries to find a good place from which to throw it all down to Rigby. Then he circles around a little before finding the broadside’s lowest point, the same place where two months ago they saw the crew of the Thunder hauling up fish. He throws the charts and a couple of folders down from the upper deck. Some of them are taken by the wind and end up in the ocean. Rigby fishes the wet documents out of the water.

  Then Ager and Vermeulen climb down the few steps leading to the middle deck. They register that all the bulkheads and doors on deck are wide open – the exact opposite of what they should be if the captain wanted to prevent the water from spreading throughout the ship.

  They find a door and stairway leading further down into the depths of the ship. First they come to the fish factory where the catch is cleaned, gutted and prepared for freezing. It is pitch dark, but in the beam of light from the flashlight, they can see that the factory is clean and neat. Ager is starting to grow worried.

  “I can’t see fuck all,” he says to Vermeulen.

  They are below deck and have no control over what is happening to the ship. What if it suddenly capsizes? Will they have time to get out?

  They keep running towards the back of the ship. Vermeulen still has a tiny hope of saving the ship by stopping the leak, but to do so he must find the engine room. He has a pretty clear idea about what has happened. There are powerful ducts running into the engine room that channel water in from the ocean to cool down the engine. On these ducts there are a couple of heavy valves that can be opened to allow seawater to flow slowly into the engine room. Being an experienced ship’s mechanic, he knows that opening these valves is the safest way to intentionally sink a ship.

  The sound of water splashing about in the bottom of the ship rises towards them and they find the hatch leading down into the engine room. It too is wide open.

  “Look here,” Vermeulen says.

  “Shit, man,” Ager answers, following right behind him.

  “It is going to be impossible to get down there now.”

  The water is about to fill up the entire engine room. In a short while it will rise through the hatch and fill the rest of the ship. Vermeulen takes a few steps down the steep stairway. He wants to try filming down in the darkness.

  “Watch out! Looks like there’s a bit of a current in there.”

  “There is a workshop here on the left which is flooded. There is no way we are going to get inside. The water is almost up to the ceiling of the engine room,” Vermeulen says.

  “Yeah, yeah. Let’s get back outside,” says Ager breathlessly.

  Staying put would be foolhardy. They quickly climb up the stairs again and into the large, open area amidships where nets, materials and floats are stored. One more task yet remains. Where is the freezer facility where the fish is stored? They are reluctant to leave the sinking ship before securing a fish.

  On the port side of the deck they find a hatch that is boarded up. When Broadfield realizes that it is nailed shut, he starts tearing off the boards. Beneath a bucket full of cigarette butts and empty Marlboro packets Vermeulen and Ager find another hatch. It is too heavy and they are unable to get it open.

  “There must be another entryway,” Vermeulen says and runs into the dark hallway of the ship together with Ager while Broadfield continues searching up on deck.

  In the messroom there is a frozen chicken thawing on the counter, but they can’t find an entrance to the cold storage.

  “Fuck, man. Do we have to wait for this piece of shit to sink,” Ager says.

  The Thunder is listing more and more all the time. How much time do they have?

  They find another entrance to the fish factory. The floor is slick and slippery, Vermeulen stumbles, skids and falls into an aluminium rinsing tank.

  “Like fucking ice skating,” Ager says before reaching out his hand to haul his friend back onto his feet.

  On the bridge of the Bob Barker they see that somebody has pulled up the rope ladder that was hanging over the Thunder’s gunwale. Is there still somebody on board?

  For the first time in the 110-day chase, Meyerson is visibly stressed and upset. He calls Vermeulen up several times, but the latter doesn’t answer.2

  “Not getting anything back from them now,” he says to Hammarstedt.

  Then Vermeulen replies.


  “Just want to make sure that it was you guys who pulled up the pilot ladder on the Thunder.”

  “No, we didn’t,” Vermeulen tells Meyerson.

  “Tell them to get off,” Hammarstedt orders.

  Simon Ager shivers. Has someone stayed behind on board to make sure the ship can’t be saved? Is there somebody waiting in the darkness inside?

  “It might be Anteo, to get into the fish hold,” Vermeulen says over the radio to Meyerson.

  “Roger that. I just don’t want anyone sneaking up behind you. Just like an episode of Scooby Doo.”

  Vermeulen makes contact with Broadfield. He confirms that it was a false alarm.

  “It is confirmed. Anteo pulled up the pilot ladder,” he says to Meyerson.

  While Vermeulen, Ager and Broadfield are sweating on board the Thunder, Meyerson and Mossfield have caught sight of a flock of birds.

  “Where did all those birds come from? They look like cranes,” Meyerson says.

  “They were sitting on the Thunder. It’s so strange,” Mossfield says.

  “Why did they come here all of a sudden?”

  They are unable to agree about what type of bird it is, but Meyerson believes it can be a sign that the Thunder is about to go down.

  “If we see those birds again, it’s time to get off the boat.”

  “Let’s tell them to get off in five minutes,” Hammarstedt says.

  “I told them that ten minutes ago,” Meyerson says.

  “Give them a reminder.”

  “It is going to roll that way, too – like right onto them,” Meyerson says.

  “The end of the Thunder,” Hammarstedt says.

  Meyerson starts singing an old classic by The Doors.

  “This is the end, my only friend …”

  “But it is not really my friend, though. I kinda hate that boat.”

  “Really?” Colette Harmsen asks.

  “Have you gotten the Stockholm syndrome?” Meyerson laughs.

  On board the Thunder Broadfield has found a small hatch leading down into the cold storage room. With Vermeulen’s help, he now pulls the rope ladder through the ship. They attach the ladder and Broadfield climbs down into the darkness. Woven polypropylene bags full of fish are floating around in cold, grey water. There is water dripping from icicles hanging from the ceiling. Since the power went out on the Thunder, the fish has begun to thaw. Broadfield grabs hold of one of the bags and attaches it to a rope. They pull it towards them and tear it open. The head and tail of the fish have been removed, but it looks very much like a toothfish. They throw it over board into one of the dinghies.