The Wreck of the Mary Deare

by Hammond Innes

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Definitely not.’ I felt relieved and angry. ‘What’s the Torre Annunziata got to do with it?’

  He hesitated. ‘It’s a little delicate, you understand . . . so much supposition . . .’ Then he suddenly made up his mind and said, ‘The Dellimare Company owned only two ships—the Mary Deare and the Torre Annunziata. The Torre Annunziata was in the Rangoon River at the same time that the Mary Deare put in to load her cotton cargo.’ He glanced at his watch and then rose to his feet. ‘Well, sir, I won’t trouble you any further for the moment.’

  He turned then and began to walk back towards the slip, and as we negotiated the wooden duck-boards of the pontoons, he said, ‘I’ll be quite honest with you. This is a matter that might in certain circumstances . . .’ He hesitated there and seemed to change his mind. ‘I am waiting for a report now from our agent in Rangoon. But . . .’ He shook his head. ‘It is all very disturbing, Mr Sands. The Torre Annunziata has been sold to the Chinese. She has vanished behind what I believe is called the Bamboo Curtain—not only the ship, but her crew as well. And Adams has disappeared, too. We are almost certain that he shipped out in a dhow bound for Zanzibar. It may be weeks before we can contact him. And then there are these two fires on the Mary Deare and the loss of Mr Dellimare. A fire in the radio room is most unusual, and Mr Dellimare had been in the Navy. The possibility of suicide . . . small firm, you know . . . might be in difficulties . . .’ He tucked his brief-case more firmly under his arm. ‘You see what I mean, Mr Sands. Little things in themselves, but together . . .’ He glanced at me significantly. And then he added, ‘The trouble is the time factor. The H. B. & K. M. are making great efforts to increase their business in the Pacific. And Mr Hsu is a big man in Singapore—considerable influence in Eastern ports. They feel it calls for prompt settlement of the claim unless . . .’ He shrugged.

  We had reached the slip and he paused for a moment to admire Sea Witch’s lines, asking questions about our diving plans, the aqualungs we were using and the depths at which we could work. He seemed genuinely interested and I explained how we had financed ourselves by salvaging bits and pieces from the wreck of a tanker in the Mediterranean and that we were now going to work on the wreck of an L.C.T. in Worbarrow Bay off the Dorset coast. He wished us luck and gave me his card. ‘Think about what I’ve said, Mr Sands. If you remember anything—well, you have my card, sir.’

  It was only after Snetterton had gone—when I had had time to think over what he had told me—that I began to understand what the loss of the Mary Deare was going to lead to. There would be other people besides Snetterton coming to ask me questions. He was just the breeze before the storm. The newspaper reports I had read had all taken it for granted that the ship was sunk—so had Snetterton and the two reporters who had come to see me when I had arrived with Sea Witch. Everybody thought she was sunk. But sooner or later they would start probing, and before then I had to see Patch and find out his reasons for concealing her position.

  I thought it must be connected in some way with his past record and when I was in London two days later to sign our salvage contract with the underwriters, I made a few enquiries about the Belle Isle. She had been wrecked on the Anambas Islands north-east of Singapore nearly ten years ago, and she was entered in the records as a ‘total loss.’ Her master was given as Gideon S. Patch. An Enquiry had been held in Singapore and the Court had found the stranding to be due to default of the Master and had suspended his Certificate for a period of five years. That was all. There were no details. But, discussing it with one of my friends in the marine section of Lloyd’s, who specialised in the Far East, I learned that some ugly rumours had got about afterwards to the effect that the stranding had been a put-up job. The ship had been very heavily insured.

  I was very close to St Mary Axe and I decided to have a look at the Dellimare Company office. It was partly that I was curious to see the sort of company it was, and also I wanted to find out where I could contact Patch. Their offices were at the Houndsditch end, on the fourth floor of a dingey building full of small trading businesses. I found myself in a poky little room with a desk and a gas fire and some filing cabinets. The single typewriter had its cover on and dirt-grimed windows looked out across a litter of chimney pots to the white-tiled rear of a big office block. There was a bell on the counter and amongst a litter of papers was some Dellimare Company notepaper. It gave the directors as J. C. B. Dellimare, Hans Gundersen and A. Petrie. When I rang the bell, the door of an inner office was opened and a full-bosomed, fleshy-looking woman appeared, dressed in black with a lot of cheap jewellery and blonde hair that was startling because it was clearly natural.

  When I gave her my name, she said, ‘Oh, are you the Mr Sands who was on board the Mary Deare? Then perhaps you can help me.’ She took me through into the other office. It was a much brighter room with cream walls and a red carpet and a big green and chromium steel desk that was littered with Press clippings, mostly from French newspapers. ‘I’m trying to find out what really happened to him,’ she said. ‘To Mr Dellimare, that is.’ And she glanced involuntarily at a big photograph in an ornate silver frame that stood beside her on the desk. It was a head and shoulders portrait, showing a rather hard, deeply-lined face with a small straight mouth under the thin pencil-line of a moustache.

  ‘You knew him well?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. We formed the Company. Of course, after Mr Gundersen joined, it was all different. Our main office became Singapore. Mr Dellimare and I just looked after the London end.’ There was something entirely personal about the way she said ‘Mr Dellimare and I’, and after that she began asking me questions. Had Captain Patch said anything to me about how Mr Dellimare had been lost? Did I go into his cabin? Had I talked to any of the survivors? ‘He had been in the Navy. He couldn’t just have gone overboard like that?’ Her voice trembled slightly.

  But when she realised I could tell her nothing that she didn’t already know, she lost interest in me. I asked her then for Patch’s address, but she hadn’t got it. ‘He came in about three days ago to deliver his report,’ she said. ‘He’s coming back on Friday, when he’ll be able to see Mr Gundersen.’ I gave her the address of the boatyard and asked her to tell Patch to contact me, and then I left. She came with me to the door. ‘I’ll tell Mr Gundersen you’ve been,’ she said with a quick, brittle smile. ‘I’m sure he’ll be interested.’

  Mr Gundersen! Perhaps it was the inflection of her voice, but I got the impression that she was a little nervous of him, as though he were entirely remote from the Dellimare Company office that she knew with its silver-framed photograph and its view over the chimneys.

  It never occurred to me that I should meet Gundersen, but on Friday afternoon the boy from the yard’s office came down to the slip to say that a Mrs Petrie was calling me from London. I recognised the slightly husky voice at once. Mr Gundersen had just arrived by plane from Singapore and would like to have a talk with me. He was coming down to Southampton tomorrow, would it be convenient for him to call on me at the yard at eleven o’clock?

  I couldn’t refuse. The man had come all the way from Singapore and he was entitled to find out all he could about the loss of the Company’s ship. But, remembering the things Snetterton had hinted at, I had a feeling of uneasiness. Also, my time and all my energies were concentrated on the conversion of Sea Witch and I resented anything which took my mind off the work that Mike and I had planned and struggled for over years of wreck-hunting. I was worried, too, about what I was going to tell him. How was I to explain to him that nobody had been notified of the position of the wreck?

  And then early next morning Patch came on the phone from London. No, they hadn’t given him any message from me. I thought then that he was ringing me about the package I had brought over for him and which I realised was still on board, locked away in my brief-case. But it wasn’t that. It was about Gundersen. Had Gundersen been to see me? And when I told him that I was expecting him at eleven o’clock, he s
aid, ‘Thank God! I tried to get you last night—to warn you.’ And then he added, ‘You haven’t told anybody where the Mary Deare is lying, have you?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’ I hadn’t told anybody, not even Mike.

  ‘Has a man called Snetterton been to see you—a marine insurance agent?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He didn’t ask me. He presumed the ship was sunk.’ And then I said, ‘Haven’t you notified the authorities yet? If you haven’t, I think it’s time—’

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I can’t come down now. I’ve got to see somebody. And on Monday I’ve got to go to the Ministry of Transport. But I’ll be able to come down and see you on Tuesday. Will you promise to say nothing until then?’

  ‘But why?’ I said. ‘What’s the point in concealing her position?’

  ‘I’ll explain when I see you.’

  ‘And what about Gundersen? What am I to say to him?’

  ‘Say anything you like. But for God’s sake don’t tell him where she is. Don’t tell anybody. I ask you as a favour, Sands.’

  ‘All right,’ I said doubtfully.

  He thanked me then and rang off.

  An hour later Gundersen arrived. The boy came down to say that he was waiting for me in the yard manager’s office. A big chauffeur-driven limousine stood outside and I went in to find Gundersen seated on the edge of the desk smoking a cigarette and the manager standing in front of him in uneasy silence. ‘You’re Mr Sands, are you?’ Gundersen asked. He didn’t offer me his hand or get up or make any move. The manager gave us the use of his office and slipped out. As soon as the door was shut Gundersen said, ‘You know why I’m here, I imagine?’ He waited until I had nodded and then said, ‘I saw Mr Patch yesterday. I understand you were with him during the last forty-eight hours on the Mary Deare. Naturally I wanted to hear your version of what happened on our ship.’ He asked me then to go through the whole sequence of events. ‘I want every detail, please, Mr Sands.’

  I went through the whole story for him, leaving out only the details about Patch’s behaviour and what had happened at the end. He listened in complete silence, not interrupting once. His long, immobile face, tanned by the sun, showed no flicker of expression, and his eyes, behind their horn-rimmed glasses, watched me all the time I was talking.

  Afterwards he asked me a series of questions—straightforward, practical questions concerning course and wind strength and the length of time we had run the engines. The ordeal we had gone through seemed to mean nothing to him and I got the impression of a cold personality.

  Finally, he said, ‘I don’t think you have yet understood, Mr Sands, what it is I wish to know.’ His slight accent was more noticeable now. ‘I want to discover the exact position in which the ship went down.’

  ‘You don’t seem to realise the conditions prevailing at the time,’ I said. ‘All I can tell you is that she was close to the Roches Douvres at the time I boarded her.’

  He got up then. He was very tall and he wore a light-coloured suit of smooth material draped in the American fashion. ‘You are not being very helpful, Mr Sands.’ A signet ring on his finger flashed in the pale April sunlight. ‘It seems odd that neither you nor Patch can say where the ship was at the time you abandoned her.’ He waited, and then he said, ‘I have also talked to Higgins. He may not have a Master’s Certificate, but he’s an experienced seaman. You may be interested to know that his calculations, based on wind strength, probable drift and tide, put the Mary Deare’s final position a good deal to the east of where you and Patch seem to think you were. Have you any comment to make?’ He stood facing me, his back to the window.

  ‘None,’ I said, nettled and a little angry at his manner. And then, because he was still staring at me, waiting, I said, ‘I’d remind you, Mr Gundersen, that I am not concerned in this. I was on board your ship by accident.’

  He didn’t answer for a moment. Finally he said, ‘That remains, perhaps, to be seen.’ And he added, ‘Well, at least I have got something out of you. Now that we have some idea of the length of time the engines were running and the course steered whilst they were in use, it should be possible to arrive at an approximation of the position.’ He paused again. ‘Is there anything further you would care to add to what you have already told me, Mr Sands?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Very well.’ He picked up his hat. And then he paused. ‘The manager here tells me that you’re interested in salvage. You’ve formed a company—Sands, Duncan & Company, Ltd.’ He stared at me. ‘I think I should warn you that this man Patch has a bad record. Unfortunately our Mr Dellimare was inexperienced in matters connected with shipping. He employed this man when nobody else would, and the result has proved disastrous.’

  ‘He did his best to save the ship,’ I said angrily.

  For the first time his face moved. An eyebrow lifted. ‘After he had caused the crew to panic and take to the boats. I have yet to discover his precise motives, but if you’re mixed up in this, Mr Sands . . .’ He put his hat on. ‘You can contact me at the Savoy Hotel if you should find you have some further information to give me.’ He went out of the office then and I watched him drive away with an uneasy feeling that I was getting myself dangerously involved.

  This feeling persisted, and it came between me and my work so that I was not in a particularly sympathetic mood when Patch finally arrived. We were living on board Sea Witch by then, which was fortunate because he didn’t arrive until the evening. I had expected him to look rested, the lines in his face smoothed out. It came as a shock to me to find him looking just as haggard. We had only one light on board, an inspection lamp clamped to a half-erected bulkhead, and in its harsh glare he looked ghastly, his face quite white and a nervous tick at the corner of his mouth.

  We cleared the saloon table of tools and wood-shavings, and I sat him down and gave him a drink and a cigarette and introduced him to Mike. It was neat rum I gave him and he knocked it straight back, and he drew on his cigarette as though it were the first he’d had in days. His suit was old and frayed and I remember wondering whether the Dellimare Company had payed him. Oddly enough, he accepted Mike at once and, without attempting to get me alone, asked straight out what Gundersen had wanted, what he had said.

  I told him, and when I had finished, I said, ‘Gundersen suspects something. He hinted as much.’ I paused, waiting for the explanation he had promised me. But all he said was, ‘I’d forgotten that Higgins might work it out.’ He was speaking to himself.

  ‘What about that explanation?’ I asked him.

  ‘Explanation?’ He stared at me blankly.

  ‘You surely don’t imagine,’ I said, ‘that I can be a party to a piece of deception that involves the owners, the insurance people, everybody with a financial interest in the ship, unless I know that there is some good reason?’ I told him I considered that my duty was clear. ‘Either you explain why you’ve withheld this vital information or I go to the authorities.’ An obstinate, shut look had come over his face. ‘Why pretend the ship went down, when at any moment she may be sighted lying there in the middle of the Minkies?’

  ‘She could have been carried there by the tides,’ he murmured.

  ‘She could have been, but she wasn’t.’ I lit a cigarette and sat down opposite him. He looked so desperately tired of it all. ‘Listen,’ I said more gently. ‘I’ve been trained in marine insurance. I know the procedure after the loss of a ship. Any moment now the Receiver of Wreck will start taking depositions under oath from everybody connected with the loss. And under oath I’ve no alternative but to give the full—’

  ‘You won’t be called on to make a deposition,’ he said quickly. ‘You weren’t connected with the ship.’

  ‘No, but I was on board.’

  ‘By accident.’ He pushed his hand up through his hair in a gesture that brought it all back to me. ‘It’s not for you to make any comment.’


  ‘No, but if I have to make a statement under oath . . .’ I leaned across the table towards him. ‘Try and see it from my point of view,’ I said. ‘You made me a certain proposition that day in Paimpol. A proposition which, in the light of your failure to notify the owners of the present whereabouts of the ship, was entirely crooked. And Gundersen is beginning to think—’

  ‘Crooked?’ He began laughing and there was a note of hysteria in his voice. ‘Do you know what cargo the Mary Deare carried?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Aero engines. Snetterton told me.’

  ‘And did he tell you that the other Dellimare ship was moored next to the Mary Deare for four days in the Rangoon River? Those aero engines are in China now—sold to the Chinks for a mint of money.’

  The positiveness of his accusation took me by surprise. ‘How can you be certain?’ I asked him.

  He looked at me, hesitating for a moment. ‘All right. I’ll tell you. Because Dellimare offered me five thousand quid to wreck the Mary Deare. Cash—in fivers.’

  In the sudden silence I could hear the lapping of the water at the bottom of the slip. ‘Dellimare? Are you serious?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, Dellimare.’ His voice was angry and bitter. ‘It was after old Taggart died. Dellimare was desperate then. He had to improvise. And, by the luck of the devil, I was on board. He knew my record. He thought he could buy me.’ He leaned back and lit another cigarette, his hands shaking. ‘Sometimes I wish to God I’d accepted his offer.’

  I poured him another drink. And then I said, ‘But I still don’t understand why you should conceal the Mary Deare’s position. Why haven’t you told all this to the authorities?’

  He turned and looked at me. ‘Because if Gundersen knows where she is, he’ll go out there and destroy her.’

  That was nonsense, of course. You can’t destroy a 6,000 ton ship just like that. I told him so. He’d only got to go to the authorities, demand an examination of the vessel and the whole thing would be decided. But he shook his head. ‘I have to go back myself—with somebody like you that I can trust.’