The Wreck of the Mary Deare

by Hammond Innes

  ‘Had this been going on ever since the start of the voyage?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Then, since it affected you directly as first officer, you must have made enquiries as to how much he drank. How much did you gather he consumed each day?’

  Patch hesitated, and then reluctantly: ‘The steward said a bottle, a bottle and a-half—sometimes two.’ The court gasped.

  ‘I see.’ The sound of suppressed sobbing was distinctly audible in the stillness of the court. ‘So that he was completely incapable as the Master of the ship?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Patch shook his head. ‘Towards the end of the day he would become a little fuddled. But otherwise I would say he was reasonably in command of the situation.’

  ‘You mean to say’—Bowen-Lodge was leaning forward—‘that he was in full command of his faculties when he was steadily drinking one to two bottles a day?’

  ‘Yes, sir. That is to say, most of the time.’

  ‘But you admitted that he was raving and you had to lock him in his cabin. If he was raving, then surely . . .’ the Chairman’s brows lifted in a question.

  ‘He wasn’t raving because he was drunk,’ Patch answered slowly.

  ‘Then why was he raving?’

  ‘He had run out of liquor.’

  A shocked silence gripped the court. Janet Taggart had stopped sobbing. She was sitting quite rigid, staring at Patch with a sort of fascinated horror.

  ‘I would like to get this point perfectly clear before we go any further,’ Bowen-Lodge said in a quiet, controlled voice. ‘What you’re suggesting is that Captain Taggart did not die of drink, but the lack of it. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Do you really think absence of liquor can kill a man?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Patch answered wretchedly. ‘All I know is that he lived on nothing else, and when he hadn’t got it, he went raving mad and died. He never seemed to have anything in the way of food.’

  Bowen-Lodge considered for a moment, his pencil tracing lines on the paper in front of him. At length he looked down at Counsel. ‘I think, Mr Holland, we should call medical evidence to establish the point one way or another.’

  Holland nodded. ‘I have already arranged for that—it seemed necessary after reading his deposition.’

  ‘Good. Then we can leave the matter in abeyance till then.’ He sounded relieved. ‘Please proceed with the examination of the witness.’

  The next stage of the voyage was uneventful, but Patch was taken through it in detail and the picture that emerged was of a conscientious officer doing his best to pull a ship’s company together with the presence of the owner a constant irritant. The incidents that came to light under Holland’s steady questioning were trivial enough in themselves—the crew’s mess table uncleaned between meals, cockroaches, several men lousy, the galley dirty, a lifeboat without provisions, a man injured in a fight, the engines stopped for the replacement of a bearing that had been allowed to run hot—but together they produced an impression of a ship that was badly served by the men who ran her.

  Other things emerged, too. The log was improperly kept, the wells not sounded regularly, water consumption unchecked, and as often as not it was Higgins, by then acting as first officer, who was responsible. Patch showed that he was coming to depend more and more on his second officer, John Rice, and the growing sense of comradeship between the two men ran like a strong thread through the evidence.

  Twice Patch referred to Dellimare. Once of his own accord, when he was dealing with the lack of supervision of the engine-room staff. ‘He was encouraging Mr Burrows, my chief engineer, in his poker playing. I had to insist that he stopped entertaining Mr Burrows in his cabin. They were playing cards together till all hours of the night and it was throwing undue responsibility upon Mr Raft, the second engineer.’

  ‘Did Mr Dellimare raise any objection?’ Holland asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said it was his ship and he would do what he damn well liked and entertain any of the officers he pleased when he pleased.’

  ‘And what did you say to that?’

  ‘That it was endangering the safety of the ship and the morale of the engine-room and that I was the captain, not him, and the ship would be run the way I wanted it run.’

  ‘In other words you had a row?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did he agree to stop playing poker with the chief engineer?’

  ‘In the end, yes.’

  ‘In the end? You used some persuasion?’

  ‘Yes. I told him I had given Mr Burrows a direct order and that, if it wasn’t obeyed, I should know what action to take. And I made it a direct order as far as he was concerned.’

  ‘And he accepted that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you tell the Court what your relations with Mr Dellimare were at this stage?’

  Patch hesitated. He had revealed that his relations with the owner were strained. He could in one sentence explain the reason for those strained relations and in doing so gain the sympathy of the whole court. But he let the opportunity go, merely saying, ‘We did not see eye-to-eye on certain matters.’ And Holland left it at that.

  A further reference to Dellimare occurred almost accidentally. Patch had just assured the Court that he had personally checked all four holds as the ship ran into heavy weather off the coast of Portugal, and Holland, again being scrupulously fair to him, drew attention to the fact that he hadn’t relied on his first officer’s report to make sure that there could be no shifting of the cargo. ‘You didn’t trust him, in other words?’

  ‘To be honest, no.’

  ‘Did Mr Higgins, in fact, check the holds?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You thought so little of him that you didn’t even ask whether he had checked them?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that is correct.’

  ‘Did anybody, other than yourself, check the holds?’

  Patch paused a moment before replying. Then he said, ‘I think Mr Dellimare checked them.’

  ‘You think he checked them?’

  ‘Well, he was in Number One hold when I went in through the inspection hatch to check. I presumed that he was there for the same purpose as myself.’

  Holland seemed to consider this for a moment. ‘I see. But this was the duty of one of the ship’s officers. It seems odd that the owner should find it necessary to check the cargo himself. Have you any comment to make on that?’

  Patch shook his head.

  ‘What sort of man was Mr Dellimare?’ Holland asked. ‘What was your impression of him?’

  Now, I thought—now he’ll tell them the truth about Dellimare. It was the opening he needed. But he stood there, without saying anything, his face very pale and that nerve twitching at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘What I am trying to get at is this,’ Holland went on. ‘We are coming now to the night of March 16. On that night Mr Dellimare disappeared—lost overboard. Did you know that Mr Dellimare had been in the Navy during the war?’

  Patch nodded and his lips framed the word ‘Yes.’

  ‘He served in corvettes and frigates, mainly in the Atlantic. He must have been through a great many storms.’ There was a significant pause, and then Holland said, ‘What was your impression of him, at this time, when you knew you were running into very heavy weather? Was he normal in every way?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ Patch’s voice was very low.

  ‘But you’re not certain.’

  ‘I didn’t know him very well.’

  ‘You had been on this ship with him for over a month. However much he kept to his cabin, you must have had some idea of his mental state. Would you say he was worried?’

  ‘Yes, I think you could say that.’

  ‘Business worries or private worries?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ll put it quite bluntly. When you found him ch
ecking the cargo, what interpretation did you put on his action?’

  ‘I didn’t put any interpretation on it.’ Patch had found his voice again and was answering factually and clearly.

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘I told him to stay out of the holds.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He shouldn’t have been there. The cargo wasn’t his responsibility.’

  ‘Quite. I’ll put it to you another way. Would you say that his presence there indicated that he was getting scared, that his nerves were going to pieces? He had been torpedoed once during the war and was a long time in the water before being picked up. Would you say that his war experience was in any way affecting him?’

  ‘No, I would . . . I don’t know.’

  Holland hesitated and then he gave a little shrug. He had been a man seeking after the truth, using the depositions already made as a base from which to probe. But now he changed his tactics and was content to let Patch tell the story of the night the Mary Deare was hove-to in the wind-spun waters of the Bay of Biscay, not questioning, not interrupting—just letting it run.

  And Patch told it well, gaining from the rapt silence of the court, telling it in hard, factual sentences. And the Mary Deare floated into that court, rusty and battered, with the seas bursting like gunfire against the submerged reef of her bows. I watched his face as he told it straight, man-to-man—from the witness box to the Court—and I had the odd feeling that all the time he was skating round something. I looked up at the Chairman. He was sitting slightly forward with his chin cupped in his right hand, listening with a shut, tight-lipped, judicial face that told me nothing of his reactions.

  The facts, as Patch presented them, were straightforward enough: the glass falling steadily, the seas rising, the wind increasing, the ship rolling, rolling steady and slow, but gradually rolling her bulwarks under as the mountains of water lifted her on to their streaming crests and tumbled her down into the valleys between. He had been on the bridge since dusk. Rice had been there, too. Just the two of them and the helmsman and a lookout. It had happened about 23.20 hours—a slight explosion, a sort of shudder. It had sounded like another wave breaking and slamming against the bows, except that there was no white water at that particular moment and the ship did not stagger. She was down in a trough and rising slowly. The break of the wave came later and, with it, the hesitation, the crash of the impact, and the sudden blur of white hiding all the fore part of the ship.

  Nothing had been said for a moment, and then Rice’s voice had cut through the gale’s roar as he shouted, ‘Did we hit something, sir?’ And then he had sent Rice to sound the wells and back had come the report—making water in both the for’ard holds, particularly in Number One. He had ordered the pumps to be started in both Number One and Number Two holds, and he had stood on the bridge and watched the bows become heavy and the seas start to break green over all the for’ard part of the ship. And then Dellimare had come on to the bridge, white-faced and scared-looking. Higgins, too. They were talking about abandoning ship. They seemed to think she was going down. And Rice came back to say the crew were panicking.

  He had left the bridge to Higgins then and had gone out on to the upper deck with Rice. Four men in life-jackets were starting to clear Number Three boat. They were scared and he had to hit one man before they would leave the boat and go back to their duties. He had taken all the men he could find, some ten of them, and had set them to work under the bos’n and the third engineer to shore up the bulkhead between Number Two hold and the boiler-room just in case. And it was whilst he was supervising this that the helmsman had reported to the engine-room that the bridge was full of smoke.

  He had taken half a dozen men and when he reached the bridge there was only the helmsman there, his eyes streaming, racked with coughing, as he clung to the wheel, nursing the ship through the crowding storm-breakers, the whole place filled with a fog of acrid smoke.

  The fire had been in the radio shack, a little above and behind the bridge. No, he had no idea how it had started. The radio operator had gone below to get his life-jacket. He had stayed below to relieve himself and to have a mug of cocoa. Higgins had gone aft to inspect the steering which seemed slack. No, he didn’t know where Dellimare was. He regretted that the helmsman was not among the survivors.

  They had used foam extinguishers on the fire. But the heat had been so intense that they hadn’t been able to get inside the room. What had finally put the fire out was the partial collapse of the roof, which had allowed the water from a breaking wave to engulf the flames.

  The wind was now Force 12 in the gusts—hurricane force. He had hove-to then, putting the ship’s bows into the wind with the engines at slow ahead, just holding her there, and praying to God that the seas, piling down in white cascades of water on to the bows, wouldn’t smash the for’ard hatch covers. They had stayed hove-to like that, in imminent danger of their lives, for fourteen hours, the pumps just holding their own, and all the time he and Rice had kept moving constantly through the ship, to see that the bulkhead—which was leaking where the weight of water was bulging it, low down near its base—was properly shored, to keep the crew from panicking, to see that they kept to their stations and helped the ship in its struggle against the sea.

  About 06.00 hours, after twenty-two hours without sleep, he had retired to his cabin. The wind was dropping by then and the glass beginning to rise. He had gone to sleep fully clothed and two hours later had been woken by Samuel King, the Jamaican steward, with the news that Mr Dellimare could not be found.

  The whole ship had been searched, but without success. The man had vanished. ‘I could only presume that he had been washed overboard,’ Patch said, and then he stood silent, as though waiting for Holland to question him, and Holland asked him if he had held any sort of enquiry.

  ‘Yes. I had every member of the crew make a statement before Mr Higgins, Mr Rice and myself. As far as we could determine, the last man to see Mr Dellimare alive was the steward. He had seen him leave his cabin and go out through the door on to the upper deck leading aft. That was at about 04.30 hours.’

  ‘And nobody saw him after that?’

  Patch hesitated, and then said. ‘As far as anybody could find out—no.’

  ‘The upper deck was the boat deck?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was there any danger in going out on to that deck?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was on the bridge dealing with the fire.’

  ‘Yes, but in your opinion—was there danger in crossing that deck?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. It’s difficult to say. Spray and some seas were sweeping right across all the decks.’

  ‘Right aft?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Mr Dellimare was going aft?’

  ‘So King said.’

  Holland paused and then he asked, ‘Have you any idea where Mr Dellimare was going?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In view of what you have told us before, would it be reasonable to assume that he might be going aft to check that the hatches of the after-holds were still secure?’

  ‘Possibly. But there was no need. I had checked them myself.’

  ‘But if he had gone to check those hatches, it would have meant going down on to the after well-deck?’

  ‘He could have seen the state of the hatches from the after end of the upper deck.’

  ‘But if he had gone down, would it have been dangerous?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think so. Both well-decks were being swept by the seas.’

  ‘I see. And that was the last anyone saw of him?’ The court was very still. The old ship, with her water-logged bows pointed into the gale and a man’s body tossed among the spindrift out there in the raging seas; there wasn’t anybody in the room who couldn’t see it for himself. The puzzle of it, the mystery of it—it held them all enthralled. And behind me somebody was crying.

  Then Patch’s voice was going on with his story, nervous and jerky, in
tune with the sense of tragedy that was seen only in the imagination and not in the cleansing, healing atmosphere of salt wind and spray.

  The wind had fallen, and the sea with it, and at 12.43 hours, according to the entry in the log, he had rung for half-ahead on the engines and had resumed course. As soon as it was practicable he had ordered the hand pumps manned, and, as the bows slowly emerged from the sea, he had set a working party under Rice to repair the damage to the for’ard hatches.

  He had considered putting into Brest. But, with the weather improving and the pumps holding their own, he had finally decided to hold his course, and had rounded Ushant early on the morning of the 18th. By then he had increased engine revolutions to economical speed. There was still a big swell running, but the sea was quiet, almost dead calm, with very little wind. Nevertheless, he had hugged the French coast just in case there was some sudden change in the state of the for’ard holds. Ile de Batz was abeam at 13.34, Triagoz light at 16.12, Sept Iles at 17.21. He read these times out to the Court from the log. At 19.46 the group occulting light on Les Heaux was just visible through a light mist four points on the starb’d bow. He had then altered course to North 33 East. This would take him outside the Barnouic and Roches Douvres reefs and leave Les Hanois, the light on the south-western tip of Guernsey, about four miles to starb’d. After altering course he had informed his officers that he had decided to take the ship into Southampton for inspection and repairs.

  At approximately 21.20, when the steward was clearing his evening meal, which he had taken, as usual, alone in his cabin, he had heard shouts, and then Rice had rushed in to say that the after hold was on fire and that the crew were in a state of panic.

  ‘Any particular reason for their panic?’ Holland asked.

  ‘Well, I think they thought the ship was jinxed,’ Patch answered. ‘In the last two days I had heard that word often.’

  ‘And what did you think? Did you think the ship was jinxed?’

  Patch faced the Chairman and the assessors. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I thought there had been a deliberate attempt to wreck her.’

  There was a stir of interest throughout the courtroom. But he didn’t punch it home with any direct accusation. He just said: ‘It was too coincidental—the damage to the holds and then the fire in the radio shack.’