A Book of Death and Fish (32 page)

If I still believed in life continuing after death, I’d see Gabriele’s aunt smiling down. The woman who’d walked across a long bridge to a chunk of Germany under a different political system – Erika. A share of her legacy let us buy our old Folkboat.

Even so, some people say it’s tempting fate – changing the name of a boat. I’m not admitting to sharing the superstitious nature of fishermen but I looked up
Erika
after Gabriele had finished painting the name, by hand, on a teak plate to be fixed to her transom stern.

I didn’t really mind dial-up internet. You had a bit of thinking time between the appearances of sections of data. Even if you’ve not had the great benefit of having studied Latin for one year, you might be a keen gardener. Maybe even a botanist. Then you’d certainly know we’re talking about heather. The genre of girls’ names linked to flowers. In turn, there’s many a boat named after either the girl or the original flower. Look up the names of the herring fleet of Scalpay – the
Daffodil
, the
Lily,
the
Lilac
, for a start. And remember the White Heather Club – twirling dancers and the costumes and the sangs o hame. Well, we’re surely nae the ainly anes, ken.

It could get worse. How’s this for a set of lyrics?

There’s quite a bit more but you’ve likely sensed the tone of it, now. If I was to make the claim that that lyric, set to an adaptation of a rousing German folk tune, was to become one of the main marching songs of the Wehrmacht, would you believe me? Granted, the words might not always be exactly as recorded in the versions made for the team working under Goebbel’s direction.

And if I were to assert that the same song became particularly identified with the Waffen SS, would that be stretching your credibility further? Sweet heather and bare skulls. Not the skulls of stags.

What if I claimed that you can now obtain a recording of German soldiers singing this song in the form of a ring-tone for your mobile phone?

Operation Heather could well have been a commando-raid but it wasn’t. Let’s go back to 1942, for now. A big year. I wasn’t even a twinkle and the guy who might have told us straight, is not to be found. Not even in his own empty grave.

But he was a ‘pioneer’. A particular breed of private in the German army. Timber roads were laid across swamps. Good experience for students of architecture. The
Erika
corridor was a German advance which became a bit like netting thin spent fish in a trap. The Wehrmacht was able to cut off huge numbers of Soviet troops in the Volkhov ‘pocket’. There are plenty of photographs. Mostly they show the more peaceful times for the German troops. A very few show the ceremonial funeral
of fallen comrades about to be placed in their carefully prepared graves. A further few show the mass of captured arms and equipment, even the T-34 tanks which were acknowledged to be superior to the panzers, in that strange terrain. They had basic diesel engines, so there was less to go wrong and the fuel was less volatile. A good thing in a tank, I would have thought. And I know another guy who would agree with his son if we could hear him.

Variants of T-34s were still in service until 1996, a bit like British Seagull engines, built as disposable units for the Normandy landings but surviving till the present day. Panzer production was a bit inhibited by unsporting rivalry between manufacturers. This was perhaps a factor in the complexity of the petrol engines installed in their units. Not a good thing on the Eastern Front. Good job for us they didn’t cope with cold the way the BMW motorbike propulsion seemed to function in extreme heat. According to certain sources, not guaranteed unbiased.

The trains didn’t do that well, either. German-made locomotives froze and the army was unable to capture any of the inferior race’s rolling stock, admittedly superior in that climate.

There are other photographs which passed the censor. Most of these were taken by enthusiastic amateurs who were soldiers of a Fatherland which had expanded with incredible speed. They hint at a huge number of Russian prisoners who seemed happy to be captured. Others revealed the photographers’ interest in human faces and ingenious little bits of engineering. One or two such photographs did arrive at the home of the sweetheart of that one pioneer, Gabriele’s olman. One of the few who found his way back. For a while.

But it was really a counter-attack, like the later last push at Arnhem against a later advancing front. Don’t take my word for it. Go to the memoirs of Field Marshal Keitel. Written but unrevised in his last few weeks before his hanging at Nuremburg.

He saw the writing on the wall in 1941 even though the resolve of his noble but volatile leader (he admits) on at least one occasion, had delayed the echo of 1812 by carrying out such pincer movements as the one which occurred in the Erika Aisle.

No disrespect to brave aunt Erika, but I wish we hadn’t changed the name of our yacht. In mitigation, do you really want to keep calling your modest Folkboat
Polaris
– the name it came with? A little bit sonorous on the VHF. And I think of that name as attached to a class of nuclear submarine and so associated with a vessel which spends too much of its time under the water, for my taste. But they do say that changing the name of a boat is inviting bad luck.

With a bit more research, it got worse. The World Wide Web provided details of another vessel going under the name of
Erika
– an example of a class of tanker (37,000 tonnes) built in Japan in 1975. There was some concern about the class’s light build and their probable safe working life. However, she had passed an inspection by RINA – the Italian shipping classification society. And the rate of hire was comparatively cheap. So that was fine.

But
Erika
began listing, off the coast of Brittany, when carrying about 20,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil. She broke up and sank in a storm. The data that will continue the story after that event of 1999, depends a little bit on your perspective. It was an environmental disaster, with all but about a third of her oil entering the sea, to cause havoc along a huge section of coast. Or it was a ground-breaking salvage operation with the remaining oil recovered from the broken ship – almost half of the original cargo, some accounts say.

As to our own
Tante Erika
, she was still afloat at the tail end of the year, with the varnish hardly dull on her proud new nameplate. Gabriele really got Anna and myself sailing together, after we’d picked her up at Lochmaddy, on the way home from our first wee cruise. But after that, she didn’t come out with us very often. She just seemed to run out of steam, no matter how much sleep she got.

That autumn, the daughter and me sailed in sun and we sailed in snow squalls. Sometimes these things happened in the same day, the same hour. We learned that you could let the sheet go now and again to let some wind out of the sails. Or you could get everything really tight so you lost some of the curve in the cloth and reduce power that way. Anna’s
pal had done a fair bit of dinghy sailing and it showed. She was really teaching us. In turn, I enjoyed showing the girls the basics of driving under engine power. Testing them, so they could reel off the shapes and lights of Cardinal marks.

She was getting good use so we decided to keep her going through the winter. So I got another mate to dive on the mooring we’d borrowed and replace the rope and chain that joined the tackle on the bottom to the buoy at the top. The two sinkers were deep in shingle. We left them undisturbed.

I got the phone call at about six a.m. ‘I don’t want to be the one who tells you, but she’s ashore.’ It was a colleague speaking. One of the few new-generation coastguards who still looked out the window of the box.

I’d been awake listening to the wind for hours. I drove down. It was a white-out. The hardest edge of the front had gone through but there were still heavy squalls with the claps of thunder. The car rocked as I watched the lines come across the harbour from the northwest. The only exposed direction from our mooring. There was not enough distance for any build of sea. It was simply the extreme power from an electrical storm. Hail dented the roof and I feared for the windscreen. It was just past the top of the tide. We were on Springs but the low pressure had forced the water higher still.

There was nothing showing where the mooring had been. A white shape, still beautiful, was being lifted and pounded, pulsing on the shingle shore. At first she seemed to be intact but, as I watched, I saw small bits of painted wood, washing up here and there. You couldn’t ask anyone to do anything in these conditions. I still had to watch.

It had gusted to 106mph that night at Stornoway airport. It was a clear day when the front went through. You could see that nothing had broken. Everything was dragged ashore. Heavy chain and two ground anchors. Not what I expected to see – I thought the mooring I’d borrowed was SY style. Two huge flat grids from the quarry. The diver had simply said everything was in good order. I had not asked the right questions.

When she was lifted by the crane, there was a gasp. One side was intact and then when she swung, there was a third of the boat missing, on the port side. I was thinking about not asking the right questions when the
remaining two-thirds of the boat were swinging in the air. The phone calls you took when you were bleary-eyed. Could you have picked up on something between the obvious lines? Something that might have made a difference.

You could see her ribs and the trailing wires. It was indecent. I heard someone say I looked pretty cool. Would the insurance cover everything?

I’d wanted to get the electrics done, complete the job, before the survey. She was not insured but I can’t say what difference that would have made to the way we felt. Anna was with me now. I knew it would be easier for her if she was involved in gathering the lifejackets, the sail-bags. Things we could save.

I just said I’d been a coastguard for a few years. The first question was, always, the number of people aboard. If there was no-one aboard, it was a sad loss but even a beautiful boat could be replaced.

People had gathered to help. Other boat owners, mostly. One was the former manager of an island estate, one where assaults and reprisals had taken place. He was therefore the enemy but he and his partner went to the last remaining Italian café and came back with coffees and bacon rolls for all. There was not much to do. At times like that you seek comfort in the words of those who have shared a similar experience.

I spoke to the GP and the poet in Kyle. Former custodians of the elegant
Isadora
. I’d got to know them when I installed their new engine. I was still trying to build up a trade, then, one that could get me free of the long nightshifts. Where did all these days go? They’d phoned to express sympathy. They’d seen the footage on the national news. ‘New Year storms lash the Northwest.’

They weren’t the only ones who phoned. Old Angus rang. He didn’t remind me that
Erika
had been a material thing.

‘I know what it’s like when a boat is lost. Sorry for your trouble.’

Others came to drink tea and offer practical help.

Later, when I was able to listen to it, the GP (wife) and poet (husband) told me the full story of
Isadora
. She had huge long overhangs, one of the metre-class, a racing boat, in her day. They only had an outboard motor clamped on. It worked sometimes. She was balanced and sailed
herself. Spoiled you for sailing anything else. And you’d turn back from the dinghy just to look at her line. Of course she also leaned right over and people with modern boats thought you were sailing badly till you overtook them.

You had to watch not to underestimate her speed. She just glided along. One night they heard the sound of surf and rolling pebbles. They looked out in time to see breaking white surf and tacked fast. A bank of shingle they thought was not going to be an issue for some time to come.

It was after that they’d considered installing a modern inboard engine. They’d heard about me from the coastguard on Skye. I advised them I was not yet a recognised Beta agent but they didn’t seem to mind. I took leave and lived in the grannie-flat attached to their house till the job was done. The grannie was no longer with us.

They grew anxious when they saw the two-cylinder unit was rated at 14bhp. I pointed out that the weight was considerably less than an older Volvo, Bukh or Sabb single cylinder, rated at eight or ten. Shortly after that, Beta marketed the same engine as an 11bhp. It was the same kit, just de-rated so people wouldn’t think it was bigger or heavier than it was. The psychology of technical improvements which have happened too fast – manufacturers shouldn’t scare people.

The job went very sweetly and the Kubota-based unit ran like the proverbial Singer even if it wasn’t built by the Clyde. It gave them the confidence to use the boat more than they had. But it had no power to save
Isadora
on the fateful night.

She was on a swinging mooring, out from the harbour. Not far from the small naval base. Butec. It had been a busy time in their lives. The GP was over in Raigmore hospital for radiotherapy, following a mastectomy. The poet proved an excellent nurse. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, for the wellbeing of the boat.

You get these localised squalls at Kyle. It funnels under the bridge and comes at you like a tornado. They had been getting a trolley welded up. The GP was welding, not the poet, so the job hadn’t got completed, after her diagnosis.
Isadora
was due to come out for survey and winter storage ashore. The dates were set.

But they were in Inverness when the call came from the harbour-master. He’d spotted her dragging the mooring.

Detail is important. I’ve heard this story more than once. Each time, the detail is more clear. It hasn’t altered. It’s different when a survivor is talking. He might have to believe the others have a chance. We’re talking about something much more analytical here. This is not an insurance report where the slant of the story could make a difference. This is more like a post-mortem.

But this is a P.M. without a body. More of a Fatal Accident inquiry really. I’ve been to one of them. Each minute has to be accounted for. The tone of each question. The answers you received and logged. The information you might have obtained if you’d asked the right question at the right time. The details are everything. Every receipt which indicates that welding was done. Anything which could indicate the addition or removal of weight from one part of the vessel to another. Any factor which could have an effect on overall stability and compromise the integrity of an approved design.

A detail like the strands of light line, called ‘small stuff’ in the trade. Found tied round the cuffs of oilskin-type protective clothing. You can see the turquoise and orange frayings on the blatant yellow. You can imagine the action of guys who know their boat’s going to go over, caught, held by the creel-rope, in a swell she can’t rise to. It might just have been possible to slow the seepage of water into the suit long enough to provide enough flotation to gain the shore. But it wasn’t enough. Not for these boys, that night. The ones I’m thinking of now.

But no-one was aboard
Isadora
.

Conditions were too severe for any boat at the harbour. By good or ill fortune, a big naval auxiliary was running for home. The harbour-master asked for a favour. He’d managed to contact the poet by phone. He’d repeated the phrase, ‘At my own risk.’

If she’d been a handier vessel they could have put a man aboard to turn the new key.
Isadora
would have been fine under her own power. But she was taken under tow. That’s another equation entirely. How the bow will rise or dig in a chop, according to the angle of the pull. How the strains
can be distributed so a hull that’s not been designed to take such pressures can bear them.

If anything at all can be done after the bow section is pulled apart. If she dips she will take in water at this point. The flow of water at a high part of the vessel must then descend with increasing velocity to the lower area closer to the stern of the boat. So the stability is seriously compromised.

Then there is the issue of sideways rolling of a volume of water, which is nothing more or less than moving weight. A pendulum but one that will increase in momentum as the movement of water goes that bit further each time. As it has further to travel, the weight of that volume will be driven, side to side, at ever-increasing velocity. Until a point is reached.

It is certainly possible to calculate that point. But there’s no need. In this case, the vessel was not manned or womanned. And once that point of stability has been passed, further changes to the outcome of the story are not possible.

I can remember that principle from O-Level Physics. So there might have been an element of learning, by accident, as I went jumping through the hoops to try to prove a different premise to the one being examined.

They lost
Isadora
. The tow had to be let go as the vessel dived down. There was a fierce combination of storm squall and tide rip. She was probably trundled along the bottom till her back broke. Then the tide would have scattered the sections in the deeper parts of the Inner Sound. Small sanctuaries for nehrops. Or maybe her sections might have been driven down the tidal sluice into Kylerea narrows. Wherever her remains lie now, she was buried at sea. They kept looking out for sections of wreckage but none appeared. The new Beta is down there with the rest. Tidy installation, if I may say so.

And we lost
Tante Erika
. Her own ruined body was recovered for a pointless examination. The conditions on the night were simply beyond what we’d been prepared to meet.

But the GP’s course of treatment seems to have been completely successful. I cooked for herself and her man, not long ago as they visited Stornoway harbour in their fine cruising yacht. It was a type known as a Rival, manufactured in glass-reinforced-plastic.