The Wreck of the Mary Deare (19 page)

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.'

‘You were convinced that there had been some sort of explosion in Number One hold?' Holland asked.

Patch hesitated. ‘Yes. Yes, I think so.'

‘And the radio shack?'

‘If it was an explosion, then the radio shack had to be put out of action—it was my means of communication with the rest of the world.'

‘I see.' Holland paused, and then he said, ‘What you are saying, in fact, is that there was somebody on board who was trying to destroy the ship.'

‘Yes.'

‘And when you heard that Number Three hold was on fire—did you immediately think that this was another attempt to destroy the ship?'

‘Yes, I did.'

‘And is that still your opinion?'

Patch nodded. ‘Yes.'

‘You realise that this is a very serious accusation you are making?'

‘Yes, I realise that.'

Holland held the court in utter silence for a moment. And then he said, ‘There were thirty-one men on board the
Mary Deare
. If the fire were deliberately started, it endangered all those lives. It was tantamount to murder.'

‘Yes.'

‘And do you still say that the fire was started deliberately?'

‘Yes, I do.'

The next question was inevitable. ‘Who did you suspect of starting it?' Holland asked, and Patch hesitated. To produce the story of Dellimare's offer now was pointless. Dellimare was dead. He couldn't have started that fire, and all Patch could say was that he hadn't had much time for formulating suspicions—he had been too busy trying to save the ship.

‘But you must have thought about it since?'

‘Yes, I have.' Patch was facing the judge and the assessors. ‘But I think that is a matter for the Court to decide.'

Bowen-Lodge nodded his agreement and Holland then got Patch back to the events following the outbreak of the fire. He and Rice had organised a fire-fighting party. No, Higgins wasn't there. It was his watch. But the second engineer was there and the radio operator and the bos'n. They ran out hoses and got them playing on to the flames through the inspection hatch whilst they cleared part of the main hatch cover. They also cleared a section of Number Four hatch cover in case it was necessary to play the hoses on the bulkhead between the two holds. He had then gone down into Number Four hold through the inspection hatch.

‘Why did you do that?'

‘I wanted to see how hot the bulkhead plates had become. I didn't want the fire to spread aft. Also, because that hold was only partly filled with cargo, I hoped to be able to tell from the heat of the plates just how serious the fire was—what hold it had got.'

‘And what did you discover?'

‘It had clearly only just broken out. The bulkhead wasn't even hot. But I didn't discover that until later.'

‘How do you mean?'

He explained then how he had been knocked unconscious just as he had reached the bottom of the vertical ladder. He told it in the same words that he had told it to me in his cabin on the
Mary Deare
and when he had finished Holland said ‘You're sure it wasn't an accident—that you didn't slip?'

‘Quite sure,' Patch answered.

‘Perhaps something fell on you—a loose piece of metal?'

But Patch pointed to his jaw where the scar still showed, maintaining that it was quite impossible for it to have happened accidentally.

‘And when you came to, was there any sort of weapon near you that your assailant might have used?'

‘No, I don't think so. But I couldn't be certain. The place was full of smoke and I was dazed, half-asphyxiated.'

‘I put it to you that one of the crew—a man, say, who had a grudge against you—could have followed you down . . . hit you perhaps with his fist?'

‘He would have had to be a very powerful man.' Patch was looking across at Higgins. And then he went on to describe how, when he had come to, he could still hear the men shouting as they got the boats away. He had crawled back up the vertical ladder to the inspection hatch, but the cover had been closed and clamped down. What saved him was the fact that the main hatch had been cleared at one corner and after a long time he had managed to stack enough bales of cotton up to be able to reach this opening and crawl out on to the deck. He had found Number Three boat hanging from its bow falls, the other davits empty. The engines were still running, the pumps still working and the hoses were still pouring water into Number Three hold. But not a single member of the crew remained on board.

It was an incredible, almost unbelievable story. And he went on to tell how, alone and unaided, he had put the fire out. And then in the morning he had found a complete stranger wandering about the ship.