Retourschepen (Prologue)

‘Every wind is bad for a sinking ship’
Quote from La Terra Trema (Luchino Visconti, 1948)


Ernest Shackleton led an ill fated expedition to walk across the Antarctic Continent. 1914, the world was on the brink of war and the suffering that was to unfold across Western Europe would be in some way expressed on a personal level in the vast tundra of the South.

The Endurance of Shackleton and his men was eventually rewarded with a rescue. Elephant Island was once again a desolate spot, made home for a while after adrift on the floes and sea sprayed at the bottom of small boats.

Shackleton now rests in peace on a lonely spot in South Georgia.

In the years that Shacklton led his expeditions, he never lost a soul, from cooks to carpenters.


******


I was born in 1969 and have never had to endure the hardships of my grandfather, a man who was drafted into the merchant navy to sweep the whale road of mines. The skipper of his trawler, much honoured with a bar, white haired with malarial sweats and never talk of the war.

In the left hand pocket of my going-a-shore coat are the ticket stubs and bar flyers from a thousand ports of call, if left in situ they will remain there forever.


******


A story that my father once recounted: It was one Christmas morning, I was given the job to go and find my father.

It wasn’t unheard of for my father to stop off on his way home in one of the many taverns that lined the wharves and helped to make up the flat vista that was Great Yarmouth.

It was a cold and wintery scene as I made my way past the old smoke houses that were part of the city walls, Charles Street was awakening to Christmas morning.

After a trawl around some likely haunts I found my father asleep under a blanket of snow, upon a tomb in the Fisherman’s Graveyard. There with his collar turned up and his flat cap pulled over his ears, clutching the bottle of rum from the night before.

The sun shone like so many other Christmas mornings from my childhood, the grey sky bleached with snow was pierced by the penetrating sun, silhouetting flakes that fell on the monuments.

All along the docks the taverns and seafarers clubs were resting in the morning gloom, quiet now but tinged by the smell of tip-less smoke that rose from the social pipes.

The ocean rose between us and like your eyes, smiled.


******


OPORTO
LISBON
AMSTERDAM
HAMBURG
DOVER
SLIGO
DUBLIN
CORK

SUEZ
TASMANIA
OFF THE SHETLANDS IN FOG
DREAMING OF HOME.


******


The sea will follow you through the small days of our lives, leaving only the songs of our forefathers to guide us in a moot landfill.

As eyes fall ground ward in this incandescent dream, you always left your white hair on the plastic rug that was Eastern raffia in a designers mind.

A shipwreck lies on a reef far out in the Indian Ocean, it leaves little to the imagination with its smashed skulls and chests pinned down by brass canon.

Alone on that shore you would be safe, if it wasn’t for the madman with a grin and a stab.

At last the trial reaches us, death with hands or without, makes no bones when the flesh has gone.

1600’s house…
Catalpa
Batavia
VOC
Retourschepen
Again and again to Pelsart Island.


******


The walk to the quay, jetty, legs lost in the morning mist. Line of black walkers, hands pressed in reefer coats as they file to maritime occupation.

The man becomes the work that holds him in his mission, the wooden and steel hulls that rise and fall in the oily harbour. Each nail and bolt cared for at some stage, time drinking capsules that will impress our children.

Open mouth, a gaping harbour, reflects the sky and fast clouds, screams of gulls that line the wire covered streets and high wheeling above the pubs and bingo halls.

Red row of non-descript building, 1890, 1800, 1780. A sea view, grey vista, slim difference from ground to brine.

Where once stood gluts, now stand car parks, a change from need to speed, one strained motion left us cold and bleeding, the television war will never end.

We are blessed to become our fathers, to mend our nets with a shuttling stick. The lights have gone from across the harbour and a winter wind whips up the sand.