The Inquiry………..Why don’t they ask me?
I could tell them, if only they‘d listen…………… I was there for pity’s sake!
What do they know, or really want to know, if truth be told.
Sitting there in judgement ……….. three bewigged and snuff stained buffoons in furbelowed finery and silk undergarments ………….. most likely milady’s!
Land-lubbers to a man!
Had they been there that day, midst the crashing sails and masts, the shattered booms and swinging pulley blocks, fit to crack open a man’s skull quicker than a boarding axe, they’d have been cringing in the gunwhale with crotches wetter than the sea herself.
Courts of Inquiry ……..Pah!
What is there to inquire into? We are all slaves to the sea!
When the sea, stirred by tide and current and lashed by tempest, takes it upon itself to rip the sails from boom and mast, reducing the mast to matchwood spears sharp enough to pin a man to the deck through his very stomach…………………. and then to thrust what remains of the vessel onto the razor sharp rocks, all the inquiries in the land won’t alter or tame her. We can but cower in her terrifying presence, and pray to God that when our wretched vessel sinks beneath the waves, we are not drawn down into the dark green depths along with her.
I, Jacob Rowley, Master Mariner, did no wrong, neither did my men, God rest their souls, ……we were all victims of capricious circumstance, plying our trade in the proper manner and in the right place but at the wrong moment in time.
An uneventful day, fair wind and full sail …..look in the Log if you can salvage it. Another couple of hours and we would have been tied up in Falmouth and carousing in the Pandora with only the Mate left aboard to keep an sharp eye on the unloading to stop thieving hands from a’chipping away at the owners profits.
A fine ship was the Maringa, with a fine reliable crew and many a profitable voyage to her record, and many more to come, were it not for that damnable sixty minute maelstrom.
It came at us from around the Lizard like it had been laying in wait for an unsuspecting prey ……..a black rumbling and a’roaring squall, the like of which I’ve not seen in thirty years before the mast.
Afore we had time to get to the sheets we was broaching-to and a’pitching and a’rolling fit to capsize. Every man was on deck working lee side towards the shoreline when she started heeling and the ship’s lad and cookie was swept overboard in a flash. That’s when the rigging started creaking and crashing and the reef tackles lashed across the decks taking the Mate around the thigh and hurling him over the gunwhales.
Now it was everyman for himself and devil take the hindmost. I’d lost hold of the wheel and it was spinning like a dervish, and at that very moment, above the storm, we felt and heard the shuddering crunch as we came down hard onto the rocks and started to break up……..the Maringa was done for!
What happened then and how I got here I’ll never know, but here I am and my account seems of no interest to anyone here present.
Do I have to scream to be heard? Am I in the right place …..is it not my ship you are talking about? Does it not say on the notice on the door “Inquiry Room”?
Here, I’ll read it to you …….
“By Order. A Court to Enquire into the sinking of “The Maringa” which went down two miles SW of Falmouth on the Thirtieth day of April 1874, with the loss …..of………ALL……….hands.”
ALL hands?
No that can’t be right ………..listen to me ………it can’t be ……..
CAN IT!!!!!
bleda22 