Often I turn with melancholy eagerness to the space reserved in the
newspapers under the general heading of “Shipping Intelligence.” I meet
there the names of ships I have known. Every year some of these names
disappear—the names of old friends. “Tempi passati!”
The different divisions of that kind of news are set down in their order,
which varies but slightly in its arrangement of concise headlines. And
first comes “Speakings”—reports of ships met and signalled at sea, name,
port, where from, where bound for, so many days out, ending frequently
with the words “All well.” Then come “Wrecks and Casualties”—a longish
array of paragraphs, unless the weather has been fair and clear, and
friendly to ships all over the world.
On some days there appears the heading “Overdue”—an ominous threat of
loss and sorrow trembling yet in the balance of fate. There is something
sinister to a seaman in the very grouping of the letters which form this
word, clear in its meaning, and seldom threatening in vain.
Only a very few days more—appallingly few to the hearts which had set
themselves bravely to hope against hope—three weeks, a month later,
perhaps, the name of ships under the blight of the “Overdue” heading
shall appear again in the column of “Shipping Intelligence,” but under
the final declaration of “Missing.”
“The ship, or barque, or brig So-and-so, bound from such a port, with
such and such cargo, for such another port, having left at such and such
a date, last spoken at sea on such a day, and never having been heard of
since, was posted to-day as missing.” Such in its strictly official
eloquence is the form of funeral orations on ships that, perhaps wearied
with a long struggle, or in some unguarded moment that may come to the
readiest of us, had let themselves be overwhelmed by a sudden blow from
the enemy.
Who can say? Perhaps the men she carried had asked her to do too much,
had stretched beyond breaking-point the enduring faithfulness which seems
wrought and hammered into that assemblage of iron ribs and plating, of
wood and steel and canvas and wire, which goes to the making of a ship—a
complete creation endowed with character, individuality, qualities and
defects, by men whose hands launch her upon the water, and that other men
shall learn to know with an intimacy surpassing the intimacy of man with
man, to love with a love nearly as great as that of man for woman, and
often as blind in its infatuated disregard of defects.
There are ships which bear a bad name, but I have yet to meet one whose
crew for the time being failed to stand up angrily for her against every
criticism. One ship which I call to mind now had the reputation of
killing somebody every voyage she made. This was no calumny, and yet I
remember well, somewhere far back in the late seventies, that the crew of
that ship were, if anything, rather proud of her evil fame, as if they
had been an utterly corrupt lot of desperadoes glorying in their
association with an atrocious creature. We, belonging to other vessels
moored all about the Circular Quay in Sydney, used to shake our heads at
her with a great sense of the unblemished virtue of our own well-loved
ships.
I shall not pronounce her name. She is “missing” now, after a sinister
but, from the point of view of her owners, a useful career extending over
many years, and, I should say, across every ocean of our globe. Having
killed a man for every voyage, and perhaps rendered more misanthropic by
the infirmities that come with years upon a ship, she had made up her
mind to kill all hands at once before leaving the scene of her exploits.
A fitting end, this, to a life of usefulness and crime—in a last outburst
of an evil passion supremely satisfied on some wild night, perhaps, to
the applauding clamour of wind and wave.
How did she do it? In the word “missing” there is a horrible depth of
doubt and speculation. Did she go quickly from under the men’s feet, or
did she resist to the end, letting the sea batter her to pieces, start
her butts, wrench her frame, load her with an increasing weight of salt
water, and, dismasted, unmanageable, rolling heavily, her boats gone, her
decks swept, had she wearied her men half to death with the unceasing
labour at the pumps before she sank with them like a stone?
However, such a case must be rare. I imagine a raft of some sort could
always be contrived; and, even if it saved no one, it would float on and
be picked up, perhaps conveying some hint of the vanished name. Then
that ship would not be, properly speaking, missing. She would be “lost
with all hands,” and in that distinction there is a subtle
difference—less horror and a less appalling darkness.