The offing...

We sail this morning.

The ship...

I wandered down to the waterfront and, after a few questions and answers accompanied by wry smiles and the odd sullen look, I found the ship. When I saw her I understood the smiles and guessed at the sullen looks. She wasn’t much to see, older than any vessel in dock and smaller than most except for the tugs and pilot boats. It was clear from the various lumps, bumps and welding scars visible through the paintwork that the ship had been patched up many times before. If the hull had been scraped clean she would have looked like a patchwork-quilt of odds and ends. I went on board. There was a dishevelled looking man leaning over the far rail in dirty shirtsleeves spitting into the water every few seconds. I asked him where I could find the Captain. He said, ‘I’m the Captain.’ I told him, by orders from above, that I would be coming on his next trip. ‘Supercargo?’ he asked. I nodded. We shook hands and he said he was glad to hear it. We went to his cabin for a chat and a drink and he told me some stories of the Magellan Straits in dirty weather and other parts of the world. I said nothing. He was in a talkative mood.

He told me he didn’t think much of the sailing qualities of his ship. He had just come direct from one voyage and had been allocated this vessel. He’d had no time to give her a thorough examination and was going mostly on faith that she was as sea worthy as she was supposed to be. The ship’s registered gross tonnage is 4,253, with a deadweight tonnage of 6,341. I say registered because she will be capable of taking more weight on board without noticeably lowering in the water. She has a length of 101 metres, a beam of 16.06 metres, and her draft is 7.22 metres. Her average speed is 13 knots. Her holds are her best feature, exactly suited to purpose.

And so, I joined the ship’s company.

The view...

Possibly distance lends enchantment to the view. But I don’t know. There is a fascination in being close to the sea in all her moods and, for that, a ship is best. Even when sitting on a harbour wall the sea is still far away. It is no longer intimate; a squall or a big wave has no influence worth mentioning and can always be avoided. On land, no one wonders if tomorrow will see them fifty miles to leeward of their course or battling to make a port that was within sight the day before yesterday. In a sense, the mystery of tomorrow is gone - the lure that takes us off the beaten track. Tomorrow is a tame prospect. But aboard a cargo-ship on a smuggling-run, well... that is an entirely different prospect.

By way of a preface

We will set down things seen as seen, things heard as heard,

so that our book may be an accurate record…

Details have been altered and omitted for the safety and security of those involved.

*

As for my name, it doesn’t matter. I’ve had more than a few over the years, enough never to become attached to any one of them. Besides, they were all picked at random. I have been a thief, a smuggler and... well, some other things I would care not to mention. Not that I am ashamed of them, but people tend to jump to conclusions based on the slightest of evidence. Nor am I proud of them. I did what I did because it seemed the right thing to do at the time even when I knew it was the wrong thing. You might say I was following my nature.

Despite what I have been and done, and paradoxical as it might sound, I believe myself to have led a decent life. I have never gone out of my way to do a wrong to anyone and, as far as I know, I have never failed to offer help when it was needed. I have never been a pimp, although I have known a couple who were very proud of their profession and saw no shame in profiting from it. I have never used violence except in self-defence. The following is my story for what it is worth and for whomever it may interest. It is the facts of the voyage as best I remember them. The French author Louis Ferdinand Céline once wrote that there are three things worth doing in life – reading, writing and travelling. I would add a fourth but leave that space blank for anyone to fill in as their preference dictates. Céline also prefaced his Voyage with the inscription – Travel is very useful and it exercises the imagination... I’ll leave that to stand as the inscription for this story.

*

It was Doc’s idea that if I should ever come to write of our adventures together I should begin them as the adventurers-of-old began theirs, with a brief resume of the contents. Something like this...

Being

the narrative

of a tramp cargo freighter,

on legitimate and illegitimate business,

sailing from Hamburg to Florida - via the Mediterranean, the

Black Sea and numerous ports - where she was, at last, arrested by U.S.

coastguard cutter, the crew captured or abandoning ship. Containing events of

the voyage and the general conditions and concerns of the company.

During the year 2013. 

For Doc and all the others, unnamed, unknelled, unknown.

By way of introduction...

A message in a bottle… an old notion. The last act, it might be said, of a desperate man, a man shipwrecked. A message consigned to the sea in the hope it might be found and the sender saved. My situation is, not so extreme. A message in a bottle might also be sent out of curiosity… ‘Is anyone out there?’… sent perhaps in a playful mood wondering if anyone might receive it. A blog, I suppose, is the modern equivalent of a message in a bottle. I was encouraged to cast this message by a man who heard my story and opened this blog in the hope it might provoke me to organise my notes and memories for whoever else might be interested, if anyone. Some messages in bottles are never found.

A few years ago, I took part in a smuggling run from Rotterdam to the Florida Coast via various ports in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It wasn’t the first such voyage I have undertaken and I doubt it will be my last. In fact, I sincerely hope it will not be my last. During the journey I kept a log, something I had never done previously as paperwork can be dangerous in our line of business. It was only once I returned to Britain that I considered writing a report on our adventures. My motive was, I suppose, a combination of vanity combined with a desire to present the facts as I experienced them rather than the biased and ill-informed reports I had read in newspapers and seen on TV. I call the exercise an act of vanity because I suppose all confessionals are attempts at self-justification, an effort to put ourselves in better light than others might have viewed us. But I don’t think that has distorted my view. None of us on board were innocents or angels but we were human, subject to the heartache and thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, and I have presented our actions as they happened, the good and the bad. The media has presented us as the modern equivalent of blood-thirsty money-hungry pirates with no opportunity to respond to the accusations.

I take this opportunity.