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.