Death is a Welcome Guest

PROLOGUE

The Oleander left Southampton on 24 May under the command of Captain Richard Greene for a fourteen-day Mediterranean cruise. The liner had a crew of 1,150 and a passenger list of 2,300 souls. Many of the crew would be engaged in the essential business of sailing the ship, rather than catering to passengers’ whims, but the cruise was advertised as luxurious and the Oleander’s brochures made a feature of the ratio of one crew member to every two passengers.

The first casualties appeared on day three, not far from Monte Carlo. Travel is well known for broadening the mind and upsetting the tummy, but many of the Oleander’s guests were elderly and so Captain Greene radioed ahead to let the harbourmaster know that there was a possibility of unplanned disembarkations.

The weather in the Mediterranean was bright and warm, the seas calm. Over the next two days more passengers and crew were confined to their cabins with vomiting, diarrhoea and worrying respiratory complaints. The sick people huddled in bed in their air-conditioned cabins, soaking their sheets with sweat and all the time shivering like it was winter in Alaska.

The first death was unexpected and was followed rapidly by another. Captain Greene radioed the news to the authorities and his boss at the shipping company. He was dismayed to receive the same command from both. The Oleander was to drop anchor immediately and await further instruction. He was equally dismayed to find that he was fighting the urge to throw up, and when the message came that the ship should on no account, repeat, no account, approach port, he was hunched over the ship’s barrier vomiting into blue Mediterranean waters.

Perhaps it was the close confinement of the passengers and crew that allowed the virus to spread so swiftly. Or maybe it was the delay in getting extra medics to the ship, caused by onshore outbreaks of what was soon to be called the sweats. When a launch carrying medical personnel dressed in protective suits eventually arrived, there were fewer than fifty passengers still alive. Most of them were already showing signs of infection. Some determined souls had staged their own evacuation and lifeboats manned by the dead and dying drifted in the waters around the liner. Later some would wash up on pleasure beaches, but by then no one would care.

It was not the first outbreak of the sweats, but it was one of the earliest and it made headlines around the world. Magnus McFall imagined the Oleander often in the months ahead. The giant liner becalmed on sunny waters, looking from a distance like a picture postcard of luxury; the rescue launch hurtling towards it throwing plumes of white foam in its wake; the stench of decay awaiting the medics in the lower decks; the impossibility of salvation.