Hell Around the Horn

17. On the Beach Near Montevideo

The launch grounded on the sloping sand beach with a soft hiss. Captain Jones leapt over the gunwale. A wave broke over his polished black shoes, soaking them and the bottom of his slacks, but he barely noticed. He couldn't take his eyes off the hulk on the beach before him. The Lady Rebecca sat with a slight list to port. The paint on her hull had been replaced by rust, but, save for a large hole cut near her stern, she seemed intact, almost ready to sail again.

He stood looking up the sweeping lines of the hull, lines you would never find on a boxy steamer. The Lady Rebecca had been the perfect balance, wresting every ounce of power from the wind, while slipping through the water as gracefully as a dolphin. And she left no trail of smoke to smudge the sky.

The hole in her hull had, no doubt, been cut to make sure that she would never again leave the beach. It seemed almost cruel, but Captain Jones understood. If she floated free in a winter storm, she would be a serious hazard to navigation. Better that her hull flood on the beach than float away to be run down by a steamer in the river, perhaps sinking them both.

It was all just as well. The Lady Rebecca's time was past. There were still a few great windjammers on the oceans, but too few. When the Laeisz Flying-P ships and the handful of others owned by stiff-necked Finns and Swedes finally furled their sails, there would be no more. The majestic clouds of sail that once graced every ocean would be gone forever.

Even old "bend 'em or break 'em" Captain Barker had understood as much. He went into steam at the end of their voyage on the Lady Rebecca. He was still young enough and all the steamship lines were looking for young captains with sail experience. No one understood the sea like the captain of a wind ship.

He had followed his captain's example. When he finished his apprenticeship, he signed on as a mate aboard a steamer. It was the only way. There was no future in sail. Anyone could have seen as much. Still, he had started out on a windjammer and had sailed around the Horn. That was, in itself, a worthy boast.

Life on a steamship was different—uniforms and regulations, schedules that could not be missed, nothing quite like the rough and tumble world of the windjammer. But the sea was the same, as constant and changeable as ever, and just as unforgiving of fools.

Oddly, his voyage on the Lady Rebecca had been a sort of brutal gift. In the almost twenty-five years since, the seas had never been as vicious, the waves never quite as high. After fighting frozen canvas with bleeding hands, bent double over a t'gallant yard, high over a raging sea in a Cape Horn snorter, nothing aboard a steamship was ever as frightening or as exciting. He had survived his ship being torpedoed by a German submarine during the Great War and had drifted in a lifeboat for a week before being picked up. He had learned to resist the old sailor's refrain, "Ah, I've seen worse than this." He had, so there was no need to say it.

He had also learned not to tell the story of the mighty wave that struck them off Cape Horn in 1905, because no one believed him. He knew the story was true. The ship, the waves, the storms and the men who lived and died, they were all more true than anything else he had ever known, even if no one believed or understood.

At least two sailors understood, because they were there. As he was passing by his parents' house in Devon just before signing aboard the Clan McCollough, as a newly minted mate, he found a letter from Fred Smythe waiting for him. They began a long exchange of letters, not more than once a year but the years had added up. Fred had moved to the Northwest of the United States, worked as a cowboy for a time, then as a teamster, until finally settling down as an insurance broker. An insurance broker! Who could have imagined sailor Fred behind a desk wearing a suit and starched collar? Over the years all of Fred's letters were always addressed to "Apprentice William Jones." Captain Jones always wrote back letters addressed to "Able Seaman Fred Smythe.”

He had kept in touch with Captain Barker, as well. Barker retired after a long career straddling sail and steam. He rounded Cape Horn forty-one times before he finally came ashore. There he kept busy giving lectures for rich yachtsmen about the great days of sail. No doubt they sat in rapt attention, like children at a magic show, listening to the old captain spin his tales.

Only last month, just before sailing on his current voyage southbound, Will had gotten a letter from Captain Barker. A group of writers and artists had just purchased an old square-rigger, the Sophie. They were going to rename her Tusitala, in honor of Robert Lewis Stevenson. The Samoans called Stevenson Tusitala, the storyteller. The new owners had asked Barker to be the captain of the newly renamed ship. Captain Barker had asked, he presumed in jest, for Jones to join him as mate. "Be just like old times," Barker had written.

He had written back congratulating him without responding to the offer. It could never be like old times, nor would he want them to be. He did have to laugh. The new owners planned on trading the Tusitala between New York and Hawaii, by way of the Panama Canal. They wouldn't be risking their ship around Cape Horn. That time had passed.

Captain Jones stepped closer and put his hand on the rusted steel plating of the Lady Rebecca. It felt warm to the touch, like a living being, though he knew that it was only the warmth of the afternoon sun captured by the rusting steel.

Behind him the boatman called, "¡Señor, hora de ir!" Time to go. It was time. He took his hand away from the steel and saw that is was covered in rust. He stepped down to the water's edge, bent down and washed his hands in the sea. The swirling rust looked to him, for an instant, like blood in the water. Then another wave came and washed it away.

Captain Jones gave the launch a shove, pushing it off the beach before leaping aboard at the last instant. The boatman pushed the gearbox lever and the throttle, and with a puff of black smoke the little steam launch backed off the sand and swung out into deep water.

Captain Jones looked away from shore. He had another ship to care for, cargo to load and discharge, passages to make and schedules to keep. When he finally allowed himself to look back at the Lady Rebecca, she had all but disappeared in the early evening haze.