Hell Around the Horn

1. River Plate

Captain William Jones paused on the bridge wing as the Mormacmar steamed up the River Plate. The blue of the Atlantic had turned a dull gray, colored by the silt of the dozen tributaries of the Paraná and the Uruguay rivers that flowed into the Río de la Plata, the river of silver, as the Spanish called it, an optimistic name for a muddy estuary.

He turned and again paced slowly from the bridge wing to the helm where the river pilot stood next to the mate on watch. The mate relayed orders to the quartermaster at the wheel, as they followed the channel markers and began the slow turn into the harbor of Montevideo. It was Captain Jones' first trip on the river and he kept an eye out for the Barra del Indio, the shoal that had marred so many a captain's reputation. He also watched for the fishing boats that swarmed on the river. Running down a local fisherman was no way to announce their arrival. From time to time, the pilot glanced his way quizzically, but Captain Jones just continued his slow pacing.

Then, on the Uruguayan shore, something caught his eye—an old hulk, steel, judging by the deep rust red of the hull. There were many old ships broken by time and Cape Horn on this coast, abandoned by bankrupt or merely indifferent owners. He took the binoculars from the case by the bridge door and trained them on the shoreline. "My God," he murmured softly to himself. "Oh, my God.”

Once alongside the wharf in Montevideo, the captain met with customs, spoke with the port captain and port purser, discussed the discharge with the mate and listened to the chief steward about provisions and to the chief engineer about a problem with a feed-pump gasket.

Captain Jones would have liked nothing more than to retreat to his bunk. He had been on his feet for eighteen hours. But he couldn't sleep until he knew for certain. He climbed down the outside stairs to the main deck and found the mate.

“I'll be ashore for a few hours.”

“Aye, sir," the mate replied, before getting back to his gang knocking the wedges from the hatch tarps.

The marine superintendent in the office ashore greeted him warmly, called for coffee and sent a boy to find a boat as the capitano required. Within an hour, Captain Jones was a passenger in an immaculate steam launch, all white paint and polished bronze with a diminutive single-cylinder steam engine and a tiny boiler, under the command of a short but proud boatman in a sailor's rig at the tiller. The launch chugged noisily out beyond the breakwater and danced in the short chop of the estuary.

At first Captain Jones couldn't find the old ship. Had he imagined her? Then, around a shallow point on a rocky beach, there she was, an abandoned derelict, but, to his eyes, still lovely. She lay listing slightly to starboard. Only her lower masts still rose above her rusty hull, but even without her rigging there was no doubt that she was a sailing ship. Her lines were long and smooth and her hull was deep with none of the ugly boxiness of a steamer. Even in death, she was a still a windjammer.

He was certain now. She was the Lady Rebecca, his first ship. He knew her too well not to recognize the arc of her bow or the half-deck in front of the poop where he had begun to learn his trade. The launch bobbed in the surf and the boatman called out, "¿Quieres ir a tierra?" The captain shouted back, "Si, a tierra." The boatman nodded, pushing the tiller over, pointing the bow toward the beach, as the little steamer chugged toward shore.