Overdue: The Story of a Missing Ship

by Harry Collingwood

I could still see nobody about her decks, although the time was now long past when her crew ought to have been stirring, nor was there the faintest film of smoke issuing from her galley chimney. Yet it seemed that she could scarcely be abandoned, for she carried two boats at her davits, one on each quarter, while there were two more, bottom-up, on the gallows abaft the mainmast, and, unless I was greatly mistaken, I could make out the longboat stowed on top of the main hatch, with the jollyboat in her. But I could not be certain of this, for the vessel’s decks seemed to be lumbered up most unaccountably just in that part of her. As I was looking at her, she canted a bit, bringing her poop into clearer view, and then I was able to see that, as the boatswain had said, there appeared to be a solitary figure up there hanging over the rail in a most extraordinary posture close alongside the ship’s bell, which still most persistently tolled a single stroke at irregular intervals. Once, when the craft rolled toward us, I thought I caught a glimpse of what might possibly be a hole in her poop deck, just where the mizenmast had once been stepped. But these imperfect glimpses, which were all that I was just then able to get, were so full of suggestion that, as soon as the watch had finished washing the decks, the weather still being fine, with no sign of wind, I had the smallest of our quarter boats lowered, and, jumping into her with a couple of hands, pushed off for the stranger, determined to pay her a visit, and thus either confirm or banish certain suspicions that were beginning to arise within my mind.

Ten minutes sufficed us to cover the stretch of oil-smooth sea that lay between the Mercury and the Braave, when, passing beneath the stern of the latter in order to reach her starboard side, I again read her name, carved in four-inch letters upon her counter, with the word “Amsterdam”, her port of registry. Then, as we cleared her stern and ranged up alongside her starboard main chains, with her green side staring at us in the full blaze of the tropical sunlight, my eye was again caught by a dark, rusty-looking stain beneath one of her scuppers, similar to what I had already observed through the Mercury’s telescope. I recognised it for what it was, and what I had all along suspected, but had refused to acknowledge it to be—blood, dried blood, that had been shed so freely that it had poured out through the scupper-holes! The man who was pulling stroke, standing up in the boat and facing forward, fisherman-fashion, caught sight of the sinister stain almost as soon as I did, and exclaimed, as he laid in his oar with a clatter on the thwart:

“Jerusher! see that, sir? See that, Tom? Smother me if it ain’t blood! Now, what’s been happenin’ aboard this here ghastly hooker?”

“I am afraid I can make a pretty shrewd guess,” I answered; “but let us wait until we can get a glimpse of what is to be seen between her bulwarks. Make fast your painter round one of her deadeyes, and then follow me aboard.”

So saying, I sprang into her main chains, and from thence made my way inboard. The moment that my head rose above her rail a horrible odour, of which my nostrils had already caught a faint hint, smote me almost as something solid, and, looking down upon the main deck, the waist of her seemed to be full of dead bodies, their clothing smeared and splashed with blood, while that part of the deck whereon they lay was deeply dyed and crusted with the same deep, rusty stain. As I gazed, petrified with horror, the bell upon the poop once more clanged loudly; and, glancing upward, I saw that the figure which I had already observed lolling in so odd an attitude over the poop rail was that of a dead man, grasping in his right hand the short length of rope attached to the clapper of the bell. His attitude was such that, as the ship swung upon the swell, his body moved just sufficiently to cause the clapper to strike a single stroke.

For the first few seconds after I had found myself standing upon the ensanguined deck planks of that floating charnel house I had no eyes for anything, save the spectacle of her slaughtered crew, lying there at my feet in every conceivable attitude indicative of the unspeakable agony and terror that had distracted their last conscious moments. Then, as the two seamen who had accompanied me from the Mercury swung themselves in over the rail and came to my side, muttering ejaculations of horror and dismay at the ghastly spectacle that met their gaze, I pulled myself together with a wrench, and, mounting to the poop, began to take in the general details of the scene.

Standing, as I now was, at the head of the starboard poop ladder, I commanded a complete view of the vessel’s deck from stem to stern, and saw that my original estimate of her size was rather under than above the mark, her dimensions being those of a vessel of fully three hundred and fifty tons. From certain details of her build and equipment I set her down as being at least fifty years old; but she was still apparently quite sound as to hull, spars, and rigging, and had been evidently well taken care of. She mounted eight twelve-pounders upon her main deck, four in each battery, but they were all secured, and I could see nothing to suggest that she had recently fought an action with another ship. On the contrary, all the evidence was in favour of the assumption that her people had been taken completely by surprise—most probably during the night; that she had been boarded by pirates, Malays or Chinese, all hands ruthlessly massacred, and the ship then plundered and set on fire. These last assumptions were based upon the facts that her longboat—which from the deck of the Mercury had appeared to be stowed over the main hatch—had been shifted over to the port side of the deck, the hatches removed, and a quantity of her cargo broken out and hoisted up on deck, where it now lay, a confused jumble of merchandise and of torn bales and shattered packages, piled high on the starboard side of the hatchway. A yawning, fire-blackened cavity in the poop, where the mizenmast had stood, showed that she had been on fire in the cabin; but that the fire had somehow become extinguished before it had had time to get a firm hold upon the hull. The condition of the bodies of the murdered crew seemed to indicate that the tragedy must have occurred some time within the preceding forty-eight hours. Apparently she had been under all plain sail when the thing happened.

Descending again to the main deck, and calling upon the two seamen from the Mercury to follow me, I next entered the poop cabin, which I found to be arranged after the manner that was very usual at that time. Access to the main cabin was gained by a narrow passage some nine feet in length, on the port side of which, and next the ship’s side, was a stateroom which was easily identifiable as that belonging to the chief mate, while on the starboard side of the passage was the steward’s pantry. At the inner end of the passage was a doorway, the door being open and hooked back against the bulkhead; and passing through this doorway one found oneself in the main cabin, an apartment some thirty feet long, with three staterooms on each side of it. Abaft that again was the sail-room, well-stocked with bolts of canvas of varying degrees of coarseness and several sails, many of which seemed to be quite new, neatly rolled up into long bundles, stopped with spunyarn, and each labelled legibly with the description of the sail. Forward of the main cabin, on the starboard side, and separated by a stout bulkhead from the steward’s pantry, was the captain’s cabin, a fine, roomy, comfortable apartment, neatly and conveniently fitted up with a standing bed-place, having a capacious chest of drawers beneath it, a washstand at the foot of the berth, and a small flap table against the fore-and-aft bulkhead, at which the skipper could sit to write up his log or make his daily astronomical calculations. There were two entrances to this stateroom, one from the main cabin, and one directly from the main deck; and in the fore bulkhead there was a window through which, while still lying in his bunk, the skipper could see everything that was happening out on deck.

These observations occupied me nearly half an hour; but the moment that I entered the main cabin my nostrils were assailed by the smell of recently extinguished fire, and upon looking about me I finally came to the conclusion that the fire had not been intentional but the result of accident. The miscreants who had boarded the vessel had apparently been all over her in search of anything that might be worth carrying away, and, among other places, they had explored the lazarette, which lay beneath the cabin, a small hatchway just abaft the mizenmast giving access to it. This hatchway we found open, and the general appearance of the cabin seemed to indicate that the depredators had roused up a number of barrels and cases, and broken them open for the purpose of ascertaining what they contained. I conjectured that among the articles broached must have been a cask of spirits, which had been accidentally set on fire. The fire had burnt away a portion of the cabin deck, partially destroyed the cabin table, severely scorched and charred the paintwork generally, and had evidently burnt the lower part of the mizenmast, and the deck in which it was stepped, so completely away that the mast had gone over the side to the roll of the ship. Why it had not spread farther and entirely destroyed the ship I could not imagine. The plunderers had practically cleared the lazarette of its contents; the chronometer, the ship’s papers, and the captain’s charts and sextant were missing; but upon investigating the state of affairs out on deck it did not appear that they had taken very much, if any, of the ship’s cargo. But we could not find any weapons or ammunition of any kind; if, therefore, the ship had carried anything of the sort the pirates had cleared the whole of it out of her. After giving the craft a pretty thorough overhaul fore and aft, and making a number of notes of my most important discoveries, I eventually came to the conclusion that the vessel had been surprised and laid aboard during the night; that her crew had been mustered and secured, most likely with a guard over them; and that, after the pirates had taken all that they cared for out of the ship, they had brutally murdered all hands.

It now became a nice question with me what—if anything—I ought to do with this blood-stained derelict. Although she had lost her mizenmast, there was nothing to prevent her being navigated to a port; and had the circumstances been different, I should have called for volunteers and made an effort to induce a crew to undertake the navigation of her to, say, Batavia, with the idea of claiming salvage. But I had come to know by this time that no eloquence of mine, even though it were backed up by the prospect of a handsome sum of salvage money, would be powerful enough to wean the crew of the Mercury from their cherished idea of a life of ease and independence upon some fair tropic island, to say nothing of their fear of what would follow upon the discovery of their unlawful appropriation of the ship and cargo to their own use and service. I therefore very quickly, yet none the less unwillingly, abandoned that idea, and proceeded to consider the merits of the only alternatives left me, namely, those of destroying her, and of leaving her just as we had found her—excepting, of course, that in the latter case sentiment demanded the decent and reverential burial of her murdered crew. Considering the latter alternative first, if we left her drifting about the ocean, what was likely to happen? On the one hand she might be fallen in with by another ship and taken into a port; but on the other hand it was equally likely that she might become a death-trap to some other craft, athwart whose hawse she might drift on some black and stormy night, and whose bows would be stove in and destroyed by violent collision with her; or she might be swamped and founder in the next gale that she encountered. Taking all things into consideration, I at length came to the conclusion that the best thing to be done was to scuttle her, and so render it impossible for her to become a menace to other craft. Accordingly, summoning my two men, who were below exploring the forecastle and fore peak, I jumped into the gig and pulled back aboard the Mercury, where I arrived just as the steward was bringing the cabin breakfast aft.