In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Introduction We spend two disoriented days powering back to Wellington Harbor aboard the Russian vessel. Though we share not a shred of language with our hosts, the communication is clear. They give us everything. We are humbly grateful. A poor ship compared to so many we’ve seen, the sailors of the Vasili Perov, a cargo vessel hauling frozen fish, nonetheless provide us with all that they have: the last of their fresh food stores, their mattresses, medical attention, live folk music, gentle company, their warm woolen uniforms, space, quiet, and privacy. Although we try to look away, we are drawn repeatedly, as if by an irresistible magnetic force, to the portholes of the great deckhouse. Here, we, the surviving and bedraggled crew of the tall ship, find ourselves congregating and exchanging conciliatory nods and shrugs as we sit hunched and mesmerized, staring silently at the now too-familiar horizon. For us, squinting at the silhouettes of the miragelike specks of ships in the distance is gut-wrenching, too powerful a reminder of the endless hours we spent in the rafts, looking, hoping, praying, calling , signaling, and finally accepting that each glimmer of fading light extinguished a tiny spark of faith, another day of our lives. Here, in the sure, safe confines of the Vasili Perov and on our way home, we somehow still feel compelled to stand watch. We are in a groggy stupor, locked into an almost constant state of hallucination . Sleep ambushes us with utter immediacy, only to be pierced c h a p t e r 1 4 Coming Home Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and at last some crisis shows what we have become. —brooke foss westcott 327 without warning by a terrifying urgency. We shudder drunkenly awake, find our legs, and stumble about in a punchy trance, never knowing where to go, what to feel, which expression to paste on our faces. We know we may not have been capable of maintaining our lofty humanity in the face of the drastically worsening conditions that were imminent in the life rafts.We’ll never know what we might have become had we not been rescued. Consequently we have been allowed to hold each other forever in memory as heroes, brave and unselfish. And this perhaps is how we can remember ourselves. Fifteen of us are sleeping in an open corridor that has been converted into a makeshift dormitory. Mattresses carpet the floor. The lights are always on. Evan has been allocated a cabin, as befits his rank, I presume. We see him at meals. He rarely joins us otherwise. The night before we are to land in Wellington, I feel the need to speak with him. I naturally expect that New Zealand officials will hold an inquiry, and I want to discuss what we will say. Searching out his cabin, I find him lying on the lower berth of a double bunk in a cramped room outfitted only with a shallow locker and a built-in metal desk. The locker is empty, the table top bare. He motions for me to sit next to him on the bed. Instead I move to the stool beside the desk. I have tough issues to confront, hard questions to ask, and I may receive answers that I might not be ready to hear, things I wish I never had to know. The room is so tiny. The cold steel stool is as far from Evan as I can get, putting three, perhaps four, feet of dead air between us. Evan asks how I am. Better, I answer, and ask him the same. He smiles and says he is fine, as if we’ve just bumped into each other on the street and are exchanging a polite greeting. Then he asks after the welfare of the rest of the crew. I am able to give him a positive report, and he seems sincerely pleased. We agree that the ship’s doctor—a gnarled, compact middle-aged woman, who looks much like the stereotype of a Russian peasant—has worked wonders with our wounds. She has also presented me with a dress, one of two that she owned. The garment is hideous and infinitely less comfortable than the cozy Russian sailor’s uniform that I had been wearing. Nonetheless...

Share