The Rocks

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The sea screamed and shrieked, threatening to slice through the rigging as the gale reached fever pitch. Beneath Captain Wouyt's feet, the ship wailed its protest as wind and waves battered it from all sides. Like a wounded animal, it limped along, offering a few last gasps of defiance before its fate caught up.

Wouyt thought back to his wife and daughters back in Amsterdam. How many times little Meuss had looked up at him with her wide, unblinking eyes and asked him if he was ever afraid when the gales turned the waves white.

Only a fool is not afraid, he had replied, taking her in his lap as he packed his pipe. But every sailor must learn to sail rough seas, or they are not a sailor.

Seeing the concern overtaking her face, he had added, Fear not, little one. I am lucky enough to ply the waters aboard a ship of the line. The craftsmen who shaved every timber and wreathed every line have not failed us yet.

Now Wouyt pondered these words. Ahead, the 40-gun Groningen shrieked as her hull met the unforgiving rock chimney that loomed up from the frothing tide, eager to shred through timber. Yet, contrary to his own words to his daughter, he was not afraid.

So, does that make me the fool?

Her belly caught on the stone spire and slit open to the sea, Groningen’s masts were the first to go as the waves continued to rake her seaward side. Those men who escaped being crushed or snared in the rigging now found themselves slipping down the slick deck as the water in her hold pulled her further onto her starboard side. They faced the choice of diving into the frothing cauldron or staying aboard the foundering warship.

Then the choice was ripped from them as Groningen settled fully onto her starboard side, turning the deck vertical and casting masts, cannon, men, and anything else not lashed down to sink or dash themselves to pulp against the rock shelf.

So died the first ship of the expedition.

As if reminding Wouyt he should look to his own fate, a massive wave nearly knocked Vrede’s bow out of the water. Wouyt caught himself against the tiller. Another member of the ship’s crew, attempting to reef the mainsail, plummeted into the sea with a single cry of despair.

Reflecting their dimming prospects, the sky grew even darker until the vengeful gray clouds swirling around Wouyt’s beloved Vrede threatened to plunge them into night.

“It is a sign,” a sailor shouted. “The Savior has abandoned us!”

“Keep to your stations,” Wouyt called in answer. “Faith in a ship and its master is the only belief a seafaring man has need of.”

Whether his words had any effect, Wouyt would never know; the man had already thrown himself into the sea.

“At such a time as this, is it really wise to blaspheme the Creator?”

For the first time in several hours, Wouyt remembered the presence of Admiral Jacos. The renowned warrior who had rallied this expedition to retake New Amsterdam and Holland’s other colonies from the English invaders, he had been rendered a mere observer when the gale had set upon the Dutch fleet.

“I doubt it matters much,” Wouyt replied. “What are a few words to a being who can manifest His anger in such ways?”

“Still,” Jacos mused as freezing spray streamed down his admiral’s hat, “it seems better to appeal to His love and His mercy.”

Wouyt took a moment to compose a reply, pausing as he watched the admiral draw a pistol from his belt. The man who had counseled faith showed just how much stock he placed in God’s love and mercy by not even waiting to witness the final outcome.

Then another wave jolted Vrede, and Jacos’s lifeless corpse tumbled from the deck.

Only then did Wouyt consider that the pistol’s powder should have been drenched by all the rain and sea spray, rendering it useless. Instead, it had lit and fired. It was, perhaps, the first true miracle he had ever witnessed.

In another of God’s miracles, Wouyt’s remaining crew had managed to reef the sails such that the wind had not driven them into the same stone spire as the fallen Groningen. Vrede passed the remains of her stricken comrade by a few ship’s lengths to starboard.

However, the cove that both ships of the line had found themselves trapped in by the incoming tide and prevailing wind jutted far to the east, forming a wall of cliffs and shoals that only a hard turn to port would avoid. But then captain and ship would find themselves facing directly into an onshore wind, losing all steerage.

He turned to the sky, opening his arms wide. It was not an appeal for mercy, as the dead admiral had trumpeted. It was a question. He expected the clouds to part, revealing a celestial staring down. Staring down and laughing. Laughing at him and all the drowning sailors who thought themselves safe from His will in their creations of timber and pitch.

Instead, the clouds remained silent. And therein lay the ultimate truth.

Wouyt turned to his final companion, his ship’s dog, who had remained standing at his foot without flinching at the wind or the waves.

“Farewell, my friend,” Wouyt said, picking Griffoen up by his furry legs and then hurling him over the side.

He would not leave me, so I made the choice for him, Wouyt told himself, breathing a sigh of relief as Griffoen’s gray back resurfaced and the canine struck out for shore. Ever the seafaring mutt, Griffoen had learned to swim when the rest of the crew had not.

His final affairs in order, Wouyt called for the men to abandon Vrede. Those few remaining scrambled over the sides, the wiser seeking out stray planks and debris that may float before making their exodus.

Who knows, some might just make it.

Rigging snapped around him as the mainmast let out a final death groan and succumbed to the tumult, and Wouyt turned to watch astern as the third ship of the expedition, Haarlem, laboriously turned out to sea. She had not been caught in the tide like Wouyt and his now-drowned fellow captain.

She’s going to make it, Wouyt thought with a quickening pulse. It was the first stirring in his chest since the dread of the first few hours had subsided to this trance-like state.

Then Haarlem ground to a halt, her movement now pained and erratic. There could be no mistake. She had been caught on an underwater shelf. A few wrenching heartbeats later, a rogue wave slammed into her side, and she capsized.

So died the dream of conquest that had driven so many good men to take to the sea.

Wouyt turned back to watching their current heading, feeling a small glimmer of pride that he and his beloved Vrede had defied the odds and stayed afloat the longest among so many skilled mariners.

Perhaps rough seas do make the sailor.

Then Wouyt closed his eyes as the unmistakable sound of stone ripping apart the seams of the hull traveled up through the belly of his ship.