The Captain Beneath the Waves

You can hardly see the sunlight down here. Up above, distant rays danced across the rippling surface of the ocean like polar lights. It's quiet, this place, always quiet. The long silence is only broken by the cracking groan of the ship shifting in its grave. Her name was Aurora. A twin-screw steamer, all 296 feet of her has been encrusted in a skin of algae and coral. Her belly is full of sharks, huge lingcod and snappers. Schools of herring swarm around her deck, some dashing in out of windows and cracks in the hull. In this way it seems to me she is, perhaps, more alive in this death below than she had ever been above the surface of the sea.

Yet still, it is cold and alien down here. There is an overwhelming aloneness that hangs amidst the abundance of life which swallows every ounce of its beauty. But then, that is, undoubtedly, a symptom of death.

What was it like to breathe? I can no longer remember. Air now seems like such a curious thing. Then so does much which is taken for granted during life.

All the senses of that distant life ring like faint echoes to me now, here at the bottom of the sea. Yet, the smells I can still recall with some clarity. I remember only taking note of them when they were overwhelming, whether pleasantly or unpleasantly. What scents lay between these extremes flowed past, noticed only by the subconscious. What a waste, it seems, for I understand now that they were the fabric of memories.

The smell of fish on my wife Hannah's hands as she would embrace me after far too long away again. The salmon she prepared for us laid out neatly on the table with roasted potatoes. The smell of burning oak crackling in the fireplace as I rocked in my chair with Edward, my son, on the floor beside me. He would stoke the fire even as I stoked his curiosity in the sea with stories full of beautiful embellishment.

Death, for me, has been an interminable thought, an endless retrospective. The book has already been written. The ending penned. All that is left now is review. Questioning this or that. What could have been. What was.

Was it pride that I stayed behind, that I saved as many as I could? Whatever it was, it does not feel like heroism. What of my family? I left my son rudderless, without a father or provider. I left Hannah alone to carry the burden of parenthood and grief. Was it instead selfish to not save myself?

Here, in the wheelhouse, is where I think. Underwater currents blow through the rotten windows in gusts like an evening breeze from a distant memory. Here is where I was when it happened, when they called me "Captain".

I was never a rich man, yet in this room I was a monarch. Around 150 passengers and crew were held within the steel hull of my kingdom. More than 2,000 tons at my command. Every ounce of tonnage, every soul aboard was my sole responsibility. Their safety vested entirely unto my acumen. I ordered my crew with authority, my commands absolute. All decisions were my decisions. Any mistake was my mistake. There was no absolution for unseen threats or unknown dangers. I was expected to account for every conceivable risk.

Decades I spent acquiring the knowledge to be faultless at this task. I traveled the world as a sailor and a mate long before I became a master of this ship, learning everything I could from anyone who would teach me. I studied the books as well, learning the mathematics of navigation, the science of meteorology. I stuffed every vocational experience and academic lesson my brain could hold without bursting. When they finally gave me my ship, I believed I had earned the pride I carried, the authority I assumed.

My kingdom looks far different now, a tomb of rusted metal and rotten wood. The decrepit windows of the wheelhouse look out into the endless evening of the ocean floor. I grab the wheel, staring out at that murky darkness, trying to remember how it felt that day.

We had left port only a few hours before the fog rolled in. It had hardly turned morning when the sunrise was devoured by a milky haze. Suddenly we were in the belly of some great cloud and I could not see as far as the bow of my own ship. My crew looked nervous, and the junior officer next to me fidgeted uncomfortably, muttering something superstitious. I did not give them time to stew in discomfort. Quickly, I barked orders at them, demanding the engines slowed to 3 knots and extra lookouts posted. I paced the wheelhouse, blowing the ship's whistle at regular intervals. I watched. I listened. I blew the whistle again, its deep blare rumbling out into the hidden expanse.

I knew the course. I knew our relative position based on our speed and my compass. We were in no danger of striking land. The worry was that we were heading through a busy shipping lane. I continued to sound the whistle, listening for a reply. Hoping for nothing.

A whistle blast came bellowing through the mist like the battle cry of a war horn. How had it got so close? It's something I'll never know, but it's often all I think about down here in my grave.

We still couldn't see through the fog and my crew scurried about the deck, searching in vain for the impending threat. The sound had been just off the port side of the Aurora. Quickly, desperately, I sounded our whistle again and ordered a turn hard a-starboard. A horn blasted in reply, its deep looming voice right on top of us. It was too late.

A great ocean liner came crashing through the fog, into view. I remember the screams as we saw it. The bow of the great ship struck our hull like an axe, snapping us nearly in two. The impact threw me across the room.

What I remember next is confusion. Thoughts swarming into my brain with such ferocity and volume that it was impossible to find the concentration to even stand. Shouts and screams, passengers and crew running this way and that in a wild rush to escape doom. And there I was, Captain. What sovereign order had I for them as the fuel containers that had been crushed on impact erupted in flames? What direction, what guidance for my broken kingdom?

I can still hear the clamor and the din of panic and scrambling. It haunts the corroded hallways and corridors of this steamship. I leave my wheelhouse, and wander the fractured deck of the Aurora.

Sometimes I pretend I'm back up above the surface again, pacing this same deck, nodding at some passengers as I walk past. Looking out towards the bow, the salt spraying off the hull below. We're headed back to port. I'll have a few days ashore before the next voyage. I'm headed home towards tales by the fire. Hannah laughing by my side and Edward staring up at me with wonder and excitement, the Captain's hat I gave him long ago sitting awkwardly on his head.

The sound of tapping interrupts my dream. Its rhythmic pulse cuts through the ocean's soundlessness. I walk back towards the wheelhouse, towards the radio room. I know where the sound is coming from. I know who it is.

Walter is sitting where he always sits, surrounded by corroded cables and rusted machines coated with sea life. He wears an eroding pair of headphones and incessantly taps the morse key on what remains of the telegraph apparatus. Dots and dashes echo out into subaqueous silence, unanswered.

Walter was the wireless operator aboard the Aurora. He was so much a hero that day that it can't be argued. He telegraphed our SOS until the ship was engulfed in flames, then rushed through fire, jagged wood, and twisted metal carrying children, holding hands, leading passengers and crew to the lifeboats, lowering them even as they begged him join them in safety.

Now he has returned to his post, forever drowned, lost to the world above. It is not from insanity that he taps morse out into the endless deep. Rather it is similar to the way in which I patrol my deck. Pretending, remembering. He has told me before it comforts him, though I have never asked why.

I wonder if he too thinks on what might have been had he not stayed behind, had he heeded one of the many calls to save himself. He stops tapping and turns to me.

"Have you heard the whale song?"

"Not for a time". I replied. We don't normally talk. There doesn't seem to be much to discuss anymore and I spend most of my time, whatever time means in this condition, in thought and regret.

"You must have missed it. I just heard it earlier." He smiles at me as he looks out through a window. "It's something I never heard when I was alive. It's beautiful don't you think?"

"Yes, I suppose it is."

Walter is my only companion down here. He and I, the last two aboard the Aurora. We did try to escape that day. I remember Walter and I sawing the rope that held the last lifeboat.

Frantically, we cut at it with our knives as the deck rapidly filled with water. The ship listed unnaturally just as we freed it, and tipped into the sea, rushing water engulfing us and sucking us into our grave. Then that was it. Then we were here, a ghost crew on a forgotten wreck.

"How long has it been, do you think?" I ask him, though I'm not sure why. It's often hard to tell the days from the nights down here, and pointless to count them.

"Many years I imagine." He nods thoughtfully and looks back at his machinery. "Does it bother you, time?"

"Not time itself, but maybe what could have been done with it".

"Yes," Walter rubs his chin. "Many things were possible. Many things were also possible for many others." Walter takes off his headphones and lays them on the remnants of a desk beside him. "Tell me, why do you wander the deck so, looking out at what might have been, regretting what was."

"The same as you and your telegraph, I imagine. I pretend I was a better Captain. That I was a better husband and father. I think of life without pride and honor where I raise my family and watch my son grow into a man. I wonder if it is my duty to be down here. I wonder what the price of shame is, and the value of that life which could have been bought with it."

As a specter, Walter looks very much as he did in life. A skinny man with a neat mustache and thick glasses that frame his small head. Somehow he looks content surrounded by seaweed, sponges, and anemones.

"You are right about me and this apparatus," he says to me. "I pretend myself. Do you know who it is I imagine I'm messaging?"

"I don't know, honestly. I guess I always assumed you were talking to your family or something."

Walter smiled again. "Yes, I do type messages to them from time to time. But often I imagine I'm talking to those who made it home safely that day. I ask them about their lives, their loved ones. I tell them to take care of their families and live a life of fulfillment."

I nod thoughtfully but turn to leave.

He continues. "I see you ask yourself why we are here, why we stayed behind? It's not for honor or heroism we did these things. Not for pride or duty. It was for life. Perhaps not our life, but for others. Think of the value in that. You could not raise your own child. That is true. But think of how many children did have fathers and mothers returned to them, how many themselves were saved from this fate. How many people left this ship behind with a whole life ahead of them?"

Walter had never talked this much since the wreck. When we did speak, he would simply listen, adding a reply only when necessary. Mostly, I left him to his ways. He was generally content to tap at his machine, occasionally making his way out to the deck, looking out at the ocean as one might watch a summer day from the front porch.

He spoke now with conviction, though. "It is not simply because you were Captain that you went down with your ship. If that were the reason then that would be sad. Your actions were your own, and you must make peace with that. But I will tell you that those decisions were right.

"It is true all we can do now is think. But think of life and be satisfied, not regretful. You are no longer Captain. Be at peace. Listen for the whale song. Next time you will hear it."

I leave him and return to my imaginary patrol and he to his imaginary messages. My mind drifts towards the past again, as it always does. I grasp a railing of coral and look up at the rays of sunlight, far above. I am no longer Captain, whatever else might be true. I ask Hannah and Edward for forgiveness again and wonder who they have become. I think of Walter's words and listen for the whales.