“Tell us as soon as we are free from the line,” Hammarstedt shouts.
If they fail to cut the floats away quickly, it could all be dragged backwards and into the propeller. And now the Thunder is headed straight towards them. The marker line is cut with a sharp knife and the net slips out of the danger zone. On the bridge, Hammarstedt and Meyerson clap their hands together in a high five.
Then they hear the voice of the Thunder’s captain over the radio. He is furious and says that they are coming to save the net floats.
“I will get it back the good way or the bad way,” Cataldo says.
“We have to pick up speed. He might hit us,” Hammarstedt says to his officers.
Anteo Broadfield can hardly believe his eyes.
“The chase is reversed,” he says.
On the radio, the Thunder’s captain continues his tirade.
“This is theft and we want the nets back.”
“We are collecting evidence for your prosecution,” Hammarstedt answers.
“We are going to follow you. You were the ones who started this war. I have received an order to retrieve the floats.”
“Tell him that they can follow us to Mauritius,” Hammarstedt says.
The captain of the Thunder makes a few desperate attempts to psyche out his opponent. He says that “Peter” can’t navigate, but they both know that it would take an engine breakdown on the Bob Barker for the Thunder to manage to catch up with the Sea Shepherd vessel.
“So he said that we started this war?” Hammarstedt asks.
“Yup. Wars to save the planet and the fisheries,” Adam Meyerson replies, who decides to tease the Thunder’s captain. “Let’s keep the speed just a little bit faster so they will continue to chase us and spend as much fuel as possible. They can chase us all day long,” he chuckles.
Hammarstedt is ecstatic. Can he get the Thunder to chase them all the way to Mauritius?
The Bob Barker is now doing 10.8 knots and creeps slowly away from the Thunder.
“So now we know that they can do 10 knots if they want,” Chief Engineer Erwin Vermeulen says.
“The engine is fine, Erwin?” Hammarstedt asks.
“Yes.”
On the Thunder, the delicious lobster meal of the night before is now a distant memory. The first thing Captain Cataldo did when Sea Shepherd hoisted the floats on board and cut the net was to call the ship owner in Galicia in Spain. The order was clear: Follow the Bob Barker, we want the floats back. But they knew that it was futile. Cataldo continues sputtering. He repeats that he didn’t believe that this would happen. Calls Hammarstedt a punk. The fishing captain Lampon is also angry, but is not as communicative as the captain. They can push the engine all they want, but it won’t do any good.
After a couple of hours they give up the chase.
24
MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
THE INDIAN OCEAN, FEBRUARY 2015
Although they are trapped in the same hopeless situation, the Spanish-speaking and Asian crews on the Thunder live in two different worlds.
During the first month of the chase, the Indonesian crew was told to stay below deck. They hung out smoking in the narrow hallways outside the crew cabins. In the evenings they played poker in the messroom or watched motocross videos, action films and recordings of the most recent World Cup football matches. When they finally received permission to move about on deck, they made a football out of a knotted tangle of rags. There was a small library on board with a shelf of books by Isabel Allende and a handful of other Spanish-speaking authors, but nothing in Indonesian.
For most of the Indonesians, it was their first voyage on the Thunder. Half of them came from the city Tegal in the Central Java province, a traditional fishing community where sailing on a foreign trawler could at best reward them with adventure, a proper income and a higher status than that of the coastal fishermen in their home town. But it could also mean gruelling labour, sudden accidents and racial conflicts. They earned one-tenth of what the Europeans did and were at the bottom of the ladder in the ship’s rigid hierarchy.
When the Thunder was arrested in Malaysia in 2014, the Indonesians rebelled. They complained about the fishing gear and about racism, and the confrontation culminated in a fist fight and mutiny. After the rebellion, the Thunder sailed out with an entirely new Indonesian crew. Only the Indonesian cook and two deckhands went along on the final voyage. The entire crew was now on one-year contracts and received 350 dollars a month – four times more than they would earn for unskilled work at home.
Few of the Indonesian crew now dare ask why they are being chased; they speak seldom or never with anyone but each other. Only a minority know the names of the officers on the bridge of the Thunder. The eldest of the Indonesians, a man in his late 40s named Edy, assumes the role of leader. He is the one they gather around now with the question that is weighing on them the most: will they ever be paid their wages?
The Thunder maintains a speed of four knots northward, very likely to make its way out of “the Furious Forties”, where the weather is a constant threat.
Every morning Hammarstedt sends a news update to Interpol. He also updates the Dutch and British authorities, but he seldom or never receives a reply. The lack of response bothers him. Had the Thunder been loaded with cocaine or weapons instead of toothfish, the ship would have long since been boarded.
But if he can add some information about slave labour and human trafficking to the Thunder’s criminal record, Interpol can be forced to become involved.
In the great cabin, Peter Hammarstedt sits down at the little writing desk and writes
