“Maybe they are getting ready to fish again,” Meyerson says.
He navigates the Bob Barker closer to the Thunder and passes around a powerful set of night vision binoculars to see whether anything is being thrown over the side. They believe there is a conveyor belt running from the rear hatch of the Thunder. When the nets are hauled in, the fish is transported through the ship and into the fish factory. Have they put this conveyor belt into reverse to discharge the frozen fish back into the ocean? But the only movement to be seen on the quarterdeck is that of the cones of light and diffuse shadows.
“If you are concerned that they are going to throw something in the water, you can just shine a spotlight off to port. Don’t know what good it is going to do. If they throw frozen stuff over, we’re just going to pick it up and throw it back on, you know what I mean?” Meyerson says.
“The fish is just going to sink. It is frozen. Not much we can do,” Hammarstedt says.
“Look what a light does to us,” Meyerson says and quotes Luke the Evangelist: “Remain vigilant at all times.”
“Let’s get to half a mile and sit there. Keep an eye on them, see if there is any activity on deck,” Meyerson says.
“19:42 – Suspicious activity continues on aft deck. Media alerted and on standby,” Lex Rigby writes in the logbook.
Then Hammarstedt goes to bed.
He is sick and tired. He downs a cocktail of painkillers and two types of antibiotics in an attempt to wipe out a powerful infection. He daydreams that he is home in his flat in Söder in Stockholm, fantasizes about lying on solid ground and hearing the rain pound against the roof, but he has promised to follow the Thunder to the bitter end. Sea Shepherd’s entire credibility is on the line. “We will not back down,” is one of the organization’s slogans.
He is unable to sleep; he has a gnawing, uneasy feeling that at dawn something is going to happen.
In the darkness of the great cabin, he relives the most brutal duel he has ever taken part in throughout his many years with Sea Shepherd. Amidst icebergs and turbulent seas in the Antarctic in February 2013, he navigated the Bob Barker in between the floating whale factory ship the Nisshin Maru and the tanker the Sun Laurel. The tanker was going to refuel the queen vessel of the Japanese whaling fleet. Hammarstedt wanted to block it. Nobody would change their course and when the Bob Barker glided into the wash of the ten times heavier whaling vessel, Hammarstedt lost control. In the turbulent ocean the agile Sea Shepherd vessel slammed into the side of the Nisshin Maru.
In the collision the Bob Barker listed dramatically to one side and for a few slow seconds it seemed that the ship would be vanquished by the colossal forces of the sea. Then the Bob Barker straightened up and remained jammed in between the whaler and the tanker while the water cannons on the Nisshin Maru poured water down the Bob Barker’s smokestack in an attempt to drown the engine. Finally, the captain of the Sun Laurel manoeuvred the tanker out of harm’s way.
Pictures of the collision in the Southern Ocean are hanging on the walls of the Bob Barker’s lounge. The series has become a veritable symbol of the swift and trim ship’s role in Sea Shepherd. But it was a battle that Hammarstedt would prefer not to relive; the collision and the turbulence produced by the duelling ships’ movements and the propellers’ heated revolutions had been so violent that he had problems walking for many days afterwards. If a ship arrives with fuel for the Thunder tomorrow, the crew will expect him to lead them into another uncompromising confrontation. And he is now in a part of Africa where help is very likely far away if something catastrophic were to occur.
Before he falls asleep, he thinks of Joseph Conrad’s descriptions of the wild African coast that lies in wait to the east.
“Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, ‘Come and find out’.”
Tomorrow is D-day, Hammarstedt thinks. And nothing will ever be the same again.
The first rays of sunlight throw a warm, reddish-brown glow across the ocean as a new watchstander team comes up onto the bridge of the Bob Barker.
The officers have been following the Thunder through the binoculars all night. Now it’s the Communications Officer Stefan Ehmann who discovers something strange – from a distance it looks like there are small figures, each wearing a bright orange coloured garment of sorts, moving about on deck. And something is hanging over the side: a jack ladder, the rope ladder that is used when someone is going to board or disembark from a ship while at sea.
“All right, I want you to get Peter,” the third mate Anteo Broadfield orders.
Are they planning to put a dinghy into the water? They are now within the exclusive economic zone of São Tomé and Príncipe, but still far away from shore and they won’t be able to make it there in a dinghy. Is another ship coming to pick up the crew? No other vessels are visible on the radar screen and the dinghy on the Thunder is still hidden beneath the blue tarp.
“There is nothing on the radar, mate. I’ve gone up and down on the range scale,” Anteo Broadfield says as Peter Hammarstedt comes up onto the bridge and takes hold of the binoculars.
“How odd,” Hammarstedt says.
On board the Thunder the day begins as usual but several of the crew also have the feeling that something is about to happen. But what?
Captain Cataldo is usually sulky and aloof and never calls the crew in for
