“Is it the Sam Simon?” he asks.
“Yes,” Hammarstedt replies.
“Where is the other ship?” Cataldo wonders.
“The Sam Simon is the other ship,” Hammarstedt says.
Again the laughter booms on the bridge of the Bob Barker.
“You behaved like a coward,” says a dispirited Cataldo.
“Whatever. Just ignore him. I’m really done with this guy.”
The duel between the two captains appears to be over. One of them is on the way to the African nightmare of his life, the other to international fame and admiration.
Hammarstedt asks the officers in the Gemini to do a head count of the crew in the life rafts; he wants to be sure that everyone has disembarked before he sends anyone on board the sinking ship. It is not easy to gain oversight. The sides of the life rafts are high; many of the crew are seated under tarps to protect themselves from the ruthless sun. They count 39. Shouldn’t there be 40? The Thunder officers are dissatisfied. They complain about Sea Shepherd filming them.
As the Sam Simon sails in towards the site of the shipwreck, Captain Sid Chakravarty prepares himself for how he will handle the shipwrecked seamen. He will help them on board and one by one position them on the quarterdeck. All the doors leading into the ship will be secured and everyone will be frisked for knives and other weapons. He will simultaneously maintain contact with the authorities in Nigeria and São Tomé.
Both the Sea Shepherd captains believe it would be best if a Nigerian naval vessel picked up the castaways and took them to Lagos, where they can stand trial. And what about São Tomé and Príncipe? Can they send a coast guard vessel? Chakravarty doubts that the authorities of the poor island state have a vessel large enough to transport the entire crew. The most likely outcome is that the Sam Simon will have to transport the pirates into the port in São Tomé escorted by the Bob Barker. Then somebody must be prepared to receive them there.
The Thunder is now even lower in the water and is listing a few degrees toward starboard.
Chief engineer Erwin Vermeulen on the Bob Barker and third mate Anteo Broadfield gather up flashlights, GoPro cameras, communication equipment and backpacks. Hammarstedt asks them to remain on the bridge of the Thunder. He is afraid that the radio won’t work other places on board the trawler. Hammarstedt is feeling stressed. He knows that the feat Vermeulen, Broadfield and the ship’s photographer are going to perform now can be mortally dangerous. If they are on the Thunder when the ship goes down, there is nothing that can save them.
“This is like a weird dream,” he says to Meyerson, who pinches his arm.
“We’re awake. Right?”
The three activists dressed in black climb up the same rope ladder that the Thunder crew used to evacuate the ship. Below them, Cataldo sits in the life raft watching everything with an incredulous look on his face.
The youngest of the three, Anteo Broadfield, is the first to step onto the Thunder’s deck. Vermeulen follows behind him and the photographer Ager, who holds a GoPro camera on a tripod in his hand and another attached to a strap around his head. He is nervous and tense. How much time do they have before the ship becomes unstable and sinks?1
They find a passageway along the broadside and make their way past the wheelhouse and up to the quarterdeck. The listing of the ship is now so appreciable that they have to lean towards the port side as they run towards the entrance to the officers’ cabins and the bridge. On the first door on the left are the words jefe de máquinas. It is chief engineer Agustín Dosil Rey’s cabin, one of the most trusted employees of the Thunder’s ship owner. It is empty and clean. So are the other officers’ cabins. The Thunder is well maintained, a great ship, Ager thinks before he climbs up to the bridge. There it is also neat. Broadfield and Vermeulen run into the navigation room, tear open drawers and cupboards, and find a white smartphone and a digital camera which Ager stuffs into a backpack. There is a logbook lying on the desk in the navigation room. Broadfield finds several blank logbooks in a small storeroom in the navigation room, but there is clearly a lot that is missing.
Where is the fishing log?
Where are all the laptops?
“What did you find?” Hammarstedt asks over the radio.
“Mobile phones and charts. Cartons and cartons of Marlboro cigarettes,” Broadfield answers.
“Leave the cigarettes. Take the phones.”
In a drawer in the navigation room there are two dictionaries – Spanish-Russian and Russian-Spanish. On a previous voyage, when Cataldo stayed home in Chile, the Thunder had a Russian captain. There are a couple of computer monitors and a printer in the room and an old-fashioned calculator. All the instruments and electronic equipment on the ship appear to be in good condition, but it is obvious that the Thunder has been in service for a long time. In a drawer in the navigation room Vermeulen finds a stack of nautical charts. Perhaps they can tell them something about the Thunder’s movements before they were chased out of the Antarctic?
While the trio searches the bridge of the Thunder, Adam Meyerson and the press officer Michelle Mossfield study the captain of the Thunder through a pair of binoculars. He is sitting on the side of the life raft and gesticulating. Cataldo is clearly not happy that Sea Shepherd is now on board the Thunder.
“It’s pretty good if you can be cocky when your ship is sinking. He runs his mouth like nonstop,” Meyerson says.
“Blue baseball cap. He’s got like a goatee. Does he look cocky to you?” Mossfield asks.
“He would be cocky in LA,” Meyerson says.
“Fuck. Excuse my language,” Mossfield
