“Then you have to stay outdoors. I need all the passports,” Chakravarty says and asks to see the contents of Cataldo’s backpack.
“No, no. You are not the police,” he protests.
“This is Dutch law. You are on a Dutch ship,” Chakravarty answers.
“We are not terrorists. There are personal items in the bag,” Cataldo says in Spanish.
But Chakravarty does not give in. He wants above all to avoid having Cataldo establish authority on board. If the 40 pirates should decide to take over the ship, there is little the 23 Sea Shepherd activists can do. For the moment Cataldo seems most frustrated about his having been completely outsmarted, Chakravarty thinks.
“OK, OK. You can check my bag. Captain to captain,” Cataldo says.
“No cameras!”
The two captains and the interpreter go through the door leading to the workshop on the Sam Simon. While Cataldo opens the backpack, Chakravarty asks what happened to the Thunder.
“There was a ship coming and then: BOOM!”
The Sam Simon soon resembles a prison hulk. One by one the Indonesian crew climb onto the deck, some barefoot, others wrapped up in warm work jackets. They are all polite and taciturn. Some seem confused. Others are clearly relieved.
The far more dejected Spanish and Latin American officers have bags and suitcases with them in which their clothes have been neatly folded with care. In response to questions they mumble their names before moving on to line up side by side with their backs to the camera lenses.
In Cataldo’s backpack, Chakravarty has made an interesting find.
“Is this your seaman’s book? Can I have a scan of the first page?”
“No. Personal,” Cataldo replies.
The seaman’s book is a personal document in which a seaman’s history at sea is recorded. The ships he has sailed with, the length of his service time at sea, and where he has been. Chakravarty wants to know as much as possible about Cataldo and the rest of the Thunder crew and tells him that he needs the passports and ID papers of the crew to notify the authorities in São Tomé. But Chakravarty also wants to give as much information as possible to Interpol and the police, who will hopefully be waiting for them when they arrive at the port.
“Where are all the passports? I don’t believe that you don’t have them,” he says.
Cataldo shakes his head.
“I am the captain. I am the authority on board,” Chakravarty says.
“You know the rules. The international laws,” Cataldo answers.
“These are the Sam Simon rules.”
On the quarterdeck the Sea Shepherd crew wearing white rubber gloves inspect the bags and suitcases of the shipwrecked seamen who climb on board. Nobody has a passport or seaman’s book with them, but Chakravarty doubts that they are gone.
He continues to put pressure on Cataldo, who complains that his crew were left stranded on the ocean for far too long before they were rescued and that they became seasick and cold.
“Can I check your pockets?” Chakravarty asks.
“OK. Can I have communication with my family?” Cataldo asks.
“We will drop you off in São Tomé. You can communicate from there,” Chakravarty answers.
“Very important to talk to my family, but por favor, no camera,” Cataldo requests.
Chakravarty does not want to let Cataldo borrow the satellite phone; he suspects that the captain of the Thunder wants to call somebody else entirely than his family in Chile.
Again Cataldo starts to ask if there are other ships nearby.
“We are the only option. No one else is coming,” Chakravarty says.
“Where’s the merchant ship that Bob Barker talked about?” Cataldo asks.
“There is no other ship. We have tried for a British warship and the Nigerian Navy. No one else will come.”
“OK. OK,” Cataldo answers, and then recalls that he left his sunglasses in his cabin on the Sam Simon.
Now he wants them back.
Chakravarty goes up to the bridge to speak with his officers.
“Phew! The captain is intense. He is a bit touchy about being locked in his cabin,” he says before returning to the quarterdeck to resume the conversation with Cataldo.
Now he is standing with the logbook from the Thunder in his hand. It was found in the bag of one of the other officers, and Cataldo demanded that it be given to him. Chakravarty wants to see it, but Cataldo refuses.
“What is this? Security, security. This book is personal for the ship. For me and the company. Log book, position, navigation,” he says and asks Chakravarty to calm down.
“Don’t tell me how to run the security on my ship,” Chakravarty answers in irritation.
He never receives the Thunder’s log book but when the crew of the Sam Simon go through the contents of a black waste bag that first mate Juan Antonio Olveira Brion has brought up onto the quarterdeck, they find all the passports for the crew. Captain Cataldo continues to refuse to hand over the passports and Chakravarty would prefer not to use force against the crew of the Thunder, who outnumber them, even though there has not been much indication that Cataldo has enough authority over his crew to order a mutiny. A Nigerian military plane is also circling above the site of the shipwreck. Chakravarty has asked the pilot to fly low over the Sam Simon a couple of times. He explains to the crew of the Thunder that the military plane is on site to help with clearance of the crew.
Captain Cataldo continues to insist on borrowing the satellite telephone. And it is not his family he is going to call now, but a ship agent in São Tomé.
“I make the calls. It’s my ship,” Chakravarty replies.
“You need to understand for me. I need to call to my agency. Two minutes. Three minutes. Finished,” Cataldo asks in his broken English.
“The ship agency is not going to come to rescue you. It is you and me.”
“My idea is very, very good,” Cataldo responds.
With his passport in his pocket and an obliging assistant on shore, Cataldo still sees an opportunity to escape. He has to speak with the local ship agent to ensure
