Sea Lord

sky was pale blue, with just the faintest hint of high cloud wisping.

She stopped singing. “Matches?”

“In a waterproof plastic container beside the cutlery tray. You strike the match on the inside of the container lid.”

She started singing again, then stopped almost immediately. “Why won’t the gas turn on?”

“Because you have to switch on the gas feed tap which you’ll find by the engine bulkhead under the companionway steps, and I have to switch the main feed on back here.”

“Then do it,” she said.

“Aye aye, Captain.” I sat up. I saw that the skipper of the mackerel boat had started his engine and was going away from us into the heat haze. I opened the transom locker where I kept the cooking gas bottles. The locker had a drain to the open air, thus, if one of the bottles leaked, the lethal gas would drain harmlessly outboard.

I heard Jennifer grunt as she turned the feed tap which was uncomfortably stiff. She started singing again as she went back to the narrow galley which was midships on the starboard side. I reached into the locker and tried to turn on the main valve. It wouldn’t turn. I heard the rattle as Jennifer opened the matches, and I suddenly realised that the gas valve was already turned on and I had never, ever, left it turned on, not once in four years, which meant that someone else had been aboard Sunflower. I twisted desperately round.

“No!” I roared.

But she struck the match just as I shouted.

And the happiness vanished.

Ask any sailor what they fear most and they won’t cite the sea, or careless merchant ships, or rocks, but fire.

And almost every yacht afloat carries a fire-bomb aboard: the bottles of liquid gas they use for cooking. The gas is heavier than air. If it leaks it settles down to the bilges where it lies, hidden and deadly, waiting for the spark. Some yachts carry a gas detector, but I’d never thought to put one on Sunflower. Instead I relied on the taps: one on the bottle itself, one where the gas pipe enters the main cabin, and the usual taps on the galley stove. I was punctilious about keeping all the taps closed unless I was actually cooking, for there is nothing I fear so much as a gas leak. Most days I hand pumped the bilges, not for any water, but just in case a tiny amount of gas had leaked. The pump will carry it to the outside air, but it was a chore I usually performed in the evening. That day, wallowing in the swell off the hidden Devon coast, the bilge and the cabin sole were unpumped and lethal.

Because while I had been in London, and while the boat had been unguarded, someone had been aboard Sunflower and they had turned the taps and let the silent deadly gas seep into the cabin. The gas doesn’t smell. It just waits for a spark or a flame.

Jennifer struck the match.

And screamed.

It was not an ear-splitting explosion. It was a soft roar. Red flame filled the cabin. I could hear Jennifer screaming beyond the fire’s noise. Her scream seemed to go on and on and on. The fire was thickening with appalling swiftness; flame and smoke pouring out of the open companionway as if it was a chimney. The slatting mainsail was already scorched up to the third reef points.

The noise of the fire was like a seething hiss, beyond which Jennifer’s scream slowly faded.

I was shouting incoherently, merely making a noise to tell her that I was there, and shouting to give myself courage. There were a dozen things I maybe should have done. I should have turned off the main gas valve. I should have dragged one of the fire extinguishers out of the starboard cockpit locker. I should have darted a hand through the fire to grab the VHF microphone and send a Mayday. I did none of them. Instead, and without really thinking, I plunged down into the flame.

I had been turning and shouting in the cockpit as the explosion erupted out of the cabin and I did not pause to think that I was throwing myself down into the fire. I simply kept moving towards the sound of Jennifer’s fading scream. I put my hands on the coachroof either side of the companionway and swung myself down. I dropped into unimaginable pain. It was like falling into the jet-flame of an oxyacetylene lamp and I saw, as I dropped down, how a piercing lance of flame was seething into the cabin from the engine bulkhead. My ankle was on fire, bubbling and spitting. Even through the pain I realised that it was there, where the pipe came through the bulkhead, that the gas line had been cut. I scrambled away from the flame jet and fell against the cabin table. I had to take a breath and filled my lungs with burning gas. I was blinded by heat and smoke, choking and sobbing, and still trying to shout to Jennifer. I wanted to tell her to survive, to hold on, to live. Light flared to my right; a brilliant and searing light as the charts caught fire.

I didn’t feel the pain. I lunged through the smoke to the galley compartment where I felt Jennifer rather than saw her. She was crouched down and I simply scooped her up as if she was an unwieldy sailbag and kept on moving. I hit the forecabin’s door and smashed it down with our combined weight. Jennifer screamed with pain. The air was suddenly cool, then instantly heated as the fire found the new oxygen and slashed in after us. Jennifer was moaning. Black smoke writhed round us.

I dropped her against my small workbench, reached up, and undogged the forehatch. “Get out!” I was shouting at her, but at the same time pushing her upwards. Smoke poured past us. I realised she was beyond helping herself, so shoved her out. I followed her, then slammed the hatch shut.

The main cabin looked like a blast furnace as it belched a horror of flame and smoke out of the companionway. The mainsail was on fire. There was no chance of reaching the radio now. I could already feel the heat coming through the teak planks laid over the thin steel deck. I could see no other boats. I didn’t want to look at Jennifer. I had caught glimpses of her burned skin, and I had heard her screams.

The dinghy was still chained to the coachroof so I yanked the liferaft’s lanyard. The lanyard pulled out the split pin which held the metal container to its securing bolt. The container rolled towards me. I picked it up and hurled it over the guardrails. It splashed into the calm sea, tethered to Sunflower by its line and ripcord. I yanked the ripcord which was supposed to inflate the raft, but instead it just floated like a fat white keg of beer. I jerked the cord again, achieving nothing. I swore at the bloody thing. The deck was already burning the soles of my feet, and I knew the coachroof would already be red hot so I couldn’t reach the chained dinghy. A scrap of burning sail material landed in my hair. Something exploded in the cabin below, and I assumed the fire had reached the emergency flares. The hull lurched and I knew the fire must have burned through the plastic lavatory pipes and that the sea was already flooding through the seacocks into Sunflower. She was doomed.

I had two life-jackets, but they were aft, where the fire was hottest. So was my single lifebelt which was attached to the danbuoy on the stern. I began to dance on the deck, trying to cool my feet. Jennifer was twitching and moaning. Her scalp was smoking where her hair had burned away. Her legs looked as if they’d been skinned and blackened. She was going to die because the bloody liferaft wouldn’t work and because I didn’t have a radio any more and because some bastard had broken into my boat and made it into a death trap.

Jennifer suddenly screamed again because of the heat in the deck. She reached towards me with fingers turned into stiff dark claws. Further aft the teak deck planks were lifting and smoking. Burning scraps of sail were falling around us to hiss on the sea or flame on the deck. There was no choice left now, none. I picked Jennifer up in my arms, making her scream, and I knew she would scream more in a moment because of the salt water, but I would give her a few more minutes of life because there’s always a chance of a miracle so long as you don’t give up. Never give up. Never. I carried her to the port gunwale, put one foot over the guardrail, then jumped.

The sea was blessedly cold, but the salt must have been like acid on her burned skin. I held her body above mine so that her grotesquely blackened head was out of the water. I had one arm round her neck, the other about her waist, while I kicked with my legs to force us away from the burning boat. I could smell her roasted flesh. She was babbling, moaning, screaming, choking. I was talking to her; telling her she would live, that everything would be all right, that she mustn’t give in. Every few seconds the water would slop into my mouth, choking me.

I twisted my head to catch a glimpse of Sunflower. The fire had reached the aft locker where the spare gas bottle was kept. At first the fire merely melted the regulator valve so that a white spear of flame seared across the smoke in the cockpit, then the gas bottle exploded. The diesel fuel was making the flames deep red and the smoke even blacker. Her red ensign disappeared in a single flare of fire.