Hammond Innes - High Stand

We did not know this, of course. Huddled together in the narrow confines between timber and steel at the bottom of the hold, all we knew was that we were headed south at an estimated 6 knots and that another night would have passed before we were into the Narrows between Vancouver Island and the mainland. We knew we were heading south because the sun was shining on the port side of the wheelhouse and we assumed we would be going inside Vancouver Island because that was the normal towing route.

As we steamed south it gradually became colder, the sun’s brightness dimming, daylight fading. The tug’s siren began to blare at regular intervals. We were in fog, white trails of vapour drifting across the logs, the cold and the damp earing into us.

By then we were convinced that there was now only one man on the barge, for we had heard no sound of voices. Even from the top rung, with our heads in the open, we could hear nothing except the sound of the water rushing past. It seemed that the men from the logging camp, who had been on the barge when loading the cargo, had all been evacuated on the South American vessel. There might, of course, be two men on board, one of them sleeping. ‘We’ll have to presume that,’ I said. Brian didn’t say anything. He had heard the man at the wheelhouse singing to himself and thought it was to compensate for the boredom and loneliness of being on his own.

There seemed only two possibilities open to us, and these were discussed endlessly: we could keep watch until the tug was approaching a suitable ship, take over the wheelhouse, then cut the hawser and steer the barge alongside. Alternatively, we could wait until we were in the Narrows, passing really close to a jetty or some small boat, then slip over the side and swim for it. Of the two I favoured cutting the tow and going alongside a Canadian vessel, and in the end Brian agreed. That way it wouldn’t be our word alone; we would have the barge and its cargo as evidence, as well as one of the crew. Also it would be dark. I didn’t like the thought of swimming for it in broad daylight, nor did the others. Even if the fog did hold, and we were not spotted by the tug’s lookout, we would still have to contend with the strong tides running through the Narrows.

So finally it was settled. We would wait till the early hours, when it was still dark and we were somewhere off Port Hardy on the north end of Vancouver Island, then take over the barge. The only problem, of course, was whether we would be lucky enough to have a fairly slow vessel overtaking us at the right time. As soon as we had cut the tow, I would start transmitting a Mayday call in an effort to try and persuade the Rescue Coordination Centre at Victoria to take immediate action. The tug would know, of course, that it had lost its tow and I hoped my emergency call would discourage it from coming back for us.

It was a good idea, but alas, the best laid plans … what we didn’t know was that the tug was on a bearing west of south, heading for the open sea passage down Vancouver Island’s rugged and largely uninhabited west coast. The Coastguard cutter didn’t know it either. Nor did the RCC in Victoria. Cornish had contacted them, using his HF single sideband, and they in turn had contacted customs. As a result, the cutter was ordered to wait up for the tow behind Pearl Rocks at the eastern end of the Rankin Shoals. One of these rocks dries as much as sixteen feet, and since it would be low water about two hours after the cutter’s ETA, there would be little chance of the tug’s radar picking it up, any blip being merged with that of the above-water rock.

Cornish arrived there at 13.39 when the tug was seaward of the Hakai Passage on a course that diverged from the Calvert Island coastline. At 16.00 it was almost due west of Pearl Rocks. The fog was still very thick and Cornish, anticipating the speed and distance run by the tow correctly, had switched his radar scan to very close range, expecting tug and barge to appear in the North Passage between Pearl Rocks and Calvert Island, or just to the west of Watch Rock about five miles away at the other end of the Rankin Shoals.

In fact, at 16.00 we were almost twenty miles west of the shoals.

Two hours later, with the fog still thick, it was almost dark, and it wasn’t until then that the cutter came out from behind Pearl Rocks and began a long-distance radar scan. But it had missed the opportunity to pick us up and identify the tow, for by then we were approaching the offshore shipping lane for Prince Rupert and the North and had several vessels within a few miles of us.

That was the position as night fell and the cold increased. A wind had sprung up, waves slapping noisily at the bows, the tow line jerking and the three of us huddled together for warmth. I remember being conscious of Miriam’s body close against me, Brian’s too, and we were all of us shivering, the breeze and the damp cutting through our clothing, eating into our bones.

Some time shortly after midnight we must have passed Cape Scott at the north-eastern tip of Vancouver Island, nothing near us now except endless forest and the occasional logging camp. I thought we were in Queen Charlotte Strait, heading for Alert Bay and the start of the Narrows, and that we would soon be off Port Hardy. Puzzled by the barge’s increasing movement, I climbed the rungs and poked my head out above the line of the deck. There was a light in the wheelhouse, blurred with vaporized moisture, nothing else — nothing visible at all, the night intensely black. Once I slithered out onto the deck and crawled to the side, so that I could look for’ard, but the fog was so dense I couldn’t even see the bows, let alone the lights of the tug.

Wind and waves increased steadily until the barge developed a corkscrew motion interrupted periodically by the snatch of the towline. Cold and worried, we let time pass, uncertain what to do. No point in cutting the tow if there was no other vessel in sight and, though I poked my head out above the level of the deck at regular intervals, there was no sign of a coast, no lights, no other vessels, just utter blackness and the fog clinging to the barge’s towing lights in a blur of ectoplasmic white.

It was shortly after four that Miriam woke me to say she thought she saw a star. By the time I had sorted myself out and got my head above the level of the deck the fog had gone, the night sky diamond bright, everything very clear — the barge’s light, the tug’s too, I could even make out the line of the towing hawser dipping into the waves and the whole shape of the tug at the far end of it. But nothing else. No lights where the shore should be. It seemed as though we were being towed through a void. Yet the position of the North Star showed that we were steaming just east of south, the course we should be on for the Narrows.

Now the voyage took on a nightmare quality. We weren’t where we should be and I was completely lost. I had no means of knowing that we had altered course at least 45° to the eastward on reaching Cape Scott shortly after midnight, and that before that we had been heading west of south. Instead I began to feel as the Flying Dutchman must have felt, the voyage going on and on without end. I suppose at some point I reached the conclusion that we were on the Pacific coast of Vancouver Island, but I wasn’t conscious of it as a decision, there was no calculation, it just suddenly became apparent to me, and for a time I kept the knowledge to myself.

When I finally told the others the sun was up, but still no sign of the coast and the only ship an empty ore carrier headed north and a long way past us. All to the east was shrouded in fog, a dense bank of it that presented a dark, lowering wall. Once, and once only, I thought I saw something — a darker shadow, high up like a mountain thrusting the wet blanket of the fog skyward. It was there for perhaps an hour, and then it was gone, and by midday we were in fog again, with nothing visible beyond the grey, enclosing walls of it, only the shadowy shape of the tug ahead.