I

“Tonight, my feathery edge brushes the shoreline. No waves ruffle my surface. I reflect the tiny fragments of moonlight. Night has not yet come, and the last light diffuses through the atmosphere, fading quickly.

For now, the sky is empty except for unusual streaks of murky cloud and the half-moon that illuminates itself behind a sheen of misty haze.   

The breeze blows soft and warm coming off the land.

The bay is shallow. Before me, a skinny beach lies in stillness and the sand gives way to shrubs lined up, side by side against the coastline, as if afraid to venture inland.   

The city lights become visible – tiny on the horizon – dancing in its delicacy. The moon on my waters is like a very faint sun, dimmed by mist. The night is not cold – the delicate cloud cover overhead acts as a sheet and the land sighs beneath its lightness.

Tonight, my waters can tell you of those sad, tragic souls who drowned on January 31^st 1909, and what happened when The Ethel ran aground, and how, beneath all of my depth, the wrecks came to rest on my floor and the lives of many were lost. I will tell you all of it…”

II

“She’s going to capsize Sir!”

The cry was almost drowned out by the droning rain and chaos of the decks as the SS Clan Ranald pitched down and crashed into the trough of a wave.

Captain Gladstone glanced at his first mate, Frederick Hill Rose, but didn’t answer. In all honesty he was scared to death, but he would never let his fear show in front of the crew. Raised in London, Gladstone had the steely reserve of a sailor and was used to rough seas, but he understood enough about the oceans uncanny nature to know what was in store for them.

With despair, he recalled how, after a brief inspection of the ship, they were allowed to leave the docks, despite listing to starboard. We should never have left in the first place, he thought to himself. Then turning to Rose he said, “Fire the distress rockets at once – and pray she holds together. I don’t want to lose any good men.”

“Yes Sir.”

“And Rose…”                                      

“Sir?”

“Be prepared for the worst. I don’t think we’re going to make it this time.”

Rose simply stared back at him with eyes that reflected a quiet sorrow and Gladstone nodded ever so slightly; a mutual understanding passed between them, and Rose hurried off to carry out his orders.

It was the last time Gladstone ever saw his first mate. Rose was struggling hard against the wind, stumbling drunkenly all over the sloping deck, the wind flapping his mop of hair about, toying with it nastily, picking up the hem of his coat and slapping it back against his legs. To Gladstone, it looked as if an invisible hand was pushing him closer and closer to the deck railing.

“Watch the railing Rose, damn it!”

And with a last wild look back at his Captain, eyes emanating terror, arms flailing, face a sheen of dripping rain, Frederick Hill Rose tumbled overboard, and was gone.     

And at that moment, Captain Gladstone knew it was all over.

“I was there that night. January 31^st 1909. I watched as the red rocket streaks bled across the night, and I felt the body of Rose as it slapped my surface in an explosion of white bubbles, legs futilely kicking at my emptiness, mouth gaping – the pearls of oxygen floating serenely upwards. I saw the crew as they struggled against the sloping deck, faces trying hard to conceal terror, but eyes bright with it – like stars in dusky skies.  

I felt the rough steel hull of the SS Clan Ranald. I saw it turn on its side gracefully, and I felt it sucked below my surface, a great hulking object, and I felt it thump when it landed, spitting up mists of sand that decorated my depths with its white streaks.  

Out of the 64 crew members, only 24 survived.

I wish more could have been saved.”

III

A ribcage of steel aggressively juts out of the sand; flaking away in layers of rust that come off in small chips. The sand scrapes at it, the waves thrash at it, and the wind tears at it, but it is still there – and one day it will be gone forever.

It all began one night in January 1904. The storm had come out of nowhere, and the Ethel was running aground. Her rudder had broken up on the reef, leaving the crew with no way to steer. And there was one crew member – a desperate boy of 19 who would have given anything to be on dry ground – whose very demeanour hinted of a superficial courage, a sort of patched-up strength. When the sea had first started thrashing, he’d tried to reassure himself with half-hearted encouragements, but still, doubt lingered. Jack Fellows was, in all honesty, rather simple, but good-natured and expressive. His face was a halo of innocence and fresh manliness combined, unlined from hard years at sea and full of the leftover wonder from childhood. Sometimes his face would assume a plaintive gaze, a sort of mournful expression, then snap back suddenly to its original eagerness – a full portrayal of life’s great scope and potential. There was in him a tendency to be rash and impulsive. Sadly, those tendencies were let lose to run rampant and by the time the storm had begun, there was little logic left in Jacks’ mind to guide him through the fear. Instead of a carefree countenance, his eyes were wild, and his mouth tightly shut, as if afraid to cry out. Lines appeared across his forehead and his skin paled, making the freckles stand out so that he took on the appearance of a phantom. He looked quite sick, but fearfully so. Panic rose in him, illuminating the imminence of death and he was paralysed.

The crew recognised it and shook their heads in concern, muttering things like, “Poor Jack, always so spirited”, and “Guess some folks can’t help it when the sea gets to ‘em”.  

And then Jack Fellows did something truly tragic indeed. Wildly leaping across the deck, he reached for a line.

“No, Jack, you fool! You’ll never make it!”

But it was too late for Jack Fellows. The impulsiveness so characteristic of his nature finally caught up with him and he plunged headlong into the ocean, a wild mess of fear, panic, and distraction, trying desperately to swim to shore. And that was the last the crew saw of him. A terribly small figure thrashing about, white shirt dragging him down, and the waters gradually coming over his head…

“I will never forget it–the boy fighting me. He fought with all his fragile strength and zest-for-life. He fought with all that was brave and noble. He fought with a ferocity and a freedom. And to this day, I’ve never come across another soul who fought quite like Jack did.”    

IV

All the shacks along the small beach are silent. All but one. Its warm light silhouetting the waving grass and trembling scrub.

The lights linger on the horizon. Still dancing.  

The sea sighs its story.

And the drone of a dingy, muted by distance, cannot drown it out…

The Story behind A Story By The Sea:

A Story By The Sea was inspired while holidaying on the Yorke Peninsula. The peninsula has a rich marine history, due to the number of shipwrecks that occurred during the 19^th and 20^th centuries and I felt strongly that I wanted my writing to tell the story of the shipwrecks, those who experienced them, and the coast itself, so the whole text is written in such a way that the presence of the sea is felt. I wanted to share the experiences and places as honestly and uprightly as possible, to honour and preserve the dignity of those whose lives were lost. “To read is to go somewhere with someone”, and in writing this piece, I wished for the reader to be taken straight to the inner emotions of the people and sensory aspects of the physical place. So I gave the ocean a voice – it is the ocean telling the story.