Schooner Integrity by Frank Mulville

Author:Frank Mulville
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781574093513
Publisher: Sheridan House

The story of Hummel boarding the Integrity is told by a lady journalist in Yachting Magazine. She seems to have caught a part of Hummel’s romantic and melodramatic air and to have cast him correctly in his role.

“What are your intentions?” Geoffrey Innes, the trawler’s British owner asked Hummel. The skipper’s light blue eyes squinted across at the derelict and he folded his lips tightly in his full chestnut beard.

“I intend to board her”, he said. Then he swung himself up the ratlines to take a look for sharks.

The cobalt waters of the Atlantic glinted back, innocent of treacherous dark shadows. Hummel dropped back dn deck and stripped down to shorts and tee shirt. He left on his sneakers, explaining “Sharks make a pass at your toes. If they scrape and draw blood, they come back.”

Shortly after Hummel swam over he was joined by another member of the Captain Cap’s crew, Harry Hess. They found the schooner’s decks knee-deep in a perplexing litter of junk and mess. Broken glass was everywhere, mattresses and bedding had been dragged up from below and left all over the deck. Broken plates, cutlery and kitchen gear clogged the scuppers, engine room tools lay scattered haphazardly, one of the bilge pumps, its handle bent almost double, rolled back and forth with the yacht’s motion. They could discern efforts to make up some rudimentary form of towing gear—lengths of wire which had been crudely made into strops, rope of several different sizes fastened like a cat’s cradle round the windlass and the stump of the foremast.

Through the open hatches they heard strange sounds from below. Doors banged to and fro as the Integrity rolled, her timbers seemed to creak eerily, loose gear slid from side to side. But she was dry—the bilge water was only up to the cabin sole. They went below with trepidation, half expecting to find tangible evidence of disaster—a dead man, the signs of violence or of some evil treachery. There was nothing but the same disorder that was apparent on deck but overlaid by the stench of sickness, stale urine and rotting excreta. They could see at once that she had been looted—perhaps several times. Drawers were pulled out and overturned, lockers were empty, left with their doors swinging, bunk mattresses had been thrown haphazardly to one side and the spaces beneath crudely broken open. They noted the battery box still jammed upside down behind the engine. The engine appeared to be undamaged—the flywheel could be turned by hand but without power there was no means of starting it.

There were signs that the Integrity had been under tow. Lengths of rope of sizes and qualities that no yacht would carry were fastened to the rails and stanchions apparently in an attempt to make a bridle. There was a strop of one-inch steel wire, odd pieces of braided manilla and a length of polypropylene hawser had been knotted round deck fittings and pulled tight as if under tremendous strain. The anchor windlass had been wrenched askew on its fastenings.

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