It was just after midnight on the night of December 24th 1936.
The steel-hulled square-rigged ship “Caspar” 140 days out of Callao, beyond Cape Horn, with 3,500 tons of nitrate fertilizer in her holds, was just into the English Channel. Her destination and homeport was the town of Ipswich, now less than 200 miles away. The weather in the channel was bad and getting worse. In heavy snow, driven by gale force winds out of the East, the big sailing ship was fighting for every inch of windward progress she could make and had tacked to the northward far over by Guernsey Island in an attempt to get beyond Start Point and buy a little extra room to make better eastward progress.
High in the windward rigging two young seamen, both barely seventeen years old, and nearing the end of their first deep-sea voyage clung to the topgallant yard a hundred and forty feet above the sloping deck and fought to secure the wildly flapping, heavy canvas sail. Minutes before, Albert Moses the younger by three months had slipped on the icy footrope and grabbing for a handhold had caught the back of Peter Moore’s belt with his left hand, hauled back to the yard he earned a punch on the shoulder and a broad grin from the older boy. A freezing half hour later, with the sail secured and the ship still running fast but already riding more comfortably, they were back in the relative shelter on deck against the after side of the forecastle house.
“That was quick thinking lad, you came close to a long fall and a hard deck” Peter joked.
“Well, old man, perhaps I was meant to drown and not break my neck, and at least we’re nearly home,” retorted Albert.
“Home?” spluttered Peter “Ipswich? We’ll be lucky to make it by New Year if this weather doesn’t lift”
“Not Ipswich, old man, Bolberry, the village can’t be more than five miles off the port bow on this tack, if we could see anything at all up ahead we should see the light on Start Point.”
The boys shared more than a midnight watch on one of the last sailing ships in service. They had both been born and grew up in the little village of Bolberry less than a mile beyond the towering cliffs of the South Devon coast that lay ahead and together had fished these inshore waters for almost two years prior to the start of their time in the Caspar. During the long voyage out and back they had become valued members of the crew, smart and quick to learn new skills but tough and strong and always willing to take on some new task.
A sudden lull in the wind made the two young men glance at each other in surprise, even in the blinding snow and wind, the surge of the water had a familiar feel to it. “We’re in the lee of the land!” Albert shouted back towards the helm station on the afterdeck where the mate had already felt the wind drop and was calling the hands for another tack, when the ship struck hard on the windward edge of the Ham Stone. The iron hard granite of the Ham tore the bowels out of the old ship, grinding her to a momentary standstill. Then the relentless howling wind catching high in the standing sails forced the stricken ship backwards off the rock into deeper water. Water flooded into the holds and soaked into the powdery guano nitrates. The ship listed heavily with the sudden increase in weight and the gale forced the ship down further. Blown almost onto her beam-ends, tons of water poured through the fatal gash and the heavily laden ship quickly settled and sank.
Albert and Peter found themselves flung into the surging sea with the first violent lurch of the ship after striking the Ham Stone. They were clinging grimly to the forecastle ladder, a heavy wooden staircase that had torn loose when the ship struck. The gale eddying around Bolt Head came in bursts of water and snow, tearing the tops from the waves as they broke in the shallowing water. Swimming against the wind driven snow and waves was impossible, so setting their backs to the wind and the worst of the blown spray they held on and inhaled what they could from the flying salt water.
“Soar Mill Bay?” Grunted Albert, Peter nodded and they both kicked to the North across the wind and with the swell.
Within minutes the sound of the howling wind and the waves crashing on the base of the cliffs was replaced by a near calm and the susurration of water on a sandy beach. They felt a shingle bottom rising beneath their feet, and scrambled up the beach, repeatedly knocked down by the surging water, clinging to the rocky bottom each time to avoid being dragged backwards into deeper water by the huge undertow, every frantic lunge ahead brought them closer to the high water mark. Soar Mill Bay it was, and once beyond the surf, still shivering and wet, finding the steep track up the cliff face and the path beyond took only a few minutes. With all the resilience of youth they ran the mile to Bolberry and raised a sleepy constable from his bed to his bicycle to ride into Salcombe and alert the Lifeboat station.
The Maroons went up, the lifeboat turned out and had a hard beat up to The Ham Stone, after a long cold night the lifeboat returned to Salcombe in the early dawn, no ship had been seen, no wreckage sighted, just the wind driven snow and the racing waves. The Caspar and the rest of her crew were no more.
It was just after midnight on December 24th 2006.
The weather was cloudy and cold and a dense fog had descended over the South Devon coast. The two old friends had left the light and comfort of the Pig’s Nose, their local pub, at closing time and were walking home a mile or so along the cliff walk. They spoke little; a lifetime had passed since their shipwreck, mostly in Bolberry, marriages, children, the war (both navy of course) then local fishing, grandkids, and retirement and in the last few years for each the loneliness of the widower. Comfortable in their misty silence Albert and Peter reached the cliff top high above Soar Mill Bay.
Far out beyond the Ham Stone the gray ship drifted through the clinging fog, the remains of tattered rotten sails hung limply from broken yards, rag ends of rope rigging shivered in the slight breeze. The rusty peeling hull bore little sign of paint, but on the stern the raised letters of the ship’s name could still be faintly seen “Caspar, Ipswich”. A faint light, as if from a candle or an old-fashioned oil lamp, spilled onto the deck from the forecastle hatch. Voices, sometimes laughter and occasional snatches of song could be heard following the scratch of a fiddle or the squeak of a tin whistle, the crew were kicking up Bob’s a-dying.
Peter shifts his walking stick to his right hand and cups his left palm to his ear then mutters to Albert “Hear that, sonny?” Albert stops in mid stride, turns to the sea, and a moment later replies. “You’re old AND you’re deaf, there’s no wind to speak of, so it’s just the sound of the waves breaking on the Ham Stone out there” “Well I heard it clear” replies Peter “and it weren’t no water, Ham or no Ham, it’s gone now but it was there”. As they continued their slow walk towards Bolberry and home, Albert cast a sideways glance at Peter and thought to himself “He IS an old man, and now he is looking his age, but not sad, more relieved than anything” in a way he could not explain.
Out in the fog the gray ship had drifted far out to sea but the Caspar would visit the Ham Stone on this day again and again until her crew was at last complete.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Very atmospheric; a great read.
It’s very well described and the nautical references add realism. I enjoyed reading this, LW. 🙂