Man and the sea are inexorably connected to one another. From the time we crawled from its watery bosom, whether by the hand of the immaculate or not, we have been trying to go back home for centuries. Anyone will tell you that the sea is a hard, unforgiving, and often cruel place to put your feet; it hasn't stopped people from trying to tame her wild beauty. Some would say that we conquered her and her untold bounty, but all my problems stemmed from this false sense of security that we humans have built up.
I'm twenty-three and my life lacks direction. I signed on to crew one of the many supertankers that deliver cheap crap from China across the Panama Canal to even cheaper consumers in Europe and America. I graduated college with a history degree and a minor in drama. My favored field would have been myth and culture, but when you can't find a job where you want you take what you can get.
Life on a super tanker isn't that great. The ships are big and certainly impressive in a utilitarian kind of way. However, the lack any real sense of grandeur or majesty. Call me a romantic, but the old girl was ugly and dependable if not sexy and coquettish. She was well-kept, but hardly gleaming with bright, shiny newness. I was part of a fourteen-man crew. You didn't need a whole lot of people to do this kind of sailing. The computers and people more competent than I am take care of the heavy lifting. I was actually brought on board because they had to fill a minimum headcount. I'm hardly what one would call qualified for the job.
Still, despite the barren and slightly-rusted innards that represented the global economy more than exploration and wonder, there was still something profound about walking above decks. The deep ageless blue of the Pacific, the agitated power of the Atlantic, and my smallness when I looked out upon it all touched me deeply. Despite these feelings of awe I never thought I was any real danger. Ship wrecks were less common than plane crashes or death by falling coconut, what did I have to worry about.
November 19
It was about 20:49 when the storm hit. Oh, it had been raining and fussing in this squalid part of the Pacific, but I was safe and dry in my tiny cabin with its books, TV, and posters of pinup girls I wish were naked by this point in the journey.
I was trying to get to bed and reading the thickest book in my small little library. I was yawning and my plan was going off without a hitch. Soon I'd be in la-la land just like everyone but the poor bastard on watch. They couldn't technically make me take watch, but I still offered. It was just good fortune it wasn't my night.
Twenty minutes later there came this terrible yawning groan of stressed metal. You hear it in movies about submarines all the time. However, being on the inside of a cavernous supertanker made it sound like Satan's very own devil-whale was going to come and drag you down to a watery hell.
I was up and getting dressed. Boots were hitting bare metal flooring and people were shouting. We all made it to the bridge and from the glass I saw what was happening to our ship. It seemed to me that there was more angry cloud than ocean. It spit lightning and roared its displeasure. It was like black foam, whipping and frothing from the mouth of some great rabid god. I felt the tanker pitch and roll under me. I felt it begin to rock from side to side.
Giant metal corrugated containers were being thrown overboard willy-nilly like the wind was looking for something. I would think back on it later and recall reports of a hurricane, but we had no reason to believe it would have shifted so radically toward us. There was a sudden great heave, and I was suddenly seeing double. I was suddenly nauseous and the metal taste of blood was in my mouth. How had I ended up on the floor.
The skipper of the tanker ordered a man to bring me to the sickbay. The only problem was that it could only be reached by going outside, if only for a brief moment. I was in no mood to protest this though, so I went without objection. The cold wind of the hurricane and the biting sting of sleet and small pebbles of hail did not make me feel any better.
There was a loud clap of thunder and the boat rocked once again. I was heaved up over the rail and into the sea below. My escort tried to throw a life preserver, but to no avail. I was already gone.
November 21