Copyright Oggbashan December 2020
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
This story was inspired by an incident in my family tree. One of the ancestors, not on a direct line, but the daughter of a brother of one of the direct ancestors, was the sole survivor of a English shipwreck on the Dutch coast in the early 18th Century. She was washed ashore in a small boat after her father's ship was breaking up in a storm on the sand dunes off the coast. In the boat with her was the ship's strong box which meant although alone, she was rich. Later she was even richer because the vessel had been insured at Lloyds and as her father's heir she inherited the compensation.
She was barely in her twenties and married a local fisherman's son. The village where she landed was very small and had only a few families with about three surnames shared between all of them. Her husband and children took her surname (the same as mine) and for the next hundred years or so that part of Holland had people with that surname until they spread to other towns and cities and the name died out locally.
Even now, in the early 21st century, the village is still small but now miles inland. In the village church cemetery, most of the early much eroded gravestones bear my family name, because only her family could afford gravestones then.
But the following story is wholly fictional.
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I was helping to heave on a rope to haul out a cannon while our ship was under attack from a more heavily armed pirate. Our guns were the same size as theirs but initially only four on that side compared to the pirate's twelve. Now two of our guns were disabled and because they had fifty men to our twelve we were losing.
I was stuck by a falling block from the rigging and knocked semi-conscious. My father carried me down to the cabin and laid me on a bunk. I was beginning to come to when the ship was rocked by a heavy explosion. One of our cannon balls had hit the pirate ship's gunpowder store. I staggered on deck to see the two burning halves of the pirate ship sinking in flames. There were no survivors.
A very small boat had been flung clear as the pirate ship exploded. One of our seamen grappled it. All our boats had been wrecked by cannon fire and our ship was sinking.
Despite my protests my father and the mate put me in the boat. It had fitted lockers all around the gunwhales. My father put the ship's strong box in one of the lockers that had been swinging open.
"Ruth," He said urgently. "We are likely to lose the ship. We are sinking, half a mile from a lee shore and we are being pushed to shore by the gale. I will try to run us aground but I don't think we'll make it. In this boat? You should. The ship's papers are in the strong box. If we are lost, we are insured at Lloyds. If you contact them, the other part-owners can be compensated."
I tried to get up to rejoin him on the ship but he tied me to the mast laying across the boat.
"Ruth, I will stream this boat astern. If we are going down I will cut the rope and you should reach the shore. Pray for me and the crew..."
The boat drifted about thirty yards clear of the sinking ship. I could see the crew trying to raise a small sail on the stump of the foremast but it was pointless. The ship was sinking faster than their progress through the water. My father appeared at the stern, waved to me, and then cut the line. A minute or so later the ship had sunk. I saw a couple of heads in the boiling surf and then they were gone too. I was alone.
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I cried for my father and the crew who had been my friends. Even if I survived I had no relations left. My mother had died in childbirth, with her baby, twenty years ago. I was alone in this boat and alone in the world. Did I want to live?
Suddenly a row boat was alongside. A man picked up the length of rope still attached to the bow and started to row me ashore. A quarter of an hour later he heaved the boat, and me, up on to sandy beach. It was almost high tide. A group of men helped to pull the boat well above the high tide mark.
My rescuer spoke to me in Dutch of which I understood not a word. He untied me from the mast and helped me to get out of the boat. I made signs to indicate that I didn't want to be parted from the boat. They heaved it on to a two-wheeled trolley and we all went into the village to the minister's house. The minister came out to greet us. He too tried speaking to me in Dutch, then French, but I was able to understand him when he spoke in Latin even if he had a strong Dutch accent.
