Free Coasting by Jonathan Raban Page A

me.
    “
Gosforth Maid, Gosforth Maid, Gosforth Maid
, this is Holyhead Coastguard, over—”
    “ Field ,”
I said. “
Gosfield
. Golf Oscar Sierra Foxtrot India Echo Lima Delta.”
    The aircraft had reported my position to the Coastguard. Serious news followed. A fishing boat, the
SouthStack
, had gone missing after failing to return to Holyhead Harbour the previous day. I was to look out for evidence of a vessel 42 feet long, with a wheelhouse forward, red hull, white upper parts and gantry mast. Three men were on board. A close watch should be kept on the water for fragments of wreckage, lifebuoys, a diesel slick, or any other sad clue as to what might have happened. All other craft in the area were being similarly contacted.
    The Irish Sea is, as Seas go, small, shallow and parochial. It responds, as parochial places do, to any news or change with the rapidity of a village. When a gale blows up, the Irish Sea turns instantly to whipped cream; when the wind dies, it goes flat in an hour. Its capacity for springing violence on one without warning is notorious, and charts of the Irish Sea are thick with the double daggers that mark lost ships. It is a dangerous, quirky, fast and malignant piece of water.
    Yet on today of all days … On this oily sea, which was now collecting the crimsons and golds of sunset … The idea of the
South Stack
being “lost” in this still, idyllic lake was difficult to grasp. There must be a mistake somewhere. No doubt the crew, enjoying themselves on the water much as I was doing myself, had lost track of time and were quietly trawling, and knocking back cans of lager, in some pretty, un-Nimroded part of the pool.
    I kept a close lookout. I saw a fleet of purple jellyfish sail past like tasseled lampshades. I saw some seaweed. I saw a bit of granulated polystyrene packing bob past my stern. But no lifebuoys, no wreckage, no trace of the
South Stack
.
    There was plenty of wreckage in the dusty antiques shop in Peel—cracked china souvenirs from Blackpool and Southport, floral chamber pots, dreadfully oxidized daubs of boats at sea, a vintage spin-dryer, fishing rods, Brownie box cameras, cardboard boxes full of old copies
of Woman’s Own
and
Picture Post
, two hat racks, a crate of tarnished silverware, a ship in a bottle, a Utility dining table plus three chairs to match, and a lot of shelves of disowned books. Iwas browsing in the Poetry section, through ink-stained school editions of Tennyson and Shelley and sepia-inscribed, morocco-bound editions of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s
Sonnets from the Portuguese
. The owner of the shop, looking himself like a premature antique, was watching me from behind his littered desk.
    “You know T. E. Brown?”
    “No, I don’t,” I said, thinking that he must be mistaking me for someone else.
    “You see—we’re a roughish set of chaps,” he said. I looked at him with interest. I would have said that he was long-boned, molting, bespectacled, shabby-suited, but hardly “roughish” by any standards.
    “That’s brought up rough on our mammies’ laps—” He was, I realized, quoting, and not apologizing at all.
    “And we grow, and we run about shoutin’ and foolin’ till we gets to be lumps and fit for the schoolin’. Then we gets to know the marks and the signs, and we leaves the school, and we sticks to the lines, baitin’ and settin’ and haulin’ and that, till we know every fish from a whale to a sprat. And we gets big and strong, for it do make you stronger to row a big boat, and pull at a conger. Then what with a cobblin’ up of the yawl, and a patchin’ and mendin’ the nets for the trawl, and a risin’ early and a goin’ to bed late, and a dramin’ of scollops as big as a plate, and the hooks and the creels and the oars and the gut, you’d say there’s no room for a little slut. But howsomever it’s not the case, and a pretty face is a pretty face; and through the whole coil, as bright as a star, a gel slips in,