Captain Webb’s Relations

Captain Webb’s Relations
(for Carol & Ian)

"Never shall I forget when the men in the mailboat struck up the tune of Rule Britannia, which they sang, or rather shouted, in a hoarse roar. I felt a gulping sensation in my throat as the old tune, which I had heard in all parts of the world, once more struck my ears under circumstances so extra-ordinary. I felt now I should do it, and I did it."
- Captain Webb

Huddled in the bow of the saloon: Leeds - Adelphi pub - Winter cold.
A morse code of beer, hot chips & black waves that still reach us here.
The crowd calls for Webb to take the stage. It’s a joke.
I’m Webb. Laugh. & so is my wife. Laugh louder.
Roar Rule Britannia. Relatives heed the hoarse call & in they come,
three deep, two wide trailing porpoise oil in their wake.
They wash up on the waves on the Victorian tiles of the saloon floor, like jellyfish.
Brown – White – Pink flailing lips that barely whisper.

One wakes, inhales as the others die beneath the gulls.
He breathes in the crack’d leather steeped in musk hops & barley.
He shivers; cold to the marrow. Shares infamy & the songs
of the English Channel falls from his lips, the voices
of Dover & Calais. He cries, I am the mariner fallen deep.
He has silenced the silence.

Webb was a distant Uncle, Cousin & Leviathan.
Half man, half whale, half something they all are, they are all not.
They have inherited his nose, his ears, his hands, his lungs full fathom five & his cartilage worn to a nub by the rocks & churning water.
Niagara, Niagara, if I die, do something for my wife, he sings, give her my broken body, my tin bath & my matchboxes & postcards; plaques and tins of oil. All watered damaged.

Nerves get the better of the room
& the descendants of sailors & skippers & slackers
sing to fill the dark night, as whale song fills the sinking room.
Now our shanties break along the skirting, kick plates & foot rests.
Along the coast of the bar our words crash & join those songs long gone.
Down between the groynes of beer pumps: Taylor – Tetley – Foster, drown.
Their last orders carried over the optics,
before we are all drawn down into the maelstrom.