Let Her Go Down

The tide runs at me. This is the end. The old lady beneath me shudders and prepares to lose her grip. I instructed the crew to abandon ship some time ago. There is no-one else here, just her and me. Nothing else can be done for her, I know. Unless I leave now, I will go down with her, but part of me still clings to hope as I cling to the mast. It is so hard to let go. I was proud of her.

It is hard to put into words the love of this vessel, what she meant to her builders, to the crew, to me. I still feel something, even when the aft mast is gone, and her decks below gape. This ship is returning inexorably to the ocean, I cannot stop it, yet somehow I want to, by staying on.

She will take me with her, if I stay too long. Drowning is not romantic. I have seen the faces of men dragged back from the water, too late to save them, made almost more water than flesh. The deck tilts further forward, the timbers screaming. She was built in Dundee, in a time now gone. I am her leader, the captain privileged to be at her death. This is no longer the ship I knew.

I am clutching at memories, and increasingly to the grey shroud that comes rushing at me, that will close over my head before I know it. It is a kindness that these great torn sides will not see daylight again, that they go down to their grave. She shifts again on the rocks, the storm pushing her further to her doom. She is stripped of her honour, the memories, already a wreck with no fit place or purpose above water. I am grieving, but the water will take me if I do not act now. I turn, fling off my uniform and dive into the tide, hoping to avoid the rocks, hoping for life.