The time was 1938 when he finished recording his observations about the seabirds, the seascape, the rising mountains above the fjords, and the unfathomable dark waters in which Cuttyhunk had sailed. He did not believe she was sunk.
He poured himself an heroic-size glass of Kentucky bourbon, splashed in the same amount of tap water, and swigged deeply. He then kicked off his seaboots and sat in the warm cabin in slacks, shirt, and light sweater. He felt the glow of the amber-colored spirit immediately, and, as he did, he saw again in his mind the face of the tall, willowy Kate Goodwin, her soft slow smile, her tawny, long hair, and her unusual, tranquil good looks.
For several months now, he had seen her face when he took his first drink of the day, perhaps in memory of the many evenings they had shared together on the Cape. He seemed unable to cast aside this secretive, utterly unworldly obsession for a girl he could never have, and who may very well not be alive. The perfect daughter of his own father’s long-dead brother.
There were times over the past few months when Freddie thought he might be losing his grip. But the frozen, loathsome place in which he now found himself had grounded him in the present. He took another long mouthful of bourbon and announced to the deserted cabin, “If you’re alive, I’m gonna make sure someone finds you, even if it’s not me.”
Putting his drink down he picked up his notebook and wrote in block capitals as he had done so many times: WHY WOULD THE CUTTYHUNK RADIO OPERATOR SAY HE WAS UNDER ATTACK IF HE WASN’T? AND IF THE SHIP WAS SUNK IN A FJORD WHY HAS NOTHING EVER FLOATED TO THE SURFACE?
“Beats the shit out of me,” he added poetically. “But I think Cuttyhunk is still floating. And I think someone knows where her crew and passengers are.”
That night, at dinner, Freddie planned his morning attack, persuading the Captain to take him for a run down Baie Blanche. “Not all the way — just three or four miles, or maybe down to where the fjord splits. I don’t think Captain Mottram would have gone farther than that point. If there’s anything to be found, we’ll find it. And if there’s nothing I’ll go take a shot at that sheltered anchorage on the Île Foch directly east. You move us on down Choiseul a bit in the afternoon, I’ll just run the Zodiac through those narrows between the islands, if the weather’s okay.”
No one had any objection to the plan, and they all settled into a dinner of coq au vin, prepared especially for the ship’s officers by one of the French scientists on board, who had poured the entire contents of a bottle of Margaux Premier Reserve ’86 into the pot. There was no objection from anyone when the chef came up with three more bottles of the Margaux, and Freddie proposed a solemn toast to Kate Goodwin, in which they all joined, with much sadness.
“The thing about it is,” said Freddie, with the careful deliberation that invariably pervades that no-man’s-land before serious drunkenness sets in, “you can’t sink ships without a lot of stuff coming to the surface. You take a big steel vessel like Cuttyhunk, you wanna put her on the floor of the ocean, you gotta blow a fucking hole in her below the waterline. You need either a torpedo, in which case you need a submarine. Or you need a fucking great hunk of TNT, which is noisy, messy, and dangerous.
“Things break up when you scuttle a ship, the whole upper deck is full of stuff that can break away — rubber life rafts, winch covers, life buoys, stuff that floats. All through the interior of the ship there’s clothes, wooden fittings and furniture, plastic bathroom fittings, suitcases. Not to mention about a billion gallons of oil and gasoline. SOMETHING MUST HAVE COME UP IF SHE WAS SUNK,” he said emphatically.
He twirled his wine around in his glass. Then he looked up and added much more slowly, “But nothing did. Not a trace was found. And we had the US Navy down here searching the waters with every possible modern device for locating stuff in the ocean. What did they find? FUCK ALL, that’s what they found. Gentlemen, I’m going to bed now, thanks for indulging me…” And he wandered somewhat unsteadily back to his cabin, to sleep the deeply troubled, dreamless sleep of the unfulfilled detective.
He awoke early the following morning, profoundly regretting the last couple of glasses of Margaux. He understood that the skill of Kentucky’s bourbon distillers very possibly equaled that of the Bordeaux wine makers, but he was unsure that those separate talents were meant to share the same evening. At least not in abundance.
The ship was still anchored in shallow water behind Pointe Lucky, south of Feron. The Captain had taken the standard precaution of leaving two men on watch throughout the night in the event another capricious Antarctic front arrived and sent the barometric pressure crashing.
Freddie took a couple of Alka-Seltzer tablets, declined breakfast, and prepared himself for Baie Blanche. They were under way before 0700, rounding the jutting ice-encrusted headland and turning hard right into the long waters of the fjord. The Captain killed the speed to four knots and placed two lookouts on the starboard side, with one other seaman joining Freddie on the port-side lower deck facing the coast of Gramont Island. All four men were carrying binoculars, which they used to scour every inch of the shoreline, hoping for the telltale piece of wreckage that would betray the former presence here of the Cuttyhunk.
They ran slowly, south-southwest for six miles, and saw nothing but rock and ice. The sun cast light but no heat, and the temperature was just below freezing. The Baie Blanche yielded no secrets.
When they rounded the point at Saint Lanne they could clearly see the headland of Pointe Bras; the Captain thought that was about as far as they needed to go, since he could not believe Tug Mottram would have required more shelter for a simple welding job. Freddie looked at his chart and noticed that there was a small bay inset into the Loranchet Peninsular, about two miles into Baie du Repos on the right, bang on the forty-ninth parallel. “That’s as far as Tug Mottram would ever have needed to go,” he said. “I’d like to scoot down there in the Zodiac, just to take a quick look. Would you mind hanging around for an hour?”
The Captain agreed, and Freddie set off alone, gazing around the still, silent waterway and wondering inevitably if Kate too had looked at the frozen cliffs. He opened the throttle and flew up into the bay, then slowed and carefully searched the shoreline at the slowest possible speed. Only the soft beat of the engine, and the light, gurgling bow wave broke the devastating silence. Freddie gazed up at the peak of Mount Richards four miles distant and irrationally wished that it could talk. But there was absolutely nothing.
Back at the ship, he suggested they might exit the fjords through Baie de Londres on the far side of Gramont. They continued to travel at four knots, still searching. Still nothing. At the northeast tip of the island they were forced to swing wide to avoid a murderous kelp bed two miles wide. Standing on the bow as they went past the bed in clear water, the island to port and the jutting, eerie Cox’s Rock fifty yards to starboard, Freddie Goodwin spotted it. They were almost by. He was late. But he saw it clearly. Something faded but red, modern Day-Glo red, jammed into the stones at the base of the Rock.
“What’s that?” he yelled, pointing out over the gunwales and racing aft.
“Where? Where? Freddie? Whereabouts?” Everyone was anxious to help, and suddenly everyone could see the red in the rocks. The first mate put the ship into reverse, and they lowered the Zodiac. Freddie Goodwin sped across the short distance to Cox’s accompanied by three crewmates. The water was deep, dangerous, and freezing cold, and they could each see the red crescent shape was a part of one of those hard styrene modern life buoys. It was jammed into the rocks and would have crumbled had they gone at it with a boat hook. Instead they decided to pry the rocks apart. Forty yards farther the helmsman maneuvered them in close to a flat dry ledge, shoving the reinforced rubberized bow into a corner and holding it there on the engine. Freddie clambered out with the two other crewmen and made his way back over the rocks to the red life buoy. It took ten minutes to wrest the buoy free. When he turned it over, the three big black letters were like a knife to Freddie Goodwin’s already broken heart…C-U-T.