Read Dart for Free Online Page B

I take steps two at a time, I salute the painted Britannia.
    I’ve got the knack of fear, I’ve done two acquaints in a dinghy, just enough to get the feel of the wind, a hostile at the end of a rope. Would I float? If the hull was damaged, how long can I hold my breath?
    the day the ship went down and five
    policemen made a circle round
    the sand and something half imagined
    was born in blankets up the beach
    all that day a dog was running
    backwards forwards, shaking the water’s
    feathers from its fur and down
    the sea-front noone came for chips
    and then the sun went out and almost
    madly the Salvation Army’s
    two strong women raised and tapped
    their softest tambourines and someone
    stared at the sea between his shoes
    and I who had the next door grave
    undressed without a word and lay
    in darkness thinking of the sea
    I remember when I was a boy rememberer
    born not more than a mile from where I am now
    a whole millennium going by in the form of a wave
    Dad was pilot on the Dart
    at two in the morning in a force nine gale
    flashing a torch to lead her in
    you can see the current sliding through that moment
    over a thousand tons of ship plus cargo
    the quay getting closer at full speed and at a certain pace
    you get this pause superimposed on water I remember
    two sisters, Mrs Allen and Mrs Fletcher
    used to row the plums across from Dittisham
    and one dawn there were seven crusader ships
    in the same steady stream of wind
    it isn’t easy to make out
    in driving rain through water when you consider
    your eyes are made mostly of movement

    the cod fleet and the coal hulks and the bunkers from the Tyne and
    a man sitting straight-up, reading a book in the bows while his Ship Was Sinking (Humphrey Gilbert)
    but that was way back, when a chap made his living from his wits,
    when I still had my parting in the middle and you could pull up
    forty thousand pilchards in one draft
    I stood here, I saw a whole flock of water migrating,
    I saw two square-rigged barges carrying
    deals, battens, scantling, lathwood
    going out again with empty casks,
    bags of trickling particles, bones, salts
    Lew Bird, Stormy Croker, former pilots on the Dart
    tiny spasms of time cross-fixed into water
    and that same night, Dad took a merchant ship out
    and left her at Castle ledge and she was bombed
    and I saw the flames for hours up over that hill there crabbers
    two brothers, both sea-fishers. Left school at fifteen and joined the supercrabbers, big boats working out of Dartmouth and when I say working
    Say it’s stormy, you walk a thousand miles just to stand upright. Each crab pot seventy pounds and the end ones that weigh the net down about the weight of a washing machine, that’s twenty tonnes of gear per day and only five hours sleep. Plus it’s high risk. We were out in a hurricaine twenty miles off the Sillies.
    No greenery – when you’re at sea it’s all sea. Then you head for Dartmouth and fifteen miles away you can smell the land, you smell silage, you see lights and fires. You’ve got a thousand pounds for a week’s work, you’ve got five days to enjoy yourself. I went mad, I sent my wife champagne in a taxi.
    I taxi’d to Plymouth, gave the cabbie lunch and paid him to wait all day for me.
    We got a reputation, smashing up the town a bit, what could we do? Age fifteen we were big money, it was like crabs were a free commodity, we could go on pulling them from the sea year after year, it was like a trap for cash. Not to mention what some crabbers pull up, they don’t always set their pots where the crabs are.
    Ten years of that you pay for it with your body. Arthritis in the thumbs, elbows, knees, shoulders, back. A friend of ours died twice lifting pots, literally died, he had two heart attacks and got up again.
    So now we’re rod-and-lining off small piss-pot boats and setting nets for whatever. Some days we don’t catch anything. Don’t catch don’t eat. Me and my dog went six days without food last winter.
    But