NONFICTION

Not the movie

ADRIFT
A True Story of Tragedy on the Icy Atlantic
and the One Who Lived to Tell about It

By Brian Murphy and Toula Vlanou

162 pp. Da Capo

Reviewed by Marty Carlock

It’s not surprising that a book about the sole survivor of a shipwreck in the North Atlantic in 1856 and a film about a contemporary woman trying to sail boat singlehandedly should bear the same title. But what else can you call stories of determined survival on the sea?

The hero of Brian Murphy’s Adrift – the book – is a New Bedford seaman named Thomas W. Nye. He shipped on the packet John Rutledge, out of New York bound for Liverpool, in the winter of 1855. The trip east, with the prevailing winds at its stern, was easy. But returning to the west – this is a sailing ship, hard to tack upwind – with the threat of winter ice, was a disaster.

Murphy spends some time chronicling the history of the moment. The habit of leaving port at will, whenever the weather permitted and the craft had enough cargo to make it worthwhile, had given way to a schedule for packet boats. Even though sailing from Europe to America could take from a month to two months, the packets promised to leave and arrive on a set schedule. Paddlewheel steamships had just been introduced, with the promise of making the run in two weeks – for steamboats, adverse winds were not an obstacle.

As if his editor had demanded a longer book, Murphy wastes many repetitive pages on this section of the story, emphasizing the demands of shipping owners and shippers of goods. At first the packets didn’t take passengers, but the Irish migration provided a steady stream of customers willing to endure the horrors of steerage for a better chance at life.

Seldom have I read a more sickening description of traveling steerage class. Except that no one was chained down, conditions were not unlike those of slave ships.

The air in steerage was weirdly stagnant even as the winds howled just above. The stench quickly grew overpowering. The unmistakable acid-sweet smell of vomit infused every corner…The two latrines—for more than 120 people—were simple holes that emptied into the bilge water, a horrific concoction of waste and runoff that sloshed in the hold below the steerage compartment. Rags soaked in vinegar were provided for common use as toilet paper. Once in a while the first mate would send down an unlucky crew member with a hot iron poker dipped in tar…intended to mask the putrid odors in steerage.

Murphy writes a detailed but fascinating account of the ship leaving Liverpool harbor; it sounds as if he has done so on a sailing craft himself. After the ship was towed from the dock:

A few sails were set, just enough canvas to move the ship along. The tug’s towline was slipped free. The John Rutledge’s bow rose slightly as the sails caught the wind. The ship gave a groan of rope and wood as it began to move under its own power. The tide helped carry it seaward. Next stop was New York, about thirty-four hundred nautical miles on the best-planned route, and hundreds more if storms or ice forced the course to be rewritten.

This author is at his best in describing action. Here’s the accident:

Even at a light-wind crawl, the jolt of the iceberg strike rippled through every corner of the Rutledge. In steerage, it was like the hollow sound of a great drumroll as the ice gouged through the hull up toward the bow. In the rigging, the impact shook the sails, causing flakes of seafoam to rain down. Then quiet.

In this era, the hulls of ships were not compartmentalized. Had they been, the crew might have been able to limit the damage. The Rutledgedisaster awakened a movement to build ships with watertight compartments – but it was seldom done until after the Titanicsank 60 years later.

Murphy solves one of a historical novel’s problems by omitting quotation marks on his fictitious dialogue, while putting quote marks around actual, documented words. He has researched the era assiduously; the downside is that his prose too often slips into 19^th-century prolixity.

The lifeboats could not accommodate everyone, and the five that were launched quickly lost touch in the snow and fog. Nye’s boat was a microcosm of humanity, the bos’n and the bossy mate’s wife hogging the water and a jug of brandy the captain had slipped to Nye. Despite his advice, all but Nye drank seawater and soon died, the men raving, the women catatonic. After the first few, Nye lacked the strength to heave the bodies overboard.

Because Nye lived to tell the tale, this portion of the book has an immediacy that kept me turning pages at a rapid clip. It would have been dismal going had I not known that at least he would finally be rescued – damaged, but alive.

~~~

Once a journalist chasing facts for The Boston Globe, Marty Carlock finds it’s more fun to make things up. Her short fiction has appeared in a dozen-plus journals and quarterly publications. She’s author of A Guide to Public Art in Greater Boston and several unpublished novels. She sometimes writes for Sculpture and Landscape Architecture magazines.