Strange things happen at sea. Aye, and some are more sinister than the darkest imaginings of any man. Now my life draws towards its close, the remaining days I am to look upon are few — Death advances stealthily. Death has stifled my voice, and in so doing hopes to prevent the horrific memories of my brain being known by others. But still I have the ability to write down that which I witnessed in my youth, and may God give me the energy to deliver a warning — of what I have looked upon — of what is to come again. And so write I must, for there is a danger I must tell of before it is too late.
***
I remember the time clearly. I was eldest ‘prentice aboard the Jenny Rose, and with this I was pleased and very proud, for I had a penchant for the old windjammers, and here was one of the few still to see service. We were engaged in salvage work, picking this and that from the seabed — anything that would turn a sovereign or two: old canon, a bit of pewter, copper bottoms from sailing vessels that foundered a century or more before.
Our diver was a wiry man by the name of Dodgson who seemed more at home in the water than out of it. Normally he worked alone but on occasions I was sent down in the second Siebe and Gorman suit when there was particularly heavy lifting to be done. I can’t say I liked the sensation of waves above me rather than below, but I was a dutiful sailor and obeyed orders. Still, what a diver sees on the seabed can rattle a man’s nerves. On one of the later dives we entered the hulk of a slaver lying ten fathoms deep. There in the hold were the bones of more than a hundred African men, women and children who’d gone to the bottom still chained to the timbers, poor devils.