# The Poison Ship

Extracted from Harper's magazine, 1915, pp. 952-957. Accompanying illustrations by F. E. Schoonover may be omitted.
The Poison Ship
BY MORGAN ROBERTSON
OVER twenty years ago, broken in health, nerve, and spirit after a four years' fight to attain and retain a foothold on shore, I fell back upon "sailors' rights," and, backed up by my discharges and certificates, entered the Marine Hospital at Stapleton as a patient. Here I was pulled through in time, but against the back-pull, or down-drag, of a patient in the adjoining cot. Part of my trouble was insomnia; his was insanity, with occasional lucid remissions which gave me short intervals of sleep. But usually, night and day, he kept me awake with his ravings and mutterings, which, though of a nautical character, were not understandable, for they were intermingled with terms, expressions, and phrasings having nothing to do with pure seamanship. He shouted vociferously about carbonic-acid gas and live steam as non-supporters of combustion. He voiced his belief that sleeping aloft in hammocks was wise and advisable. He begged, pleaded, and prayed to some one to paint the deck, and, if the paint gave out, to tar it—an unseamanly procedure. Insane himself, he called others insane, and would insanely order them to "wake up." I, for one, always obeyed this order, and it was in vain that I petitioned doctors and nurses for removal from his neighborhood. Despite the fact that the vast chain of Marine Hospitals in the country and the fund which supports them come from sailors' money, sailors who enter them are treated as charity patients. This man was surely a sailor. He was powerfully built, though emaciated, was suntanned to the color of a Moor, and when the maniacal glare left his deep-sunken eyes his face showed a degree of intelligence that marked him as a skipper or mate. He had been picked up in an open boat in the Strait of Magellan, taken to Montevideo, and then, still out of his mind, sent to New York by the American consul.
It ended at last when he had recovered the mental poise that usually precedes death, and when I was so exhausted and distracted that his words practically went into one ear and out the other. He died next day, and even before he died, the story he told, terrible though it was, had gone from my mind. But the wonderful subconscious memory that records every face, fact, and happening from the cradle to the grave held that story against the time—a few months ago—when, helped by another wonderful subconscious faculty, the association of ideas, I could dig it out of my soul and write it down.
The associated idea in this case was a picture—a full-page picture in a magazine, illustrating a story of the sea. The story was well told, and when I had finished reading I naturally examined the illustration. It was equally well done, but did not seem to belong to that story. The author had described the wrecking on a rock-bound lee shore of a square-rigged ship under lower topsails, main spenser, foretopmast-staysail, and reefed spanker, with green seas breaking over her; but the picture, properly captioned from this part of the text, was of a bark under all sail, with little wind or sea to bother her, apparently drifting close to the rock-bound shore described. This shore was all that linked the picture with the story, and, marveling at the perversity of artists in refusing to read the stories they illustrate, I put the matter from my mind—or, rather, tried to.
For the picture persisted; it intruded itself at all times and places until finally I convinced myself that at some time I must have seen that bark and rocky coast, but was unable to recall just when and where. Yet this did not banish the obsession; it got into my dreams after a few restless nights. Then, one morning, I wakened with the memory of that hospital experience and the story poured into my distressed ears by the dying man. Only a part of the story came back to me, but it was enough to explain the grip that picture had taken on me. I had not seen the bark; he had described her as she looked from the boat in which he had left her to drift until picked up, half-starved and deranged.
That day I did what I might have done before had I the slightest plausible excuse: I found the artist's address and called upon him at his studio. His name was Marlowe; he was a pleasant-faced young fellow of about twenty-five, but neither in years nor appearance did he give any indication of the seafaring tutelage which had produced the admirable—though incongruous—technique of that picture. He was slight, but symmetrically built, with sensitive mouth and expressive eyes, and with hands that showed no indications of any harder work than sharpening a lead-pencil. He received me cordially, and as I was not there to criticize, but merely to refresh my memory, I asked him bluntly if he had ever seen that bark and the rocky shore. The expression on his face startled me.
"Have you seen her?" he asked, excitedly.
"Not to my recollection," I answered, "but I think I heard of her, years ago, from a dying sailor. It came to me this morning; but all I can remember is the way she looked when he quit her. I thought you might know, inasmuch as you did not really illustrate the story, but seemed to have pictured something firmly fixed in your mind."
"It is fixed," he answered, mournfully, as he picked up the brushes he had put down on my entrance, "or, rather, has been; for since I got it off my chest I do not think of it so much. It is the first thing I can remember of my life. I was a baby, in a boat full of men, and we were leaving that bark. I cannot remember anything else for a few years of my childhood until I knew I was in an orphan-asylum. I do not know that my name is Marlowe, but that is the name I was called, and I remember being called Bennie; so I wear the name Benjamin Marlowe, and when I took to art I studied marines, with that bark always in the back of my head. Who was that sailor?"
"I don't know. He might have been in that boat with you, but I have a dim recollection that he was picked up alone. If he told me his name, or the name of the bark, I have forgotten. It is twenty-three years ago."
"About the right time," he said. "I must have been about two years old, when consciousness—or, rather, memory—begins, and I must be about twenty-five now. If you remember any more of what he told you, please let me hear it. I want to find out who I am. But don't roast me about that misfit picture!"
I promised, and departed, not much easier in mind as far as mere curiosity was concerned. Only this much more had come to me: somewhere in the world, about twenty-three years before, there had been a debarkation from a craft in good condition, in fine weather, and on a smooth sea—possibly in the landlocked Magellan Strait. I went that day to the Maritime Exchange and the Hydrographic Office, but obtained no information. Government clerks are indifferent, impatient, and sometimes peevish.
The mental state continued; I could not disabuse my mind of that bark, the smooth sea beneath, the fair sky above, and the threatening rocks beyond. Intermingled, too, were transient memories of the distracting experience in the hospital, where I had listened to the ravings of the dying man and finally to a story which had escaped me. But the story came, in time—not as a whole, but in fragments. Each morning as I lay in the borderland between sleep and waking there would come to me something new—new, but old, something remembered out of the long-forgotten past. And finally it was complete, save for two things: either I could not recall, or he had not told me, his own name and that of the bark. I waited for a week, searching my mind, then gave it up and called upon Marlowe. He received me in a condition of repressed excitement, but listened quietly while I reeled off the yarn which had come back to me from the realm of delirium and dreams.
It began with my fellow-patient asking me, after an hour of quiet, what hospital he was in, and when I had told him he lay for another hour, then muttered:
"Six thousand miles from that hell-hole! I must have been a long time out of my head. What month and year is it, mate?"
"April, 1890," I answered, weariedly; for I wanted to sleep.
"Two months, at least," he said. "I just remember a steamer coming toward me, but I don't know how long I was adrift."
I did not answer, but he evidently wanted to talk, and did so. I do not pretend to give his story with all his pauses and repetitions; but in substance, as I gave it to young Marlowe, it ran as follows:
I shipped second mate of her at a small port in New Zealand, where she had put in for fresh water and stores for the run home. Somewhere, out among the islands, she had filled up with a cargo of jute—she didn't get it in New Zealand, for it doesn't grow there—and this cargo was battened tight under hatches to keep the water away from it. But she was an iron ship, with a rotten wooden deck, and I always had a theory that with a cargo of jute or cotton, liable to spontaneous combustion, hatches should be open in fine weather to let air down, particularly in iron ships, which sweat. But I was only second mate, and, being an American among Englishmen, not supposed to know anything. So my advice was not taken. It made no difference at first, for we had fine weather, and it was Southern summer down there; but we sailed the Great Circle course to Cape Horn, and that took us down to nearly sixty south, where it was cold and stormy. The result was that, with decks wet all the time, water oozed through the leaky seams, and the chilled iron hull condensed the harmless watery vapor in the hold into solid, trickling water. Then we sailed up on the last leg into warmer weather, but the mischief was done. We smelled smoke one day, and after a thorough search realized that the jute was on fire, not blazing, you know, but smoldering.
Now, the customary thing to do with fire is to douse it with water, and, excepting in the presence of some chemicals, like potassium and calcium sulphide, it works first-rate—provided you know where the fire is. But we couldn't know. One part of the deck was as rotten and spongy as another, and she was iron, fore and aft. So all we could do was to keep battened down, keep all hands on deck and all windows and skylights closed, and trust that the fire would smother from lack of air. About this time we spoke a ship, but were not scared enough yet to ask for help, so we let her go on.
In spite of the fact that we carried a big crew—thirty-three all told—this lime-juice bark was equipped with one of these new-fangled donkey-engines—just a boiler in the after part of the forward house and a steam-winch outside. Well, that boiler could make steam, and I knew from my studies in physics—went through high-school before going to sea—that steam would replace air and, by depriving the fire of oxygen, kill it in no time. I suggested this to the skipper. I wanted him to set the donkey-man and the carpenter at work—to turn the main steam-pipe into a hole in the deck forward, open an aperture aft, and, by firing up the boiler, flood that smoldering jute with steam, driving out the air through the aperture in the stern. But he wouldn't have it. He argued that steam was nothing but water, after all, forgetting, or not knowing, that steam condensed to water has but the smallest fraction of its former volume, and the harm would be less than the benefit. I argued and swore, but it did no good. I was only an ignorant Yankee second mate, and he was skip- per; so he had his way. He was a big, fine-looking Englishman, and was entitled to some brains, but God Almighty had limited him.
The first mate was an educated pig from Cardiff, and the less I say about him the better. The third mate was a passed apprentice, a gentleman's son in the way of a second mate's berth, and a fine young fellow. We had a big crew: there were four apprentices serving their time, a steward, cook, and cabin-boy, a carpenter, sailmaker, two bo'suns, donkey-man, and a butcher—for we carried about a dozen passengers, all men, except one small baby—and then we had sixteen in the forecastle—thirty-three of a crew. Now, you might think that in that crowd I'd have found a few with sense enough to listen to me; but no—not one, not even the third mate. They were all English or Scotch, insular as hell, and the baby, a small toddler, while a good friend of mine, was too young to know anything or have much influence. He was an orphan, consigned to relatives in England, and his name was Bennie. We had good times in my watch below. As second mate I could have done something for that ship, even with the passengers, who had paid their way, against me; but I was blocked by the ignorance and stupidity of the skipper and mate. Even with all hatches, windows, skylights, and doors closed, we could not seal up the hold, and when I suggested painting or tarring the deck I was laughed at.
Soon, and before it was warm enough to stand watch without an overcoat, we could see little spirals of smoke rising from the seams in the deck, and it was evident that the fire was spreading. Then the deck grew hot, and, provided we kept out of the draught from over the rail, we did not want our coats. We were over a furnace, and no one complained at sleeping on deck. But this brought to the case a new danger. It was hard to waken a man from sleep, and many a time I had to go the rounds and rouse up the watch below at eight bells with a belaying-pin, for nothing but a tap on the head would stir them. I understood why it was: burning jute gives off the soporific fumes of hashish, which is made from India hemp, and which produces drowsiness, then wild dreams and a waking ecstasy.
I am, or was, a pretty husky man, and didn't feel this as quickly as some of the weaker men of the crowd. The passengers slept and wakened as they pleased; but I soon noticed that they acted foolish—that they talked to themselves a good deal, and that when they talked with me it was about trees and flowers and fine spring weather. Think of it!—trees and flowers and spring weather down in that wet, watery wilderness near the Horn. The one to show it first, and hardest, was little Bennie. I found one day that, though I could get his eyes open, I couldn't get him to talk or move; so I rigged a kind of hammock for him out of a sailor's clothes-bag, dressed him warmly, and whipped him aloft at the end of a cro'jack buntline. Up there he escaped the fumes somewhat, and whenever he'd yell I'd go aloft and comfort him. So I think I saved his life—that is, if the boat that took him away at the end was picked up. But it's doubtful; they were all crazy or stupefied, and, as all of them were passengers, not one could pull an oar, while the fellow that had charge of Bennie, a dull-witted uncle from Falmouth, was one of the first to go under. However, he managed to give me Bennie's last name. It was Derringer, and there was big money coming to him in England.
It was when Bennie's guardian, after a crazy day about the deck, was found dead in the scuppers that the captain realized the wisdom of rigging canvas hammocks aloft to sleep in; and so we sprinkled the rigging with them as fast as we could make them. But they mainly benefited the passengers, as the crew had to be on deck half the time at least. So the next dead man was a sailor, who was too sleepy at the end of his watch to climb aloft. Then followed another, and another, and we buried them, sea-fashion, as fast as they died. The next to go were the steward, cook, and cabin-boy, whose duties required that they enter the closed cabin and galley.
We carried a 'midship bridge extending fore and aft from the poop-deck to the forecastle, and on this raised platform the skipper and mates had some immunity from the fumes; but even up there we felt the effects. I remember being wakened, flat on my back on the bridge, by the captain's boot, after a long dream about the country, with its green and yellow and red flowers and foliage; there were beautiful girls in that dream, and singing children, and it seemed like my idea of heaven. But it was only the hashish coming out of that smoldering jute, and it was a cold awakening. I protected Bennie from it; no matter how he yelled, I kept him aloft, only lowering him down to feed him and change his clothes.
All this time we were driving up to the Horn before fresh, fair winds and half-gales that occasionally demanded the taking in of royals. I saw to it that the men took turns going aloft to furl, for this gave them their only breathing-spells; yet they weakened, one by one. I spent as much time as I could aloft with Bennie, but the skipper, first mate, and third mate had no such incentive; they remained on the bridge, as became their dignity, so all three went under in time. The skipper went first. He stayed too long in his room working out chronometer sights, and when he came up he was talking to his wife, his owners, and himself. When a man talks to himself he's beyond all reason, and nothing I could say to him would drive him aloft to clear out his brain. He stayed on the bridge, seeing things and telling us about them until the end, then we sewed him up in canvas for burial; but we never buried him. By this time the whole working force of the ship was more or less crazy, wandering around the deck, unable to understand an order, and finally, to a man, they dropped, though a few managed to climb to the bridge before giving up. It was pitiful to hear the third mate babbling to his mother and his sweetheart, telling them about the fine little cottage he was to put them in when he got command. But he went under in time, leaving things to me; for the first mate, as soon as he saw the skipper die, went below and returned with a bottle. He shared that bottle with the men, as many as could get to it, but they took it in the forward companion, and a few drinks sent them tumbling down into the cabin, where they remained.
Meanwhile I had taken my blankets, sextant, the chart, and the log into the mizzentop, where I also fixed up a bed for Bennie. The passengers stuck to their hammocks up the fore and main, and none of us went down except to grab something to eat. It was dangerous, for the whole deck was hazy with fumes, and a few that went down did not return. But one spot on the deck seemed fairly safe—aft near the wheel there seemed to be immunity, so that a man could steer for a while and find sanity to climb. There were no sailors left now, but I made the passengers take their turn at it, and, as the wind was fair and the yards square, they managed to keep the bark fairly on the course I gave them. I planned to make the Magellan Strait and stop at Punta Arenas, where there might be some way of putting out the fire, either by steam, or by burning coal on the dock and injecting the products of combustion—carbonic-acid gas, you know—into the hold. It will kill any fire.
Well, I made Cape Pillar, and, as the wind luckily hauled to the nor' west, we did not need to touch the braces, but sailed into that nest of tide-rips, currents, and uncharted shoals backed by high, mountainous cliffs. I don't know how far we got. I had lost all thought of Punta Arenas, and was in the green country again, hearing music. I suppose the rest were the same; but when a jar shook the bark we waked up. We were ashore, and there was not a sail, a town, nor a habitation in sight—nothing but high, rocky walls of a deep cove into which some vagrant current had drifted us; and the man at the wheel was asleep or dead.
There was mutiny and insurrection at once; and had things been normal I would have fought that frenzied handful of passengers and made them hold on until something came along to help us. But, under the circumstances, I yielded; so, holding our breaths, and holding one another together, we lowered the starboard-quarter boat, and they all tumbled down, the last to go being Bennie, lowered by myself in a bowline. Then I thought of food and water, and, telling them to wait, I went below for a supply. But on coming up I found them a hundred feet away, pulling like farmers, each man in his turn. They would not come back, nor even answer my hail; so I took a short breathing-spell near the wheel, then, one end at a time, I lowered the port boat, got into her, and cast off before thinking of the food and water I had brought up. I was too hazy of mind, too, to see that there were no oars in the boat. So I drifted away—to seaward; for the tide, or current, seemed to have changed. About all I can remember after that, before I saw the steamer coming, is the sight of that poison ship, resting quietly, with all canvas set, and the background of rock behind her. Lord knows what became of her, or of that boat-load of passengers.
As I finished, Marlowe was crying.
"I was that child Bennie, I know," he said; "but I do not know how I was rescued nor what became of the rest. Look at this." He showed me a morning paper, and I read the following:
"Special Correspondence to the——
"London, Oct. 26.—A weird story of the sea has been briefly cabled from New Zealand. It is the story of the finding of the sailing-ship Marlowe, with twenty skeletons on board.
"The Marlowe—a Glasgow-owned bark—sailed from Lyttleton, New Zealand, with several passengers and a crew of thirty-three in January, 1890. She was homeward bound by the Cape Horn route, and was spoken in mid-ocean in the southern Pacific, after which no other word of her was ever heard.
"In April of that year she was posted as missing, and later on was given up as having been lost around the Horn, where the bones of many a good ship and many a hundred seamen lie. A government cruiser searched the rocky and tortuous coasts of Patagonia, but no trace of her was found. The Marlowe became just another of the thousand mysteries of the sea.
"A day or two ago another British sailing-ship arrived in Lyttleton with the story that she had found the Marlowe and the skeletons of twenty of her crew in one of the rocky coves near Punta Arenas (Sandy Point), in the Magellan Strait. The captain is quoted as telling the story in the following words:
"'We were off the rocky coves near Punta Arenas, keeping near the land for shelter. The coves are deep and silent, the sailing difficult and dangerous. We rounded a rocky point into a deep-cleft cove. Before us, a mile or more across the water, stood a sailing-vessel with the barest shreds of canvas fluttering in the breeze. We signaled and hove to. No answer came. We searched the stranger with our glasses. Not a soul could we see, not a movement of any sort. Masts and yards were picked out in green—the green of decay. At last we came up. There was no sign of life on board. After an interval our first mate and a member of the crew boarded her. The sight that met their gaze was thrilling. Below the wheel lay the skeleton of a man. Treading warily on the rotten deck, which cracked and broke in places as they walked, they encountered three skeletons in the hatchway. In the mess-room were the remains of ten bodies, and six were found, one alone, possibly the captain, on the bridge. An uncanny stillness pervaded everything, and a dank smell of mold which made the flesh creep. A few remnants of books were found in the captain's cabin, and a rusty cutlass. Nothing more weird in the history of the sea can ever have been seen. The first mate examined the faint lettering on the bows and, after much trouble, read, Marlowe, Glasgow.'"
"Possibly," I said, when I had finished reading, "you were the child; and, as all English craft have their names on their boats, whoever found you called you Marlowe. What shall you do about it?"
"I'm going to England—to Falmouth. I shall investigate all families named Derringer."
He departed next day, and in a few weeks I received a letter written on crested paper which, in part, read as follows:
"I was right. I needed no story nor testimony. I am so much the image of my father as he was at my age that my grandparents received me and welcomed me at once. I shall return soon. Meanwhile, can you find the grave of that second mate?"
I found it easily; and there now stands over it a monument bearing no name—simply this:
A SEAMAN AND A MAN WHO STUCK TO HIS SHIP.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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