Editorial and Illustrations by Curt Bowen

Underwater Photography by Becky Kagan Schott

Coal came down the chutes in black rivers and hissed against steel. The air was grit and smoke. Men worked bent and silent except for short curses and the clatter of shovels. The Norman lay against the dock and took it all, eight square hatches open like mouths along her mid-deck. She was steel and long and right: 296½ feet in the tape, 40 feet of beam, twenty-one feet deep in the hold, a raised forecastle with the pilothouse high and glassed, cabins aft over the engine house, a stack that breathed coal breath. She had been built in 1890 at Globe Iron Works, Cleveland, for the iron and coal trade. In her belly was a triple-expansion engine—twelve hundred horses when called—and two Scotch boilers big as rooms.

Captain Kevin Ashman watched from the deck with his hands behind his back. He was tall. The cap sat level. His face was lined from years and weather. His eyes were still. He did not talk much. When a pile shifted he said, “Spread it,” and the men spread it. He wanted the trim even and the deck clean. He kept his ships that way.

Brian Hamilton, the first mate, moved hard along the planks. He was stocky, full-bearded, spectacles smudged with dust, voice carrying clean over the chute noise. He wanted it fast and right. He checked the list, checked the dogs, checked the hatch covers. He had worked docks fifteen years and the deck five as mate. He wanted a command of his own and worked as if it were already his.

Below, David Walker owned the engine room. Barrel-chested, short and heavy in grease-stained coveralls, beard and hair black with soot, he moved among gauges and valves like a man among his own bones. He touched bearings with the back of his knuckles, listened for wrong notes, smelled for hot metal. The boilers lay quiet and ready. The engine sat polished and oiled. “She’ll answer when you want her,” he told the Captain through the voice tube. He did not promise. He stated a fact.

By evening the hatches were down and tarped. The Norman rode deep but even. The dock shut down in stages: the last cart, the last shout, a hammer in some shed going on because the man with the hammer did not know when to stop. Out beyond the breakwater, fog lifted and fell in a low, white breath.

“We sail at dawn,” Ashman said.

Hamilton wiped his lenses with a black sleeve and grinned. “Two days ahead. Easy run upbound for Escanaba.”

Ashman looked at the water and said nothing. There are no easy runs. There are runs not yet troubled.

Rain had fallen two days and did not quit. It swelled ropes and slicked planks and put weight into every stick of timber. The yard was mud, the river high and dark. The Jack lay with her bow into it, longer than Norman by thirty feet, 44 feet of beam, iron-framed oak and pine in her skin, bow braced hard for ice and timber. Three bare masts stood over her decks as a last resort if steam failed. Down below she held a triple-expansion engine a notch stronger than Norman’s and two Scotch boilers stoked to run.

Men in oilskins dragged square timber across the dock. Block and tackle squealed. Chains sang. The soaked wood slid and hit the deck with hollow thuds. The deck sagged and groaned. Lashings went on and stretched wet; they were doubled and crossed and dogged again. Water went in sheets to the scuppers and off into the river.

Captain Kipp Lekon walked the planks with his hands behind him. He had a hard mouth and a habit of time. Two days gone to rain, and he would have them back. “Get it on,” he said. “Wet or dry, it goes aboard.” The men heard and pulled and cursed the luck and the timber and the weather.

Larry Borden, first mate, thin and older, gray hair and a set to the shoulders that told ache, watched the weight rise and the ship sink on her marks. “She’s low already,” he said at the pilothouse door. “Wet weight rides ugly. She’ll be slow to turn.”

Lekon did not soften. “We sail tonight. Full speed.”

Borden could say what he thought and live; he had forty-five years afloat stamped in his back. He turned and shouted down the deck. “Double lashings. Cross them and dog them tight.” The ropes sang when they took the strain. The deckload stood high, a dark hill on steel. The Jack sagged another inch.

Fog thickened at the end of the dock. The stack breathed a deeper note. Lekon looked into the white and said, not loudly, “Fog is a coward if you keep your nerve.”

Borden heard and said nothing. He had seen fog wait men out.

The lines came off. The Jack edged into the white, heavy with wet timber, lashings taut as bowstrings, speed rising under a captain who meant to make up lost days with the throttle.

Fog lay flat over Huron. Sky and water were the same pale thing. There was no edge to anything. Sound went far and came back wrong.

The Norman went upbound slow. One-quarter speed. The horn sounded every fifteen minutes; it lifted long and low from the ship’s chest and ran out into the white, came back bent. The men were quiet. When a ship is blind, the ears grow big.

Ashman stood in the pilothouse and did not move. He watched the compass and the white ahead. He liked a clean ship and a slow ship in fog. There was time. No cargo ever wanted a headstone.

Hamilton walked the deck, fog beading in his beard and on his lenses. He wiped and the lenses fogged again. He checked each station. “Listen,” he told them. “Don’t think. If you hear it, sing out.” He was restless. He wanted speed. He kept it to himself.

Jim Bowels stood on the port bow. Young. Rope-scarred hands. Shirt stuck to his back with damp. He leaned over the rail with one hand cupped to his ear. He did not move. He listened for a name in the white.

Below, Walker kept the fires banked and the steam sweet. The room was hot with work. Sweat ran and turned to grit. Pipes hissed. The engine ticked for its quarter speed like a big clock. Walker kept his hand near the throttle and waited for what the lake would ask.

Toward noon the fog pressed heavier and carried a smell of damp and smoke and iron. The horn went again and came back thin. Men shifted feet. They cleared their throats. They looked into a world that did not answer.

“Listen,” Bowels said then. Soft first, then louder. “Listen!”

They went still to hear. Something else beat out there. Not their engine. Heavier. Faster. Coming.

“Horn,” Ashman said.

The Norman’s voice went into the white. Another answered, closer than any man liked.

On the Jack, the answered horn came dull and near. Lekon’s mouth went tight. “Hard over,” he said. “Engines astern.” Borden struck the telegraph. The clang ran down into heat and steel; the deck quivered under boot soles. The ship did not want to turn. She was full of rain-heavy timber stacked high and lashed fast. The lumber pressed forward, groaning under its own water weight. Lashings creaked. The deckload moaned. The big hull leaned her shoulder into the fog like a bull refusing to give ground.

On the Norman, the fog split as if torn by a hand. Out of it rose a bow that was less a bow than a wall: iron-framed, black, wet, crowned with pine and oak. It filled the world at once. There was no time to measure. It came too fast and too near to matter.

Jim Bowels shouted one short thing—no word anyone could tell later—and jumped. He went feet first into the gray, arms wide, coat flying. A heartbeat later the cutwater passed through where he had stood.
Ashman did not move. His hand stayed on the polished brass at the pilothouse. His eyes held the thing that was already upon them. He had seen too much sea to waste breath now.

Hamilton ran, yelling names, driving men to rails, to belts, to anything that floated. His voice broke in the growing thunder. His glasses slid down and he shoved them up with the back of his hand and kept shouting.

Below, Walker felt the pound before the steel screamed. It came through the hull like a hammer swung far away but aimed at his chest. Tools lifted and clinked. Men looked up without knowing why. “Hold,” he said, though there was nothing to hold that could keep what was coming.

The lake itself held still, old and patient, as if it had watched such meetings before and would again. Then the blow came.

The Jack’s reinforced prow struck the Norman amidships just forward of the third hatch. The sound was many sounds at once—iron tearing, rivets letting go and flying like shot, plates shrieking, timbers cracking, boilers ringing in their beds. The Jack bit deep, an ice bow driving into steel as if it were thin plank. The soaked deckload heaved with the shock and crashed forward against its dogs. Chains went tight and sang.

The Norman’s deck rose under men’s boots. The rail shattered and went. Some were thrown to the planks, some to the coamings, one into the open hatch and down into coal and water. For the length of a breath the two ships held each other—steel in steel—then the Jack tore free and left a hole wide as a room.

Water hammered in. The Norman heeled to port and groaned low. Her long back bent wrong; the mid-deck slipped toward the wound. Ropes and gear ran across the planks like live things. The horn never sounded again. There was no time for horns.

“Abandon ship,” Ashman said. His voice carried clean.

Hamilton hit men in the chest with cork and shoved them to the rail. “Jump,” he said, and they jumped. He did not hold hands. Holding hands is slower.

Walker blew the fires and came up black with soot and steam. “She’s gone,” he said, and the words were not fear and not excuse. They were true.

The Jack drifted off with her bow torn and her load growling on its lashings. She was hurt but afloat. The Norman was broken and dying. There was no boat to lower, no time for davits. It was only water now.

The water rushed through the torn side and boiled up in the stokehold. It met the red of the boilers and turned to a white scream of steam. Walker drove the firemen up the ladder with his voice and shoulders. Lights flickered and went out. The engine did not stop so much as it drowned.

On deck the list sharpened. Galley pots rolled and banged and were gone. A coil of hawser unrolled itself and slid clean overboard. Tarps strained and popped. The eight square hatches stared open-mouthed. The Norman’s spine bent. She had been built straight and honest and now she was not.

Ashman watched the stern lift and the bow fall. He had seen bad weather and bad luck and bad men, but never a ship die this quick. “Hurry,” he said, not loud, and men moved. They went over. Some kicked before the cold took their legs. Some did not.

Hamilton shoved the last pair to the rail and followed them into the lake. The cold took his breath like a fist. He came up spitting black and shouted for Bowels. The fog swallowed the name.

Walker climbed out of steam and noise, crossed the slanting deck, hauled himself along a combing, and jumped. Behind him the drowned heart of the ship thudded once.

Ashman stayed, because a captain waits for the last man and then for the ship. The stern came high, screws dripping, turning once in the air like something alive. For a breath she hung against the weight in her broken middle as if the lake would let her think it over. Then she chose. The bow plunged. The lake roared and pulled. Men went under and some came up again, choking and blind.

Bubbles lifted big as helmets and burst. Foam spread wide. The stack slid under like a black chimney lowered into earth. Then there was only flat water and pieces of a life. The Norman lay down in the dark with her plates twisted and her hatches open to fish.

Three minutes. That was all. A man can hold his breath that long if he trains for it. A ship cannot.

Three men did not rise. One was Jim Bowels, who had jumped first. Two more went with the stern and were gone.

The fog swallowed the ship, but noise stayed—shouts, splashes, coughing—men calling names, prayers, curses. Oars splashed heavy in rhythm.

On the Jack, Lekon leaned from the rail, color wrong in his face. He had seen ships go but not so fast. “Lower away,” he said.

Borden shouted. Davits squealed. Ropes sang. Two yawls went down into black water and longboat after. Men rowed out into wreckage: beams, hatch covers, coils, a drift of coal that slicked the lake and made everything black to the teeth. An oar blade hit a timber and snapped. The bowman swore and grabbed a spare.

A cry came off the starboard bow. The yawl swung hard. A head showed in foam, an arm up, glove torn. The bowman leaned and caught the man under the arms and dragged him over the gunwale like a sack. He hit the boards coughing coal-black water, chest heaving like bellows. Beard full of ice. It was Hamilton.

“Another,” an oarsman said, pointing into the gray.

Faces showed and hands and sometimes only a sleeve. The boat crews rowed among them and pulled men in with boat hooks and fingers numb to the bone. Teeth chattered loud as iron shot in a bilge.

From the Jack’s rail, lines flew. “Catch hold! Catch hold!” Some hands found them. Numb knots came ugly and held anyway. Men were dragged along steel, boots scraping paint, nails tearing.

They found Walker and hauled him in by the collar. He laughed once—a short, cracked thing—and lay still except for the slow rise and fall of his chest.

Ashman floated steady, arms spread. When a line hit him he took it with one hand and wrapped it once and climbed, hand over hand. Water fell off him in sheets. He stepped to the deck and stood, boots sloshing, eyes dark.

Captain faced captain. Lekon with his coat open and his hat in his hand. Ashman dripping, white with cold. They did not speak at first. Behind them men lay coughing and crying and some did neither. Three names were called and called again and none answered. Jim Bowels. Two others.

The yawls came back with the last of the living. Out of the white another horn sounded, small and back in the throat. The steam barge Sicken slid up careful. Lines went over and blankets and coffee. “We’ll carry them,” her master called. It was a good voice.

The lake smoothed itself as if ironed. The Norman was gone from sight and all that showed was a black sheen and broken wood.