"Mowat, Farley - A Whale For The Killing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mowat Farley)

She was waiting for us: small, dowdy, dirty; in sharp con-
trast to the sham grandeur of the Carson. But, unprepos-
sessing as she looked, the s.s. Burgeo was wise in the ways of
the unforgiving world of water. She was a proper scaboat,
not a floating motet. Day in, day out for more than twenty
years, she had shuttled east and west along that iron shore,
furnishing the physical link between the outports. She also
provided the principal contact with the outside world for
some forty fishing villages which clung between wind and
water to one of the least hospitable coasts on earth.

By 1967 more than halt the outports originally served by
the Burgeo had been abandoned - "closed out," as their
forcibly uprooted inhabitants described it. These age-old
settlements had become victims of the cult of Progress even
as the Burgeo herself was soon enough to become such a
victim. In 1969 she was condemned, although still as sound
as ever, and sold for scrap - an unwanted anachronism from
an age now past and rejected. Left lying at a wharf in St.
John's, she was stripped by souvenir hunters, and the cold-
ness of a dead ship spread through her. But she was not
quite dead. One dark winter's night, just before the cutting
torches could start eating into her good Scots iron, she com-

12

mitted herself to her own element. So quietly that not even
the watchman knew what she was about, she settled to the
bottom of the harbour, there to become a monumental em-
barrassment to the authorities and a remembered heroine to
the many thousands of outport people who had known and
loved her during the long years of her service.

However, in mid-January of 1967 the Burgeo was still
very much alive. Her Master, Captain Ro Penncy, wel-
comed us aboard as we scrambled up the gangplank through
a burst of driven sleet.

A small, neat, precise man. Skipper Ro was shy of women.
He flushed and ducked his head as Claire came aboard.
"Well, me dear, you're back again," he muttered, appar-
ently addressing his own feet. "Nip in out of the wet now.
'Tis dirty weather .. . dirty weather ..."

He turned more familiarly to me.
"Come on the bridge, Skipper Mowat. We'd best get under
way afore this nor'easter busts its guts!"

During the years Claire and I had known the Sbu'wcst
Coast we had made at least a dozen voyages with Skipper