For as long as I have known my father, which isn’t long, the star around which his life orbited was a trawler called The Unsinkable II. It was bought long before I or my sisters were born. It became the centre of our family. Though we lived on land, it was from the sea our life was drawn. Though it did also take from us. Six nights a week our father was taken from us. He slept most of the seventh. He was a fisherman all his life, but when he finally took the plunge and bought Unsinkable II, he became a captain also. Later, a father. I wonder now if he regrets one of those transformations.
Unsinkable II was kept in better shape than any other vessel on the marina. There was not a spot of rust on its white hull. Not a bolt out of place. A net tangled. A line twisted. Her engine was checked twice a year. All the few hours my father had spare from the sea was spent in careful maintenance aboard her tiny confines. And through the foam of the sea, he could not see us growing. By the hard coastal wind, our voices were mute.
A line of tradition ran through him. An immovable rod. If the other sea-dogs chortled behind his back about his meticulous care of Unsinkable II, then they would have laughed in his face about taking one of us aboard. Three girls he was cursed with, so they say. Not a merry lad to join him out on the churning iron of the sea. Any one of us could have endured that life. My father’s strangling pride couldn’t stand it.
I think he loved Unsinkable II more than anything else in his cold, unchanging life.
Which is why I was so surprised to find it burning last May. Down by the chopping coves, the Unsinkable II bobbed against the wash, clanging its hull on the broken rocks. Hidden from the path above, we saw the smoke billowing all the way from the wharf. A bright ball of fire had consumed the pilothouse and was spreading along the deck. By its brilliant countenance, I saw the black silhouette of my father stood watching, an empty jerry can discarded by his side.
Paddy Dobson
14th August 2020