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“The sea, the sea, the open sea, the blue, the fresh, the ever free.”’
    â€˜Not always blue or fresh looking, but ever-dangerous,’ Mr Charteris replied.
    â€˜You had to go to what was known as a Board of Inquiry.’
    â€˜An awful time. But up until the drowning, you could say I was lucky to get a job on the
King
Arthur
. Only a deckhand, though good pay, the work not too hard, and passengers usually in a nice holiday mood, unless heaving up sticky, odorous ex-fodder. Luckily, I’d been in the navy during the Great War, so I knew seamanship. I had to take the wheel sometimes, even in a storm. Important to fix her head or stern towards the weather, Ian, so she didn’t broach on. I had to use all my strength to hold the rudder on course, even with the paddles driving her straight forward. The ship would sort of fight me, like an enemy, but knew it couldn’t win against my steady force and skill. I was lucky to have these aplenty, oh, yes, part of my nature.’
    â€˜â€œBroach on” meaning a ship did not keep her bow or stern to the weather but went broadside on, and the wind and big waves hit her there, made her helpless, got into her engines, and maybe rolled her over, capsized her.’
    â€˜Each voyage we ran safety drills with the lifeboats. Think what it would be like if the worst happened and we had to get a thousand people to safety in big seas. We’d swing one of these lifeboats out on davits every trip, to make sure the lowering mechanism worked, and we’d show passengers their emergency stations. Of course, they thought it was all a bit of a game, a slice of amusing drama to liven up the trip, but it wasn’t, I can assure you. “Only the Bristol Channel,” they’d exclaim, perhaps laughing. There’s nothing “only” about the Channel, Ian.’
    â€˜Davits – small cranes that took lifeboats down to the sea if the ship was going to sink.’
    â€˜The Board of Trade had naturally thought a lot about the
Titanic
,
destroyed by an iceberg in 1912 with many lives lost. They tightened precautions. I’m not saying there’d be icebergs in the Bristol Channel! But ships could sink for other reasons. Our lifeboats were ahead of the paddle box on the port side.’
    â€˜Port is left when going forward, right starboard. Port lights red, starboard green.’
    â€˜Plus some of the benches where passengers on deck could sit were made so they would become life-saving rafts with ropes to hang on to if the ship went down.’
    â€˜These were what’s known as “double-purpose”.’
    â€˜Generally for relaxing on and chatting together, but also a safety measure. And then, a smaller lifeboat at the stern. This could be lowered quicker than the others, and was for the kind of emergency when someone went overboard, or if a line fouled the rudder. We got the stern boat into the water fast on that bad day, but not fast enough. This was 1934.’
    â€˜The dark water.’
    â€˜I want you to think of those two paddle steamers approaching Penarth pier, Ian, the
King
Arthur
and
The Channel Explorer
.
These are rivals.’
    â€˜No love lost.’
    â€˜
Channel Explorer
, owned by the Pearson company of Bristol and Avonmouth and part of its
Ocean Quest
fleet, gross tonnage five hundred and fifty, maximum speed claimed as twenty-one knots, master, Captain Lionel Corbitty, buckets of deep-sea experience before taking
Explorer.
’
    â€˜Age, forty-eight, nickname “Top-dog Corbitty”. He thought he ruled the waves, like Britannia.’
    â€˜Scratch golfer.’
    â€˜Big-headed.’
    â€˜The skipper of the
King Arthur
,
himself a bit of a Great I-Am. Perhaps they all needed some of that to become captains. It’s called “dash”. Like Drake and Nelson. Remember Nelson putting his telescope to his blind eye and saying, “I see no ships,” although enemy vessels