At Sea
The Town
It was four in the afternoon when we got dropped off near the fishermen’s wharf. The journey from the town was long and bumpy. The Ambassador was a little too big for the narrow roads that wound through the small town towards the fishing harbour.
It was an ancient town on the eastern seacoast. Though small and congested like most Indian towns dotting the fringes of agricultural lands, it has a couple of distinctive features: it is the district headquarters with a natural harbour. Narrow roads and overcrowded streets, unkempt and undulating, crisscrossed the town. The main road, made narrower by parked two-wheelers all along its middle, led the way towards the harbour.
The driver honked and yelled sometimes to the passers-by who seemed unaware of the approaching automobile until it was almost upon them. We passed over a small bridge under which flowed the rainwater and perhaps the sewage from the town that discharged into the sea.
The way to the harbor reeked of sea fish and there were fish heaps lining the roads where fishermen sold their catch. Some fishing nets were in repair on the sandy beach. A man came up with a wild sea prawn that looked mean with its leathery body and hair-like legs. We waved him away; we did not go there fishing for prawns.
The Black Gold
We were three colleagues on our way to a barge that was waiting for us in the outer harbour. Too heavy to come in shallow water, it lay anchored about two nautical miles from the shore. It would leave the following day for the oilrig somewhere in the Bay of Bengal.
As engineers working in the Ocean Engineering Department of a petroleum consultancy firm, we supervised offshore operations. Our job now was to oversee the laying of a pipeline from the oil terminal on the shore to an oilrig located at about 10 nautical miles into the sea. I was responsible for the quality of welding which joins the pipes into one continuous string from the shore to the rig. The joining of pipes and laying them into submarine lines takes place on the barge. The other two were responsible for the structural stability of the pipeline once it is laid on the bed of the sea. The pipes were heavily coated with concrete to prevent them from buoying up to the surface after they have been laid.
Petroleum, euphemistically called the black gold, dug out from under the seabed was transported to land via the submarine pipelines. At the oil terminal on the shore it was refined and its constituent products extracted – petrol, diesel and LPG. Deep from the bowels of the earth come the fuels that drive us around the world and the machinery on which we depend. They come to us at a great cost of money and sometimes of lives.
The Ambassador left us on the shore with a billow of sand in its wake: we looked forward to the next leg of our journey. We had nothing to do but wait for the fishing boat that was hired to ferry us across the bay to the barge at sea. We took in the scene around us. The Sun shone brightly from the clear October sky. The sea looked blue-green, the waves lapping on the shore and some fishing boats bobbed on the restless water, their bows tied to the wharves. Gusts of breeze blew in from the sea causing the sand to rise and swirl. Shouts from the fishermen reached our ears as they went about their work. The sea seemed calm, contrasting the noise and bustle of men on the shore. They were dark and wiry people, these fishermen, and looked quite strong.
Apart from looking up the map of sea-lanes identifying the submarine oil pipelines in the Bay of Bengal, I also happened to look up the information on the town and its people. After agriculture, fishing is the major source of income to the town’s half a million inhabitants. An estimate put the figure of registered fishermen at more than 15000, whose trade sustained nearly a third of the population.
My colleagues and I walked on the fishermen’s pier looking into the murky waters below. It was somewhat dark and green with algae and shoals of tiny fish zigzagged for no apparent reason. The smell of dead sea fish on the shore rose with the wind and I hoped to God we wouldn’t have to wait any longer. Raw fish stank and I wondered how it could become the staple food of people on the 5422 KM coastline of peninsular India.
An hour went by - it seemed like an eternity - when at last the hired boat wobbled towards the wharf. Our spirits rose and we looked forward to a journey by the sea. The Sun dipped closer to the horizon and the smell of fish receded as we sailed off into deeper waters.
The boat
It was a small boat, perhaps measuring no more than 18 feet from stem to stern. It was half as wide with the sailor’s cabin in the center. A hole in the cabin took us down a narrow staircase to the deck below. It was dark and crowded in there, too small for the three of us to be in at the same time. Beyond the sailor’s cabin was the bow in front. A wooden table and bench stood behind the cabin. There was water splashing on the deck as the boat went rocking unsteadily forward.
There were two men with us; they chattered all the time while one of them held the steering wheel that turned the rudder this way and that way. We probably stayed on course most of the time for there was little turning of the wheel. The boat was powered by a diesel engine that ran noisily and belched blue-black smoke. Used rubber tires hung from the sides; the boat’s port and starboard I noted were well protected from sideways impact.
I found that the fishermen’s lives were hard; the boats looked so ancient that I wondered about their seaworthiness, and the men were ever exposed to the dangers of working at sea. Cyclones hit the eastern coast with unfailing regularity year after year and the men eked out their living at a great price. While fish remains an all-time commodity on demand, fishing itself was fraught with dangers and the fishermen’s lives were anything but enviable.
We sat for sometime on the stern and looked around us. The boat rocked to and fro; it also nodded from side to side, while all the time it went up and down on the water. Every floating object at sea experienced these three types of motion. Waves occurred with metronomic regularity, though the height varied with the season and the tides.
Walking on the boat was not easy; walking unaided was to risk tumbling into the water. Salt water splashed onto the deck and sometimes lashed on the cabin; it fell mostly towards the stern. Steadying ourselves against the low bulwark, we shouted to make ourselves heard. The strong breeze carried away our voices and dialogue seemed difficult, made worse by our lurching caused by the boat’s unsteady progress.
My colleagues felt sick with all that movement. They complained of a churning sensation in the stomach and left the deck for the dingy quarter below. A floating vessel was most steady at its keel, which lay somewhere vertically in the middle of the boat. They disappeared down the hatch in the cabin, leaving me alone on the deck. I felt light and somewhat uneasy from the happenings around me and made for the bow. I found a place just ahead of the cabin where I could sit easily and safely. The men in the cabin did not stop their chatter. Sometimes their voices rose above the sputtering noise of the engine and the swishy lashing of seawater.
I had heard of seasickness before but strangely felt nothing of the kind now. I had been several times on sea before, though not on a rocky ferryboat. I had flown from an airstrip on company-chartered helicopters onto barges on high seas off the western coast. The barges were large and relatively more stable compared to the tiny fishing boats. A typical submarine pipe-laying barge usually measured more than 100 meters in length and weighed over 5000 tons. It is widest at the center and measured about a quarter of its length. Their sheer size and ponderous gait perhaps dulled the sensation of movement at sea.
The Muse
I enjoyed the strong breeze and the occasional sprinkling from the splashing water behind me. The sun set low on the horizon and soon it would be dark. The sea reflected the changing colors in the sky, indigo in the east and the fiery glow in the west. The waves rose and fell as the boat chugged along its course. The barge was not visible yet; as far as the eye could see there was only water and the land was receding fast behind us. The coconut and palm trees waved to us in the wind and soon disappeared from view.
Ensconced in the prow of the boat, I watched it rocking forward at an unsteady pace. The sea seemed to stretch endlessly ahead, for even though we had been sailing for an hour now the horizon appeared to be where it had been when we started out. The sea occupied three-fourth of the earth’s surface. And the tiny boat, unaware of the vast depth below and the mighty power of the waves, sailed on its coarse merrily, powered by a spluttering motor and guided by the chattering men in the cabin.
The aquatic immensity around me evoked eternal thoughts. I felt as if I were a piece of flotsam adrift on tossing wood. How come I was here when all the world was elsewhere? I felt alone, but not lonely. I felt I was being carried into oblivion, into that space where humans make not their homes and the gods were powerful and relentless in their onslaught on the carrier. The waves seemed bent upon rending the puny vessel into bits; such was their power and the tireless lashing. The rough boat ride was shaking me, and my thoughts grew less and less as I succumbed to the sense of the everlasting sea, boundless and restless.
The smell of burning flesh rudely interrupted my reverie. I felt choked and gasped for clean air. It came from behind and was all over the place. It was almost dark now and the men had lighted a lamp. They were seated at the table behind their cabin preparing dinner for themselves. I felt my stomach turn. I resisted the impulse to throw up, but the pressure within was too great to control. Holding myself from falling off the side of the boat, I retched violently. Staggering now from the effort, I rolled into the cabin, found the hole and slipped down the stairs to the lower deck. It was quite dark below, but I was in no shape to care or complain. I stumbled over my colleagues who had already lain there like logs, huddled and motionless. I found a corner and slumped there lying quite still for fear of irritating the stomach and risking another bout over the side. The smell was not so strong down there below the deck, but the nausea remained. Mercifully, I was soon overcome with sleep…or did I swoon? I couldn’t tell.
The barge
I awoke to the shouts of men above. Mentally I assessed my physical condition and found to my relief and surprise that there was nothing I need be alarmed about. I had rested. And now I wanted to know what all the commotion was about. ‘Has there been an accident? Is the boat leaking or someone went overboard?’ Consternation puckered my brow and thoughts of burial at sea raced through my mind. Overcome with curiosity, I peered through the cabin door. There were lights outside the boat and a huge vessel could be seen in the distance. The sea seemed rougher than ever, but the men’s voices seemed reassuring. We reached our destination. It was the barge from which shone the powerful lights and the voices came from the men guiding the fishing boat alongside.
I shook my colleagues who started to get up and out of the dismal cubicle. I clambered up the rickety staircase and emerged into the cabin through the hatchway. I looked at my watch. It was nearing 11 o’clock in the night; we had been sailing for about six hours on rough sea.
I steadied myself on the deck, feeling the wind and the water. I saw ropes snake from the barge to the ferryboat. The men no longer chattered but being intent on securing the boat to the barge silently followed the directions from the men on the barge. I noticed that men on both sides worked with precision; there was no fumbling or sloppy manner; they knew what had to be done and did it quickly and efficiently. The sea does not tolerate negligence: it makes men work like machines and yet retain their humanity. Beneath the rough exterior, they were not cold like machines; the passion of the sea was in them.
They tied the ropes to the bollards, vertical posts used to attach the mooring lines. I got to see the way they tied the knot – fisherman’s bend, as I later knew it was called. As the men on the barge tugged at the ropes, the boat came up and close. It swung like a pendulum from 10 feet to within a foot from the barge. It fell down a trough as it moved away from the barge and came up and close again as it followed up a crest.
We had to cross over from the tiny fishing boat to the mighty ocean barge that stood in front of us. I hadn’t the faintest clue how we would get there; a shiver of fear and excitement tingled my spine. The ferryboat seemed puny in comparison as it neared the colossal vessel whose side looked like the Great Wall of China from where we saw it, 50 feet below.
‘How are they going to transfer us from this rocky cradle to the colossus that lay rock solid in supine indifference?’ My thoughts were turning from curiosity to worry and fear was not far behind. A colleague had once injured his foot when he was being lowered onto a dinghy from a crane operating from a barge. The basket that hung from the crane hook and to which he had been clinging for life had come too close and too fast to the edge of the dingy and before he could realize what was happening the rough edge caught him on the foot and smashed a bone. Not a cheerful thought to occur now, but fear has a way of remembering and conjuring up images. While fatal accidents were uncommon in our profession, it was comforting to know that people often got away with minor injuries, if at all.
The ferry rose and fell as it came nearer and nearer to the barge, rising to meet the barge’s deck and falling again to the fifty-feet mark. The wave crested, bringing the ferry flush with the barge’s upper deck, stood there for a brief moment then fell deep into the trough; this cycle went on endlessly. I looked up and scanned the deck of the barge. There was no crane in sight. Obviously they were not going to haul us up from here. I saw the men crossing over the one-foot gap when the boat came up on its upward movement; just managing to get across precisely at the moment the ferry came up level with the barge deck. I looked at my colleagues and they nodded in understanding - we had to follow the men and cross over like they had just shown us. A slip in between………. ah! It would mean a crunch and perhaps death; such was the force of the waves and movement of the ferry.
It was important not to panic. ‘Just follow the men’, I told myself. ‘They are there in front and behind for any eventuality. Time the crossing and at the right moment step over; to safety or to eternity, only time will tell.’ Eternity would make front-page news, I thought ruefully, and create enough stuff for the town’s folk to feed on, besides their reeking fish.
The faces of my colleagues reflected my own grim look. None of us betrayed what we actually felt inside. It would be tawdry and uncharacteristic of men at sea. Beyond the little human activity, it was quite dark and the waves raged against the boat. ‘Hungering for our flesh,’ it occurred to me ungraciously. There was no moon and the sea reflected the barge lights as it caught the rays in the swirling and turbulent waters. It was eerily quiet beyond the little commotion around us, as though we were being watched, silently, invisibly. The rocking and swaying ferry seemed like an infant flailing in a baby swing.
The men were in no hurry at all. They ushered us gently and we moved forward one by one. They crossed and re-crossed to assure us it was as easy as that. And so it was, timed to perfection. We all went over to the other side as easily as the men had shown us. I once looked at the gaping chasm that separated us from the barge, but crossed over it without a thought – eyes alert to the boat’s movement and the moment it came flush with the barge deck.
Last Updated: March 20, 2006
