A Day in the Life of a Ship Hunter
My father's oldest friend, who died in June of this year, on his 98th birthday, was something of a recluse. But, long ago, he had known many more adventurous people, including one who had made several leisurely voyages about the world. Among his few belongings were some letters and notes in a small file marked "Explorations". Sadly, most of this turned out to unreadable - apart from the few puzzling fragments below.
"There is a persistent legend that the Southern Ocean is haunted by a deathless ship. And that mariners are from time to time hailed by the wanderer and asked to convey post to a long vanished family. A variation on this legend places the haunting on an island, somewhere beyond Australia, which appears 'every seven years'.
Lone yachtmen may hallucinate, I suppose, but the invention is consistent - an island with a cool but not frigid climate. Reports vary somewhat, but there seem to be two inhabitants, never seen together. One says nothing; the other insists on handing over a letter, with some nonsense, to be taken back to an untraceable address in Europe."
"Unearthly, slender Nick Alligin stands by the tree.
A master of misdirection, he stands like a figure from a green, past, England - Wayland, Hereward, Robin, Herne. In that early morning it is remarkable to be alive. The longest of histories stretches back in his thoughts. Some of it is true. Most of it is retold, from even earlier memories.
But remember, it was not the Ancient Mariner who became sadder and wiser, but the unwilling recipient of that improbable story.
Is even an examined life worth living? If in the cycle of the seven sages, the world passes through seven ages, this one is clean and skippered. The flowers that fade in the fall bring fractions of berries and wine. Fa, la, la.
But I, captive Vandervecken, will catch slim Nick Alligin."
This former may be a somewhat free translation or paraphrase of a nearly illegible note, clearly very old, that is - as far as we can tell - written in seventeenth century Friesian.
and finally:
"One of the oddities of the history of maritime exploration concerns Royal Company Island, situated to the south and west of Tasmania. It was removed from Admiralty charts in 1904. This in itself was not unusual, since there were many islands reported by the explorers of the Southern Ocean which turned out to be non-existent. Icebergs presumably account for most of these reports, or, before longitude could be determined, necessarily inaccurate navigation. Bouvet Island was so difficult to find after its first discovery that no less than four spurious islands were claimed in the general area, and Bouvet itself was removed from the maps until it was finally pinpointed in 1893. But the mystery of Royal Company Island is that the Admiralty had no trace of any report of its original discovery or of any subsequent sighting."
link to some reflections on this somewhat unsatisfactory text