The good ship Nancowry

I write this from an indeterminate point within the Bay of Bengal. The scenery is just the one I was imagining, and hoping for: sparkling ocean in every direction, meeting sky, where the Earth curves out of sight. There is not a lot more to say about it, except to say, it is beautiful. And very welcome, after the hours spent berthed in the port of Chennai.

The early signs were not so promising; the ship was delayed several hours before we boarded it in Chennai (although this worked out well for us, as it gave us a chance to load up with supplies). We found ourselves once again in the company of the Indian paramilitary, who were also having another go at getting to the Andaman Islands. Once again, they were wearing their combat fatigues, which they would change out of when they were on the boat. I was rocking my usual vest and shorts combo, plus distinctive haircut, and I was still standing a full head taller than most of the Indians around me. As such, I did not recognise many of them, but many of them recognised me. Their attentions on us were focussed by the fact that Celia and I were now the only white people on the passenger list, as Carl, Paul, Oscar, Cern and Leah had all decided to fly to the Andamans, following the last failed attempt by boat.

That last failed attempt had given us some useful insights that we hoped would improve our experience on the Nancowry, a sister ship of the Nicobar. In particular, the confiscation of Oscar’s Absolut had impressed on us the importance of disguising alcohol, lest it be spotted by the eagle eyed security.

We bought a fair-quality Indian whisky in Chennai and poured it into Celia’s water bottle, which was usefully opaque. This caused not a beep or a raised eyebrow as it whistled through the scanners. We also bought some earplugs, to insulate us from the noise of our fellow bunk class passengers, several litres of drinking water, and plenty of bagged snacks.

(Of course, this being Chennai, we had the devil’s job tracking down the earplugs and the whisky; the earplugs were only available from an obscure sports shop, rather than a pharmacy as they would have been back home, and were designed for swimmers, and the whisky involved multiple journeys in motor rickshaws to booze shops selling terrible expensive lager and brandy, but no whisky. But it was fine, because we stopped regularly for curry, which is cheap and unbelievably excellent, and easily the best thing about Chennai.)

It was evening when we boarded the boat, and then it just sat there, remaining motionless in its berth, just like the last boat.

Celia and I had located our bunks and stashed our big bags, in the explosively hot dormitory below decks. It was stifling and there was no movement of air and we were hopeful that the situation would improve when we were under way (it didn’t).

Then we bought some dinner and proceeded to the top deck, where we gazed upon the familiar and somewhat grotesque (to these eyes) vision of Chennai port. We waited around. A few hours crawled by. The delay was stretching on, and there were no announcements. We began to get that Sinking Feeling, which is not what you really want on a boat. I decided it was time to embark on the pantomime of Getting Some Answers, and so we began worming our way through the stairwells and passages to the hilariously-titled “Information” kiosk where there were different faces perched above the same old uniforms.

I addressed a grim-looking man in his sixties, who was clearly this ship’s version of the bulldog I used to try to get answers from on the last ship. I asked a few (I thought) reasonable questions like, “When is the ship leaving?” and “What is the cause of the delay?” In response to the typically vague and evasive answers, I made the point (again, not unreasonably – I thought) that we had spent two days on the last ship before we were told it wouldn’t be leaving port, and that I would like to know what time the ship is scheduled to leave. When he couldn’t give me a time, I asked to speak to the captain – and the uniformed officer erupted at me.

He stood up and started waving his arms and shouting, saying he was going to kick me off the ship! He said he was going to call the police, that he wasn’t going to put up with this abuse, etcetera. A small crowd gathered, and one of the immigration officials, who we knew from the last failed attempt, came over to find out what was going on.

“I want him off this ship!” he ranted. “I’m not setting off with this trouble-maker on board… Says he was stuck on the ship for two days, wants to speak to the captain… I’m not here for this …” Etcetera.

Keeping a cooler head, the immigration official told us we needed to hand over our passports at the information desk, like we did last time.

I glanced at the kiosk, staffed by the mad old seadog, whose blood pressure was clearly red-lining, and who I hoped might drop any second.

“To him?!” I exclaimed, astonished. “You want us to give our passports to him? You must be crazy.”

“In that case you are off the ship!” said the immigration officer, sternly, before spouting something predictable about the regulations.

Celia and I exchanged a defeated look and handed our passports to the angry man. I had visions of him tearing my passport into small pieces right there, and cackling with the light of madness in his sunken eyes. Or just throwing it in the sea later on, and chuckling merrily to himself.

In the event he chucked them in a drawer while Celia smoothed things over, asking him a few banal and uncontroversial questions, to take his mind off the murderous path it had found itself. I exchanged a few words with the immigration officer, and kept my distance from the increasingly unhelpful information booth.

When the angry man was settled again, and staring vapidly at the walls like he was when we found him, we took our leave, and went for some whisky and a cigarette on the top deck. While we laughed about the ridiculous scene, some of our fellow passengers – all military men, now in their civvies – came up to us and asked us for details. It was a bit of entertainment, I suppose, although such altercations are things I would rather avoid. It is not good to be marked out as a lone trouble-maker on an ocean-going ship by a deranged and volatile senior officer. It is far better to organise a mutiny, quietly, below decks – should an act of rebellion be deemed necessary.

So I vowed to keep my distance from the rabid sea hound, and we finished watching Django Unchained, which we had started watching in the hostel the night before. It was better than I remembered it (I had thought the film was slightly spoiled by a ridiculous ending that descends into a morass of increasingly pointless shoot-outs, which took something away from the taut narrative up until that point. But this film – like all of Tarantino’s films – gets better with repeated viewing).

The credits rolled, and still the ship remained stubbornly lashed to its berth. We drank more whisky. We laughed.

(Ah – whisky! Where were you last time!? What horrors cannot be broken down and made good – or at least made tolerable – by your incendiary medicine? What malaise of the soul cannot be temporarily cured? What splenetic outpourings by seafaring bastards cannot be laughed at with fondness and sentimentality? What ugly happenstance cannot be marvelled at as a hallmark of the head scratching majesty and wonder of a chaotic universe?)

And eventually, we detected activity, which gave us cause to hope. To hope, that we may in fact leave Chennai, this maddening city to which our combined fate had been inextricably bound for too long.

The first good sign, heralding our mythical departure: the immigration officer left the ship. The second, really good sign: an articulated vehicle with a winch turned up and hauled away the gantry, which had been our umbilical with terra ferma. And then: the tug boats. They did their thing, of hauling our much larger boat away from the jetty. And then: we were making forward progress, under our own power!

To see the bright lights of the port drift away in the night, and to feel the cool sea air, was an incredible tonic (and a great accompaniment to the whisky). We slipped past the spiderlike cranes and the commercial ships, into open water, and we watched the city open out and recede, taking with it – the east coast of India.

*

I woke up at about 2am during that first night, prickling with sweat, and feeling like I was suffocating.

Turns out these bunks are situated directly above the engines. There is no air circulation, and no cooling of any kind. The windows are port holes, sealed with metal lids. It feels like being buried alive.

I slithered off my bunk, feeling dreadful, and staggered out of the dorm – with no clear idea of where I was going, or why I was going there.

As soon as I stepped into the corridor, the cool air enveloped me, seeming to freeze the sweat on my face. I wandered about the sleeping ship in a daze.

The thing I was looking for – which I held out little hope of finding – was a powerful electric fan. To this end, I roamed the corridors, opening cupboards and closets, and looking around communal rooms. My wanderings took me to the other end of the ship, and the first class dining room – which was unlocked. There, above the service hatch, was a useful-looking fan. To my surprise, and considerable delight, it slid easily out of its mount. I unplugged it and carried it back to my bunk, where I installed it in one of the port hole alcoves.

Amazingly, there was a power point within reach of its cable. And it worked! After a bit of manoeuvring, I positioned the fan so its blessed vortex would be divided between my bunk, on the top, and Celia’s bunk, which was below mine.

I lay down again. The air washing over me was an indescribable relief. It made the heat tolerable. How the other hundred or so people in that room slept through that night, and subsequent nights, without a murmur of complaint, or indeed, any obvious discomfort, is a mystery.

*

Earlier today I climbed a ladder and made my way around the vast exhaust funnel, to the helicopter landing pad out back. It’s a rather lovely spot, sadly neglected. From the giant “H”, I peered up at the towering black funnel, which has a ladder running all the way up its spine. The compulsion to climb that ladder is strong, but I think I will resist. The funnel radiates a good deal of heat and gas, and it is covered in years’ worth of grime.

As I climbed back down to deck level, a Chinese or possibly Taiwanese man informed me peevishly that I had ventured into a place I wasn’t supposed to be. I clapped him good-naturedly on the shoulder with one grime-covered hand and told him not to worry, and he took a picture of us using his selfie stick.

It got me thinking about the cultural differences that exist from place to place, which cause some people to respect authority, and others not. If I had been on this ship with Manuel, my Italian friend, we would probably have enjoyed a whisky in the eagle’s nest by now, followed by a few whiskies in the engine room, followed by a toxic whisky up the funnel. But this kind of behaviour is frowned upon by some – even by those who are not employed by the company. It offends their sensibilities, which have been moulded to accept the dictates of controlling interests. Squares.

The last uplink I had from Google Maps put us splash in the middle of the Bay of Bengal, still heading east.

*

We’re around sixty-two hours into a sixty-hour voyage. My last uplink from Google Maps put us a little over two hundred miles from the Andaman Islands.

About two-and-a-half hours ago, I climbed over to the heliport again. I took a few more pictures, and I made a video for Madelene – sending her greetings, and love, from the Bay of Bengal (although I will only be able to send the video when I get to the islands).

While I was peering over the rail at the back of the ship, I noticed that the frothy white track we should have been leaving in the sea was absent. The engines had cut out.

And that’s it, really. We’ve had lunch, and had a shower – because, who knows how long we will be stuck here, and how long the water will last. Naturally, there have been no announcements from the crew – and nor do I expect any. We visited the dark and misleadingly-titled “Information” desk, but it was closed. The senior crewmembers were probably having their post-lunch nap, which is likely to stretch on for the rest of the day, or at least until dinner.

My fellow passengers are carrying on as normal – watching Bollywood films, snoozing on their bunks, sitting around chatting on deck, playing cards below deck. Everything seems reassuringly normal.

Except we are dead in the water, drifting, two hundred miles from land.

*

Fifteen hundred hours, and we are steaming ahead again, under full power!

Just in time too. I had announced to Celia – without enthusiasm – that I was going in search of a senior officer, to posit questions over our mysterious engine shutdown. I was probably on a collision course with the seadog who had barked at me so energetically prior to our delayed departure from Chennai.

I knew the encounter would be unproductive at best, and violent at worst, but what can you do, when you are stuck on a ship, drifting at sea, and no one will tell you what’s going on?

Happily, my unscheduled dip in the Bay of Bengal will be avoided. We are delayed by at least twenty-four hours, however.

I spoke to a mechanic who was taking a breather on the deck just now. He told me there was a problem with the exhaust system, and there was a blocked fuel line, but it’s all fixed now. We are scheduled to arrive at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands at midday tomorrow.

Just as well, too. We are out of snacks. And whisky. And cigarettes!

*

Eighty hours into the sixty-hour voyage, and we have sighted… land! Yes! We are rounding the southern tip of the islands, on our way to the capital – Port Blair.

We have spent four nights aboard the good ship Nancowry. It keeps its “good ship” status, despite the delays, because it looks like it will deliver us to the hoped-for destination – alive, well-fed, and happy.

I’m glad we travelled by boat. It feels like the right way to arrive at an exotic cluster of islands like these. And despite the delays – which meant two nights aboard a boat became six nights aboard two boats – and the lack of information, and the basic, slightly unsanitary conditions – crossing the Bay of Bengal by ship felt like a romantic throwback to the old days, the food was great, and the experience was enlivened by the people we met.

The Indian people travelling with us were insanely friendly. We posed for countless selfies with the paramilitary, with families, and with a martial arts school from Kerala. As the only white people on the second boat, Celia and I were something of a curiosity, it is fair to say. Sometimes we felt like weird exhibits, as dozens of dark eyes followed us around the ship. But overwhelmingly, we felt accepted and even looked after by our fellow travellers. Often, somebody would make way for us in the scrum for lunch or dinner, thoughtfully trying to shield us from the usual melée that occurs at times like these.

Our maritime adventures are not over yet. The next vessel will take us from the Andaman Islands to Calcutta, before we move on to Bangladesh. Just another sixty-six hours on a boat.

What could possibly go wrong?

Note: this post was originally published 12th January 2017.