The Dystopian Times, 24. Shipwrecks.

I saw a newspaper article mentioning it's the hundred fiftieth anniversary of a ship's sinking off the coast at Fisterra these days. Truthfully, almost every day is the anniversary of a sinking off our northwest coast. There's a reason it's called the Costa da Morte, the Coast of Death. 

The ship that sank was called the HMS Captain, and was a brand-new British navy vessel that had just practiced firing at targets off the shore from Vigo, joined by other British navy ships. On its way back home, an early fall storm caught it unawares as it was trying to sail past Fisterra, and capsized it, drowning 480 sailors, including its designer, Captain Cowper Cole. Eighteen managed to get in a life boat, that had been untied by a sailor who didn't like the looks of things, and didn't mind getting courtmartialed. 

The HMS Captain was a steam and sail ship, that had a 360º turret mounted on deck. From the beginning, the design was flawed; the ship was too heavy, and the center of gravity too high. On the night of 6 September, as they were heading back, a front that had been approaching all day, brought gale-force winds and heavy rains. The surgeon of the HMS Monarch, which had been sailing alongside, wrote an account of what happened. He described how the morning after the storm, the Paymaster had told of a troublesome dream, in which he saw the Captain sink. After a while, they indeed got word that the HMS Captain was missing, and that survivors had been taken in at Corcubión. The surgeon and some others went ashore to interview them, and make sure they were fine. The sailors explained what had happened, and the local mayor told them where wreckage sometimes washed up along the shore. They went and searched the coastline, where they found some fine tall cliffs, but nothing from the Captain, and they gave up the search, returning to the HMS Monarch, and home. The survivors went back to England on another ship.

This wreck is not as well-known, nor as popular, as that of the HMS Serpent, further north, on a spit of a lonely shore.  It was a torpedo cruiser that, on the 10th of November, 1890, ran aground during another fall gale, on rocks that stretch out into the sea off a headland next to the Praia de Trece, near the Cabo Vilán, called Punta do Boi. Out of a crew of 176, only three survived. One of those wandered to the nearest village, well inland, and discovered another survivor walking in the same direction. The other found shelter in a coal bin. The neighbors of that village, Xaviña, went down, but couldn't do anything but collect the bodies that washed ashore. From that day until Christmas, 172 bodies were collected and buried in a spot on the headland, since called the Cemiterio dos Ingleses, the English Cemetery. 

We've been to that lonely spot many times. The sea can be heard lunging against the rocks right at the end of the Punta do Boi when winds are tough, with a sullen roar. Of late, tourists had discovered it, and was no longer as solitary as when we first drove by. This year, silence may have reigned, though it's never very silent with the wind, the sea, and the gulls. 

Life continues.