Page 74 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

samples for the galley. But very shortly, the picture changed completely. Within
fifteen minutes the ship was surrounded by sharks, ominously predatory, of
which I had previously never before been aware (one sees dolphins, flying fish,
sea snakes, even whales, but sharks infrequently appear to surface dwellers)
and which readily yielded to the temptations of baited hooks, and when hauled
on deck thrashed around in a violently dangerous way. But a few of our braver
worthies quickly saw this as excellent bait and, chopping the thrashing fish with
carving knives with dangerous expertise, found that there was much more flesh
available than could easily be used. More heavy fishing rods rapidly appeared
(from where?) and very soon the deck was running with blood, but the effect in
the water was far more dramatic. By utilising the shark flesh as bait, the surface was
transformed, for, within a few minutes, there appeared a host of hammerheads.
These, surely among the more bizarre of animals, were large, ten to fifteen feet in
length, but most obviously, driven by a terrible savagery; they attacked all and
sundry around them, smaller sharks, other fish who happened to get in the way,
and offal left by the dead and dying around them. All around the starboard side of
the ship the sea was alive with the quick and the dead, huge sharks seeking food,
smaller sharks dead or dying and many trying to escape the maelstrom. Although
hammerheads move around in schools, and this predatory behaviour, including
cannibalism, have obviously produced a very efficient machine, the afternoon’s
experience was to me akin to a vision from hell. Survival of the fittest was all very
well, but to see it in action was sobering.
Next morning a berth was available, and we went alongside a pier that, as
expected, was a substantial distance from the city itself. However, discharging the
cargo was not complicated, it all being fairly standard product (though I was told
not to be too complacent, the last cargo delivered by the ship within the Indian
Ocean having been aviation spirit unloaded at Gan, a somewhat secretive British
Air Force base south of Ceylon. That product that was more gas than liquid and
thus far more dangerous than virtually any other normal product). But unloading
in Durban occupied less than a day, after which we were sent to another berth,
there to have our hull examined.

The hull inspection was by itself interesting. Immediately after berthing,
there came aboard a gang to clean those tanks that were to be examined because
of possible hull damage. I had previously had no experience other than by
anecdote of the effect of apartheid, but it was immediately apparent to even the
unenlightened how pervasive was this systemic cancer. The gang comprised
about fifty blacks supervised by one white man, who patently regarded his charges
with contempt. Curiously, the gang itself, though very unkempt in clothing and
appearance, seemed quite happy, singing and laughing around the buckets of
water with which they had been supplied for liquid sustenance, even though I
saw little evidence of their careful preparation for descending into the tanks that
we always experienced because of the known dangers that such descents could

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