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Cheatum made it down to the cargo hold. He raced amidships to where the container carrying the unprocessed lead had been stowed. Three of the massive wooden crates had tumbled from the top row and broken apart. Several tons of rock lay scattered on the starboard side. There was nothing he could do but report his findings. Turning on his heel, he started for the ladder.
“Engine room,” Captain Ilbery shouted into the speaking tube, “I’ve lost starboard propulsion.”
He repeated his pleas, but no one answered.
Twelve dead, including Brody. Their bodies were boiled — their skin cooked from their bones. Three African shovelers had been spared, but they did not understand the words that came out of the copper tube. They held their shovels in their hands, frozen in horror.
Joe Conquer peered through his telescope as the cargo vessel came into view. Wiping water from the lens, he stared again. She was an ungainly vessel, with a squat black superstructure and yellow decks. Her single stack was black, with a band of white in the center.
As Conquer watched, she heeled to one side and hung there for a few moments.
Fate can come in many packages. For Waratah, it would arrive on a rogue wave.
His ship was already wounded, and Ilbery knew this. The best he might hope for was to ground her on shore or limp back to Durban on a single engine. He waited for a clear spot, then spun the wheel to the stops.
A mile distant from the struggling ship, the rogue wave was gathering force. Fifteen, then twenty feet in height, and she kept growing. A half-mile away, the surface tension of the water should have broken, but it did not. The thousands of gallons of seawater that should be sliding down the leading edge of the wave rose higher and higher, as if stuck together with glue. A single object lay between the wave and shore.
“Mother of God,” Ilbery managed to say.
Waratah was struggling to turn on a single engine and was just past the halfway point of the arc. Captain Ilbery looked out the side window. He saw death and he knew it. The seconds ticked past as he awaited the arrival of fate.
From where he stood on the cliff, Conquer could see the cargo ship and the sea behind. He watched in horror as a giant curled wave raced toward the stricken vessel. He held his breath as it slammed into the vessel.
Clinging to the metal ladder leading from the cargo hold, Cheatum felt Waratah lurch hard to starboard. Farther and farther she heeled over, until she passed the point of no return. The upper decks went awash, and thousands of gallons of water flooded into the holds. Cheatum lost his grip on the wet metal rung and fell the twenty feet to what had moments before been the inside of the upper deck. His neck snapped like a twig, and then there was only blackness with a tiny pinpoint of growing light.
No one had time to react. Not the frightened passengers in the dining room, not the passengers in their cabins. The few crewmen lucky enough to have been on deck were tossed into the water and not trapped in the ship. Their deaths would take longer.
Captain Joshua Ilbery was shaking his fist at the wave when Waratah flipped on its end beams. His head struck the ship’s bi
Joe Conquer could not believe his eyes. Three minutes had elapsed from the time the wave had struck the ship to the time the last part of her hull had slipped beneath the waves. It was as if a hole in the sea had opened and swallowed the ship whole. Wiping the lens again, he sca
When the ship failed to reach Cape Town, authorities hoped for the best but feared the worst. Waratah was known to be unstable, and the hurricane that had raked the coast at the same time was one of the worst in the last decade. The 211 passengers were mourned, and at Lloyd’s of London the bell was rung. The mystery of what became of Waratah remained unsolved.
Lieutenant D. J. Roos talked to himself when flying. He found comfort in uttering his motions aloud, as if he were verifying his actions with heaven’s copilot.
“Richer fuel mixture,” he said, twisting the knob.
The throbbing from the engine evened out.
Roos was piloting an experimental South African air force plane on a mail run from Durban to East London, and the aircraft was performing almost flawlessly.
“I think I’ll take her out to sea a bit,” Roos said aloud.
It was a glorious day, and Roos was happy. The skies were clear, with unlimited visibility, and the sea below showed nary a wave. Days like today happened maybe once a year — crystal-clear skies and the Indian Ocean appearing as a pond. Roos stared at the water out of the side window. A dozen T-shaped images appeared in the water below.
“Hammerheads,” Roos said quietly, as he continued along the coast.
Lighting a cigarette, Roos puffed contentedly.
“Fuel three-quarters, manifold temperature dead on,” he said.
A whale, a small sailboat, and ten minutes passed. Roos pushed the yoke forward and descended two hundred feet. He smiled to himself and watched the water again.
“Whoa,” he said.
A ship came into view — two hundred feet below the water. It looked close enough to touch. The ship sat upright, as if it were steaming for a port it would never reach. This was a sea mirage, and Roos knew it. He turned the plane and circled around.
“Damn,” he said.
Sure enough, it was a ship, and a big one. Must be close to five hundred feet, Roos thought, and the smokestack is still attached. He adjusted course and passed down one side. The decks must be yellow, he thought, that’s why it looked like the sandy bottom. Must have sunk in a storm, he thought. Marking the position on his chart, he turned the plane around and continued to New London. Then he reported his findings.
The next day on his return trip, the seas were rougher and the bottom not visible.
He passed over the area three times, but he couldn’t find the phantom ship.
II
Is It Here or Is It There? 1987–2001
The question that has been asked for more than ninety years is what happened to Waratah and the 211 people she had on board. From the time she sailed into oblivion during a storm off the east coast of South Africa, her ultimate fate has never been far from the minds of dedicated marine historians. And yet, since the day she vanished in 1909, no one seemed interested in launching a search for her until Emlyn Brown and I met up during my book tour in South Africa in 1985.
I was speaking at a book conference in Cape Town when Emlyn came up to me and asked if I was familiar with Waratah. He seemed mildly surprised that I had researched the ship’s disappearance in the hope that someday I might go out and search for it. We later met at the Mount Nelson Hotel and discussed the possibility of joining forces for a search. The meeting led to a friendship that remains strong to this day. Emlyn is one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. I couldn’t have been luckier in finding someone like him to run the show. Courteous, determined, and dedicated to finding the legendary ship, he formed a branch of NUMA as a closed South African corporation in 1990.