Authors: Simon Winchester
Atlantic (51 page)
Onshore nearby and in sight of the wreck, on a sandspit protected by a shallow lagoon from the full ferocity of the sea, is the grave. It must be one of the most remote and least visited grave sites in the world, and sad to say it is quite irredeemably ugly, a boxlike structure of four courses of red brick, and with a large brass plaque sloping up to the north. Its stark lack of beauty is tempered somewhat by the mass of whalebones that cover it, some of them washed there by the sea, most others placed by the occasional visitors.
The tomb is first and foremost a memorial to Matthias Koraseb, who came from South-West Africa and whose body was found and buried here, in the sand of his birth. But also mentioned on the plaque is Angus Campbell Macintyre, whose body was never found: he had been the first mate of the
Elliott
. In the old Scottish tradition of leaving a stone on a mountain cairn, I had long wanted to leave something on this grave, if ever I was able to visit it.
I am not at all ashamed to say that I was very moved, standing there in the Atlantic wind, listening to the growling of the surf, beside this lonely little grave. And so, although I knew at the time that this would be a sentimental gesture, I wrote a note. It said quite simply,
Thank You for Trying. Now Rest in Peace.
I signed it and dated it, then folded it up as small as possible and pushed it down through the narrow neck of the little smelling-salts bottle that I had taken from the wreck. I screwed the cap tightly shut and placed the little token beneath the stones and the old whalebones and pieces of driftwood that covered the grave, and left it there. A message in a bottle; I hope it stays in place for many years.
Here on a lonely beach on Namibia’s notorious Skeleton Coast is the
grave of Matthias Koraseb and the memorial to the never-found Angus Macintyre
, who died in a failed attempt to rescue the survivors from the
SS Dunedin Star
in 1942. This book is dedicated to Angus Macintyre.
Angus Campbell Macintyre was a Scotsman. He was born beside the North Atlantic Ocean and he died, during the commission of an act of great kindness, far away from his home, in the South Atlantic Ocean. What cruel symmetry, I thought. As I leaned on the grave, looking out to sea, I thought back to that morning, nearly half a century before, when the liner on which I was crossing the same ocean for the very first time—and which was steaming across to the New World, and from a Scottish port—stopped to play a small part in a similar mission of mercy for someone who was also in distress upon the sea. On that occasion the scales were tipped in our favor: the mid-ocean rendezvous was safely made, the crisis averted.
But on this occasion, and as is so often true, the advantage had been with the sea: the wild ocean currents had swept mankind away as if he were no more than spindrift and foam. The man has gone; his ship has almost gone; in time the grave will be submerged by the ocean’s rising waters, and all solid memory of the small event will have been washed away. I hope the dedication of this book to his memory will serve as something, to someone.
But whatever the fate of Able Seaman Macintyre, the ocean in which he lies will long remain. In one form or another, in one shape or another, and perhaps known by other names than as a memorial to Atlas, its waters will always exist, so long as the planet exists. They will always be present, gray and heaving, washing and waiting, extending out to the deeps, stretching across to the far horizon and then far, far beyond. Mankind may come and go, but an Atlantic Ocean of some kind will endure, will always be at the end of the beach or down at the base of the cliffs. It will always be in motion. It will always be present. Whether seen or unseen, heard or unheard, it will be imperturbable and irresistible, and as the poet has it, it will be quite simply
be there
, always just minding its business, always just
going on
.
The typeface employed throughout this book is a modern interpretation of the classic eighteenth-century Bodoni face, and known as Filosofia. This was created in 1996 by the Bratislava-born type designer Zuzana Licko, who with her Dutch-born partner, Rudy VanderLans, astonished the typographic world during the closing decades of the twentieth century with a whirlwind of type design, largely occasioned by the invention of the Macintosh computer in 1984. Filosofia, with its slightly bulging serifs and lighter-than-classical-Bodoni vertical lines, clearly owes much to one of the most beloved of all Italian faces, but is more amiable and less wearing to the eyes when ranged over texts as lengthy and complex as that of
Atlantic
. I am proud that this book’s designer felt able to employ this wonderful new typeface, and applaud with gratitude its most gifted creator.
SW
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