Lobster ReefA Poem by David Lewis PagetAn Isle rose up from the ocean swell On the seventeenth of June, It was totally unexpected by The M.V. Cameroon, She’d sailed with seven passengers And some cargo in the hold, They all kept well to their cabins for The deck was more than cold.
The Captain up on the bridge had checked His maps before they sailed, Had marked his course dead reckoning Though the gyro compass failed, They’d been at sea for eleven days So he took a fix on the stars, Then left the wheel to the Bosun while He searched for the coffee jar.
The ship ground up on a coral reef At two in the morning, sharp, The night was black as a midden since The clouds had hidden the stars, The hull bit deep in the coral as It drove ahead with its way, Grinding slowly to come to halt Just in from a new-formed bay.
‘There isn’t supposed to be land out here,’ The Bosun cried to Lars, The Captain said, ‘I fixed a point, Dead reckoning by the stars! There shouldn’t be land in a hundred miles,’ But the ship was high and dry, ‘It must have come up from the ocean floor,’ The Bosun said, ‘but why?’
The passengers spilled out onto the deck With cries and shouts in the gloom, ‘What have you done, the ship’s a wreck,’ Said the Banker, Gordon Bloom. The sisters, Jan and Margaret Young Burst out in sobs and tears, ‘How are you going to float it off? We might be here for years!’
At daylight they could see the extent Of the distant lava flow, ‘Lucky we’re not on the other side Or we’d all be dead, you know.’ The tide came in and the tide went out But the ship was high and dry, As clouds of steam from the lava flow Poured out, and into the sky.
‘We’re not gonna starve,’ said Andy Hill As he peered down onto the reef, As thousands of crabs and lobsters crawled ‘There’s plenty of them to eat.’ They lowered him down on a rope, along With the engineer, Bob Teck, Where they gathered the lobsters up by hand And tossed them, up on the deck.
The evening meal was a feast that night, They ate and they drank their fill, ‘Too much,’ said Oliver Aston-Barr ‘I think I’m going to be ill.’ But Jennifer Deane, Costumier Had an appetite for four, She ate the scraps that the others left And was calling out for more.
The following morning all was still Til Jennifer Deane came out, She roused them all with a frightened scream, And then continued to shout: ‘I’ve got some horrible bug inside And I’ve lost my sense of taste, It must have come from the lobsters, for It’s eaten half of my face!’
The lobsters must have been undercooked For the symptoms would appal, A necrotizing flesh eater Had started on them all, The flesh was eaten from Andy’s hand And the leg of Gordon Bloom, While the sisters Jan and Margaret Young Lay screaming in their room.
The sickness took them rapidly, For Jennifer Deane had died, They had no place to bury her So threw her over the side, The crabs then swarmed and attacked her there, Ate all of her flesh away, There was little left of Jennifer Deane Before the end of the day.
Each time that one of them died, the rest Would fling them over the side, The bodies had piled up higher out there Than those alive, inside, Til finally, Oliver Aston-Barr Was last to die, on the bridge, Of the Motor Vessel Cameroon, Upthrust on a lava ridge.
A winter storm was to float it off, It drifted out with the tide, A rusted hulk with ‘The Cameroon’ Paint peeling, off from the side. An ancient freighter, crossing its path Drove past it, steel on steel, And that’s when the helmsman held his breath, ‘There’s a skeleton at the wheel!’
David Lewis Paget © 2014 David Lewis PagetFeatured Review
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