“What?  I didn’t know it was about here.  That place!  Well, it’s a good yard, that.  They’re all right.  I was on a steamer that went in there, one trip.  She wanted it, too.  You could put a chisel through her.  But they only put in what they were paid for, not what she wanted.  The old Starlight.  She wouldn’t have gone in then but for a bump she got.  Do you know old Jackson?  Lives in Foochow Street round about here somewhere.  He’s lived next to that pub in Foochow Street for years and years.  He was the old man of the Starlight.  He’s a sailor all right, is Jackson.

“The last trip I had with him was ten months ago.  The Starlight came in here to the West Dock with timber.  She had to go into dry-dock, and I signed on for her again when she was ready.  This used to be my home, Poplar, before I married that Cardiff woman.  Do you know Poplar at all?  Poplar’s all right.  We went over to Rotterdam for something or other, but sailed from there light, for Fowey.  We loaded about three thousand tons of china clay for Baltimore.

“The sea got up when we were abreast of the Wolf that night, and she was a wet ship.  ‘We’re running into it,’ said old Jackson to the mate.  I was at the wheel.  ‘Look out, and call me if I’m wanted.’”

The man pushed his plate away, and leaned towards me, elbows on the table, putting close his flat and brutish face, with his wet hair plastered over all the brow he had.  He appeared to be a little drowsy with food.  “Ever crossed the Western ocean in winter?  Sometimes there’s nothing in it.  But when it’s bad there’s no word for it.  There was our old bitch, filling up for’ard every time she dropped, and rolling enough to shift the boilers.  We reckoned something was coming all right.  Then when it began to blow, from dead ahead, the old man wouldn’t ease her.  That was like old Jackson.  It makes you think of your comfortable little home, watching them big grey-backs running by your ship, and no hot grub because the galley’s flooded.  The Wolf was only two days behind us, and we had all the way to go.  It was lively, guv’nor.  The third night I was in with the cook helping him to get something for the men.  They’d been roping her hatches.  The covers were beginning to come adrift, y’understand.  The cook, he was slipping about, grousing all round.  Then she stopped dead, and the lights went out.  Something swept right over us with a hell of a rush, and I felt the deck give under my feet.  The galley filled with water.  ’Christ, she’s done,’ shouted the cook.

“We scrambled out.  It was too dark to see anything, but we could hear the old man shouting.  The engines had stopped.  I fell over some wreckage.”  The sailor stroked his nose.  “This is what it did.

“Next morning you wouldn’t have known the old Starlight.  All her boats had gone, and she had a list to port like a roof.  You wanted to be a bird to get about her.  The crowd looked blue enough when they saw the falls flying around at daylight, and only bits of boats.  It was a case.  Every time she lay down in the trough, and a sea went over her solid, we watched her come up again.  She took her time about it.