28

THE BIRD OF ILL OMEN

THE SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN, MARCH 2015

It is a bad omen: an albatross whacks into the foremast of the Bob Barker. The powerful bird drops down onto the foredeck, and lies there flapping helplessly.

Peter Hammarstedt carries his superstition like a much older seaman. If he sees somebody spilling salt in the messroom, he gets up immediately and throws a handful of salt over his right shoulder. If he hears somebody whistle, he immediately orders them away from the bridge before they succeed in summoning a storm. To hint that one’s own or another ship could ever sink is also taboo. It is therefore one of the possible fates of the Thunder that is never discussed on board the Bob Barker.

To allow an albatross to die on the foredeck is also a cardinal sin.

For generations, the albatross has lived in the imaginative universes of sailors. For a long time nobody knew exactly where the bird came from or where it was headed. When it soared up along the side of a vessel, it was as if it was only making a brief visit to our world. In mythology, it carried the souls of drowned seamen. In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” a ship is blown off course and finds itself helpless in the Antarctic. An albatross appears and leads it out of the ice and fog, but when one of the crew shoots the albatross, a curse is put on the ship. The cadaver of the albatross is hung around the neck of the shooter as an eternal burden, while the thirsty and helpless crew drifts towards the equator and death.

On board the Thunder nobody can afford to believe in the dead albatross’ curse. At first the illegal fleet fished toothfish with longlines. The albatrosses that always followed the ship dove for the bait, were dragged down into the depths and drowned. The loyal giant, which can live more than 50 years and remains faithful to one partner throughout an entire lifetime, was almost wiped out. At most, the illegal fleet killed 100,000 albatrosses a year. Of the 22 different species, 19 were on the verge of extinction.

While the Thunder was wreaking devastation in the Southern Ocean, Prince Charles, the British heir to the throne, wrote a letter to the Labour Party government’s Minister of the Environment to bring the poaching of toothfish to his attention. It was the fate of the albatross that triggered the prince’s concern.

“I particularly hope that the illegal fishing of the Patagonian toothfish will be high on your list of priorities because, until that trade is stopped, there is little hope for the poor old albatross, for which I shall continue to campaign,” he wrote in a letter in 2004.

The Prince of Wales also suggested that the British Navy should be involved in the search for the illegal toothfish fleet.1

To save his own disabled albatross, Hammarstedt slows down the Bob Barker and calls the ship’s physician and veterinarian Colette Harmsen. Folding its wings together, Harmsen picks up the bird and carries it out onto the quarterdeck. There it has a runway long enough to allow it to take flight.

When the albatross is airborne once more, Hammarstedt returns to the great cabin and closes the door behind him. The cabin is situated directly under the bridge, so he can get there in just a few seconds. The portholes in the cabin face forward, so at all times the shipmaster can see what is happening on the foredeck.

It is the only place where he can remove himself from the questions, speculations and expectations. Some of the crew view him as being private and reserved, bordering on anti-social, but they appreciate his dark, cunning sense of humour. Few have heard him raise his voice.

In the corner of the great cabin there is a small desk and a tiny kitchenette with a freezer that is always filled with blueberries for Hammarstedt’s daily smoothies. The bulkheads are clad with dark, African bamboo and decorated with a replica of a sword bearing the eye of Odin embedded in the haft and a painting of a sperm whale. The berth is luxuriously wide, but runs lengthwise across the cabin so the pitching of the ship is transmitted through its entire breadth. When the Bob Barker is plunging in the waves, Hammarstedt lies rolling back and forth like an empty bottle.

When Hammarstedt found the ship it was called the Polaris and was abandoned and forgotten in Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast. The Polaris was covered with a fine layer of red dust found only in West Africa. Streaks of moisture were running from the bulkheads, and when Hammarstedt swept the beam of his flashlight over the flooring, he saw the cockroaches scurrying into their hiding places. The motor started with a reluctant sigh. Nonetheless, she was the vessel he wanted.

The Bob Barker was built as the Pol XIV in Fredrikstad, Norway in 1951, and became a part of the fleet that made Norway a whaling superpower. For ten years the ship operated out of Grytviken in South Georgia. By the time it was removed from service, more than 350,000 blue whales had been slaughtered in the Southern Ocean since the beginning of the century. The Norwegian whalers were so effective that they boasted about being able to cut up 50,000 kilos of whale meat in the amount of time it took a housewife to clean a mackerel.

Then the fate of the ship underwent a series of strange reversals. Back in Norway it was converted into the coast guard vessel the Volstad Jr. and used to chase Sea Shepherd’s Whales Forever out of Lofoten during their action targeting Norwegian whalers in 1994. Three years later, the Volstad Jr. was rebuilt for the transport of tourists in the waters around Svalbard, but the ship never had any success there. Finally, it ended up in the Gulf of Guinea as a bunkering ship for the fishing fleet.

Sea Shepherd had long been looking for a new campaign vessel. During a meeting with the American television host and multimillionaire Robert William “Bob” Barker, Paul Watson claimed that for 5 million dollars he would manage to stop the Japanese whaling crafts in the Southern Ocean.

“I think you do have the skills to do that. And I have 5 million, so let’s get it on,” Barker replied.2

This saved the vessel from being scrapped. Subsequent to rebuilding in Mauritius, in 2010, painted black and under a false flag, it sailed into the Antarctic as the MY Bob Barker. The ship was registered in Togo, but the Norwegian flag fluttered on its bow.

“The Japanese could be forgiven for thinking that the pro-whaling Norwegians had sent a ship to support their illegal whaling activities in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. But any excitement turned to disappointment quickly as the Norwegian flag was hauled down and the black and white skull with crossed Trident and Shepherd’s crook was raised to announce the arrival of the Bob Barker,” Sea Shepherd bragged after the incident.3

She was the most important tool he had in the search for the Thunder. The Bob Barker’s radar has a range of 20 nautical miles. If the Bob Barker were to let him down, the Thunder would be out of sight in less than two hours.