The Ship That Grows
Twenty-one come ashore; nineteen were lost
A colony of kelp, bone and barnacle that regrows the shape of the last ship wrecked on its coast. Each March it sails in, and its crew walk the village looking at doors.
- Code
- VN-022
- Kind
- organism
- Where it is met
- water
- Scale
- vast
- Leaves you with
- awe
What it looks like, and what it does
A hull of black kelp-rope and pale rib-like timber, plated with barnacles. Sails of translucent algal membrane. Lanterns of glowing jelly along the rail. A woven weed figurehead that always faces aft.
Grows through the winter, sails on the March tides, moors for seven days. The crew speak little. They stand at doors for a long time, then move on.
What is known
At Karrick Sound the barque Perpetua was wrecked on the reef in 1889 and never salvaged. Each winter the reef regrows her shape, board by board, out of weed and calcium.
Every March it comes in low and slow and moors at the old quay. Figures of kelp and salt come ashore and walk the village, studying the doors. The village sets places for them.
What it can do
- Regrows the shape of a wreck from reef weed and bone in a single season
- Animates a crew of kelp that carry the memory of the drowned
Where it stops
- Cannot leave the Sound
- Dissolves back into the reef on the seventh day
An encounter
Brae stamps the moorage form every year and leaves the “Name of Vessel” line blank, because the form does not allow the name. One figure stood outside her door for an hour. She gave it tea. It did not drink, but the cup was empty when she looked again.
Eilidh Brae, harbourmaster, The old quay, Karrick Sound, Each March
What is established, and what is only said
- established: Harbour logs record the moorage on the same tide for 112 consecutive years.
- rumor: That the villagers feed the two extra figures first.
- interpretation: It may regrow whatever the reef lost on that tide, and the reef lost more than the ship.
Still unresolved
The crew list of the Perpetua holds nineteen names. The figures who come ashore number twenty-one.
Where it has been recorded
- Karrick Sound (confirmed) — Recorded by Eilidh Brae, harbourmaster.
Stories about it
- Twenty-one Come Ashore (Entity story, 4 min) — Every March a barque of kelp and bone regrows on the reef and moors at the old quay at Karrick Sound, and every March the figures who walk the village to look at doors outnumber the lost crew by two.
Connected entities
- The Cathedral Slug — Both are communities carried by a larger body on a circuit. Both are looked after by the people they pass.