Witness account · 3 min read · Set in Avonmouth ·
The Ramp That Waits
A boarding ramp trims itself to the freeboard of a ferry that has not berthed, and holds that height until the ship arrives.
- reliability: corroborated
- witness: "Walter Skuse, boarding-ramp attendant"
The boarding ramp at Avonmouth lowers on certain nights to a ferry that has not berthed yet, and it holds its height until the ferry does berth. I have tended that ramp eleven years, and I am writing what it does, not what the office explains.
The ramp is hydraulic. It follows the tide by floats in a well under the abutment, and at berthing time it trims to the freeboard of the ship in the berth and rides her as she loads or lightens. That much is in the manual, and nobody disputes it, because that is what a ramp is for.
On the 21st of March, with the night boat three hours down river, the float well took the ramp off its tide-following at 03:03 and lowered it to a trim no ship in the harbour matched. I laid a hand on the deck plates and they stood like a table. I logged: ramp set for arrival, vessel not in sight. The office rang down to ask what I was setting the ramp for. I said I had set nothing. It set.
The hold ran to 05:40, when the regular ferry, the Dunlochay, came in. The ramp walked itself down her side, trim and true, as though it had been trimmed to her all night, though her freeboard is a hand higher than the trim the ramp had held, and the floats had not moved a notch between 03:03 and her arrival. Since March it has happened on nineteen nights. The harbour list shows the berth clear on every one of them. The office keeps asking after the name of the vessel I hold the ramp for, and there is no name to give, and the sheets go up with the space standing blank.
The thing I can weigh is the counter. A print counter over the gangway tallies every crossing, posted to the sheet. On hold nights, once in the middle minutes of the hold, the counter prints one, with nobody on the ramp and the ramp lamps showing nobody. The sheets carry forward. Season to date, the count of holds and the count of single prints agree exactly, and I have never once been able to square either count against a crossing I stood and watched with my own eyes on the plates.
On the 9th of the month my relief, Bernard Coupe, stood a hold with me through to the print. He had fitted his own spare counter at the far rail the week before, out of his own distrust, and inside the same minute both counters printed the one: same tally, same minute, two machines that had never been wired to each other. He signed the counter sheet, and his signing is what puts this account into corroborated, because that is what harbour paper calls two instruments, one print, and two signatures on the line.
What the paper does not settle is the only page it will not carry. Nineteen holds, nineteen single prints, and no feet on my gangway on either night the tally was taken. If the ramp trims to a ferry that has not berthed yet, and it keeps that trim until the ferry comes, whose crossing is the counter counting in the meantime?