Witness account · 4 min read · Set in Ferry Road ·
The Tide Stopped at Ferry Road
A night ropekeeper at the terminal watched the water stand still for four minutes, and something lying on the flats shaped like the friend he had been thinking of.
- reliability: uncorroborated
- witness: Gil Varley, night ropekeeper, Ferry Road terminal
I mind ropes and lines at Ferry Road and have done it nineteen years, night shifts mostly, and I have seen every kind of tide the estuary keeps. I want to set down what happened on the fourth of the month, because I wrote it into my own log that same night and will stand by the wording.
I was alone on the low wall by the slip, which is normal; the second ropekeeper doesn't come on until the four o'clock turn. Slack water was due at 04:21. The night was fair by our standards, a drizzle and no wind to speak of, the flats well out.
At the turn the water stopped.
I don't mean it went calm. I mean it stopped. The ripples stood. I could see the tide edge — the actual lip of where the water was going to come back — standing out there like a chalk mark, and a duck on the mud ahead of it stood with its head seaward and did not shift its weight for the whole of what followed. This one had been paused.
And on the flats, maybe fifty yards out, just short of the lip, there was a shape lying down.
It was laid flat on the wet sand like a drawing of a person done in water — no more thickness than a spill, no shadow, and a shade longer than any man I have roped aboard. I will be honest, since it is only me reading this in the end: it looked like Tam. Tam Beake, my second on the ropes until March, went off the apron one tide and we did not get him back. Whatever lay out there had the arms laid the way Tam used to lay them when he waited for a slow boat: one across, one out.
I looked at my watch, because that is training. 04:21. The second hand was not moving. Everything of ours was held.
I walked down the slip to it. That was stupid, and I am not going to defend it, except that nineteen years of ropes teaches your hands to go toward what is off the boat. I got within four yards and reached.
My hand went into wet sand. It arrived into the place where the shape was, and there was nothing there to arrive into, and the sand closed on my fingers wet and ordinary. I came back up the slip without retrying.
The water moved at 04:25. Just the first swell of the return, and the lip came over the place where the shape had lain, and there was no shape, and my watch started again in my hand — a small jolt, and the second hand walked round from where it stood. The duck flew off. The kettle clicked off.
The tide office were correct with me; I'll say that for them. Their master clock lost the same four minutes, and so did the terminal clock, and that is on the record. So the clocks corroborate the stop, if a clock can be said to corroborate anything. What nobody else corroborates is the shape. The second ropekeeper came on at four and saw nothing but an ordinary slack, from two hundred yards away, and has signed a form saying so because he believes it — which is worse than kindness would have been.
I keep the log wording I wrote that night. It says, in full: *04:21 slack, water stood, shape on flats lying facesea, watch stopped, watch restarted 04:25, appoint enquiry if wanted.* Nobody has wanted it. I am not asking to have it investigated. I am asking that it be filed where the next person this happens to can read it, so they know the watch will stop and start again.
One more thing, since uncorroborated is written against my name and it is the correct word. The detail of Tam's arms. I did not tell that to the harbour coroner's report, to anyone at the terminal, or to Tam's people. There is no reason for anyone else to know how Tam waited. I have been up the wall at night since and I have not seen it again. I do not expect to, and I will not say whether that is what I want.