“The sea, seemingly a constant to the naked eye, is one long goodbye.” Dean Young
People have always got into boats hoping to find a better life. Often it doesn’t end well.
Mark Joughin, four generations back on my father’s side, was born in 1865. He was of yeoman farming stock, not poor, but life at the north tip of the Isle of Man would have been austere and hard. Numerous cousins died as children and at least five crossed the ocean on boats to make lives in the New World. The allure of the Wild West was surely real and Mark had his sights set on travelling to Minnesota where some family were already settled.
To catch the Cunard transatlantic liner from Liverpool he booked the midnight sailing of the Isle of Man ferry on 3 December 1909 and bid good-bye to his mother and his sisters with whom he lived.
These days, there’s not a place in the world where young people are not watching films and the internet and thinking that life is better somewhere else. But even then, Mark, with some education, will have known about Henry Ford’s automobile, the new telephone gadgets, electrification, ‘moving pictures’, Marconi’s radio experiments and all the rest. The prospect of going to America was surely intoxicating.
Mark boarded the ferry from Ramsay, the Ellan Vannin, as the crew were loading up the last of the cargo, which included 60 tons of agricultural produce, boxes of fish and 88 live sheep. There was a strong breeze blowing.
Reports afterwards suggested some passengers disembarked at the last moment, fearful that the crossing would be rough on a notoriously challenging stretch of water. Most were reassured, though, that the weather was no worse than many other winter crossings, and Captain Teare was noted as being one of the most cautious of the ship’s masters.
A serious storm blew up
About an hour and a half after departure the wind suddenly increased and the sea got up dreadfully. A serious storm had blown up apparently out of nowhere. Company staff on shore told themselves that, despite the storm, the wind was from behind and the vessel had come safely through weather as bad, if not worse.
The ship should have been comfortably in Liverpool by morning, but it was not and it was obvious that something serious had happened. Then, in the early evening, crew on the Mersey Lightship spotted dead sheep and a quantity of turnips in the water. It was the worst news, but it was not until the following day that rescue boats actually located the wreck.
The subsequent enquiry reckoned the Ellan Vannin must have been hurled into the Mersey Channel by the 80 mph gale, then thrown against the river and the outgoing tide and the 24-feet waves that would have been whipped up. The ship would quickly have been overwhelmed.
The ship appeared long lost
When divers were able to go down, it was apparent the vessel had already sunk far into the sand and that many of the bodies were probably buried there, covered so deep there was no getting them out. The foreman’s body was found in the engine-room with his head jammed between the ladder rail and steps. The Captain’s body was washed ashore near Southport six weeks later. Only 17 bodies were recovered and Mark Joughin’s was not among them.
In 1999, modern divers made numerous dives to the site but could find nothing, concluding that the ship was long lost in the sand and silt.
I learned the outline of this story while exploring a Sussex Bylines side-tale about Michelle Mone, the notorious lingerie impresario. As I was getting ready for my research trip to the island, a Manx neighbour I had met quite by accident told me the disaster still haunted the island and that at special times of extra low tide, it had become possible to see the wreck of the Ellan Vannin now, sticking out of the sand on the edge of the Liverpool bar.
A couple of weeks later, as our ferry was departing, I realised we must be at, or nearly at, low water. Ten minutes into the trip, while our super modern ferry picked up speed, I was still frantically searching for latitudinal readings for the wreck site. Then, just as I got a bearing and figured out how to overlay it onto the standard Google maps, I realised the spot was exactly where we were at that moment.
I looked up and out across the placid waters, and there, not more than 300 yards away, was the wreck. A quite extraordinary moment.
Was Mark still down there I wondered? There was only time for a few words and a snatched photo before we were gone, accelerating away out into the deep, probably nothing there but ghosts.
Evidence suggests the boats will never stop
Since then I’ve had time to think of the boat that sank off the coast of Egypt in 2016, with 203 drowned, and the one in Australia in 2011 with 250 Indonesians on board. Also the 50 million Europeans who left by boat for the Americas in the 19th century and these days, the Vietnamese boat people, the Rohingyas, the Libyans and other Africans. A very long list.
There is no reason to think this is going to stop. Indeed, all the evidence suggests it can only escalate. Climate change is turbo-charging extreme weather events and consequent displacements. The numbers are impossible to predict, but in 2021 the World Bank estimated that “as many as 216 million people could move within their own countries due to slow-onset climate change impacts by 2050”.
We need to get used to it. People will continue to get into boats in search of a better life.
