Stranger things have happened at sea
An origin story, of sorts...
I awoke that morning to the dull, thudding sound of a chain slapping against the ship’s bow and angry raised voices. Out on the deck and in the water below, the rest of the crew were engaged in a frantic attempt to free the nets of a local fishing boat from our anchor chain and it wasn’t going well. One of our jet boats was nose in against the rusty chain as one of the mates desperately worked on the seaweed laden net wrapped around it. The local fishing boat, little more than a rickety canoe with an outboard motor, circled despondently, unable to get closer to the net without getting their propeller caught in it. Orders and contradicting orders, barked in multiple languages, filled the salty morning air. Despite our crew’s best efforts, the net was a total loss and was rapidly disintegrating into the ocean. Not only were the local fisherman going home empty-handed, they were now down a $100 net and their creditors on shore were going to be pissed.
The ship was the MV Greenpeace, usually just shortened to “the MV” or alternately “the black pig” for its hull color and handling characteristics. It was a refurbished deep-sea tug and one of the eponymous organization’s three oceangoing vessels. In those days, before the ships became mere fundraising tools, they circled the globe, investigating and documenting environmental destruction and where possible, taking direct action to prevent it. The crew of these ships were a ragtag ensemble of professional sailors, hippies, misfits or a combination of all three, drawn from all over the world. It was Gene Roddenberry’s dream made real, a fraternity of humanity, working together to explore the world and to right wrongs. I’m not sure where the rampant sex and drugs part fit in to that vision - maybe Gene didn’t talk about those dreams so much…
My job onboard was No. 2 Radio Operator (RO) for the old rust-bucket’s final mission to intercept and document the massive pirate fishing fleets operating with impunity in the waters of West Africa. Not the cool Johnny Depp kind of pirates either - rather a flotilla of decrepit fishing boats desperately hoovering up as much tuna as they can to feed the world’s insatiable desire for the wobbly pink flesh before it all runs out. Taking advantage of lax or non-existent enforcement of international laws or territorial rights, these ships would stay at sea for years at a time without going into port, transferring their catch to and resupplying from refrigerated cargo ships called reefers. The impact of these illegal operations was disastrous, not just on tuna stocks but the broader environment as well, with millions of tonnes of by-catch (other fish, sea life and birds) thrown back in to the water, and thousands of miles of sea bed scarred by longlines and nets.
At the point this story begins, we’d been patrolling off the coast of Sierra Leone for several days, tracking, filming and even boarding several pirate fishing vessels and talking to their largely Chinese crews. Many of them were literally “shanghaied” into service, having been sold by their parents into virtual slavery for several years in return for a few hundred dollars. Life onboard for them was dangerous, lonely and miserable. Some didn’t see land for years, some would never see it again. Aside from the environmental impacts of the illegal fishing operations, they were also bad news for the local fishing communities. The closer into shore the pirate fishing vessels came, the more there were disputes over fishing areas, collisions and the local fisherman’s nets getting caught in the much larger pirate vessels’ anchor chains.
Whoops.
With too many cooks on deck I slid down the staircase to the mess where there would be a more manageable number of catering staff. The skipper of the local fishing boat was sitting with the campaign team and their translator, wolfing down a hot breakfast and talking very animatedly but his demeanor was surprisingly calm, given the situation. Mike, the senior RO, was showing them how to use the satellite phone to call our man on the ground in Freetown, who would go and talk with the fisherman’s creditors and pay them cash for the damaged net. It was all going swell down here it seemed, or at least as well as such things can go. It wouldn’t last.
Truth be told, I was still a little hungover from the revelries of the night before, which, in addition to the usual poop-deck socializing had included a toast to the first anniversary of Australia’s very own “battle-of-Seattle”. Activists from all over the country had come together in Melbourne to stop a meeting of World Economic Forum that was taking place there in what would become the largest protests the country had seen since the Vietnam War. I had waxed lyrical about how we had worked for months forging alliances between loggers and greenies, unions and student groups to mobilize thousands of people to take to the streets. We finally knew who our common enemy was - Global Capitalism - the neoliberal religion of endless growth at the expense of the people and the planet.
“The people, united, can never be defeated”, I burbled, as Mike graciously helped me into my bunk and into oblivion.
Now I was back on deck for fresh air, and the net was free and the anchor stowed. There was still some clean up going on, but the local fishing crew were chilling in their boat, drinking cans of Coca Cola and eating hot food from the galley. Their skipper emerged from below decks and skillfully cambered down the groaning rope ladder into his boat. He was just explaining to his guys about how everything was OK when shit went decidedly sideways.
The ship was suddenly being circled by several other local fishing boats which had appeared on the scene to see what was going on. The sea churned about us as the new arrivals made tighter and tighter maneuvers, closer and closer to the ship, shouting questions and demanding answers over the roar of straining outboard engines.
“What was going on? Who were the owners of this big shiny ship? Were they Americans?”
We could now see the crews of these boats up close, their bloodshot eyes and bright white teeth shining through the pulp of the narcotic leaves they chewed to stay awake and alert during the long nights of fishing. Like a group of tweakers at the end of an all-night bender, they weren’t exactly in the most reasonable state of mind. The situation rapidly soured, with the new arrivals demanding compensation as well, and they wanted it there and then. The skipper of the first boat tried to reason with them, but his own crew was getting agitated and their boat was still tied to ours. What happened next is a bit of a blur and those involved may dispute the order of events, so I make no claims to accuracy in that regard.
The crew from the original fishing boat, tried to climb back onto the MV. Our captain shouted the order to cast off their lines and one of the mates, carried away with the moment, pulled a knife and cut the ropes. One blade flashing in the early morning light became several as a roar went through the assembled fishing boats and they unsheathed their machetes, now apparently ready to stop asking politely.
More orders from the captain - “full ahead!”, “all crew below decks!”, “prepare to repel boarders!”. Bulkhead doors were slammed and fire hoses unreeled as we dashed about the deck frantically trying to secure the ship. Thick black smoke belched from the ship’s stack high above us the engineers coaxed the machinery below us into life. The rising pitch and rhythm of the accelerating engine seemed as if the ship herself was as frantic to escape as we were.
The MV Greenpeace, was a sturdy and reliable ship, but not exactly the fastest vessel in the fleet, with a top speed of 13 knots (13 mph). The local fishing boats were basically wooden canoes with a 40 h.p. outboard stuck through the hull. They could troll all night but had a top speed of about 13 knots. The situation rapidly devolved into one of the slowest boat chases in history. For an hour we watched, first in horror, then amusement, as the fishing boats went from close enough to see their bloodshot eyes to slowly dropping back to bumps on the horizon with the occasional flash of a raised machete.
Holy shit. Well, that’s one for the books, we all sagely agreed and went back to work, which in my case, involved relieving Mike in the Radio Room. After a quick handover, Mike shuffled off to bed for a well earned rest and I sat down for what I assumed was going to be another boring shift. In addition to what you might expect a regular ship’s radio operator to do, we would also spend hours listening to and recording the occasional radio chatter between the pirate fishing vessels and their supply ships and manually sorting the incoming email (which all arrived as one big text message) into individual inboxes. In performing this last task, it was assumed by social convention that we didn’t read the contents of these emails and tacitly understood that if we did, we kept it confidential.
I was still chuckling as I copied an pasted yet another email of forlorn love between crew members into its final destination when the HF radio barked into life.
“MAYDAY MAYDAY”.
I scrambled the pick up the headset to respond but the subject of one of the very emails I was just reading, stormed into the radio room and took the call with all the bluster and confidence of the former cruise ship chief mate that he was. The ship in trouble was one of the pirate fishing vessels we had been tracking, they were taking on water fast and were a little over 40 miles away from us. We were the only ship responding to the call, and mindful of the potential for a trap, the captain ordered us to intercept and to prepare to take on survivors. We were still going at full speed in an effort to put as much distance between ourselves and the last disaster. After plotting the last position of the sinking ship, we changed course and steamed into the unknown.
It would take us at least 3 hours to arrive, which was way beyond the end of my shift. Ship life can be like that, moments of extreme tension played out over hours and even days. It’s exhausting. Mike and I exchanged notes and scuttlebutt (sailor gossip) and I went back to the cabin to try and get some sleep. I awoke not long after to the stench of diesel in the air. Out on deck I could see that we were in the middle of an oil slick surrounded by the debris which was all that remained on the surface of the pirate fishing ship. Our rescue boat was in the water, desperately searching for any survivors but finding nothing but an old dry suit.
One of the other mates on deck told me that when they arrived there was a rescue boat from the same mercenary company we’d come across the week before. They’d been sent by the ship’s owners to rescue the captain and first mate, who’d survived by grabbing the only life rings on board. So much for going down with your ship. The rest of the crew, most likely Chinese kids who’d been sold into virtual slavery by the families for a few meager bucks, were gone.
After an hour, the captain called the rescue boat back. The young Indian engineer who’d been part of the search crew, although visibly distressed himself, protested that there could still be someone out there. We all knew it was hopeless though, as we stood there hosing the salt water off the rescue boat before strapping it back into its cradle. The mood on deck was somber, like we were at a funeral and the Scottish Crew Chief, who was normally hilariously unintelligible, delivered a eulogy of moving eloquence and profundity. He drew a line with his words that connected us all, above and below the sea, who draws us all inevitably into her bosom. Faces were streaking with tears as the weight of the day crushed down upon us, beneath a sun that had barely reached its zenith.
Mike, who had been in the radio room, crashed out onto the deck and blurted:
“Two planes have just hit the World Trade Center and a truck bomb has gone off in front of the Pentagon!”1
I can’t speak for how Mike felt when he saw our expressions, but the news was so outlandish, so wild, so beyond sense that we all assumed he was making some sort of sick joke. In his trembling hands, he held up a print out of the front page of the CNN website (minus any pictures) with the headline “America under attack”.
The Rainbow Warrior, another of our ships, was in New York Bay, waiting to steam up the Narrows in time to celebrate Greenpeace’s upcoming 30th anniversary. The radio operator onboard confirmed the situation by satellite phone. The world would never be the same again and he was off to get drunk as a skunk.
In internet terms, 9-11 took place in the steam age. There was no social media, no high speed broadband, no video streaming. We pieced together what was happening through the websites of major news chains, emails and frantic phone calls over a satellite link that cost $10 a minute. It was like watching a war movie through a keyhole. I wouldn’t even see the video of the planes hitting the towers until several years later. Our minds and mouths were running wild with speculation and assumptions. Were there more attacks to come? An invasion of Afghanistan was inevitable but where else? Would this lead to a war between super powers? Would the US go nuclear?
The captain called the ship’s crew together on the helideck and confirmed everything that we knew at the time: all missing planes had been accounted for; that head office was telling us to sit tight while things unfolded and that as far as he was concerned the day was over and he wouldn’t begrudge any crew member getting drunk right now. Before going back to his cabin to do precisely that, he added that now would be a good time to get rid of any contraband we still had onboard.
Phil, the Outboard Mechanic, whose devilish grin had been absent all day, suddenly brightened.
“You heard the man” he said, pulling a zip-lock bag out from under his belt.
“Smoke it if you’ve got it!”
As the world shook in horror at the events of that day, we were busy making our way back to the Canary Islands. The conversations between ourselves and with the crews of the other ships were frantic and often heated - there was no direction from head office forthcoming but we had to do something, right? The U.S. Fifth Fleet was heading for the gulf via the Mediterranean and we could form a blockade. The third ship, the Arctic Sunrise, was now making its way back from the Amazon to Amsterdam and could join us. Even the captain, who had only sailed with Greenpeace once before, was enthusiastic about these plans.
Then the orders from Head Office came through loud and unequivocal - stand down and return to port. Hurried and hushed conversations were held over private satellite phone calls and the captain’s ardor vanished. The U.S. Office of Greenpeace had put out a media release all but directly praising the war effort. They had taken a side and made it abundantly clear to the rest of the organization that you were either with them or against them. We were heading home, with our tail between our legs.
We arrived in the Canary Islands a few weeks later and the ship was reduced to a skeleton crew and the rest of us sent home, or in my case, back to Amsterdam to work off the rest of my contract. The (mis)adventures that occurred during that week of shore leave are worthwhile fodder for a whole series of anecdotes which will have to wait another day.
Back in Amsterdam, I was sent into the basement of the old Greenpeace office on the Keizersgracht to help Hans Monker, one of the senior Radio Operators. Our job was to sort out and test a pile of equipment that was being transferred to the Eco Fighter, the ship which would eventually become the Esperanza. Hans was an exceptional individual and I feel privileged to have got to know him, in those dark days post 9-11. He also knew how to drink, so we did.
The news was nothing but the constant drumbeat of war, as an angry United States whipped itself into a frenzy. Even Amsterdam felt under siege, the threat of invisible enemies everywhere. The world was holding its breath, terrified by what could come next. Those days have a dreamlike quality now, no doubt due in part to the large quantities of drugs and alcohol we were all consuming to cope, but also because of the way the media was spinning a narrative that we all knew was divorced from reality but which we also seemed to be going along with anyway. What else could we do, it’s not as if we were part of an organization that had been formed to oppose war or anything?
Greenpeace was fucking useless. The organization, which literally has “peace” in its name, had nothing to say about the impending war and the horror we all knew was going to be unleashed. The U.S. office, which had already rolled over, was struggling with an ongoing court case against 17 activists who had been arrested earlier that year protesting the Missile Defense Shield. They were losing donors hand over and fist and couldn’t be seen to be opposed to any reprisals for the 9-11 attacks. This was no time to talk peace, they had concluded, if they wanted to save the organization.
Then, one chilly day in October, I woke up in the spare room of my friend’s apartment and, rather then go straight to the office, I turned on the TV and started watching CNN. I don’t know why I chose to do that on that particular morning, it wasn’t unheard of, but it wasn’t something I did often. The news was the usual “man-bites-dog” inanity of high rotation cable and I was about to switch it off when there was breaking news.
“This just in Tom, we’ve begun bombing Kabul”
The screen was suddenly a blurry green with jerky black shapes and white flashes, an image of the Kabul skyline as seen through a night vision filter. I’d spent a lot of time in my previous life as a soldier peering through lenses just like them and had learned to distinguish between trees and cars, headlights and explosions and the scene I was witnessing looked more like a security camera at a parking lot than a live broadcast from a war zone. I would come to appreciate why this was the case soon enough, when I witnessed first-hand the sheer desolation of Kabul, a city that had been under siege for a decade, and realized that there had been precious little for the U.S. to bomb that terrible morning.
“Gee Tom, it’s not nearly as exciting as Baghdad in ‘91”
Something deep inside me unraveled. I knew I couldn’t stand by and just let this happen, that I couldn’t sit on the sidelines of what was going to be the tragedy of my generation. The next day I went into the office and sent an email to the aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières, expecting nothing but figuring it was a good place to start. Within a few short months I was on my way to Somalia and my life would never be the same again. But that’s a story for another day.
Storyteller’s note: There are as many versions of the first part of this anecdote as there were people on the ship that day.. I do, however, still have the email I wrote that afternoon. I haven’t re-read it in years, and wrote this piece without referring to it, as this is the anecdote I tell now, and in that way, is the real story unspoiled by the truth. In addition, the owner(s) of the images used in this post have been lost to time, please let me know if they’re yours.
I clearly remember that the very first reports were of a truck bomb at the Pentagon, but that this was revised to another plane by eyewitness accounts and video soon after. I included this detail for verisimilitude, not in support of one 9-11 conspiracy theory or another
Great, fascinating read! I recall far less opposition to Afghanistan in particular the Institutional Left than how that moment is portrayed now. Your story foreshadows what became painfully obvious to many in the age of covid. Thanks for sharing, Chris!
This is really excellent stuff- please keep writing. your story deserves to be told.