A Mile Down by David Vann Page A

the engines to steer the boat. The wind and seas continued to build, the waves very sharp, becoming twenty-footers packed close together, driven by wind over fifty knots. I could get the boat moving several knots forward, catching up to the freighter, but then my bow would take three feet of solid water over the top and the boat would slew to the side from the impact. The wind would catch us as we came up high over the next twenty-foot wave and blow us into a spin. In the spin, another twenty-footer would catch us broadside and roll us more than fifty degrees, which meant looking down across 21.5 feet of deck more or less straight into the water. Fifty knots of wind has tremendous force. The engines were strong, and I was using all the power they had, but if the wind caught the boat right, there was no stopping the spin without a rudder.
    An hour later, when I was finally in position behind the stern of the freighter, I tried to hide in its wind shadow, but it was weaving a bit. The German ship’s crew was on the stern, ready to throw small lines with monkey’s fists, a knot shaped like a ball. To get close enough for my crew to catch one of these, I would need to place our bowsprit within about twenty feet of the German ship, which was a fearsome sight. The stern of the freighter was fifty feet high and flared on the sides, so that when the stern came down after each wave, it flattened the seas with a loud crash and then a sucking sound as it rose up again. I had to use the engines to keep my bow straight behind the freighter’s stern, but I couldn’t drift forward any faster than the freighter was going.
    I hated to take my hands off the throttles, but I had to radio the other captain. “This is just to verify that you’ll be sending a long line to us first, which we will use as a bridle, tying it to both sides of our bow.”
    â€œI don’t have that line for you. I have only one tow line. This is the tow line they are throwing to you now.”
    â€œBut that won’t work,” I said. “We can’t be towed from just one side of the bow. We have to have a bridle.”
    â€œYou will have to put it in the center.”
    I couldn’t respond because I had to throw the starboard engine hard forward, the port engine hard reverse. The bow straightened but also jumped forward, very close to the freighter’s stern, which came down with a huge crash just as two men threw their lines, both of which fell short.
    â€œPut it in the center?” I yelled over the radio. “We have a bowsprit. And we have anchors that will sever the line.”
    I had to let go of the radio again.
    â€œWe are doing our best,” the captain said. “We do not have what you are requesting.”
    â€œNancy, go tell the crew this line is it. They have to get it attached through the hole in the bow for the anchors and then to a cleat or the windlass, preferably a cleat.” We had enormous steel cleats that were welded to the steel deck underneath the teak.
    Nancy worked her way forward along the rail, struggling to hold on amid the spray and storm-force wind.
    Our bow went up over a wave just as the freighter’s stern drifted to the side, so the wind caught us full blast and spun us, dipping our rail almost to the water. I held on to the throttles and saw the crew holding on to lifelines and keeping so low for balance they were lying on the deck. As we came back around, the boat stalled broadside and I gunned the engines at full power to bring the bow up. I tried not to appear panicked, since Barbara was on deck now. She didn’t know how to swim. She was wearing a lifejacket, sitting braced against a table, and not saying anything. I didn’t like it at all that she or anyone else was experiencing this.
    The bow came around under force of the engines, but the trick, with no rudder, was to avoid coming around so fast as to then spin the other way. I had to ease off at the right