The abandoned ship was there one morning – a new broken headland –
shiny, sitting high on the low tide, with hundreds of windows like
blinking oval spectacles. Over months the view became fractured;
someone dubbed it the Marie Celeste ‘beached at last’ and a group of us
rowed out in a dinghy but could not board the leviathan. After a year it was
rust colour and a blue funnel, and had witnessed marriage proposals and
one-night sandy flings. It scrutinised our town – as if our future had arrived
and never taken us towards its promise; as if something within us was
quelled, the hulk growing barnacles at the waterline, beginning to list.
‘Salvage’ remained an echo of its first days when motor boats skimmed
its shadow with flurries of optimism. Tourists took pictures; the town
council’s new brochure featured it as a local attraction. But summers
grew squally; the coastline began to erode, our famous white sand was
washed away. Most evenings a few of us would stand on the wooden
pier and raise a glass to its stiffening profile.

Paul Hetherington