Storm Birds

by Einar Karason

Genres: Sea Adventures; Disaster Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

"This gripping novel is as good at describing the magnificent seascapes and the unforgiving elements as it is at examining the inner lives of the besieged crew, toiling ceaselessly against implacable nature" -Financial Times BOOKS OF THE YEAR

"Gripping and Exciting" The Sunday Times BOOKS OF THE YEAR

In February 1959, several Icelandic trawlers were caught in a storm off Newfoundland's Grand Banks. What happened there is the inspiration for this novel. Not since The Perfect Storm has there been a book which captures the sheer drama and terror of a crisis at sea. Karason is an exceptional storyteller, an Icelandic Erskine Caldwell or William Faulkner.

The side trawler Mafurinn is hit by a major storm just as they prepare to turn for home. Thirty-two men aboard, and a hold full of redfish. The sea is cold enough to kill a man in minutes, and the trawler quickly ices up in the biting frost and violent tempest.

The heavy icing weighs down the already fully laden craft, which is pummelled by one breaker after another - and here, out on the open sea, there is no exit route. Distress signals from other ships in the same circumstance and be heard from the fishing grounds around them. It is a battle of life and death.

Translated from the Icelandic by Quentin Bates

Release date: September 3, 2020

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 160

Sample

At first glance, chipping ice off a ship seems to be a never-ending task. The ice not only looks like glass, it’s as hard as glass, and when things are as they were on board our ship, then it’s not just a thin, icy film which a child could shatter with a stone, more a vast crystal sculpture of waves and bulges, apparently moulded according to an artistic workman’s notion of beauty, but in reality taking the shape of the ship’s lines, primarily those of the hull. The big winches forward of the wheelhouse are suggested by large, convex lines, reminiscent of little mountains or ski slopes, while the deck’s iron stanchions, for the fish pounds, might bring to mind the skyscrapers in America; the rails atop the gunwales have become a stone garden wall, the wires and stays, normally no thicker than a stolid bosun’s thumb, have the bulk of sewer pipes, the trawl gallows on both sides have become mounds of ice, as has the superstructure and everything else on the boat deck, including what we would later rely on to save our lives: the lifeboats.

Then there’s the raised bow, the whaleback with its winches and windlasses, all of it a bulging ice cap that could almost be the Vatnajökull glacier where the airliner Geysir crash-landed a few years ago, whose crew were found many days later, long after they had been written off as dead. The following spring, when they went to check on the aircraft and its cargo, it had been absorbed by the ice which grows thicker every year. The same happened to the plane fitted with skis that the U.S. Air Force sent up there to fetch the survivors, but which froze tight as soon as it landed and had to be abandoned as well. That one had also disappeared under the ice by the time soldiers arrived, only a few months later, to take a look at the accident site.

It was an endlessly thickening glacier such as this that the Mávur’s crew were now facing, every one of them wrapped in his warmest clothes, shod in thigh-high waders and with a waterproof oilskin smock over the top. Some carried hammers, others the deck spanners that are the trawlerman’s universal wrench, some had lengths of pipe, meat mallets and heading knives, the bosun wielded the long knocking-out pin that ashore is called a crowbar, but the best equipped among them had the surprisingly modest ice axes, of which there were two on board. They went forward onto the deck, which was also sheeted in ice, so they had to hold on tight; normally this was easy enough when the ship rolled in heavy weather, but anything that could have provided a handhold had by now vanished under the layers of ice.

It was just as well that the roll had become much gentler than usual in this kind of heavy weather. The top weight of ice that had built up on it meant that the ship was less eager to right itself after rolling to one side or the other; although that didn’t make things much easier, as it meant that the deck under their booted feet was never horizontal, it was always sloping. Then there were the breakers that surged in when you least expected them, deluging everything. That was when it was wise to hold on tight, because the cold sea had plenty of weight behind it, and these weren’t mere splashes of water, but came in cascades.

Although the ice had the look of an ice cap or a crystal sculpture, it was easier to crack and break up than anyone would have expected. One decent whack on an iron stanchion, or where there was wire underneath, was enough to free a surprising amount, half a metre or more if it was a smart enough blow that hit the right spot. There’s something satisfying about seeing the effect of your efforts, whatever work you’re doing, and here it was right in front of your eyes. The crew put their backs into it, and after a few blows the rails that had been completely covered reappeared where they always had been. To begin with there was a certain enjoyment in all this, peering from under your sou’wester with water running down your face, watching the shards of ice shatter from a wire as broad as a barrel after a couple of swinging blows, seeing the pieces being scattered over the deck or out into the weather and the wind.

To begin with they made good progress, giving the ship back its proper shape. The working area reappeared, the colour of metal or painted brown, but mostly black. It wasn’t hard to become absorbed in this work; although that was the one thing you shouldn’t allow yourself to do, because you had to keep an eye out for breaking waves crashing over the deck and be ready to snatch at one of the newly uncovered handholds. The skipper was at the wheelhouse window above their heads, watching the seas around them, some of the waves so high that he had to crane his neck to see where they were headed. He had a knack for working out where they were going and would yell, “Breaker!” when one was about to crash into the ship. By the time the ship had shaken the water off, a new film of ice had already formed again on the iron surfaces that had been cleared and squared away just now. That thin covering thickened rapidly, swelled by more waves sweeping over the boat and by the spume that filled the air, blending with the swirling snow. It wasn’t long before it was no longer just a film of ice, and there was nothing for it but to start all over again and break it off the same ladders and stanchions that they had worked so hard to clear just moments ago. By now their hands are a little more tired, and the clothes they pulled on before starting work aren’t as dry and warm as they were; you build up a sweat under your smock doing this kind of heavy work, cold water finds its way down past your collar when you crouch to shelter from the worst of the seas, and there’s always the chance that the water flooding the deck is going to be deep enough to fill your waders.

They made quick progress where they broke the ice on the wires, rails and casing, but that still left the ice caps covering the winches and the whaleback, which presented a greater challenge. They didn’t tremble or sway when you landed a blow on them, but sat immobile, cold and silent like the glaciers of the wild highlands. The most powerful men with the heaviest tools set to work all the same, and were most successful when, as with the whaleback ladders, they broke away large chunks in one go. That presented a new problem, as these ice boulders began to slide and ground their way across the deck, and you did well to keep out of their way. Every seaman knows that the danger that comes from scraping against a lone drifting iceberg is greater than that of any other ice, and it was just such a berg that a few days before sank a new ship with almost a hundred people on board, in the same waters where Mávur had been fishing; and the same as the one that sank the magnificent Titanic with its two thousand passengers, half a century before – and these slabs sliding in the slush on the deck could easily injure a crewman. On top of all this, the ship had grown no lighter after the ice had been cleared from where it had collected, because the ice was still on board. Stray chunks like these had to be chased down with axes and clubs and broken down into pieces small enough to be washed out of. . .