Chapter Text
[click]
(Pen scraping across paper)
[Grian]
(humming)
(Door opening)
Ahh! Mumbo, got a statement for me?
[Mumbo]
Yep, here you go, with appetizer and well.
[Grian]
( eager ) Ohh, gimme. Let's see what you're all about.
[Mumbo]
(snickering) You're getting weirder and weirder about those statements.
[Grian]
You don't have to stay here, you know. But thanks for making the excerpt. Now shoo !
[Mumbo]
(snickering) Okay, okay. I'm going.
(door closes)
[Grian]
Now, Is everything ready? Yes. Okay.
Statement 7050611 of Captain Owen, a pirate in the Carribean, about the events resulting in his shipwreck. Original transcript originating from a confession written on the sixth of june, 1705, in a cell in Kingston, Jamaica.
Statement begins
[Grian (statement)]
Alright, if you want a confession, you better read carefully, because this is all you're going to get.
I, captain Owen of the Seasalt, am a respectable captain in the seafaring trade, who just simply exercises a lot of freedom. I did not land on this island of yours on purpose, but by the dreadful circumstances of my shipwreck.
Those circumstances I will now relay to you, in the hopes that you might understand my circumstance.
To begin, I never liked being alone at sea. Ironic, being a sailor and all, but something about the endless blue waves just made me feel uneasy. The thought of being lost at sea, slowly dying from hunger or thirst, with no one knowing where I was, or if I was alive. It just scared me. Even more since I know that if I made a mistake in the navigation, it had a really high chance on happening. To avoid such a thing, I always ensure I have a crew with me, and sail with another fellow sea trader. Just the fact that I can see something else in the horizon than endless water just calmed me down. And having a crew aids me in ensuring my navigation is in order.
It's because of these precautions that I know something must have happened that wasn't normal. Something happened that I can't quite explain, without being branded mad.
I sailed from Abraham's bay, where I had refilled my supplies, on the 30 th of May to continue my journey. My ship was transporting Seized Dutch and Spanish supplies to Charleston. The main goods were cotton, although some other things were transported as well. The exact list lies now with the rest of my ship somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, so don't bother pressing me for more information on that front.
I sailed, as was usual, with another captain. Let's call him Apo. Everything went as it should: the crew did their work, the weather was good and there were no signs of problems on the horizon. Me and Apo sailed on our average speed of 15 knots with moderate wind for roughly a few hours, when I started to feel the winds start to change.
The air got colder, and, although the sky seemed undisturbed, I could sense that rain would be coming soon. I send a signal to Apo, and we both slowed down so that we could communicate. I left my first mate in charge and stepped into the longboat to talk with Apo on his ship. We discussed our course of action and decided to try and sail forwards to George Town. After all, beter be in the storm onwards to your destination, then on the retreat.
With that decision made, we sailed further. Five minutes later, we saw the storm on the horizon. A big dark front, slowly coming in our direction. Another five minutes and it was on us. I'm sure you know of the horrors of storms at sea, so I won't go into detail. I do have to say that this was the worst storm I have ever had. The wind hurling at us from all directions, as if the storm was purposely trying to kill us. Waves as mountains coming at us, attempting to drag us under.
The storm lasted what felt like days but were in reality a mere few hours. When the storm was over, five people of my crew had died, we had lost all sense of direction and Apo's ship was nowhere to be found. There was just endless ocean.
The wind had fallen still, so the water was smooth like a mirror, reflecting the bright sun overhead and the blue sky. There were no clouds, no sign of the storm that just passed over. Me and my crew took the silence as an opportunity to take up stock about all parts of the ship that were damaged and to see which parts of the crew were lost at sea. Like I said, I lost five good men to that storm.
When all that was done, I decided to see if I could get our sense of direction back. I went back to my quarters, trying to not look at the fast blue waters around me when I walked to it. In my quarters, I tried to look at my compas, to see where the north was, when I noticed that it didn't seem to work. The needle kept spinning in all directions, as if it was as lost as we were. I asked my first mate and his compas seemed to act the same. We then decided that the crew was tired after the storm and that we could wait for the sun to go down, so that we could use the setting sun and the stars as means of navigation. Besides, it wasn't like we could get anywhere with the absence of wind. I told the first mate that he could rest, while I would take the first watch. After some polite refusals, he went to sleep, together with most of the crew. I sat on the deck, waiting for the sun to set.
Except it didn't.
I sat on deck for more than two hours, trying to ignore the slowly rising dread I felt. All that time, the sun didn't move. It was just a burning yellow sun in an endless blue sky over a vast silent ocean. The world felt so unreal, like time itself had stopped everywhere else, except the ship.
The longer I sat there, the more I started to feel like something was very, very wrong. A compas didn't suddenly go spinning. The sun didn't suddenly stop moving.
I decided that it must have been a heatstroke, which caused my feelings of unease. I went to wake up the first mate for his shift and went to sleep.
I woke up, by the first mate knocking on my cabin door, with great distress. When I asked what was wrong, he said that the crew began to feel uneasy, because the sun wasn't setting.
Have you ever felt a moment where you realise how bad your current situation really is? I did then.
Because I knew that we only had rations for half a month. Those could be stretched out to a full month at best, but without wind our directions, we would starve of die of thirst. If the crew didn't rebel first and drink themselves to an early grave.
I gathered my crew and spoke to them, managing to ensure those men that not everything was doomed yet. I did not believe those words myself.
We spent three days at sea, with no wind and no setting sun. The only reason we could keep track of time, was because of a pocket watch I possessed. I stayed inside my cabin for most of those days, to ignore my unease with the vastness of water outside my wooden walls. I heard from reports that the crew began to feel restless. That the water supply began to run dry because of the relentless heat from the sun. That the water seemingly contained no fish or other lifeforms.
That last news somehow scared me more than the rest.
When I read it, A thought ran through my mind: What could cause such absence of life?
The feeling of unease began to grow even further, as that question started to echo in my head.
In the following day, we lost a man who had thrown himself overboard, trying to escape. According to the crew, he jumped in the water, and immediately began to sink. His dead body didn't float up. Somehow, the water had kept him.
I had come to the realisation in those three days that this was some sort of punishment from our Lord or from the devil. That this hell that we lived in, was designed to slowly kill us, draining all the life and fear out of us.
That question cemented this fact for me. And then the ship shook, as if the cruel creator of that place felt my sudden loss of fear and resignation with my fate and had send a creature to try get me to feel afraid again.
I ran outside my cabin to the deck, seeing the crew scrambling to defend themselves from whatever it was that attacked. They grabbed their cutlasses, pistols and some even readied the canon's.
The ship shook again and again, as me and my crew looked around, to see if another ship was attacking us. A crewmate then screamed, and was dragged in the water by a long, grey tentacle.
Then in an instant, more of these tentacles climbed up the sides of the ship, and tried to grab sailors, to pull them into the deep. Some of them where as thick as a man, other so thin as a blade of grass.
The crew fought off these crawling tentacles, trying to prevent them from getting to much hold on the ship. But one by one, many of my men were dragged into the depts.
I don't know, whether it was a sense of heroism, despair of stupidity, but I decided that the only way to save my crew was to kill that kraken, and so release it's hold on my ship.
So I jumped in the depts, cutlass and gun in hand, murdering my way through the swirming mass of tenticles, dragging me down. I fought them, for what felt like hours, but must have been less, because I hadn't drowned yet. The I saw it's big yellow eye, the size of a dinner tabel.
I cut it open and kept cutting. A tentacle knocked against my back, causing me to open my mouth. The water immediately poured in my throat. What was a moment of victorious violence, immediately became a moment of fear, as I saw the big and vast endless blue of the ocean depts outside of the mass of tentacles. That mass grabbed me, and the primal instinct inside me gave me the power to fight back, as my body began to drown. I remember the bleeding eye of that monster falling shut, and the darkness that followed.
I woke up on the beach here as the sun set. My ship nor my crew where somewhere to be seen. Then you lot found me.
I know I sound like a man that had a bit too much of a drink, but I ensure you, if you look me or my ship, then you know I must speak the truth.
Captain Owen of the Seasalt
Statement ends.
[click]
[Grian]
While this does sound like some drunk sailor's tale, there are a few things that should be noted:
Firstly, there was a captain Owen hanged in Kingston on Jamaica in the year 1705, for the crime of piracy. This means that this could indeed be his confession. Secondly, according to Scar's extensive ramblings about pirates, this Owen could indeed be guilty of piracy, though it's unknown if he might have been an English privateer. “Transporting seized goods of enemy nations” was sometimes used as euphemism for the work of a privateer. Thirdly, the prisoners in Kingston had no access to alcohol or other mind-altering substances, which means that the story could only be attributed to the man's fantasy, mania or symptoms of dehydration.
Overall, this statement is probably nothing more than a false statement made by someone with too much time on their hands. However, the described ocean in this statement seems somewhat similar to the world described in statement 0161212. Namely the sun not moving in the sky and the absence of visible live.
I don't think it will be worth further investigating. It's too old for that, and it doesn't contain any relevent information relating to another statement.
[click]