The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor

Immediately upon finding himself alone and adrift on a raft, Velasco contemplates his rescue, believing it to be relatively imminent. He calculates the time based on what he knows about the ship’s probable location and distance to Cartagena and the rescue procedures of the Colombian navy. Nevertheless, the reader knows the rescue will not happen and is left wondering what went wrong. There is scarce secondary information about the incident to ascertain precisely what hindered rescue efforts. Nevertheless, the Caldas was so overladen with contraband and the weight of the new guns, that it could not maneuver in the seas and pick up its men. This what made Velasco’s story so volatile, politically: Personal items such as washing machines, radios, and stoves—items Velasco reports were on deck—are strictly prohibited aboard a warship because the vessel is not supposed to be used as a cargo ship to transport civilian goods of any kind. Thus, the Caldas’s command was breaking military law, which resulted in the deaths of naval personnel. Furthermore, not only did the command of the Caldas do something illegal, but instead of punishing the naval leadership, the government-backed the report that a storm, and not contraband burden, had caused the tragedy. The government initiated no investigation into the deaths of the seamen; and they still denied the truth even when El Espectador, the newspaper of Márquez’s employment, found corroborating evidence. The El Espectador found that there was no storm according to the weather bureau on that day (viii) and that photos from other sailors aboard the Caldas prove that there was indeed contraband stored on deck, something that the government also continued to deny.

Maintaining the book’s fiction-like narrative style, Chapter 4 presents other tropes that provide a literary depth beyond a utilitarian report. Márquez employs hints and phrases that resemble magical realism. On Page 26, Velasco hears the voice of Luis Rengifo calling out to him in the wind. The description of the scene places the experience between the realms of reality and hallucination. This is a trope that Marquez uses seldom, but with effect, throughout the book. Márquez would later often use magical realism in many of his novels, for which he would eventually receive the Nobel Prize in literature in 1982.

On Page 36, continuing onto Page 37, a curious event calls into question what went wrong during the search-and-rescue performed by Colombians and Americans (the US via the Panama Canal Zone Coast Guard). According to Velasco’s account, he saw a black seaplane approach sometime around noon on his second day at sea. Visibility that day was clear enough for him to “see a man looking out of the cockpit, searching the ocean with a pair of black binoculars” (35), and he even states that the plane flew low and over him. While he was confident that the pilot saw him, there came no rescue. While there is never a reason provided for this, there is only one conclusion: The pilot missed him. It is incredibly difficult to spot a raft at sea, and, with its limited field of vision, it is nigh impossible for a pilot to spot anything below the nose of the aircraft.

Hope begins to show its thematic importance and prevalence in Chapters 4-7. In Velasco’s first night alone at sea, he searches for Ursa Minor in the sky (Ursa Minor contains the North Star). The constellation has provided comfort and hope for many a mariner, not only those who have been lost at sea. Not only does Ursa Minor, and thereby the North Star, provide a geographic approximation of Velasco’s location, it also provides a psychological anchor: It triggers a memory of shore leave in Cartagena, when he and his comrades stood on the Manga bridge while Herrera sang and impersonated a popular musician: “I watched it [Ursa Minor] from the sea, and that made me feel less lonely” (29). Such memories provide hope and mental fortitude amidst his dire circumstances. Velasco realizes the importance of hope to his survival: When he weakens and fears he must lash himself to the raft to prevent being tossed overboard by a wave, he states, “But still you never lose hope” (46). During World War 2 many shipwrecked sailors were found dead, decomposed, lashed to their rafts; the lashing signifies a desperate situation that requires desperate means, but above all, it signifies holding out until death.

However, hope is not simply perseverance under dire circumstances. Velasco finds hope in the simplicity of his surroundings: “Nevertheless, each time my spirits sank, something would happen to renew my hopes. That night it was a reflection of the moon on the waves” (53). The reflection of the moonlight bouncing on the choppy waves gives him the impression of ship lights, as if Nature is reminding him that rescue was still possible.

Ursa Minor is not the only sign of hope within the first few days at sea. On the fifth day, Velasco spots a small flock of seagulls: “To a hungry sailor alone at sea, gulls are a message of hope […] Seven gulls over the raft meant land was nearby” (47). However, while the gulls raise his diminishing spirits, the hopeful omen can quickly vacillate. In Stephen Crane’s touted short story, The Open Boat, seagulls symbolize nature’s indifference toward humankind. Similarly, after Velasco captures a small seagull but cannot stomach it, throwing it away in disgust, the gulls’ symbolic hope mutates into its opposite, despair: “Every sailor knows that seagulls sometimes get lost at sea and fly for several days without direction, until they find a ship to point the way to port” (56). This idea makes him feel all the more forlorn.

Among Velasco’s many seafaring experiences is hallucination. A few hours after Velasco is thrown overboard and witnesses the deaths of his comrades, “The wind went on roaring, and above the noise I could still hear the voice of Luis Rengifo: ‘Fatso! Row over this way’” (26). He remembers the phenomenon that the wind and crashing waves can give a sailor the impression of hearing voices. Mariners from time immemorial have reported hallucinations, oftentimes due to exposure, sleep deprivation, or dehydration—and Velasco hasn’t slept all night. Furthermore, hearing Rengifo’s call for help signifies that Velasco is attempting to come to terms with his shipmates’ deaths. Again, the book’s narrative style allows for little emotional expression, but Márquez uses Velasco’s story about the voices—even if the narration is subtle—not only to create a sense of mystique and allure, but also to communicate the sense of loss and solitude Velasco must be experiencing at that moment. The effect is similar with the “visitations” of Velasco’s oldest naval friend, Jaime Manjarrés, whose “arrival” is at the intersection of sleep deprivation, physical exhaustion, hunger, and dehydration. This is a potent cocktail for hallucination, but it is more than illusory: “If this had been a dream, it wouldn’t have mattered” (40). Jaime arrives just when Velasco feels the most isolated and vulnerable. Jaime speaks with him, reminisces with him, points the way to Cartagena. The hallucination is a brief moment of nonreality that paradoxically fosters Velasco’s overall grasp on reality and hope for the coming days. Jaime becomes a constant companion.

On Page 51, Velasco exhibits a strong moral code—a quality that definitively characterizes him. He has just caught the seagull and is about to wring its neck. Even though he has eaten nothing for five days, once he has the bird in his grasp, Velasco hesitates. He remembers wanting to shoot a seagull from the deck of the ship one day when a gunnery officer said to him, “To a sailor, sea gulls are like sighting land. It isn’t proper for a sailor to kill a sea gull” (51). This memory demonstrates Velasco’s ability to ethically organize the world into wrong and right. Though Velasco’s hunger ultimately wins out, his hesitancy is telling. He is a man who thinks before he acts.

Part of the title for Chapter 6, “[…] an Island of Cannibals,” exemplifies Marquez’s use of story details to create attention-getting headings and subheadings (each chapter represents a specific installment of Velasco’s story in the pages of El Espectador). Velasco encounters neither islands nor cannibals, as the idea comes merely from his memory of a magazine article on the topic. Velasco tells the story simply to illustrate his state of mind—his catastrophic thinking—at that particular moment at sea. Today there is the term “clickbait”; one could term such a title as this, “reading-bait.”