On old writing and old wrecks, by Joan Haig

 

On old writing and old wrecks

My WIP is set on a Pacific island. I’m considering an underwater element, so I fished out my old diving logbook.

I first learned to dive when I was twelve, and was immediately ruined for life. Nothing else has ever been so astonishing, no place else so pristine. My family lived in Vanuatu at the time, where, away from the oily harbour and beyond the reef wall, 80-metre visibility was not uncommon.

My preteen logbook is an excellent statistical record: visibility, dive times, depths. It is, however, useless at describing the beauty and variety of the oceanic world. I made no attempt to capture the colour of a blue hole beyond calling it blue; I saw ‘lots of fish from the chart’ but don’t identify which ones. One entry goes as far as listing sharks and rays we encountered but says nothing about how that felt – the only feelings described are of seasickness en route.

As archived material goes, my logbook is pretty pulpable. As material for a novel, it stinks. Luckily, my memory of my time diving means I’m not reliant on this particular record.

This isn’t usually the case.

Notebooks and journals are like external hard drives for my brain. Old writing recaps for me moments and emotions that I might otherwise have forgotten.

An example of this is my first published article, in 2007, in a Zambian magazine called The Lowdown, about a dive I'd joined on Lake Tanganyika. My initial memory is nothing more than the dread of lurking crocodiles. Re-reading my article, however, less menacing details come flooding back. The murky water becomes clear.

‘Diving the Cecil Rhodes’, The Lowdown, p26, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2007

In September’s edition of The Lowdown, readers learned the fascinating history of Zambia’s war wrecks. The editor made an appeal for information on the current site and state of the SS Cecil Rhodes, which was assembled on the lake as a cargo boat in 1901 and sunk as a target of war in 1914. By co-incidence, the same month that the article on Lake Tanganyika’s battle ships was published, a small team carried out a series of dives to the wreck, with the aim of recording its exact position using GPS.

Among the team was Philip Nielsen, who was jointly credited with rediscovering the site of the century-old steamer some years ago. Local fishermen have been familiar with its location for much longer: the steel skeleton is sometimes visible from the lake surface and occasionally shreds their nets.

It was fascinating to read that the Cecil Rhodes was destroyed by fire while German Lieutenant Kendrick was attempting to tow her out to deeper water: today she is awkwardly twisted, her hull broken and bow sitting at an awkward angle in the sand only six metres down.

The wreck protects a colourful ecosystem: yellow electric catfish waver under slabs of metal, crabs scurry across fossilising rods and bolts, and there an synodontis, zebra-striped or pale orange neolamprologus, eels and even nkupi.

Diving into the belly of the wreck would be a tight squeeze since space for tanks is limited, the hole from the gun is ragged and the port holes are small. There used to be many more of the riveted brass windows, but now only four remain. It seems a pity that these have been removed, since they are part of a situated, if not yet officially recognised, Zambian heritage site. Gladly, the name of the vessel, which is embossed in Victorian courier font, survives for posterity.

Maybe I will write a children’s novel set on Tanganyika at some point, when the names of its fish will serve a purpose greater than jogging my memory. They're not much use for my ocean island tale.

Does anyone else draw on old writing for information or inspiration? Does anyone else rely on old wrecks in their new work?