Shipwrecked!

Shipstorm (Wikipedia Commons)

In my novel-in-progress, Clara Valle studied Chilean history before she began to take her own journeys through time. How that could happen … well, no one really knows for sure, though opinions abound. Her historic travels are, without doubt, strange events. One of them occurs during a shipwreck.

A bit of history:

In the centuries before the opening of the Panama Canal, European ships en route to the western shores of the Americas or the Pacific Ocean had to navigate the Strait of Magellan or sail around Cape Horn. These ships often battled nightmarish conditions, fueled by hurricane-strength storms, sub-zero temperatures, ferocious gales, waves the size of buildings, fog-shrouded cliffs, and unseen sandbars. Over the years, hundreds of wrecks disintegrated off the coast of southern Chile from Punta Arenas to Chiloé Island; countless shipwrecked sailors froze or starved to death on the archipelago’s desolate islands; and more than a few writers recounted the misadventures in fascinating books.

For an interesting article about those times, read Where Sailing Was a Passage to Doom  by Chris Hedges. One of numerous shipwreck books, Patrick O’Brian‘s The Unknown Shore  — a precursor to the author’s famous Aubrey/Maturin series — is based on the ill-fated 1740 voyage of the HMS Wager, which wrecked off the coast of Chile’s southern Patagonia. It served me as inspiration for this particular journey.

A bit of fiction:

“When Clara opened her eyes, she lay on a pebbly beach, squashed between what looked like two bears but were actually sailors dressed in heavy outerwear that resembled bear skins. Wan light from an unseen sun delineated a narrow bay framed by massive black cliffs, rocky landslides, and skinny streams of water, all dusted in powder-sugar snow. Frigid gale-force winds ricocheted off the cliffs. In contrast to the immensity of the headlands, the shoreline where she lay seemed no bigger than a nail clipping. Heavy surf slapped at broken pieces of dinghy and barrels. Peering around a boulder, Clara saw several bodies sprawled at the far end of the beach. Near the open ocean, the grounded ship swung back and forth against a low outcrop of rocks in a futile effort to break free. Solitary birds circled overhead, their shrieks echoing against the cliffs — the only other signs of life on the desolate landscape.”