which measures wind speed, had been on the fritz, so the sea conditions recorded in the logbook were estimates made in darkness, in wildly “confused seas,” by sleep-deprived, tempest-tossed mortals, and the ship had been yawing hard, off its intended course. In confused seas, the waves move every which way, and the prevailing direction is difficult to determine. It would be understandable if the officers had been wildly confused too.
“It was only after listening to four or five guys that I began to take them seriously,” France told me. Their stories all matched, and France discovered forensic evidence confirming some of the details—green water inside a running light up on the bridge, wave damage to the outermost containers in stacks still standing, a dent on the bow’s protective steel bulwark. But what finally made France a believer was the testimony of the China’s master, Parvez Guard.
A seasoned mariner from India who’d been captaining container ships for fifteen years, Guard was an exceptionally expert witness, France said. In a deposition lasting three of the six days that the China spent in Seattle, Guard reconstructed the voyage day by day, then, as the time of the disaster neared, hour by hour, then minute by minute, corroborating his testimony with entries in the logbook. While that testimony isn’t in the public record, one very telling quote from it is. Just before the containers began to fall, the ship had suddenly become “uncontrollable,” Guard testified, “as if there were a devil in it.”
NOT DOWN IN ANY MAP. 47˚6’N, 178˚1’E.
Today, a little while ago, we came as close to the site of the toy spill as we’ll come, about 180 nautical miles north of the 45th parallel. The conditions were fairly calm. The sky was white, the water gray. There was a light roll to the ship. Wind out of the southeast, but we didn’t know how strong because the Ottawa’s anemometer, like that of the China a decade ago, is on the fritz. Fredrik Nystrom, second mate, was on watch. “You are lucky,” I told him upon entering the bridge after lunch, a bit giddy, and he looked at me with a skeptical smile. “You will be present for an exciting moment!” I said. I’d already recounted to him the legend of the rubber ducks lost at sea.
“Oh, yes?” he said. Humoring me, he calculated as precisely as possible when we would cross the longitudinal line I was waiting for, 178.1° E. For almost three years now I’ve been contemplating this anonymous place on the map, this nowhere, this freak coincidence of coordinates where there are no landmarks to be seen. “An event took place,” we say, and in taking place here, in taking this particular place, in tumbling overboard here, or near here, the toys transformed this middle of nowhere into the middle of somewhere, at least in my imagination. On a computer screen, Nystrom and I watched the degrees tick closer, 177.8, 177.9, 178.0. And then we were there.
I rushed out onto a bridge wing, then down the metal staircases, six flights, to the main deck, all the while thinking of that day—or night—sixteen years ago, all the while wondering: Which twelve containers fell? Did two columns fall? Or containers from different columns? Were they to starboard or to port? Fore? Aft?
As we steamed on at twenty-three knots, I felt as though the toys were still out there, as though the point I’d marked on my map were already slipping away, as if I were leaving the toys behind. I made my way to the Ottawa’s stern, where—below the aftmost rows of containers, stacked overhead, water raining down between them—there was a great cavern. Standing at the taffrail, I studied the horizon to the southeast, the horizon toward which the Ottawa’s wake foamed and frothed and stretched.
The containers would still have been afloat. Perhaps, standing at the taffrail of the Ever Laurel on that day—if it had been day still and not night—you could have seen the colorful boxes, appearing and disappearing from behind the waves. Had the one containing the toys burst open yet? Had the brown cardboard boxes inside yet escaped? Perhaps. And perhaps even one or two of the cardboard boxes had already opened. Doubtful, but possible, depending on the physics of the spill and the qualities of the glue. Perhaps the little packages had already come bobbing to the surface and begun to drift apart.
I had my own yellow duck in the pocket of my windbreaker, the duck