Saving from the Sea

You know that part in every shipwrecked movie where the battered and bruised survivor looks up and sees a ship coming in the distance?  They stare in disbelief at first and then the shout themselves horse to get the ships attention.  The credits start to run at about the time when they are being wrapped up in blankets.  We can fade to black because our heroes are going to okay now.  They have been rescued.  It is one of the best clichés in the movie business.  They heaven-sent ship that shows up on cue right when all hope was lost.

Today we were that ship.  A Chinese fishing ship caught fire in the night and our ship saw it burning.  They had left an SOS running even though they had abandoned ship.  Luckily we were close enough and it was light enough that we saw survivors in the ocean.  They had only life jackets on and were drifting in the ocean with little lights flashing off and on.  I was on deck when they pulled one exhausted fisherman (he had just climbed up 5 decks on a swaying ladder).  He sat heavily down in the wheelchair they had waiting for him. They covered him in blue deck blankets and started to run with him down to the medical center.  A flurry of crew followed the wheelchair carrying water bottles and towels.  Most survivors couldn’t make it up the ladder.  So they lowered the life raft.  I really can’t call it a life raft though.  That would give you the wrong idea.  This wasn’t some Gilligan’s island raft, it was a huge boat fully covered and equipped with medical supplies and lots of rescue equipment. 

By now the helicopter from China had swooped in and was running a search pattern over the ocean looking for other survivors.  It was odd to watch the life boat out in the ocean.  On the cruise ship you couldn’t feel the waves and it is easy to forget they are even there.  But the life boat was knocked back and forth by them as they tried to pick up the four other people floating near our ship.  All in all they got 11 people out of the ocean this morning.  I don’t know how many people were on the fishing boat.  No one seems to know that. 

We will arrive in Sanya later than we had expected and everyone with paid shore excursions will be given an automatic refund.  They have moved the time of the Cha Cha lesson and opened the kids club a little later.  But I haven’t forgotten the look on the castaways face as they wheeled him away.  He looked at me as shocked as I looked at him both of us had a moment of “what are you doing here?”  It was weird for him to have a blonde girl from America show up in his nightmare just as it was weird for me to have a thin tired Chinese fisherman show up on the cruise deck. 

It can be easy to forget what sea travel really is.  After all, everything about a cruise is designed to keep you feeling safe happy and slightly thirsty.  I suspect that is why no one knows the number of fishermen who don’t get to go home tonight. 

But there is a little chapel here with the maritime prayer to Mary written in six different languages.  The cards for all of the languages are empty today except for a few that slipped down by the wall.  I pulled one out with my fingernail and read it.

“Help of all Christians, intercede for us before your Divine Son whom the winds and the sea obey.  Keep us from every danger…Grant us to arrive safely at our destination and so with our dear ones to raise up thanksgiving hymn as one day we hope to do in the safe port of Heaven”

Arriving safe, covered in blankets pulled from the ocean and ready for the credits to roll.

Amen for all.