— '
Elwyn Rhys-Lewis had been a good witness; maybe even a bit too good, in building up the picture?
So he had underlined Elwyn Rhys-Lewis in his notebook, for possible further consideration.
But this pride-and-joy had been kept in immaculate order, anyway — with a fair amount of help from old George White, over at Hamworthy. George was apparently a shipwright of the old school, and what he didn't know about wooden boats wasn't worth knowing. So that was why Philip Masson always laid the Jenny III up at Poole during the winter, said Mr Rhys-Lewis.
'We shall never know exactly what happened. But, thanks to the evidence which we have heard, a fair reconstruction of what may have happened is possible,' the coroner had concluded at last.
That Friday evening, the deceased went down to Lymington, for his Rover car was found in the car park. He must have gone straight on to his boat, though no one remembers seeing him. But we have heard that he made no secret of his intentions to sail her round to Poole as soon as possible, having already left it a little late in the season owing to pressure of work in London.
dummy2
'There was, we have heard, a stiff south-westerly wind blowing that Friday, with the threat of worse forecast. These were not ideal conditions for the passage he planned to take, but nothing that he and his boat could not handle. At all events, he probably heard the late night forecast of a low pressure area building up in the Atlantic, and he must have decided to make a night passage.
'In that event, he probably motored her down from Lymington to Hurst Point. Or (as we have heard) may have sailed, even though he would have had to tack all the way.
But he would have had an ebb tide under him, at all events.' (This coroner sounded as though it hadn't been his first sea tragedy, Ian had noted there.)
'Mr Rhys-Lewis and Mr White are both agreed that he would then have hoisted sail, prudently putting a tuck in the main.
And once round Hurst he would have proceeded on the port tack, taking the inshore channel to pass north of the Shingles. With a south-westerly wind he would have made good progress for two or three miles, and gone over to the starboard tack once he was sure of clearing the Shingles.
'It is at this point, one may suspect, that something went wrong, and we must attempt to recreate the situation from the little evidence we have.
'The deceased would most probably have been intending to head out to sea on a southerly course, and once clear of the Shingles to have gone about, and sailed across Poole Bay until he picked up the Fairway. By then the tide would have dummy2
turned, so he would have had a fair run into Poole entrance.
Daylight would then not have been far away, so he would have timed it exactly right to arrive at Poole Bridge for the early morning opening. With a mooring waiting for him in Holes Bay, he would have intended to go ashore at Cobbs Quay, and then taken a taxi back to Lymington, as he had done before on such occasions.
'But this he never did. We must surmise, rather, that when he went on to the starboard tack, probably somewhere off Barton in Christchurch Bay, the jib sheet shackle came adrift.
It is significant that when the boat was found the jib was flogging and the sheets lying on deck, with the pin gone from the shackle.
'That, for an experienced yachtsman, would have been only a minor annoyance. All he had to do was to find a spare shackle, clamber up to the foredeck to fit it, return to the cockpit, and then sheet in and carry on.
'Being perhaps a little further inshore than he cared to be, he would have lashed the tiller and sailed towards open sea under mainsail alone as he hunted out a shackle and fitted it to the jib.
'It is at this moment, also, that he should have taken those precautions which should have been second nature to him —
'
(This was where the coroner had ceased to be a yachtsman, dummy2
and had become all-coroner, sad and solemn and wise-after-the-event. But it had been good old Elwyn Rhys-Lewis who had been more convincing earlier.)
('Yes, of course he should have put on a lifejacket, and a safety-harness — or both — before he went up on the foredeck. But there are times when you just go ahead and get the job done . . . And how long would he have lasted in a cold sea on a November night — dangling over the side and unable to climb back? I remember chaps in the navy who didn't want to learn to swim — they said it only prolonged the agony.')
(The coroner had reprimanded him at that point!) ('Yes, sir — that may be. But a single-hander's motto is
"Don't go over in the first place", sir.') So there it was: at that point Elwyn Rhys-Lewis and the coroner had both agreed on the 'freak wave' theory. Which Rhys-Lewis had more vividly described as 'the Sod's Law of the Sea' — 'when wind-and-water hit you in that single unguarded moment, groping around to catch a flogging sail
— and then you're over the side and alone, with your boat sailing on without you, to the Port of Heaven — '
'We may be somewhat surprised that the body of the deceased was not recovered in the search next day, or that it dummy2
never came ashore as others have done. But we have also heard an expert witness from the RNLI testify that the ebbing tide would have carried it several miles into the bay.
And if it finished up in the Needles Channel, in the shipping lane, then it may have been hit by a large vessel well before daylight.
'So, before I record my verdict, it is more than ever necessary for me to emphasize that, however experienced one may be, the necessary and prudent precautions must be paramount.
One witness has spoken of what he called "the Sod's Law of the sea". But — '
That had given the Telegraph sub-editor his arresting headline ' "Sod's Law" killed yachtsman' .
But that had been a 'Sod's Law of the sea'. And it had been a quite different Sod's Law — a 'Sod's Law of the land' which had finally brought Philip Masson into the light, all these years afterwards; which, in his neat little report, Reg Buller had pounced on smartly:
'Why did they plant him there? It's a good question, because bodies have a way of turning up. HM prisons are full of people who believed otherwise. But these chummies weren't so stupid as that, they just had very bad luck. Because that old ruin, where they planted him — and the nice old farmhouse on the hillside above, where the kids came from
— was all due to go under the line of the motorway. So the machines would have cut through the hillside above there, dummy2
and piled the soil on top of the ruin and buried him deep.
And what must have given the chummies the idea was that it was about that time that the "Motorway Murders" came to light: this bulldozer driver was murdering women in his spare time, and then covering them deep next morning at work. That was a year or two before, but it was a big talking-point. Only then the Government fell, so there was a new Minister. And they found a lot of rare flowers on the moor there, which didn't grow anywhere else. So they finally re-routed the motorway by a couple of miles in 1980, and left that bit out. This is what's called "Green Politics"
today, I believe. But I'd call it "bad luck" . . . for chummie.'
More like very bad luck, Ian had mentally added there.
Because the alleged drowning of Philip Masson had otherwise been perfect. There had been no dangerous carrying of bodies (always a risky business; and, presumably, Masson had been intercepted and murdered close to where he'd been buried, in the middle of rural nowhere). And then a false Masson had taken his car on, and slipped aboard the Jenny III in the gathering dusk, either taking another inflatable on board to get ashore, or (in view of the weather) rendezvousing with one of his confederates just north of the Shingles.