"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
— the old sea song from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island
Every port has a bay where the sea leaves what it no longer needs: crates, rope, old tyres, men. In the dirtiest of these bays stood the dirtiest of bars.
One day a stranger came to it with a heavy sea chest. He asked for a glass of rum, looked out at the cape from which the passing ships could be seen, and said it would do as an anchorage. He wanted nothing but rum, bacon and eggs. When they asked what to call him, he said: call me Captain.
The years ran out like his money. Once he had dealt in silk and gold and sailed farther than the maps went. He had slept in the finest rooms and under cardboard. He named the bay after a daughter the sea never gave back, and drank away the ring his late wife had given him. For five years he had not been to sea, yet he still remembered his last storm, and over his rum he showed his scars to anyone who would buy the next glass. Every evening something like a bell called him to the bar, and every night they dragged him out across the floor like a rag.
Then a rumour ran through the town: the old man had put on his coat and was making ready to sail. The town laughed. A drunk, half dead, out of his mind. Where could he go?
A few days later his corner was empty.
No one saw him leave. He took only what the bay had given him: an old tyre for a boat, a rope, a staff. He passed the cape from which he had watched the ships for years and went out into open water, singing an old sea song under his breath, the one every sailor knows: bullet or old age, it makes no difference, everyone goes over the side in the end, so pull the sail tighter and laugh like the devil.
The sea knew him. It had been waiting. It took the old man and gave back a king. Salt grew into his skin, his beard became weed, shells crowned his head. Behind him the storm he had remembered for five years burned again, now at his command.
And the lighthouse, which every night had shone over the town that laughed at him, now stands before him small and obedient. He extends his hand to it slowly and royally, as a king offers his hand to a servant to be kissed.
In the bar everything is as it was. Only on still nights, when a bell sounds somewhere far out at sea, the regulars fall silent and look at the empty corner.
One of the last works made in the canon of pulsed studio light, and the herald of the RGB colour era that began with the very next shoot.
The story was inspired by the song "Captain (The Bay)" by KREC, in memory of Fuse.
(Fine Art Photography. Created in 2020.)
