A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst
Imagine being stuck in a life raft on the Pacific Ocean for 118 days. Now imagine your spouse being in that bobbing raft with you. The addition of the spouse into the scenario is not meant to elicit a cheap laugh. The change in setting has a genuine bearing on one’s attitude. Instantly relieved? Or immediately tense? In 1973, Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, a British married couple, experienced this exact event. They ended up writing a book about it, so you could just read their account. Or you could do yourself one better and read A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst.
Through Elmhirst’s narrative, not only do we read about the Bailey’s ordeal at sea, we have the added benefit of Elmhirst’s expert writing. She has a Truman Capote-like talent in describing subjects and events with expert concision. Within a matter of pages, the reader knows Maralyn and Maurice.
Prior to meeting Maurice, Maralyn’s circumstances left her feeling isolated from the life she wanted to live. Maurice, on the other hand, isolated so that he could live the life he wanted. To Maurice’s great fortune, he met Maralyn, a rare someone who shared his want to avoid a conventional work-a-day life and instead spend it outdoors. More importantly for Maurice, Maralyn didn’t seem to mind that he could be a downer, a man who rubbed most others the wrong way and had the “tendency to get in the way of uncomplicated joy.”
It was Maralyn who convinced Maurice that they should sell their English home and commission the building of a sailboat that would take them around the world, ending up in New Zealand to begin life anew. To Maralyn, it was that simple, her positivity at times bordering on naiveté. One friend later recounted that Maralyn often spoke of New Zealand as if “might still be uninhabited.”
They put their plan into action, with Maurice as skipper and navigator, and with Maralyn in charge of the supplies and the galley. Having honed their skills over the years, they were competent sailors. They successfully crossed the Atlantic and docked in Barbados with the intoxicating high of having crossed a wild ocean. Once through the Panama Canal and fully resupplied, they set out on the Pacific Ocean.
When the impact came, they were both below deck. The collision of a breaching whale, much bigger than their sailboat, sent water gushing into the cabin. They had just enough time to load some supplies into an inflatable raft and a dinghy. Maralyn took a photograph of the sailboat just before it completely disappeared, the last tip of the mast sticking out of the water “like a thin arm hoping for rescue.”
What follows over the next 118 days is about as harrowing as you can imagine. Drifting deep into the Pacific Ocean, their only potential stroke of luck was that they were in a shipping lane. But that also meant what was once a liberation, sailing the open ocean and watching a passing vessel recede into the distance, became a repeated soul-crushing occurrence. It appeared they were not going to be spotted at all, not while still being alive anyway.
It was also clear that Maurice was no longer the skipper, as Maralyn became the decisive one. Maurice would later say that he wouldn’t have survived without Maralyn’s firm belief that they would be rescued. She constantly had to keep him from giving up. Maralyn had them talk about their next boat and where they would venture; she made a deck of playing cards out of paper, which didn’t really last because of the ocean spray.
Still, they worked together in collecting rainwater to drink and in catching sea turtles to eat. One day they went on a near-rage and killed anything they could get their hands on, including small sharks that were caught by the tail. This was done as they kept a pet turtle aboard. After they were rescued, neither ate another piece of meat—of any kind—for the rest of their lives.
They said hurtful things to each other. They survived epic storms, “squall after squall.” But, writes Elmhirst, “They were alive, just.”
A Korean fishing vessel ultimately plucked them from the water. News of their rescue made them famous before they reached land. Their recovery process was long, but they would eventually acquire another boat to set sail once again.
The ultimate end—via illness—came for Maralyn long before it found Maurice. And it was as though Maurice was set adrift once again. “There had been,” however, “a strange kind of peace adrift on the ocean, even if it was a peace close to annihilation,” says Elmhirst. Now, on land and back in England, Maurice was without the one person to help him navigate life. He shuffled around, becoming once again—shall we say—a bit much to take. Whether waiting for rescue on the open ocean or acting on your own volition with two feet firmly on land, that time is yours. Writes Elmhirst, “…dying is still a process. You’re still alive while you’re dying.”
Review by Jason Sullivan
