Maurice and Maralyn Bailey are an odd couple. “Love, when it works, can feel like such a terrifying fluke,” and that is certainly the case in this story. He is eccentric, moody, lacking confidence. Several years older, his life is narrowing and “loneliness had closed around him like a case”. She “coloured in his gaps“. Lucky him. She’s terrific, outgoing, brave and smart. But Maralyn falls in love with Maurice, and it feels true. For some reason, women seem to love an oddball.
They go sailing to get away from the confines of their English life and, in a move that seems inevitable for the pair, sell the bungalow, have a boat built to their specifications and head off into the blue. They’re running away from a difficult England where they feel they don’t fit, and New Zealand is the chosen destination, via a long ocean voyage. They leave in the summer to catch the trade winds across the Atlantic. I was quickly caught up in this story, always a sucker for a tale of life at sea but also I wanted to find out how long it would take for Maralyn to throw Maurice overboard.
Of course things go wrong or it wouldn’t be a story. On the cover we are told this is a true story of love, obsession and shipwreck and the whale’s tail is right there, centre-front. The whale, the crash and the sinking come fast and early in the story. They abandon ship, taking what they can.
Part two begins: “They floated separately. Maralyn in the life raft, Maurice in the dinghy.” And from there the story becomes one of keeping a marriage afloat, for a gruesome 118 days until they are rescued.
Maurice thinks they are doomed from the start. They are near a shipping lane, but chances of being seen practically zero. They have no radio transmitter or motor and are at the mercy of the wind which pulls them about. They grab passing turtles and go fishing with saftey pins. Maralyn sorts and organises and sets routines. Invents games and encourages conversations. She compiles an inventory and rations the food as their supplies dwindle. Maurice knows he is kept alive by her tenacity.
“Towards the end of March, they ate the last piece of Dundee cake for breakfast.” It’s a fraught sentence. On one hand the eating of Dundee cake is surely always a good thing, but it’s that word ‘last’ that brings in the tragedy.
Dear reader, they are rescued by a Korean fishing boat. This comes half-way through the story, which is a relief, as I was pretty empathically hungry by then. They were very thin.
I think I would have been satisfied for the book to end there. With the rescue after those explicit descriptions of the deprivations at sea. But this is a retelling of the original story that Maurice and Maralyn wrote in 1974, 117 Days Adrift. Now Sophie Elmhisrt writes around the original with compelling storytelling, drama and additional detail, though of course, without the authenticity of the seafarers themselves. She continues the rest of the history of Marurice and Maralyn.
The book switches mood. The couple are no longer fighting for their lives but have other pressures. Theirs is such a fantastic survival story and people can’t seem to get enough of them. They became celebrities across the world and do international tours, promoting and talking. The marriage is holding. They still seem to be in love. The Southampton Boat show names them Boatsman and woman of the year. It feels inevitable and fabulous and horrible all at the same time. They undertake another sailing trip, this time to Patagonia with another couple on board, intending to write a second book, but it seems no one wants to know about a sailing trip that goes well. Their story was sinking/survival/rescue, and that’s all behind them now. The years pass and they struggle, but stick it out.
This is a story of survival, after all, and it is Maralyn who comes across as the real hero. When she dies of cancer, Maurice folds in on himself, alienating old friends and becoming a singular and difficult old man. She had sheltered him for a such long time with her grace. It’s a long slow ending – both of the man and the book.
Warning to women: don’t marry the miserable ones. You can’t change ’em.
Cristina Sanders' blog 