I’d met Helga at the ******’s Rest
Where I said that I’d be her mate,
Sailing her ancient Freighter for her
Down to the River Plate.
But then, I’d never set eyes on it
I was more concerned with her lips,
This Helga, who had bought the wreck
From the old graveyard of ships.

Then down at the dock, I saw it then
Coal fired, and full of rust,
And wondered if it could make it there
But she turned, and said, ‘It must!’
She’d spent the coin from a bad divorce
From the head of a shipping line,
‘I helped him to build that business up,
In truth, it ought to be mine!’

It was then that I saw the hatred there
Set deep in her flashing eyes,
‘My husband said he was going broke,
It was just a pack of lies.
He’s bought another great tanker since
That he calls Madrid Maru,
And sails it under a foreign flag
So there’s nothing that I can do.’

We threw some paint on the freighter then
And piled the coal in a stack,
Painted the name as Helga Jane
But the only paint was black.
She hired some Lascars, stoking coal,
An engineer for the crew,
And loaded the hold with tractor tyres
And aircraft engines, too.

We left the port with a head of steam
And nosed our way from the dock,
The pistons rumbled beneath the deck
In their first reprieve, in shock.
‘It’s been a while, it will settle down,’
Said the engineer, old Sam,
So slowly, out to the open sea
We sailed from Amsterdam.

The stars were bright on that first full night
With Helga stood at the wheel,
Heading into the darkness there
As if she could see and feel.
The Freighter seemed to respond to her
At the slightest touch of her hand,
And I took over the wheel once we
Were out of sight of the land.

I’d thought she might have been lonely
Once we had been some days at sea,
And hoped she’d open her cabin door
But her door stayed closed to me.
She seemed to brood, in an evil mood
When she joined me at the wheel,
‘I gave him years of my life,’ she said,
‘Then all that he does is steal!’

And even the freighter seemed to feel
The sense of her own despair,
It rose and fell with the ocean swell
And groaned as if steel could care.
In black of night, with a single light
There were sounds deep in its bowels,
The hull would shake as I lay awake,
And moan, like a demon’s howls.

A storm blew up on the seventh day
And it tossed our craft about,
We turned it into the crashing waves
As we tried to ride it out,
But the rudder snapped from the rudder post
So we couldn’t turn or steer,
And all this little black freighter gave
The crew was a sense of fear.

Then out of the mist of the driving rain
Came a hull she thought she knew,
And Helga screamed, and the freighter seemed
To know it, Madrid Maru,
The pistons started to race below
And the bow rose out of the swell,
Racing towards the starboard now
Like an arrow released from hell.

Though Helga clung to the useless wheel
To try to steer it away,
All the hatred she’d ever felt
Reposed in the ship that day.
We threw the lifeboat over the side
And the engineer jumped free,
I called to Helga, and she replied,
‘It’s fate! It’s coming for me!’

One of the Lascars made the boat,
The others were down below,
We watched as the Freighter raced ahead
While the tanker was long, and slow.
It punched a hole in the tanker’s side
And was rushed by the water in,
With Helga fighting the useless wheel,
I never saw her again.

It took an hour for the ships to sink
Still lodged together with force,
Even while drowning in the depths
They couldn’t get a divorce.
I’ll never forget that Freighter though,
It took on a woman’s pain,
They lie as one, now their day is done
Since we christened her Helga Jane.

David Lewis Paget