So I went, one spring Tuesday afternoon, to the wharves. Beckwith showed no surprise at my arrival. Behind the whiskers and the sharp eyes, I detected the echoes of conversations he had had with my father.

‘Was hoping you’d come,’ he told me. ‘Owner’s had her tied up here waiting for you. She’s over here.’

He walked me along the timbers, under the swaying shadows of the trees that clung to the rock wall. The slime beneath us gave a metal scent to the air and the slick water made slopping sounds in the dark corners where the piles met the shore. Smacks and light brigs stood waiting; a clipper rested at anchor further out. There were more birds in the land behind us than over the water; given the air as a choice they still opted for the trees.

‘Terrible business,’ Beckwith said, out of nowhere.

‘What?’ The birds, scrawing at the air, made his words faint.

‘About the Howrah. She left from here. Just over there, in fact.’ He pointed. ‘Lovely vessel.’

‘All those people. Children.’

He nodded soberly. ‘Odd how they prepared her, though. She took on the passengers but no one ordered any ballast. Must have ballast through the straits, you understand, especially if you’re carrying people. Then they had the soldiers down here. Closed the wharf for a whole day. Lord knows what they were up to. Wouldn’t tell me a thing. Here,’ he said. ‘This one’s yours.’

My acquaintance with boats was cursory at best: that of a half-observant resident of a harbour town, glancing at the craft that bear news and people and commerce. I don’t know what I had expected, but I must have assumed it would be something other than the boat he showed me now.

She was short, stout and sleepy-looking, and yet the very moment I saw her I felt a deep affection I cannot explain. She was the tired hound that wants to sleep on your feet: idle yet watchful. Able to tell the shadows of easy repose from those that should be barked at.

She looked nothing like her neighbours. She was carvel-built in heavy, dark timbers. Two short, thick masts; strange diagonal rigging. The hull was heavy, reassuringly so, rounding through a fat waist to a stern that was almost a teacup. The mainmast passed through a low cabin, while at the stern there was a modest quarterdeck.

I have no regard for the idea that it is possible to love an inanimate object. I will choose instead to say that this modest boat, perhaps eighty feet of her, was animate. And she was entangled, right alongside me, in a venture that made no sense. I felt she was on my side.