The exercise:
I'm going with a bit of an odd prompt today, compared to what I usually give you guys to work with. Write about: the wreck of the HMS Fogfinder.
I was inspired while watching a kids show with Max up at Kat's parents place this afternoon. The characters were exploring a sunken pirate ship and I wanted to do a prompt around a shipwreck. But the term 'shipwreck' was not coming to mind, at all.
So I was thinking of simply going with 'the wreck'. But I really wanted you guys to write about a sunken ship. My genius brain, instead of coming up with the term shipwreck, decided I needed to make the prompt about the wreck of a specific ship.
And... now here we are. I hope you guys have some fun with this one.
I spent most of the morning weeding the new strawberry patch, with a brief break to weed around our zucchini and potato plants. We're making good progress out there.
Mine:
They say the HMS Fogfinder was doomed from the start. That the fog crept in the morning of her launch and never let her escape its embrace. That it was only a matter of time before she was smashed apart by a rock or iceberg or another ship or...
Of course, Fogfinder was not the name she was christened with. It was something along the lines of Princess Lois or Queen Charlotte or Lady Princess Fancypants. Something like that.
But her new moniker stuck like glue. They say she was cursed. There was no escaping her fate to rest silently at the bottom of the sea.
And they were right.
Divers have been seeking her wreckage for decades. Not for any grand treasure though, just for the glory of being the one to find the mysterious ship. And, in all that time, not so much as a hint of her presence has been found.
Until now.
I've found her. Me. This journal entry is the last thing I will do before strapping on my tank and going overboard. My boat is anchored a little over one hundred feet above the Fogfinder. I am absolutely sure of it. All that's left now is to go get the proof.
I better get moving. There seems to be a fog rolling in from the west...
2 comments:
Sounds like the weeds must be scared of you by now! I'm glad you elaborated a little on what you were after; I would have treated a shipwreck as a boat run aground, probably on rocks, rather than a sunken vessel. I have swum around a couple though, when I was scuba diving, and they're fascinating, but very dangerous, things.
Heh, I like your list of shipnames, though I feel compelled to point out that the SS Lady Princess Fancypants is currently on active deployment in the Gulf of New Mexico :-P And that's a very brace diver! 100ft is about 30m, which is about as deep as you'd go on an ordinary tank of air, and he'll need to stop a couple of time to decompress coming up. And there's a fog coming in as well...! This is a nicely atmospheric piece with some amusing moments thrown in to lighten things up, but I fear the worst for you narrator, I really do.
The wreck of the HMS Fogfinder
"Vince, where did you get this?"
"Ebay, Dave. It was a bit of a steal really, I bargained them right down from their initial asking price."
"...Ebay? You bought a submarine off Ebay? Oh gods, we're all going to drown!"
"It's not a submarine, Dave, it's a bathysphere. There's a difference, right? And we're not going to drown, we're just going to poke around your sunken wreck a bit and see if she's worth the salvage."
"You bought an effing bathtub on Ebay and I'm sitting in it with you. I'm going to drown, and people are going to laugh at me after I'm dead. They're going to laugh!"
"Just shut up Dave and check the map. Which way?"
"Down. Down among the dead men. Yo ho ho and a bottle up your bum."
"Christ Dave, you're a drama queen sometime. Gimme that map. Right, we want to go... this way."
"What's that fizzing noise?"
"That's the leak, Dave. Oh jeebus, calm down, it was a joke. A JOKE, right? Look. Look. Look over there, it's the Fogfinder."
"You what? Oh my me, it is as well! I can't believe I found it! It's here, it's right here! Right, get over there and get the treasure!"
"Getting, Dave, getting. It takes time, and we don't want to ram anything."
"Faster! What if the treasure's dissolving?"
"Then it's all gone already. Jeez Dave, calm down. What treasure, anyway?"
"The FOG. That's why she's called the FOGfinder Vince, she found FOG and hauled it away."
"...what the hell's FOG, Dave? You mean the grey misty stuff that hangs around on autumn mornings?"
"No, you tool. It's an acronym. FOG is Fortunes Of God."
"..."
"Why are you turning around Vince? Turn back or I'll ding you so hard you think it's next Tuesday when it's really last Thursday!"
"Fortunes Of God, Dave? That's not treasure, that's suicide."
"It's religious, it can't be bad!"
"You should have asked which religion, Dave. Which God."
"...which God, then?"
"Only Cthulhu, Dave. Only Cthulhu."
Greg - yeah, I had to do a little research on just how deep a diver could go using only a tank for air. I wanted the wreck to be deep, but not excessively (or unrealistically) so.
Ah, I do love hearing from these two. And sticking them into a submarine (of sorts) is rather inspired. I'm glad Vince was a little more knowledgeable on this subject than Dave, otherwise this might have been the last we heard from them!
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