The Helje

The old derelict looms above us in the darkness as we approach in the dinghy. We spotted her on our arrival here in port, and instantly knew we needed to explore her. There is a mystical, magnetic pull that draws me to old ships, and this one has it stronger than most. We pass under the stern, with "Helje, Kherson" written in faded white paint, past rust scales that look as if they would kill a man if they dropped.. After tucking the dinghy safely out of sight between the ship and the dock, we find a sturdy fender chain and climb aboard.

The deck is absolutely covered in crap that nobody cares about any more. Lines, oil barrels and miscellaneous detritus all abandoned in a fantastic jumble. We gingerly make our way across wooden deck covering rotted to mush, listen to the creaking of the old steel plates, painfully aware that there is a ten meter drop into the cargo hold beneath us. Up rickety stairs, maintaining separation so we don't both fall if one of us goes, up three deck levels to the bridge roof.

Wow, the size of the thing! She is big. Not really big, of course, but at three hundred feet or so, the deck is absolutely vast compared to the ones I'm used to staring at. Quietly, careful with the flashlights so as to not alert the dock guards, we start searching for a way in. Open doors lead to electric utility rooms, deck lockers and god knows what, but all the doors leading inside have been welded shut. Astrid finally finds one that has been cut open, and we step into the darkness, flashlight beams playing across the bulkheads.

The place gives me the creeps. I'm usually pretty comfortable around shipwrecks, having left my boyhood fears behind, but not with this one. Before I'm to steps inside, the hairs at the back of my neck are standing on end, telling me forcefully that this is an evil place. We go forward. Old pyrotechnic distress signals are strewn about everywhere, covering the floors in all the main deck level cabins. There must be a hundred kilos of the stuff, way more than would ever have been carried on board, and the distribution tells a clear tale. Idly wondering why the insurance scam never got further than that, we keep going.

The hallway to the galley is blocked by stacks of welding sticks. Nice, new, vacuum packed ESAB sticks, in quantities that makes me stop and wonder. What happened here? Somebody bought a half ton of welding sticks, and there it stopped. My feeling that something evil took place here deepens as we go down the hallway. Cabins, and lots of them. This thing must have carried a crew of thirty or forty. A huge crew, for the size of the ship. Posters line the walls, dirty bedsheets on the floors, and throughout are obvious marks of fighting. Doors forced open, cabins ransacked, broken bits of furniture.

One level down, and there are more cabins. Pornographic posters on the walls, more porn on the floors, mixed with postcards, Russian documents, tacky little books of bible quotes and cigarettes. Cartons and cartons of cigarettes. The infirmary stinks like no other place. Here too we see stuff strewn about, a huge medicine cabinet all stocked. Down the corridor and left through a watertight door into the engine room. A spare stream turbine rotor blocks the hallway, still in its crate. Spare parts and tools strewn everywhere. Two levels down, and we find ourselves deep in the bowels of the ship.

The water is just an inch below the deck plates, lapping gently against the bed plate of the massive, straight eight main engine. Everything is covered in Cyrillic writing. Astrid steps through a deck plate. Half finished maintenance, some of it shoddy work. A generator pulled apart, cylinder head and all left on the deck, unprotected. More tools, drawers full of fuses, spare electric motor brushes, huge machinery the function of which I can only guess at. Hilarious Soviet health and safety posters on the walls.

Three levels up, into a small, spare galley. The place has been used for keeping birds. Empty cages, must be ten of them, and bird seeds on every surface. Filth. Eggs wedged behind a fridge that smells like death. Soviet propaganda maps on the walls, with the United States omitted. Up to the bridge. The compass is missing, but the rest is there. The charts we found in another cabin. The radio room has been tossed worse than the rest of the ship, the floor covered in circuit boards, thermal printing paper, an inflated life raft, and more. Back down, and Astrid stops: "Baby, what is this?"

It is blood. Lots and lots of it. Sprayed on the walls. On the ceiling, even. Probably some on the floor, as well, but that has been lost in dust and gunk. I trace it back to where it started, by one of the starboard cabins, door forced. Spatter stripes. Drag marks on the walls. Fantastic amounts of blood on the left side of the corridor, around the corner, to the head of the stairwell. Down the stairs and to the right is the infirmary. So that's where he was trying to go. Poor guy obviously never made it further than the stairs, though, because that's where the blood stops.

It's beginning to make sense to me now. Crew confined to the ship, a bad captain losing control. Fights breaking out. Thirty men in that space with nowhere to go, it must have been hell. The murder is the last thing to happen on board, and they are all spirited away, leaving the mess behind for us to contemplate.

P.S:  Sorry about the pictures.  I uploaded them all correctly rotated, and Blogger somehow decided to convert them all to landscape.  You'll just have to tilt you head on the side.