Turn to turtle

[Harrytate]

Let me tell a story that some may not understand well, so I will address this yarn to those who could have had specific experiences such as dredging at sea.
It occurred in the dredging business in 1994, and I can tell you about it by my lingo.
I was beached and had no job at hand when I bumped into a building contractor. He asked me if I wanted to join the dredging business as a hopper's skipper. He told me that there was a convoy under tow from England, and it was traveling to the west coast of Finland and was to arrive within a couple of days of the scene in which the dredging was to begin.
The convoy consisted of dredging, and several small crafts, including two mud hoppers. The crew aboard this fleet was mostly British, except for one Spaniard and one Islander.
I got the job to be a skipper on the self-propelled Hopper to drive her between the dredging and the dumping place in the offing, four miles off the coast.
All went well, and I got along well with the Englishmen who were familiar with the sea; everybody of them, in one way or another, had been at sea for years. We took care of things, and there were no arguments among us.
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One could think of such a craft as being less dangerous because it usually works near the shoreline or in the estuaries. It is a fatal mistake as well as the thought that you are safe when you are sailing inshore water, like in an archipelago or in some other area close to the shore, because the closeness of the coast could give you the false sensation of safety so that you think you could be able to swim ashore.
Any real professional sailor or any of those native islanders never think so, for they know how easy it's getting down into the water and how hard it gets out of the water. Secondly, real old-fashioned sailors or islanders can swim a stroke.
Many fatal disasters have occurred within the offshore and in the waters of the archipelago of Finland.
It's the same false sensation that prevents you from getting the vessel properly shaped, and on many occasions, due to the lack of knowledge for operating in these inshore waters.
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When I was driving that mud carrier, I soon found it a very dangerous craft in the case when she was fully loaded with wet soil. I knew that when the knockout came, it would happen quickly, so I kept the wheelhouse's door wide open, ready to jump if needed.
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All went OK with the British mates because each of us knew the risk. Then came the new crew, and the British went off. The new crew, inlander all, were keen to show that they are more capable than the previous ones, so they started to overload the hoppers, and when I protested, they shouted out that I am a coward.
The dumping was four miles out to sea, and when driving you had to travel over the sunken Danish ship, wreck which lies below on the seabed.
Well then, it was one night when I was hauling the mud carrier over the wreck, trying to keep my thoughts out of that sunken wreck under as I saw something like mist flying in the glare of the searchlight, thinking what that might be. I went on, keeping an eye on the track.
Immediately, upon getting to the dumping place, I turned the hydraulic on to get the hatch closed, but there was no success. Actually, in that type of hopper, there wasn't any bottom hatch. During the dumping, the hull of the vessel fell apart, splitting into two from bow to aft. Now the hydraulic was breaking, and the two hull pontoons fell apart. The sea was running, and the loose Hopper started her noisy slapping with booms and movement like the wings of a huge birth.
It was an autumn night, and there was a continuous gale blowing, and it was raining, too, and as the nights were dark, I got enough of that sort of job to be working with the landlubbers and with those horse sailors, so one morning I said myself off and travelled to home. I hardly arrived at home as the supervisor told me the Hopper Cara, on which I had been skipper, had 'turned turtle', capsized up down, and the and new skipper drowned in the wheelhouse.*
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