Ryan Ho Kilpatrick

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Sunrise over Sharp Peak after an overnight hike from Sai Kung to Tai Long Wan. One of my favourite things about long solo hikes like this is listening to an audiobook from start to finish and this time I chose The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Edgar Allen Poe’s only complete novel. It’s meandering medley of misadventure and encyclopedic tangents was an influence on Herman Melville, who perfect the form a decade later in Moby-Dick, but Pym is frankly a bit of a mess with slip-shod composition and an extremely anti climatic ending. Nevertheless, it does contain a number of interesting episodes—one of which became one of literature’s most bizarre coincidences. After thwarting a mutiny on their whaling ship Pym and his companions pass through the teeth of storm that renders the ship a hulk. After drifting for days and facing starvation, one of the survivors––a mutineer whom they spared to help man the ship named Richard Parker––suggests they follow the “custom of the sea” and draw straws to determine which of them should be sacrificed for food. Ultimate, Parker himself draws the short straw. Half a century after the novel was published, the shipwrecked crew of the yacht Mignonette found themselves in a similar dilemma, and arrived at the same conclusion. After the cabin boy fell into a coma they decided to kill him to feed the others. The ensuing court case after the made landfall became a cause celebre in Victorian Britain. Despite the opposition of seamen nationwide––including the family of the murdered cabin boy––it established that the “custom of the sea” had no legal basis, and necessity could not be used as a defence for murder. It was a landmark legal case and a landmark case of life imitating art, for that cabin boy’s name was also Richard Parker. Yann Martel would reprise the role again in his novel Life of Pi, featuring a shipwrecked man-eating tiger (who may not actually be a tiger) named Richard Parker. A perfectly anodyne name that through the force of coincidence has become synonymous with our worst instincts.

Located at the southwestern tip of Lantau Island, Fan Lau overlooks the strategic sea passage leading into the Pearl River Estuary. It’s name—“Division of Flows”—refers to the change in colour of the waters where the blue South China Sea meets the muddy Pearl River. A fort was built here under the reign of the Qing Kangxi emperor to guard against piracy, and was manned by four dozen soldiers with eight cannons. After the surrender of the major pirate fleets in 1810 the fort began to lose relevance, and was abandoned around 1898 after the lease of the New Territories to Britain. Throughout its history it continued to serve as a landmark for oceangoing vessels approaching Canton, then the only Chinese port open to international maritime trade.

“As for the fall, it began long ago. Can’t stop the rain; can’t stop the snow. I sit in my chair. I look at the street. The neighbour returns my smile of defeat. I move with the leaves. I shine with the chrome. I’m almost alive. I’m almost at home. No one to follow and nothing to teach—except that the goal falls short of the reach.” Tuen Mun to Yuen Long, the long way around.

Grazzi, Malta. It’s been real.

Sicilian scenes.

HMS Hellespont is one of Malta’s many WWII shipwrecks. A familiar site in Valletta’s Grand Harbour for over 20 years, the sea rescue paddle steamer tug was sunk during an Italian air bombardment in 1942—a year that saw this little island become the most bombed place on Earth. After the war, her mangled metal body was towed several nautical miles out to sea, where she now lies under 42m of dizzyingly blue and clear water. Dropping down the water column, the temperature plummets sharply from 28 degrees to a spine-chilling 17 on the rocky seabed. As her lines slowly come into focus, you begin to notice the details that make the Hellespont feel so much realer than bigger scuttled wrecks: the eratic scatter of debris that surrounds her, the thick layers of calcium carbonate concretions built up over decades, and the splayed metal ribs of her port bow still frozen in the moment she met her violent end.

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