Tuesday, 10 June 2025

IF WE HAD ONLY KNOWN... (My poem about the wreck of the German ship 'Hera' off Nare Head, Cornwall, January 1914...)

 The German barque Herasank off Nare Head, January 2nd, 1914, only months before the First World War broke out and yet the locals buried the dead German crewmen in what is reputed to be the longest grave in England and a good many people turned out to honour the seamen. 



VERYAN churchyard was the final resting place and Joseph Johns dug the 75 foot grave. 



Fog, a broken chronometer and a slow ships clock, along with other errors and the slow turning speed of the barque, plus difficulties in locating the wreck, led to only five of the company of twenty-four surviving. 


The first mate was found lashed to a mast but had died from exposure, other men had clung to the mast until they fell, while still others had located the one escape boat, which had been stashed on the port side of the ship but that was upturned too…


Oddly, the Falmouth Seamens Chaplain was Mr Badger and the German vice-consul was Mr Fox, from Falmouth… 




My poem:


If We Had Only Known…


If they had only known

What lay months ahead…

An assassination,

A culmination of muscling,

Tussling

And the outbreak of a rotten war,

Directed by commission,

For troopers of attrition.


If they had only known

What lay off Nare Head…

An abomination,

A termination of grounding,

Drowning

And the slaughter by a rotten mist.

Sinking by collision

But not by ammunition.


If only they had known

What lay in Veryan, dead…

An indication,

A validation of mourning,

Warning

And the burial of a rotten crew,

Deformed by putrefaction

And bacterial reaction.


If they had only known

What lay on the ocean bed…

An eradication,

A celebration of empathy,

Sympathy

And the cursing of a rotten wreck,

Silenced by dejection,

A natural rejection.


If only I had known

What lay on the grave’s head…

An appreciation,

A pacification of indifference,

Deference

And the memorials of a rotten death,

Blessed by resurrection,

And eternal perfection…


Pete Ray








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