The Curiosity Box of Captain Bloodworth
How my great grandfather got lost in the Sargasso Sea
My great grandfather’s name was Kapten Alfred Blåsvärd, but it was too difficult to pronounce for the English so they named him Captain Bloodworth.
From a small village on the west coast of Finland, to the Atlantic Ocean and beyond, he went to seek better fortunes so he could better support his young wife and two sons. He sailed from Åbo to Portsmouth.
From there he sailed the continental European ports for several years until he got approached by Sir Cedric Blanchfleur, an illegitimate (and unfortunately undocumented) brother to Sir Adolphus Augustus Frederick FitzGeorge a famous Rear Admiral in the Royal Army. Sir Blanchfleur had long dreamed of his own ship, and after spending many years aboard Galatea and later under the command of his brother onboard Rapid in the Mediterranean. It was at a port in Barcelona that the two met and smithed the idea.
The story of how they got hold of the steamship Eos is murky, and would require its own story, but they brought her to Liverpool and hired a crew of fifteen. And then they set course for the Sargasso Sea and the Bermudas. The plan? To recover treasures from the pirate ship Alethia, which wrecked in a hurricane in 1798. Blanchfleur had the recovered the captain’s log, and was certain he knew where to look. And — my great grandfather must’ve believed him because he went with him across the Atlantic Ocean.
What really happened to Eos and her crew no one knows. A Portuguese ship came across a small life boat near Bermuda Island, and found a chest with items that were in surprisingly good shape. Among the items were a few things that belonged to Captain Bloodworth; a curiosity box with ten small compartments, a captain’s log or more appropriately stated, a diary, and finally two Peruvian gold doubloons in a small leather pouch which was tied to the curiosity box.
The curiosity box and the diary were brought back to his wife in Jakobstad, together with the two gold doubloons which my great grandmother took and buried somewhere in the village. She refused to use the coins or to let anyone ask her about them. We used to run around and dig holes when we were kids. We still dug holes when we were teenagers and our grown up parents also dug holes. No one found the coins. They’re still somewhere in the ground near Jakobstad, because none of her relatives saw any improvement in her quality of life. She didn’t buy anything expensive or unusual. She remained as she had always been. But she loved and treasured the curiosity box and his diary.
I was old enough to remember her, Signhild, when she sat by the window and read out loud from his diary. She held the log book gently in her small hands, and the pages shivered a little when she read. On a small coffee table nearby sat the curiosity box on a crocheted large doily. We children sat on the floor and looked with our eyes at the magical objects inside the box.
“No looking with your hands!” she would say with a stern voice before it turned into a smile. We held our arms behind our backs and looked and looked.
“If you can hold your hands like that while I read, I think I might have some lemon candy left in the cupboard for you.” We obeyed and were eager to please!
She always read with a loud and theatrical voice. As if the storm and waves and salty spray prevented us from hearing. She read with a beautiful voice. As if each word was a gift from an otherworldly being. It was as if she saw something in the objects in that peculiar wooden box. Something that the rest of us couldn’t grasp. It looked so new, so recent, so untouched. She read in perfect Swedish, without an ounce of the local dialect shining through. It always surprised us and made us wonder if great grandma had fooled us and really was a secret duchess from Helsinki.
I’ve translated for you the ten diary entries of Captain Alfred Bloodworth from Swedish to English. It seems as if he sometimes has added things to the log as the day or days progressed, instead of writing the day’s log in one sitting. No dates or times have been indicated. Simply numerical indications of what came before the next. I have created a simple diagram for you with the corresponding numbers so you can see the contents of the curiosity box. It was our belief that each of the compartments were matched with the diary entries, and so did his wife.
We must pay with gold and a drill, says the siren. So we seek, day and night, knee deep in ebb and tide. Stooped over the shallow salty silt with the sun beating down on our backs and our toes wrinkle into radish leaves. It must be somewhere here, somewhere. Somewhere. Then, in the pink dawn, Blanchfleur finds the gold coin and carries it as if it’s an engagement ring. But the drill? What drill? We are desperate and tired but continue on. When we finally give up and stumble to the shore to pay the ransom, I step on the drills and bleed and bleed and bleed.
She screams and thrashes in the kelp. She cannot find her purple ear rings nor the pink little pill box where she keeps her sea salt lozenges. We float on our backs nearby, unable to cut off the rubbery thick giant kelp which spirals around our ankles. Relax, relax, we tell each other. Don’t upset her even more. If we get out of this we will do this and we will do that. Something soft touches my right ear. A Portuguese man-o-war! In its tail are hooked her purple ear rings and the pink pill box. Blanchfleur sacrifices his ivory pipe to gingerly unfasten the accessories. She seems disappointed that we don’t get stung.
Three of our best divers brought back these treasures from the wreck. There’s lots more, they say. Lots. The golden ram’s horns look like they could be from an ancient statue, says Blanchfleur. We opened a new bottle of rum to celebrate. The other two pieces we’re not sure of. They could be ornamental dishes of some kind. The divers also brought up twelve gold doubloons! It was determined that I, as captain, will have two of these doubloons. It is Incan gold, they say. I hold them and feel uneasy. Something low and murky creeps out of them. The siren was quiet today, and we’re all looking forward to sleeping well tonight.
After breakfast she arrives. Two dolphins pull her slowly through the sargassum, and it opens a wake. In tow are hundreds of little giggling fish! After them four pelicans fly low. They carry something and land on our deck. The siren screams a command to us: “I give you four! If you lose a single one you shall die!” and then she leaps into the air and dives like an arrow into the water without a splash. All the giggling fish have vanished and the pelicans as well. We sit and admire the four large pearls for a long time, before some of our men bring large sheets and wrap them in the sheets. We store them below deck in a safe place.
Blanchfleur thinks we will get out of the doldrums soon. He spends most of the days sitting at the bow with binoculars. We have now drifted for two weeks in the sargassum. It stinks and mocks us. The siren yells and screams at night. She also blows a peculiar horn that makes a terrifying low and vibrating sound. Our men have wrapped oilcloth and wool around their heads so they can’t hear. I got so angry that I ran up on deck and yelled: “Throw me your infernal horn!” — and a while later we hear a thud and see the horn on the deck. It’s a silver metal and very light. It looks like an elongated olive. I saved it so I can bring it home.
Two butterflies have fluttered around on Eos all day long. One is completely golden and the other one purple. One of the more educated crew men suggests that they might have woken up from a slumber in one of the food boxes below deck. I lured the purple one with some honey and caught it! Soon after that the golden butterfly followed and got stuck in the honey. An hour later both of them had dehydrated and I have preserved them. They are unlike any other insects I have ever seen. Before supper a large pink and white moth landed on our table. It wobbled back and forth and perished. We are perplexed! The siren is silent today.
It’s raining! This meteorological change has brightened everyone’s mood and we all ran up on deck and tore off our clothes and washed ourselves in the squall. No lightning, no wind, just masses and torrents of water from the sky. I saw them first, but Blanchfleur was faster and shot the two guards. Guards we called them, whatever they were. Half men and half fish, bearing white spiky helmets and holding the siren on their shoulders in between them. They sunk fast because Blanchfleur is an accurate shot. The squall was fading and foamy red waves formed around the siren. She was livid, weeping and shaking her fist at us and promising revenge if any of us dared to enter the water again. Then she vanished and so did the rain.
The rain did nothing to the sargassum weed. The stench and rotten material are a constant reminder of our reality. Everything is wrapped and bound by it. We stare at it and begin to see strange movements in the rot. “Non-euclidian geometry…” murmurs Blanchfleur and his eyes are wild with something. Fear? What have we found so far? We reason and search ourselves every night. Are we going mad? I keep our collected objects as a biologist or geologist. Perhaps someone else, back home, can make sense of it all. Perhaps we have all become ill with an invisible pestilence of the mind so that we see things that aren’t? We lower a hook into the water and it sinks far far below. Something hooks onto it and we pull it out of the water. It is a large chest made of seashells. A smaller seashell serves as a key. We dare not open the box! The siren is silent today.
The Sargassum Sea. It is open! Everything is open and blue. The Atlantic water is perfectly clear blue and turquoise. What is this, a miracle? All abominable sargassum weed has vanished over night. We are moving and elated. We sing. We cry and do not feel ashamed. We shake off our fears and memories of the past few weeks as if they have been strange nightmares. Blanchfleur and I look at the map and set course for the wreck of Alethia. We feel optimistic and gather our diving crew and begin planning. At sunset one of the younger men come running to us. The chest from the sea. It is open. There are things inside! Come look! We make haste and find the seashell chest open. In it lays a shield. It is white and shines like mother-of-pearl. Next to it lay two other objects that we do not recognize. “Non-euclidian geometry and metallurgy!” exclaimed Blanchfleur and tried to light his pipe with shivering hands. Someone got a grappling hook and closed the chest. Exactly then we heard a shriek that lasted several breaths. The siren is back! Then a howl and then… then came the wind. It formed a circle around Eos and spun around. It turned our ship around like a toy boat made of birch bark. Our compasses failed and the stars vanished from the sky. We are lost.
We have now secured and fastened everything. The lifeboats are ready but no one wants them. The waves are ten meters. Our lookout swears he spotted calm waters a mile out in all directions. I believe him. I do not believe this ship can take much more but we have nowhere else to go. I cannot even light my pipe, everything is wet. The pipe looks like a flute. I play a strange tune on it and Blanchfleur laughs merrily! My boys back home will find it a fun toy, I’m sure! I will leave this log and my collected treasures in a pigskin bag in lifeboat number 2. I think of my beloved wife, Signhild, and my dear children. All my love. Remember me well. Alfred.
Note:
The curiosity box is now on display in the local history museum in Jakobstad, Finland. Special permission by the family is required to view the box.
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Very cool. Took me by surprise, had no idea what I was in for.