MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN

It’s the deep mid-winter, when sailors check their warps, settle down in lamp-lit saloons, top up their bogey stoves and pour themselves a dram. If they’re in tune with the outside world, they’ll also shut off the flickering screens, kill the music machines and listen. On a quiet night, they’ll hear the lamps burning and the occasional clink from the stove as a coal settles in the grate. From up on deck as the frost deepens and the shorelines stiffen with the cold, there might be a gentle crack as a spring takes the strain on the turning tide, while out there in the dark, a curlew calls.

If a boat’s been around long enough, she’ll have absorbed the spirits of those who have gone before; they’re all there after 70 years or