The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor

“What if something like that happened to us?”

The Caine Mutiny is a type of foreshadowing. The crew in the film experiences a terrible storm, and Velasco’s crew are thereafter full of anxiety in returning to sea. The reader is well aware by the first chapter that Velasco will suffer 10 days shipwrecked at sea; this line thus infuses the story with a sense of foreboding and tension. In a way, it is not only foreshadowing but an omen.

“‘It’s a safe ship,’ Luis Rengifo said.”

Shortly after Velasco confesses to Herrera his anxieties about weathering a storm similar to the one depicted in The Caine Mutiny, Rengifo consoles him with the statement that the destroyer, Caldas, is a safe and very sea-worthy vessel and that the ship sank a German U-boot during WW2. Rengifo is technically correct: Despite the weight of the new guns and the contraband, the Caldas survives the rough seas and makes it to port in Cartagena. Unfortunately, Rengifo and Velasco were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“I made a last try so that Luis Rengifo could reach the oar, but the raised hand, which a few minutes earlier had been trying to keep the headphones from sinking, sank forever, less than two meters from the oar.”

Rengifo had been a good friend and close companion to Velasco in Mobile and on-board the Caldas. One can only imagine the pain, frustration, and shock Velasco must have experienced watching his friend drown only two meters away from his outstretched oar. It is also an example of the text’s laconic style in dealing with emotion. The reader must take time to imagine the scene and “read between the lines” to grasp the events’ concealed emotionality.

“But I know that when the wind howls at sea, that when the waves break against the cliffs, one hears voices from memory.”

This line not only conveys Velasco’s first experience with hallucinatory sensations—which are brought on by shock, sleep deprivation, dehydration, and will worsen the longer he is stranded—but it also establishes a sort of mysticism that Velasco and Márquez insert into the tale. Through clever and subtle adjectives, and descriptions of events that blur the lines between reality and dream, Márquez fashions a story that goes beyond simple journalism.

“I watched it from the sea, and that made me feel less lonely.”

Velasco maintains his clear-headedness and courage throughout his ordeal partly by gaining peace of mind and encouragement through memories. During his first night at sea, when he is feeling especially lonely, Velasco finds Ursa Minor in the night sky. The constellation triggers a memory in which Velasco is with his friends on the Manga bridge in Cartagena, Colombia. The happy memory helps him to feel less isolated.

“I reconstructed the tragedy minute by minute and decided I had been stupid.”

Not much space is given to Velasco’s reconstruction of the events leading to his being shipwrecked, and it is very easy to read over this line without giving it any thought. However, Velasco is not wrong in asserting he may have had a hand in his tragedy. He and the others were up on deck because they felt too uneasy and nauseated below deck while the ship tossed in the rough seas. However, had they remained below like many other men, they would never have been washed overboard. They were on deck of their own decision: They were never ordered up on deck, only to shift to the vessel’s port side.

“I was sure they had seen me from the black plane, but I couldn’t understand why so much time had gone by without their coming to rescue me.”

Velasco’s perception of the black plane’s behavior suggests that a communication breakdown must have occurred; surely such a plane would spot a man in a raft. However, spotting a raft from a low-flying pontoon aircraft isn’t as easy as it might seem. While there are plenty of moments when Lady Fortune appears to smile on him, this is a moment of misfortune for Velasco.

“If this had been a dream, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

Velasco’s hallucinations extend beyond the aural and enter into the visual. He sees his oldest naval friend, Jaime, in the raft with him. Not only does he see someone who is not physically present, but his mind drifts between awareness and unawareness that it is a hallucination: “Undoubtedly Jaime Manjarrés was there” (40). Once again, the boundary between reality and dream blurs—but Velasco admits that seeing and speaking with his friend is greatly encouraging, so the hallucination’s reality or unreality is not important.

“And I completely lost all hope that I would be rescued.”

Until this point, Velasco has maintained a nearly unbroken chain of positive thinking. However, the strain of the elements on his body is beginning to erode his morale. This illustrates the extent of Velasco’s suffering, but it also demonstrates, in retrospect, how he is able to consistently push himself beyond a physical limit that he had previously thought himself unable to cross.

“And in fact it seemed to be the most dreadful moment of all, the one the instructor had described to us: when you lash yourself to the raft.”

Like the previous quote that marked a mental boundary for Velasco, this quote illustrates Velasco’s raggedness and physical exhaustion. Lashing oneself to the raft is done only when the shipwrecked victim becomes so weak that they risk falling out of the raft with a simple tipping from a wave or push from the wind. As a last resort, it is the moment of greatest desperation and lowest hope for survival.

“To a hungry sailor alone at sea, gulls are a message of hope.”

Hope, a primary theme in the book, is among the greatest factors in Velasco’s ability to overcome. However, hope is not granted much symbolism in the book: It simply exists as one of Velasco’s characteristics. Nevertheless, hope here appears as a tangible object in the form of a seagull.

“I kept finding ways to survive, something to prop myself up with—insignificant though it might have been—some reason to sustain hope.”

This quote is like a thesis statement for Velasco’s survival, and it ties in all other examples of hope in the book, validating that all instances of hope were significant. From the hallucination of Jaime, to the little seagull and the large, old seagull, to the memories of friends—they all encouraged Velasco’s morale and survival.

“But when you feel close to death, your instinct for self-preservation grows stronger.”

Velasco accepts this premise as universal, but there have been others lost at sea who were close to death and did not feel the same survival instinct (a figure in Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, for example). Velasco’s attestation here illustrates his great strength of character and desire to continue in the face of terrible suffering.

“I had no quarrel with my luck.”

Velasco is well aware that luck pertains to his survival. Apart from this quotation, Luck (or Fortune), as an entity of its own, is never mentioned by name—but it pervades the narrative. In many instances of Velasco’s ordeal, the question “why” draws a blank: why Velasco was the only one to reach a raft, why he always made it back into it when he fell out, why the plane didn’t spot him, etc.

“I felt renewed strength.”

There is nothing that can provide Velasco with renewed, physical strength at this point. He has lost his fish and is experiencing extreme thirst. The strength he feels is a strength he finds in hope. The seagulls have returned and bring him the hope that he is near land.

“I felt nothing, other than complete indifference to life or death. I thought I was dying. And that thought filled me with a strange, dim hope.”

Velasco does not spot land as quickly as he had hoped after spotting the seagulls. This weakens his spirits. He has already been feeling near death, and the dim hope that he experiences here with the thought of death is simply the hope for a cessation of suffering—a testament to the severity of his pain.

“I now believe that the wound saved my life.”

Velasco points out that pain serves a purpose. Not only does it alert the body to damage, but, in Velasco’s case, it also keeps him focused and awake so that he maintains enough focus to spot land a little later. It is possible that without the pain to keep him awake in his state of physical exhaustion, Velasco would have fallen unconscious—which would cause him to either miss land entirely, capsize, or crash against the rocks he mentions on Page 85.

“I hadn’t gone five meters when I realized that my chain with the Virgin of Carmen medal had come off.”

This line demonstrates the importance Velasco places in his talisman, the Virgin of Carmen. The medallion is seldom mentioned in the story. In Chapter 3, Velasco shares how he came to possess the medal, but it is not mentioned again until he nearly loses it. Nevertheless, his awareness that it slips off from around his neck, and that he pauses to retrieve it, demonstrates its unspoken importance. This presents the question of why it is so important and what it means to him.

“I lay exhausted on the warm, hard beach, not thinking about anything, not thanking anyone, not even rejoicing that, by force of will, hope, and an indefatigable desire to live, I had found this stretch of silent, unknown beach.”

Velasco is usually very humble about his ability to survive, often either attributing his survival to factors beyond his control or simply brushing it aside as something anyone could have done. However, in a brief moment, he admits that he had some control over his fate and attributes his survival to personal characteristics.

“The only difference between the fakir and me was that the fakir was in a glass box.”

Again, Velasco is modest and easy-going. After he makes it ashore, he must endure continued hunger and a long journey to San Juan de Urubá, the only place nearby with a doctor and the means to travel to Cartagena. Velasco is in such an isolated part of Colombia that his mere presence is something of a wonder to the locals, and he becomes a spectacle. He could have easily been annoyed and angry at this, but in his good-natured fashion, Velasco laughs it off. Composure and good humor are among Velasco’s permanent and obvious characteristics—characteristics that were crucial to his survival.

“There’s a plane ready to take you to Cartagena. Your family is waiting for you there.” 

As Chapter 13 ends, in keeping with the style of the narration, the emotional weight of the scene is born in a simple way. One can only imagine with what joy and relief Velasco must have heard those words. Finally, his tribulation is over, and he can go home.

“So, in my case, heroism consisted solely of not allowing myself to die of hunger and thirst for ten days.”

Acknowledgment of his own feats once again takes a backseat to Velasco’s modesty. Velasco may admit to special traits that helped him survive, but his humble nature does not allow him to consider himself a hero. This presents the question of what defines a hero.

“I never imagined that surviving ten days of hunger and thirst would turn out to be so profitable.”

There is an ironic twist Velasco’s life has taken since he’s returned from his ordeal at sea. Certain companies—like those that produced his watch and boots that he wore during his time lost at sea—want to capitalize on his newfound fame. This is a feast-and-famine trope, juxtaposing two polar opposite events: having nothing but the clothes ones back, then gathering riches and fame from those poverty-like conditions. As Márquez does in several instances in the book, he illustrates the cross-over between fiction and nonfiction, that literary elements exist in reality.