We will go down with this ship.

I’m almost positive we’re going to die here.

Our sailing boat hit a reef some two kilometres out at sea and capsized. We spent approximately two hours trying and failing to right it once more but its wooden frame stayed stubbornly upturned, gently swaying in the waves.

It wasn’t even our ship; it was belonged to a friend of John’s father — a pompous, wealthy politician no doubt. It had taken us some three weeks of pleading and promises of repayment in the form of painting the bungalow flat in the back garden to even be awarded permission to borrow said boat. Alas, now it sat bobbing in the Atlantic Ocean; expensive cutlery and Egyptian-cotton linen included. I suppose we should be counting our blessings. It was quite convenient that we only had to row the useless blow-up lifeboat for a few minutes before we spotted land.

If this were a film, I’m sure it would have been a more enthralling journey:

The travellers set out, steering themselves expertly over the building 10 metre waves only to get caught in a severe and unexpected lightning storm, where they lose their oars and thus, their strength and hope. After accepting their mortality, the screen cuts to black – suddenly two saturated bodies wash ashore, suddenly coming to consciousness under the blinding sun.

In reality, the journey was more like this:

The travellers release their lifeboat in inexperienced stupidity and thus are forced to dive into the ocean to retrieve the floating vessel before the rapids took it far out of reach. Wet and cold, they climb into the boat and spend the next 10 minutes figuring out how to connect the stupid detachable poles to form oars. One traveller is particularly frustrated and throws their oar out of the boat. Luckily, the plastic blade is designed to float and can easily be fished back out of the water.

They plan to stay within sight of their sailing boat until another ship passes to flag down for help (obviously, there’s no service on their mobiles). Unfortunately, the ocean has other plans and begins gently guiding them towards the west – they know it’s west because they look to the sun and say ‘Never-eat-shredded-wheat’.

They attempt to paddle backwards causing a rancorous conversation to erupt between them.

‘Stop it, wouldya? You paddle when I paddle, otherwise we keep going sideways.’

‘Why can’t you paddle when I paddle?’

‘Because I’ve got the leading position.’

‘Well, me being at the front begs to differ.’

‘For fucks sake, just paddle.’

The weary travellers, already tired from hours spent sunbaking and starved due to eating their packed picnic of ham sandwiches and stale crisps, felt impending exhaustion come over them. It appeared that despite their Herculean efforts, the boat was determined to go in whichever direction the sea and wind agreed upon.

‘Wait, are you even paddling anymore?’

‘Yes…no. It’s pointless.’

‘Great. We’re going to die at sea because my boyfriend thinks “paddling is pointless”.’

‘We’re not going to die.’

‘Oh, yeah? It has been hours and I still haven’t seen a single ship, or person, or any proof of life at all.’

‘Dad knows we have the boat, he’ll send one of his marine friends out to find us when we don’t come back in this afternoon. Fuck. George is going to kill me.’

‘George won’t need to.’

‘Your right, the sharks will probably get me first.’

‘Sorry, sharks? There was no mention of sharks before.’

‘Relax, as long as we stay in the boat then we’ll be fine.’

‘Oh, sure. Until we’re both dying of hypothermia and I’m forced to let go of your frozen hands and watch you fade into the depths of the ocean while floating away on my oversized door frame.’

It was at this moment that the shadow of land emerged over the horizon and the prospect of a future was reinstated. With a new-found purpose, they begin frantically rowing towards the promise of sand and assumedly, civilisation.

Once they see the gravelly sedimentation beneath the blue water they jump out of their flimsy boat and run towards land. It’s an ungraceful sight; knees awkwardly high and feet being suctioned into the grit of the sea floor. They had foreseen the isolated island as a tropical paradise, somewhere they would no doubt find concave palm trees and coconuts aplenty. The waves would ripple in the sunshine along the glistening white beach and they would find shelter in a rocky cave under a tranquil waterfall, making love under the stars to pass time until their rescue. However, as they dragged their sodden clothes onto land, it became quite evident that there would be no lovemaking on this island.

The gritty seabed soon turns into hard crushed shells and coral, which cut their feet as they toe their way towards the shade of a nearby coniferous tree. Whose idea had it been to take their shoes off anyway? The harsh rays of the sun are far from a gentle glimmer and more akin to a supercharged laser beam set to melting point and pointed directed at their already red and swelling skin. The tree itself appeared to have survived quite the struggle, with several branches missing and the remaining foliage turned a mottled grey-brown colour from the heat.

There was no flowing river or Instagramable waterfall, just a barren wasteland that had been used as the garbage disposal for passing fishing fleets. A smell emitted from the pile of discarded nets and plastic barrels. The scent of ammonia told them it was likely the dumping ground for unauthorized chemicals, which had no doubt already leached into the sea and killed any potential food sources within reach of the island.

‘Fantastic. I would rather have died at sea.’

‘At least it’s dry.’

‘Yeah, parched like a desert…and my throat.’

‘I said I was sorry for drinking the last of the water, okay? But how was I to know that we would be slamming into a chunk of coral half an hour later.’

‘What about food? You could have grabbed some fruit before you set off that stupid raft.’

‘Yeah because food was the exact thing on my mind when the ratio of sea water to dry boat was rapidly increasing.’

So, the weary travellers occupied themselves by silently avoiding eye contact and doing laps of their tiny trash island. They made makeshift shoes from washed up plastic bags and searched pointlessly for a tropical fruit tree or some form of sustenance. The adrenaline from the shipwreck and rowing had long worn off, leaving only a foul mood transpired by withering glares and quiet mutterings. It was entirely plausible that if this were not the end of the travellers’ lives, it would indeed be the end of their short-lived relationship.

Television says rescues should be adventurous; often including a handsome heartthrob and a plethora of journalists with news cameras, ready to surround the victims and hear about their terrifying ordeal in great detail. The rescued victims are covered in insulated foil and speak to the camera with wise eyes, vibrantly retelling how they survived on the flesh of coconuts and freshly caught swordfish, sleeping under a makeshift shelter of woven together palm fronds to protect them from the monsoonal rain.

Generally, they then go on to have careers in the media; a spot on the morning talk show, sometimes a gig doing the nightly weather forecast, at the very least they’ll be given a weekly column in the weekly trashy tabloid. Years down the line, when their spotlight has long faded, they will return to the island. Their faces are vaguely recognisable as D-list celebrities and people refer to them more so from their recent messy breakup that played out in the headlines, than their original source of fame…which was what again?

Their eyes meet across the banks of the sea, the cameramen artfully circling so it appears they are once more marooned on this island alone. They hold hands as the trauma returns, gasping as they remember that once night where they were forced to catch crabs with their bare hands just to get enough energy to survive, crying when they see the familiar tatters of leaves that was once their dilapidated shelter and definitely not placed there by the show producers.

Having revisited their fears, the couple realised their love for one another has never changed and more so, they vow to take to the seas once more so they may discover more paradisal islands to share with the world. They then set sail, along with a film crew, a boat financed by a rich philanthropic billionaire and the beginnings of a reality TV show that will go on to make them millions and allow them to retire at the ripe old age of 36.

The reality was far less glamorous.

The travellers had long given up scouting the island for signs of life. Besides what appeared to be some water rodents, there was most definitely no intelligent life amongst them. The girl retired to the beach edge, her plastic-protected feet painfully burned—from the chemicals or the sun, it couldn’t be certain. She sat on the gritty sand, which wedged itself into her nether regions, and allowed the cooling ocean to lap at her outstretched legs. Her ex-partner was now using dead driftwood to hack at the undergrowth of their only source of shade, insistent that he was to make a shelter for them by nightfall.

The topic of conversation had turned to whom was to blame for the initial collision with coral and thus, who was responsible for stranding them here.

‘You told me that you knew how to sail.’

‘No. I told you I’d been sailing since I was a kid.’

‘Is that not the same thing?’

‘Well, no. Dad usually hires a skipper to look after all the ropes and steer.’

A pause.

‘You have never sounded more like an entitled, rich white boy than you did just now.’

‘Oh, here we go again. I can’t help that my family had money and yours didn’t. I’m so sick of you holding wealth against me—I never once judged you for growing up in the ghetto with your trackie knacker dad.’

It was fortunate for both parties that a shadow emerged on the coastline, for otherwise the dead cadavers found on the island would have been linked to homicide rather than starvation.

As the shadow drifted closer, it took the form of a small fishing trawler. Two boys stood on the found, garbage bags in hand ready to dispose and behind them an older man stood behind the wheel directing. When they got close enough to the beach, somehow expertly avoiding the coral, the boys jumped down in their suitable protective footwear and marched right by them towards the rubbish pile. The travellers stood frozen as the boys walked past their decrepit figures without blinking an eye.

‘Quick, fuck your pride and tell them we’re stuck.’

‘We’re not stuck, I—’

‘Excuse me, sir! We need a little help here.’

The man standing behind the wheel, presumably the father, removed the cigarette he was smoking and grinned down at them. He was missing four prominent teeth and the remaining were an unsightly yellow.

‘Don’t you kids know, you should have stayed with the boat. She’s got flares for these emergencies.’

A look transpired between the two travellers, one I’m sure would have withered any organism that required love to survive.

Once they clambered aboard, with the help of the sweaty hands of the young fishermen, they found seating on separate sides of the vessel. One said by the blood-stained knives and hooks that entwined with the nets at their feet, the other sat within a suffocating smell of fish innards in what the captain described as the ‘gutting station’. He offered a free demonstration, which they gratefully declined, eyeing the hundreds of still-flapping silvery bodies crammed into buckets nearby.

The travellers remained in perfect silence throughout their entire rescue mission. Burned red from the heat, covered in stinging coral cuts and suffocated in the aroma of fish innards—they were the ‘lucky ones’.

They would return to their normal lives as separate bodies. A towboat would be sent out to collect the wreckage of the sailboat and she would spend the next three years paying off a mere tenth of the true price, the rest being taken from his college fund.

The tale of their escapade would not make the nightly news, not even the weekly gossip of local housewives as they would never tell another soul. Instead, it would remain an uncomfortable memory that would haunt them whenever someone mentioned a tropical island.

As I am now aware, there is nothing romantic about a shipwreck.