REFLECTIONS
ALL AT SEA
Losing her father in her teens left Sophie Elmhirst drifting through life – until she found her partner, and a new perspective on vulnerability
It was the life-altering moment of meeting my partner that first drew me to the (true) story of Maurice andMaralyn Bailey. Their tale includes an escape from England on a small boat, an attack by a whale, a shipwreck and a love story. In the 1950s, Maurice was in his late 20s, working at a printing press and living alone in a small flat in Derby. An affection-less childhood left him addled with self-loathing. He was stuck in a pit, lonely and lost, and assumed this state would define the rest of his days.
Then, one day, an acquaintance asked Maurice to take his place in a car rally. He would be accompanying the driver, Maralyn. From the moment she picked him up in her Vauxhall Cresta, Maurice knew he was in the presence of a different kind of person. Maralyn drove fearlessly, alive with energy and optimism; qualities that Maurice self-confessedly lacked. Through Maralyn he saw the possibility of a different future. She agreed to go for dinner with him, and within a year they were engaged.
From that moment, Maurice’s life changed: Maralyn rewrote the story. Within a few years of their marriage in 1963, they had sold their bungalow, bought a boat and were planning a voyage to New Zealand, where they’d start a new life. It was all Maralyn’s idea. Left to his own devices, Maurice would never have left Derby.
From that point, their plot goes haywire. Neither of them expected to be hit by a whale in the Pacific Ocean, shipwrecked, then cast adrift on an inflatable raft for nearly four months, but that’s what happened. Maurice and Maralyn nearly starved to death, almost drowned in massive storms and succumbed to infection, but somehow they survived long enough to be rescued. (I won’t reveal how, but suffice to say that seven ships passed them, neither seeing them nor stopping.)
Afterwards, Maurice said that he would never have survived alone: it was Maralyn who kept him alive. She was the one who worked out how to make a fish hook out of a safety pin and carve up a turtle so they could eat its raw meat. She was the one who invented word games for them to play to occupy their minds, and who wrote out menus for dinner parties they would have on their return. She was the one who believed they would survive. Maurice was doubtful from the moment their boat went down, immediately wondering how they might end their lives. He would have given up entirely within weeks.
Maurice’s story resonated with me, because I knew those fears. When I met my partner in my mid-20s, I, too, had managed to dig myself into a fairly deep pit. My father had died when I was 17; not that young, really, but
