Belle in the Bottom *

by g. emil reutter

It was a brutal night

the kind they say

a man’s breath

freezes in the air.

Navigating through

a thick fog, a schooner

alerted Willets of

Tuckerton there were

cries moaning from

the shoreline.

Willetts and crew shoved

off blinded by the fog

as its ships bell rang and

clanged into the deafening

mist. No cries could be heard

no other bells rang, just

dead air.

Several hours they searched

along the outer bar for the

troubled ship to no avail.

Then suddenly the darkened

hull of an overturned ship

did appear in the shoals.

Bodies bobbed in the sea

bodies hung from rigging

none alive. Steadying

themselves Willets and

crew climbed aboard the

barnacled hull of the beached

vessel.

Just underfoot near the keel

Willets heard a tapping coming

from below. Ax in hand he began

chopping, tearing, chopping the

hull. The wood gave way and a

young woman was pulled from

the hull to safety. Her name was

not written down, she knew no

English. Upon reaching land

she marked the sand, disappeared

into the foggy mainland never to

be seen again. Some say she went

to Philadelphia, some say she went

into the pines and others say she

never left. Her name unknown as

the ship she was aboard

Anonymous, the belle in the bottom

survived, sailors frozen to death in

the shoals, a ship destroyed in the

hard winter of the Atlantic and a

town born of the sorrow.    

*The Town, Ship Bottom, New Jersey