She was a deep-sea fishing boat of a type used all along the north coast of Spain; an undecked wooden launch, fifty feet long, with the simplest kind of steam engine amidships. These launches looked the most top-heavy craft, for a brightly painted boiler, topped by an unwieldy funnel, stuck up high above the sides of the boat. Actually, they were wonderfully seaworthy. The weight of engine, water, and fuel acted as ballast, and they could roll, pitch, and waddle through heavy seas without shipping a drop of water. The most frequent accident was the parting of the funnel stays. In that case the funnel went overboard, and the crew came back from the voyage as black as negroes from the blinding smoke. The San José would not have been seriously troubled by the gale that wrecked Dick Garland. She had gone down in the flat calm before dawn. She belonged to the fishing fleet of Zumaya, a port in the Basque country two hundred miles to the east. The fleet had been working out of sight of land, with the San José sailing about two miles closer to the shore than the rest.
