Low life
Watertight
Jeffrey Bernard
It had never occurred to me until last Sun- day that I might have anything in com- mon with a 450-year-old battleship. And why should it? But I gather that the biggest problem now facing archaeologists working on the Mary Rose is to keep her wet for the next ten years. Like me, she'll crumble to dust if she dries out. Unlike me, she has at least got a trust fund to keep her wet. Ac- tually that's not quite true. Francis Bacon bought me a bottle of champagne in the Colony Room yesterday, but more of that later. Yes, if you hit a ship over the head with a bottle of champagne before she's learned to swim she's bound to get a taste for the stuff. Incidentally, the other day in a hotel bar I heard an idiot telling the stu- dent part-time barmaid that if she passed her exams he'd buy her a bottle of cham- pagne and if she failed them he'd buy her a bottle of wine. Such mean fools are com- pletely out of touch with just what life's all
champagne is for failing; if the Titanic had been launched with a bottle of light ale she'd be afloat today, listing to port maybe, but afloat.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, my man in El Vino, has suggested that one way of keep- ing the Mary Rose wet is to send a team of experienced Fleet Street imbibers — head- ed, I ventured, by Alan Watkins — down to Portsmouth so that they could spill their drinks on the Mary Rose. Oh, and by the way, talking of Fleet Street, I wonder how the feminists on the Guardian would react to a brave skipper shouting, 'Women and children first.' I see such a man getting a fearful slap across his chops. Speaking as an 'every man for himself' chap, I've always held the Captain of the Lusitania in the greatest regard. My father, who happily survived the torpedoing of that ship to sire me and many others, was one of the last to leave the ship, as any petrified non- swimmer would be, and he had a good view of the proceedings. He always said that the first lifeboat away positively glittered with gold braid.
But I, too, have seen my boats burned. In 1972 I thought I was watching my boat come in as Rheingold and Roberto came to the final furlong, but it was not to be. Pig- gott at his brilliant best got Roberto up in the ugliest photo ever taken. This is why I sympathise with Henry VIII. I know just what he must have been feeling when the Mary Rose went down, with the first-class passengers singing `Greensleeves' in the ballroom. My guess is that they'd all drunk too much sack, all rolled over to one side of the ship and so caused her to capsize. And, if these secretive archaeologists discover any unbroken bottles of sack, I shall de- mand that the wine correspondents of the Spectator — the staff — be allowed a taste.
There's also another reason for my feel- ing slightly sorry for Henry VIII. I don't know whom he was married to at the time of the Mary Rose dunking but I do know that he must have had a hell of a job ex- plaining it when he got home. He probably staggered in, grief-stricken, cowslip wine coming out of his ears, an old chicken bone in one hand and before so much as a 'Sorry I'm late, darling' she hit him and said, `Been playing with your silly boats again I suppose.' I can remember to this day the agony of having to go home to my mother and report the sinking of the Sea Witch in the Round Pond at Kensington Gardens. Never trust a boy who doesn't put the cork in properly.
Now supposing the Mary Rose trust fund gets really big, there's no end to the fun and games the archaeologists could play. Firstly I'd like to see the Atlantic drained. That would clear up a lot of mysteries and might even reveal a perfectly contented Lord Lucan dressed in black rubber and flippers. Also I'd like to see a team of Fleet Street imbibers headed by Alan Watkins get to work on clearing up the Marie Celeste mystery. I suspect they all jumped over- board when they discovered that she was the one ship that wasn't being kept wet.
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