Incident in a Nowhere Place (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine May 2002

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Incident in a Nowhere Place (Cont.)

ON A RAW JANUARY DAY, I visited Blake's grave, beside St. Thomas à Becket Church in Warblington, England, on the Hampshire coast. The bare trees at the edge of the graveyard framed a view of the English Channel. The grave was newly dug, with no stone yet erected to mark it—no way to know who lay there, except that Alan Sefton had told me it was decorated with an empty bottle of Steinlager. It's a peaceful spot, the sort of place where Blake suitably might have been buried in another 30 years, after a long life of venerable service to the world's oceans.

The location and manner of Blake's death have disturbed many people—a brave man's senseless end at the hands of punk killers in a nowhere port, a fatal appointment in Macapá after surviving all those circumnavigations and stormy seas. But perhaps even more haunting has been the question of culpability and blame. It may be easy to discount Ricardo Tavares and Isael da Costa's dubious assertions—their apparently self-serving claims about cocaine, a recklessly aggressive crew, and killing in self-defense. Less easy to dismiss is an undercurrent of doubt and criticism that has turned into a nasty debate in New Zealand, where the view that Blake lived and died a hero has been challenged by those who believe Blake and his crew bear a large share of responsibility for escalating a robbery into a murder.

Perhaps the severest critic has been columnist Frank Haden, of Auckland's Sunday Star-Times, who in a controversial February article wrote, "We send kids to school with their ears ringing from praise for Sir Peter Blake, a man who got himself shot and put the lives of his crew at enormous risk by doing the red-blooded Kiwi male thing and trying to shoot it out with some armed pirates. He behaved like an irresponsible oaf and paid for it with his life. But we should think soberly about the way the shooting reduced us to an orgy of self congratulation about how lucky we were to have such a red-blooded Kiwi male icon of international sport."

Only one eyewitness to the piracy in Macapá has given credence to such criticism: journalist Mark Scott. Early this year, after the funeral service in England and the memorial in Auckland had sent Blake to his rest, Scott, who left Seamaster the day after the killing, began to tell his story.

Scott declined to be interviewed for this article, claiming that the contract with blakexpeditions that gave him access to Seamaster prevents him from speaking, but he has offered his account of the events in the piece he wrote for New Zealand Geographic, and in an interview with New Zealand's 60 Minutes. On the television show, he painted himself as the only cool head aboard Seamaster that night, and accused the crew of sharing the blame for Blake's death. "I took control," he said, describing how he forcefully put one of the crew in a headlock to restrain him. "I've been there, I know the ropes.É You've got armed, masked gunmen pointing pistols at you. Who are they? Are they out of it on drugs? How jittery are they? How ruthless are they? You don't put those questions to the test by spitting in their faces with absurd abuse. You do what you're told."

Scott gave another brief interview to Auckland's Sunday Star-Times, in response to "all kinds of unpleasant whisperings from the crew about my motivations" and "a wall of hostility" with which they'd greeted his comments. "I don't condemn anybody for their actions [that] night," he told the paper, "but honesty is essential.... If the crew thinks a shoot-out and crew actions which the Brazilian police describe as suicidal was a job well done, then they are in denial."

In the Star-Times, Scott argues that he is speaking up for Blake and against the idea "that Peter Blake was entirely the author of his unfortunate response." In fact, Scott charges, "an aggressive reaction by the crew" was the crucial factor in the tragedy. "Was there time for calm to prevail?" Scott asked. "If there was enough time for different crew to throw beer in the face of a gunman, challenge gunmen, refuse to give up a watch, and to fetch ammunition for Peter—well, there was certainly enough time to say, 'Do as they say,' or 'Drop the gun.' If the crew was happy to have Peter going for his gun—and took no action to stop him—then they clearly share responsibility for the outcome."

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