A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck

by Sophie Elmhirst

his diaries, Cook had recorded encounters with wildlife, including numerous whales. In doing so, he had caused “a holocaust in centuries to come,” Maurice wrote, by revealing to whalers the location of their prey. The ocean would once have been teeming with their vast, slick bodies, roaming in pods. Now there was no sign of them at all.

Three weeks adrift, and Maurice’s skeleton seemed to be trying to find a way out of his body.

Fame had taught Maurice one of its many questionable lessons: that it is possible to perform life for the sake of a good photograph.

A theatrical departure in front of a well-wishing crowd followed by a long voyage on which you might be shipwrecked: It’s not bad, as metaphors go, for the relationship between a wedding and a marriage.

Somewhere, deep within, unspoken, we must know, we do know, that we’ll all have our time adrift. For what else is a marriage, really, if not being stuck on a small raft with someone and trying to survive?

Only Maralyn would think she had the power to plan other people’s lives beyond the limits of her own existence.