The Legend of James Carson - Chapter I

Chapter I

james carson

From the window of his room in the family home in County Down, James Carson grew accustomed as a child to contemplating the hazy outlines, the changing greens and blues of Strangford Lough while he fabled further seas and more exotic accents. His imagination soon preferred the tales and legends of servants and sailors and games among Celtic ruins to the demands of education for the young men of the Irish aristocracy.

The severity of classrooms, tradition, and parental expectations did not weigh on him with the force of the words of Jack Gilligan, the pedlar, one afternoon in a Lisburn pub: “Boy, things may look good or bad, but only you are the owner of the face you are going to put on. Nothing is written". As he walked away laughing, he tossed two dice into the air: “They're yours, boy!” he told her.

Carson looked at them and realized that he, too, was beginning to walk away.

On the morning of May 19, 1921, the dense, leaden waters of Plymouth Harbor bid farewell to the Excelsior. The passage, in the stern, watched the city blur.

In the bow, alone, a young man with an energetic and friendly appearance was smiling. Gone were already traced paths, an enviable position, a surname.

Many did not understand it. “A future overboard”, was the general comment.

As he felt the salt wind whip across his face, James Carson reviewed his possessions: what he knew, what he felt, and what he wanted. More than enough, he thought, and tightened his grip on the dice he always carried with him.

He never came back.

Upon his death in 1943, the story of the Irishman who found the sunken galleons of the East India Company and bejeweled his men with silver from sunken treasures, just as ancient Indonesian pirates did, circulated among sailors. of the north coast of Java as a legend. There was talk of an old corsair tattoo on his right arm and the nickname, PLATADEPALO, with which his friends knew him.

Ten years later, a young woman with oriental features arrived unaccompanied at Strangford Castle. Standing by the lake, she let a few minutes pass. Then she unfastened something from around her wrist, brought it slowly to her lips, and tossed it into the water. The reddish rays of the sunset made it shine before sinking. "Nothing is written," said Andrea Carson, and she felt that this sea was also her sea.

Precious wood, silver and silk bracelets were for decades the hallmark of those who, like Carson and his crew, far from immobilizing security, accepted the challenge of inventing their own rules, they loved adventure because they recognized themselves as alive in it.