Small Boat

Small Boat

Based on a true tragedy that took the lives of 27 migrants

Author:

Vincent Delecroix

Genre: True story, French lit, short stories/Novella

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Rating
3.5/5

Publication
March 24, 2025
by HopeRoad

Pages
122

Content Warning
N/A

About this Book

In November 2021, an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the United Kingdom capsized in the Channel causing the death of 27 people on board. Despite receiving numerous calls for help, the French authorities wrongly told the migrants they were in British waters and had to call the British authorities for help. By the time rescue vessels arrived on the scene, all but two of the migrants had died. The narrator of Delecroix’s fictional account of the events is the woman who took the calls. Accused of failing in her duty, she refuses to be held more responsible than others for this disaster. Why should she be more responsible than the sea, than the war, than the crises behind these tragedies? A shocking, moral tale of our times, Small Boat reminds us of the power of fiction to illuminate our darkest crimes.

Review

Small boat is based on a true story giving us a brief account of 27 lives lost in French waters. The story is not told to us from the pov of the victims onboard that small dinghy but instead from the pov of an operator of the coast guard responsible for saving lives at sea. 

The book opens with an introduction by Jeremy Hardings giving us an account of the true tragedy that took place on the night of November 23/24 2021. Thereafter the book is divided into three parts: the first part is an impactful interrogation between a woman coastguard officer incharge of receiving that call of distress and a police officer. The second part is told to us from the POV of one of the survivors who made that distress call onboard that small dinghy, while the third part moves back to the coastguard woman and her reflection of the whole tragedy without showing signs of remorse, empathy, sympathy or accountability of the tragedy that took place that night.

Are we humans so bound by territorial boundaries, countries, conflicts, caste, religion, rich, poor , personal opinions, political beliefs or do we sometimes fail in our assessment of a situation? Had the operator sent out help and done her duty, would things be different? Should only the woman coastguard officer be in the firing line and not her colleagues? Are we humans so truly unable to sit quietly in one place and need to move as soon as we hear of better opportunities elsewhere? Had the woman coastguard officer shown remorse, empathy, sympathy of her misdeeds, would she be punished? Had she really left her soul behind when she was on duty or was she responsible of cradling every victim that went through the channel each night? Did she fail as a human or did the system fail her? This book does raise a lot of questions on human behaviour and how we behave so inhuman from time to time.

Now coming to the technicalities of the book. Despite the writing being so strong, impactful and thought provoking for me it felt a little bit slow paced, thick and repetitive. I totally understand the stream of conscious kind of writing but the repetition of similar words—empathy, sympathy, judgment, dehumanisation—made parts of the narrative feel unnecessarily dense while it also added some extra pages to the book that could have been avoided. However, the author does present his ideas and perspectives quite strongly.

Overall, while the books theme and intent are powerful, a better balance between its three parts and a tighter narrative would have made it a far more compelling read for me.

Beware the Ills: Part 35

Two machines worked their way towards me in the melee. One stalks in my shadow, the other sits directly in front of me. They start to glow blue-green fire. It collects around their peeled cores in translucent streams and smudges. I tilt the machine over and leap off. The two orbs streak through the air and destroy each other in a verdant flourish of crackling metal. Idiots. They’ve lost their edge completely. Their commander must be ashamed of how they’re behaving.

I’m running through the clouds of brown armor now. I’ve got my left shoulder down to cut or stab any man which steps in my way. My sword slashes up and down as I run, hacking men left and right. I’m too close for arrows. They’ll hit each other in the crossfire. They’re also too slow to pull out their swords, and swing around their shields to deflect me.

I had such high hopes for them.

I behead a man in front of me. I leap off his stumped body and grab the crossbow out of his hands. I fire one solitary shot in front of me. The heavy weapon clatters awkwardly. A man falls impaled. I grab his crossbow before it hits the ground. I have two now. I fire in all directions around me, unleashing a wide circle of pointed stalks. They fall back like a broken brown wave. The crossbow’s metal chamber hammers back and forth. The screaming and thrashing shapes topple against one another. Blue’s just beyond me, attacking and carving away at their outer lines.

I hope he’s okay.

They’ve started to out flank me in this melee. One crossbow is empty. I run into the crowd so they can’t focus fire on me. I bet they’re willing to sacrifice a few men to take me down at this point. Where’s the man with the spear? What’s taking him so long? I run. I can’t expose myself to their bum rushes any longer. The other crossbow twines empty. I throw it towards the men behind me like a broken toy.

I make my way towards the river. I’m not far out from its icy billows. Speaking of which, where’s the woman-monster hiding? She has yet to make an appearance. I leap over the last confused soldier before the river and jump down onto the ice below. It’s empty, quiet, and absent of any blood.

The peons haven’t even turned around to me. The bloodshed spooked them even further. During my escape towards the river, the machines realigned at the front of the army to powder the river with their pretty lights. They roar and grind, as they center on me standing on the river. It’s too late for them. Screams hit the air.

Blue has fallen upon them.

I join him. Blue’s strong enough to throw and swing the machines freely in his enormous paws. They howl and groan under him, as he grabs and tosses them into the scrambling invaders. Men scream too, firing arrows randomly into the air. I’m running towards the muddled edge of falling machines. He grips the machines at their backwards feet. His paws look small against their metal extensions, an enemy worthy of his size. He strains under their weight; you can see the lines of his muscles and veins beneath his fur. He balances them, one on each paw. Smart boy. He can only spin them twice before he scatters them in each direction. The men fall like blades of red ice, cracking and shattering in bloody streaks between their shells. Four other machines are smashed and turned over. The troops run from the colliding metal. They run onto the river in a wild panic. The shore and trees ooze red in extravagant patterns.

It’s quite a sight.

The ground troops are collecting again further down the shore. The man with the spear has taken control of them, directing swarms of hissing arrows at Blue’s blood-painted form. He barrels forward to take away their sharp momentum.

Two of the machines have turned to me on the river’s edge, just south of where Blue is attacking. They fire a pair of orbs at me like melted lighting. They move too straight, too stubborn. I run in between them as they scorch towards me. My sword is out in my right hand like a waiting needle. I need it to balance me out as I move horizontally between these blasts. The shore and ice below my feet bursts and cracks against the round fire. It will all come apart. The cold-water sprays under the deafening air. The sound annoys me. I weave my way between the ruptures. I can see the surprise on their goggled white faces atop their machines. The wind whips the spraying water, it nearly freezes in midair. The machines groan and bend down, unleashing a fade of arrows against me. So annoyingly predictable. I’m in the air before the metal rods reach me. I’m a little late in this jump. The arrows are up against me in a pointy wall. The momentum pushes me back. I whip the fur cloak out in a wide shield in front of me. Arrows break and clatter into one another. A few stranglers spear at me below my cloak and I knock them away with my sword. They shake my sword and sting the handle.

The black storm takes a large amount of my momentum in the air, pushing me back against the shattered ice. I spin my cloak again and knock more arrows away. Troops have started to run onto the river. They’re tired of watching the slaughter. A middle-aged man with a short sword and broad shield rushes me. He’s a fool. Brave, but a fool, nonetheless. I impale him with the long hilt of my sword and kick his body off onto the ice. They surround and crowd me, on both sides of my shoulders. I cleave in a wide sweep leaving my feet and spinning. Only limbs, ligaments, and blood remain in a motionless pile.

Where is the man with the spear?

I’ll be releasing my novel Beware the Ills in segments every Friday. You can find out more about the book right here, or check out Amazon’s info. I love this book. Happy to simply share it. 

It is Friday, so that means you get to take your weekly trip to the Cursed Island via my weird and dark narrator. Enjoy.

#writing #reading #fiction #books #novels #horror #fantasy #darkfantasy #steampunk

https://patrickwmarshauthor.wordpress.com/2026/03/20/beware-the-ills-part-35/

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