If nothing prevents me from doing so, I always choose the second option, so this is what I have been doing last week: get hold of the mast with all my strength and ride the storm out. The truth is I was seeing it coming. My partner reproaches me that I never want to do anything that falls out of our usual routine, like visit naval museums, but perhaps it is because I know the risk I take: there are potential triggers stalking me in every corner. And though this time the effect has not been so immediate, let us say the experience is being quite... productive.
I already noticed something was stirring inside when I saw that old engraving of my destroyed ship, oversized. I remembered that since I verified this life (that was four years ago... yes, four) I hadn’t read any of the books I had downloaded about what happened in the battle of Toulon. So I thought it was time to do it. I already had experience reading books that speak about you in a past life. In that occasion it was supposedly a fictional book, and the emotions that arose surprised me for their intensity. This time the book was not fictional. Besides, it doesn’t focus too much on my person. I didn’t expect at all that reading it was going to affect me so much. I admit it: even though I have been remembering past lives for over six years, I keep being quite innocent concerning certain things...
My first reactions in regards to how things developed during the battle were of rage. Before going to bed, I posted this in a forum I frequent:
In sum, it seems I was surrounded by inept superiors and coward coworkers, who left me alone when things got nasty. I can count the brave ones with the fingers of one hand, like another captain who was commanding a fireship (a smaller ship whose mission is to set the enemy ship on fire once it has been shot and almost destroyed), but she blew up before she could accomplish her task.
I get so angry seeing the chain of mistakes and how everything led to the destruction of my ship and so many casualties, when we could easily have defeated the Spanish ship I was attacking (we were even superior in number, for God's sake!). They called it "sacrifice". I call it "pure cowardice, mixed with incompetence". How shameful it was. I feel so disappointed with my own fleet. After the battle they only committed themselves to blame one another instead of assuming responsibility. Now I know most of them got what they deserved in the martial courts.
But besides this ever-growing inner anger, a deep sadness was invading me, and I only mentioned this to my friend at first. Little by little it settled in my being, as I went on reading the book. I had already gotten emotional reading how my death had occurred and the high esteem in which my British Navy colleagues held me. The description of my personality was a set of qualities that keep being present in me today, perfectly recognizable, of which I feel proud. But this kind of emotion had been good. Bittersweet, perhaps, but good, one of those jewels that you find now and then in your work of past life research and treasure in your reincarnationist’s heart and memory forevermore. On the contrary, knowing with all detail the chain of mistakes that led to the destruction of my ship and the loss of so many lives (including my own), in addition to getting me angry, started to cause me an immense grief. I can’t even imagine the hell everything must have become. We were caught in the fire of two Spanish warships, and no one in my fleet came to my aid, despite the fact they were not far. Reading that the shots from our own ship began to be fewer and more distanced, my eyes filled with tears. “How could it be otherwise?” thought I. “My men were dying.” My heart breaks thinking how my ship must have ended up, literally bathed with the blood of my men, and all those corpses thrown to the sea...
My impressions about my superiors, of which I spoke a little in my previous entry, were turning out completely justified. Only one of them could be spared, but now I was also feeling a deep disappointment at discovering not only that his decisions were not the most correct, but, besides, he seemed to run away from the battle and get away from my ship when he saw what was happening, instead of trying to help me. The rest of the captains didn’t come to my aid either, as if they didn’t know that you go to a battle to fight, not to play dumb and flee as fast as you can. It seems I was the only idiot who faced the danger. I suddenly understood why I couldn’t stop listening to the song “Sirens” by Arena in the last few weeks. As in other occasions, this progressive rock band seems to be linked to my past lives, and in that song there is a verse that moves me deeply. Now I know exactly why. It says:
now that death is all around me
Did you hope for my surrender
leaving me to die on the bloodstained ground”
Rage and sadness constantly followed each other during that day. They seemed to feedback one another, and I could not say which of those two emotions was stronger. If I thought about the loss of my ship, my sudden death or the fallen sailors, grief would invade me, but from there I would go back to anger again, as it all was our fault and nobody else’s. A naval battle is already quite tough in itself, but if in addition to that, you fall into arrogance, overconfidence and you even neglect the proper repairs and care your ships need after spending a few years sailing, you have more chances to be defeated and die. That was how the British covered ourselves in glory in that occasion.
As all this was affecting me too much, I decided to take a break and I stopped the reading for one night. It was when I got up the following morning, that I realized grief had touched me really deep... and the book was bringing me new emotions and memories. I will tell what happened next in the following entry.
Part 2.