River Yarns: How to sink an unsinkable boat

a lesson in the laws of buoyancy

Hello and get out. This is the second piece in a series that I’m calling River Yarns, which is about summer life on the river. And like the first piece — and the rest of these pieces — I’m going to put up a paywall in a few graphs. Sorry about that. But what with the price of books and all, I’m flat broke.

The first River Yarn was about a series of watermelon thefts that occurred in the local field. It focused on two thefts and two bumbling thieves in particular but you’ll have to subscribe to read about that. This week I’m writing about how to sink a boat. Specifically, how to sink an unsinkable boat. If you’re tempted, go ahead, fork over five dollars and join the in-crowd. If you’re not, and you still want to read my stuff, I wrote about vigilantism last week for The New Republic. Here’s that piece.

But anyway, returning to unsinkable boats — there are two possible quandaries you might come across when you encounter an unsinkable boat. The first — and inarguably the worse — possible situation is the Titanic Circumstance. That is, when you find yourself aboard an unsinkable boat that has inflated its credentials. You’ve gone out to sea in this unsinkable ship and then you discover that she will go down for a common iceberg. The second possible predicament is the Battle of the Ironclads Circumstance — when you want like hell to sink a boat but you’re at the whim of a boat that just will not sink. The Battle of the Ironclads Circumstance is most common in naval warfare and insurance fraud.

The Titanic Circumstance isn’t relevant to this story; but because this story centers on an unsinkable boat, I thought it best to make distinctions.