Appendix · The wreck register

The ones that did not come back.

Lloyd's kept two books. One listed the vessels in class; the other listed the losses, name by name, with the date, the days at sea and the cause where it was known. Chapter III is the first book. A yard that prints only the first book is not a yard, gentle reader, it is an advertisement. This is the second.

IThe Channel

22days afloat

Rigged as a launchLaid down 20 March MMXXVILost 11 April MMXXVI

Five steps and a deadline in April: the account, the flagship film, the thumbnails, the distribution, the pipeline. The deadline arrived and not one of the five had been struck through. Nothing was ever uploaded.

SalvageThe whole launch was refitted as a book — the one you are reading.

IIThe Five Profiles

81days afloat

Rigged as a presenceLaid down 20 March MMXXVILost 9 June MMXXVI

Five platforms to open with one face across all of them. She stayed afloat the longest of any vessel in this register and finished the voyage with every box on her manifest still unticked. Time at sea is not the same as distance made good.

SalvageNone recovered.

IIIThe Day I Decided to Start

70days afloat

Rigged as a filmLaid down 4 April MMXXVILost 13 June MMXXVI

A master execution plan, a north star, a wiki, a clip plan and finished copy for every platform she was meant to reach. All of it survives. The film does not: it was never shot. The papers of this vessel outlived their subject by ten weeks, which is the most expensive thing in the register — not the failure, the paperwork around a failure that never became work.

SalvageThe lesson, taken aboard everything since: no plan is allowed to be longer than the thing it plans.

IVThe Secretary

33days afloat

Rigged as an assistantLaid down 26 April MMXXVILost 29 May MMXXVI

A design document that opened with the words to be approved before build. It was never approved. The brief itself was sound — read the message, judge the urgency, draft the reply in his hand, never send without him.

SalvageEverything she was for is standing today under another name and another hull. The design was right; only this vessel was wrong.

VThe Mission Control

72days afloat

Rigged as a dashboardLaid down 27 April MMXXVILost 8 July MMXXVI

One screen that would say, in five seconds, what the day held. Her own papers record her status for the whole voyage as design phase. She was drawn for ten weeks and never built.

SalvageRebuilt from the keel by a different hand, and now at sea.

VIThe Programmatic Reel

72days afloat

Rigged as a film engineLaid down 27 April MMXXVILost 8 July MMXXVI

Fully rigged and provisioned — the framework, the compiler, the render command all in place — and launched with an empty hold. Her own log says it plainly: the source directory never received a single composition.

SalvageNone recovered. The rigging is still in the yard.

VIIVael'Dur

0days afloat

Rigged as a worldLaid down 23 May MMXXVILost 23 May MMXXVI

Three civilisations, eight races, twelve Fragments and four seasons of Resonance, all set down in a first edition of the lore. The thing meant to hold that world was a scaffold for a single day. She is the shortest entry in the register and the largest cargo: the world was finished before the vessel.

SalvageThe lore, intact, in a drawer. It never sank — it was never launched.

Vessels lostVII
Days at sea350
Cargo recoveredV
In class · Ch. IIIIV

Four works are shown afloat in the catalogue. Seven are on the bottom, and three hundred and fifty days are down there with them. Both books are the same yard; only one of them was ever meant to be seen.

Dates and days are taken from the yard's own book — the first and the last entry of work on each vessel — not from the day she was wanted or the day she was mourned. The measure under each name is that span, drawn on one scale for all seven. Vessels still at sea are not listed here, and vessels belonging to other yards are nobody's business but theirs.