Places
FS Heron and Helgoland
A broken-down ship off Helgoland, where Lena meets Lukas
The Heron is a small research vessel, 44 meters long, launched in Emden in 1987 and owned by a university that can’t really afford it anymore. On a calibration cruise into the German Bight one May, the cooling water pump on one of the engines fails, and the ship is stuck off Helgoland for sixteen hours. Lena Voss, 33 at the time and two years into her job at the ICRU, keeps working in the instrument room. That’s where she meets Lukas Ahrens. He brings tea and a historical map of the German Bight, shows her where Rungholt used to be, and tells her about the St. Marcellus flood of 1362. Around five-thirty in the morning, the two of them find an error in Lena’s calculations together.
First encounter
- First noticed: “She had met Lukas on a ship that had broken down.”
- Object: the reproduction of a historical map of the German Bight, “the paper artificially yellowed”
Connected to
- Lena VossOceanographer at the ICRU in Hamburg, following a falling line
- Lukas AhrensOceanographer at Lena’s side, died at sea eight years ago
- North Sea, Shelf, and Monitoring NetworkThe sea off the Elbe estuary, decisive in Lena’s math
- ICRU HamburgLena’s institute in Hamburg, looking out over the Elbe
Spoiler-free. This describes the starting point of the book named, without its major twists or resolutions.