grab chains

It's just the scuttling isopods and me on the shore for an evening mudlark in Greenwich, listening to Bhangra pop waft and warp from a chartered boat as its party motors towards Tower Bridge. My shoes squelch in the clay as I pick around slimy ancient leather, cattle bones, fragments of blue ceramic, rusted metal spikes the size of my forearm, and heavy old anchoring chains that lie like beached whales revealed at low tide. Smaller grab chains draped like necklaces were added after the 1989 sinking of the Marchioness, where revellers celebrating a 26th birthday drowned because the slick embankment had nothing to hold onto. I learn this after drawing hands around the chains with the soft chalk scattered among the flint.