Titch builds a flying boat to cross the Atlantic

Titch builds a flying boat to cross the Atlantic, an unfinished project that brings his earlier life with Washington Black back into the present. When Titch reveals the craft in the courtyard of his house, Washington sees not only an ambitious vessel but also a return to a past that Titch, in Washington’s view, has selectively remembered. The scene makes the boat both a proposed means of crossing an ocean and a sign of Titch’s unresolved attachment to what came before.

Discovery in the Courtyard

After leading Washington through the house and out into the courtyard, Titch shows him a structure that had previously been concealed in shadow. In the darkness, Washington first makes out a tangle of wood, cloth, and metal rods. As his eyes adjust, the object resolves into a small boat for two: white masts rise at an angle above a dark, polished wooden hull, while enormous wings extend from either side. Its strange scale and shape make the craft seem at once purposeful and formidable.

Titch explains that he has been constructing it for several years. He still intends to cross the Atlantic and has considered Barbados as a destination, describing a return to those shores as fitting. The plan thus links the boat’s practical purpose with Titch’s past: the voyage would take him toward a place Washington associates with the life they once shared.

Titch’s Renewed Plan

The craft represents a sustained undertaking rather than a passing idea. Titch has devoted years to its construction and speaks as though crossing the Atlantic remains a live ambition. The small, two-person design also recalls the earlier journey in which Washington and Titch’s lives became bound together, although the evidence here presents the new boat as Titch’s project and does not establish that Washington has agreed to travel in it.

Titch’s choice of Barbados gives the proposed voyage a particular emotional and geographical direction. He regards that destination as fitting, while Washington immediately connects the plan to their shared history. The scene leaves the project at the stage of construction and intention: no crossing takes place in this account, and the boat’s ability to make the journey remains uncertain.

Washington’s Judgment and Memory

Washington does not interpret Titch’s plan as proof that Titch has lost his reason. Instead, he understands it as a reenactment of the past that offers Titch comfort by allowing him to forget what was painful or wrong in their earlier life. This reading complicates the boat’s appearance as a vehicle of escape or renewal: its direction is forward across the ocean, but its inspiration, as Washington sees it, is backward-looking.

Washington also predicts failure. Looking at the craft, he believes it will not carry Titch even halfway to Barbados and that Titch will have to abandon it or die trying. This is Washington’s judgment at the moment of discovery, not a narrated outcome; the evidence does not confirm what ultimately happens to the vessel or to Titch’s intended voyage.

The Past Made Present

The boat’s form draws Washington into a sudden recollection of the Caribbean world associated with their former life. The sight of its white masts, dark hull, and outspread wings brings back remembered images of turquoise water, palm leaves, grass, cane toads, geckos, and the heat of machetes. The intensity of the recollection becomes physical: Washington grimaces and closes his eyes as pain fills his head.

The episode therefore gives the unfinished craft a double significance. For Titch, it is a means of attempting an Atlantic crossing, with Barbados as a possible destination; for Washington, it is a material trigger that brings a difficult shared past into sharp focus. Their different responses leave the project suspended between aspiration and repetition, without resolving either the voyage or the relationship that the boat recalls.