THE boat came in on Monday morning, silently, without flag or flare or cry for help. It grounded itself in Little Bay on the southern fringe of Canouan, a postcard island in the Grenadines archipelago better known for billion-dollar resorts than the dead.

What police found inside was a horror that has become disturbingly familiar across these blue waters, 11 bodies, shrivelled by salt, heat and time, far past the point of recognition. Some were missing limbs. Others were just fragments of who they once were.

‘SLOW-MOVING TOMBS’: The boat that came ashore in Canouan. —Photo: Canouan Islanders FB page