by James Barlow
‘Oh, hell,’ he said. ‘Now I’ve trodden on your corns . . . Her mother’s pregnant. About seven months. On the Opalescent we had a delivery room – Oh! Sorry! I’ll try not to mention that ship again.’
‘Very well,’ the sister said. ‘In that case I will come for a drink with you.’
Her name was Eleni Kalogeropoulou. She was serious, but quite formidably witty. For three days they fought day and night for the child’s life. She flickered on the edge of death several times, but they saved her. The Greek doctor said nothing, but Dempsey sensed a respect at the end of those three days and knew they were going to be a good team. The first surgeon’s name was Panayiotis Zafiropoulos, neither of which was easy for Dempsey. After a week they were calling each other Dan and Pan.
It was never the same as the Opalescent in efficiency, but Dempsey began to like it. Sometimes he opened his mouth to tell them about the Opalescent, but desisted. Perhaps it belonged to a world that was dying: India and the British Raj, colonialism and the journey home. He recalled his Goan steward, Gomez, a young man of incredible loyalty.
Two nights later, while he was dining alone, Dempsey was called to the bridge with urgency. The quartermaster in fact came to fetch him.
He found the officer of the watch – tonight it was the third mate – vomiting and miserable with diarrhoea. He evidently had food poisoning. ‘Rotten eggs!’ suggested Dempsey, and had the young man brought to the hospital.
In the morning he was summoned to appear before the master. Dempsey ranked as second officer, but it was very rare for a doctor to be sent for by the captain, let alone put in the log book.
Captain Vafiadis was in his Day Cabin, which Dempsey at once compared with that of the master of the Opalescent and found it infinitely inferior, almost scruffy. With the master was the first officer, Tomazos, a dumpy cheerful man of about thirty-five. They were studying a fuel chart.
The master looked at Dempsey. He was a man whose feelings it was impossible to identify. As well, his translations blurred any emotion he may have felt. For this reason he always sounded like somebody reading a script, and his speeches to English-speaking passengers seemed flat.
Nevertheless, it was obviously a reprimand he now intended and he did not even ask the first mate to leave.
‘Dr Dempsey,’ he pointed out. ‘Last night you ordered an officer off the bridge because you felt he was not fit enough to continue his duties?’
‘He has food poisoning,’ Dempsey told him, not without satisfaction.
‘The bridge,’ said Captain Vafiadis, ‘is the heart of the ship and its brain. It is essential that an officer always be there. Why was the first officer not informed that the officer of the watch had been taken to hospital?’
Dempsey disputed: ‘How should I know where the first officer was? I had a duty to my patient which was urgent.’
He looked at the seated first officer, expecting to see resentment but Tomazos grinned very faintly and winked.
‘You seem to be under the impression that because this is a Greek ship it is run carelessly,’ complained the captain.
‘Not at all –’
‘It is run as efficiently as any British battleship –’
‘There aren’t any British battleships anymore,’ Dempsey pointed out, refusing to be intimidated, and Tomazos lowered his face and hid a smile behind a hand.
‘On this ship there is always an officer on the bridge,’ said Captain Vafiadis.
The blighter thinks I’m going to apologize, Dempsey deduced with irritation. He countered, ‘The bridge was in darkness but it seemed quite crowded to me. The first officer might well have been there.’
‘Very well,’ the captain acknowledged. ‘May I now ask if you would care for a drink? And how is the third officer now?’
As on shore, patients seemed to have their emergencies at night. Dr. Zafiropoulos decided to give a party in his cabin for any passengers on board who happened to be doctors. There were three and they came with their wives, dressed very formally, and for the first twenty minutes were careful with their dialogue. After that they realized that the Greek officer wanted them to enjoy themselves. They began to drink quite heavily and to laugh and fill the cabin with cigar smoke.
Dempsey was there with Sister Eleni and a nurse named Anna, who was very attractive but spoke not a word of English apart from certain words related to medicine and the functions of the human body.
They were getting very noisy when a man entered and shouted: ‘My battery’s failed.’
No one took any notice and the middle-aged Australian called with some desperation, ‘Where’s the doctor? My battery’s failed.’
Dempsey asked, ‘What battery?’ and the man informed him: ‘The one in my heart.’
‘God Almighty!’ bellowed Dempsey. ‘That’s all we need!’
‘What do we do?’ asked Zafiropoulos, and not one of the other four doctors knew.
Dempsey asked, ‘Don’t you have a spare for the thing?’
‘I don’t know where it is.’ Wailed the patient.
‘My God, man!’ protested Dempsey. ‘Ask your wife or somebody.’
‘I don’t know where she’s gone.’
‘It’s not such a big blasted ship,’ suggested Dempsey ‘Find her.’
‘I’m tired,’ admitted the man.
A long search for the man’s wife followed. She wasn’t in the cabin. ‘I’ve looked there; I told you,’ complained the man.
‘Christ, find the woman!’ roared Dempsey. ‘Get the blasted public address system working.’
The public address system had an unfortunate habit of breaking down. First they had to trace the purser or one of his staff to open the office and switch the system on. The announcement was then made by a Greek girl to all parts of the ship where passengers might be: ‘Will Mrs. Shugg please come to –’ and then the system broke down. After a while they got it going again and recommenced: ‘May I have your attention, please? Will Mrs. Shugg please come . . .’
Mrs. Shugg turned up ten minutes later. She was very indignant. ‘They said the old battery’d be good for another year.’
‘Well, it isn’t,’ said Dempsey.
‘We paid for it,’ Mrs. Shugg argued.
‘Where is the spare battery, madam?’ asked Dempsey impatiently. ‘Your husband is likely to drop dead soon.’
‘It’s in the baggage.’
‘In your cabin?’
‘No. In the baggage room.’
‘It would be,’ Dempsey agreed bitterly.
The baggage room was locked up and he had to find the officer responsible for the key. He then went with the officer and Mrs. Shugg and they had to move dozens of heavy cases as these had not yet been placed in order of disembarkation. . . .
In the morning, Dempsey was sent for by the staff captain. ‘Dr. Dempsey,’ this giant of a man said. ‘You have criticized our ship –’
‘I have not!’
‘It is unfortunate that I must now complain about your own competence.’
‘Competence!’ shouted Dempsey. ‘What the devil do you know about my competence?’
‘A patient has complained that you were drunk while attending to her.’
‘Nonsense! I’m never drunk while attending to patients.’
‘The lady says you were shouting and your breath smelled of gin.’
‘Who is this woman?’
‘A Mrs. Shugg on B Deck, Cabin Forty-one.’
‘I was not attending Mrs. Shugg but her husband. And it was whiskey, not gin.’
‘You agree you’d been drinking?’ the staff captain questioned.
‘I was at a party. Dr. Zafiropoulos’ party. Of course I’d had a couple of drinks! This idiot came along with an emergency. I wasn’t on duty. Am
I not to eat and drink?’
‘We are always on duty,’ concluded the staff captain.
‘Pompous ass!’ said Dempsey, but he said it quietly, for the staff captain was six feet three inches tall and weighed about two hundred and twenty-five pounds.
Chapter Four
Nikolaos Tomazos, First Officer, leaned on the chartroom desk and said to the visitor, ‘You see, I do my watch from four until eight in the morning and I fix the ship’s longitude by timed observation of the sun soon after sunrise. And this is carried forward by dead reckoning – you know, on our course and speed – to noon, when latitude is determined by sextant observation of the sun at its zenith. The result is plotted on the chart and is the official departure for the navigation of the next twenty-four hours.’
Tomazos had no idea who the visitor was, apart from his name. Someone who knew someone who knew someone. He did not excuse himself on the grounds of exhaustion – although he had had a brutally busy day – nor on those duties impending. He was a thickset man of five foot seven, one hundred and ninety-five pounds in weight, but he was agile and tireless. He was enthusiastic about his work and would talk for hours to small children on the bridge while carrying out the most exacting duties.
‘What about radar?’ inquired the visitor. ‘Don’t you ever use it?’
Tomazos grinned. He had a scar just to one side of his mouth where ten years before two men had attacked him with a bottle. He had fought them off and jumped straight into the harbour water – it had been at Keelung – and swum half a mile in darkness.
He commented, ‘Oh, those things! We have two sets – one British, one American. We use them in estuaries and rivers or in bad weather, but not much otherwise. You know,’ he continued, thinking about it, ‘ships could be completely automatic, like cameras, planes and cars. They could build a ship now which needed no crew and which could even take avoiding action in the crisis of a possible collision. Or it could have a crew of one man. But do you know what would happen?’
‘The seamen’s unions wouldn’t stand for it,’ suggested the visitor.
‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ Tomazos qualified. ‘But there would be so many dials, gauges, flashes and bells the man would go crazy. There would have to be two other men so that this one could eat and sleep. This,’ he suggested with a characteristic wave of one arm, ‘would tend to fill up the ship with people to look after the three men – a cook to feed them, a doctor . . . You comprehend?’
‘Is this the log?’ asked the visitor.
‘Yes. The ship is crammed with documents,’ Tomazos told him. ‘Most of our ship’s papers are in Greek. The crew list, amount and quality of water, Customs declarations, certificate of seaworthiness – all these are ready for our departure. The log has the name of the master and the number. It shows all these times and compass errors, the draft of the ship and the amounts of fuel used and left. And the events of the day –’
‘Social events, too?’
‘Everything. Social, what the engineer reports, the doctor, the quarrels, complaints, members of the crew in trouble. As you see one man was injured today. Even the dockside is not safe! “Greaser Ioannidis was badly hurt when a gas cylinder fell off a lorry belonging to Babble and Company Proprietary Limited and exploded,”’ Tomazos read out. ‘“He was brought on board by Dr Daniel Dempsey, himself reporting for duty, but later had to be taken to the Parramatta Hospital.” We’re a man short,’ explained Tomazos. ‘I’ve signalled our agents in Melbourne. Maybe we’ll pick up a replacement.’
The noise of singing and cheering drifted into the almost complete silence of the bridge and chartroom.
Tomazos looked at his watch. He said in shock, ‘It’s nearly nine o’clock.’
‘Do I have to get off now?’
‘No. You stay where you are, Mr. Biggar,’ Tomazos suggested. ‘But I have to start the checks.’ He lifted part of the top of the chartroom desk and examined a chronometer. ‘That is correct by Greenwich,’ he explained, and altered the clock in the chartroom, which was half a minute slow. ‘I’ve already signalled for two tugs at nine fifty. I’ve got the engines on standby, which means they can give full steam any time we require it. I’ve also singled up. I expect you know what that means.’
Mr. Biggar did. ‘It means you’ve reduced the number of moorings to a minimum, so that the ship can move out as soon as you signal.’
‘That’s correct,’ agreed Tomazos. ‘I’ve let go the two back spring ropes and the two breast ropes. She’s held by the head rope and stern rope. We’ve cleared the ship for Customs and Health. In fact we’re pretty well ready to sail, Mr. Biggar.’
‘I’d better go,’ said Mr. Biggar anxiously. ‘My wife’s waiting in the car. She can’t drive.’
‘We shan’t carry you away!’ Tomazos assured him. ‘You’re all right for half an hour yet . . . You know, I think the Australians are the most emotional people in the world about ships. Come and have a look.’
The two men walked to the starboard wing of the bridge. In the near darkness the scene was incredible. On the George Street dockside were hundreds of people, whistling, cheering, singing, waving, a few already weeping. So many hundreds of paper streamers had been thrown from shore to ship and vice versa that they hung upon each other in hundreds of crisscrossing layers. Children shrieked, girls ran about, old men who’d once been the captains of merchant ships came to stare at this departure. What Tomazos said was true, and it was all the more curious because of the qualifications. The Australians were not an emotional people; to some they even seemed vegetative or taciturn; but they became near hysterical when a ship sailed. It did not matter what the ship was or where it was going. They would attend the sailing of the Empress of Australia as it left to cover the mere six hundred miles to Tasmania. But Tomazos had never seen or heard anything quite like this. It moved him that hundreds of people should come and cheer his old ship and its passengers. . . .
There was faint illumination in the chartroom, but none at all on the bridge except light reflected from buildings on the quay side. This was so that the officer of the watch and the seamen should acquire and maintain night vision.
Tomazos moved rapidly and with confidence in the darkness, switching on the telegraph, the two radar sets, to warm them up and remove condensation, if not to use them, explaining to Mr. Biggar, ‘The gyro compass is never switched off, or at most once in four months. The magnetic compass is in a periscopic housing above your head. We rarely use it.’
‘What’s this?’ asked Mr. Biggar, referring to a handle and wire fixed to the deckhead, and looking rather like an enlarged railway compartment emergency chain.
‘That’s for the hand operation of the siren,’ Tomazos told him. ‘We’ll blow the whistle at a quarter to ten if you like.’
Mr. Biggar stood behind the wheel. Metal arrow pointers indicated the amount of turn. Indicators on the bridge structure ahead confirmed the degree of rudder. The rudder turned about thirty-five degrees each way. Other indicators by the side of this one told the officer of the watch the degree of roll and the revolutions per minute of the propellers. Although in harbour the Areopagus apparently had a starboard incline of six degrees. ‘Oh, that thing’s out of order,’ qualified Tomazos.
Two telephones rang and he rushed from one to the other. Mr. Biggar listened as Tomazos said into the one, ‘I’m ready to begin when you are,’ and then into the other, ‘I‘m receiving you loud but not clear.’
Mr. Biggar said, ‘Don’t you ever get into a flap?’ but Tomazos smiled and told him ‘No.’ He then began the telegraph check. The telegraph positions were now illuminated in brilliant red light. Tomazos worked through them with an audible response from the engine room each time. He tested in the order Full Ahead, Half, Slow, Dead Slow, and then again with Astern, and left the telegraph on standby. To Mr. Biggar he commented, ‘The alarm
bell sounds in the engine room and the buzzer up here until the engineer has replied to my order by moving his telegraph lever to the identical position, which cancels the alarm system. You will notice that there is a reply pointer on my telegraph. This will move to correspond with my order lever when the engineer has cancelled the alarm . . . Some ships now have a Wrong Way Alarm, so that if the engineer acknowledges the order correctly but then manoeuvres the ship in a direction contrary to that signalled, as soon as the propeller shaft starts to turn in the wrong direction the alarm signal screeches.’
Tomazos tested the rudder by turning the wheel, and the indicators ahead of him showed the degree of turn. He then phoned someone and asked, ‘Propellers clear?’
He called Sydney Harbour Authority: ‘Areopagus calling Sydney . . . I am leaving at ten o’clock on schedule. Is there anything local?’ and a voice told him ‘The Lindisfarne went out half an hour ago.’ ‘I’ll watch out for her,’ acknowledged Tomazos.
He checked the engines with the engine room, the indicator on the bridge climbing to the maximums of 140 port and 138 starboard.
Mr. Biggar commented: ‘There’s no vibration. No noise up here either.’
The radar sets were warmed up now and Tomazos let Mr. Biggar play with them before he adjusted them to the ship’s present heading and locked them. The two sets now corresponded and moved with the ship, and would show a full circle around her with Ahead at the top.
‘You married?’ asked Mr. Biggar suddenly. ‘Or a girl in every port?’
‘I married an Australian girl,’ Tomazos told him.
‘Good for you!’ enthused Mr. Biggar. ‘Where did you meet her?’
Tomazos laughed. ‘At a Master Mariners’ Dinner!’
‘What was she doing there?’
‘You may well ask!’ acknowledged Tomazos. ‘Then a few months later she came on a cruise.’
‘Ah, those cruises!’ suggested Mr. Biggar, echoing the romance of the shipping brochures – two young people holding hands, standing at the ship’s rail and gazing at a lurid sunset and the churned water of the ship’s wake.