by James Barlow
This in any case never happened. The decks were too crowded and privacy had to be found elsewhere. And it certainly hadn’t taken place like that for himself and Elaine. Five minutes’ conversation at a dinner, and a plenitude of other ships’ officers waiting to talk to this pretty girl. Months later she’d turned up on the bridge. It had been coincidental, not her deliberate choice of cruise. He had been on duty and Elaine had been one of several people visiting the bridge. Tomazos had felt quite shaky when he saw her, and something in her demeanour and the nature of the few questions she had asked at least suggested that she remembered him. But he was an officer of the bridge. He could not stroll the decks looking for her. He found her in a bar one evening with others, and they, not she, had claimed him. He could not go ashore on excursions, but in the third frustrating week of that cruise had encountered her in a shop in Suva. A very earnest half hour had followed, but he had had to visit Adelaide, and she Melbourne when his ship called (for the Areopagus did not often call at Adelaide) over a period of months before they really knew each other. These days Elaine sometimes came to Melbourne, but she wouldn’t be doing it this time the Areopagus called, because of the two children. They couldn’t keep missing school . . .
There had been a dream that he would take her to Greece, but it was still less than a probability, again because of the small children. Elaine now lived in a medium-sized stone house in an outer suburb of Adelaide, with a view of the Mount Lofty hills. She had in common with him a liking for Greek restaurants, swimming, sailing, and driving sports cars. She knew how to water-ski. She was a tall very Australian girl with a fine body and limbs and an honest straightforward face under the honey-coloured hair. She was very passionate and had soon conceived the first child. Elaine had quite a bit of money of her own. Tomazos had very little. He couldn’t quite bring himself to become an Australian citizen. He didn’t even like Australia as a place. But the Areopagus belonged to a company which, while registered in Panama, operated primarily between Greece and Australia. It was in essence a Greek ship, but so many of the passengers were Australian or English that some of the crew had to be Australian – one of the doctors, some of the girls in the Purser’s Office and, on the bridge, the second officer, Mollon, a close friend of Tomazos.
The third officer, Makris, came on the bridge, carrying a newspaper.
Tomazos introduced him to Mr. Biggar.
Makris said, ‘Guess what’s happened?’
Tomazos shrugged. ‘Another war?’
‘Almost. There’s a strike in Melbourne. The Port Emergency Division. They want “proper provision for safety.” Also four dollars a week more. It affects only about a hundred men, but fourteen unions and three thousand men are coming out in support. They refuse to man tugs for ships with dangerous cargoes.’
Tomazos said in some irritation, ‘So if they get the four dollars a week they’re prepared to forego the safety provisions? What kind of people are these? Fourteen unions! You see what happens, Mr. Biggar? As if we don’t have sufficient problems of our own they give us some more. We expect to disembark four hundred and seventy-three passengers at Melbourne, to pick up one hundred and twelve, but also we expected to load on twenty-two brand-new automobiles, on their way from Adelaide –’
‘By train?’ asked Makris. ‘They’ll never get to Melbourne. The railways have gone on strike for twenty-four hours to show sympathy for these other people.’
The second officer, Mollon, came on the bridge. ‘Tugs are coming up. Time for the whistle, Nikolaos?’
Tomazos looked at the clock he’d adjusted. ‘One minute to go.’
There had been no diminution of the sounds of excitement on the quayside. When Tomazos sounded the siren – that of the Areopagus had an impressive, deep, melancholy wail – the hundreds of people began to cheer.
‘I must go,’ ventured Mr. Biggar apprehensively.
‘You’d like to meet the captain?’
‘He won’t want to meet me right now.’
‘He’s all right,’ Tomazos reassured the visitor. ‘Not very good at X-chasing, but otherwise okay.’
X-chasing meant mathematics, and by implication the navigation of the ship.
Tomazos hurried into his cabin, which was opposite those of the captain, and re-emerged struggling into his jacket. It was cool in Sydney this October evening and it was the black winter jacket Tomazos put on, with its three bands of half-inch gold lace on the cuffs.
He knocked on the door of the captain’s Day Cabin, and Captain Vafiadis appeared at the threshold. He was in shirt sleeves, as Tomazos had been, but it did not detract from the dignity he had. He was a little taller than any of his officers, except the staff captain, and had a weather-worn expressionless face with a touch of something in it – pride, arrogance or confidence? – Mr. Biggar couldn’t be sure, but was a fraction daunted.
Tomazos said, ‘Good evening, sir. I’d like to introduce Mr. Edmund Biggar, who is president of the New South Wales Miniature Ships Association. Captain Vafiadis.’
A tiny smile altered the captain’s expression. It might have been frivolous.
They talked with difficulty about the ship, the construction of models, and Mr. Biggar’s service as a midshipman in the Royal Australian Navy during the war. ‘Do you know Ernest Bedford?’ asked Mr. Biggar with minor desperation, but the master of the Areopagus had to admit ‘No,’ although he said it kindly, as if he had been waiting for a long time to meet Mr. Bedford but somehow things had worked out to prevent the contact. ‘He’s master of the lodge,’ Mr. Biggar explained earnestly. ‘He has a model of the Areopagus.’
Tomazos said suddenly, ‘I think they’re taking the forward gangway away.’
It wasn’t true, but Mr. Biggar departed, suddenly cheerful. ‘I’d better be off or I’ll be sailing with you.’
Captain Vafiadis had heard this remark many times, but smiled.
A little later he appeared on the bridge. There was no stiffening in nervousness by anyone – officers, helmsman or the standby sailor – as there might have been on the bridge of a warship. The captains of liners are important men, but they are not piped over the side when they go ashore, or come aboard. There was no particular esprit de vaisseau aboard the Areopagus. There had been too many changes in the crew for that. In the darkness of the bridge there were three officers, two seamen and the pilot, who had just come aboard. Conversation did not cease, and no one pretended to appear intent upon his job or find it necessary to think up answers to possible questions or criticism. In a way, this was a compliment to the captain and showed that the Areopagus was an easygoing ship in which the weapon of discipline didn’t need to be used too often or harshly.
Captain Vafiadis was in fact a kind of vestigial relic of the original functions of a sea captain. As a master mariner he was nevertheless not as competent as Tomazos, nor as versed in radar and the gyro-pilot – although Tomazos recalled with humour that when, ten years before, radar sets had been fitted to the ships of this line, all the officers had been distinctly nervous of them, and the captains had kept the first sets on board locked up when not in use! Since then officers had been trained in radar, although even now when they changed ship they wanted to be reassured that the radar sets were of the same manufacture as those aboard their present ship.
In fact the captain, although an object of some awe among passengers, was scarcely more than final arbitrator in a floating hotel. Like a hotel manager he was almost reduced to doing a daily inspection of some parts of the ship and for the rest to waiting with composure for a crisis. His legal and commercial responsibilities were numerous but reduced nearly to a formality. The mail might bring him a thick pile of letters, and he himself had to write a report from every principal port of call. He had to interview the directors of the company before each voyage and talk to a navigational superintendent, who could call his attention to
any changes in charts, soundings, buoyed channels or harbour approaches. For the rest, he had to exist in an isolation and maintain dignity before passengers and crew, and wait for the rare emergency which he must answer with skill and courage and for which he would be answerable. It was usually a minor drama he had to sort out – a refusal to be browbeaten by foreign officials, or, as these last few days, settling a disagreeable dispute between a group of dissatisfied passengers and the purser – in effect, the ship herself. And he had disliked this, for he knew that the thousand and more passengers, some five hundred of whom had just disembarked at Sydney, had lived in disagreeable conditions, and these had in effect been inflicted on them by the financial greed or ignorance of the company.
To move a big ship out of harbour is far more dangerous than to take her through a storm. For she cannot be steered without movement and a force of water on her rudder. And in this condition the Areopagus, like all liners, was entirely dependent on the engineers. The deck department could do nothing except let go ropes, handle a hawser or launch the lifeboats, unless they had the power of steam. When a fine manoeuvre was called for, the ship was at the mercy of the engineer. There was always a time lag between the request from the bridge telegraph for movement and the function of the turbines, reduction gears, steam and auxiliary gear. A failure to reverse engines due to the time lag of having to put the telegraph first to Stop Engines and then to Full Astern might be the difference between going alongside perfectly or clouting the dockside and damaging the ship’s steel plates.
Tomazos heard over the amplifier the signal from the bridge, ‘Let go aft!’ and he shouted it himself. On the bridge the third officer signalled Dead Slow Astern to the engine room and the Areopagus pulled against the one rope holding her. Her stern swung outward as the crowd cheered frantically. ‘Let go forward!’ was the next signal and on the bridge Captain Vafiadis said to the pilot, ‘She’s yours, Mr. Pilot.’
There were tugs fore and aft by which all these manoeuvres were assisted. The Areopagus glided into cautious motion with a mild kick from her propellers, moving on the shiny still waters of Sydney Cove and out into the River Parramatta. The current was negligible, the tide was right, but the pilot had to exercise caution, for there were submarine cables in the area.
The passengers watched with interest and confidence as the Areopagus reversed toward Sydney Harbour Bridge, over which a train thundered with a noise like a jet plane.
‘Look at all the lights behind Circular Quay,’ the pilot was saying conversationally to the captain. ‘Starboard ten degrees. . . . It’s getting like New York. . . . One long blast on the siren, please. . . . Damn these ferries. . . .’
The Areopagus slid easily past Fort Denison with Rushcutter Bay to starboard. The third officer said, ‘The Seaway Hawk had just radioed harbour control that she’s approaching the Heads.’
‘Thank you,’ acknowledged the pilot. ‘Just give her a shout on the radio and tell her I’m coming to the turn . . . Ah, there she is,’ the pilot said soon afterward, and, sure enough, the men on the bridge could see the other’s lights just behind South Head.
‘Well,’ said the pilot a few minutes later. ‘That’s about it. Stop the world, I want to get off . . . What about this strike? It’s on for twenty-four hours.’
‘It’s a damned nuisance,’ Captain Vafiadis said. ‘We have twenty-two cars to load, passengers to disembark and about a hundred boarding.’
‘It’ll be over by the time you get to Fremantle,’ forecast the pilot.
‘We may have to forgo our vehicles,’ the captain said gloomily.
The Areopagus was a passenger liner but carried a small amount of cargo. She did not, like many cargo liners on the Australia to Europe run, carry carcasses of mutton and lamb, or boxes of New Zealand butter. She could carry about twenty-two unpacked assembled automobiles or about the same volume (a greater weight) of general cargo, which tended these days to be unassembled motor cars in cases, tractors, electric lamps, clothing, furniture, cigarettes, and parcel and letter mail. The wharfie gangs had been loading these this afternoon while trucks and vans had been bringing the jam, meat, vegetables, bacon, flour and fruit which the passengers would eat during the next few weeks. All day the officers had supervised these activities and kept an eye open for theft. Everything had to be packed so that it did not get chafed by the ship’s motion, so that light cases were not crushed by heavier ones, so that cases of machinery which had been wrongly shipped with oil left in their sumps at least did not leak oil and ruin boxes of furnishings, so that things which had strong smells did not communicate them to things which did not, so that ventilation was consistent and yet did not allow salt air to corrode machinery or wet weather to ruin bags of flour. Things had to be loaded so that they weren’t damaged by heavier goods and yet they had to be loaded so that those which were to be unloaded first could be reached easily. This might involve unloading what ought to be on the lowest tier at the first port of call. Logically, therefore, it must be at the top; in terms of textural strength it ought to be at the bottom.
All of this cargo had been handled on its way to the ship, and yet once it was over the rail the ship could be blamed for damage which might have been inflicted by the railways, cranes, trucks.
Captain Vafiadis was understandably annoyed about a twenty-four hour strike, for it would involve the day during which the Areopagus would enter and leave Melbourne. Every deckhand had worked hard today, just as every steward had been busy mustering passengers’ luggage and changing bed linen. The ship’s storage plan had been laid out in Mr. Tomazos’ room and there had been discussions about the arrangements for loading oil and water. The hatches had been closed, the tarpaulins replaced, the derricks run down, the wharfies and winchmen had departed. At dawn tomorrow the weary seamen would hose down the docks. A gang to load the twenty-two automobiles had been ordered by radio. If the men turned up, they would have to be paid whether the automobiles arrived or were stuck in some railway siding.
And it all involved paper. Paper, paper, paper, by the square mile, it seemed, and for which the Areopagus would be answerable. Inventories and international certificates, tallies of packages, formalities of police, Customs and Immigration, passengers’ passports and tickets, crew lists, manifests . . .
It was hard work, with money involved. The quicker the turnaround the better, for ports cost money, pilots and tugs cost money; to keep the Areopagus in commission was costing £2,000 a day and more . . . There was little opportunity for shore leave, for even in a prolonged period in harbour there were plenty of overhauls to be carried out, and it was only when there were no passengers or cargo aboard, when the holds were completely empty, that the double bottom with its fresh water and ballast tanks could be inspected. The crew might have a few hours in some cheap uptown cafe to break the monotony of the ship’s food. For those who wanted them, foreign beer and foreign women, but both in a hurry, for the Areopagus never seemed to stay still.
When the pilot had gone overboard and the Areopagus reached open water and the bridge signalled Full Ahead, the officers and men resumed their normal stations.
Tomazos stood on the bridge with two seamen as the liner left the River Parramatta and entered the South Pacific Ocean. To pace up and down a fairly well-equipped bridge fifty feet above a calm sea was dull and suggested that Tomazos lived a life that lacked something in seafaring experience. He was paid more than an officer on an oceangoing tramp, for his duties were more exacting and he had to have some knowledge of a variety of scientific equipment. All Greek officers had to have a reasonable knowledge of English before they qualified. The log book was in Greek, but also had parallel entries in English. The chats and the weather reports which looked like old telegrams, clipped to a book on the bridge, the row of Pilot books in the tiny bookcase in the chartroom, which explained how to enter any harbour, large or small, in the world – these were all in Eng
lish. Yet somehow the impression obtained even among passengers was that these were officers merely steering a hotel from one well-equipped port to another, while the officers of a tramp might well have to manoeuvre a ship, often unhandy in an awkward sea, to some obscure roadstead whose soundings were uncertain and whose pilot, if there was one, could be a gentleman in a loincloth who spoke no English and viewed foreigners as people to be robbed.
In fact Tomazos, like most Greek officers, had served on a variety of ships, many of them old, a few shining new tankers. If he understood very fully the organization behind the Areopagus – with its special berths, particular gear, complicated stevedoring, and its ramified intelligence of brokers, agents, as well as its elaborate documentation of tallies, receipts, manifests, bills of landing and storage plans, it was because he had learned them the hard way from boyhood. He had gradually understood the system whereby in a cargo of 12,000 tons in five decks a bottle or a bicycle could be traced immediately. He had served on cargo liners and tramps, arguing with foreign officials, picking up cargo in small lots from five to fourteen ports, and alone making the calculations so that weight was properly distributed in the ship, so that there were suitable allocations of blocks of loading space, and so that the selection of cargoes was such that they neither contaminated nor crushed each other.
There had been sunshine, fresh air, reasonable food, some recreation aboard, but no dances or girls, no TV or football matches, no lazing in bed on Sunday mornings. Nor was there now on the Areopagus. The life of an officer in any merchant navy allows little privacy.
He had served on an old ship with a reciprocal engine, in which the coal had self-ignited and burned it out quite quickly, fortunately in harbour. He had seen men die of silicosis, the result of frequent handling of china clay. He had lost a friend in a ship which had exploded, its content of grain dust being the cause.