by James Barlow
Aboard the S.S. Seattle Doll they were aware that the storm was coming. They knew that it was vital to keep outside a radius of two hundred miles of it, because at this distance the wind didn’t exceed Force 7 and allowed freedom of manoeuvre. Often a tropical storm moved so slowly that a vessel ahead of it could easily outpace it, or if astern could overtake it. But to escape this storm a ship needed twenty knots at her disposal, and this the Seattle Doll did not have.
The S.S. Seattle Doll was the vessel which Tomazos had seen as a yellow pip on the PPI of the radar. She was making a thirteen and half knots and thus creating a wave system herself about a hundred feet from crest to crest. The speed of a wave depended on its size and those of the storm were overtaking the Seattle Doll. Soon three hundred foot waves moving at twenty-three knots overtook her and shook her. It was desirable to have the wave crest, not its hollow, under the stern, otherwise ‘pooping’might occur, that is, the overtaking wave would break over the stern.
As the storm worsened, visibility dropped to a maximum of a thousand yards and was at times zero. The Seattle Doll was not merely rolling but heeled over continually by the force of the wind, leaving her with very small margin for any further rolling to leeward. Despite closing down every inlet, water was shipped in bulk through the ventilators, blower intakes and every small opening on the upper deck.
There was loss of steering control for ten whole minutes; the lights went out and the Seattle Doll’s one radar and radio cut out. The switchboard and some other electrical machinery short-circuited as they flooded and three fires began. Free water up to twelve inches flooded over her engine-room plate decks.
The wind carried away the forward mast which carried the radar reflector plates. This was one of the two reasons why the Seattle Doll had disappeared from Tomazos’ radar. The other was that the beam of radar was narrow, like a searchlight probing. The Seattle Doll was dropping ‘out of sight’ into the immense troughs of water, and by now the pencil beam of the Areopagus’ radar was itself pitching up and down and thus missing the possible target.
The Seattle Doll was taking long rolls to leeward, as much as forty-five degrees and hanging in this appalling posture for whole seconds. Men could not secure gear and were themselves injured. At times men could not even stand upright.
The Seattle Doll was a merchant ship of 6,742 tons gross. She was twenty-seven years old and had a high metacentric height when she was without cargo. This was due to a combination of factors – a welded hull, lightweight machinery of low power, a broad beam and some permanent ballast worked into the hull. She was safe when fully laden, but excessive rolling was likely to set in when she was without cargo or temporary ballast. The ballast was needed for the unusual purpose of reducing her metacentric height. For this reason the ballast or cargo was carried as high in the vessel as possible, and at the moment 1,900 tons were stored in the ‘tween decks. Extremely strong shifting boards should have been carried, but this essential for safety, while not neglected, was not good enough to withstand a typhoon. The shifting boards had angle-iron supports and these were already weakened in the storm so that some cargo had shifted to port and the Seattle Doll, if she had been in calm water, would have been seen to have a mean list of some fourteen degrees.
She was travelling from Vancouver to Hong Kong and Saigon with a cargo of oils, paint, explosives, mattresses, clothes and toe puff. Toe puff was made from layers of cotton or woollen material impregnated with cellulose nitrate, solvent rosin and dye. It was used to form the hard toe caps of boots and shoes.
When smoke was smelled and found to be coming from the ventilator of Number 3 hold, which contained clothing and mattresses, the officers on the bridge were very worried, for the adjoining hold contained toe puff and the one beyond that explosives. Steam-smothering lines were got ready – a man was at this point washed overboard but the storm allowed no mercy and they couldn’t stop to find him. The steam saturated the mattresses and liquefied the explosives, which made them unstable.
No one worried about the toe puff.
Tomazos had seen the Seattle Doll twice on radar – once at thirty-four miles and again at twenty-five miles. Each time he looked at the tube he saw the sweep trace as it rotated in synchronization with the antenna, the range rings indicating distance, and a momentary heading marker flash as the sweep trace passed the lubber line. The sweep trace was in fact a series of spots on the tube corresponding in speed to the emission of radio waves from the antenna. The spot moved from the tube’s centre out to the azimuth scale and, being repeated at a pulse frequency of over 2,000 times a second, made it appear as a solid line. The brightness along its length had been interrupted when the reflected echoes had picked out the Seattle Doll, whereupon the reflected echoes increased the discharge of the electron gun to paint a bright spot on the scope. The micro-precision timing of transmitted and echoed waves – they travelled at about six millionths of a second per nautical mile – separated and indicated the distance. Each time the antenna directed the radio waves across the target – every two seconds as it rotated thirty revolutions a minute – the returned echo re-illuminated the pip of light in the tube. Tomazos had taken two readings, half an hour apart. Radar did not give the aspect of the other ship, but it gave range, and the Seattle Doll’s course and speed could be worked out from a combination of the times of the two sightings, the apparent bearing and the two ranges.
From these Tomazos had seen that the other ship, twenty-five miles away, was on a reciprocal course. He had turned a few degrees of starboard. She had then disappeared, and he could no longer plot her. It worried him only fractionally – on her behalf – and he deduced, correctly, that while the other ship was on the crest of a swell the antenna of the Areopagus’ radar might be sweeping the other quadrants of the horizon, and as the radio waves passed over that location again in a beam only a few degrees in diameter, the other ship might be down in the trough and thus not able to present her flat surface to the seeking signals. If so, it implied that the other vessel was in very heavy seas, and this was all too probable, since she was coming the way the storm was approaching.
He had left on the forty-eight-nautical-mile radar set and soon it told him of his unpleasant position. He deduced it anyway with seaman’s logic. The centre of the storm must be from nine to eleven points to the right of the true wind, and this meant to starboard on the Areopagus. On the port side, twenty miles away, were the outlying rocks of the southern most point of Taiwan. It was as if he was on a great clock, but did not know yet if the fingers were to place him at ten o’clock, noon or two o’clock. It was a clock that went the wrong way, so that at ten o’clock the fingers would sweep him out of the way. At noon he would be for a while in the calm of the centre where nothing rotated. But at two o’clock he would be carried with the fingers of the clock, for it was rising as well as revolving backwards.
The fury of water outside, the big drop in the barometer, and the rushing sky told him he was in trouble anyway. He had ordered all possible speed, and the Areopagus was thrashing her way at 17.8 knots. The sea was large and Tomazos knew that by now passengers would be frightened.
Now he saw on the forty-eight-nautical-mile radar the large solid circular shape of the storm and its vast whorls. It already occupied half the screen. From the curvature of the whirling cloud echoes he estimated that the centre was going to pass behind the liner. They were caught on the great dial at two o’clock and the revolving storm was likely to push the ship around into its own northerly path. The Areopagus was hurrying to get out of this dangerous quadrant. Captain Vafiadis had been warned but had taken the risk. But it was true, also, that no warning had been signalled. The Turkish radio officer rushed onto the bridge now – nearly falling as he did – with a warning of a tropical revolving storm, given high signal priority on an operational circuit. But this was hours too late.
It was totally dark now. The sea was en
ormous, confused and bad enough to worry even experienced sailors. It was at present on the starboard side and the Areopagus rolled very unpleasantly. As well, she remained heeled for long seconds. All over the ship, Tomazos knew, any loose objects would be sliding about – from glasses and ashtrays to saxophones and suitcases . . .
Captain Vafiadis had returned to the bridge, and he said disagreeably now to Tomazos: ‘I suppose you feel satisfied about this?’
Tomazos informed him: ‘I have the wind four points on the starboard bow and we’re making over seventeen knots even now.’
‘What do your gadgets tell you?’
‘That the storm centre will pass five miles behind us.’
‘I see,’ the captain said. ‘We should get out of it soon then.’
His observation seemed offhand and a little callous in regard to the passengers’ welfare. The fancy dress ball had been abandoned of its own volition.
Now the old age of the Areopagus and her neglect began to be felt. The confused and enormous seas took hold of her and shook her. During each revolution in the water the propeller blades passed through regions of lower velocity in the wake field. This occurred when the blades were in the upper part of the stern-frame aperture. Coming around to a position about sixty degrees away from this they encountered water of relatively high velocity and then again re-entered another lower velocity region in the lower part of the aperture. The level of the suction on the back of each blade increased until the peak negative pressure was lower than the local vapour pressure. The result was the separation of the air from the surrounding water and the formation of a cloud or sheet of ‘cavitation.’ Bubbles of air could not persist and imploded with violent mechanical hammering action on the blades.
This sometimes happened to the Areopagus’ propellers, but now the port propeller had had enough. The surface of the blade was eroded and it began to weaken.
The heavy seas were confused and as well as rolling the Areopagus began to pitch and yaw. For whole seconds, then, the propellers were clean out of the water. They ran too quickly, added to general vibration, especially at the stern, and overheated the shafts and bearings. The port propeller couldn’t take these variations and the blades began to buckle.
It was noticeable to Tomazos in the loss of performance, and (although not aware of the cause of failing power) he knew that the Areopagus wasn’t going to escape the fury of the storm. It was unfortunately – but, surely, no more than that? – and he felt very sorry for the passengers who were in for a buffeting of several hours . . .
The strain on the propeller shafts with this violent alteration of torque – one second free to rotate too fast and the next having to cope with the effort as the propellers were plunged into tons of water – began to seek out other weaknesses in the structure, and the first gave way near the stern. The corner of the elevator shaft opening in the strength (Metaxas) deck had been left almost square and not rounded off. The excessive stress of years and now of exceptional vibrations started a local crack which spread right across the deck stringer plate and down the sheer strake until it stopped at a round porthole.
Tomazos heard about this via the telephone. Mollon had come on the bridge – so had Makris because of the storm – and it was he who answered the telephone. He said with sardonic Australian humour to Tomazos: ’If the ship doesn’t split in half and we survive the storm I suppose the bleedin’ tub’ll catch fire.’
He had scarcely said it when the alarm bell rang automatically. One of the telephones also rang. A breathless voice shouted into Tomazos’ ear: ‘The barber shop’s on fire, sir.’
‘How bad?’
‘Some spirit stuff’s burning. A lot of smoke, sir.’
‘Right,’ said Tomazos briefly.
He estimated that flooding or damage due to objects falling had caused a short circuit. Passengers might be stumbling about, feeling sick, in a corridor now full of smoke, and he had no option but to drop the fireproof doors. The passengers might be cut off in an area heavily used. The fire-fighting squad would be tackling it, but with smoke and perhaps total darkness and a heaving sea it would be very alarming. And there were materials in the hairdressing salons that could burn very fiercely.
He could limit the area because the main fire-resisting bulkheads – about 131 feet apart – with the fire-resisting boundary doors, divided the ship from the keel to the top of the superstructure into a number of fire-containing sections. The sprinkler system presumably wouldn’t have put out a fire thriving on oils, but at least it had given early warning.
Tomazos could also limit the flow of air feeding the fire by closing down the forced draft ventilation and the air conditioning. But it was very worrying, for the hairdressing salons were in an area full of old-fashioned inflammable wood – the public rooms and cabins . . . He was frustrated greatly by the central position of the salons. They were in the bowels of the ship, but, worse, were amidships. A fire in the stern of the ship would be unable to spread forward because of the wind caused by the motion of the ship. If there had been a fire in the bows Tomazos would have reversed the Areopagus to cause her wind to drive the fire away from the ship. But a fire amidships and five decks down and in a giant storm which made experience seaman clutch and crawl and fall . . . It was something to be afraid of. He recalled the devastating fires at sea which were part of maritime history – the Georges Philippar, Empire Windrush, Morro Castle, Lakonia and L’Atlantique . . . Later he learned that two of the crew had seen flames and had battered at the locked door to get at the fire – a mistaken heroism as it had allowed air to flow into the salons.
Mollon lurched over to Tomazos and informed him – Tomazos was staring ahead through the small circle of glass which was swept clear of the rain and violent spray – ‘The bleedin’ gogglebox has gone.’
‘Which one?’
‘The twelve mile.’
The twelve-nautical-mile radar set was a valve set, 1955 model, and therefore inherently less reliable that the subsequent transistorized sets.
Mollon persisted, ‘I could use a drink. I feel terrible. Shall we start praying?’
‘Change the scale of the forty-eight-mile down to twelve.’
‘What for, mate?’
‘There’s another ship.’
It was almost totally dark on the bridge. There was just the bright red of the telegraph and a glow from the other radar set, still functioning. Tomazos could see that the other officers were unashamedly holding onto pieces of structure or leaning heavily. The Areopagus rose up like an elevator, sometimes already heeled, dropped as if a cable had been cut, then yawed . . . She was handling rather badly, or else it was the worst storm he had ever been in.
He asked Yannopoulos: ‘How is she?’
The seaman said, ‘I think the port propeller has lost power. She is very heavy to hold on course.’
‘The sea is pushing her to port.’
‘That is true, sir.’
‘Are you tired?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘It is quite a storm.’
Tomazos was very anxious about the other ship, that spot of light identified by an electric instrument . . . He had carried out a manoeuvre dictated by the other vessel’s relative heading. But she had ‘disappeared’ and he was now in no position to learn if she had also manoeuvred. There were no steering or sailing rules which provided that one vessel should manoeuvre and the other should not. She was still not visible on the alternative radar, which was functioning now on the twelve-nautical-mile scale. It could be that she had about now passed the Areopagus, but Tomazos had a superstitious seaman’s acknowledgement of luck, and luck was running badly. The fire was not extinguished, and the fracture would have been very disturbing in calm seas – or even in harbour – let alone in this . . . In theory the two ships had met end-on (but at a very safe distance o
f twenty-five miles). Visually this was defined by Rule 18 of the Regulations as, in day light, when each ship saw the masts of the other in a line with her own, and by night, as when each vessel was in a position so as to see both the sidelights of the other. He, Tomazos, had seen that this was the position at a distance of as much as twenty-five miles: he ‘saw’ that the other ship was end-on by use of an instrument. Rule 18 said each vessel meeting end-on should move to the right. Tomazos had done so, and had then gradually and naturally made a return to the original course. But suppose the massive sea was strong enough to push the other ship off course? It would be in this direction. And sometimes Rule 22 prompted an alteration to port to avoid cutting across ahead – although not, surely, at a distance as great as twenty-five miles: the tiniest alteration to starboard even by one ship should be more than adequate. Had the other ship ‘seen’ the Areopagus – at all? Before her three degree turn to starboard? After returning to her original heading? Did her officers bother at all in this vast ocean to plot the relative movement of another ship – a tiresome exercise in these most uncomfortable conditions, and involving twenty minutes mathematics after two observations say half an hour apart?
He returned to his position by the small circle of glass, spattered with violent rain and sea spray as fast as it was cleared. He had just done so when the sea caused the Areopagus to rise sixty feet as she pitched, and to shudder. Tomazos clutched onto the nearest piece of metal, which happened to be the dial indicating the starboard engine revolution. Behind him he heard someone fall and a cry from Makris: ‘The captain’s fallen.’ This was followed by the master’s angry retort as he struggled to his feet: ‘I am in no need of assistance, Mr. Third.’