by Voyage East- A stirring tale of the last great days of the Merchant Navy (retail) (epub)
‘Oh, look!’ Mrs Saddler drew our attention as she stood wide-eyed at the top of the pool ladder, her voluptuous figure sending a sudden surge of lust among us. Her plump arm was outstretched and we saw the dolphins coming in from the beam, easily outstripping the ship as they darted into our curling bow wave, breaching and gambolling as we crowded the rail to watch. It was a common enough sight, but Mrs Saddler’s enthusiasm was infectious and I found the touch of her arm beside me profoundly disturbing.
‘Isn’t that wonderful? They’re so beautiful…’ She turned to me and I noticed her eyes were warm and brown and a damp lock of hair trailed down on her breasts. ‘Don’t you think so?’ Her skin, I noticed, was lightly dusted with freckles, and this suddenly made her seem younger and infinitely desirable. I nodded stupidly and turned away, making for the pool to escape the effect she was having. Mike remained chatting to her husband who was, I later learned, something to do with the British Council, and then she joined them, lifting her arms and vigorously drying her hair with a towel.
We met the southerly breeze that afternoon, a warm haboob that told us we were approaching the end of the Red Sea. On either hand, unseen beyond the horizon, the shores began to close in. The area was littered with dangers: islets, rocks and reefs, most with Arab names but some with the anglicised titles of the Admiralty’s hydrographic surveyors. Thus Abu Ail was known as Quoin Island and the narrow and dramatic passage between its precipitous cliffs and those of its neighbour, Jabal Zuqar, was called Hell’s Gates. It was an apt enough title, for the rocks and beaches of Jabal Zuqar were black, of volcanic origin, and held upon their sinister sand the remains of an old Liberty ship.
The following morning the lights of Mocha were fading on the eastern horizon and beyond, the Tihamah Plain shimmered in the refracted air while a ghostly dawn broke over the distant Yemeni Mountains. Daylight filtered through a gossamer overcast. Arabia and Africa drew together, crowding our passage and constricting the exit from the Red Sea into a narrow gut, the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, the Gate of Tears. Set against the Yemeni shore lay the island of Perim, once an important coaling station, beyond which the Indian Ocean replenishes the Red Sea with an indraught of water. In the main body of the strait the Red Sea chokes out its salty overflow. Less water flows out than in, for it is the high rate of evaporation that causes the dense salinity of the Red Sea.
The strait was crowded with shipping as we rounded Perim, bright spots of colour on the perfect blue of the sea. We swung east, hugging the brown coast of the Aden Protectorate, great ramparts of fissured, arid rock whose jagged summits rose 2,500 feet against a sky of cobalt blue. The wind had backed, a cool and welcome headwind fresh from the Indian Ocean that set the sea dancing with white horses. Spirits rose as the temperature on board fell and the prospect of mail from home drew nearer. But our relief was short-lived, for we were ordered to anchor in the bay to wait for a berth. On three sides of us the barren peaks of desolate volcanic rock beat back the brazen sun so that one’s head ached with the intensity of it. It was hard to see why the Romans had named this coast Arabia Felix, Happy Arabia, even though the comparatively moist ocean breezes stimulated the growth of vegetation, particularly coffee. For us the heat was terrific and it seemed that, if we waited long, we would share the fate of the Esso Norway lying less than a mile away. She had suffered severe fire damage following an explosion. Her boats were missing except for one which hung forlornly from a single davit fall; her rudder was gone, torn off when, to save her, she had been beached. This was corroborated by the marks of a waterline that ran obliquely up her sides from her forefoot to her afterdeck. She was quite a new ship, the pilot said when he boarded, but was to be scrapped.
‘Anyone killed?’ asked the Mate.
‘Yes. Three men.’
That made four deaths we had heard of within a few days.
By late afternoon we had secured to a bunkering pontoon off Steamer Point under the peak of the great volcano. Although we had a few cases of cargo for Aden, we had come for fuel oil. At 16 knots we averaged 384 nautical miles per twenty-four hour day at a consumption of 30 tons, and replenishment was a matter of importance. Antigone carried all her oil, fuel and fresh water in double-bottom tanks; these heavy weights placed low in the ship improved stability and were in an area where the structure of the ship consisted of webs, intercostals and frames which served to minimise the ‘free surface effect’. This, which might better be described as a cumulative sloshing, was a potential danger if not restricted. Unrestrained liquids, free to slosh back and forth under the inducement of a heavily rolling hull, can suddenly rush to the low side, producing a sudden shift in the ship’s centre of gravity, increasing the list which in turn throws more liquid to the low side, exerting a violent capsizing moment unless slowed and subdivided by barriers. The whole bottom of the ship was doubled, and in these spaces, subdivided by bulkheads and the internal framework of the ship, the lifeblood of Antigone was stored until wanted. Oil and water tanks were separated by narrow void spaces called ‘cofferdams’, so that the two commodities could not be mixed, and a substantial reserve was always maintained.
For the Chief Engineer, Mr Kennington, bunkering was a ‘workout’, a feverish rush of activity to fill one tank to the brim and switch to the next so that no overflows took place but the pumping rate was undiminished. Since each tank had a narrow breather-pipe to the upper deck, overflows could be messily polluting, staining immaculate teak decks and stirring the old antipathy between engine-room and deck departments. Kennington and his staff were therefore on their mettle under the broiling sun, aware that China Dick disliked delay. The rest of us haggled with the bum-boatmen, for Aden was a free port, full of those cheap Japanese consumer goods just then reaching western markets and signifying the beginning of Far East industrial ascendancy. Perhaps we were among the first to recognise their quality; that they had ceased to be a joke. A junior officer like myself on about £90 per month could not afford a pair of Barr and Stroud binoculars, but a serviceable pair of Japanese glasses could be had from the bum-boatmen of Aden for a fiver. Or, one’s cabin could be fitted out with an Akai stereo-system for a modest outlay. What was more, the bum-boatmen would barter odds and ends of currency, so that one could purchase in Straits, Hong Kong or U.S. dollars, European notes or Japanese yen. It was odd to watch such modern goods being bought and sold in so primitive a manner for, unlike the vendors in the canal, the Aden Arabs did not come aboard unless it was with a knife in their hand to settle-up with someone trying to cheat them. For the most part they bobbed alongside in their boats, opened cartons of radios and cameras and awaited trade with the aid of a little self-advertisement.
‘You want, Johnnie… hey! You want? Camera? Binocular? Hey! Special for you Johnnie… radio… very good radio… I make for you special price!’
‘Okay. How much?’
‘No. You have look-see.’
I leaned over the rail and caught the line thrown over the after well-deck rail. Next to me Zee Pang Yun, the Old Man’s personal Tiger was arguing over a pair of binoculars. I pulled on the line, half-way along which was secured a large rush basket. The radio was inside and I pulled it out and turned it over. Despite myself, I noticed the numerous wavebands, the fine tuning and the tone control. It would make a welcome addition to the sparse furnishings of my cabin. I leaned back over the rail. Below, the bum-boatman, still holding the other end of the line, looked up.
‘How much?’
‘Twenty pound.’
‘No.’ I shook my head vigorously and replaced the item in the basket, lowering it over the rail. The Arab made no attempt to pull his end of the line and the disputed radio swung between us.
‘What you pay? Eh? English money? Straits dollar?’ There was an edge of aggression now. I knew I had to take the offensive.
‘English money. Hey, you say you make me special price. Twenty pound is not special price.’
‘How much you pay?’
‘Eight pounds.’
There was a disgusted tugging on the line and recognisable Anglo-Saxon floated up amid a torrent of Arabic abuse. Next to me Zee had reached a similar stage in his negotiations. He was swearing in Cantonese, leaning outboard and grinning as he shouted ‘Too fucking much, savvy? Fucking Arab robbing bastard…’
‘Hey you fuck me, eh? I fuck you, bastard Chinaman…’ It was a great comment on international relations that we were driven to such extremes, but there was little real malice in it, rather a series of ritual posturing. My own line jerked tight. I still wanted that radio and the bum-boatmen knew it; he could afford the Parthian shot. ‘American ship comes tomorrow. I sell everything…’
‘Okay you give me special price in English money.’
‘Fifteen pounds.’
‘Too much!’
We compromised at twelve, both affecting disgust yet both having done well, the Arab probably better than I. Zee was less easily satisfied and stopped frequently to report in asides to his countrymen, who were milling about in vests and thin cotton shorts, their feet in sandals that flapped on the hot steel deck.
‘Ay-ah…’ Zee consulted his friends for a last time. His broad face cracked into a mirthful grin, revealing his gold fillings; he had reached a last price and hoisted up the binoculars again. I was busy sending down twelve pounds in my own basket.
We took less than six hours to bunker, three of them in the sudden, surprising chill of the desert night. That evening the Mate announced that China Dick intended breaking with tradition to the extent of altering the watches. The Mate himself was going on day-work, office hours, the better to supervise the maintenance work that could be undertaken during the nine days’ run across the Indian Ocean. The Third Mate was to stand the twelve-to-four, the Second Mate the four-to-eight and I was to have the eight-to-twelve. Each of us would be assigned a midshipman, in my case the young greenhorn whose acquaintance I had first made over a hydrometer and a bucket of foul water from Vittoria Dock.
We went to stations and slipped from our berth, discharging the pilot and swinging eastwards round Ras Marshaq. It was nearly midnight when we took our departure and China Dick watched me plot the position on the chart and the abbreviation ‘Dep’ in squared brackets next to it.
‘Well, Mister, you’ll be keeping the eight-to-twelve then.’
‘Yes sir.’ I turned to face the portly figure in the white drill shirt with the four gold bands of ultimate responsibility upon his epaulettes.
‘D’you think you can teach that young man some navigation?’ He nodded to the pale figure of the midshipman wandering uncertainly on the port bridge-wing.
‘I’ll do my best, sir.’
‘Well you’d better go and teach him how to keep a bloody lookout while I write up the night orders.’
He lifted his glasses from around his neck and laid them on the chart table. I recognised them as the pair Zee Pang Yun had bought that afternoon at Steamer Point. I wondered how much the Old Man had had to pay for them.
The Third Mate and his midshipman relieved us at midnight. When Bob had acquired his night vision and noted all the ships in sight I lingered for a few moments’ gossip.
‘Mike’s a bit pissed off,’ he said, stroking his new and itching beard.
‘Didn’t he get any mail in Aden?’
‘No.’
Flying Fish Sailors
Before us lay a nine-day ocean passage of some three-and-a-half thousand miles between Aden and Pulo Penang. Initially we shaped our course obliquely across the Gulf of Aden, raising the grey bluff of Cape Elefante the following day. The Somali coast to the eastwards of this mighty rock hummock was high, a vast upland plateau extending to Cape Guardafui, beyond which lay the Indian Ocean. Refreshingly strong katabatic winds streamed down from the Horn of Africa, relatively cooler air drawn off the land to replace the rising updraughts of the sun-warmed air at sea level.
Cape Guardafui, the Cape of Spices of the ancients, was marked by a lighthouse, extinguished on that first night-watch as I stood the eight-to-twelve with the young Midshipman.
‘I wonder if they’ve been eaten,’ I remarked, giving up the search and putting my binoculars into the bridge box.
‘What?’ asked the Midshipman incredulously.
‘Eaten,’ I repeated. ‘Soon after the Italians built the thing, native tribesmen attacked it and were supposed to have eaten the keepers.’
‘Bloody hell.’
I went into the chart-room, where the high cliffs of the Cape glowed hard-edged on the radar-screen, and fixed our position, recording the fact on the slate and adding the symbol
‘Astronomical navigation,’ I began bravely, ‘is based on the pre-Galilean misconception that the earth is the centre of the universe.’ I could almost hear his brain coping with the acceptance of this great lie as we leaned on the rail and stared at the horizon. Above our heads the vault of the sky was a mass of stars, a perfect night for the elucidation of the great nautical mysteries.
‘As you can see, all the heavenly bodies – sun, moon and stars – can easily be imagined as moving relatively on the inside of a vast sphere, which we call the celestial sphere. Okay?’
‘So far, sir.’ I sensed a wariness that it was not all going to be so easy.
‘Good. Now just as our position on the surface of the earth is located by latitude and longitude, so it may be on the celestial sphere. Up there!’ I pointed dramatically overhead. ‘It’s called our Zenith, and is point Z of the PZX triangle.’ I could see the starlit frown smooth with the realisation that the thing had no visible existence.
‘And if we extend the earth’s axis through the poles to a point above them, then we have the P of our triangle. Point X is the sun or star which we observe with sextant and chronometer, and the solution of one or more of the component parts of the PZX triangle helps us to determine our position.’
My arm swept across the great blackboard of the sky from our zenith to a point close to Polaris and out towards the great coruscating glow of Canopus low on the southern horizon, where the refraction of low altitude was producing spectacular flashes of blue and red from its ice-water centre.
‘But, just as a single line of bearing, such as that radar bearing I took off Cape Guardafui, will not give you an exact position unless crossed with another piece of information such as a second bearing or, in the case we have just taken, the distance off the Cape by radar, so a single observation of a star will not give you a position.’
‘Then how do we…? I mean you get one at noon, don’t you?’
‘Ah. Good question. That is a piece of legerdemain, a nautical conceit which we can look at later, but it is conditional upon a good observation of our longitude early in the morning. We make an allowance for the run between the morning longitude and the noon latitude and, hey presto! A noon position to use for calculating the day’s run to keep the passengers happy. It’s not perfect, but substantially accurate. The best fix is obtained by stellar observations at twilight…’
‘When you shoot more than one star at the same time?’ He was a quick-witted lad; I would have to watch myself.
‘Except that we “observe”; “shooting” things is strictly for Hollywood.’
‘Oh.’
‘Well, that’s enough for tonight. It’s nearly one-bell. Nip down and call the next watch.’
He left me alone for a few minutes. Ahead the pale half-moon of the forecastle bulwarks showed the dark shape of the lookout pacing his lonely grating in the very eyes of the ship. Beyond, the horizon stretched away dark and empty now. I went into that chart-room to complete writing up the log-slate.
‘Okay dere, Fourth, I got de tea.’ Wakelin, the second man in my watch, brought the pot of tea onto the bridge. He had stood the first two hours of the eight-to-twelve as look-out, the second two hours in the seamen’s mess on st
and-by.
‘Thanks. Nip down and see if the Middy’s put the Third Mate on the shake.’
‘Okey-doke.’
After the change of watch I came off the bridge to make my round, a quick, torch-lit tour of the upper decks to see that all was well, reporting the fact from the gyro-room where our Sperry master gyrocompass hummed and from which we regularly verified the readings of the bridge repeaters. I made my way back to the boat-deck, exchanging a few words with a passing engineer and avoiding the passengers, still revelling at the bar. I was pleasantly sleepy and almost bumped into Mrs Saddler leaning alone on the promenade-deck rail.
‘Hullo,’ she said coolly, turning and leaning back, her elbows on the rail. She wore a thin white crepe dress with a stole of the same material, caught on her shoulder with a brooch. The noise of male laughter came through the jalousies of the adjacent Chief Engineer’s cabin.
‘Oh, hullo.’ I paused briefly as she smiled.
‘They’re all drinking,’ she said in answer to my unasked question. ‘D’you have a cigarette? I don’t like to go back and disturb them.’
I fished the packet from my breast pocket and a lock of her hair brushed my hand as she bent over the lighter flame. She caught my eyes on her cleavage as she smiled her thanks and her perfume completed my confusion. She turned back to the rail and stared out over the sea while, I, hesitating, lit a cigarette and leaned beside her. Beneath us the wake rushed, hissing past.
‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you all the other day, when we saw those dolphins.’
‘Oh.’ I recalled the incident. ‘Were we embarrassed?’
‘Well, I said they were beautiful. I suppose it was a silly thing to say to a lot of men.’
‘Why? We’re not all boors.’ I thought of the Mate and the sensitive person beneath the professional carapace. ‘Just a bit different, I suppose.’
‘I suppose so.’
I could not tell her that her physical presence aroused us; that every day the voyage lasted she became increasingly desirable. I felt her elbow brush mine. Or could I?