Then Hanslip had us all file out and reassemble in some sort of a broom-cupboard-cum-store-room where he gave us each a brown envelope.
‘I want you, Tomkins, on board as soon as possible.’
‘Aye, aye,’ replied Tomkins taking one end of the envelope, the traditional ‘sir’ conspicuous by its absence.
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ responded Hanslip, still retaining his grip on the other end. ‘We may as well start as we intend to go on,’ he added, perhaps catching something in Alan Tomkins’s eye.
‘Yes indeed, we may, in which case I am Mister Tomkins.’ For a moment the two men stood in a rather ridiculous tableau, both glaring at one another, a thin brown envelope between them. They were both of a similar height, both ruddy in complexion and I felt an almost prescient sensation that I was witnessing the beginnings of a long-running tussle as to primacy – but perhaps that too I have added in the years that have passed since that afternoon. One never quite knows where memory is concerned.
Eventually Hanslip grinned, with patent insincerity I think I can say with a certain amount of conviction, and let go of his end of the envelope. ‘Of course, Mr Tomkins.’ He turned to me and Nat. ‘Mr Adams and Mr Gardner, your special orders. If you two could be aboard by the end of the week your accommodation should be ready by then.
And that is how the three of us found ourselves shipmates aboard your Daddy’s yacht.
*
It’s getting late, d’you want me to go on? All right.
*
When I got aboard that Thursday evening, picking my way over the greased steel wire ropes and the general muck that accumulates on the deck of a vessel newly out of dry-dock, the first figure to greet me was the ship-keeper. He reminded me of the narrator so frequently employed in the short stories of W.W. Jacobs, though he was less obliging and to my question as to where Mr Tomkins might be found he merely jerked his thumb over his shoulder and left me to find my own way down into what turned out to be a surprisingly cosy, mahogany-panelled saloon that I knew instinctively Hanslip would soon be calling ‘the ward-room’. Tomkins was not there but he had heard me and hailed me from his cabin, one of several that opened off the saloon and was separated by a sliding door.
‘Come in.’ He gestured for me to sit on the bunk, indicated half a dozen bottles of India Pale Ale, a bottle-opener and excused himself for a few minutes. I opened a bottle and drank out of it while he finished some paper-work, a fact he indicated by blowing out his cheeks, turning to me with a smile and reaching for a bottle of IPA.
‘Well, here we are,’ he said pleasantly, raising his bottle to chink mine. He sat in his collar-less shirt sleeves, his blue serge trousers held up by both belt and braces – a sailing-ship man to his finger-tips. ‘So, on the basis that we may as well start as we mean to go on,’ he announced in a tone of mock gravity, ‘what are we to call ourselves, Mr Adams?’
‘I’m happy to call you whatever you wish: “sir,” “chief,” “Mr Tomkins”…’ I ran out of options.
‘How about Alan?’
I think I grinned. ‘I’m Ned, short for Edward, but please not Ted. I’m pretty sure Nat Gardner will fall in line.’
‘He’ll have to,’ Tomkins said. ‘Ned and Nat. The crew’ll have some fun with that. Better use rank in front of them. Chief, Second and Third…’ He paused for a moment, then ran on, ‘I expect our esteemed leader will cling to his naval rank. I noticed we are all engaged as “officers” rather than “mates,” though both he and the rest of us will have to sign the Articles as master and mates.’
‘He’s a reservist, I presume,’ I said. ‘My instructions said that uniform would be worn once we left British waters.’
‘Yes. I take it you have one. I’ve had to pay Silver’s a visit though, to be fair, the charge will be reimbursed. It’s all part of the mystery, but once we appear off the Norwegian coast and the news is out, we have to make a good showing. His Nibs has obviously given all this a good deal of thought.’
‘Or Commander Hanslip has insisted,’ I added.
Alan Tomkins laughed. ‘Yeah. I had the unhappy experience of working with his type during the Great War. I hope we can cure him of the worst excesses they seem to indulge in and rub along together.’
‘I hope so too.’
‘Seen anything of Nat?’ Tomkins asked, giving the shortened form of Gardner’s name a certain flourish to match the larger-than-life chap to whom it applied.
‘No, sorry.’
‘Oh well. He’s got until tomorrow, but we need him here soon, there’s a good deal to be done and he needs to sign the Articles by then. The crew sign-on on Monday morning and if all goes well we’ll be off by this time next weekend. Have you signed-on?’ I shook my head. ‘Dock Street tomorrow morning then. Hanslip’s opened them, you can pop in at nine and then get back here for morning smoke-o. I want those topgallant yards sent up tomorrow. A good introduction to sail, or a re-run of school-days. She only carries a thimble-full of steam coal…’
‘What about engineers?’
‘Monday. I’ve poached some from my last ship which was not a sailing ship but was sold to the Belgians under our feet. Good men going to waste.’
‘You were master?’
‘Perceptive of you. Yes indeed I was; Master under God, Mr Adams, until He deserted me…’ he paused for a moment, looking round his hutch of a cabin. ‘Still, this is a bit out of the ordinary, though I have no faith in this Blavatskoya nonsense.’ I forbore correcting him. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘there’s an interesting folio of charts on the bridge. That’s your domain, so perhaps you can tell me where we are off to just by guessing. According to the rather spare information in my secret orders, the old bat Blavatskoya said something about a white island. I thought that rather rich since most islands in the Arctic, and there seem to be rather a lot of them, will be white. Any ideas?’
‘No, none whatsoever. As I had a day to kick my heels I did think of making enquiries at the RGS…’
‘RGS?’
‘Royal Geographical Society…’
‘Ah yes, of course, stupid of me.’
‘But then I thought I might give the game away and that all would be revealed in time…’
Our chat was interrupted by a clatter on the companionway and a booming ‘Anyone at home?’ Two minutes later Nat Gardner had joined me on the chief officer’s bunk with one of Tomkins’s bottles in his over-large fist. I seem to recollect another half an hour’s fairly aimless chat at the end of which Tomkins announced that since we now owed him a drink we should all go ashore to the nearest pub and find something to eat. During a pretty indigestible meat pie, peas and mashed potatoes, Tomkins told us that he wanted us both to take advantage of the ship being dead over the weekend and get to know her, particularly her rigging. ‘I’ll walk you round and you can watch the t’gallants going aloft. If you’ve got any balls you can go up yourselves and check the riggers seize all the shackles pins and secure the foot-ropes and Flemish horses. Between you you’d better check the seizings on the shroud battens too,’ he went on. I recalled the solid wooden battens that crossed the vessel’s shrouds in place of ratlines, making going aloft much easier, even if it did increase windage and looked clumsy. I found myself thankful for that. He finished off with something to the effect that he’d like to get the ship in good order before the Old Man arrived, adding that that wouldn’t be ‘until he’s got running hot water and a hot and running steward.’
After a bare breakfast of coffee and toast, the following morning found Gardner and I on deck in a fresh breeze under a grey sky. ‘This ain’t no Indian Ocean,’ Nat said out of the corner of his mouth as we watched the riggers prepare the fore-topgallant yard for running aloft. It was a long wooden spar, spruce, I supposed, lighter by far than the lower yards, which were of steel, but it was secured to the upmost section of the foremast by its parrel by lunch time, along with most of its gear – braces, lifts and so forth - and was followed in the afternoon by the main topgallant.
Back in the pub that evening Tomkins declared himself satisfied with the day’s work and asked us a few rudimentary questions about the running gear, to see to what degree we had profited from our labours. Thanks not merely due to the day’s travail but also to my Conway training, I proved up to this catechism. Gardner, who had attended the Worcester, our rival training ship on the Thames, also passed this viva voce examination with ease. I wondered vaguely if my father could have understood the complexities of the rigging of a sailing ship, but soon forgot him when Nat announced that he was going ‘up west’ the following evening.
‘You have a floosie in tow, or shall you be trawling?’
‘Ha, ha,’ grinned Nat, tapping the side of his nose with his index-finger.
‘I’m not joking, Mr Gardner,’ Tomkins said, suddenly serious and pulling a pipe from his pocket. ‘As far as I know there’s no doctor on this voyage and if you cop a dose of something unpleasant, you’ll have to submit to my ministrations.’
‘I intend taking the charming Doris for a turn around the floor at the Café Royal.’
I laughed and Tomkins stopped tamping the tobacco in his pipe-bowl. ‘Who?’
‘His Lordship’s private secretary,’ I said, half enviously, half admiringly. ‘I noticed her giving you the glad-eye.’
‘Stone the crows,’ said Tomkins before resuming the interminable fiddling that pipe-smokers find so absorbing.
‘Still,’ I said, probably with some residual half-thought about my own father, ‘given he’s providing everything else on this expedition, I’m surprised Southmoore’s not giving us a doctor. Wasn’t there some talk about bringing bodies back?’
‘Good Lord, yes. I had clean forgotten about that,’ admitted Tomkins, excusing himself by adding, ‘had my eye on too many other concerns getting the ship ready.’
‘I hope he doesn’t expect us to…’
‘There’ll be someone to attend to that,’ said Nat confidently.
‘How d’you know,’ we began before both of us knew the answer. ‘You’ve already wined and dined the lovely Doris who has revealed all,’ I guessed.
Nat grinned. ‘Well, I know a good deal more than you chaps about the Andrée expedition. Apparently after this weird White Russian contacted her boss she had to prepare a note about it all. She knows pretty much everything about our mission, it seems, though I was sworn to secrecy over my entrée,’ he grinned again.
‘Well, who is this Andrée fellow? I was under the impression that this was a Swedish matter, though Andrée sounds distinctly French. His Lordship mentioned Sweden, didn’t he?’ asked Tomkins.
‘Yes, but he mentioned Andrée too,’ I said. We both looked expectantly at Nat.
‘He was a Swede and in 1897, with backing from Alfred Nobel, he undertook to fly over the North Pole in a balloon with two others. They left from Spitsbergen and simply disappeared. After they had vanished all sorts of stories circulated. It was their second attempt, they were ill-prepared – Doris mentioned they took evening dress and champagne, intending to land near the Pole and drink the health of the King of Sweden/Norway as it was then. Several search expeditions were launched, apparently, in Greenland, Siberia and around Spitsbergen, but nothing was found. Then this barmy Russian woman…’
‘His Lordship doesn’t think Madame Blavatskoya is barmy,’ I interjected mischievously. In fact I entirely agreed with Nat, but felt we should try and take the matter seriously.
‘Is that it?’ Tomkins asked. ‘That’s your excuse for joining the ship late?’
‘I wasn’t late,’ responded a suddenly deflated Nat.
‘You were later than Ned here.’
‘Well, if I hadn’t been late you wouldn’t have a clue what we were about to embark upon.’
‘I am about to embark upon six or more months of fully paid employment,’ Tomkins said, extinguishing the umpteenth match and dropping it into the ash-tray. ‘Ours not to reason why…’
I remember the weekend that followed as one of those odd periods that will be familiar to all ships’ officers. The vessel was dead with all but the three of us on board, plus the old ship-keeper who kept his own counsel and emerged like a badger after sunset, and any casual labour we employed, such as the riggers and the last of the dry-dock labourers who made a vain attempt to finish the paint and varnish work and clear our decks in decidedly inclement weather. At the end of the working day these men knocked-off, of course, and the Alert fell silent and the cold seeped back into her as night fell. Our food was inadequate and our evening meals in that pub, the name of which I have forgotten, were monotonous and dreadful. I could have gone home, but that did not seem fair on Alan Tomkins, so we left Nat to make an attempt on the virtue of Doris and got down to the serious business of preparation. In that sense the weekend was a little oasis of contentment. Despite the cold, the lack of food or crew, there were tasks to undertake and we undertook them, working through a list Tomkins drew up and many tasks of which were entirely practical. I found I got on with Alan Tomkins. He might have been a difficult man to deal with since he had so recently been in command of his own ship, but he seemed to bear the world no ill-will and simply got on with what required his attention: the complete professional.
With all the yards crossed I made a point of ascending both the fore and main masts and working my way out to each yard-arm so that I could identify all the ropes, lines and chains that made up the lifts, braces, sheets, tacks and so on. In truth the little barque was not over complex, for her two forward masts only carried courses, upper and lower topsails and a single topgallant, while her mizen carried a gaff headed spanker with a triangular topsail that ran vertically up the mizen topmast on a jackstay. It was pretty clear she would be no flyer under sail, though she had a pretty clipper-bow and a gilded fiddle-head. Her bow-sprit and jib-boom carried three sails, a foretopmast stay-sail and an inner and an outer jib, and she set a couple of staysails between the masts.
Down on deck I tried to cram into my head the location of the belaying pins to which each one led, so that I might find them at sea, in the dark. The rigging itself had a logic, the layout of the belaying pins, though standard to British merchant sailing vessels, took some mastering. Alan Tomkins assured me that others would usually be around to attend to the detail, but I was driven by the desire not to be outdone. Somehow that quizzing by Hanslip over my lack of square-rig experience during the process of my interview had exposed an ignorance I was oddly ashamed of. Anyway, by the time our odd little idyll came to an end on Monday morning, and new faces began to appear with remarkable speed, I was reasonably competent and confident.
I had signed-on in Dock Street as Tomkins had bid me on the Friday. There were two oddities with which I was not familiar about this; the first was that I discovered that I was signing-on a vessel registered as a yacht – perfectly understandable under the circumstances and not, in itself, of any note. Your father was a member of several prestigious yacht clubs but was unable to fly fancy ensigns without drawing attention to the vessel, so we sailed under some club of which Hanslip was a member, eschewed any burgee and would wear the common-or-garden red duster of a merchantman. The second odd thing was that in signing-on that Friday, the first time I encountered the remainder of the crew was as they came aboard in dribs and drabs the following Monday afternoon, most of the firemen and seamen the worse for wear. Nothing new in that, of course, though, ironically it marked us more a merchantman than a yacht! As for Hanslip, our Old Man, he arrived in a car around eleven and immediately announced an officer’s conference in the saloon at noon. It was, he added, the time that a proper ship’s routine would start, the ensign would be hoisted, officers would commence deck-watches and – his words, not mine – ‘the routines and discipline of a well-run vessel would prevail’.
As far as the crew was concerned no such thing was likely to occur much before we got to sea, but the officers, engineers, the Marconi man, the scientists – who all looked like under-graduates – and a rather elderly gent wh
o turned out to be a doctor, all obeyed. Your father must have had a late change of heart, or perhaps your dad was moved to an act of charity as our quack seemed to have enjoyed better days and bore no resemblance to my father. Southmoore’s staff reporter and photographer were not expected until the afternoon we were due to sail on the high-water and were, in fact, late. We had actually left the berth and an instruction that they were to join us at Blyth, our last coaling port, but they made-it in a taxi while we were going through the lock and so joined by a ‘pier-head jump,’ which seemed to amuse them if it infuriated Hubert Henry Hanslip.
Anyway, I have run ahead of my narrative. H.H.H, had us all – the officers, that is - assembled in the saloon that Monday forenoon and welcomed us all, even though all of us had joined the vessel before him. He pointed out that we were bound upon a scientific expedition and hoped to return by the autumn. In the unlikely event of being trapped in the ice and forced to winter in high latitudes, we would receive a lump sum above our pay in compensation. No mention was made of the recovery of bodies, of Madame Blavatskoya, or Mr Andrée, and it was clear that only the three of us, plus Hanslip, had any inkling of the truth behind Lord Southmoore’s project, though it turned out later that the old quack did. Indeed, it was quickly apparent that, until the journalist and the photographer jumped aboard, no-one beyond this privileged quintet knew of the connection with The Courier, though our actual departure was photographed by an unobtrusive young man with a large plate camera who had been given permission to come on board and take some evocative shots of our rig and the curious collection of individuals accumulating on board. Someone said he worked for the Woolwich Gazette, or the Tilbury Times; others that he was a ship-lover curious about our not so lofty spars – an increasing rarity on the Thames. Anyway, as cover it worked well. Southmoore got some good shots of the ship preparing for her voyage. Expedition vessels like ours were few and far between after the Great War and we carried about us a little of the glamour of Scott, Shackleton and Worsley, who had himself made such a voyage the year before.
Cold Truth Page 3