Anyway, the crew spent the next couple of days washing down paintwork and sending the sails up. We didn’t get the filth off the deck until we got into the river, but it was now and in the next few days that the companions with whom we would share our lives for the next few months made their appearance. I can now only properly recall those who became significant in what followed. Among the assembly of officers in the saloon, besides Hanslip and we three mates, Dr Crichton proved to be a dry old stick in every sense of the word and our chief engineer, Owen Jones, a Welshman of memorable rotundity and an equable temperament such that I have never come across in any man, before or since. He simply loved life, even the sea-life, which he regarded with what in any other man would be a suspect geniality and seemed incapable of being defeated by life’s trials. He had been recruited by Alan Tomkins when Hanslip asked Tomkins if he knew of a decent and reliable chief engineer and they were old ship-mates. Jones’s assistant, the second engineer, was a diminutive Geordie named Rayne who, one felt, might collapse at any moment, such was the fragility of his physical appearance; in fact he proved incredibly tough, utterly suited to life in the ferocious heats of a boiler-room, though the Arctic cold would test him. Others I can introduce as they appear in the narrative, their characters had less to do with the outcome of our voyage, though the Bosun, a Cockney seaman whose name escapes me, was a tower of strength and soon after our departure licked his deck-hands into a half-decent ship’s company. There were a dozen of them altogether, a very generous complement for a small auxiliary barque like ours, varying from several able-seamen, all of whom had served in sail, down to one deck-boy, James Dell, fresh out of a school in Poplar. Since we would not spend all our time under steam, the engine room boasted just three greasers, the boiler-room three firemen and a trimmer. The deckhands had signed an agreement to assist ‘with the machinery if and when required.’ Apart from the Bosun, we also carried a carpenter, a tall North Chinese named Mr Wang who spoke excellent English and lived in Limehouse.
Our wants were attended to by a steward, a cook and a boy, Hanslip himself attending to the vessel’s victualing stores for reasons of petty aggrandisement. I got the impression his relationship with the steward was one of long-standing.
As for Hanslip, he was full of himself. He handed out specially made cap-badges to we three mates. They bore The Courier’s winged Hermes in gold wire in a similarly wrought wreath of laurel surmounted by the naval crown and must have cost a bob-or-two but I suspected they were as far as he could go in setting the sort of tone he envisaged, having been denied a blue ensign or a club burgee in the interests of secrecy. After a rather boring pep-talk of the kind I had heard aboard the Conway, he dismissed the meeting with the caveat: ‘deck officers stand fast,’ which was a bit over-the-top since we were seated but with the saloon cleared and the hovering steward kicked out of the adjacent pantry and all doors secured, he addressed Alan Tomkins, Nat Gardner and myself.
‘Still can’t tell you much,’ he confided, ‘but it’s no secret to you gentlemen that we’re bound north towards Spitsbergen. The vessel’s cleared outwards for Blyth and Norwegian ports, chiefly Bergen and perhaps Tromso and/or the Lofotens, anyway we’ll see. Much will depend upon the weather and our coal situation.
‘Now, I know you chaps have had no experience in polar seas, but I was in North Russia after the war with the naval forces supporting the Allied Intervention in nineteen and twenty, so if any of you are entertaining any anxieties on that score I can put them to rest.’ I remember him looking at each of the three of us as if expecting some murmur of appreciation, but he was out of luck. As if disappointed and seeking some sort of reaction, he went on, patting the saloon table, ‘the ship’s sound, heavily constructed as a sealer, ice strengthened forrard as you will have noted. As to her running, well, I want a smart ship; smart ships are happy ships…’ at this point I could almost hear Nat Gardner laughing, even quoting the dictum alongside our oh-so-serious commander, the words being a well-remembered chant with which the authorities running training ships like the Worcester and Conway justified the petty rules, the oppressive discipline, the dreadful food and the vicious corporal punishment meted out to over exuberant youth.
Anyway, it was all over at last and Hanslip rose and picked up his cap with its oak-leaf embossed peak, ostentatiously laid on the table before him as he had sat down and bearing the then unfamiliar new cap-badge.
‘You two,’ he said, pointing at Nat and me, ‘can come aft while we raise the ensign.’ I supposed he referred to our being familiar with the drill of saluting from our training-ship days, something he assumed Alan Tomkins knew nothing about. I caught the mate’s wry smile at being relieved of this small ceremony, but I knew better than Hanslip.
Apart from the stupid drama of the pier-head jump of the journalist, Geoffrey Hardacre, and the photographer, John Sykes, our departure was unremarkable. Our Trinity House Pilot saw us down-stream, disembarking off the Sunk lightvessel off Harwich about two o’clock in the afternoon. He gave us the customary wave from the pilot-cutter’s little motor-boat as he departed and called up to me – I was leaning over the rail to see him off – that we looked like ‘a bloody jumble-sale.’
As soon as we had lifted the pilot-ladder Commander Hanslip handed the ship over to me as it was my watch, the twelve-to-four. After a blustery week we found ourselves in a North Sea bereft of a breath of wind, so we proceeded north under power. Once clear of the Shipway which led us out of the sand-banks which make the navigation of the outer estuary of the Thames such a nightmare, we settled down and I had a couple of hours to take stock, pacing up and down the tiny wheelhouse with just an able seaman on the wheel for company.
Steam-ships are quiet and with no wind, the only noise was the swish of our forward progress and the creak of a gear aloft as the little Alert rolled very gently in a low swell. It is a curious fact that seafarers never know what their ship looks like at sea and it was only much later, when I saw some photos taken by The Courier’s discreet photographer that I had any inkling of precisely to what our pilot had referred.
I have already described our rig, that of a three-masted barque, very economical on man-power, but it was our decks that looked most like a jumble-sale. It was quite clear that Old Southmoore – sorry, your father – had given H.H.H. an open cheque-book when he was drawing up the specification for conversion, for no expense had been spared to turn this elderly wooden sealer – she’d been built in 1891 in Dundee – into a half-decent expedition-ship. Even the pokey glory-hole of a fo’c’s’le for the deck crew under the small well-deck forward had been extended and ran aft on either side of the hatch. This was trunked down to a capacious hold, a gloomy cavern that stretched aft under the small raised centre-castle which incorporated all the officers’ and specialists’ cabins, the galley, a small workshop for the carpenter and the wireless shack, the proud domain of the Marconi man from Chelmsford. Apart from general stores, lockers and, at the bottom, fresh-water in galvanised steel tanks, the hold had a ’tween-deck-cum-sail locker. The hold-spaces were serviced by a swinging derrick which had its heel goose-necked to the foremast but required the standing rigging on the side you wished to use to be slackened off, which was a pain in the backside. On top of the hatch we carried a small pram-dinghy and abaft the wheel-house and flying bridge, which was actually not very high, there nestled a pair of lifeboats, bloody difficult to swing out on their radial davits owing to the running rigging belayed along the ship’s rail. However, we had plenty of alternatives. On top of the galley and wireless-shack we carried a dory and a smart little clinker sailing dinghy, and on skids over the after well-deck a pair of large boats, a pulling-cutter and a motor launch. As if that was not enough another dory was slung on its side and lashed in the mizen chains to port and to starboard, similarly secured, was a smaller pulling-gig.
The boiler and engine rooms together with the coal bunkers occupied almost the entire after third of the ship, all except for some confined spaces u
nder the counter which provided extra storage space and access to the well into which the banjo frame lifted the screw. This was an ingenious device which allowed us to uncouple the propeller-shaft and draw it up into the hull, useful if making a long passage under sail (it reduced drag), or to avoid damage if caught in ice.
I’m sorry, I’m rambling, but the truth was, that as I stood there that afternoon running up towards the Aldeburgh Napes, I found I had grown rather fond of the quirky little vessel and I distinctly recall this somewhat cosy sensation – a jolly good one for any seaman off on such an unorthodox trip as we were then embarking – with a second and sudden damper, a feeling that all was not quite right. Quite unbidden the expression ‘ship of fools’ floated into my mind.
At first I tried to dismiss it as a silly anxiety. Alan Tomkins was right; we had work, a contract for six months and a bonus if things went wrong and we got delayed in the ice. I think it was that cautionary clause that triggered by misgivings but it occurred to me that, despite appearances and a certain sense of bravado, none of us were Scotts, let alone Shackletons or Worsleys. Commander Hanslip’s assertions about having been in Russian waters during the Allied Intervention in the civil war that followed the Revolution of October nineteen seventeen was actually a very slender claim to Arctic experience. As far as I knew the British naval presence was only through the summer months and actually had only a small amount of contact with ice. He would actually have been more reassuring had he claimed having been in the Baltic trade where ice navigation was common and I was certain sure that several of the weather-beaten old devils who had occupied that waiting-room at The Courier’s head office were of that ilk. Which, of course, led me to the presumption that Hanslip had selected his three executive officers on the grounds that they knew less than he did, though having chosen Nat and myself purely on such reasoning, he clearly needed Tomkins for his experience in sail. That boded ill, as had that little spat in the broom-cupboard. Such things as how we addressed each other may seem silly, but they established a certain standard, a regime, if you like, to which we ought all to have signed-up as much as we signed-on the official Articles of Agreement prescribed by His Majesty’s Board of Trade.
It turned out that I had got it spot-on and it was not long before the first sign of trouble emerged.
I think we had better leave it there for tonight.
THE SECOND EVENING - THE SHIP OF FOOLS
As far as we three mates were aware we were bound for Spitsbergen by way of Blyth, Bergen and possibly Tromso or the Lofoten Islands. Hanslip had indicated, with a certain smug importance that our ‘secret orders’ – by which we all assumed Madame Blavatskoya’s divinations would be revealed to us - would be opened once we departed from Blyth. So-far-so-good. Unfortunately the first spat on board was predictably between Hanslip and Tomkins. I didn’t witness it, but Nat did because he had just relieved Alan at eight o’clock the following morning. Before he went down for his breakfast after keeping the four-to-eight, Tomkins was writing up the fair-copy log-book from the slate that we kept in the chart-room when our gallant commander stormed onto the bridge.
During my middle watch – midnight to four in the morning - a gentle breeze had sprung up from the sou’west and by half past five it had filled-in. As soon as the off-watch hands were called for wash-down routine, the first proper scrub our decks received, Alan sent them aloft to cast off the gaskets and twenty minutes later, with the engine still sending us along at six or seven knots, he had got our passage speed up to ten or eleven by setting the fore and main courses, all four topsails and both t’gallants. It was this act of seamanlike initiative that Hanslip fulminated against.
According to Nat the conversation went something like this:
‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing Three-Oh,’ Three-Oh being Hanslip’s informal mode of addressing the Third Officer (I was Two-Oh and Tomkins was, of course, Number One). Nat looked perplexed.
‘You’ve set sail!’ Hanslip expostulated, but before Nat could explain, Tomkins came out of the chart-room.
‘I set sail, sir, at 06.00 this morning…’
‘Without my orders!’
Well, there was nothing in the night orders that said I couldn’t or shouldn’t set sail, Commander Hanslip, a fair wind had come up and…’
‘You do nothing on this ship without my orders!’ Hanslip raged, almost beside himself. ‘Just because you’ve commanded a merchantman yourself doesn’t mean you can assume responsibilities that are properly mine,’ he roared.
Alan Tomkins flushed deeply and responded. ‘I didn’t think the matter warranted your being told, sir…’
‘You bloody well tell me…’ but he got no further as Tomkins persisted with his own line of argument.
‘And I’d be obliged, Commander Hanslip, if you find my conduct displeases you, you berated me in private. I have a strong prejudice against being addressed in such a manner that reflects my personal circumstances in front of junior officers and…’ - here apparently Tomkins jerked his head towards the wheel-house where one of the able-seamen was at the wheel and vastly enjoying the contre-temps, the relating of which in the fo’c’sle later he was already rehearsing, I imagine - ‘and members of the crew. It is extremely bad for discipline.’
Nat said this last was uttered with such an air of authority mixed with a tone of utter contempt, that it stopped Hanslip in his tracks.
Taking advantage of the hiatus, Tomkins added. ‘I’m going below for my breakfast. If you wish to speak to me on the subject I shall be in my cabin in about half an hour. In the mean time I am sure Mr Gardner here will pass word to shorten down. Good morning.’
And Nat, unfazed by this public disagreement, coolly enquired if he should take sail off the barque.
‘It was only a force four,’ he told me when I relieved him at noon, ‘and right on our port quarter, but the silly bugger had to save his face. Looking round the horizon he said: “It’ll freshen further within the hour, Mister, we’ve a new crew, get the t’gallants off her pronto”. And now look,’ Nat had gestured at the grey sea through which the Alert scended with an easy motion, ‘three hours later and what? A four still? Certainly nothing to get excited about.’
I learned later that day from Owen Jones that there had been a little sequel in the saloon where Hanslip, having stood on the bridge while Nat ordered the t’gallants clewed up in their gear and a couple of men sent up both masts to secure them, eventually arrived in what he indeed called the wardroom for his own breakfast. Tomkins and Jones had just finished theirs and were laughing companionably together and Hanslip assumed that the former had been telling the latter about the incident.
Hanslip affected not to notice, ordered his breakfast and ate it in silence. When the two others rose to leave – they were the last officers to break their fasts that morning both just having come off watch – he told Tomkins he would see him in his, Hanslip’s, cabin in twenty minutes. Precisely what happened next I can only surmise from a few remarks Tomkins let slip later and it all sounded rather childish. Apparently Hanslip declared that there was only room for one captain and Tomkins agreed and said there was nothing in the night orders that precluded the use of his own initiative in making sail, that the coal bunkers were finite in their capacity and the wind, when fair, was not to be sneezed at. Hanslip, still fighting to save face, snapped that Tomkins shouldn’t try and be smart, at which point Tomkins shrugged his shoulders and made to leave the cabin. Hanslip let him go but called after him that he should mind his manners to his superior officer.
Tomkins told me about this on the first morning after we had left Blyth, when he was relieving me at O-four hundred, having scrutinised Hanslip’s night orders.
‘I think that we’re going to have trouble with the Old Man, Ned my lad,’ he said quietly. ‘Either that. Or I am going to have to quit; I thought about it while we were in Blyth but…’ he shrugged, ‘it’s a job and with mouths to feed I need the money.’
This was
the first allusion Alan had made to having dependants. I didn’t press him at the time, but I gathered he had an ailing mother and a sister who took care of her. Both relied upon Alan as bread-winner.
*
I don’t remember much about our short stay in Blyth, though two things stuck out. The first was that two hands got drunk and Nat was sent to bail them out. Nothing unusual about that but it upset Hanslip who seemed to have lost some of his glossy polish. Certainly the ship did, as she was covered in a fine layer of black coal-dust. With full bunkers, we even had bags of the stuff stowed on the after deck and shoved a few tons down the hold forward by way of a reserve.
The other thing was the discretion shown by The Courier’s staff reporter, or ‘Special Correspondent,’ Geoffrey Hardacre, and his side-kick, the photographer, John Sykes. When a news-hound from the local rag came sniffing round the gangway, Hardacre chased him away, fobbing him off with some cock-and-bull nonsense that we were going north to prospect for lead and other minerals on Jan Mayen Island. Old Southmoore certainly had secured a pair of loyal adherents in his own private team, but after Alan Tomkins’s comments that first morning and the odd meeting Hanslip called in the saloon as soon as we had cleared the land after leaving Blyth, I began to wonder how he had settled on Hanslip.
I had mentioned our brief exchange to Gardner when he relieved me that midnight, just to put him on the qui vive really, relative to Hanslip. I was more disturbed than I can say about what Tomkins had told me because I thought him, Tomkins that is, a very decent, steady chap who had taken demotion from Master down to Chief Mate in his stride. It was common enough in those very tough days, but it took character to wear it lightly, especially when goaded over it and Hanslip seemed to have provoked him, though I only have his version of what went on. Anyway, I had taken an instant liking to Alan, largely due to that short weekend we had worked together in the Surrey Commercial Dock and it didn’t take me long to realise that he, like Nat Gardner, was a man of parts. Like a number of merchant marine officers, both were well-read, Alan exceptionally so, as the collection of books on his small cabin book-shelf attested, literary works sitting alongside the standard reference books any master-mariner would take with him to sea.
Cold Truth Page 4