Hanslip stood swaying and babbling about not having two men in command while we took our cue from Alan and went about our business for going to sea. On the one hand we were grateful for something positive to do; on the other we feared the consequences of going to sea with a drunken master on the bridge.
‘Oh ho[e1],’ Nat stage-whispered into me ear, ‘I thought it was the crew who were supposed to be the devil in harbour, isn’t that what old Admiral Napier said?’
‘I don’t know what old Admiral Napier said,’ I remember responding, ‘but I think we are going to leave a wonderful impression of Britannia’s rule in Reine…’
We dispersed to our stations and I heard Tomkins blow his whistle for the hands to muster. A moment later, as I reached the Alert’s little poop-deck, I watched the pilot run up the gangway. It was the same man that had guided us into Reine and a few moments later I was involved with singling-up, watching the hands coil down the after mooring ropes, lift the fenders inboard as soon as we were clear of the quay and Owen Jones’s Singer sewing machine was trundling away under my feet. We swung away and headed north-east, through the Leads inside the Lofotens. Half-an-hour later the pilot had been discharged and we were on our own. Having checked everything was secure aft of the low centre-castle which, incidentally, provided the officers and some of the crew with their accommodation, I made my way up to the bridge. As Third Officer, Nat’s station was on the bridge and seeing me he nodded his head at Hanslip who was fast asleep in the one chair allowed in the tiny wheelhouse.
‘Been like that since the pilot boarded.’
‘What was the pilot’s reaction?’ I remember asking, ashamed of our Commander’s conduct. Nat laughed. ‘I told him that our captain had had a very bad war, that he would be fine once we were at sea…’
‘That was resourceful of you,’ I said.
‘ “They drink a lot here,” the pilot said, “I expect he spent too much time with the chandler,” ’ Nat recounted with a chuckle, adding, ‘so the national honour was just about saved.’
‘Ah,’ I half-jested, ‘the Worcester training will out.’
*
Hanslip disappeared into his cabin and reappeared next morning as though nothing out-of-the-ordinary had happened. Perhaps in his imagination nothing had. Anyway, we steamed clear of the Lofotens, shut Owen Jones’s iron-ware down and hoisted sail. I was beginning to enjoy conning the ship under sail and, to be truthful, despite the shenanigans in Reine, this passage proved to be the happiest of the entire voyage. The weather improved as we sailed north under all sail, a steady moderate breeze blowing out of the north-east had us close hauled and while the air was cold, coming as it did from a northerly quarter, and we were close-hauled on the starboard tack, I do remember it was surprisingly warm out of the breeze in brilliant sunshine, the sea was a deep blue and we carried all plain sail, bowling along at a creditable rate of knots.
The only thing that sort-of marred what would otherwise have been an unsullied delight, was the appearance of Hanslip on the bridge at midnight, oh, I suppose on the second night out from Reine… No, maybe the third; anyway, we were well clear of the land. I had come up in the bridge to relieve Nat and, as was customary I went first into the chart-room where I expected to find the Night Order Book signed by the Old Man. It was laid out on the chart, but not written in for that night, so having made myself a mug of tea from the pot prepared at the after part of the chart-room, I went out onto the bridge-wing and found Nat leaning on the rail behind the canvas dodger with Hanslip beside him.
‘Ahh, good morning Ned,’ Nat boomed, straitening-up as I approached. Hanslip looked round but did not otherwise acknowledge my presence. I recall looking up at the sails lit-up by the midnight sun which glowed low on the northern horizon as Nat handed over to me, course to steer and what-not. With the Commander on the bridge he was almost pompously formal and, briefly, turning round to see that Hanslip had resumed staring forward again, made a curious little gesture with his thumb, towards Hanslip, simultaneously pulling a face which I instinctively interpreted as distaste, or disgust, or something of the sort.
Without lingering for our usual chat Nat dropped his voice, murmured ‘Good luck’ and then, raising it, said, ‘I’ve handed over to the Second Officer, sir and bid you good night.’
Given that our usual partings at this hour were of a less than polite nature, I realised Nat was putting me on my guard, so I said ‘Good morning, sir,’ and walked out to the extremity of the bridge-wing with my mug of tea and looked about me, as though taking stock – which in fact I was, and usually did once I had the con. Apart from my ‘good morning’ I did not deliberately ignore Hanslip’s presence, but it was not my place to cosy up to him and adopt the same position as that in which I had found Nat and I guessed that it had not been of his choosing either.
Anyway, I was just about to cross the bridge and do the same thing on the port side when Hanslip called me over. ‘Two-Oh.’
‘Sir?’
He patted the thick teak cap-rail that ran round the bridge, indicating that I should now take Nat’s station beside him. ‘I was just saying to the Third Officer,’ he began, ‘that we must begin to keep a sharp lookout for old ice. This wind may bring some growlers down from the ice-edge and we should be on the lookout for them.’
From my reading of the Sailing Directions, I knew what a growler was, an old piece of ice that floated barely clear of the water but which could be quite large. Moreover, I thought Hanslip’s remark about meeting them a little premature but contented myself with an ‘aye, aye, sir,’ and lest this should sound too abrupt, added, ‘lovely night.’
‘Yes,’ Hanslip agreed, whereupon an awkward silence fell upon us. Rather gauchely I tried my best.
‘I’m looking forward to getting a bit further north, never having been this far before. We used to have ice a-plenty in the Gulf of Po Hai, to be sure, but that was considerably further south than we are now.’
‘Yes,’ Hanslip said again. It was clear that he was winding himself up to say something. After a bit it came out. He coughed and picked up my earlier remark. ‘Yes, it is a lovely night. Good to be at sea,’ he added with a touch of pomposity before saying, ‘much better to be at sea than in port. I was decidedly unwell in Reine. Had a drink with the agent and it turned my guts. Laid me up sick for several days. Good to have reliable officers who kept the show on the road. Most grateful…’ His voice trailed off, he straightened up, slapped the rail and said in a suddenly decisive tone of voice as though his conduct in the Lofotens was all explained, justified, done-and-dusted, ‘right, well give me five minutes to write up the night’s orders and then come and sign them.’
And that was that. I did as I was bid, counter-signed his orders to show that I read and understood them and then with a curt ‘good night,’ he disappeared below to his pit.
The whole little episode had taken no more than fifteen to twenty minutes but it left me and, I learned later, Nat Gardner feeling distinctly iffy about Commander Herbert Henry Hanslip, Royal Naval Reserve, and his powers of self-deception.
*
It’s getting late but I only have three more evenings to tell the rest of the story and if you want to hear more tonight, I think you should. I don’t think I have wasted your time because without the preamble the finale won’t make a great deal of sense and it will certainly not satisfy your father.
Okay? Good.
We continued our passage north and east, tacking for the greater part of the way as the wind veered and backed a bit, then and settled again in the north-east, all of which lost us a good deal of time, but Hanslip had suddenly become conscious not merely that the days were slipping by, but to rely upon our steam-engine would consume more coal. The wind now remained steady from the north-east, give or take a point or two, so we beat our way up wind passing Bear Island which we closed to about five miles before old Herbert Henry got a cold funk and we put about. One thing I will say about it though, was that it was fine sailing and
Alan Tomkins was in his element. Nat and I learned a great deal of the finer – and now completely arcane – points about trimming sails to get the best out of a square-rigged vessel going to windward. Whether it was by sheer chance, or cunning design, your old dad really had bought a rather fine little barque, but I’m repeating myself, nevertheless, for one bred to steam I found myself reluctantly admiring the capabilities of a well-handled sailing vessel which ran counter to all the orthodoxy of my professional training in the Blue Funnel Line.
We didn’t see the South Cape of Spitsbergen but soon ran into the ice, I forget where or when but I suppose it was somewhere south-east of Edge Island. It was loose pack, pushed down from the north through the Hindlopen Strait and we still had I suppose about sixty miles to run to reach the White Island. The weather remained mild for our latitude, which was seventy something north and we were miles from the starting point of Andrée’s balloon ride which was away on the far north-western edge of the Svalbard Archipelago at what had once been a whaling base fort the Dutch in the seventeenth century, a place they called rather colourfully Smeerenberg, though it was in fact no more than an anchorage. Here they – the Swedes that is - had mixed iron filings and hydrochloric acid to make hydrogen to fill their ill-fated balloon before lighting off for the pole, full of expectation and dreams.
Looking back, we were not so very different; the closer we got to the White Island, the more those of us in ‘the know’ dwelt upon Madame Blavatskoya’s clairvoyance. I’m not certain even now what I thought about it at this time, but as a sceptic I don’t think I thought much beyond the fact that the expedition offered me a great opportunity for an experience that might prove valuable and, as Alan Tomkins repeatedly pointed-out, provided employment.
Whatever our private thoughts, whatever the irrational conduct of Herbert Henry and whatever the reliability that could be placed upon Blavatskoya, we were a fine little ship and our crew had, despite the conduct of their Commander, settled down under Alan’s and the Bosun’s close eyes as we started our assault on the ice.
This began with a ward-room discussion which turned upon at which point did we fire-up the boilers, lower the screw – oh, did I tell you that for sailing and protecting it if we were caught fast in the ice, you could disconnect it from the drive-shaft and lift it into the hull? No? I thought that I had. Anyway, it was a cunning bit of kit, designed originally, I think, for the Victorian navy where, in the days of auxiliary steam frigates, when they changed from steam to sail, they could lift the screw out of the water to prevent it dragging and slowing the ship. It rotated in what was called a banjo-frame – don’t ask me why – but this could be lifted into a well in the ship’s counter. One had to be careful to get the shaft and the screw realigned when you next wanted to use it but that was essentially an engineering problem.
Anyway, though conscious that his coal stocks were finite, Owen Jones was both eager to use his steam engine and confident that we carried a pretty generous supply. As bags of the stuff seemed to be everywhere and the bunkers were filled to over-flowing, no-one gave the matter a great deal of serious consideration at this time. If Blavatskoya was correct, all we had to do was reach the island, locate the wreckage of the Swedes’ balloon, take the photos and come home. Put like this it all seems pretty bizarre now, but that is how it seemed to us then. Either that, or we found nothing where Blavatskoya said we would and we all came home anyway with the boffins having gathered some data. This was before the Kylsant scandal and the Great Depression and we did not question the decisions of great – and by that I chiefly mean rich – men and their whims. We were born to servitude whether we were the grubby products of Cardiff’s Tiger Bay toiling in the engine-room, or the polished products of the Conway and Worcester, like Nat and I. You’ve got to remember that while Mussolini was already making a name for himself, no-one in Britain took him seriously and no-body had heard of Herr Hitler.
Sorry, I digress and am wasting time, but the nub of the day’s discussion revolved around Hanslip and Owen’s desire to flash-up the boilers and get the ship under steam and my calculations of distance. We weren’t making any headway under sail and that afternoon, although we had – by some miracle – found a lead, a channel of open water, what the Russians call a polynya and it led in roughly the right direction, we could not expect it to go on for many more miles and, sure enough, it failed before the day was out. Owen Jones got his way, and we began shoving our way through increasingly thick ice under steam.
I can’t really recall much detail of the next week or two. For the Arctic, the weather remained relatively benign; lots of low fog and by-and-large a fluky wind from the north-east, all of which gave us a good deal of trouble making progress towards Kvitøya through the ice. Watches became tedious re-runs of the previous day, then the previous week as we found a lead, steamed or sailed down it, only to find that while we might have made five miles progress, we then had to cast about for some new opportunity.
We did have, I recall, a few days delay while another gale came through and the ice closed in on us. It blew like hell, the little ice spicules hitting us like small bird-shot as the Alert rolled and ground against the ice. The temperature dropped and Hanslip did his impression of Shackleton by trying to force the vessel through the ice until the Chief mentioned the daily consumption of coal, at which point he desisted. Eventually, of course, the depression moved through and things calmed down again.
During all this Hanslip fretted mightily, coming up on the bridge at irregular intervals, taking command when we found a bit of a lead then going below again when the ice shut-in. He muttered a lot to himself and his comments to us, the Mates, seemed increasingly odd, strangely disconnected with the matter-in-hand, though to be truthful, he didn’t say a great deal to either Nat or myself, though I knew that he talked a good deal to Alan Tomkins.
I got the distinct impression that he thought the difficulties of finding a way through the ice was a personal insult offered him by an implacable fate, for he regularly lost his temper when the lead shut in, proving to be the most impatient of men. The rest of us found it rather a challenge, I think.
Most of the ice was old pack, interspersed with small bergs, but occasionally we’d find a large berg stuck in the ice-field, wonderfully spiky things, some of them, with fantastical profiles – nothing like the pictures of bergs you see in books about Scott’s or Shackleton’s Antarctic adventures. Up in the Artic, ‘under the bear,’ it’s very different to the Antarctic but we didn’t take much notice of the aesthetic merit of our surroundings; the ice had just become an enemy. It would have been the enemy had the process of our disintegration not begun, but it was, I think, the ice that triggered it.
Unfortunately it began with that mildest of men, Owen Jones, who at dinner one day mentioned to a pretty full ward-room – Nat was on watch – about the inroads all the faffing about was making into our coal reserves. We all knew this and certainly among the deck officers it had been an underlying feature of our general concerns, mentioned when handing over the watch, and so forth. Although we had been using the sails whenever we could, you can’t shut-down the boilers when you might need them again so that even when not under power, you are still using a certain amount of coal. We knew too that the Chief made a daily report to Hanslip on fuel, just as Tomkins did on water, but Hanslip, who had just taken his place at the head of the wardroom table, took exception.
‘This is not the place to be mentioning coal stocks,’ he upbraided Owen Jones.
Jones looked up astonished. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I just thought…’
‘Well stop bloody well thinking,’ snapped Hanslip, taking up his soup spoon. Amongst most of us this would have precluded any further remark, but good old Jonesy was, in his own way, as touchy about rank as Hanslip and regarded the rank of chief engineer as a senior one. Certainly, as Alan Tomkins explained it to me afterwards, he was not used to being publicly humiliated, and his Welsh blood was up, so-to-speak. He made a sotto voce comment.
‘What did you say?’ said a flushing and soup-spluttering Hanslip.
Quite unabashed, the Chief replied, ‘I said that won’t do us any good, will it?’ I can quite clearly recall the strong Welsh lilt to his voice, because he went on to press his point with a certain amount of license. ‘You don’t want a chief engineer who doesn’t think, Captain, do you? You think about that, Boy-O; not up here in all this bloody ice.’ He used to say ‘ploody ice’.
Well that was it for Hanslip: the answering-back and the ‘Boy-O,’ unintentional or not, absolutely infuriated him.
‘You mind your damned manners, Jones,’ he snarled, his face beetroot-red as he made a passing attempt to control his temper but I could see quite clearly that it wasn’t just what Hanslip thought of as insubordination that triggered the outburst, but something else. He went on to deliver himself of a rant about ‘respect for rank’ and the importance of the ‘maintenance of proper discipline and order, particularly in difficult circumstances,’ all of which was supposed to put a gloss on the affair, but it merely made Jones lay down his knife and fork and rise from the table.
‘Where are you going, Jones? I’m talking to you…’
‘You’re talking at me, Captain, and I’ve had all I want to eat, so,’ and here he looked round at the rest of us, quite unfazed by Hanslip’s behaviour and said, ‘excuse me gentlemen.’
Of course, those of us who knew the Chief knew his politeness, but I think Hanslip thought the allusion to ‘gentlemen’ excluded him. It was all quite ridiculous, but he threw down his cutlery and stalked out of the wardroom. Thereafter he reverted to the naval formality of eating alone in his cabin, which increased the poor steward’s burden, though it left the rest of us a degree of freedom, best expressed by Second Engineer Rayne who subsequently remarked that mealtimes had improved ‘now that the bear ate in his lair’.
You are probably thinking all this very puerile, and it was in its way, but aboard ships such stupid rows, caused by collisions of cultures, or incipient mental break-down, can take on an impetus and character of their own. Old Jonesy might have blown-up in true Celtic fashion, but he didn’t, to his credit, though I think he went below to his beloved engines and did some entirely unnecessary overhauling until he had worked his ire out of his system.
Cold Truth Page 7