The Lonely Sea

by Alistair MacLean

  One by one the lifeboats were lowered—a difficult and often dangerous task in a wickedly rolling, all but stopped ship in those wild and pitch-dark seas. Some of the lifeboats capsized immediately, throwing the occupants into the water—few of these were ever seen again. Some were swamped and cut adrift. Others came alongside the foot of rope ladders, and women and children clambered down over the side towards them, as often as not to find that the boats were no longer there. And then they would find that they no longer had the strength to climb back up on deck again: for a few seconds they would hang there, being battered against the ship’s side, alternately being plunged deep into the water or hauled high above it as the foundering vessel rolled deeply, sluggishly in the seas: and then their slender strength would fail them, their fingers would open and they were never seen again.

  Other women took children in their arms and leapt into the darkness of the sea near a spot where they had seen a raft being dropped over the side. Occasionally—very occasionally—they would reach it, drag themselves aboard and lie there helpless, beaten flat by the wind, the hail and the waves, unable even to so much as raise their heads: more often than not, they would fail to see the raft in the deep gloom of a sea where the towering wave-crests reduced visibility to only a few feet, or, even if they did see one, would find it floating away into the outer darkness more quickly than they could swim after it.

  The City of Benares sunk in just over ten minutes from the time she was torpedoed, and the wonder of it is that so many managed to get away at all. Miracles of effort and selfless courage were the order of the day. Crew-members leapt into the water to right upturned boats and rescue what passengers they could. Others stayed on the slippery canting decks until the City of Benares foundered, struggling to free rafts and jammed lifeboats. All too often they were still struggling when the ship foundered, taking them along with it.

  In the minds of nearly every one of the crew and the passengers, the children were the first, last and only thought. The Captain died while still searching for them below decks. So did Colonel Baldwin-Webb, MP for the Wrekin Division of Shropshire, who had acted with imperturbable gallantry throughout and had led many children from the cabins to the lifeboats. So did Colin’s guardian, Mr Raskay, who gave up his own place in a lifeboat to a woman and child, turned back, went below, extricated more women and children from blazing cabins, returned to the upper deck and dived into the sea, not to save himself, but to rescue drowning children in the water. It is not known how or where he died, but it was inevitable that he should die. Mr Raskay was a Hungarian, but race and creed meant nothing to him, only humanity.

  The chief quartermaster also died in the search for children. He had loaded a lifeboat with women and children, left it in the command of another seaman, climbed back aboard and was never seen again. And the children’s official escorts more than lived up to the trust that had been placed in them: only three of them survived.

  One of them was Mrs Towns. She stayed to see as many children as possible into the boats, refused a place for herself, and jumped over the side—and she had never swum before in her life. Somehow she reached an upturned boat and clung on to it, one of fifteen, mainly children, who did so. But the cold struck deep, the biting hail and pounding seas numbed arms and bodies and legs, and one by one the children dropped off during that bitter and interminable night. When dawn came, only Mrs Towns and two little girls were left. They survived.

  Colin Richardson and Kenneth Sparks were luckier—they managed to get away in lifeboats. Colin remembers vividly the actual moment of the sinking of the City of Benares, the spectacle of a man being blasted out through a door crashing back on its hinges, the swift plunge, the bursting open of doors and ventilators as the air pressure inside built up swiftly to an intolerable degree.

  He remembers too, the strange sight of the sea dotted with the red lights attached to the life belts of the crew struggling in the water, of those who swam alongside and begged to be taken into the already over-crowded boat; the quiet, unquestioning acceptance of nearly all those who were told there was no room left. They swam away to find what floating debris they could, most of them knowing that it could be only a token postponement of the death by exhaustion and exposure that surely awaited all those without either boat or raft. And the fear-crazed selfishness of one or two who desperately hauled themselves aboard, almost sinking the boat.

  ‘It was a dreadful night,’ Colin Richardson remembers. ‘Rough and bitterly cold: we were continuously swept by icy wind, rain and sleet. There was a half-hearted attempt at singing to keep up our spirits—but this did not last long for every time we opened our mouths we got them full of salt water. So we resigned ourselves to concentrating silently and grimly on keeping our place in the boat.’

  And, indeed, that was an almost impossible task. Colin’s lifeboat was swamped, waterlogged, down to its gunwales in the water and kept afloat only by means of its buoyancy tanks. All were sitting waist-deep—for youngsters like Colin, chestdeep—in the freezing water: every time a wave came along, and they came in endless succession all through that endless night, they had to cling on desperately to prevent themselves from being swept away into the sea: when, like Colin, it was impossible even to reach the floorboards with your feet, the chances of holding on and surviving were negligible. But Colin held on—and he survived.

  But many failed to hold on, and many died. One by one they died—from exposure, from just drowning where they sat, from that murderous cramp that weakened their last grip on gunwales and on life and let them be swept over the side to the oblivion and swift release of death by drowning.

  The lascar seamen died first—ten of them in swift succession: accustomed all their lives to tropical and subtropical heat, they had no defences against that intolerable cold. Then members of the white crew, and some of the women and children also—up to their chests all night in that freezing water, their hearts just stopped beating. One man went mad and leapt over the side. An old ship’s nurse died in Colin’s lap after he had spent much time in comforting her, cradling the tired head in his arms, telling her over and over again that the rescue ship was coming. (Mr Richardson, when interviewed recently, did not mention that he had received the King’s commendation for bravery for his conduct in the lifeboat that night—surely one of the youngest ever to receive it.)

  Dawn came, the sea calmed but the cold was as bitter as ever. Still they died, one by one, but Colin Richardson says his most vivid memory of that day was the sight of an upturned lifeboat with five people clinging to it. ‘When first we spotted them, the five waved at us quite happily. But, as the day wore on, one by one they weakened, lost their hold and disappeared. Five, four, three, two, one…’

  Rescue came at 4.00 p.m. when the destroyer Hurricane spotted them and came alongside. Only one person was able to climb up the lowered scrambling nets—25-year-old Angus MacDonald, the ship’s carpenter in charge of the boat, and due to whose magnificent seamanship all the survivors undoubtedly owed their lives. All the survivors…ten out of the original forty.

  Kenneth Sparks’ adventures form a strange contrast to those of Colin Richardson. He too, was in a crowded lifeboat—there were no less than forty-six people in it—but, instead of being eighteen hours in the boat, as Colin was, before being rescued, he and his forty-five companions spent eight days and nights on the surface of the broad and hostile Atlantic—and all forty-six of them miraculously survived.

  The difference in survival ratios appears unaccountable at first sight—until it is remembered that Kenneth Sparks’ boat did not become swamped and waterlogged, and those in it were not condemned to sit in crouching immobility with the ice-cold water up to their chests: with a judicious sharing out of clothes and covering and huddling together for mutual warmth, even the chill night air of the Atlantic can be borne: it is only when one is immersed in the freezing water itself that there can be no defence.

  They also had another great advantage—a means of propulsion t
hrough the water. Colin Richardson’s lifeboat had had all the oars swept away in the first few moments, but on Kenneth’s boat there were no oars to be lost. There was, instead, a screw attached to a long driving shaft, turned by means of vertically mounted push-pull levers between the seats. Not only did this give them directional stability and enable the man in charge, Third Officer Purvis, to keep head to stern on to the worst of the seas, but it also had the great advantage that it could be worked by anyone, the exercise providing life-giving warmth on even the coldest of nights.

  They suffered, of course—they suffered cruelly. The cold and exposure were with them all the time—Kenneth spent two months in hospital after his rescue—so were the discomfort and sheer physical fatigue of holding on in the heavy seas. They had food and drink, but not enough: hunger, thirst and sleeplessness were part of their every waking thought. Kenneth Sparks is convinced that he and the five other children aboard that boat owed their survival to Miss Cornish, an official escort later honoured for her courage: she spent nearly all her waking hours in massaging the hands and feet of the children to keep the lifewarming blood circulating, giving them exercises and telling them countless stories to keep their minds off their desperate predicament. It says much for the entire success of her efforts when Kenneth says that no one among them ever lost hope of being rescued. And rescued they finally were, located in the first instance by a patrolling plane, and then picked up by a destroyer that took them safely home to Scotland.

  Such, then, is the tragic story of the City of Benares, surely the most pathetic and heartrending story of the war at sea. It is reasonable to hope that not even the most ruthless U-boat captain would have torpedoed the City of Benares had he known that there were a hundred children aboard, but speculation is no consolation and makes the story no less dreadful.

  A dreadful story, but not without its splendour. Apart from Colin and Kenneth and his five companions, only twelve other children survived. A pitiful handful. But it was to give a chance of life to this pitiful handful that dozens of adults out of the 163 crew and passengers gave their own lives willingly and without thought of self.

  Who, for instance, was the man who towed a raft away from the sinking ship, just as it was in deadly danger of being sucked under, saw the children on board safely on a lifeboat, turned back again, towed another raft with a woman and four children through the huge seas towards another lifeboat, turned away again into the darkness to search for other survivors and was never seen again?

  We do not know, nor does it matter. All we can know is that this man who selflessly gave his own life, would never have thought of recognition nor cared for it had he been given it. An unknown man, a nameless man, but he remains for ever as the symbol of the spirit of the City of Benares.

  The Gold Watch

  His watch was the pride of our captain’s life. It was of massive construction, being no less than three inches in diameter; it was made of solid gold; it was beautifully engraved with cabalistic designs of extraordinary intricacy; and finally, it was attached to a chain, whose dimensions, with regard to both length and circumference, had to be seen to be believed. The chain also, needless to say, was made of gold. Anyone, who had the temerity to doubt this last fact, was handed the chain and coldly asked to observe for himself that it was stamped on every link.

  In addition to the aforementioned merits, the watch, our captain claimed, was completely moisture-proof. We had, on several occasions, urged him to prove his words by submerging the subject of discussion in a basin of water, but, on each occasion, the captain’s reply, uttered in a very injured tone, was to the same effect, namely, that if we did not believe his statement, he was not going to stoop to demonstrate its truth to us. From this, we could only conclude that the captain, like ourselves, had his doubts as to his watch’s ability to defy the ravages of water. It was indeed, we knew, a very, very sore point with our captain, one which he longed, with all his heart and soul, to prove, but lacked the courage to put to the final test.

  Usually, this watch was hidden from the plebeian gaze—and fingers—in a locked case, which, in its turn, lay in a locked drawer in the captain’s cabin. But today, it reposed in the captain’s waistcoat pocket, while the chain, such was its length, seemed almost to girdle the area of the captain’s maximum circumference. Waistcoats are very uncommon with ‘whites’, and it was maliciously rumoured that the captain had had his specially made for the purpose of accommodating and displaying the watch and its accessories. Be that as it may, here was our captain, this blistering June afternoon, going ashore for his last interview with his Basrah agents, wearing a genial smile on his face, and, about two feet further south, his beloved time-keeper.

  When he came back a bare two hours later, his launch nosing its way through the date-laden lighters surrounding our vessel which was anchored in mid-river, his genial expression was no longer there. Neither was his watch, and our deduction, that the latter circumstance accounted for the former, proved to be correct. Having solicitously helped the red-faced, perspiring captain on board, we waited patiently.

  He was, at first, incoherent with rage, and, with his clearly visible, ever-mounting blood pressure, we feared an apoplectic stroke. Fortunately for him, he at last recovered the power of speech, and this undoubtedly relieved, to a great extent, his almost over-powering feelings. He was very bitter. His language, in addition, was shocking, but we had to admit that he had full justification for it.

  He had, apparently, been walking peacefully back to the ship from his agents, with malice in his heart towards none, but nevertheless, taking due and proper precautions for the safe-guarding of wallet and watch, when among the riffraff of the street bazaars. Once clear of them, he had dropped these precautions, deeming them needless, and, at the entrance to the docks, he had had to push his way through a group of Arab sailors, whom he, in his great and regrettable ignorance, had thought to be as honest as himself. (His bitterness, at this juncture, was truly remarkable.) Suddenly, he had been jostled in the rear with great violence, and, on turning to remonstrate with the discourteous one, had not felt his watch and chain being slipped from their moorings, with that dexterity and efficiency which bespoke of long and arduous practice, so that, when about to resume his journey, he found his watch no longer there.

  At this point he again lost the power of speech, and to our fearful and dreading eyes, his entire disintegration appeared not only probable, but imminent. Recovering himself with a masterly effort, however, he resumed his narrative. Although unable to espy the actual perpetrator of the theft, who had, with commendable discretion and alacrity, completely vanished, he had realized that the jostler must have been his confederate, and had pursued the said confederate for over half a mile, before being eluded by the Arab in a crowded thoroughfare. This, we realized, accounted for our captain’s complexion and superabundance of perspiration.

  Here again, having once more relapsed into incoherency, he was left to his vengeful meditations, alternately muttering ‘My watch’ and ‘The villain’, the former with a touching pathos, and the latter, preceded by some highly descriptive adjectives, with an extraordinary depth of feeling.

  Thirty hours later found no appreciable diminution in our captain’s just and righteous anger, although he could now speak like a rational being, albeit forcefully, concerning his grievous misfortunes of the previous afternoon. We had loaded our last case of dates just on sunset, and, early that morning, even as the first faint streak of grey in the eastern sky heralded the burning day, had gratefully cleared the malodorous port of Basrah. We were, by this time, fairly into the Gulf and proceeding serenely on our way, South by East, through the stifling tropical night, the darkness of which was but infinitesimally relieved by the cold, unthinkably-distant pinpoints of stars in the moonless night sky.

  Our captain, whose outraged feelings evidently refused him the blessed solace of slumber, had recently come up to the bridge, which he was now ceaselessly pacing, very much after the manner of
a caged leopard, all the time informing us as to the dire retribution which he intended meting out to the present illegal possessor of his watch, should he ever be fortunate enough to lay hands on him. The lascar quartermaster, very zealous in the cap-tain’s presence, was poring over the compass box, while in the bows, the lookout-man was either thinking of his native village in far-off Bombay, or had found sleep vastly easier to come by than our captain.

  This last was, of course, pure conjecture, but it must have approximated very closely to the truth, for the first the lookout knew of the dhow lying dead in our path, was when a loud splintering crash, accompanied by even louder frenzied yells, informed him that our steel-bows had smashed the unfortunate dhow to matchwood.

  ‘Don’t say we’ve run down another of these b—y dhows,’ groaned our captain wearily (it is a surprisingly common occurrence), ringing the engines down to ‘Stop’, and bellowing for a boat to be lowered with the utmost expedition. This was done, and then minutes later the lifeboat returned with the shivering, brine-soaked crew of the erstwhile dhow; the captain, duty-bound, went down on deck to inspect them, as they came on board.

  The rope ladder twitched, and as the first luckless victim—how luckless, he did not then completely realize—appeared over the side, the captain’s jaw dropped fully two inches, and he stood as if transfixed.

  ‘That’s the gentleman I chased yesterday’—he ejaculated joyfully (‘gentleman’, as will be readily understood, is employed euphemistically), then stopped, staring, with rapidly glazing eyes, at the second apparition, who had just then topped the railing. Dependent from this, the second, ‘gentle-man’s’ undeniably filthy neck, and reaching to his waist, was a most unusual ornament for an impoverished Arab—no less an object than our captain’s purloined watch and chain, thus miraculously restored to him, by the playful caprices of Fortune.