The Sea Hunters II: More True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks

by Clive Cussler

  “Secure the cargo,” Ilbery ordered Cheatum. “I’m going ashore.”

  “Very good, sir,” Cheatum said.

  * * *

  The date was July 25, 1909. The time just past 4 P.M. Waratah was scheduled to steam from port at first light in the morning. Ilbery walked along the dock, then climbed the stairs leading to the port office. A hot dry wind was blowing from the Kalahari Desert far to the north, and Ilbery could taste the grit on his teeth. Wiping a few drops of sweat from his brow, he opened the door to the office and entered.

  “Afternoon, sir,” the clerk said.

  “I’m Captain Ilbery of Waratah. Do you have an updated weather forecast?”

  The clerk shuffled some papers on the desk, then removed a single sheet. “There’s not much,” he admitted. “Ministry in Pretoria warns of dust storms and thunderstorms in the interior continuing through the twenty-eighth.”

  Ilbery nodded.

  “We’ve had two ships make port since your arrival. The clipper Tangerine crossed from Madagascar midday, and she reported rough conditions in the Mozambique Channel. Her mainsail was shredded and her decks raked with hail.”

  “Hail?” Ilbery said in surprise.

  “I know,” the clerk said. “Most odd.”

  “What of the other ship?” Ilbery asked.

  The clerk consulted the sheet again.

  “The cargo ship Keltic Castle out of Port Elizabeth. She makes a regular run from Cape Town to Durban. The captain noted rough seas between the Xora and Mbashe rivers.” He stared at the sheet again. “Said there were choppy conditions and much debris in the water. That’s about it.”

  “Appreciate it,” Ilbery said, touching the brim of his cap. “Do you have the tugs scheduled for seven A.M., as ordered?”

  The clerk removed a clipboard from under a pile of papers on the desk and glanced.

  “Waratah, seven A.M.”

  “Thank you,” Ilbery said, as he turned to leave.

  “Captain,” the clerk said, as Ilbery opened the door, “good luck and fair seas.”

  Ilbery smiled a grim smile, nodded, then walked out the door.

  * * *

  Six hours, six pints of ale, and six shots of whiskey later, Claud Sawyer was seeing stars. The Royal Hotel was plush by frontier standards. Electric lights and ceiling fans, indoor plumbing on each floor. As soon as Sawyer had checked in, he’d made his way to his room. A large wooden, four-poster bed draped in mosquito netting. Cotton sheets and hand towels for the bathroom down the hall. Sawyer had washed up, changed into clean clothes, and lain on the bed, but sleep would not come. After a few hours, he had given up and walked downstairs to the bar. He’d been there ever since.

  The ornate bar was nearly twenty feet long and carved from zebra wood. To the rear, the back bar had several panes of stained glass lit from behind by lightbulbs. The floors were made of a sandstone-colored tile. Carved chairs sat in front, and Sawyer had parked there for the first few hours. Once the night had cooled some, he had made his way outside.

  “Sir,” the bartender said, walking out to the patio, “we’ll be closing soon.”

  Sawyer was staring skyward at the Milky Way. He looked down and smiled at the man. “Nothing else, thank you,” he said.

  The bartender walked back inside.

  Sawyer had failed to eat since lunch, and he had vomited his lunch into the toilet in the lobby bathroom upon arriving. His head was not swimming, but it was far from placid. The alcohol had failed to have the desired effect. Waratah was never far from his mind. Rising unsteadily to his feet, he made his way to the stairs in the lobby and climbed them to his floor. After several tries, he managed to unlock his door and enter his room. He prayed he would pass out soon.

  * * *

  Captain Ilbery stood on the foredeck of Waratah. He was smoking a pipe and staring at the sea. Even over the smell of his cherry-tinted tobacco, he could smell the ocean. A bitter, acrid odor like that of a copper coin cooked in a cast-iron skillet. Knocking the dottle from the pipe, he made his way to his cabin.

  * * *

  The sheets were bathed in sweat, and Sawyer’s feet were entangled in the mosquito netting. He had passed into a stupor, a feather pillow pressed against his mouth making breathing difficult. Sawyer shook his head from side to side for air.

  Waratah was steaming into a storm. Sawyer could see it as clear as if he were standing only a short distance away. Then, in Sawyer’s mind, the ship became small, as if he were watching it from the heavens. He watched as a rogue wave far out to sea made its way toward the vessel, then slammed into the side. Then the image faded, and a knight in medieval armor appeared. “Stay clear of Waratah,” the knight said ominously.

  Sawyer bolted upright, the pillow flying to the side.

  The rest of the night he tried to sleep, but sleep never came.

  * * *

  Captain Deroot maneuvered Transkei alongside Waratah and began the push away from the dock. The Lund Blue Anchor Line ship was responding differently than he remembered. If possible, the ship seemed stiffer and more ungainly than before.

  Captain Ilbery stood alongside the chief pilot, Hugh Lindsay, as he guided Waratah out of the harbor and past the outer bar. After a celebratory drink with Lindsay, then his transfer off, Ilbery assumed control of Waratah. Ordering a course along the coast, he tried to shake his feelings of impending doom.

  * * *

  Corporal Edward “Joe” Conquer stepped from his tent along the Xora River mouth. His unit, the Cape Mounted Rifles, was on field maneuvers. For the last hour, a warm rain had been falling. It leaked through the crude canvas and soaked the crude wood-planked floor. Conquer had waited for the storm to abate before venturing outside. Staring over the cliff to the ocean, he could see that the skies were temporarily clear. Farther out, Conquer could see another storm building. A black wall of clouds had formed. At that instant, gusts of wind raked the camp. The temperature, which had been hovering around ninety degrees, dropped into the seventies as if by magic.

  Conquer reached up and smashed his hat down on his head before it blew away.

  Then he reentered his tent to strap on his side arm.

  * * *

  “Merciful Allah,” the African said, “protect me.”

  She came with a fury on a wind of destruction, with no name or number to mark her passage. Formed of hot wet winds far in the Indian Ocean, she moved on a westward course like a relentless marching army. The leading edge of the hurricane packed winds of nearly a hundred miles an hour. Lightning streaked from water to heavens, and booms of thunder racked across the tossing seas. Waterspouts fanned out from the center, sucking fish and marine life high into the air.

  Urbuki Mali was in the wrong spot at the wrong time.

  His cargo dhow Khalia was carrying a load of cinnamon and pearls, enough for Mali to retire at last. A trader in East London had agreed to buy the load — all Mali needed to do was bring it home. It was greed that made Mali tempt the weather, and avarice that would end his life.

  Twelve miles from land, Mali might have seen the shoreline had the weather been better; as it was, he was surrounded by a tempest that refused to release him. A strong gust carried his foremast away.

  “My fortune for fair winds,” Mali shouted.

  And then the sky rained fish, and Khalia turned turtle.

  * * *

  On Waratah, Captain Ilbery was fighting a losing battle. The leading edge of the storm was still miles offshore, but the effects were being felt in the pilothouse. Choppy waves raked against the hull, and twice already his vessel had dropped into troughs, as if the seawater had been sucked out to sea. All at once, Waratah listed hard to starboard and hung suspended at a forty-five-degree angle. Fully three minutes passed before she righted herself.

  “Mother of God,” Ilbery said.

  Second Officer Charles Cheatum could no longer contain his anxiety. His face was ashen white, and moments earlier he had nearly vomited onto the floor.

&
nbsp; “Captain, this is bad,” Cheatum said loudly.

  “Hell, I know,” Ilbery said. “Go below and check the cargo hold. I feel it’s shifted.”

  Cheatum tried to move, but the muscles in his legs were knotted with tension. Pounding his upper legs with his fist, he made a few steps toward the door before he had a stomach spasm and vomited onto the pilothouse floor.

  “Swab that down,” Ilbery shouted to a deckhand.

  Cheatum wiped his mouth with his handkerchief and walked woodenly out the door.

  * * *

  Fully half of the passengers were clustered in the dining room. Each time the ship listed, they were tossed from one side of the great room to the other. Most were bruised and bloodied from slamming into tables and flipping from their chairs. Fear was palatable — chaos was reigning. Carl Childers, a robust Australian cattle baron on his first trip to London, did his best to quell the increasing pandemonium.

  “I peered out the port,” he shouted. “I can see land.”

  Sydney diamond merchant Magness Abernathy found no solace in Childers’s words.

  “Well, it best be close enough to swim to,” Abernathy yelled, “because that’s what we’ll soon be doing.”

  A deckhand made his way into the dining room with an armful of cork life vests. The children were outfitted first, the women and elderly second.

  “She’s pitching and wallowing,” Ilbery shouted, as he spun the wheel in an attempt to bring Waratah back on a solid heading.

  * * *

  Deep in the engine room, Chief Engineer Hampton Brody could sense things were not right. Every time Waratah heeled over, one of the two propellers was wrenched from the water into the air. Without the drag of water, the shaft would spin rapidly, taxing the steam boiler providing power. At just that instant, a pressure valve on the starboard boiler exploded, and the engine room was filled with clouds of scalding steam.

  Cheatum made it down to the cargo hold. He raced amidships to where the container carrying the unprocessed lead had been stowed. Three of the massive wooden crates had tumbled from the top row and broken apart. Several tons of rock lay scattered on the starboard side. There was nothing he could do but report his findings. Turning on his heel, he started for the ladder.

  “Engine room,” Captain Ilbery shouted into the speaking tube, “I’ve lost starboard propulsion.”

  He repeated his pleas, but no one answered.

  * * *

  Twelve dead, including Brody. Their bodies were boiled — their skin cooked from their bones. Three African shovelers had been spared, but they did not understand the words that came out of the copper tube. They held their shovels in their hands, frozen in horror.

  * * *

  Joe Conquer peered through his telescope as the cargo vessel came into view. Wiping water from the lens, he stared again. She was an ungainly vessel, with a squat black superstructure and yellow decks. Her single stack was black, with a band of white in the center.

  As Conquer watched, she heeled to one side and hung there for a few moments.

  * * *

  Fate can come in many packages. For Waratah, it would arrive on a rogue wave.

  His ship was already wounded, and Ilbery knew this. The best he might hope for was to ground her on shore or limp back to Durban on a single engine. He waited for a clear spot, then spun the wheel to the stops.

  A mile distant from the struggling ship, the rogue wave was gathering force. Fifteen, then twenty feet in height, and she kept growing. A half-mile away, the surface tension of the water should have broken, but it did not. The thousands of gallons of seawater that should be sliding down the leading edge of the wave rose higher and higher, as if stuck together with glue. A single object lay between the wave and shore.

  “Mother of God,” Ilbery managed to say.

  Waratah was struggling to turn on a single engine and was just past the halfway point of the arc. Captain Ilbery looked out the side window. He saw death and he knew it. The seconds ticked past as he awaited the arrival of fate.

  From where he stood on the cliff, Conquer could see the cargo ship and the sea behind. He watched in horror as a giant curled wave raced toward the stricken vessel. He held his breath as it slammed into the vessel.

  Clinging to the metal ladder leading from the cargo hold, Cheatum felt Waratah lurch hard to starboard. Farther and farther she heeled over, until she passed the point of no return. The upper decks went awash, and thousands of gallons of water flooded into the holds. Cheatum lost his grip on the wet metal rung and fell the twenty feet to what had moments before been the inside of the upper deck. His neck snapped like a twig, and then there was only blackness with a tiny pinpoint of growing light.

  No one had time to react. Not the frightened passengers in the dining room, not the passengers in their cabins. The few crewmen lucky enough to have been on deck were tossed into the water and not trapped in the ship. Their deaths would take longer.

  Captain Joshua Ilbery was shaking his fist at the wave when Waratah flipped on its end beams. His head struck the ship’s binnacle, shattering the glass and removing his scalp from his skull. He drowned minus his hair. Waratah filled with water and plunged down. Flipping upright as she sank, she settled on the bottom on her keel.

  * * *

  Joe Conquer could not believe his eyes. Three minutes had elapsed from the time the wave had struck the ship to the time the last part of her hull had slipped beneath the waves. It was as if a hole in the sea had opened and swallowed the ship whole. Wiping the lens again, he scanned the water. A few pieces of debris, a shiny spot where oil had spilled. Then the storm increased, and the surface of the sea was swept clean. Folding up the telescope, he made his way back to his tent a few minutes ahead of the approaching wall of rain. Using a quill pen, he wrote a report of what he had witnessed.

  * * *

  When the ship failed to reach Cape Town, authorities hoped for the best but feared the worst. Waratah was known to be unstable, and the hurricane that had raked the coast at the same time was one of the worst in the last decade. The 211 passengers were mourned, and at Lloyd’s of London the bell was rung. The mystery of what became of Waratah remained unsolved.

  SIXTEEN YEARS LATER

  Lieutenant D. J. Roos talked to himself when flying. He found comfort in uttering his motions aloud, as if he were verifying his actions with heaven’s copilot.

  “Richer fuel mixture,” he said, twisting the knob.

  The throbbing from the engine evened out.

  Roos was piloting an experimental South African air force plane on a mail run from Durban to East London, and the aircraft was performing almost flawlessly.

  “I think I’ll take her out to sea a bit,” Roos said aloud.

  It was a glorious day, and Roos was happy. The skies were clear, with unlimited visibility, and the sea below showed nary a wave. Days like today happened maybe once a year — crystal-clear skies and the Indian Ocean appearing as a pond. Roos stared at the water out of the side window. A dozen T-shaped images appeared in the water below.

  “Hammerheads,” Roos said quietly, as he continued along the coast.

  Lighting a cigarette, Roos puffed contentedly.

  “Fuel three-quarters, manifold temperature dead on,” he said.

  A whale, a small sailboat, and ten minutes passed. Roos pushed the yoke forward and descended two hundred feet. He smiled to himself and watched the water again.

  “Whoa,” he said.

  A ship came into view — two hundred feet below the water. It looked close enough to touch. The ship sat upright, as if it were steaming for a port it would never reach. This was a sea mirage, and Roos knew it. He turned the plane and circled around.

  “Damn,” he said.

  Sure enough, it was a ship, and a big one. Must be close to five hundred feet, Roos thought, and the smokestack is still attached. He adjusted course and passed down one side. The decks must be yellow, he thought, that’s why it looked like the sandy bottom. Must have
sunk in a storm, he thought. Marking the position on his chart, he turned the plane around and continued to New London. Then he reported his findings.

  The next day on his return trip, the seas were rougher and the bottom not visible.

  He passed over the area three times, but he couldn’t find the phantom ship.

  II

  Is It Here or Is It There? 1987–2001

  The question that has been asked for more than ninety years is what happened to Waratah and the 211 people she had on board. From the time she sailed into oblivion during a storm off the east coast of South Africa, her ultimate fate has never been far from the minds of dedicated marine historians. And yet, since the day she vanished in 1909, no one seemed interested in launching a search for her until Emlyn Brown and I met up during my book tour in South Africa in 1985.

  I was speaking at a book conference in Cape Town when Emlyn came up to me and asked if I was familiar with Waratah. He seemed mildly surprised that I had researched the ship’s disappearance in the hope that someday I might go out and search for it. We later met at the Mount Nelson Hotel and discussed the possibility of joining forces for a search. The meeting led to a friendship that remains strong to this day. Emlyn is one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. I couldn’t have been luckier in finding someone like him to run the show. Courteous, determined, and dedicated to finding the legendary ship, he formed a branch of NUMA as a closed South African corporation in 1990.

  Emlyn believed the freak wave phenomenon — that a tremendous wave smashed over Waratah and took her to the bottom. He theorized that the rapidly sloping continental shelf and the power of the Agulhas Current, combined with a severe gale, caused a series of gigantic waves that engulfed Waratah and drove her to the bottom. That she wasn’t a stable ship must not have helped during her struggle with a sea gone berserk.