All the time I was looking things over, I was casting about for some ploy to engage Carr’s interest, for I knew from what I had heard that simply presenting myself as a would-be apprentice would result only in my being invited to depart. Still without a real idea in my head, I approached the seemingly windowless shack pointed out to me and knocked firmly on the rough wooden plank door. Taking the muscled expletive in the response as permission to enter, I pushed open the door, which creaked on its hinges.
Standing by the drawing board was a tall black-haired man perhaps in his middle forties, thin to the point of emaciation. Even at that first meeting I noticed his hands, bony with extraordinarily long fingers so that they resembled clever mechanisms rather than flesh and blood. The right one was stained yellow with tobacco smoke, and a cigar shouldered on the edge of a shallow can filled with old butts. As those dark eyes bored into mine, I realized that the light came from an ample skylight in the roof, the sought after north light of an artist.
“What in the bloody hell are you doing, barging in like this?” His voice held impatience and irritation, not a promising beginning for my project.
“Sorry, I thought you gave me permission to enter.”
“A bloody American. Don’t they teach you any manners in the colonies?” He was being deliberately insulting.
“Since, I’m here and you are already interrupted, why don’t we begin all over again?” I suggested reasonably, sounding far more sure of myself than I really was. For a moment there flicked through my mind one of Arabella’s playlets in which I was a brilliant ship designer about to revolutionize the history of shipping and she my wealthy patroness. The spark of laughter this split-second vision occasioned heartened me. “I am Judgement Christian Hand, at your service, sir, the son and grandson of shipbuilders in the United States. I have come to you because you are said to be the best here.”
“Napier is the best, as you well know,” he snapped, “and I have enough problems of my own without trying to solve them for others. If it’s free advice you want, you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“Not free advice so much as an exchange of information.”
“What information could you possibly give to me?” he sneered. I was fascinated, I had never seen anyone actually sneer before. I began to think I had a chance after all, for he was overplaying his hand outrageously.
“It’s like this, Mr. Carr. My father, Gideon Hand, builds clippers, not steamships, but we’re thinking of perhaps converting. What bothers him the most is that sailing ships are apparently much safer than steam —”
“What do you mean, safer?” he broke in sharply.
“You must admit that last year’s examples of the Arctic, the City of Glasgow, and the City of Philadelphia are hardly conducive to the idea of safety, now are they?”
“Young man, you haven’t done your homework. The Arctic collided with another ship, which has been done repeatedly by sailing vessels as well, and the City of Philadelphia ran aground, again an accident hardly limited to steamships.”
“Ah, but the City of Glasgow simply disappeared, did she not? As did the President ten years ago. In both cases there were sailing ships on the same route at the same time that came through perfectly all right. I am trying to persuade my father that steam need be no more hazardous than sail, but it’s uphill going, I’ll tell you. On my very passage over here we nearly became another celebrated disappearance.”
“Indeed?” He was suddenly keenly interested. “What happened?”
“Our problem was caused by a very simple weakness of propeller-driven ships. I notice that you are using drawings rather than a ship model. Have you by any chance got one of the rudder arrangement?”
He thumbed hastily through the stack of sheets on the drawing board and came up with one showing the stem section of the ship. “This is a quite standard rudder and steering scheme, I assure you,” he said defensively.
“That’s just what I’m talking about. What happened to us was that this metal pin here broke, the pin that holds the quadrant to the rudder head. The rudder came around then and interfered with the propeller blades, making the screw useless and the ship unsteerable.”
“What ship were you on?”
“The Medea.”
“But she’s got paddlewheels as well.”
“Paddlewheels are notorious for breaking up in a storm, as did the Medea’s. That may have been what happened to the President.”
“How could the rudder have interfered with the propeller? The quadrants and rudder head should have stopped it.”
“Heavy following seas sheered off that pin, as I told you, and there is nothing else that acts as a stop. There was too strong a gale for sail, even if she could have been steered, and the only way we could even keep her from broaching was with an improvised sea anchor. She was taking water faster than her pumps could get rid of it.”
“What did the captain do to save her?”
“Besides the sea anchor, nothing. His chief engineer and I managed to come up with a makeshift pin, and what a brute of a job that was. It’s possible that the Glasgow couldn’t manage that. Now, maybe the rudder wasn’t the Glasgow’s trouble at all. Maybe a fishing trawler hit the wrong way, an iceberg …
Carr had been looking at the stem drawing all this time. “You’re lying.” His voice was flat.
“About the Glasgow? I’ll admit, as I said, that it is only a guess.”
“No, about the Medea.” His eyes narrowed. “If the rudder was around by the propeller blades, you couldn’t have fixed her from inside. You had a following sea that would have kept you from straightening the rudder blade enough to engage the new pin.”
“We winched it around from outside.”
“You couldn’t have. How did you get a line on it?”
“Lowered a man from the stem.”
He was silent for a moment, regarding me steadily with those black eyes. “Who was the man?” he asked softly at last.
“I was.”
“I see. And how would you avoid a similar predicament in the future?”
“Put stops on either side where the pintles go through the gudgeons. Here, here, here, here, and here. They won’t keep the quadrants from sheering off if enough force is applied, but they will keep the rudder off the propeller blades. A heavier quadrant and pin wouldn’t be amiss, either, or a guard on the propeller.”
An hour later in our shirtsleeves we had the whole rudder mechanism rearranged with stops and a removable head that could be readily replaced with a spare. I didn’t like that last bit — it weakened the whole head, to my mind — but it was worth considering, anyway. I told him that now would be the time to make the model in miniature and see what happened when force was exerted. He straightened up and lit another cigar.
“Mr. Hand, would you care to be in charge of this project?”
“I would very much like to, but I should tell you that I intend to take the methods I find here over to the other side of the ocean.”
He laughed wryly. “My dear fellow, you are welcome. The Yankees won’t be able to make a decent steamship the longest day they live.”
Chapter III
I am ashamed to say that I forgot all about Sam Drury, so absorbed did I become in Black Jack Carr’s shipbuilding operation. He was crusty all right, often downright ill-tempered, but he knew his business and he knew how to teach it. I had caught him out fairly and squarely, and his own chagrin demanded that he allow me to work with him. Actually, he needn’t have felt chagrined at all, for screw propulsion had been first tried on an Atlantic crossing only something like fourteen years before, and most shipowners and designers still considered it an unproven entity.
I was supervising the installation of the hanging of the rudder on the post one morning in a fine, driving rain and swearing a blue streak because some jackass had gotten the measurements off a fraction of an inch, which was nonetheless enough to make the lining up of the gudgeons and pintles a brute of a job. I had just
managed to pinch a finger tightening one of the nuts when I felt a tap on the shoulder. I swung around ready to chew nails at having been interrupted to find Sam in a very showy gray caped cloak with scarlet facings.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” I demanded truculently.
He ignored my surliness. “Don’t you remember, Christian? I’m your lawyer. The hearing for the suit comes up next month, and I’ve got to brief you and track down the necessary witnesses.”
“For God’s sake, Sam, I haven’t time for all that foolishness. You know we’ll never get a penny from the owners or insurers, either one.”
“My dear fellow, I would hardly have taken the trouble to track you down and engage a British figurehead law firm had I not thought we stood a very good chance of collecting a great deal of money. Cumings and Wightman think so, too.”
I stood there soaking wet in the cold rain and stared at him. “I’ll be damned,” I said weakly.
Much to my surprise, Jack Carr applauded my suing the shipping line. “Serves them right,” he said. “They have it all their own way when stupidity runs one of their ships aground or they lose one to the icebergs. They seldom pay a penny to the poor damned passengers. What a marvelous ploy for a passenger to claim salvage.”
“Salvage?” I asked stupidly.
“Well, of course! They set off the distress rockets, didn’t they? Drury’s right — any ship taking them in tow under those circumstances would automatically have been granted salvage. In effect, you took them in tow when you fixed the rudder.” He roared with laughter. “And all because they were too stingy to give you a few hundred pounds reward. I think that’s the most bloody funny joke I’ve heard in years. More power to you, lad. I hope you skin them alive.”
It wasn’t all that easy, of course. First there had to be a hearing before the commissioners of the Board of Trade. However, Sam assured me, this would be the crucial action, for if the case sounded strong enough, the owners and insurers would put out feelers to settle rather than undergo an expensive trial they might well lose. If no settlement was reached, then the suit would have to go into a regular court of law and possibly drag on for months. I knew that if I had been the owners, I would have counted on an individual like me running out of time and patience and funds, and I would have bided my time to offer a paltry settlement.
I worked at the yard right up until the day of the hearing and grudgingly took my leave of Jack. If this all went on long enough, I would miss the launching of the Cassiopeia, and I felt a very proprietary interest in her.
“Give ’em hell,” Jack said cheerfully as he saw me off.
The Board of Trade inquiry took place in a bare, high-ceilinged room that felt almost as frigid as the wicked January weather outside. At a long table sat seven middle-aged men who seemed, in their similar costumes of white stock and black frock coat, to be members of the same family. The head of the inquiry, a freckled little man whose gray hairs had only succeeded in turning his once red hair an unbecoming shade of pink, opened the proceedings. As plaintiffs, we were required to state our case first. We had been very fortunate in laying our hands on witnesses for our side, for it had been arranged that the Medea should put in at the London docks to accommodate Captain Crowell, Chief Engineer Houser, and other witnesses from the ship.
The lawyer from Lloyd’s, Irving Clay, was handling the defense, though in consultation with the law firm serving the owners, Cassell & Son, Ltd., Shippers. Young Lawrence Cassell himself had come to view the hearing. I say young, though he must have been in his forties, a pale, composed, slender man already losing his hair. Our antagonist Clay, on the other hand, though also in his forties, was dark with a lean clever face somewhat reminiscent of Sam’s and astoundingly white teeth that he bared from time to time in a nervous grimace.
Our law firm, Cumings and Wightman, turned out to be just that: two very young eager lawyers with more energy than sense who had teamed up as a firm for this particular case. Sam had explained that he himself, though every bit as young as they, had organized the whole business, which should prove to be a landmark case of sorts even if it never reached formal court. Jim Cumings and Charles Wightman had welcomed the opportunity with open arms, agreeing to take their losses if we lost and to split up to five thousand pounds if we won. Since Cumings stuttered and Wightman had a high voice, I couldn’t say that I thought they were being put upon.
To begin, Captain Crowell was called as an unfriendly witness for our side. Sam was trying to defuse him immediately, since he would no doubt be the biggest gun the opposition could bring forward. No man ever questioned a captain about the running of his own ship, and Crowell didn’t take to it kindly, I’ll tell you. Cumings, whose stutter mysteriously disappeared when he was on stage, so to speak, led him through a sullen, grudging rendition of what had occurred aboard the Medea on the second of October, 1855.
“And now, captain, would you please tell us in your own words what happened when Mr. Hand offered to put forward a solution to the predicament.”
“I told him to mind his own business,” Crowell said reluctantly.
“And did he?”
“He did not! It was sheer luck and nothing else that prompted his success. We would have gotten it fixed without him.”
“You didn’t seem to think so then.”
“How so?” Crowell asked truculently.
“You did shoot off distress rockets, did you not?”
“That was only to see if we could transfer the injured passengers, of which we had many, to a ship better situated to make them comfortable.”
I looked at Sam then and shook my head gloomily. If he stuck to that story, our case was lost. It would be his word against Houser’s and mine, presuming Houser stuck to the truth himself. It certainly wouldn’t make him popular with his own shipping company.
“You don’t remember saying, ‘We’re going to lose everything before long. There’s two hours yet until dark when the rockets will be readily visible, and the pumps are already losing ground’?”
“I do not,” that obnoxious little man said firmly. It occurred to me that he might well now believe his altered version of what had gone on. In extremes, many are capable of completely rearranging reality.
Clay rose then and objected to any further questioning concerning the disputed quotation. He pointed out that Cumings was forcibly trying to put words in Crowell’s mouth.
Houser stuck with us, but the first officer, Grant, backed up Crowell. It would no doubt be worth his career not to, and I hated to think of what might become of Houser, though he had in his favor the fact that men capable of coaxing along the cranky marine engines of that day were in very short supply. The second officer had drowned, and the third officer claimed that he hadn’t been present, though I knew he had.
“Damm it,” Sam said angrily that night, “I had no idea they would out and out perjure themselves.”
“I could have told you.” It was Sir Aubrey Markham, Sam’s mentor, speaking. “Why in heaven’s name didn’t you confide in me before beginning this ill-conceived bit of shit?”
I stared at him, startled by his vulgarity, which was not usual in the wellborn Englishmen I’d met thus far. He was a large man with a freckled bald head surrounded by a short-clipped trim of white hair. He had small pale-blue eyes like pieces of glass and heavy furrows on either side of his mouth.
“I didn’t think it was ethical,” Sam said sullenly. “You used to be chief counsel for Lloyd’s.”
“And you wanted the glory unshared, didn’t you?” Markham surmised shrewdly. “Well, you’re apt to pay for it in a way you won’t soon forget even if you are an American. Edwin Cassell may be in his seventies, but he wields tremendous power and influence in this country. I shouldn’t be surprised if some of that power and influence couldn’t be brought to bear in yours as well. There’s nothing for it now — you’ve got to take them.” He waggled his oversized bald head and examined his nails. Without looking up he added, “But h
ow?”
Sam and I looked at each other with a sudden lift of spirits. If Markham was with us, perhaps we stood a chance after all.
The pale eyes regarded me. “I want you to close your eyes,” he said, “and envision the scene on deck when Captain Crowell was supposed to have said those fatal words. Name everyone who was there.”
“The deck was pitching pretty wildly,” I began slowly, “and we were all either hanging to the rail or to a line rigged to allow crew members to get about on deck without being washed overboard. The captain and the first were standing with their backs to the stem, because they were watching —” I broke off as I realized the significance of what I was about to say. “They had been watching the seaman setting off the rockets,” I continued. “He was only about six or eight feet away from us, and the wind had dropped from a gale to a stiff blow. We were all talking loudly, because you get used to raising your voice after a while in a storm.”
“Do you think that the seaman heard what was said?” Markham asked in a deceptively mild, almost uninterested tone. I could see how he would have been a formidable adversary in court.
“I suppose he must have,” I replied. “Of course I have no idea who he was, but Houser would know. Why ever didn’t either of us think of him?”
“Because, my dear fellow,” Markham drawled with a faint smile, “you Americans are no better than the rest of us, for all your pretty speeches. Seamen, like servants, are hardly to be taken notice of, now are they?”
I flushed angrily and stammered, “It wasn’t that at all!” His smile grew broader. “Pinked you, didn’t I? Well, never mind that now. Do you know where to find Houser?”
“He’s staying at the Ship’s Bell near the London Docks, not far off Nightingale Lane,” Sam said.
Markham drew out a remarkable great gold watch. “It’s eight o’clock now, and the hearing reconvenes at ten tomorrow. That gives you exactly fourteen hours to find Houser and then track down this seaman, who with luck is still with the Medea. Unless you or Houser can remember someone else on deck nearby at the time, that’s your last chance.”
Kings of the Sea Page 23