China Jewel

by Thomas Hollyday

“Can we get more information on the plane?”

  “It’s called a clipper too,” said Cutter. He nodded at Doc Jerry. “Can you get them some of the company photographs of the seaplane?”

  Doc Jerry grinned, “Sure can.”

  Stringer walked ahead by himself. When they entered the main workshop, he went directly to the master carpenter, a man named Bilge. Bilge’s big stomach showed under the bottom of his undershirt, while his ball cap was ajar, its brim turned up over his balding head. He and Stringer had been constantly together during the original construction. Cutter well knew they shared the worry the Peregrine was not seaworthy. He was not close enough to hear their conversation but judging from Stringer’s wildly gesticulating arms, he assumed Stringer continued to express alarm at the Peregrine’s sailing characteristics.

  The boat shop was a historic affair, as old as River Sunday and involved in most of its history. It centered on the ancient ship hauling ramp which had now become a modern railroad to the water. Much of it was reinforced during World War Two for military contracts with the Russians for wooden sub chasers. After the war it had continued building and repairing countless schooners and bugeyes, the local two-masted fishing craft. At the top of the rails and near the shop and various sheds, was the huge electric motor used for hauling boats of all sizes.

  Inside the workshop, amid the smells of sawdust and sweat, were the old offices used during the war. Most were filled with storage materials left over from the recent construction of the brig. These included the dozens of paper printouts of designs of various components, and the patterns used for lofting or marking the frames to make perfect the curves of the hull. Assorted piles of lumber were everywhere. Some of this wood came in for the Peregrine from the South American countries where proper timber could still be harvested and cured. Also present were the old steel desks used by the Navy when their supervisors and the aforementioned Soviets had been on duty.

  The first room and the biggest space with the least of the old storage materials was used by Jolly for his own yacht building and repair business. A large and faded wartime photograph of one of the Soviet sub chasers was framed over the back wall in the darkness behind his surplus grey desk. It was pictured in black and white coming off the ways, a small Soviet flag on its bow. A crowd of River Sunday civilians including Bilge and Jolly, caught by the lens as excited young teenagers, stood alongside wartime women, probably mothers. To the left of the new warship were a few men, some of them in uniform, standing on a platform, its base decorated in bunting. Even in faded black and white, the picture had the gray tints representing red, white, and blue. In the background the photographer had included a flight of Republic P47 fighter bombers roaring over the boatyard from practicing touch and go at the town’s runway, in those days a grass one.

  A bustle of men moved quickly around the workroom at the center of the shop outside Jolly’s office. Stringer’s area, several flat drafting tables, was along the far wall. Stringer had switched on a bright fluorescent light above him. He was sifting through the large drawings piled on the tables, picking up one and examining it, then throwing it down and lifting another sheet of paper

  Cutter nodded towards Bilge who was gathering his tools, his face sullen. He nodded back without expression.

  Jolly said, “Don’t worry about Bilge. Once he starts to work there’s no one I’d rather have.”

  Stringer beckoned them to his table. When they arrived, he said, “They lost the foretopmast and the foretopgallant. Here, come see.” He adjusted the fluorescent light above the table.

  Cutter looked over Stringer’s shoulder and nodded slowly, as Stringer pointed to the drawings.

  “What do you think?” asked Jolly.

  Stringer said, “Put enough men on it, anything’s possible.”

  “I figure we can get them built and flown out there pretty quick. The crew needs as much time as possible,” said Cutter, “to install and right the masts. Then they got to sail to the southwest out of the range of those thunderstorms.”

  “You leave with the finished spars in less than twenty four hours. Then you got to fly down there and still give them time to raise the new wood and rig it. You don’t want nothing,” said Jolly.

  “Yessir,” said Cutter.

  Bilge had come over and after listening to them, said, “We got to find the logs, cut ‘em down, make the taper. We also got the finishing.”

  “Forget the finishing,” said Jolly. “We’ll send them out with a fast coat of poly and that’s enough to get the boat to China. What I’m saying, they can do the fancy painting later as they sail towards China.”

  Stringer nodded. ”Suit yourself. There’s still the tapering. Mast has to start at one diameter then be smaller up top to fit the next mast.”

  Bilge said, “It ain’t going to be easy to get just right.”

  He looked at Cutter. “When it gets out there we want them to be able to hang it snug, that’s what I’m saying. It takes time to make sure it be right.”

  Jolly looked out at the workshop floor where some logs, the bark still on them, had already been brought in. He said, “Big Smithy’s on the way in here. He’s got the eye for it. He did the ax work on the last ones.”

  Jolly took a pencil stub from his jeans pocket and licked it, then began to write on a small pad of paper. His head was wet with sweat, even here in the shade of the workroom.

  Behind them, more of the large doors to the harbor were being opened by a team of workmen. A breeze of outside air flooded into the workshop. It was quickly replaced by the stagnant heat of the late Maryland afternoon. The air carried the sour smell of drying and parched clams and seaweed stranded in mud by the outgoing tide.

  Jolly compared his notes with the drawings. “That’s two logs. The foretopmast is about thirty feet long with a nine inch diameter. It weighs finished about nine hundred pounds. The foretopgallant is smaller, about twenty feet and a similar diameter and it weighs about five hundred pounds. With finishing the surfaces and mastheads, lot of steady hours all of us working. She won’t be finished pretty but she’ll hold the sails.”

  Cutter nodded.

  Stringer asked, “How you going to load them?”

  Cutter said, “The masts can be stored in the passenger compartment.”

  Jolly smiled, “Well, you best get the seaplane in here and moored close. We’ll talk about how to swing them into that plane. Your boss won’t like nothing scratching up his fine interior.”

  Jolly inspected the logs. “Too many knotholes in these. Would make the sticks weak,” he said. He pulled his phone and rattled off a conversation in the slurred speech that could only be understood by the local long-time residents. He smiled as he put away his phone. “My cousins will help us.”

  They didn’t have long to wait. An hour later a Peterbilt truck with two more large logs of aged white pine were delivered to the side entry of the shop. Smithy waved to his relatives, two burly tanned men Cutter guessed were farmers.

  When the selected timber was on blocks, the positions were carefully marked so that the work could be turned. They used templates to assure the rounds and tapers as the carpenters began initial trim work. All this was in preparation for Big Smithy’s arrival.

  Big Smithy arrived. He stood by the open door to the harbor for a moment before anyone noticed him. Then the room grew quiet as the workmen saw him and laid down their tools, knowing he would tell them how to proceed from now on. He was tall, the lights flickering on his dark skin, his shoulder straps and the grease on his overalls. He was a black man, a former football lineman who had played for a while with the Baltimore Ravens.

  Jolly spoke to him, “There was something weak in the heartwood of those poles we last made for the brig.”

  Smithy just said, “I’ll get this one right enough. Got to save them folks.”

  Stringer said, “Would have liked to laminate these masts from several pieces. Get some strong resin into the wood. However, we had had to be accurate to th
e old designs, so there was no way to add strength.”

  “I can do it,” Smithy said, as he chose one of the adze tools near the logs. He touched the blade for its sharpness and was satisfied. He took his first cuts. Here was the master, the man who with a simple ax could round these logs into piece of precision wood, a true artist. The other carpenters knew he was the only man in the region with the innate skill to do this work. One false blow and a log would be splintered into a false cut that could not be retrieved. A weak cut of mast wood would ruin the whole job in the way that a diamond could be chipped into destruction.

  “How long?” asked Cutter.

  Smithy looked at him and the other carpenters who had come over to stand with him. He shook his head, meaning he would work as fast as he could, and he continued cutting. Cutter and the others joined him and stood by to turn the heavy logs as Smithy signaled.

  Above them, the white sign with the black letters played in the shop lights. The words, flecked with sawdust from the boatbuilding machines, still could be read. Cutter smiled. He knew the quote from the days of the historic Peregrine race against a British boat in China. She lost that one but the captain promised revenge.

  “Peregrine will come back. She’s not finished yet.”-Captain Tolchester

  Later, in the middle of the night, Cutter stood outside as they all took a short break from pure exhaustion. Inside the logs were beginning to look something like masts but they were still far from the correct diameters. Each fitting of the templates did show progress but the work would take many more hours.

  He looked at the night lights playing over the large ways and smelled the stink caused by the low tide exposing mudflats and drying seaweed. The nighthawks still dived at bugs in the glare from the shop behind him. He remembered the day early in the summer when the Peregrine was launched. He saw again the finished hull ready to go.

  He had a rare telegram of congratulations from his former wife, sent to him from Argentina. He read between the lines. She was worried and still had a lack of forgiveness, a sense he had once again put their son in danger.

  “I hope this finds you and your ship in good conditions. I pray daily that our son will be kept out of harm’s way in this adventure. Sincerely, Rosa.”

  Jolly’s drawl behind him broke into his thoughts. “Let’s get back to work,” Cutter heard Jolly say. He turned in the bright lights of the workshop. As he did, his shadow arched out over the shallow tidewater behind him.

  Doc Jerry reminded him one more call had to be made. He listened as the phone rang in China. Dela picked up on the fourth ring.

  “We need a replacement antenna.”

  “You have so many troubles with our equipment. What have you done to the antenna?”

  “The masts broke. The antenna was crushed. I’m taking out new masts to our ship tomorrow.”

  “I see. You have the approval of the boat committee?”

  “Yes. You can check with New York.”

  “Very fine, James Cutter. I’ll have one delivered to the boatyard in the morning from our stateside warehouse.”

  Dela hesitated then said, “Your entry is receiving far more attention from us than the other boats. It may be that the other companies will protest. We have to be neutral in all our effort.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, General?”

  “As I told you, I have no rank anymore. Those days are gone forever, my friend,” said Dela, his voice smooth.

  “Let’s just say that once a Charlie, always a Charlie. Get this. I’ll expect the antenna tomorrow.” He was referring to the Army nickname for the Viet Cong, “Charlie.” Cutter hung up without waiting for Dela to comment. Somewhere along the line before this race was over he knew he’d have to face that grinning man again. In a way, he was looking forward to it and this time he’d finish what he started in Vietnam long ago.

  Chapter 10

  June 26, 3 PM

  Atlantic Ocean

  It had been a slow trip out to the Peregrine. The flying boat was sturdy but heavy. In seaplanes the engines carried not only the weight of the aircraft but also the weight of the attached hull structure. As a result the plane was slower than a similarly powered landplane. In the cockpit Willoughby drove with Jenks, his co-pilot, a man Cutter had met on past trips. He was a red-headed Irishman with a face of freckles and a large grin.

  Cutter said, “Did Bill talk you into restoring this seaplane?”

  Jenks said, “They brought me in to clean out the fish.”

  Willoughby said, “He also flew with me in Iraq.”

  Jenks said, “You mean, we were lucky they couldn’t shoot straight when we came over. That C130 gunship we flew was pretty slow.”

  “We called them Puff the Magic Dragon when they let loose with the

  Gatling guns,” said Cutter. “What’s the landing going to be like out here?”

  Captain Willoughby said, without looking away from his instruments, “Sparkles is giving us light winds and good weather. We’ll have enough time to get their mast fixed and get on our way. She predicts some swells but we can land in them.”

  The brigs finally came into sight, surrounded by warships and passenger vessels carrying newsmen and race officials. They circled, exchanging radio signals with the American destroyer.

  Willoughby said, looking down, “We can judge the wind and see where the surface gives us the best landing. Then we’ll come up to the boats.”

  As Sparkles had predicted the ocean surface had a light wind and large swells coming in from many miles away. The plane approached to land in the trough of one of the swells. As she came in, Willoughby brought the seaplane lower until he was flying level a few feet above the water surface. Adjusting for the wind, the big plane settled onto the water and gradually landed from its flat glide path. Willoughby began to taxi. The spray was heavy at first but then subsided with Willoughby and Jenks keeping the nose high enough to avoid water on the propeller blades. “Too much water will ruin those prop blades with corrosion.”

  Cutter automatically flinched back with the noise of the salt spray that crashed against the plane. The wash overwhelmed the cockpit glass like a white waterfall. Cutter felt as if he were deep underwater. His brain worried the torrent would be sucked into the radial engine air intakes above, leaving the cylinders full of salt water and inoperative. Yet, the water receded. Cutter recovered just as quickly. He mentally stopped himself in an old reflex of going into action when danger approached, his right arm groping hypnotically for an M16 rifle he didn’t have.

  After they were down and moving slowly on the ocean surface, the large propellers motored the plane easily through the waves. Captain Willoughby turned to him and said, “Like a cat, she can land anywhere.”

  Willoughby whistled Yankee Doodle as he worked the engine levers and rudder pedals to begin a slow turn of the plane’s hull towards the brigs. They twinkled in the sunlight, visible as the seaplane was at the tops of the long swells and then gone. Cutter could see he gauged the ocean carefully to keep the wing tips out of the water. He’d gun the engines to keep the high wing from upsetting the plane by dropping too far and grabbing the sea surface.

  As they approached Cutter watched the crew working on the forward deck of the Peregrine. Several block and tackle hoists were fastened to the bottom shafts of each mast. The broken top of the foremast had been stripped to its masthead. The lines and shrouds which had held up the top masts were piled on deck ready to be assembled when the new masts went up. The French boat was on the other side of the Peregrine and its sails had been carefully furled so as to minimize tangling with the Peregrine rigging. Cutter could see his old friend standing with a bull horn at the bow of the Louis Fourteen, gesticulating and shouting. A beautiful young woman in jeans stood next to him. Captain Hall was at the other end of his own ship doing the same thing with his team. A set of wood planks created a walkway between the two racers. He smiled at the sight of the albatross supervising from the tip of the highest mainmast sec
tion, the topgallant mast. At the same time, he noted the broken front mast still had only its bottom section, waiting for the topmast and the top gallant.

  Within a few hundred feet of the Peregrine, the four Pratt and Whitney radial engines were idled back. The seaplane’s nose slowly moved up and down and her hull drifted casually with the waves. Willoughby ordered the rubber raft inflated to take over a line to the brig. By now the two sailing ships towered over the seaplane, their masts waving back and forth in the swells. The high spars slowly approached almost to tap against the aircraft wing and then went back the other way again. Captain Hall called out to keep lines paid out enough to keep the seaplane clear.

  An occasional helicopter passed over them. “Probably out from Brazil or flying from the Azores,” Willoughby estimated. “The reporters are taking video for the news.” None came low, fearing, as Cutter guessed, they might get too close and tangle with the up thrust masts of the ships. Further away the large naval vessels of the Chinese, Americans, and Brazilians were monitoring the activity.

  Finally secured, the seaplane stayed several hundred feet from where the two brigs were tied together. The engines were shut all the way down. Cutter paddled in the plane’s inflatable boat to the Peregrine. The sudden quiet after the hours of throbbing engine noise was pleasant to Cutter, almost relaxing. He looked at the parcel beside him. It contained the new radio assembly General Dela had rushed to his office. The gear had been wrapped in protective plastic labeled with Chinese characters. He reached the side of the brig, its black wooden planking rising more than ten feet above the raft. He had to grab quickly for the boarding ladder as it rose and lowered, slapping the ocean surface.

  When Cutter was aboard, he turned to look down the deck. Among the bustling crew members, he saw the young woman coming toward him. She moved her head up, tossing back her long black hair and stopped, facing him. Cutter looked into her deep black eyes. She smiled at him, her face radiating excitement and youthful energy.

  “Now we get our mast,” she said, pulling back her hair which fell again.