Making Shore

by Sara Allerton

  God, I am not hurt. We must have been hit.

  I held my hands up before me to see if I could see them but I could not. I grabbed hold of the bunk end again, my only point of reference, and one hand above the other, felt my way up to the top of the bunk. My hurry bag. I always hung it, like we all did, on the bulkhead above where I slept. It had my essentials in it. Spare trousers, socks, a pullover, some chocolate. I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t there. I tried to steady myself. It must be there. I felt again where I thought it should be. It wasn’t there.

  The cabin continued to tip and I couldn’t keep my balance. It would stop momentarily and then jerk sharply further left, causing something I couldn’t see to smash against me, knocking me sideways again. My ears didn’t seem to be hearing properly. They were throbbing painfully but below that I could make out water gushing; also wood breaking apart and the muffled shouting of men.

  It must have been a hell of a hit.

  The door. Scrambling along the side of what I took to be the wall, I made for the door. Or at least where I thought the door should be, but at first I could not find it. I clambered my hands up, around, feeling frantically out in front of me. It was not there. Unable to comprehend the disappearance of my only escape route and disorientated by the tangible darkness pressing in against my eyes, I opened them more widely to see if I really could not see. Black. Only black.

  My throat began to constrict and my limbs began to lighten. The creeping, sickening spreading of an old childhood fear revisited me, not consciously but up through my guts, leadening my lungs. It was the same cold, gripping fear of my infancy, of being shut in a small, dark room when all the people and the light were downstairs. Panic throttled my thought and my mind stuck stubbornly to the knowledge that the door had been here. Just here.

  My hands compulsively covered the same ground over and over as if by willing it to be so, the door would suddenly appear. I stifled the screaming that was already overwhelming me inside and forced myself to think. Think.

  I was knee-deep in water now and could barely keep my feet. I am not going to die here, I thought. I know I am not.

  Another sharp lurch of the boat to the left caused my arm to fling out above me to the right and as it did so my hand got caught up in what felt like material. My pyjama top. In the heat of the confined cabin space on hot nights, I hung it on the back of the door. Bizarrely, it seemed to be hanging from somewhere above me. I grabbed at it again, sliding sideways all the while and luckily, this time, I found it. I clasped the reassuring folds with both hands and with it as a guide, I was able to grope to the door handle. Relief flooded through me for just that split second and as I pulled, my body relaxed into the shaky giddiness that comes with liberation. For just that one split second.

  But then the door would not budge. I twisted the handle, pulled, yanked. Pushed my feet up against the bulkhead below it to try for greater purchase. In vain. Splashing and kicking, I yelled furiously in my frustration, flinging my head from side to side as if in childish petulance. My arms exhausted quickly and just when I thought that I could not do it, the hinges gave. The force with which the door flew back surprised me off my feet again. But I could get out. I scrambled through the hole and into the companionway leading to the well deck.

  My station in an emergency was the radio shack and so, doing what I could to remain upright and reaching the steps, I clambered up on to the deck. The ship was tilting forty-five degrees or more, hard to port, and though the swell was fairly gentle, the seas were already swamping her. There was little doubt that she was going down.

  I clung to the canvas of the hatch covers, precariously scrabbling from one to the next, refusing to allow myself to slip undetected into the enveloping water. The noise was overwhelming. Escaping steam kept up a steady, shrieking hiss, spars crashed, glass shattered. Timbers, splintering, bowed and snapped, while concrete and steel crumpled all around me into heaps. My whole body, not just my mind, absorbed it, reverberated with it. Shook.

  Barefooted, I scurried over fallen wood and broken metal, canvas and rope until I was brought up short by a huge, jagged edge of timber. On this side at any rate, the Sithonia had clearly been spliced in two. There was no way that I could get to the stern of the ship across this growing, watery ravine, dark and deep and terrifying.

  I darted for the bridge companionway and started up it, making for the port lifeboat. I was somehow not afraid by now, just determined. I was quick and I was strong – there would be some way out. I do not think I was even that alarmed to find the port lifeboat useless. It had been stoved in, crushed by a fall of shattered concrete from the bridge reinforcements.

  I took to the railings and started to pull myself along the length of the bridge. As far as I could tell it was still intact, and if I could just make my way across it, the starboard deck might yet afford me access to the stern. If it had not already been blown apart. The list of the ship was growing more pronounced now, and every now and then a sudden lurch downwards loosened my grip. My hands, wet and grimy, often slipped and I swung out, dangerously close a couple of times to losing hold altogether. I was immensely encouraged though by the fact that the further along I got, the louder the shouts and cries of men became, and when I finally reached the starboard lifeboat, to my utter relief, it seemed that the whole ship’s company was already there.

  I saw Joe, crazy-haired and quick, but calmly trying to stay Mick’s arm. Mick was wielding an axe. The lifeboat was dancing free at the forrard end but had snagged on something in the stern. Regardless, men were surging forward, from all directions, shoving and falling over and across one another in their determination to make the boat. Mick, wide-eyed and panting, was hacking away at the falls, swinging his axe wildly, willy-nilly and in grave danger of laying out flat anyone foolish enough to get too close to his heedless backswing.

  Men were crowding in on them, panicky, barging to get past and into the boat. Joe, using his bulk, was patiently pushing them back, around and away from Mick’s lethal slashing. Captain Edwards was among them, bleating ineffectually, in a vain attempt to establish some kind of order.

  On catching sight of me, he hurried over.

  ‘Got the emergency radio, Cub?’ he yelled. Another huge crash behind him made us both wince.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Fetch it up. Down at the bottom of my companionway.’

  ‘Sir.’

  I struggled, fighting against the list, desperately clinging to whatever I could manage to grab on to, along the deck to the ten steps leading below to the Captain’s quarters. Looking down the hatch, I saw that only two or three steps at the top were now visible. Gurgling, swaying water was rising rapidly from below and I hesitated. Surely he couldn’t mean it. Who would ever know? But then we were going to need it. And I would know. Taking a deep breath, I quickly started down the ladder. The water was cold, black, entombing. I clung to the steps, counting them as I went down, and at seven I was forced to go under completely.

  The tumult above me abruptly ceased. Aside from the pounding of my heart in my ears, there was the strange, echoing soundlessness of the water. There was the vague muffled clunking of the ship’s body as it creaked further, slowly into the gloom. The sea pushed and pulled me, forcing my body this way and that as, eyes closed, I thumped about with my free arm and my legs, desperately trying to locate the small suitcase-sized radio transmitter. It was hopeless. Blind, weightless and powerless, I floundered around in vain. My temples began to throb, my heart to race, louder still, and the air that I had been holding bubbled uncontrollably from my lungs and mouth. A few more seconds, just a few more. After one final, useless grope, I kicked with all my might, up and out. I broke through the surface, shaking and gasping, heaving in air as if it were my last. I clung weakly for a second to the steps and then slowly clambered out, light-limbed and grateful. Stumbling, half crawling, I made my way back towards the mêlée at the lifeboat.

  By now, Joe was shouting and pointing, trying to make M
ick hear, to show him that the boat was caught by the after falls which, stiffened by old paint, held it fast. Finally, Mick understood. Switching his aim he smashed the axe on target and with two or three swift, decisive blows he got the boat away. It slid onto the water. The drop now was not a great one, for while Mick had been struggling, the after end of the ship had been sinking fast and dark water was beginning to swirl up and over the tops of the hatches.

  Men jostled and blundered into me, crashing against one another, shouting, swearing, crying out but impervious to all except the one primeval objective of getting in the boat. It mattered little that others were knocked down or trampled over in the fray and as men fell, jumped and scrambled in, the little boat was fast becoming overloaded. Built for twenty-three, at least that and more were now already thrashing about within. And the deck was not yet empty.

  Big Sam Cook had got himself on board. So had Mac and Tomas. Clarie. Fraser, the chief engineer, was there. I stopped, suddenly struck with the realisation that Jamie was not with them. I had not seen him since supper the night before. He had been heading off to the radio shack to take the eight ’til midnight watch, the one before mine. I grabbed at someone skittering past me.

  ‘Jamie. Jamie Robinson. Seen him?’ He looked at me blankly and shirked me off.

  ‘Jamie! Jamie!’ I yelled at the top of my voice, but it was useless. I couldn’t even hear my own cry. My shouting was then whipped away in a sudden crushing crescendo of splitting and splintering timber, which culminated finally in a resounding crack. I cringed, half expecting to be flattened by whatever it was that had caused it, but on turning saw that the forrard half of the ship had upended. I could do nothing but look on, horrified, as, with a terrifying quickening of motion, its fast-shrinking hulk vanished, hissing and grumbling into the black, glistening quicksand of water.

  Time was running out.

  ‘Jamie!’ Frantic, I began to dash about, grabbing at the last of those still passing me and squinting about at the faces of the men on board already. The deck was emptying. As the lifeboat slowly began to bob away, I saw the captain take a jump for it and, as he landed heavily across numerous others, he fought in vain to keep his balance. ‘Wait!’ he screamed in the futile hope that those now scrabbling at the oars might hear him and somehow prevent the gap between the boat and ship from widening. Stricken with the knowledge that anyone who did not take their chance immediately would surely now be lost, he twisted his head to look back up at those of us still on the deck and, throwing up his arms, he bellowed hoarsely: ‘Jump!’ And then his legs gave way and he fell among the mass of struggling bodies around him.

  The last of the men were now leaping in, on top of one another, batting and kicking and shoving as our half of the ship continued to slide into the grasping sea. I was sure Jamie had not got in.

  I peered helplessly up the sloping deck towards the stern and then towards the lifeboat. I could not decide. The lifeboat. My friend. I could not decide. I put my hands up to my head, desperate to cut out the incessant, confounding roar around me.

  Then, a heavy paw upon my shoulder. He turned me round to face him. ‘Brian,’ Joe said. Strangely, in spite of the noise, the constant, brain-numbing noise, I could hear him. He spoke calmly, almost quietly. ‘Brian. It’s time. There’s no one else.’

  ‘But Joe. Jamie!’ I shrieked.

  ‘There’s no one else,’ he said. He propelled me towards the rapidly widening gap between the ship and the boat and shoved me hard. I jumped too late and landed half in, half out, on top of Mac, who swore and then heaved me over. The boat rocked again as Joe leapt behind me, knocking over one of the others who was standing, struggling to get an oar into the rowlocks. Domino-style, he fell backwards on to those behind, sending them sprawling. The scrapping for space, increasingly aggressive, intensified.

  Panting, Joe scrambled across to me.

  ‘Probably made another boat,’ he yelled, nudging down in front of me. ‘Jamie.’ We were huddled towards the back end of the lifeboat, next to the water. I had been afforded a little space on one of the wooden seats while Joe hunched down on the floor in front of me.

  ‘Another got away. I saw her,’ shouted Tomas, over my shoulder. ‘Port side, by the radio shack.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Mac, who had remained the other side of me, suddenly jumped up and, clambering roughly across me, snatched up one of the life jackets stowed down by my feet beneath the boat’s rim. Without a second’s pause, he leapt up onto the ledge, standing painfully on my hand as he did so, and astonished all of us by diving headlong into the sea. He made off away from the boat into the darkness as quickly as he could. There was a sudden resurgence of frantic panic and several other men piled in and swam off after him.

  ‘Don’t look now,’ Joe said, looking up and over my head, ‘but things aren’t looking too clever behind you.’ Startled by his expression, I glanced quickly back over my shoulder. Our boat, so overcrowded, had been impossible to steer. No one had had the room to get the oars into the rowlocks, let alone row with them, and so our safe haven had begun to drift uncontrollably, drawn towards the pull of the water under the heavy counter-stern. Due to the swell and the angle the ship’s end now had, like a weighty hammer, it was slapping up and down on the surface, sucking our boat in beneath it with each mighty blow.

  ‘The oars! Get the bloody oars!’ Calhoun was on his feet, yelling and gesticulating wildly. Two or three more men to his right hastily took to the sea. Thankfully, some of the more nimble-minded among our crew leapt into action and were able to take quick advantage of the space created by the bailing lemmings. Mick virtually ran across a number of bodies and seized one of the oars, yelling to Big Sam Cook to grab another. Given suddenly more space, others pitched in and, with a supreme effort, hollering until hoarse, they managed to coordinate the rowing and force the boat around, away from the smashing stern.

  I became aware during this desperate frenzy of activity that Joe was holding on to my pyjama trouser leg, pinning it with a firm fist to the wooden bench where I sat. I realised that having witnessed my reluctance to get into the boat just minutes before, he didn’t trust me not to decide injudiciously to leave it. In fact, I had no intention of leaping out of the frying pan and into the fire, but Joe wasn’t taking any chances.

  We rowed a little distance away until Captain Edwards called a stop. Mick and Sam and the others hunched over their oars, sweating and breathless while the rest of us, with all the excited exhilaration that comes with such a close call, took to slapping the oarsmen on their backs and crowing at those who were beginning to swim over to clamber back in.

  I turned around to watch. There wasn’t much of the Sithonia left to see: she had become a small island, diminishing by the minute. The dense, greedy waters were claiming her more readily now, sucking her in. It was almost an anticlimax when at last she gave up a final, furious, protesting hiss of steam and the last of her shuddering shell slithered effortlessly beneath the undulating surface. She was gone. There was an appalling, soundless pause and then the gentle lapping of the waves against the few pieces of wreckage left behind, the only evidence that she had ever been there at all.

  For the first time on the lifeboat, we fell silent. I saw Fraser make the sign of the cross and realised that he surely had lost men. The torpedo must have ripped through the hull of the ship, right through the engine room. There would have been no time for anyone to get out before the seas smashed in, had they even survived the blast. There could have been no one left alive down there.

  Somehow, oddly, it was only then that I fully began to appreciate that this wasn’t just an exciting interlude that had relieved the boredom of our otherwise uneventful voyage. We had lost our ship, our belongings and we had lost some men. Men with real lives, thoughts and feelings, aspirations. Men with families at home. Men I had worked alongside, greeted in the companionways and shared jokes with. They were dead.

  The magnitude of what had just happened settled upon us and we wer
e quiet.

  ‘Hey lads, give us a hand!’ It was Mac, slowly making his way back towards us through the blackness. It spurred us into action and we began manoeuvring a weaving course through the deck covers, wooden spars and bits of old flag lockers to pick up those who had preferred to take their chances in the water. Most had managed to don a lifejacket before their flight, and as each had a tiny light attached they were not difficult to locate. Only Billy Rawlins and Moses had not had the time to take any such precaution, and we heard Billy long before we could actually see him, swearing and cursing. We found him clinging to what looked remarkably like my old bit of wardrobe panel, but I could not be sure. The sea was relatively calm and Moses a capable swimmer. He managed to make his own way in. We heaved them aboard, cracking jokes at the lightness and ease of our load without them, how their absences had saved us and how much better off we’d been without them.

  The mood lightened further still when Tomas jumped excitedly to his feet, pointing away off to the right, shouting, ‘The other boat! Over there! See the lights?’

  We turned slowly, awkwardly, as having recovered all of those who had leapt from the boat in peril, we were once again heavily overladen. The oars were difficult to manage and we were low, dangerously low in the water. There were too many people in the way for those trying to row to get any rhythm going and Mick was having a hard time making himself heard over the whistles and catcalls aimed at attracting the attention of the other boat.

  It made greater speed and when it hove more clearly into view, some twenty yards off, Joe unfurled his great frame from the bottom of the boat and bellowed, ‘How many are you?’

  No answer that we could hear, but the figures of two men standing in the prow were now discernible and the fact that at least four of the boat’s oars were working quickly, smoothly and in time, was reassuring. It seemed interminable but by the time they got within shouting distance I could make out six, perhaps seven bodies. They were few.