At the Midway

by J. Clayton Rogers

  Ramming as a form of sea warfare was as archaic as necromancy, yet protruding twelve feet out front of each armor belt was a prominent, deadly ram. Since 1865, the sole victims of these devices had been friendly ships, accidentally rammed on dark, foggy nights.

  Nights just like this one.

  Collision!

  By the time he reached the bridge, Oates was breathless and sweating. It had been a fair distance to run, from officer's country to the bridge. And his two packs a day plus the bulge at his belt--not to mention his age--made it no easier.

  From the starboard bridge the senior watch officer was shouting at the quartermaster over his shoulder. On the port wing the junior watch officer looked thoroughly constipated, his face twisting into every conceivable expression.

  "Helmsman!"

  The Florida jumped to port. It took Oates several seconds to identify the ship a hundred yards ahead of them as the Missouri. Thank God, Captain Merriam still had his running lights on. If they had been under attack, the Missouri would be blacked out.

  Then the Missouri veered sharply to port. The Ohio hove into view. Her lights, too, were on. She was closing fast on the Missouri. One brush and the ram would slice the Missouri's hull like a knife through cheese.

  "Captain Oates!"

  The exec was calling from the cubicle where the wireless was hooked up. Inside sat a young electrician, buried in a maze of rheostats, wires, coils and coherers. Leaning forward, he looked like a boy holding black clams to each ear as he pressed the headset with both hands. He mimed his frustration at what he was hearing over the set--or rather, what he was not hearing. Captain Oates nodded. The fact was the instrument which was supposed to launch a revolution in ship-to-ship communications and tactics was notoriously ineffective. Its most frustrating quirk was that a wireless operator a hundred yards off might not receive a transmission, while hundreds of miles away it would come through clear as a bell.

  "Helmsman!"

  "We had to avoid the Minnesota," the quartermaster said, explaining the sudden lurches.

  "What?" Oates looked to port. Sure enough, the Minnesota was not more than fifty yards distant. It was drawing away. Oates decided he would wait until later to ask how close they'd come to colliding. Right now, he did not want to know.

  The Third Division's formation had gone to hell. From the faint traces of taffrail light ahead to starboard, it appeared the Second Division was no better off.

  What in God's name was going on?

  "It was the Flying Dutchman under command of the Wandering Jew."

  Singleton! Oates winced. Who had brought him up here? No doubt some petty officer gasping to have his name in print had sneaked him onto the bridge. The exec knew better. But there was no diplomatic way to banish the doctor from the pilothouse once inside. He was, after all, credentialed by the Secretary of the Navy.

  "What are you talking about?" Oates half-shouted when he caught Singleton grinning at him.

  And....

  That hat! He's wearing that hat! On my bridge!

  "Just a schooner, Captain," Lieutenant Grissom interposed. "It cut right through the Second Division. They broke formation to avoid hitting her. I guess one of them came close to the Missouri and she went hard to port."

  "The New Jersey put a spotlight on it. It was as plain to see as your shiny nose." Singleton spoke like a scout at a campfire. "There was no one on her deck, no one in the sheets. She floated by like Death itself."

  This earned the doctor some incredulous looks from the officers around him. But they did not have time to dwell on his bizarre comment.

  "Here she comes again!"

  Oates grabbed a pair of binoculars and looked to starboard. A smallish sailing vessel was closing on them.

  "It must be the Yankton, broken loose."

  The Yankton was a small pleasure yacht reserved for use by diplomats and foreign dignitaries while in port. One of the auxiliary ships had her in tow. If the towline had broken....

  "No…." said Dr. Singleton with a succinctness that quieted them.

  She rode high in the water, as if carrying no ballast. Her bow barely stirred the surface. As she closed, the observers on the bridge looked hard for a sign of life abovedecks. From their perch high over the ocean, they could see directly into her cockpit.

  There was no one at the helm.

  "Sir," the exec murmured, "if a foreign power wanted to embarrass the expedition...."

  No more needed to be said. The Fleet had gone to great lengths to avoid antagonizing other nations. Roosevelt wanted America to appear powerful, not obnoxious. As an example: thousands of burlap bags had been stowed on the ships so that ashes from the holds could be cleanly removed, rather than being dumped into the water as was the usual practice.

  If the president was so adverse to dirtying foreign harbors, imagine his horror if they ran down a foreign ship--no matter how inexplicable its actions.

  The Minnesota had retreated to port. A thick bank of fog made judging her distance virtually impossible. The baleful low of her foghorn kept fading in and out--difficult even to tell what direction it was coming from. Oates wanted to slow down, but that was what Second Division had done, causing chaos in the Third. If he reduced speed, Fourth Division might run smack into his rear.

  The schooner kept coming. The officers watched with widening eyes. The beams darting down from the Florida's spotlights exploded in a murky haze. They were not much improvement over total darkness.

  "Those lights make us a fine, fat target if she has torpedo tubes amidships."

  "Doctor, I doubt the Flying Dutchman carried torpedo tubes." Turning to his right, Oates commanded, "Hard to port!"

  "Hard to port, sir!"

  He had waited until the last possible moment for the maneuver. He was hoping the Minnesota was still swerving away, increasing the distance between them. Could the bridges of the Ohio and the Missouri see the bow lights of the two ships behind them? Everything was so faint.

  Not the mystery ship, though. It was now close enough to count her travelers, the metal rings on her spars. Something that might have been a slicker lay on the deck next to a bin. Its fore-and-aft rig was handy to leeward--a quaint reminder to the men on the Florida that one did not need steam to drive against the wind.

  "Rudder amidships."

  "Rudder amidships, sir!"

  Dr. Singleton's brief foray into levity was forgotten. He took a prominent role in the chorus of awed silence. How could she go into the wind so effortlessly? How did she maintain her trim?

  The Florida's ram threw up a rich, snowy bone in the artificial light. The bows of the two ships came with a few dozen yards of closing a "V," then started to draw apart.

  From Gun Number 3, starboard amidships, Midshipman Davis peered through the gun shutter. With only eleven feet of freeboard, the crew of the six-inch gun was blinded by spray whenever the Florida made flank speed or veered to port. The narrowness of the gunport limited their line of vision. Their befogged telescope sight was next to useless.

  The twelve-inch batteries could, via phone or voice tube, communicate with both the bridge and Central Station. But the only contact the Number 3 six-incher had was through the electrical indicator bolted to the wall of the casemate. It displayed four pieces of information: range, command (CEASE FIRE, COMMENCE...), target (CONNING TOWER, BOWS...), and projectile (LYDDITE, SHRAPNEL...)--but nothing at all about the nature of the target. Until the searchlight beams from overhead flashed on the water in front of them, the gun crew was ignorant of what they were up against.

  "Jesus! A pipsqueak schooner!" Davis fumed. "I could sink it with a spit wad."

  Davis not only had a clear view, he had a clear shot. She could not be more than forty yards away--and that was worrisome. The Florida had sixteen six-inch guns mounted in broadside, twelve on the main deck and four on the upper deck. In addition, there was a battery of twenty-two three-inch rapid-fire guns, twelve three-pounder rapid-fire guns, four one-pounders, eight machine
guns, and six Colt automatic guns spread fore and aft between the six-inchers, in sponsons over the gun deck, on the superstructure and bridges, and in the fighting tops. All of them were arranged to blow a torpedo boat to hell as quickly as possible. If that schooner was being steered by an enemy, and if it carried torpedo launchers, the Florida was practically a dead duck already.

  The ammo hoist rattled behind them, but before they could get the shell to the gun they heard the breech of the gun directly above them slam shut. The gun crew on the upper tier had once again beaten Davis' team to the loading. With competition between gun crews so fierce, this was a matter of some importance even with a potential enemy on top of them.

  The gun-layers murmured as they worked the dual hand wheels, the worm gears putting in motion a combination of gears to the lower left of the six-incher, which in turn operated the cam, which in turn aimed the gun. Captain Oates was marking a parallel course to the schooner, as though he had in mind a Nelsonian broadside. Yet the command box stubbornly remained at STAND BY.

  "She's got no name on her," one of the gun-strikers said in a perplexed tone.

  Davis leaned forward. Sure enough--no quarterboard. Neither did she fly an identifying flag or pennant. She could be registered on the moon, for all they knew.

  The desire to let loose with a round was nearly overwhelming. Davis' finger touched the trigger. It felt remarkably like the trigger of a sporting rifle.

  Now... if someone would only give the command….

  His finger nestled tightly in the deadly curl. A half-inch plunge would ignite the gun. He pressed his free hand against the wall to steady himself as Oates maintained the turn. Without quite realizing it, Davis had already depressed the trigger a quarter of an inch.

  For a few minutes the Florida and the mystery ship ran parallel to each other. Grabbing his megaphone, Captain Oates stood outside and shouted:

  "Ahoy! You on the schooner! Are you in distress?"

  No response.

  "Ahoy! Schooner! Identify yourself! Do you need help?"

  Grissom and the senior watch officer chased after the captain as he dashed from the bridge. A tactful way had to be found to tell Oates his pants were unbuttoned, his underwear hanging out. But the captain's attention was glued to the schooner. The exec could not catch his eye.

  The strange ship captivated Oates. Who would dare sail it blindly through the mightiest fleet in the Western Hemisphere, disregarding all the rules--the common courtesy of the sea--at their own peril?

  "Ahoy! Captain of the schooner! Show yourself!"

  Midshipman Davis heard the captain bellowing as he raced past his station. He watched as Oates huffed down the deck in his thick wool socks, his long johns flapping out the back of his trousers like a pair of deflated water wings.

  "What's up?" one of the gunners asked him.

  "We're not shooting, that's all I know," Davis sighed. He did not bother putting his hand back over the trigger, but leaned back and folded his arms in disgust.

  By the time Oates had run the length of the ship, he was nearly faint. For a few moments he stared incredulously at the schooner. How had she pulled so far ahead? Then he realized the illusion of what he was seeing. She was not pulling ahead, but away. It was a result of the course he himself had set. The Florida had begun to go in a circle.

  There was a loud snap overhead and he jumped back with a shout.

  Damn. It was the flag! He was standing under the large ensign at the bow.

  He glanced around to see if anyone had observed his reaction and found his exec and the senior officer of the watch staring straight at him.

  "Sir... your pants are down," said Grissom.

  The composure Oates had lost while pursuing the schooner abruptly returned. Well... there. My pants are down. By Godfrey, I must be a hell of a sight. With the waist of the trousers halfway down his buttocks, the wonder of it was not that he'd not noticed, but that he had not fallen flat.

  "Thank you," he said. With great dignity, he drew his pants up, packing his long johns in with a couple of deep shoveling sweeps of his hands.

  "Uh... where's Dr. Singleton?"

  Grissom's response was cut off by a shout from the watch officer.

  The world suddenly exploded with light.

  "The Minnesota."

  Deciding that he'd swung out far enough to avoid collision, Captain Hubbard of the Minnesota had begun easing back into formation... only to find the Florida running straight for him.

  Captain Oates and the two officers raced for the bridge.

  There was a great deal more clanging and frantic signaling that night before the divisions regained formation. In Captain Oates' case, the situation was not improved by the fact that the Minnesota was the flagship of Rear Admiral Thomas, commander of the Third Division. True, the Minnesota had nearly rammed the Florida first. But in matters of rank, precedence had no standing. Thomas took a thorough verbal thrashing from Admiral Evans. As a consequence, Captain Oates received a crushing reprimand from Thomas. Oates could not bring himself to reprove his exec, who was blameless, so he banned Dr. Singleton from the bridge. None of which helped Oates, who the next day found his ship placed in the observation ward.

  And none of which changed the fact that when the sun rose and the fog cleared and the ships of the Atlantic Fleet were sorted out, the mystery schooner was long gone.

  And unexplained.

  VI

  1905 - 1907 California Current, West Wind Drift, Alaska Current

  Only once did Tremblin' Chandry try to give up whaling.

  When gold was discovered in Kotzebue, the passenger trade skyrocketed. Pickings were fat on the gold run. Having grown weary of whale blood and shiftless hands, Chandry hired himself out as skipper on a steamer of the Northern Lights Line. Before shipping out with his first load of passengers, he spent a week tearing through the blind tigers and gambling dens of the Barbary Coast. While absorbing alcohol in prodigious quantities, he also gleaned information from captains who had already worked the route. The technical details little concerned him. Men who sailed passenger ships were no better than freshwater sailors, in his estimation. Always hugging the coast, seeing no more ice then a berg or two, these lubbers didn't know that north was neither true nor relative--not in the nautical sense and certainly not in the gut sense. It was blinding, endless night. It was blowing ice with dynamite and praying it loosened enough that you could free your ship. It was the very end and the very beginning, and if you couldn't actually see the planet cascading down from the soles of your feet, the compass told you it was so. North! What did they know of it? They probably drank piss and thought it first beer.

  They did, however, offer useful tidbits.

  He learned that Kotzebue Sound could not be entered by any deep draft vessels; they had to anchor outside the shoals and wait until lighters and other shallow-bottom boats came out to pick up the passengers and cargo. Between poor communications and adverse tides, that could sometimes take more than a week.

  The miners on board would be gamy with anticipation. They'd heard that sailors up the sound found gold on their mudhooks when they hauled them in. They went mad with the idea and more than one load of passengers had overwhelmed the crew and foundered on the shoals while trying to take a ship in.

  This said everything skippers needed to know about prospectors. Men maddened by gold lust were more dangerous than men plagued by thirst. Hence, they took the illegal step of drilling holes in their water casks, creating artificial shortages. The crews approved of this, so long as they could stash their own canteens out of sight during the parched interim.

  "After a week offshore they're damn near comatose," one captain told Chandry. "Quiet as lambs when the boats take 'em off."

  That was all Chandry needed to hear. He staggered to his ship that very night and hammered holes in the water casks. Next morning, the first mate roused him.

  "Captain, we got vandals been on board. Put holes in our--"

  Trembl
ing as he sat up--his mornings, after all, had given him his name--he cut the First off. "Passengers all aboard?"

  "Yes."

  "Then set sail, and don't forget to drop the pilot off." Then he fell back on his cot, asleep before his head hit his greasy pillow.

  Chandry felt he understood the prospectors better than most because he understood a breed of man more desperate than the miners of Kotzebue and the Klondike. In their way, the whalers were little different from the gold miners at Kotzebue and the Klondike. In the days of sail, ships were forever getting boxed in the upper reaches of the Bering Sea, between Wrangell Island and Point Barrow. Countless men had perished in search of the final barrel of whale oil, the final strip of baleen, the final dollar. One had only to see what Chandry had seen at Franklin Point and Icy Cape to understand whalers. The shores there were littered with the corpses of whales cut lose at the last moment, when skippers discovered they'd ventured too far into the ice packs, that their kills were worthless because they themselves were about to die. Most of the whale bodies were headless, the result of quick decapitations as the whalers took the most precious oil (stored in the whales' heads) as insurance against the possibility that they might, after all, survive.

  With the coming of steam, trammeling the southern ice packs had become much simpler, almost child's play. Yet again, greed reared up, and did not blink or flinch. Once the whalers realized they were comparatively safe in their old hunting grounds, they started to go even further north, into Mackenzie Bay and the Beaufort Sea. They went as far as Baring Land and Prince Albert Land--even Melville Sound. And of course, the old dangers returned. Even steamships could not break the harsh grip of the northernmost reaches once they were caught. Crew after crew became stranded on ice which could be either land or hidden ocean. There were stations that far north. The one at Point Barrow was responsible for saving hundreds of lives. And eccentrics lived up there‑‑"naturalists" they were called‑‑who got a peculiar thrill out of studying the Eskimos. They, too, had done their share in saving stranded whalers. The Eskimos had rescued many an ice‑bound sailor. Yet there were hostile natives, also. There was a long‑standing feud between the mariners and some of the Eskimo tribes, who had been treated badly by early whalers. A few crews had been slaughtered after their ships had become trapped in ice.