A FLOCK OF SHIPS

by Callison, Brian

  ‘You seem to be in accord with my own summing-up.’

  ‘It’ll be like driving a scheduled bus on a circular route past a homicidal maniac with a shotgun and a bloody timetable!’ I affirmed emphatically.

  Then the chart and the coffee arrived together and we sat in thoughtful silence as the Old Man’s Chinese steward poured the coffee. I remember hoping apprehensively that, this time, the shiny silver pot wouldn’t finish up on Evans’s fancy Egyptian carpet while we finished up on the bridge ... or in the water! It was very warm in the cabin and my eyelids started to droop until I came round with a nasty, shivery start to find the tiger gone and the Captain immersed in the big book. I leaned forward and searched vainly for the sugar—damn! I’d forgotten we’d run out of that, too—while Evans ran his finger across the chart, then looked up.

  ‘More a sixth-form bloody history book than a navigational aid, this,’ he muttered, then stabbed his finger irritably at the chart again. ‘According to our three a.m. position the island lies roughly one twenty miles sou’ sou’ west of us ... say about six hours’ steaming.’

  I glanced at my watch. ‘Giving us an E.T.A. around 0930? We should raise it around one bell in the Third Mate’s watch.’

  Sipping the coffee I pulled another face as he tapped the open book with his knuckle. ‘Did you know there was land that close to us? Before the signal, I mean?’

  I nodded. I’d seen it often enough on the chart. In fact, on the small-scale projection it was often mistaken for a spot where someone had dropped their pencil point by mistake. ‘I wouldn’t really call it “land,” though. More a spit of rock a couple of miles wide from the look of it on the chart.

  'They say Tristan da Cunha isn’t much more than that, and even it’s a tricky landfall.’

  He became lost in thought for a few moments, then, lifting his eyes, said, ‘Well, Mister Kent. What do you think we should do?’

  I shrugged. ‘We don’t seem to have much choice. That signal doesn’t leave any room for doubt. While presumably they have a more accurate appreciation of the situation directly ahead of us ... though I still think it’s bloody crazy to go right down there, farther south. As far as I can see, we’re doing exactly what the enemy are trying to push us into.’

  He got up, paced a few steps, then swung on me. ‘But we still have no proof, John. It’s all assumption, everything. At least we have only another hundred odd miles to run doing it the Navy way, then we just wait for the escorts. To me the risk seems marginally less by going for the island.’

  I bowed to his decision, after all, he was the Captain. ‘Aye, aye, Sir. But I still wouldn’t like to put money on our chances, just circling in the open sea for three days. Maybe we ought to look at the pilotage instructions first, then decide if we can risk entering this enclosed anchorage the signal advises?’

  He picked up a pencil and bent over the chart, laying off a course to the tiny speck that marked the mysterious and, evidently little-known, island of Quintanilha de Almeida.

  ‘Maybe we ought to get there first, eh, John?’ he murmured softly.

  *

  Five minutes later he had blown Charlie Shell up on the voice pipe and given him the new heading ... told him to advise Athenian. I guessed the Second Mate must have been beside himself with curiosity as he swung the ship through yet another sweeping turn and the compass settled back in its, by now, almost permanent state of southerliness.

  Evans was frowning through the pilot book again, which suited me perfectly. That chair was lovely and comfy and I didn’t want to go back on the bridge. Come to that, it was still my watch below, but ... the Old Man looked up from his reading. ‘It’s interesting that you should have compared the two, John.’

  I blinked, ‘Sir?’

  ‘Tristan da Cunha with this ... ah, Quintanilha Island. Tristan was actually discovered by the same Portuguese Admiral in 1506; a voyager called Tristao da Cunha. There are four islands, or groups of islands actually—Tristan itself, Nightingale, Gough and a cheery-sounding place called Inaccessible. Or did you know already?’

  I didn’t as it so happened, and now I did I still wasn’t much better off as far as I could see. I’d heard that people lived on Tristan, but anyone with an inclination to maroon themselves on a rock in the middle of the South Atlantic came well outside my sphere of understanding.

  But then again, perhaps to the Tristan Islanders the idea of steaming around the ocean aimlessly butting at invisible barriers and going nowhere fast, would have had its bizarre side. Hell—not only to the bloody islanders! Presumably the black teeth which marked Tristan remained as the only legacies of an earlier submarine cataclysm. Suggesting we had more in common than I'd first imagined.

  The Old Man seemed to have relaxed considerably now that the responsibility for our next move was lifted from his shoulders, so I just poured myself another coffee, searched forgetfully for the non-existent sugar, then sat back and left him to ramble on.

  ‘Yes, well, apparently, when Almirante da Cunha finished discovering the Tristan Group which, incidentally, we British annexed in 1816 ...’

  ‘A good sovereign tradition,’ I murmured, not really listening too hard.

  ‘... the admiral continued south, presumably to give the Cape a wide berth. In doing so he came across another island. He described it in his log as a “Bleak, inhospitable hoof of stone at first sight, and extending to some two and one half thousand hectares, but of value to the mariner by reason of its central lake, affording as it does a protection from the tempests met in the great sea around”.’

  He looked up and I jumped self-consciously. The comfort of the chair had finally overwhelmed me and I could feel great waves of lassitude blurring my mind. After no sleep for three days other than a few hastily stolen catnaps, I could well have spent this time more profitably in my bunk.

  ‘Yeah? But does it say if that ... that Quintel place affords protection from the U-boats met in the great seas around?’ I inquired guiltily.

  The grey eyes stared at me reproachfully from under the bushy brows. ‘Quintanilha de Almeida,’ he grunted finally. ‘Having used up his own name by that time, the Admiral called it after his sailing master and dear friend, Almeida.’

  ‘A nice, easy-to-remember tally,’ I ventured, trying to appear interested.

  ‘And nice, easy-to-remember pilotage instructions too, seeing there aren’t more than a couple of sentences of them.’

  I sat up as he carried on. This was important. If we could find a way into that central lake of the old admiral’s, then we’d be a damn sight safer than steaming around in a repetitive orbit of the island like some giant Kriegsmarine torpedo range target. I leaned over the chart again but it wasn’t of much help: all it showed was an irregular blob shaped rather like a lower-case letter ‘d’ with a tiny gap where the top of the circle didn’t quite return to the vertical stem. This, presumably, was the entrance.

  ‘Quintanilha has never been inhabited since its discovery,’ Evans frowned, ‘and apart from occasional visits from British and America sealers during the latter part of the eighteenth century, has very seldom been landed on, or examined. It was surveyed by a Royal Navy ship, H.M.S. Cilicia, in 1868 ...’

  ‘Good God. That was the year before the Suez Canal opened,’ I murmured, snatching at a long-forgotten splinter of school memory.

  ‘... which was, however, wrecked off Madagascar before she could despatch the results of her survey to the Admiralty.’ He glared up at me in angry frustration. ‘Typical Royals. Incompetent clowns.’

  ‘So we’re not much the wiser now than we were before, Sir?’

  He looked doubtful. ‘It says that, while none of the Cilicia’s officers were saved from the wreck, some of her ratings survived and, according to statements from them, “It appears that a passage into the central anchorage is clear to ships with a draught of at least some twelve feet—this being the survey vessel’s draught at the time of her entering—and navigators so doing are advised to ke
ep well to the larboard side of the rocky fault forming the opening. They are further warned that an almost vertical submerged shelf, or reef, prevents direct access to the enclosed waters and necessitates a right-angle turn to starboard just after the vessel’s counter clears the inner periphery of the natural breakwater thus formed”.’

  ‘And that’s all we have to go on?’

  He nodded. ‘Unless you’re interested in the fact that the last recorded persons to land on Quintanilha de Almeida were the survivors of the German Keil-Sud Afrika Linie steamer Darmstadt in 1903? And they got fed up with waiting for no one to call so, after four months of living on seabirds’ eggs and rainwater, seven men left again in a fifteen-foot boat. Two of them were still alive when they reached Africa.’

  ‘Sounds like a bustling, hospitable little stop-over,’ I muttered gloomily.

  He closed the book with a snap. ‘Let’s hope like hell it’s not. Bustling stop-overs might be bustling with the wrong kind of people.’

  ‘Implying you intend to try for the anchorage, Sir?’

  The Old Man levered himself out of his chair and paced slowly back and forward, hands clasped behind his back. ‘I don’t know. We don’t have much practical information, just a lot of damn sketchy history. And what we do have doesn’t make me any keener to try.’

  ‘At least we know the Royal Navy man went in.’

  ‘Aye, with a twelve-foot draught. What was our mark when we sailed, John?’

  ‘Twenty-eight, Sir.’

  He turned the corners of his mouth down sourly. ‘So where’s the reassurance in that? And another thing ... they apparently made a sharp turn to starboard just as their stern cleared the inner rocks of the entrance. In those days she’d have been a big ship if she was three hundred feet long ... we’re what? Four eighty overall?’

  I nodded and got stiffly to my feet. I needed a shower and shave myself before I went on watch. ‘So we’ll be feeling our way in completely blind, Sir?’

  He smiled fractionally and, for a fleeting moment, I got the impression he was actually looking forward to it. ‘If I decide to go in at all, Mister Kent, we’ll feel our way in as tentatively as a virgin with his first lay.’

  *

  We sighted the island as I’d predicted—at 8.40 in the morning watch. The low cloud had dissipated under the onslaught of the sun’s return, and already it was getting hot. To be on the safe side I’d posted a masthead lookout an hour before our E.T.A. as well as a man up in the eyes of the ship. The Captain was already on the bridge, standing in the chartroom wading through a mound of bacon sandwiches, when the call floated down from aloft, ‘Laaaand fine on the starb’d BOW!’

  I hadn’t bothered going below for breakfast; eating was a habit I seemed to be rapidly giving up. Maybe it was just nerves but, as soon as I saw food, I stopped feeling hungry and settled for a cup of unsweetened coffee.

  The Fourth Mate had stayed up on the bridge too, so the three of us, Brannigan, Curtis and myself, hung over its fore-end and allowed the cool draught to swamp over us as we watched the island grow, hazy and shimmering in the heat-distorted atmosphere at first, then slowly becoming more black and solid as we approached.

  Occasionally I glanced aft to watch Athenian ploughing stolidly along just to the right of our, for a change, ruler-straight wake. Once a brief flash from her bridge showed that someone was laying binoculars on the island too, and I wondered if it was Bill Henderson. Hopefully, with luck, if we went in and anchored I would get the opportunity for a chat with him. That was the great disadvantage of being at sea. Though we passed each other almost invariably twice a trip—once outward and once homeward-bound—very seldom did we actually have the chance to meet one another except through the medium of a hasty Aldis stutter.

  Still, she looked good, did Athenian, with the high flare of her bows raising a sparkling hump of blue water as she cut through the glassy sea astern. One thing we’d been lucky in so far was the weather. Or had we? A force nine gale was uncomfortable but, at the same time, it discouraged U-boat activity. There was a dark cloud to every silver lining when you were at war.

  Evans stepped out of the chartroom, brushing crumbs from the front of his barrel chest, and came to stand beside us. Curtis and Brannigan moved discreetly away, but I gestured to the Third Mate as he disappeared into the wheelhouse. ‘Have Breedie go aft with the stand-by quartermaster and bring in the log, Mister Curtis.’

  We were almost there: time to get the crowd moving to their stations. I pulled my whistle out of my pocket and glanced inquiringly at the Old Man. ‘Blow for stand-by, Sir?’

  He nodded, so, stepping to the after-end, I blew one long blast, then moved back beside Evans to watch as the anchor party ambled forward and hauled themselves up the ladders at the break of the foc’sle. The Old Man cupped his hands and leaned over the dodger. ‘Make both cables ready, Chippie!’ he roared, then, turning back to me, ‘We’ll let go the starboard anchor, Mister, but I want you ready with your other hook if necessary.’

  ‘Aye, aye, Sir.’

  I glanced at my watch. It was just coming up to two bells and we were less than three miles off the island now. It looked bleak and forbidding, bigger than I’d actually expected, but somehow unfriendly with an oily sea breaking sullenly at the base of near vertical cliffs. At first glance it appeared there was snow lying on the rocky outcrops, but it was only guano; acrid bird deposits left by generation upon generation of those seabirds that wheeled eternally above, hovering and swooping in the slight up-currents of air from the black cliff faces. I shivered slightly and started to feel cold even though the steel of the well deck was now shimmering in the heat.

  ‘I’ll get forr’ad then,’ I muttered unenthusiastically.

  Evans lifted the binoculars, searching for the entrance so much depended on. He spoke without lowering them. ‘You have someone in the chains, Mister Kent?’

  ‘The Bosun,’ I answered, leaning out over the wing and looking almost vertically down on the small platform that had been lowered into place for the leadsman. Maybe, one day, we would get one of the new echo-sounding machines the Navy had, similar to their Asdic equipment, where you simply listened into a headphone and heard the vibrations being returned to indicate the depth of the sea bed. I didn’t think we would for a long time yet, though—aids like that were far too fancy for merchantmen.

  Evans lowered the binoculars and pulled a face. ‘Can’t see anything that looks like a passage yet ... Mister Curtis!’

  The Third Mate stuck his head out of the wheelhouse, ‘Sir?’

  ‘Stand by the telegraphs, Mister Curtis. And ask the engine room to stand-to on the platform and reduce to twelve knots if you would be so good.’

  Curtis went on the engine room phone and I heard him telling them to stand by down below. Evans grinned unexpectedly at me and chuckled. ‘Quite a change from picking up a local pilot and letting him take you into a place prickling with buoys and navigation marks, eh, John?’

  I smiled back uncertainly. Personally I preferred the less romantic approach to seafaring but I could see that the old devil was in his element. ‘Absolved responsibility for mishaps,’ the Admiralty signal had said, and both Evans and Bert Samson on Athenian were just the kind of bloody-minded old dogs to take their freedom from Board of Trade consequences in the strictest spirit. If there existed a passage into Quintanilha de Almeida just one inch wider than our beam, then we were in. Then all we'd have to do was get out again when the Navy arrived.

  I turned back at the top of the ladder, struck by a sudden thought. ‘What about Athenian? Is she going to be right on our tail when we go in?’

  Evans chewed his bottom lip. ‘Better not. If we go aground or get into trouble she’d never be able to pull astern in time ... Mister Brannigan. Bring the Aldis out here if you please, and the Very pistol from the chart-room.’

  Brannigan looked surprised for a moment, probably thinking it was a bit early to start sending distress flares before we even smelt the lan
d, then the Captain helped to ease his mind a bit. ‘Send to Athenian ... ANCHORAGE AND ENTRANCE APPARENTLY OBSCURED FROM SEAWARD ... SUGGEST YOU ZIG-ZAG ROUND PRESENT POSITION WHILE I FEEL MY WAY IN ... IF SUCCESSFUL WILL SIGNAL YOU TO FOLLOW WITH TWO RED FLARES REPEAT TWO REDS IF NOT WILL ATTEMPT LAND BOAT PARTY TO COMMUNICATE FROM TOP OF CLIFFS SIGNED EVANS MASTER.

  The reply came quickly back from Bert.

  ACKNOWLEDGE BUT DISAPPOINTED YOU DON’T ALLOW A PROPER SAILOR FIRST CRACK BEST OF LUCK SIGNED SAMSON MASTER.

  *

  We were less than a mile off the old admiral’s island by then and I could feel the tension building up around me on the bridge. The only man who seemed at ease was the Captain himself, but I could see the grey eyes probing keenly for the first signs of a break in the looming rock ahead. I knew I should have been on my way forward to my station in the bows, but I didn’t want to leave before I had to. Something—some comforting aura of competency—seemed to exude from the stolid bulk of Evans which helped to compensate for my own anxieties.

  'That could be the entrance,' the Old Man muttered, lifting his glasses. 'Exactly where the chart shows it to be.'

  ... and, suddenly, it was time to go despite my indefinable unease. We knew there was deep water right up to the base of the cliffs, the chart assured us of that at least, so we hadn’t slowed unnecessarily until we had to. Five cables, half a mile, and the Old man called quietly, ‘Slow speed both, Mister Curtis.’

  The throbbing under the deck died to a barely perceptible tremor and the bows dipped slightly as they adjusted the engine governors below. The exhaust note from the funnel softened to a muted whisper and we seemed to be gliding through the still water. For the second time I announced reluctantly, ‘Well, I’ll get off forr’ad, Sir.’

  Evans was still standing, hands behind his back, staring ahead. Without turning he said, ‘Take Brannigan with you. The water should be fairly clear as the ground shoals ... Keep a good lookout under the bow if you can. Don’t forget, the Bosun with his lead is a considerable distance aft from where you are. He could still be registering a fair depth of water while the forefoot goes aground on that shelf the book talks about.’