CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Bloody But Unbowed
A long time ago, it seemed now, before the Matthew Flinders reached Singapore and he had swum daily in the pool, wallowing in the balm of the ship’s routine, Mackinnon had imagined these last hours. They would be heavy with nostalgia, poignant with sadness but full of a sense of achievement, of effort sustained, of a job well done. His life, he would console himself, had been well spent, a good one and if it wound down on the back of the great institution of the British Merchant Navy, there was a certain, selfish satisfaction in the thought; a graveyard consolation that an old man might hump with him, a sense of being part of a last stand.
If life had taught him that expectations were rarely fulfilled, the sense of that ludicrous propriety was shattered now. The vision of his last days afloat, in command of a British merchantman, had been clouded by that fear of meeting the boat people. Ironically that was an expectation which came true and from it, and the typhoon, and the deaths of four people arose his present, far-from-nostalgic last approach to a port.
He raised his glasses. Ahead of the ship as it cleaved a sea of innocent and sparkling blue, the purple hills of China and the Crown Colony of Hong Kong were hardening in their outline, gathering mass and form as they changed to dun and dark green. On the port bow, stared at by Alex Stevenson over the prism of the azimuth mirror on the bearing compass, the white tower of Wang Lan Lighthouse reflected the sun. All about them the bag-wing sails of fishing junks dotted the calm sea and half a dozen ships, container vessels, two tankers and two ro-ro ships, converged or departed from the focal point of Hong Kong’s landlocked harbour. It was a scene of tranquil normality; perhaps, Mackinnon thought, the only thing about this day likely to conform to his imagination.
Stevenson straightened from the compass and smiled at Mackinnon as he went into the chart-room to plot the ship’s position. How did the young Second Mate feel? Mackinnon’s was not the only career due to terminate in the coming hours. He supposed Stevenson’s grin was one of those tiny miracles which passed unnoticed in daily life.
‘Starboard easy; steer o-one-five,’ he said automatically, altering the Matthew Flinders’s course to avoid a junk just then hauling her nets two miles ahead of them.
‘Starboard, o-one-five.’ The helmsman’s abbreviated reply came in Pritchard’s inimitable accent. Pritchard, Stevenson, Sparks, Thorpe, all good men, true characters, the bearers of men of indifferent qualities, men of Rawlings’s and Macgregor’s stamp. Mackinnon felt nothing towards Macgregor. Like Rawlings, he was simply part of the warp and weft of the sea life.
Mackinnon remembered some lines which had once won a poetry competition run by the old Seafarer’s Education Service. In Mackinnon’s opinion they were not poetry, for they neither rhymed nor scanned, but they had stuck in his mind:
In passing, I have seen deep sea-scapes,
Been ashore, adrift and drunk
with this world’s soiled glories.
Ships and men and places all within
my compassed horizon . . .
In passing, some few sweet kisses,
Given, taken; at hazard and wind
Swept dreams away; alone.
Gale and calm and chilling dawn
and watches stood . . .
How true; of all of them, good, bad and indifferent.
He raised his glasses again and stared at the junk as they swept past. The high, square stern, the peaked, bamboo-battened sail had not changed in a thousand years; its elderly helmsman leaned on the tiller indifferent to their passing. Mackinnon acknowledged a brüderbond with so ancient a mariner. Perhaps, he mused, that man’s great-grandfather had stared incredulously as the steam dragons of the fan kwei moved against wind and current and forced the passage of the Bocca Tigris in the first Opium War!
‘Well, old fellow,’ Mackinnon muttered, ‘you’ve the last laugh. No more red barbarians.’
And then the extent of his self-deception hit him with an almost physical impact. Below, on the foredeck, walking forward to the foremast, Able Seaman Braddock carried a fluttering red bundle. Mackinnon watched him hitch the Inglefield clips to those on the flag halliard and then, with a smooth, hand-over-hand motion, began to haul the red ensign up until it flew, brilliant in the sunshine, against the cerulean blue of the sky.
‘God damn!’ Mackinnon swore. The flag of the British Merchant Navy, once the senior squadron flag of the Royal Navy was not going to fly as a bloody courtesy ensign on his last morning in command, by God!
The insignificant consequence of their not being a British ship (as he had earlier stupidly deluded himself), and therefore having to fly the merchant ensign of the port they were approaching, stung Mackinnon to the quick. Suddenly the day turned upside down, a position from which it was never to recover.
‘Braddock!’ Mackinnon roared. Just short of the yardarm the red duster halted its ascent and flew as if at half-mast, in mourning, reminding Mackinnon of something else, of an old flag etiquette that in this world of commercial pre-eminence he had almost forgotten. Braddock spun round, looking up at the bridge. ‘Take that down,’ bellowed the Captain. ‘Go and hoist it aft, at half-mast!’
‘Sir . . .’
The tone of reasonable protest came from Rawlings, standing in the wheelhouse doorway in his smartly ironed white shirt and shorts. He must have sent Braddock forward with the courtesy ensign.
‘Well, what is it?’
‘I’ve already ordered the ensign to be half-masted, sir.’
Mackinnon looked aft. The red and blue squares and stars of the Republic of Panama flew its own depth below the truck of the staff.
‘That’s not the red ensign, mister,’ snapped Mackinnon. ‘Ernie York and Charles Taylor arrive in Hong Kong under the red ensign. Even that bastard Macgregor was one of us.’
‘But . . .’ Rawlings began, then shrugged his shoulders. It was none of his damned business.
Sparks had contemplated his wrecked radio-room with dismay. Not that the ship was out of communication with the rest of the world, for there was a VHF radio telephone on the bridge. It was intended for inter-ship and port operational use, but Sparks had harboured an inner resentment against surrendering the ship’s prime communications function to the deck ornaments up there. He made a gallant effort to restore his office and succeeded to the extent of repairing the medium frequency receiver and tuning it to Hong Kong Radio.
To his alarm not only was the Matthew Flinders on the traffic list, but was being repeatedly called by the duty operator. He quickly found it impossible to repair the transmitter; Macgregor had destroyed it with the sure hand of instinctive vandalism. Swearing comprehensively, cheated of his final operational function as a ship’s Radio Officer, Sparks made his way forward along the boat-deck to the bridge.
He found it crowded. Although Mackinnon stood alone on the port wing, Stevenson ran in and out of the chart-room plotting the ship’s approach to Hong Kong every ten minutes, Rawlings fussed about in the wheelhouse, and Able Seaman Pritchard stood at the wheel steering. Over the bow a cleft in the coastline revealed the position of the Lye Mun Pass.
Sparks found the volume control of the wheelhouse VHF set turned down. With a savage satisfaction he twisted the knob and the wheelhouse boomed with the weary voice of the operator:
‘Matthew Flinders, Matthew Flinders, Matthew Flinders, this is Hong Kong Radio calling the Panamanian ship Matthew Flinders, come in. Over.’
Sparks was suddenly surrounded by staring faces. ‘You had the volume turned down,’ he said with collective accusation, ‘they’ve been calling for ages.’
‘Well answer them, then,’ snapped Rawlings, irritable at Mackinnon’s behaviour and secretly pleased at the operator’s correct use of their formal nationality.
Sparks shot the Chief Officer a resentful glance; what did it matter now when the voyage was all but over?
‘Hong Kong Radio, this is the Matthew Flinders, come in. Over.’
‘
Chop channel twelve,’ came the curt reply. Sparks changed frequency.
‘Hong Kong Radio, this is the Matthew Flinders. Over.’
‘Ah, Matthew Flinders, been trying to contact you for two hours. What are your intentions?’
‘Tell him,’ said Mackinnon, looming in the wheelhouse doorway, his face dark with anger. ‘I intend entering Hong Kong Harbour.’
Sparks swallowed and a sense of foreboding, of having touched something he could not quite comprehend swept over him. He felt a hammering of his heart at that emphasised monosyllable of mastery.
‘Hong Kong Radio, this is Matthew Flinders, intend entering Hong Kong Harbour . . .’
‘Bound for the quarantine anchorage. Pilot required in half an hour,’ prompted Mackinnon.
‘Bound for the quarantine anchorage. Pilot required in half an hour. Over,’ Sparks dutifully repeated.
There was a short silence, then the operator’s voice came back: ‘We have no knowledge of your ETA, Matthew Flinders, minimum notice for pilotage is—
‘Pettifogging bugger,’ snapped Mackinnon, ‘give me that bloody thing.’ Mackinnon’s voice drowned the operator’s as he shoved Rawlings aside and took the handset from Sparks.
‘. . . Your entry not permitted at this time. Over,’ the Operator’s voice concluded.
‘Hong Kong Radio, this is the Matthew Flinders. Master speaking. My radio sets have been damaged, my ship is short of fuel after weathering Typhoon David. I intend entering Hong Kong as port of refuge. I have four dead on board. I require a doctor and can manage the pilotage if necessary. Over.’
Mackinnon lowered the handset and Sparks noticed he was biting his lower lip. Behind him Rawlings expelled his breath with an audible incredulity.
‘Matthew Flinders this is Hong Kong. Wait one.’
In the wheelhouse the atmosphere was tense as they waited for the reply. Mackinnon broke the silence.
‘Starboard easy.’
The pale blue hull and white upperworks of another container ship appeared through the cleft in the hills and its profile foreshortened as it altered course towards them, coming on to the reciprocal of their own headings.
‘Midships. Steady on o-one-five.’
Pritchard repeated the order and the waiting officers watched, apparently mesmerised by the simple evolution. With every passing moment the Matthew Flinders drew closer to the port. Details stood out on the shoreline. The sparse scrub on the hillsides, the houses and the gleam of sunlight in metallic reflection from a moving car.
Like marionnettes they jerked to the sudden squawk of the VHF radio.
‘Matthew Flinders, please confirm you received orders for Shanghai. Over.’
‘Hong Kong, this is Flinders. Confirm affirmative.’
‘Roger. Please also confirm you have refugees on board.’
‘Confirm affirmative,’ Mackinnon repeated, adding, ‘one hundred and forty-five souls.’
‘Wait one.’
Again the deadly silence of shoreside consultation and the expectant hiatus on the bridge. At a mile every four minutes the Matthew Flinders ate up the distance to the gap in the hills beyond which lay the harbour of Hong Kong. Already, ten knots faster than themelves, the huge, blue container liner bore down upon them. The officers continued to watch her, thinking the same thing: that she was their supersessor. The hull colour and the logoed funnel were familiar to them. As she swept past, the flag of Liberia was a mere handkerchief above the one-hundred-feet-wide transom. On her bridge they could see two tiny figures staring at them through binoculars as once steamship men had looked at the last, rusty windjammers.
‘Matthew Flinders, this is Hong Kong Radio, do you receive? Over.’
‘Loud and clear, Hong Kong. Go ahead. Over.’
‘Entry forbidden, Captain. Do you understand?’
Mackinnon opened his mouth, then shut it, his teeth bearing down on his lower lip. Slowly he looked at each of his officers.
‘I don’t think I do understand, gentlemen,’ he said grimly.
‘But sir . . .’ protested Rawlings.
‘What have we got to lose?’ he asked, aware of the irony in Rawlings’s case. ‘And how can you object in the name of common humanity? I’d like to know who exactly made that decision. One of your relatives, I expect, Rawlings.’ And Mackinnon turned forward, ordering Pritchard to swing to port, to begin the final approach to the Lye Mun Passage and the entrance to Hong Kong.
The disembodied voice of the VHF persisted to query them.
‘Matthew Flinders this is Hong Kong Radio. Do you read me? Please confirm you received my last. Over.’
‘Be a good fellow, Sparks,’ Mackinnon said, ‘and turn the volume down.’
The Captain was smiling as he walked nonchalantly back on to the port bridge-wing. Behind him in the wheelhouse Sparks and Rawlings exchanged glances.
Mackinnon was aware that he had thrown down the gauntlet. Leaning again on the rail he was aware, too, that below him, crowding the main-deck rail, the Vietnamese were mingling with the idlers among the crew, seamen waiting to go to stations, stewards and off-duty greasers, chattering together and excitedly pointing to where the first pale tower blocks appeared beyond the shoulder of the headland. Mackinnon shook his head in wonder; it was unusual for the ship’s company to fraternise even on the approach to so popular a port as Hong Kong; it seemed the Vietnamese had acted as a social catalyst. It was just as well they did not know what was awaiting them on Stonecutter’s Island.
‘Sir . . .’
The note of alarm in Stevenson’s voice alerted Mackinnon. The Second Mate, his glasses in one hand, pointed ahead with the other.
‘I was expecting some such visitation,’ muttered Mackinnon.
The Bird-class patrol vessel, pale grey with a feather of white at her forefoot, came clear of the land and headed out towards them. Immediately the twinkle of a signalling projector flashed imperiously from her bridge.
‘Shall I answer, sir?’ asked Stevenson.
‘No,’ replied Mackinnon languidly, ‘ring down and ask the Bosun to put the pilot ladder over on the port side.’ Mackinnon glanced up, amused at the outrage and confusion on Rawlings’ face.
‘Put the engines on stand-by, mister.’ he ordered.
The patrol craft swept across the bow and circled under the stern of the Matthew Flinders. On her tiny bridge they could see the white-capped naval officers studying them. A white ensign fluttered above the stern and they could read her name in small red letters on her quarter: Starling. Mackinnon was reducing speed progressively as he slowed his ship for the Lye Mun. As he did so, with a dull roar, HMS Starling gunned her engines and began to overtake them. Members of Starling’s crew in the berets and blue cotton of Number Eight rig were taking the canvas cover off the 40mm Bofors gun on her foredeck. As they clustered round the exposed gun they pointed at the gaggle of refugees and crew that stared back at the Starling’s unnecessarily aggressive appearance.
‘Bloody hell, James Dent’s aboard.’ Rawlings was clearly more apprehensive at the appearance of the chairman of Eastern Steam than the hostile intent of Her Majesty’s Navy.
As the little warship ran up alongside and slowed to match her speed with that of the elderly cargo-liner, Mackinnon stared down on the blond, swept-back hair of the ship owner, saw him point, presumably recognising the figure above them, and watched the naval officer beside him put the portable loud-hailer to his mouth.
‘Captain Mackinnon!’
The naval Lieutenant’s voice echoed eerily off the old liner’s wall side, as though they were in some vast cave rather than the open air.
‘You must stop your ship. You are forbidden entry into Hong Kong Harbour. I am empowered to arrest your vessel if you attempt to enter.’
Mackinnon watched the patrol boat’s First Lieutenant lean over the bridge front and the Bofors was trained sharply to starboard. Bristling at the indignity of being brought under the cover of a gun his taxes paid for, he disdained a haile
r and bellowed back at the young officer:
‘I demand a port of refuge. I am almost out of fuel and I have four dead on board in addition to the boat people you can see. Furthermore I am committed to the Lye Mun Pass now and unable to turn around. I suggest you take that ridiculous gun off us and send someone on board . . .’
A clatter of wooden rungs striking steel told where the Bosun and Braddock had thrown the pilot ladder over the side.
Aboard Starling there was a brief moment of consultation.
‘So, James Dent represents the government of Hong Kong, does he?’ Mackinnon muttered to himself. ‘He must have been pulling some high strings.’ He called over his shoulder. ‘Go down and welcome our guests, Alex . . . You stay here, mister,’ he added, as Rawlings made a move towards the ladder. Mackinnon watched while the Starling edged closer and bumped gently alongside the rope ladder.
Below him, the patrol boat’s skipper handed over to his Number One and led James Dent down on to her deck, then forward to where the Matthew Flinders’s pilot ladder dangled. The two men scrambled aboard and, with a grumble of her Paxman diesels, HMS Starling pulled off and ranged herself off the Matthew Flinders’s side.
Mackinnon heard the step on the ladder and swivelled to meet the intruders. Stevenson appeared first and, proper to the last, introduced the naval officer.
‘Lieutenant Drinkwater, sir,’ he said, adding after a slight pause, ‘And Mr Dent.’
‘So, the Navy’s here, Lieutenant Drinkwater,’ Mackinnon said, holding out his hand and marvelling at the youth of the naval officer. ‘I recall another Starling, d’you know? She was the toast of the Western Approaches.’
The apparent cordiality disarmed the boy as Mackinnon detached his hand, turned to the civilian bringing up the rear and with deliberate impudence greeted his employer.
‘Well, well, what seduces a shipowner from his VDU, James?’
Dent with equally offensive purpose ignored Mackinnon’s outstretched fist.
‘I thought so,’ he said quickly. ‘This is done on purpose, isn’t it, Mackinnon?’
‘That might be a perceptive remark, James,’ Mackinnon replied smoothly, ‘it might even do your conscience credit in respect of my shortly to be out of work crew, but it is a foolish one.’ Mackinnon addressed the naval officer. ‘Lieutenant Drinkwater, my ship has just suffered an ordeal in passing through Typhoon David – you may inspect the logbook and the damage if you are not inclined to believe me – and we are desperately short of oil fuel. The Chief Engineer, who was, incidentally, killed in the typhoon, was under orders from this gentleman here not to over-bunker, to have only enough fuel to reach Hong Kong . . .’
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