The Shipkiller

by Justin Scott

  One by one the dockers dropped the extra cables, and one by one LEVIATHAN’s deck gangs reeled them onto the deck. Ogilvy paced the wing, his eyes in constant motion, and every time he passed near him, the pilot could hear through his radio the breathing of the men who were laboring at the steam winches. They loosed the cables until only three held the ship to the pier—a single line each at the bow, at the stern, and amidships. Singled up.

  The pilot waited to be called, but Ogilvy seemed to have every intention of undocking and turning LEVIATHAN himself. He was welcome to it.

  Thank God they dredged the mud shoals off Hamble Spit a year ago; it had greatly widened the channel opposite the refinery. Still, the giant ship barely had room to turn, and it wouldn’t take much more than a minor miscalculation to block one of England’s principal ports by sticking the monster’s bow in the mud and straddling the channel like Hadrian’s wall.

  Ogilvy radioed orders to the tugs, to his officers, and to the dockers. Still ignoring the pilot, he faced LEVIATHAN’s bow and spoke again.

  A docker flung his arms high.

  With a loud clank, the bow mooring cable dropped free of the pier and fell into the water, leaving a white trail like a jellyfish. Ogilvy spoke again: The midships line clanked loose. The tugboat at the bow was joined by a second. Together, they began pulling toward the middle of the channel.

  Ogilvy reached into a small cabinet on the wing and engaged the bow thruster. Unseen and unheard, a two-thousand-horsepower diesel engine turned a propeller inside a tunnel that traversed the front of the ship. It pulled water in the starboard side and spewed it to port, pushing with the straining tugboats.

  The bridge lights were extinguished. The thickening night moved closer to the ship. The pier and the refinery took on lighted shapes. A cool wind swept the bridge wing. Ogilvy ordered the stern cable cast off.

  The last tie splashed into the water. Two Southampton tugs tightened up astern and pulled toward the channel. The rest picked up lines on the outboard side and joined the effort to draw the ship from the pier. Water streamed from the taut hemp and the air trembled with the beat of their engines, but LEVIATHAN stood firm.

  Ogilvy went into the bridge house and the pilot followed. The third officer took up a position by the engine consoles. A seaman waited at the helm. Small red ceiling lights illuminated the instruments and controls. The second pilot was already at the communications console, a VHF radiotelephone in his hand, conversing with the tugs and the harbor traffic.

  “Right full rudder,” said Ogilvy.

  “Right full rudder,” repeated the helmsman, turning the miniature yoke.

  “Port, slow ahead,” said Ogilvy. “Starboard, slow astern.”

  The third officer repeated Ogilvy’s command and moved the plastic-knobbed levers which automatically controlled the engines, one forward, the other back. The engines engaged soundlessly with a barely perceptible tremor.

  Then, by slow degrees, the world started to turn past the bridge windows. The distant lights of Southampton moved majestically across LEVIATHAN’s bow. The pier angled away from the port side of the ship and the rows of red and green lights that marked the channel to the sea lined up in single file facing the starboard side. The pilot shivered; it was like watching the start of an avalanche.

  Minutes passed. LEVIATHAN felt motionless, but the lights turned faster. The stern tugs dropped off, retrieved their hawsers, and scurried between the ship and the pier to help push the bow. Now the lighted outskirts of Southampton slid along the hull toward the stern, while the refinery—glittering like a space installation—swung to the other side.

  “Stop engines!”

  “Stop engines.” The third officer moved both levers to Stop and recorded the changes in the Engine Movement Book. The harbor lights continued to shift as the ship kept on turning on its momentum. Several minutes later, as it lined up with the channel and was completing its turn, Ogilvy ordered the bow tugs away. LEVIATHAN’s deck gangs loosed their slack lines and heaved them over the side.

  At precisely the instant it was facing the first channel marker— a quick-flashing white light a mile away—the ship stopped turning.

  “Pilot!”

  “Thank you, Captain,” he said admiringly. It had been a masterful undocking. He turned to the second pilot. “Tell the tugs we’ve finished with them.”

  “Not yet!” snapped Ogilvy. “I’ll tell them. I’ll ruddy well tell them when I’m ready to. Is that understood?”

  “I beg your pardon, Captain,” the pilot said, startled by the outburst. Ogilvy’s face set angrily in the dim red glow of the bridge lights.

  The pilot stared down the channel, lining the marker against the window frame. In a moment the ship would drift. Out of the corner of his eye he saw James Bruce watching with a concerned expression on his fleshy face.

  “Will you order ahead full, Captain, or shall I?”

  Ogilvy turned to his third officer. “Tell the tugs we’re done.”

  “Aye, sir.” The third spoke into the VHF phone.

  The pilot waited, his eyes flickering from the marker, to the compass, to the rate-of-turn gyro, to the zero-reading knots indicator.

  “Thank you, Number Three. Port . . . starboard . . . ahead full.”

  “Ahead full, sir.”

  “She’s yours, Pilot.”

  Ogilvy spun on his heel and disappeared into the chart room. A moment later the bridge deck shuddered as the twin propellers bit deep.

  The gray interlude between day and night was over. It was quite suddenly dark, and the sky, the land, and the water merged at indistinct places. The flashing lights of the channel buoys, dim in the dusk, were now sharp pricks of red, green, and white. They were the only visual features that the pilot could trust, because the vague silhouettes of the hills and riverlands offered depthless perspective.

  He stood close to the third officer. “Please give me six knots.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Helmsman. Steer one four two.”

  “Steer one four two,” repeated the helmsman.

  Slowly the shuddering eased and the great ship began to move down Southampton Water toward the Calshot Reach. The second pilot picked up a telephone at the communications console. As he swept the VHF channels, he reported to the pilot.

  “The harbor patrol is ahead of us.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We’ve a ten-thousand-ton freighter, inbound, heading for Thorn Channel.”

  “Ask him to wait for us, please.” The channel was less than a thousand feet wide beyond the turn.

  The first channel buoy was coming up. The second pilot said, “Seatrain is behind us, just now leaving the Test.”

  “Thank you. Could you give me a bearing on the Reach light?”

  The second pilot hurried out on the wing. You had to move quickly on a bridge this big. He sighted the grouped flashing white lights through a pair of vanes that rotated around a fixed compass card, then did a quick mental calculation from relative to compass bearing as he walked a hundred feet back to the helm.

  “One four zero.”

  “Thank you,” said the pilot. A moment later, he called to the helmsman, “One four zero.”

  Slowly, too slowly, the lights ahead moved right. The pilot watched the magnified fine-line compass overhead. The card ticked the degrees past the needle and settled, finally, on 140. He looked ahead. The grouped flashers were there, coming up fast. He raised his glasses and searched for the quick-flashing ten-second red Castle Point buoy he would use to begin his turn into Thorn Channel.

  It was where it should be, twelve points off the starboard bow.

  These were familiar waters—he guided ships up and down them day and night. But LEVIATHAN’s great height altered his perspective and that took some getting used to. The grouped white flashers suddenly disappeared. He gripped his glasses, searching frantically before he realized that the distant bow had blocked his view. He hurried out on the port wing and leaned over
the side and found the white flashers.

  Quickly he walked off the wing, hurried through the bridge house, past the helmsman and the third officer, and out to the far edge of the starboard wing. Three hundred feet. It didn’t seem possible a ship could be so wide. When the pilot on that ten-thousand-tonner saw LEVIATHAN coming out of Thorn Channel, he’d be glad of the port regulations that required him to wait.

  The pilot leaned out over the water and eyed the Castle Point light to see how close the ship was to the edge of the Calshot Spit shoal. The stacks hissed above him. A gust of wind burst off the flats and tore at his hat. He jammed it on tighter and hurried back to the bridge house. He was afraid that the ship was moving too slowly.

  Captain Ogilvy had come back on the bridge and was standing at the engine control console.

  “When will we have six knots?” asked the pilot.

  Ogilvy telephoned the engine room. So much for automation, thought the pilot. It was one thing to throw a lever demanding speed and quite another to get it. The instruments were not the machines.

  He glanced at the deck-level anemometer. The wind was gusting to seven knots. Ogilvy cradled the telephone. “You’ll have more turns immediately.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  He moved to the windows.

  “What’s that?” he asked his second, who was already studying a pair of white lights off the starboard bow. One was higher than the other and a dim red hung in the blackness between them. He picked them up on the radar. A medium-sized blip, moving slowly east into LEVIATHAN’s path.

  “He’s crossing into the North Channel,” the second pilot said incredulously, grabbing the radiotelephone. Moments after he made contact with the harbor patrol boat, a single bright white light raced ahead of LEVIATHAN and hovered by the moving lights until they circled back in the direction from which they had come. The second pilot listened to the telephone and chuckled. “Coaster. He told the harbor patrol he thought he probably had time to make it.”

  But the pilot was already hurrying toward the wing. The white flashers were dropping behind. Overhead, he heard one of the radar dishes squeaking as it turned. He returned to the bridge.

  “Helmsman. Steer ten degrees right standard rudder.”

  “Ten degrees right.”

  The great bow swung to starboard until the compass read 150. Eyeing the Castle Point quick-flashing red, the Calshot Spit white flasher and the distant quick-flashing North Thorn on the opposite side of the channel, the pilot ordered the rudder angle increased as the curve steepened.

  “Steady up on two two zero.”

  “Steady on two two zero.”

  The white lights started to drift to the right. The pilot’s eyes shot to the rate-of-turn gyro.

  “Is she yawing?” he asked the helmsman.

  “I’ve got her, sir. Steadying up on two two zero.”

  The pilot glanced at him. He was young and rugged-looking, with the intelligent expression and confident bearing of the sort of seaman who either breezed through his ratings test and became an officer, or, if thwarted, left the merchant service for better opportunities ashore.

  The channel lights returned to their proper positions, and one of the open VHF local traffic channels came to life.

  “LEVIATHAN. This is Seatrain right behind you.”

  The second pilot picked up the phone. “Hello, Seatrain.”

  The pilot walked to the wing and looked back at her lights. He had piloted several of the sleek container ships. They were big and fast. Four and a half days to New York. Faster than QE2. She’d be chafing to run.

  He returned to the helm. The Seatrain pilot’s voice sounded as clear as if he were on LEVIATHAN’s bridge. “My minimum speed is six knots. When may I overtake?”

  The second pilot looked at the first. He shook his head.

  The second pilot spoke with a grin. “We suggest a lower minimum.”

  “That’ll mean stopping,” cried the voice.

  The pilot took the phone—one eye on the next marker, a five-second white. “Sorry. No room.”

  “Thought so. Just wanted to give it a try.”

  “Cheero.”

  The pilot and his second exchanged smiles as they rang off.

  They were almost through Thorn Channel. The Solent lay ahead, a broad, open wind chute. LEVIATHAN was doing six knots—barely steerage because her bottom was only a few feet above the dredged channel. The pilot glanced at the knots indicator. The needle, quivering at the six-knot mark, had begun to fall toward five and half. He beckoned for the third officer.

  “I need more turns.”

  “Yes, sir.” The young man telephoned the engine room.

  The pilot eyed the light on the West Bramble buoy. Just before he was abeam the quick-flashing white, he started a slow turn to port. LEVIATHAN lumbered east into the Solent. He would have liked more steerage, but the stiffening west wind helped push her bow through the broad turn. He finished the turn at Prince Consort Shoal.

  “Steady up on one zero eight.”

  “Steady up on one zero eight.”

  A pair of white lights, one almost atop the other, appeared dead ahead, looming larger than the others that dotted the black water.

  “That’s the freighter,” said the second pilot. “I’ve got him on the phone.”

  “Thank you.” He gave the helmsman a course change to give the freighter more room. It was a small, aft-conned semicontainer with silvery boxes stacked between massive deck cranes. He said hello to its pilot on the radiotelephone as it squeezed between LEVIATHAN and an anchored Hovercraft tender.

  The pilot exhaled. It looked like the worst was over.

  An hour passed quickly, during which he located his buoys, visually and on the radar, took his bearings, and instructed the helmsman. The channel lights pricked the distance, moved in front of LEVIATHAN’s gigantic bow, grew larger, and slid past. All the while the wind grew stronger. Six knots. Eight. Ten. Gusts to fifteen.

  He put his face to the radarscope. Ahead, the channel was clear. The distinctive electronic signatures of the buoys filed up the screen—an almost straight path for six miles. Then a forty-five-degree turn into the narrow Nab Channel, which was reserved for deep-draft vessels. Once through the Nab, LEVIATHAN would be in the English Channel and he would be riding home on the pilot boat.

  He straightened up and glanced around the dark bridge. Ogilvy emerged from the shadows, spoke briefly to the helmsman, and hurried onto the starboard wing. The pilot listened to the peculiar shuffle of his left foot dragging slightly on the polished linoleum deck.

  “Tea, sir?”

  A steward appeared at his elbow with a tray.

  “Thank you.”

  The pilot bent over the radar for a final look. A cluster of sailing yachts occupied the lower quadrant of the screen, glowing like grains of white sand. They were astern of LEVIATHAN, pointing Cowes and refuge for the night.

  The second mixed in milk and sugar and handed him a steaming mug. He sipped gratefully and tried to squirm the tension from his back. Good tea.

  Abruptly, he put down the cup and stared ahead. The quickflashing red that marked the channel past Warner Shoal had moved left.

  “She’s yawing, sir!” cried the helmsman.

  The third officer rushed to the helm, but the pilot looked at the knots indicator. The needle had dropped below five. He went to the helm, his heart pounding. The relief man was much older than the helmsman he had replaced. He licked his lips as he fiddled the yoke. The third officer put down a telephone.

  “There’s trouble in the engine room, sir.”

  “For how long?” the pilot asked quietly.

  The third officer’s youth was suddenly apparent and it occurred to the pilot that all of Ogilvy’s officers were very young.

  “Thirty minutes.”

  “You’d better get the Old Man.”

  “He’s waiting for you on the starboard wing.”

  The pilot spoke to his second, who was hove
ring by his shoulder. “Put him on one two zero when you’re abeam the Warner Shoal.”

  “One two zero.”

  “And call Eastern Docks and tell them we may need tugs.”

  The bow began to swing to starboard as the pilot headed toward the wing. He forced himself to walk normally. This was no place to run, not in front of a wet-behind-the-ears third officer and a jittery helmsman who was doing his damndest to compensate for the drift, trying to walk her back into the center of the channel. Everything happened so slowly, because of the ship’s size, that it was impossible to gauge the success of the maneuver. He stepped out of the bridge house.

  Ogilvy’s officers were grouped around him, shadowy forms in the wing’s darkness, while the captain spoke by telephone to the engine room. At his waist, beside the bow thruster controls, a dimly lighted remote-instrument panel showed the ship’s course, propeller revolutions, and speed.

  Ogilvy cradled the phone and turned to the pilot. In the dim reflected red light, he could see a tic in the captain’s left cheek, a tiny movement like a fish breaking the water’s surface.

  “Pilot,” he said stiffly, “I’m losing steam pressure. Water in my fuel bunkers has fouled my Number Two boiler’s burner nozzles. My engineers need thirty minutes to clear them. LEVIATHAN will maintain four knots maximum.”

  “Will she obey the helm at four knots?”

  “My helmsman can handle her.”

  “Can she turn into the Nab?”

  “Not at four knots.”

  “Not even with the bow thruster?”

  “I said no.”

  The pilot waited for more, but Ogilvy said nothing, which put him in a classic harbor pilot’s dilemma. He was not familiar with LEVIATHAN’s performance, nor did he know the man. Was Ogilvy’s glacial calm a matter of heroic self-control or paralyzing fear? Was he warning about a difficult situation or was he predicting a catastrophe?

  The pilot focused on the facts he knew. The Warner Shoal light was abeam. That meant LEVIATHAN was an hour from Nab Channel traveling at four knots. He asked, “When will you have steam?”

  “One hour.”

  Fact or wish, the pilot couldn’t know. He wondered if he should have kept the tugs all the way to Nab Light. Too late. He asked, “Can we twist her around by reversing the starboard screw? ”