The Lonely Sea: Collected Short Stories

by Alistair MacLean

  On the bridge, the Lieutenant was poring over a minutely detailed Admiralty chart spread open before him. Also consulting it, but with a much lesser degree of concentration, was the skipper, who only did it that he might not hurt the feelings of the Lieutenant, for whom he entertained a very high regard. Privately, however, he held Admiralty charts and all such inessentials in a mighty contempt, and considered them unworthy of a real sailor. He had never needed a chart; a torn, finger-stained school atlas had served his purpose equally well.

  When the Lieutenant judged we had reached the end of our beat, he pulled on the siren lanyard, and the other trawler cut her speed down to a mere crawl; whereas we continued at full speed and came sweeping round in a full half-circle, a manoeuvre which, though apparently simple, like all else in minesweeping, was, in actuality, a brilliantly executed bit of seamanship. One might have been excused for thinking that we had been hauled round by centripetal force, our companion trawler acting as the pivot and the sweep wire as the connecting link, so high a state of perfection had the co-ordination existing between the two trawlers reached.

  All morning we continued in this fashion, beating up and down and gradually working our way westward. The wind, in the meantime, had veered from the west to north-by-west, and, though not becoming any stronger, had become exceedingly cold. At this juncture, we began to feel truly sorry for the winchman, exposed, as he was, to the full force of the elements, but consoled ourselves with the thought that he was specially adapted for resisting the cold, owing to his enormous girth. We were surprised to learn, however, that he was of normal proportions but wore no fewer than five overcoats under his oilskins and life jacket. But this may merely have been malicious rumour and we never received any confirmation as to its truth. Suffice is it to say that his attitude, regarding the weather, of the completest unconcern was Spartan to a degree.

  If he was, undeniably, the most important member of the crew, the second most, equally without doubt, was the cook. Balancing himself with a marvellous agility, born of long and arduous practice, he made his appearance at regular intervals — never exceeding three-quarters of an hour — bearing, in the one hand, a large and much-battered iron kettle, and in the other, a motley assortment of tin mugs, joined together by a strand of wire passed through their handles. The kettle was filled, alternately, with strong, sweet tea and cocoa, and the contents surpassed, we were of the opinion, anything we had ever experienced in the finest of city restaurants. Apparently coffee does not find favour in the eyes of the crews of minesweepers.

  Minesweeping is a dreadfully monotonous business, but we managed to pass the time tolerably well by smoking, spinning yarns, and drinking the cook's concoctions. In the early morning, a huge, four-engined flying boat of the Coastal Command passed directly overhead, acknowledging our humble presence by dipping graciously in salute, at which we felt highly flattered. About noon, a small convoy appeared on the southern horizon, but was gone within half an hour. Occasionally, gulls or wild duck flew overhead, and twice we saw the round, black, glistening head of a particularly venturesome seal emerge from a nearby wave, stare at us coldly and dispassionately, after the manner of its kind, then sink beneath the waves with an expression of disgust on its face. But noteworthy incidents were non-existent, and we gradually settled down into a state of wakeful boredom.

  About two o'clock in the afternoon, when conversation had languished and died, and we were conjuring up fanciful visions of what we should have for our evening meal, our dreams were abruptly shattered by a loud, incoherent, but unmistakably triumphant cry from our indefatigable winch-driver. We dashed to the starboard side of our vessel and scanned the stretch of water under which the sweep wire was passing, eagerly awaiting the first appearance of the mine — as mine it must be. We could see nothing: neither had our winch-driver seen anything, but he had FELT some foreign body making contact with the sweep wire — and he was far too experienced a man to make a mistake.

  It was a tense moment, holding, as it did, two distinct possibilities regarding the immediate future of the mine — one unpleasant, the other not so. (Parenthetically, it speaks well for our faith in our winch-driver that we never doubted the existence of the mine.) In the first case, our sweep wire might foul the detonating mechanism of the mine, which would forthwith blow up, in which event our sweep wire would be almost inevitably destroyed. Moreover, we had no means of knowing how close the mine was to one or other of our trawlers, and it was far from improbable that the explosion of the mine would entail our own or our companion sweeper's destruction. Such things had happened before. The other, and infinitely more pleasing possibility was that the mine would be drawn on to one of the cutters, be severed from its anchorage, and float harmlessly to the surface. To our immense relief, it was the latter that came to pass.

  At a spot that was almost mathematically equidistant between the two trawlers, the mine rose slowly to the surface and remained there, rising and falling sluggishly with the seas, an evil-looking, murderous spheroid of black steel, about three feet in diameter, liberally covered with knobs. These knobs, when broken, set the detonating mechanism in action and explode the mine. We steamed on for some distance farther, in order to carry the sweep well out of the mine's reach, and, almost before we had stopped, two of the crew had their rifles out and were firing at the mine, patently bent on its early despatch and eager to witness the explosion and its spectacular after-effects. In their laudible efforts they were nobly supported by the crew of the other trawler.

  After about a score of ineffectual shots had been fired by each trawler, it became evident that the disposal of the mine was going to be a by no means simple matter. The heaving decks of the trawlers, combined with the fact that the target was not static, made for very inaccurate shooting. Still, persistency had its own due, if not very satisfying, reward, for, after another ten minutes, the mine sank to the floor of the sea, riddled with bullets, none of which had the luck to impinge on any of the detonators. Although our object had been accomplished and the mine rendered harmless to shipping, one and all were grievously disappointed at the mine's inglorious end, having been pardonably desirous of witnessing a more dramatic finale. With a glow of inward satisfaction, not unmixed with a slight feeling of frustration, we returned to our posts and resumed operations.

  Contrary to popular conception, minesweepers do not sweep up and explode dozens of mines every day. Long weeks may pass without so much as the sight of a mine; this was, accordingly, a red-letter day for the crew of our trawler. We had already nine white-painted chevrons adorning our long black funnel, signifying that we had destroyed that number of mines; already the ship's artist was ferreting out his paint and brush, preparatory to painting our tenth chevron when we should reach port or the weather moderate sufficiently to permit of it.

  Towards evening the skies began to clear, the wind backed round to the westward again, and the rough, wind-swept seas gradually calmed down to a gentle swell. If the Lieutenant felt chagrined at his interrupted success as a weather prophet, he concealed his feelings remarkably well; probably, however, the excitement and success of the early afternoon had driven all thought of it from his mind. Some time later the cloudbanks to the west lifted, and, for the first time that day, we saw the sun, an enormous ball of dull red, its circumference very clearly etched through the lowlying winter haze.

  Half an hour later, the sun dipped slowly below the south-western horizon, laying a broken path of crimson over the sea of our ship. Soon after, as the light was failing and we had the better part of twenty miles to go before we reached our home port, the Lieutenant signalled to our companion trawler to cease operations and disconnect the sweep wire. We hauled it aboard, unshackled the 'kites' and stowed them carefully away; we then turned the trawler's bows towards the east, for the first time that day, and set a course for home through the swiftly gathering darkness.

  The day's work was done. The skipper, his hands gently caressing the wheel, was talking quietly to the Lieu
tenant, relaxed on a disreputable camp stool, his back against the bulkhead, his hands behind his head. Down below, the cook, his labours over, was lying on his bunk, reading a detective novelette. The winch-driver, impervious, as ever, to the icy wind which still blew, had not stirred from his post, but was dreamily regarding our slightly phosphorescent wake, watching it recede gradually into the darkness. A couple of men were sheltering from the following wind in the well-deck before the bridge, quietly smoking. Yet another two men were on the bridge-deck, steadying a ladder, on the top of which was perched a man for whom the slight pitching of the ship, the insufficient light, and the chilly night wind were proving no deterrent in the execution of his task. To him, art was all. He was painting our tenth chevron on the funnel…

  Words cannot adequately express what we owe to these men — fishermen all, from the Hebrides and Mallaig, Wick and Peterhead, Aberdeen and Grimsby, Lowestoft and Yarmouth: call them heroes, and they would jeer at you: yet they are nothing else. Theirs is, at once, the most lonely, monotonous, and dangerous of all our Empire Forces' tasks, and one indispensable for the maintenance of danger-free sea-lanes for the Merchant Service, our lifeline with the world beyond. They put to sea in the morning, gay or grave according to their wont… and some do not return. But they close their ranks, and carry on.

  CITY OF BENARES

  Colin Ryder Richardson, a city broker, and Kenneth Sparks, a Post Office employee, both live in the western outskirts of London, the former in Worcester Park, Surrey, the latter in Alperton, Middlesex. Both are approximately the same age, both are married, both have a baby son. Superficial similarities, these, similarities that could be duplicated ten thousand times: but through the warp and woof of the lives of these two young men runs a coloured thread of memory that sets them apart from all the others: the memory of that dark and bitter and hopeless night eighteen long years ago, when the torpedoed liner CITY OF BENARES slid beneath the gale and sleet-torn surface of the North Atlantic and left them to die in the cold and hostile waters.

  They should have died that night. Their chances of survival, the chances of survival of any child, in waters such as these, were remote. But incredibly survive they did — they and a handful of other children. A handful, no more. The chances were remote, and with the sinking of the CITY OF BENARES, a tragedy which aroused more pity and indignation than any other naval loss of the war, the law of averages had its inexorable way. Of the hundred young children aboard the liner, no less than eighty-three, far from the parents, the homes, and the friends that had until then made up the entirety of their young lives, died on that night of 17 September, 1940.

  Kenneth Sparks was thirteen years old, Colin Richardson only eleven on the day when the CITY OF BENARES left England for Canada with a total complement of 406 — 191 passengers and 215 of a crew. Even today, Kenneth Sparks can recall the dark mutterings of some members of the crew on the choice of a sailing date — Friday the 13th of September.

  But no one paid any attention to their gloomy forebodings — certainly none of the children, ranging from five to fifteen years of age, for all of whom this voyage was the most exciting adventure of their lives. There was so much to see — all the other ships in the convoy, the destroyers fussing busily around them, and so much to do — exploring the big liner, playing games, trying their best to do full justice to the magnificent meals set before them.

  Nearly all the children were being evacuated, Kenneth Sparks among them, under an official Government scheme, from heavily bombed areas such as London, Middlesex, Sunderland, Liverpool and Newport: there were nine officially employed escorts to look after them. Colin Richardson was an exception, travelling privately under the care of a Mr Raskay, a Hungarian, who had arranged with Colin's parents to be his guardian for that trip.

  On the third day out from England, the destroyers, their charges now safely past the recognized danger zone, turned for home, leaving the convoy on its own. Even among the most hardened sailors in wartime there is always the same feeling of desertion and vulnerability when their naval escort is compelled to withdraw. But this very human apprehension subsided considerably on the evening of the next day when the liner began to pitch and roll in awkward cross-seas as the weather deteriorated and the wind moaned and whistled round the superstructure and through the rigging as it steadily mounted towards gale force, building up the big seas ahead of it.

  The tension and the strain aboard the CITY OF BENARES eased; it was safe now almost to relax. U-boats, of course, were the great menace. But everyone knew how almost impossible it was to launch an accurate torpedo with such seas running, even if a U-boat captain was lucky enough to see them and have time to take an aiming sight, through the cold rain and sleet showers that were beginning to sweep across the darkening sea. Besides, it was the absolutely recognized convention and law of naval warfare that the torpedoing of liners in gale seas was forbidden: in such heavy seas the chances of survival of the complement of a torpedoed liner were remote indeed.

  The CITY OF BENARES was torpedoed at exactly 10.00 p.m. that night. The torpedo struck the ship far aft on the port side, almost directly opposite the place where the majority of the evacuee children had their quarters. It is not known exactly how many of them lost their lives in that first lethal moment of impact, when the detonating torpedo ripped a huge hole in the unarmoured hull of the CITY OF BENARES from above to far below the waterline. The probability is that nearly half of these children either died in the first moment, were too dreadfully wounded either to struggle to freedom or even cry out for help, or were trapped in their cabins by warped and buckled doors and taken down with the ship with no one near to help them.

  Some children, on the other hand, were at first quite unaware either of the fatal extent of the damage or, indeed, of the fact that there had been any damage at all. Among the unsuspecting ones were Colin Richardson and Kenneth Sparks.

  Colin was in his bunk at the time, alone in his cabin, reading a comic. He felt a heavy bump, but paid no attention to it — we can only assume that he found the contents of his comic singularly engrossing — and carried on reading. Not until the alarm bells started ringing did he reluctantly abandon his comic, don a pair of slippers, put on his dressing gown over his pyjamas, his vivid red kapok life jacket — given him by his mother with the instructions that he should wear it always, and of so eye-dazzling a colour that he was already known throughout the ship as Will Scarlet — over his dressing gown, a cork life jacket above that and made his way to the ship's restaurant where he found all the passengers lining up to go to their boat stations.

  Kenneth was in bed at 10.00 p.m., and sound asleep. The insistent clamour of the alarm bells brought himself and his two cabin companions — both of whom were to die during the darkness of that night — to their feet, struggling into coats and life jackets before hurrying to their boat positions on the upper deck.

  Newly awakened from the soft blanketed warmth of their beds, most of them still half-asleep, the children shivered and tried to crouch more deeply still inside their thin night clothes as the bitter night wind, blowing a full gale now, knifed through their pathetically inadequate garments, drenching them with driving rain and icy hail, blinding them with the bulleting spray whipped off the wave-tops as the already sinking ship, losing way rapidly, began to wallow helplessly in the deep troughs between the seas.

  It was not until then that Kenneth Sparks realized what was happening, not until he saw the blown hatch-covers, the snapped and splintered mast, the debris lying everywhere, the dazed and fearful lascar crew members that he understood that the ship was sinking beneath his feet. Both he and Colin Richardson remember clearly that there was no panic, no fear at all among the children, nothing except the lonely sobbing of one little boy, crying quietly in the darkness, his voice carrying only faintly in the sudden moments of silence when the CITY OF BENARES listed far over to one side, momentarily blocking the sound and the power of the gale.

  One by one the lifeboats were
lowered — a difficult and often dangerous task in a wickedly rolling, all but stopped ship in those wild and pitch-dark seas. Some of the lifeboats capsized immediately, throwing the occupants into the water — few of these were ever seen again. Some were swamped and cut adrift. Others came alongside the foot of rope ladders, and women and children clambered down over the side towards them, as often as not to find that the boats were no longer there. And then they would find that they no longer had the strength to climb back up on deck again: for a few seconds they would hang there, being battered against the ship's side, alternately being plunged deep into the water or hauled high above it as the foundering vessel rolled deeply, sluggishly in the seas: and then their slender strength would fail them, their fingers would open and they were never seen again.

  Other women took children in their arms and leapt into the darkness of the sea near a spot where they had seen a raft being dropped over the side. Occasionally — very occasionally — they would reach it, drag themselves aboard and lie there helpless, beaten flat by the wind, the hail and the waves, unable even to so much as raise their heads: more often than not, they would fail to see the raft in the deep gloom of a sea where the towering wave-crests reduced visibility to only a few feet, or, even if they did see one, would find it floating away into the outer darkness more quickly than they could swim after it.