With every surge of the sea the tug would bash against the hull of Syrius; but Pacific Ranger was built for that, with great hard rubber buffer-strips bolted along each side. It was the tug crew who were getting the worst of it, treading warily, keeping one hand on the rail at all times, and now and then being jerked off their feet as a sudden jarring impact caught them unawares.
There were four large pieces of machinery sitting on the back deck of the tug, each wrapped in water-proof canvas: the salvage pumps. Our aft cargo winch-boom was swung overboard and the cable lowered and drawn across to the tug’s stern, and in an instant the hook was passed through the sling on the first pump and the signal given.
The winch driver pushed the lever and the pump jerked from the deck, snatched from the crew’s restraining hands, swinging backwards to the stern bulwark, crashing into the rail. The sling snapped at one end, running free through the hook. The pump teetered on the edge as two men raced forwards; one of them just managing to get a finger to the pump as it tumbled over the rail and down to the reef below.
The Dutchman came racing across the deck yelling at the top of his voice. The situation was electric. He stood below the winch house, his face red, one hand on the ladder ready to swing himself up. It was the winch-man’s fault, trying to impress, snatching the lever forward. That one piece of carelessness and the loss of a pump could have cost the whole salvage. One glance at the winch-man’s ashen-white face was enough to show the Dutchman that it wouldn’t happen again.
The cable was lowered once more. The second pump moved up and out from the tug’s stern, restrained by the crew from hitting the bulwark, then straight up and over on to our deck. The other two pumps were brought on board and the tug moved away to the safety of deep water.
Two divers climbed down into the rubber boat, and were brought bouncing back to our side. They fell into the swell, disappearing beneath the surface, their bubbles streaming across the reef.
The winch cable pierced the water and we could see the divers dragging the hook back across the reef towards the pump. The winch whirred and the pump broke the surface, dripping water. The canvas cover was removed as it hit the deck, and I saw that it was not a complete pump and motor, but only the pump itself. What I had taken to be four separate pumps were in fact two pumps, split into their component units: a pump and a motor.
A couple of brackets had been bent, but it didn’t seem as though the fall had done any real damage. The salvage master leant over the unit, turning this and checking that, and then looked up with a smile. It would work!
Lengths of hose were unloaded from the tug on to the rubber boat three or four at a time, and carried in under our stern and hoisted on board, the aft quarter-deck becoming a mass of twisting blue pipe.
The pumps were joined to their partner motors; the damaged one requiring the application of a sledge-hammer before a fit was achieved. The hoses were attached and dropped into the flooded main hold, the pumps primed and the motors started. Water spewed forth: tonnes and tonnes pouring out each minute.
They could empty the hold in a matter of hours and not the days it would take if we relied on the ship’s bilge pumps. They were run for two hours, with the water level marked as they began and when they stopped. They would take just over six hours to empty the hold.
The fire hoses were set going again to replace the water thrown out by the pumps, water needed to pin us back down on the reef.
The stage was now set for the attempt: the ground tackle had been laid and the pumps set in position. The big test would come on the next day, the first test of the tackle, and the tug. The news spread throughout the ship, the air crackling with excitement.
The entire crew was up and about even before the sun had risen, and I was among the first on deck, but nothing was happening. Pacific Ranger was still at anchor in the lagoon. The coral on the reef was far too visible – high tide still hours away.
A cry went up from our crew around mid-morning as they spotted the tug’s anchor being raised; and then she steamed around to take up position just ahead of the buoy over the salvage anchor; holding herself on station with the bow thruster as the crew picked up the end of the line attached to the loop in the wire. We watched as the divers went down into the water. We stood at the rail, knowing that thirty metres below they would be hauling the end of the wire cable over to the huge anchor, dragging the heavy wire across the sea bed by pure physical force. Fifteen minutes later they surfaced. The loop was fixed to the great shackle on the anchor stock.
Meanwhile the tug had steamed across to the white buoy, to the other end of the cable. The light line was hauled in on the aft windlass. Once on deck the cable was looped over the towing hook, ready to take the strain.
The divers waited in the inflatable, circling the yellow buoy as the tug got up steam and began to move out to sea, the water churning behind her.
The divers went down again. The yellow buoy bobbed once and the boat driver raised the walkie-talkie to his mouth and the tug’s engines eased, the churning water smoothing out.
The bubbles pimpling the surface came towards us, following the line of wires as the divers checked for obstructions; then they headed back to the anchor and the buoy bobbed twice. Once again the tug churned forward, moving on for fifty metres until the jerking buoy once again brought it to a halt. This time the divers swam nearly to our bow before returning again to signal the tug.
Twice more the pattern was repeated and each time the tug moved farther away as the slack was taken up, until finally the single strand of cable from the tug’s towing hook back to the pulley-block on the Syrius’ bow came looping out of the water, flopping on the surface. Minutes later, with much dripping of water, the group of wires rose out of the water, stretching from the pulley-block on our bow – clear of the water for half the ship’s length – before knifing into the sea and down to the salvage anchor.
The divers returned to the tug, their task completed, the tackle checked: no tangles or obstructions, no twists, no turns – laid perfectly.
Pacific Ranger lay some four or five hundred metres astern of us, over to our starboard side. Without the binoculars it was difficult to discern the churning water around the propellors. White smoke drifted from the funnels; the drooping wire cable flipped out of the water, and dipped back again.
Our stern deck was cleared of all personnel. The wire’s breaking strain was known but never tested and if it parted under tension it might whip back, severing heads, limbs and bodies.
I moved up to the bridge.
Smoke streamed from the tug’s funnels and this time the wire was stretched clear of the water, dipping only where it approached the stern of the tug; its back deck deserted.
The smoke darkened. The water rumbled and bubbled. The wire stretched and no longer touched the sea at any point, as taut as a violin string. I held my breath and waited for it to snap.
The tug growled for another ten minutes, the water a turmoil. We hadn’t moved, hadn’t even rocked on the reef. The smoke cleared to grey; the wire dropped and the ground tackle sank slowly beneath the waves.
The testing was over.
We watched as the wire was removed from the towing hook, and watched as the buoyed line was tied on again and the wire cable tossed over the side. Gloom descended. We knew it was only to be a test, but we believed we would come free. We had all seen the force exerted, and yet there had been no movement, not even a shudder.
The remaining hours of that day and evening were the most miserable I had spent on the ship. It wasn’t the weather. The wind had dropped and we weren’t rolling about. It was the crew. The entire ship’s complement had thought that this was to be the day they would bid farewell to that godforsaken reef.
There were a couple of fights in the crew’s quarters, where tempers were running hot. It wasn’t safe being on deck any more. You only had to look sideways and somebody would take offence. The mumbled insults and veiled threats were once again out in the open.
/> I kept to my cabin with a bottle of whisky and my own thoughts for comfort.
The new day dawned quietly, as had many previous days, except there were more sore heads on this one. The bond store had been broken into during the night and most of the liquor distributed.
Breakfast was a despondency of grumbling officers, complaining about the food and the way it was cooked, and the rapid decline in discipline amongst the crew. Flint hadn’t come down from his cabin, and had coffee sent up to the bridge,
But the salvors were moving early and it was evident they weren’t suffering from the doldrums as we were. They had boarded whilst we were still at breakfast, and when I heard the great pumps start up I gulped my coffee down. As I came on deck the smell of diesel carried out by the offshore breeze reached my nostrils and I looked down on a sea already covered with thick black bunker oil, thrown up by the bilge pumps as they began to clear the flooded double-bottom and forepeak tanks. The remaining oil was being rinsed out with the salt water that had poured in through the splits in the hull. And then they stopped. The bilge pumps had been put through their paces, tested, proven.
The crew still slouched and grumbled. Nothing seemed sufficient to give them hope; not the activity on deck, nor the water gushing from the flooded tanks; not even when the big salvage pumps were started up and the level in the main hold started dropping again, the ship becoming lighter, grinding on the reef once more.
At noon the tug hauled up the end of the wire cable and steamed slowly out to its station. The divers went down, checking for kinks and turns in the cable. This was no trial run; this time the main hold would be emptied and the bilge pumps would be run at full force. This would be the day!
The main hold was now only a third full and still the pumps belched forth their grimy stream – the dirt and dust of a thousand cargoes. The bilge pumps cut in, and then the oil transfer pump; and more black water poured out from the ship to darken the sea. The forepeak was pumped dry and then the sound double-bottom tanks. Syrius was rocking with the swell, and the faint crunch of grinding coral could be heard below deck.
I could see the smoke start from Pacific Ranger’s funnels. It was strange, being able to see so clearly through the binoculars and yet not able to hear the roar of the tug’s engines, nor the shouts of the men on board, the wind taking it all away. The only sound was the racket of the salvage pumps and the splashing of water gushing from the ship and cascading into the sea.
The strain was taken up and the wires rose out of the sea like some awakening serpent.
We waited whilst the tide rose, centimetre by centimetre. The colour of the smoke from the funnels darkened from white to grey and then to a dull grey. The water in the main hold now almost gone, the salvage pumps were manhandled forward to the hold that had held the sodden sugar. The bilge pumps kept up their relentless task, fighting against the inflow of the sea to the holed tanks.
Syrius rolled ponderously, but still would not break free. The single wire cable was stretched so tight that water was wrung back into the sea. Then the rumbling started: our main engines. It was eerie to feel the vibration through the hull after the weeks of quietness.
Pacific Ranger slewed from side to side, pulling first to the east, then south-east and then straight out to sea. Time and again the procedure was repeated as she tried to rock us free.
Knowing the action would be on the bridge I raced there to become a part of it. Once again all positions were manned as they had been that first day on the reef, but this time the Dutchman was in command. It seemed like only yesterday that I had stood there and watched as the ship tried to tear her insides out, as the engines roared and screamed in that first futile attempt to break free.
The order was given: half astern and then full astern. The faces were silent; the commands monosyllabic; the vibration of the plating mingling with the grinding of coral beneath the hull.
We didn’t move.
Full tide was almost an hour away.
Backwards and forwards went the tug, to and fro, slewing and jerking. For two hours it pulled and for two hours we held our breaths, and prayed.
But still we didn’t move.
And then the order was given: close down the mains!
“We’ll do it on tomorrow’s tide,” I heard the Dutchman say. “All we need are a few more centimetres of water under the keel.”
I could see from Flint’s face that he didn’t believe him.
We were trapped on this bastard of a reef and here we would stay. My fortune would go to the bottom, and me with it.
The previous evening had been a picnic compared to the atmosphere now pervading the ship. Nobody spoke. Nobody bothered to move about. Meals weren’t eaten. The steward swore at Flint, and he didn’t even bother to reply.
We hadn’t moved a centimetre, not a single solitary centimetre! Would we ever move? Nobody seemed to think so.
I should have eaten, but there didn’t seem to be any point. Half a bottle of whisky would bring sleep, and sleep might stop me worrying about the rolling of the ship; but it wouldn’t stop the nightmares. We were without ballast, apart from a couple of hundred tonnes of seawater the fire pumps had managed to put back into the main hold.
We were grinding like some gigantic pestle, with the reef as its mortar.
I cried that night.
Morning.
We were still in one piece. The ship hadn’t split apart.
My head throbbed. Coffee was all I could face.
Again we gathered on the deck, with some at the stern and some amidships, but nobody really taking an interest. We stood silent, waiting for the salvors to give up their feeble attempts so that we could pack our personal belongings and desert, leaving the ship to beat herself to death.
We waited, not really caring; watching, with nothing better to do. I moved up to the bridge.
The ground tackle was checked.
The tug took up the strain.
The wire was wrung taut, the tug oozing dark grey smoke, water dripping from the wire cable; everything the same as yesterday.
Then I looked again.
It wasn’t water dripping from the wire now. It was grease!
Sixteen
Black smoke was pouring from the tug’s funnels: thick billowing smoke; darkening the sky. This was different. This hadn’t happened before, not black.
The pumps burst into life, spurting water back into the sea.
The mains trembled, a promise of power still to come. The hull began its rhythmic vibration and the tremor increased.
Half astern!
Full astern!
The tug slewed from side to side, still belching its blackness.
Backwards and forwards.
The grease dripped.
Emergency astern!
The hull hammered and thundered, the engines seeming to scream as they had never screamed before. I had been terrified that first time, but now I thrilled to the sound, the adrenalin coursing through my body.
“Roar, you bastards, roar!” I screamed to the wind. “Tear yourself free!”
Nobody heard above the sounds of the ship.
“She moved!” the captain yelled. “She moved!” The officers scrambled to look. I stared across at the island. It had moved; but it wasn’t the island that had moved, it was us. We had pivoted a few degrees across the reef and then back the other way.
To and fro.
Roaring.
The holding of fifty breaths.
Then, with a graceful slide, as the swell raised her stern and raced along underneath, we slid towards the tug. The ship thumped once on the reef and then fell away into deeper water, drawn backwards by the mighty main engines, over the top of the salvage anchor lying far below.
The engines were shut down to an idle, the vibration dropping to a quiet murmur as our momentum swept us on towards the tug tethered to the end of the cable, bearing down on her like some rolling mountain. There was a flash of light from the back deck of the tug as an oxy
-torch cut through the cable and the tug raced free, scuttling away from our swooping stern.
We drifted; afloat once more, the cable slipping back through the blocks until all eight turns had gone and we were finally free.
There was no roar from the crew; no shout of cheers; all of them unable even to speak. Some had tears of joy streaming down their cheeks; others grinning from ear to ear. My hand was shaken many times. I looked across the wheelhouse to the captain, white-faced, smiling.
We were safe!
We were free!
Our momentum carried us on and out to deeper water. The tug circled around us, taking a line thrown from our foredeck, and towed us about a kilometre out to sea.
The divers went down and checked our propellor. The blades were clear. Flint and the salvage master spent an urgent hour inspecting the holds, the engine room and all the lower spaces of the ship. There had been no new inflow of water. We were afloat. We were a ship again.
We anchored in the lee of the island that evening, with the site of our stranding blocked from view by the mountain. We lay there with the tug strapped up to us for the night, like a mother with its child.
We had sailed around under our own steam.
It was peaceful and quiet. Gone was the noise of the breakers and the grinding coral; the twisting of the hull a thing of the past; now just a simple light rolling motion, easy and comforting.
We were all late to bed that night, with celebrations on board both vessels going on until the early hours. A watch was kept, of sorts. Our crew was beyond discipline for the moment, but the watch from the tug made regular turns around the ship.
Morning was late arriving and heads were heavy, but the jubilation hadn’t faded. The divers went below again, this time making a detailed report. The bow was badly stove in, but apart from this, and a few splits in the hull plating, we were in fairly good condition, all things considered, and sound enough to proceed under our own power.
THURSDAY'S ORCHID Page 24