A FLOCK OF SHIPS

by Brian Callison

  About the Author

  Brian Callison is the author of 22 best-sellers published by HarperCollins, Severn House, Futura, and Ostara. His novels have been translated into twelve languages including Japanese, Polish, Icelandic and Finnish. They have been printed in Braille, released as audio books, issued in large print editions and are used as creative writing references by many international learning institutions.

  A former Merchant Navy officer in cargo liners sailing to the Far East and Australia, Callison subsequently worked in commerce before becoming a full-time author. Following service with the 51st Highland Division Provost Company (TA), Royal Military Police, he returned to his seafaring roots to maintain an active 35-year connection with ships as a Head of Unit and Naval Control of Shipping Officer in the volunteer Royal Naval Auxiliary Service.

  More recently he completed a three-year appointment to the University of Dundee as a Fellow of The Royal Literary Fund. His latest title to be reprinted is A Flock Of Ships (Ostara Publishers 2011 and, here, available in eBook format). On first publication of this now-classic work, Alistair McLean wrote, ‘The best war story I have ever read. No qualifications, no reservations, no exceptions as to type and time: it’s the best. Makes All Quiet On The Western Front look like one of the lesser works of Enid Blyton’.

  Currently he continues to work with private clients as a literary career adviser, manuscript editor and mentor (www.writermentoring.co.uk). 'Hopefully putting something back into a trade that has been good to me.' Guiding aspiring writers: teasing out the very essence of professionally competent authorship is what he excels at, and he submits a portfolio comprising some two million published words as evidence.

  All Brian Callison novels are now published as eBooks. If you enjoy this one, then perhaps you'd care to keep a weather eye open for others among his twenty-one titles released in digital format?

  Callison Titles

  A Flock of Ships

  A Plague of Sailors

  The Dawn Attack

  A Web of Salvage

  Trapp’s War

  A Ship is Dying

  A Frenzy of Merchantmen

  The Judas Ship

  Trapp's Peace

  The Auriga Madness

  The Sextant

  Spearfish

  The Bone Collectors

  A Thunder of Crude

  Trapp and World War Three

  The Trojan Hearse

  Crocodile Trapp

  Ferry Down

  The Stollenberg Legacy

  Redcap

  Trapp's Secret War

  Creatures (Writing as Richard Masson)

  A FLOCK OF SHIPS

  Brian Callison

  First published by Collins Publishers Ltd 1970

  Published by the Author as an electronic edition 2014

  Copyright © Brian Callison 1970

  Conditions of Sale

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be copied, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the Author's prior consent

  TO HUGH C. KEITH

  LATE CHIEF ENGINEER

  BLUE FUNNEL LINE

  PROLOGUE

  The ship had lain there for many years—Ten? Fifteen? Maybe even twenty? One of the old pre-war cargo liners with her high, straight stack and the strangely antiquated vertical lines of her midships accommodation. From nearly two miles away at the entrance to the island’s inner lake it was hard to make out detail but it looked as though she was slightly down by the head, while there was an odd, untidy geometry in the ragged shape of her wheelhouse and bridge structure.

  Which was very odd indeed, because this island hadn’t been visited for well over a century—or so the Navigator’s South and West Africa Pilot book said.

  From his post in the bows of the slowly moving R.N. survey ship the First Lieutenant took one disbelieving glance and muttered, ‘Jesus!’ Farther aft the Commander—concentrating only on conning his ship through the narrow gap between the towering, nerve tensioning black cliffs that pressed in on either side—didn’t notice anything strange until, one hundred and ten seconds later, the bridge also broke out into the blinding South Atlantic sunlight that swamped down over the hitherto uncharted inland sea. He, too, stared for an incredulous moment at the ship that couldn’t be there and grabbed for the 8 x 50 Ministry of Defence (Navy) binoculars slung round his neck.

  By the time the stern had crept infinitely slowly past the huge, weed-skirted rock marking the inner periphery of the apparently natural anchorage, the only man aboard who hadn’t expressed surprise was the phlegmatic Chief Petty Officer leadsman in the chains who, unconcernedly, continued to barrage all within earshot with the mystical information that the depth was now ‘By the deep ... Six!’, or ‘And a quarter ... Seven!’ as he leant precariously out over the silent green water yet again to heave the bunting and flannel-decorated line. Despite the several-million pounds’ worth of sophisticated electronic sounding and measuring gear condensed in the sleek hull below him the Commander still clung to the comfort of a good, old-fashioned leadsman when feeling his way into places strange and uncertain.

  An urgently hailed warning from the First Lieutenant, hanging insecurely out over the ship’s stem, a few staccato commands to the Coxswain at the wheel, and she was turning on her screws, swinging fast to starboard with an almost complete absence of forward way while the anchor party on the foc’slehead watched as the thing they had nearly hit vanished again in the concealing anonymity of the waters.

  The Commander flashed a look of relief at his Navigating Officer and leaned over the voice pipe. ‘Stop engines ... Dead slow ahead both!’ Then, as the ship’s head steadied on a course to take her towards that non-existent freighter which still sat, nevertheless, as stolidly and patiently at the end of her rusty cable as she had done for at least two decades, the Commander swivelled slowly with the binoculars pressed hard under his bushy brows and surveyed the black, forbidding land formation that pressed in on them from all points.

  A glint of yellow almost directly astern, down past the far side of the entrance they had just squeezed through. Sunlight, reflecting on billions of tiny, incandescent grains. A beach? Warm and beckoning after the bleak inhospitability of the surrounding rock. ‘Excellent,’ he thought. ‘Give the men a run ashore while we’re ...’

  Then he stopped thinking and fumbled for the knurled focusing wheel. ‘My dear God!’ he said this time, not so much compounding the blasphemy as requesting reassurance, and his stubby finger moved the wheel another eighth of an inch until the thing on the beach jumped into brilliant, clear-cut detail.

  And the Commander had now found two ships where there couldn’t have been any.

  Or, perhaps not two ships so much as one and a part, because the monstrous deformity on the beach couldn’t really be called a ship any more. It was still possible to make out the line of her hull form, with the greater proportion of her floors still sheathed in rusty red tank top plating. There was even a vaguely nautical suggestion in the few frames and pillars that rose from her bier of sand like the ribs of some skeletal, stranded whale. But, otherwise, the thousands of tons of corroded, heat-twisted steel that lay carelessly scattered by some incredible internal force were almost unrecognisable for what they had once been—the complex deck housings and engine parts and entrails of a mighty vessel.

  The Commander had barely time to note the twin tracks that still marked the sand where the huge phosphor-bronze propellors had gouged deep into the surface as they drove the ship farther and farther up on to the beach; then the Navigator was pointing to yet another obscenely deformed mass that rose from the shallow water directly astern of the gutted steel corpse.

  And, while th
e Commander swung his binoculars incredulously between what were now the three shells of that impossible fleet, the Navigating Officer whispered in a hushed voice: ‘She must’ve been doing bloody near twenty knots to drive herself up on the beach like that, for Chrissake!’

  *

  The Commander stood silently gazing around while the rest of the boarding party shinned sweatily up the grapnel line caught in the aftermast stays and gathered wonderingly about him abaft the ghost ship’s centrecastle. They could have come aboard by the bleached accommodation ladder which still hung dejectedly down her starboard side, but one glance at the rusty bridle and mildewed topping lift which suspended it had convinced the Commander of the folly of such a venture.

  The First Lieutenant heaved himself over the bulwarks and uneasily took in the rotting hatch covers, the streaming, leprous steel of bulkheads and decks and the patches of creeping yellow fungus that sent out diseased fingers to explore every inch of wooden doors and awning spars. He shivered involuntarily despite the shimmering heat of the high sun and self-consciously eased the Webley and Scott .38 sitting so unaccustomedly in the sagging web belt around his white-shorted waist. The Commander saw him and smiled a little tightly. ‘There hasn’t been anyone to shoot at aboard this ship since you were getting your picture taken on a bearskin rug, Number One.’

  The First Lieutenant coloured in embarrassment and tried, doubtfully, to laugh it off. ‘No, Sir. Though I did see a horror movie once ...’

  But the Commander wasn’t really listening. Instead he was gazing aft at the incinerated mess of sprawling rails and shattered ventilators which scarred the high poop, and at the object which rose arrogantly and still lethally traversed almost on his own ship. ‘Good Grief!’ he gestured. ‘That was the sort of museum piece the D.E.M.S. crowd used to install aboard merchantmen back in ’39 ... An old 4.7 by the look of it.’

  His Number One followed the oustretched arm and bit his lip involuntarily. Apart from the gun itself, the rest of the deck aft had been practically swept clear of fittings, presumably by what must have been a virtual hurricane of gunfire. ‘Poor bastards ... Whoever made up that gun’s crew, I mean.’

  ‘Which seems to prove one thing,’ the Commander said, almost to himself.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘This ship, Number One. She’s been lying here ever since the war, just rotting and rusting and dying of old age.’

  ‘Yessir ... Er, which war would that be, Sir?’ said the First Lieutenant, for he was young and his first memory of angry guns was as fleet midshipman off the coast of Korea.

  The Commander looked at him sadly. ‘If you were a little older, Number One, you’d realise there only ever was one real war.’ He turned. ‘Petty Officer Torrance.’

  ‘Sah?’ The thump of rubber-soled boots.

  ‘Take your party and, starting from aft, search the ship as thoroughly as you can. Don’t attempt to enter any ill-lit spaces or go below to the engine room at the moment. I’ll have the E.R.A.s fit up emergency lighting tomorrow. Just settle for a quick shufti through the main decks and accommodation for now. The First Lieutenant and I will visit the master’s quarters; you can report to me there as soon as you’re finished.’

  He turned back to his Number One. ‘I always was frustrated every time I read that damned Marie Celeste story, Number One. You know? That sailing ship found drifting with no one on board?’ He started off up the shrapnel-pitted ladder from the well-deck, then hesitated momentarily. ‘And I’m buggered if I could stand not knowing what happened here twenty-five years ago.’

  *

  They found the radio room as they climbed the last ladder up to the high boat-deck and, when they glanced apprehensively inside and saw the shambles of splintered dials and valves and wires hanging from the still grey enamelled cabinet, the First Lieutenant said ‘Jesus!’ again. There seemed no way it could have happened—unless someone had done it deliberately.

  But what sane person could ever want to maroon himself without any means of communication on a ring of black rocks a thousand miles from anywhere?

  *

  They walked along the sun-bleached decking towards the curiously canted bridge and noted the empty, swung-out davits with their rotting, drooping rope falls terminating just above the glassy water in rustbound blocks, and the Commander muttered in angry frustration: ‘From the looks of her, this ship isn’t all that badly damaged. Why, in God’s name, did her crew leave her in the boats? Why didn’t they just sail her straight out?’

  *

  They stood for a few moments surveying the partially collapsed wheelhouse and then walked cautiously across the vast plain of the bridge-wing—vast in comparison to the tight compactness of the survey ship’s tiny navigating space—and entered the structure itself. Shards of shattered glass from the starboard windows scrunched under their feet as they moved silently into the dank shade. A faded black course-board hung from the deck-head forward of the lifeless telemotor and wheel, the faint lines of chalk still showing the last course some long-gone quartermaster had steered to. The Commander allowed his hand to rest briefly on the green verdigris of the binnacle while the First Lieutenant nudged his toe against a ragged, discoloured signal flag thrown carelessly on the coir-matted deck. It was still decipherable to a seaman, though.

  ‘Letter “U”,’ murmured the Commander looking down, ‘“you are standing into danger”. I wonder: did they get it out, perhaps, to signal to that gutted wreck on the beach across there?’

  The First Lieutenant squatted and fingered it with distaste. The discoloration wasn’t all caused by the ravages of time. ‘I don’t really know what twenty-five-year-old blood should look like, Sir ... but somehow I don’t think this was meant to be used in any signal hoist.’

  *

  They only hesitated for a few seconds beside the collapsed section of teak planking that had, at one time, presumably formed part of the monkey island—that open area topping the wheelhouse and used primarily for taking azimuth bearings while navigating in narrow waters. The little white-painted silhouette they could see on it had weathered well through the years, protected as it was from the winds and rains by the break of the chartroom.

  ‘Damn thing looks like a submarine, Number One,’ the Commander commented, looking more closely.

  And that was yet another odd factor to consider because, as the First Lieutenant pointed out, it was not uncommon for submarine captains to celebrate a kill by painting a little white merchantman on the side of their conning towers ... but a submarine painted on a merchantman?

  *

  They stared, baffled, at the curling, mildewed chart which still lay spread out beside the long-stopped brass ship’s chronometer in its rosewood box. They could see quite plainly the little misshapen ring indicating the island. They could also see the soft pencil line that had indicated the ship’s course and the dead-reckoning positions marked as she had approached the landfall, but what they were so mystified by were the other tracks entered by various officers of the watch during the earlier part of her voyage. Northings contradicted Southings, Eastings countered Westings—there was no rhyme or reason in the darting scribbles.

  ‘They must’ve been either bloody drunk or bloody mad ... or bein’ chased by the very Devil himself,’ muttered the Commander.

  Yet even that explanation didn’t bear close examination for, in a ship of this size, there must have been a lot of deck officers and they couldn’t all have been drunk or mad.

  And the Devil doesn’t really exist—not in the South Atlantic anyway.

  ... or does he?

  *

  They entered the master’s day-room under the bridge very cautiously indeed, the Commander slightly in the lead stepping over the low coaming while the First Lieutenant followed, this time with his hand unashamedly firm on the plastic butt of the pistol in its webbing holster.

  The Commander smiled to himself in anticipation as he saw the pile of closely-written papers lying on the desk between the silver,
company-crested coffee pot, now filled to overflowing with a leprous mould, and the yellowed pages of an open book. He stepped across the expensive and still curiously pristine Egyptian carpet, frowning slightly at the brown stain that marred it under the low coffee table, and leafed through the sheets of what appeared, at first sight, to be some form of manuscript.

  They met the rather grimy and sweating Petty Officer Torrance as they stepped out into the sunlight which flooded the silent boat-deck. The Commander returned the salute, at the same time being careful not to drop the papers he held covetously under his arm.

  ‘Proper rum do, Sir,’ the P.O. said, in a voice of such low pitch that one might almost have felt he was afraid the dead ship would hear and resent the imputation of abnormality. ‘The only sign we could find that she ever had a crew aboard was ... this, Sir.’

  And the Commander and the First Lieutenant stared uncomfortably at the yellowed officer’s pattern deck shoe held unconcernedly in the Petty Officer’s outstretched hand.

  ‘Good God - there’s still something in it,’ the First Lieutenant muttered, taking an uncertain step backwards.

  ‘Yessir,’ the P.O. whispered conspiratorially. ‘A bit of a foot, Sir. I thought, like, that you might want to ... well, inter it with proper respec’, Sir?’

  ‘Quite correct, Petty Officer Torrance,’ boomed the Commander approvingly. ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to ... ah, take charge of the remains until we can conduct the appropriate ceremony.’

  The First Lieutenant blinked doubtfully—did one perform a ceremony over what was, after all, only a very little part of a man? ‘I now commit this deck shoe and contents to the deep ...’

  ‘Where did you find it, P.O.?’

  ‘Sort of caught up in the traverse ring of the 4.7 on the poop, Sir. Proper bloody old cannon it is too.’

  But the Commander wasn’t really listening again, being more anxious to get back to his ship and begin his study of the manuscript clutched under his arm.