Close to the Wind

by David B Hill

  At 1630 hours on 02 March, the Verspijk slipped its moorings and moved backwards into the stream in a cloud of black coal smoke. Then, with a clanging of telegraph bells, she moved slowly forward to thread her way through the other vessels and rendezvous with the escorts. Johnny was delighted to learn that the Australian corvettes Ballarat and Maryborough were to provide escort: his old friend Glen Cant on Maryborough had obviously escaped the Japanese blockade of the Sunda Strait. Johnny had a signal sent – ‘Bull aboard’ – and received the warming reply ‘Cant believe it’. Further communication ensued about the likelihood of encountering the Japanese, and a course was set to the north-west. If they were to be observed, which was more than likely, even at this late stage of the day, it would give the initial appearance that they were making for Colombo.

  ★ ★ ★

  Conditions were quiet as the little evacuation fleet took to sea, heading into a gentle swell of the Indian Ocean. It was approaching sunset, and orange-bottomed clouds laden with moisture dotted the sky. It was a beautiful scene: one which momentarily purged the mind of all thought of war, reminding Len of home and the evening sky over the Waitakeres.

  Settling into their passage, they focussed on their ship, its sea-worthiness and whether its engines would last the long and circuitous route to Western Australia. The three sailors stood together with Captain Oudenaarde on the bridge, watching the smoke from the little ship stream back behind them towards Java and disappear on the horizon. There was enough smoke from the Verspijk’s funnel in the slowly drifting atmosphere to indicate the convoy’s whereabouts for miles around. They looked forward to the night.

  The ships of the convoy had barely settled into position when one of the starboard lookouts called out excitedly, ‘Sir! Aircraft, bearing two five zero.’

  Captain Oudenaarde and Johnny both raised their binoculars and swung to the north. The seaplane was high enough that any fire from the corvettes fell short, and so they had to allow themselves to be shadowed until darkness forced the plane to eventually turn away. While it seemed inevitable that their position and course had been reported, they continued to sail away from the Java coast north-west for Colombo, before turning towards Fremantle under cover of darkness.

  That night, Johnny and Len were on watch together, standing silently in the dull red glow of a solitary bulb on the bridge. Jock and the Captain were resting before their watch, while Brouwer, the first mate, stood at the ship’s wheel. Except for the sound of the sea breaking around them, and the irregular thump of the engines beneath their feet, it was relatively quiet. Men still sat or lay around on the decks, enjoying the cooler night air. Len was smoking a kretek. He let the smoke billow out of his mouth to be swept away in the wind. He thought he could feel some weather arriving. He counted back the days that had passed since Merak. That had been five, six days ago?

  They both saw the torpedo at once: a single track of phosphorescence coming straight towards the Verspijk. To Len’s surprise, while he suddenly felt the frozen grip of Hine Nui Te Pō on his neck, everything seemed to slow down. Both he and Johnny knew instinctively that they had no opportunity to avoid it. They made no move to alert others. What was the point of warning everyone that they would, in a split second, experience a fiery, explosive death? He counted the seconds under his breath, grasping the rail with all his strength and tensing every muscle in his body for the impact. One, two … He watched intently, without panic.

  Three. Four …

  It never came. God knows why. The torpedo went straight under the boat.

  ‘Jesus,’ Len offered to the heavens.

  Now Johnny shouted, ‘Torpedo! Starboard zero nine zero.’

  Brouwer immediately swung the wheel ninety degrees to port, calling for more speed, and while the Verspijk slowly turned, diminishing its exposure to another attack, Johnny and Len rushed to the rail, staring intently behind the boat.

  ‘Can you see anything?’

  They scanned the sea.

  ‘Nothing.’

  They heard a dull thud as the torpedo reached the end of its line and exploded harmlessly in open water. Others who had heard the commotion began to crowd the rails. Jock arrived, and Captain Oudenaarde emerged from his sleeping cabin, clapping his cap on his head. A buzz of concern prevailed as they all scanned the seas around them. While the other ships scattered in the darkness, Verspijk built speed and began to blow sparks furiously out into the night. Crews stood at action stations for some time in anticipation, but there was no further attack.

  Later, a tropical storm blasted through the little fleet, hurling most of the ill-conditioned passengers off balance and into an abyss of immobilising nausea and stomach purging, but by sunrise conditions had eased. Maryborough’s cluster of charges were still within sight of one another, spread over a few miles of blue Indian Ocean. The civilians on board began to circulate on deck, tempted to think the worst was behind them, but experience suggested to Len that nothing could be taken for granted or left to chance. In his thinking, neither the weather nor the enemy could yet be discounted. He still felt vulnerable. The only weapon he had was the revolver Johnny had given him on Laboe. When a flight of aircraft passed overhead, he was stunned to feel the wehi once more.

  Speed was of the essence, but the Verspijk could not provide it. The ship was making barely five knots and continued to send volumes of black coal smoke and soot into the sky, providing a clear indication of their whereabouts. Thus they sailed on throughout the day and into a second night.

  In the early morning of 04 March, the ships seemed to be heading into another storm; the horizon glowed brightly in erratic flashes and a sound like a bass drum rolled ominously into their hearing. The flashes were not the white of lightening, however, but the orange of high explosives. And the sound wasn’t thunder; it was the sound of battle at sea, an unmistakable sound to those for whom it was familiar. Every now and then, the sky brightened intensely as the ships that had left Tjilatjap earlier, on 02 March, having sailed into the Japanese blockade, began to be systematically destroyed. The vessels in Verspijk’s convoy immediately scattered, turning away at high speed, or at least as fast as they could, hoping against hope to be beyond the risk of discovery by sunrise. In attempting an impossible defence of its convoy, the corvette Yarra turned and attacked two Japanese light cruisers head-on. It was an unequal action against overwhelming force. The convoy was lost, and brave Yarra sunk with all guns blazing. The Japanese were sufficiently distracted by that encounter that Maryborough and Verspijk avoided detection and sailed on into the night in apparent safety, becoming effectively the last vessels to escape from Java.

  Johnny and Captain Oudenaarde now puzzled over the dilemma of how to optimise their speed while conserving their fuel. Len and Jock stood vigilant throughout the day, scanning the sea for any sign of movement that spoke of enemy. If they could continue to avoid contact, they might finally get beyond the enemy’s range, though they were acutely aware that their greatest threat came from submarines. Meanwhile, below them on deck, several hundred passengers continued to seek respite from the heat and humidity, sitting in shadows or crowding the rails to windward trying to gather a little benefit from the breeze.

  ★ ★ ★

  At best, the Verspijk could barely manage ten knots and not for long, and she was soon obliged to throttle back to a speed that ensured her engines didn’t shake apart.

  Another storm engulfed them. Heavy rain pelted down and high winds drove hard at the little ships, which rolled and pitched for several hours in the deep swells. At its height the storm was almost cyclonic. Wind wailed through the rigging, and the steamer crashed through waves and plunged into troughs, coming almost to a standstill from time to time, or shuddering violently as her screw came out of the water at the crest of a swell. Len’s emotions swung considerably, and he began to relish the experience, calling on Tāwhiri and Tangaroa both to test his senses. Those below suffered badly, disorientated by the vessel’s motion. Others clung to par
ts of the ship, struggling to suppress their biliousness, lightning illuminating them hanging grimly onto the ship’s rail. When the storm abated, men lay sodden and exhausted on the deck, contemplating the grim probability of more such days at sea. Eventually, most were revived by the delicious smell of hot coffee. People began to appear from below deck, and in spite of the chaos on the mess deck caused by the storm, those who could lined up at the galley to receive a mug of coffee and a bread roll. When dawn came, Maryborough and Verspijk were still in each other’s company, but the other boats were nowhere to be seen.

  ★ ★ ★

  For three more days the two vessels steamed south. An air of tension continued to prevail, particularly among the officers, who were fully aware of their vulnerability. There were no clues to the enemy’s whereabouts, but of greater concern was their slow progress: they were crucially short of food and water.

  At this point Glen Cant was forced to make contact with Verspijk using his Aldis lamp. Len was on the bridge with Johnny and Captain Oudenaarde when the signal from Maryborough flashed.

  ‘Get those bloody civilians back into the stokehold!’

  Len knew what he meant – more speed – but he knew they were crucially short of fuel, too. Nevertheless, Oudenaarde gave his orders.

  Below in the stokehold, the clerks, company representatives and government workers threw open the boiler doors and shovelled more coal into them. When the doors slammed shut, they stood back smiling with satisfaction. Their dust-covered faces, streaked with sweat, glowed orange in the dampened light of the flames. Slowly the tempo of the pistons rose, and the ship’s engineer moved between taps and dials, opening some valves and closing others, in order to balance the output of the engines. The triple expansion chambers hissed and blew steam out of worn seals, and the engineer was compelled to oil moving parts constantly, wiping away residue with his ever-present rag. The drive shafts stroked powerfully back and forth, spinning the twin screws a little faster, until the thumping pistons threatened to shift the engines off their mounts. Only then did the engineer wind back the throttle. On the bridge the needle indicating the vessel’s speed moved infinitesimally upwards, and then stopped moving at all. They had gained another three knots. It was all they could dare to maintain. Even at a constant eight knots, they made tortuously slow progress.

  Jock found Len leaning over the bridge rail.

  ‘How are you going, laddie?’

  ‘I’m looking for the gap in the clouds.’

  Jock looked up. There were no clouds.

  ‘It’s too bloody quiet. Something’s got to give,’ Len added, sweeping his binoculars across the sea once more.

  ‘Och. Don’t worry yourself. We’re almost there. I can feel it.’

  13

  Verspijk

  For six days Verspijk had been steaming doggedly on, still a long way from home. Its faithful escort Maryborough, on a parallel course – weaving to and fro, sometimes nearer, sometimes further away – maintained vigilance against the possibility of submarines. The aircraft that had tracked their progress daily had disappeared now. But so had the coal, and there was a serious concern about whether there would be enough fuel to last until they reached Australia. Since the cyclone, conditions had become absolutely calm and still: the surface of the sea was flat and reflective, and the atmosphere humid and hazy. The smoke issuing from the steamer, now labouring along at an excruciating five knots, continued to mark their position indelibly in the sky. Even at night, a column of sparks and burning soot flew out of the funnel and could easily be seen from a distance.

  The mood on board had shifted as the men, including Len, struggled with the inertia and apprehension that typically filled the void when constant action suddenly ceased. The tension was beginning to consume Len. Surely something was brewing?

  He was right. The day seemed quiet enough when suddenly he heard the cry ‘Fire!’ followed by the sound of the Verspijk’s klaxons.

  The one thing that sailors fear most, in peacetime and in war, is fire at sea. Len froze. He dropped his glasses and grasped the rail as if intending to tear it from its mounts.

  Fuck! Was there no end?

  ‘Lenny! C’mon, man!’ he heard Jock shout. ‘Get your finger out. The fucking boat’s on fire. Jesus Christ. How the fuck did that happen?’

  Len opened his eyes to see Jock disappearing down the ladder in front of him. He slid down the rails so fast his feet never touched the steps, and he almost landed on top of the Scot. There was shouting, and the sound of men running. They hesitated at first, not sure where the fire was, or which way to go, until a singed figure emerged in front of them from the galley. They elbowed him out of the way and leapt inside.

  The place was filled with suffocatingly thick smoke, billowing up from the stovetop, which was on fire. The air was acrid with the smell of burning fat, and flames were disappearing up the flue overhead. An Australian steward, who had volunteered to cook on the voyage, was beating at the flames with his apron, with little effect. Jock grabbed an asbestos blanket from a wall container beside the door and threw it over the stovetop. The gas taps were still on, so Len crouched under the smoke to avoid the heat and turned them off one by one. The stovetop was still blazing, and the blanket did not cover it all, so Jock grabbed a drum labelled ‘flour’, and threw the contents over the flames; this immediately dampened them. Someone from outside the galley hurled a bucket of water over the rest, splashing gobs of hot fat over the men inside and the walls. Now, although it still smoked heavily, the stove was no longer on fire. The flue, instead, was burning, and the flames that shot up it threatened to spread the fire to much less accessible places. Len grabbed the fire blanket from the stovetop. Wrapping it into a ball, he stuffed the wad of asbestos up the flue. It was too small, and the heat forced Len to snatch his hands away. The fire began to intensify. He quickly shook out the blanket and folded it in two.

  ‘Grab this, mate,’ he told Jock. ‘Hold it up under the flue.’

  Jock understood immediately, and together they lifted the fire blanket up and over the bottom of the flue. Starved of oxygen, within seconds the flames inside suffocated and died. The men held the blanket there until they judged it safe to remove. Foul black grease ran back down the flue and began dripping onto the stove below, where it bubbled, hissed and eventually settled. Dense black smoke hung thick and heavy in the air. Len, Jock and the steward struggled to breathe, and coughed uncontrollably until Len threw open the hatch on the other side of the galley. The breeze that now blew through the space quickly cleared the smoke, and they were able to take stock.

  Johnny appeared, with Captain Oudenaarde. They found the three men covered in soot and glistening with sweat, lumps of black fat clinging to their clothing.

  ‘Are you three all right?’ asked Johnny. ‘What happened?’

  ‘No idea, sir,’ answered Jock, turning to look at the cook.

  ‘I’m sorry mate,’ the steward offered. ‘I was told to collect all the fat off this meat. I must have fallen asleep. It’s so bloody hot in here.’

  At first, this made no sense, but then Captain Oudenaarde spoke. ‘Ja, he’s right. We are so short of fuel I had anything wooden – furniture, fittings – stripped from the cabins to fuel the boilers. I told this man to render the fat off these carcasses, to help things burn.’

  The Verspijk still had meat in its freezers: several sides of lamb snatched from Tjilatjap prior to the escape. It made vague sense. Jock started laughing. The Dutchmen didn’t really understand this, but Len did, and for his own part he shook his head in disbelief. For days they had survived on tinned meat alone. Now they had so much of the real stuff they were burning it to fuel the vessel.

  ‘It might have been better to have thrown the carcasses straight into the boilers,’ Jock said.

  ‘You may be right,’ Johnny said. ‘Engineer Honig and I will check the flue linings. We don’t want any more surprises. You boys tidy up and get back on watch. There’s very little night left.
’

  Johnny reached out to the trays on the stovetop and plucked a morsel of meat from the smoking mess. His ratings did the same, before leaving the galley. As they did so, a desultory cheer arose from the men who had come out on deck at the first alarm to see what was going on. Jock seized the moment and cheered too, waving regally to the group, but when Len opened his mouth to join in, his throat was too dry to speak. Instead, he stuck the meat in his mouth and began to chew. It tasted unbelievably good.

  When he woke the next morning, the sun was well up. He took a long time to get out of his hammock, instead gathering his thoughts and letting the ship’s movements rock him gently back and forth. Before long he began to sense that, again, something had shifted. Whatever this new state of affairs was, it was entirely unfamiliar. The air was cool. And fresh.

  He swung his legs over the hammock’s side and jumped to the floor. Through the open porthole he could hear men talking – no, shouting. Loudly. The breeze was blowing their words away, but there was something about the volume and the tenor of the voices that alerted him. He roused Jock, who was swinging away in an adjacent hammock, oblivious to all sound and movement.

  ‘Come on, mate. Get up. There’s something going on.’

  Jock groaned: a groan of the exhausted. ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘No. Get up. C’mon.’

  Before Jock had begun to swing his feet over the side of his hammock, Len had left his own. He found virtually the entire complement of passengers lined along the port rail, and elbowed his way between some of them to look out, following their gaze.

  He saw nothing, but began to recognise the possibility.

  ‘What is it? Not land? Is it land?’

  ‘Yeah, mate. Can’t ya smell it?’ someone said.

  Len followed the prompt, and breathed deeply through his nose. No, he thought, I can’t bloody smell it.

  ‘What am I supposed to be smelling? My nostrils are still full of smoke.’