by Peter Tonkin
As it happened, Bob Collingwood was slated to relieve Doc, but he was the strongest sail- handler. And, as her chart table had been washed away in any case, Amy came up and shared the helm with Richard. Joan called out that Doc was breathing, then she laid him on the composite skeleton of the after seat and began to check for specific injuries. Bill, Bob, and Harry took on the sails, and within ten minutes, Katapult was back in the race again. Richard was not a sailboat sailor, but Amy certainly was and together they came very close to replacing Doc. Their course was straightforward now - 85 degrees until they ran into Plymouth. And everything else relied as much upon experience and a weather eye as upon charts and instruments.
The first thing that he and Amy noticed was that the wind was moderating. The next was that the outrushing power of the last huge spring tide’s massive ebb beneath them was confusing and steepening the waves. This was a very dangerous combination and Amy said quietly, ‘We really need more speed if we’re going to stay alive, let alone catch up with those bastards.’
More positively, it seemed to Richard that the unavoidable tidal ebb rushing westwards beneath the surface was beginning to slow even Tin Hau, gripping her in a way that it did not grip Katapult. Perhaps the stolen design of the Triad trimaran included some kind of centreboard after all, thought Richard. Some Chinese like to gamble. Some like to play things safe. Perhaps even with ship design. While, on the other hand, the water in the central hull was steadying Katapult, and allowing her the chance to carry more sail. He called, ‘Bob! How much sail do we dare put on her?’ At his call, the clouds in the west were briefly snatched away and the sun struck over the stormy sea, showing Tin Hau like a jade dagger, cutting through the sky half a mile ahead.
Bob looked around, literally sniffing the wind. ‘Leave the storm mainsail up,’ he said. ‘We lost the smallest jib, so we’d have to go straight for the bigger ones...’
‘She seems very stable to me,’ insisted Richard. ‘Dare we try the Genoa? That’d really put us back into the race.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Bob. ‘You’re a bit of a madman on the quiet. Still like Amy says, wind’s moderating. Sun’s out. What’ve we got to lose? Other than the mast, of course...’
Joan left Doc and held the wheel with Amy. Richard went up and the four sail-handlers got the Genoa out and up in short order. Then, with Richard back at Amy’s side, they hauled it as tightly as they dared and rushed on down towards Wolf Rock, hard on Tin Hau’s heels.
Richard knew these waters better perhaps than he knew any in the world. He kept Katapult inside the track he had followed all too often in the supertankers and container vessels coming and going to Europoort. He watched the distant Scillies swing along the horizon like a string of rough gold nuggets in the setting sun. He followed the course that Lionheart had followed a year and more ago, skimming like she did, over the thickening drag of the tidal gate. The course was the same, the conditions were the same. The vessel was different, but with the help of Amy, Bob and the rest, he was getting the best out of her he could. The best, in fact, that anyone could. And by the time the Wolf Rock Light was gleaming like a sunken emerald through the green hearts of the tall waves ahead, they were up with their quarry once again.
At once Amy whispered, ‘Watch it!’ and pushed the wheel against Richard’s hands. ‘He’s driving us up toward the rocks again. Look.’ And sure enough, the digital compass on the binnacle ahead of them was reading 83 degrees instead of 85. Tin Hau was forcing them over almost imperceptibly, degree after degree. ‘Two can play that game,’ said Richard, grimly. And he let the racing multihull’s head fall off another point. ‘Eighty two?’ said Amy, her voice trembling. ‘I’d say that was a very dangerous heading indeed.’
‘It is,’ said Richard grimly. ‘It’s what Goodman Richard was drifting sideways along when she went up on to the rocks here last year. I had to bring my SuperCat Lionheart in on 262 to come aboard her.’
‘Then why in God’s name are we sailing along it now?’
‘Because I learned something from that experience that I’ll bet anything you like that no one aboard Tin Hau knows. Trust me?’
Amy looked up into the wind-ravaged, salt-grimed sleepless skeleton of his face, all white skin, black hair, black stubble and utterly mad blue eyes. ‘Of course,’ she said.
‘Then let’s do it!’
Richard eased back a point. Their course clicked round to 83. Tin Hau held steady. Katapult’s starboard outrigger seemed just about to graze her sleek black paintwork. Her green sails seemed to overlap Katapult’s long central bow. ‘More speed,’ yelled Richard, coming another point back round into the wind. And the sails indeed seemed to be overlapping, he thought. Certainly the straining bulge of the big Genoa - an insane sail choice or not - was stealing the air out of Tin Hau’s tight green storm sails. For the first time, it was the Triad-funded, Hong Kong dark horse that was beginning to falter. Now where was that red-clad bastard Lee? he wondered, as Katapult seemed to leap forward half of Tin Hau’s length.
If Richard was watching Tin Hau, seeking to distinguish the figure of his enemy - so at the least he could shout the promise of ruin and revenge - Amy was wise enough to be keeping her eyes fixed firmly ahead. ‘Richard!’ she screamed. ‘We’re running up on to the reef!’
She had to scream it twice, for Richard at last had found Charles Lee again. Bareheaded, laughing or shouting, hanging out on his trapeze in the midst of a team of four. The only one clad in poppy red amongst a bunch of daffodil yellow. Swinging out further and further, looking up at the mast from which he was hanging, and the full-bellied, bright-green sails.
‘RICHARD!’ screamed Amy again, recalling him to himself.
The instant Richard took his eyes off Tin Hau to look ahead again, the black multihull turned a point off the wind, coming near 83 degrees herself - crowding across his course again. Trapping him between her port outrigger and the foaming rocks ahead - exactly as she had done at the Bishop’s Rock. As he had seen her do to the poor little yacht at the Fastnet Rock itself. ‘Steady, all!’ Richard bellowed. ‘We’ll be coming round three degrees at any moment and things’ll get pretty hairy.’
‘They bloody will,’ said Amy feelingly. ‘Three degrees starboard and we’ll ram him midships like the Roman galley in Ben Hur.’
‘Three degrees to port,’ said Richard. ‘Coming round NOW!’ He span the twisted wheel before Amy could stop him.
And round came Katapult. Three degrees off the wind hardly slowed the racing multihull at all. It loosened the strain on the big Genoa perhaps, but it wasn’t anywhere enough to require a tack and the knotmeter didn’t even flicker. ‘HANG ON!’ bellowed Richard. But he needn’t have bothered. Everyone aboard was hanging on as tightly as they could - and most of them were praying.
Richard hit the button that deployed the outriggers as hydrofoils and they dug into the heaving water as the first white backwash from the Wolf Rock reef roared out towards them. Katapult’s central hull reared dangerously out of the water. The weight of water still down in her bilges was like ballast - as it had been in Lionheart under Robin’s command at the beginning of this. But he had learned too, even from that. The weight of the water, untouched as yet by the pumps, made her stern dig deep, as Lionheart’s had done, but it held her steady as she sailed a straight course. Deeper it went. And deeper still, until the wake seemed to be closing behind them like the waves of the Red Sea on Pharaoh and his horsemen behind the fleeing Moses. Until only their tremendous speed was stopping it flooding aboard.
But the outriggers pulled in as well as pushing down. Katapult’s sixty-foot width shrank to fifty. Then to forty. And still she hurtled on, held steady in the rushing wind by the weight of the water in her central hull. And the cunning of Richard’s plan was suddenly revealed to his marvelling crew. For there, immediately beneath the rearing bow of the rushing multihull, was the narrow, bottomless gap that had broken Goodman Richard’s back.
Foam-swollen rocks stood on either
side of them like the pillars of Hercules, cascading backwash by the ton. Spitting spray like thunderstorms. Beneath the weltering foam, the black rocks gleamed wickedly in the last of the setting sun. The sound, the sensation, the simple stench of death was almost overwhelming. But dead ahead there was that channel. A little more than forty feet wide, a couple of hundred feet long, straight as a die, and leading safely through the heart of the reef.
Richard flung Katapult into it unflinchingly, and she held her course unvaryingly even though the walls of rock and water seemed to top her mast on either side. ‘She’s gone!’ screamed Amy. Then she had to batter on his shoulder and gesture. He glanced back to see Tin Hau explode against the outer reef. So intent had the Triad boat been on driving Katapult on to Wolf Rock that she had sailed too close herself. Leaning in just that little too far when Richard turned to port so unexpectedly. She must have been doing forty knots, he reckoned - Katapult certainly was - when she hit the immovable solidity of the reef. Richard had a horrific, instantaneous vision of her three black hulls flying up into a somersault, exploding to pieces as they did so. Of her rigging ripping away from her sides and whipping wildly free like the hair of a madwoman. Of her tall steel mast like a javelin hurled forward across the sunset sky and over the mountainous rocks, wrapped in the rags of jade green sails. Trailing behind it the broken marionettes of four bodies still strapped in their trapezes - three in bright butter yellow and one in bright blood red. And, like Katapult’s own, the steel javelin of Tin Hau’s mast, alone amongst the fittings of the boat, was never designed to float. It would strike into the bosom of the ocean, and pierce it to its deepest, darkest heart, hundreds of fathoms down, beside the wreck of Goodman Richard herself. Taking the dead men in their trapezes with it. Charles Lee, it seemed, would not survive his second pitch-poling after all.
In the blink of an eye there was nothing left to see.
Then Richard was facing forward again and fighting to control Katapult as she burst out of the narrow channel into the relative calm in the lee of the reef. He punched the outrigger control again and the great fins spread wide once more. ‘Get that bloody Genoa off her,’ he ordered. ‘We’ll be arse over tip like those poor beggars if we don’t slow down!’
By the time they pulled out of the quiet water and into the darkening storm set again five minutes later, they were running under sensible storm sails and proceeding under more control.
‘That was neat,’ grated Harry Black, looming out of the thickening dark. ‘Whether or not Grandma Chung gives the certificates back or not is immaterial now. They’re worthless. We’ll have to reissue Charles’s three per cent and let it revert to the company as per contract. You’ve got your fifty-one per cent holding again. You’ve beaten Whitesand-Sandarkan after all. You’ve won!’
But before Richard could answer him, Doc sat up like a puppet whose strings have all been pulled at once. ‘Hey guys, how’re we doing?’ he demanded, bright as a button, fresh as a daisy. Totally lost in shock.
‘Do you know, I think we were winning,’ answered Richard quietly, almost wearily. ‘I really do think we were. Winning.’
Then he raised his voice and shouted, ‘Prepare to come about. Joan, help Amy with the wheel while I help with the sailhandling. And then see if you can find the distress flares. If we haven’t any radio we’ll have to make do with them. We’re going back to see if there are any survivors from Tin Hau. Sorry, Doc. Sorry, all of you. Maybe you’ll win the next one.
‘Wolf Rock, here we come!’
Acknowledgements
Wolf Rock is based upon legislation that has yet to be passed - though its likely content has been widely trailed over the years. Further, it concerns a race that has yet to be sailed. Research in preparation for it had to rely less on published authority - in book form or on the internet - than usual. It had to rely more than ever, therefore, on the help and speculation of friends, and it is to them that I owe the greatest debt.
Criminal barrister Richard Atchley was my legal sounding board right throughout, as he has cheerfully been on several occasions before. It was with Richard that I discussed the likely form of any legislation. It was he who supplied some of the legal authority for it and a great deal of what published speculation there is. He made sure I got the process and the timings as correct as the dictates of plot and practicality would allow. It was he who checked the typescript and ensured as far as he could that I did not get my bailiffs confused with my ushers or my examinations in chief mixed up with my cross-examinations. I have tried, within the dictates of an adventure-thriller plot, to follow the likely process from start to finish and I hope the pace does not flag. Where things are correct, Richard is most likely responsible - where they are not, then I have misunderstood or disregarded his patient advice.
The same is true for the sailing. Except for The Fire Ship, which introduced the Katapult series of multihulls into Heritage Mariner’s fictional world, I have been hesitant to deal with small boat work. When I had to deal with the Fastnet, therefore, I turned to two active sailors without whose help I would have been all at sea with a vengeance. David McGregor kindly managed to fit into his busy summer’s racing schedule a read-through of the first draft and was able to advise on the ways he would approach the race in the conditions described. And Peter Halsor also went through an early draft making sure I ‘luffed up to the wind’ and ‘fell off’ at the correct points; and followed the true course of my Fluxgate compass at all times. To both of these advisors I owe a great deal of thanks - though both have pointed out that anyone not taking a much safer course in the conditions described would be lucky indeed to survive.
Which brings me to my main written authorities for the opening and the climax of the story. Whenever I want to check on anything nautical, my first source is usually John Rousmaniere’s The Annapolis Book of Seamanship. To this authority in this instance I added his definitive Fastnet Force 10, a blow by blow description of the tragic 1978 race which he himself had sailed. The conditions through which Richard Mariner sails Lionheart and, later, Katapult VI, are the conditions faced by the intrepid sailors in that race. The timings - which made both my sailors gasp - are based on the winning times of the most recent races, details of which are still available on the internet, and to which I refer anyone wishing to explore the real world of competitive sailing.
Finally, I must admit that, much against my family’s wishes, I researched the Bentley Continental GT only on paper. My primary source was Bentley A Legend Reborn by Graham Robson in the Haynes Classic Makes series, published 2003. The specifications are accurate according to that publication, but I used my imagination with regard to settings, security and so forth. And, because I am very well aware of the astonishing breadth of general knowledge that my readers often display - certainly judging from the letters I receive - I should also add that Richard (for once) got it wrong. Peter Wimsey’s motorcar ‘Mrs Merdle’ was not a Bentley but a Daimler (1927 12-cylinder six’ four-seater, especially imported). Richard was right about James Bond’s Bentleys, however.
Peter Tonkin, Isle of Man and Tunbridge
Wells, Summer 2004
Cape Farewell
Peter Tonkin
Copyright © 2006 by Peter Tonkin.
Peter Tonkin has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 2006 by Severn House.
This edition published in 2019 by Sharpe Books.
Acknowledgements
Cape Farewell has been in the planning stage for many years. Consequently it would be impossible to acknowledge all the sources and influences that went into its writing. But it would be unfair not to mention some of the most powerful influences and important sources from my extensive bundle of notes so that anyone wishing to look further behind the story may do so.
David Miller and John Jordan’s Modern Submarine Warfare was published by Salamander Books nearly twenty years ago. Conseque
ntly much of the information it gives - cutting-edge though it was at the time - needs support from more recent sources nowadays. The Internet proved invaluable once again - especially as I was dealing with the Canadian Navy and that organization has a range of detailed and easily accessible websites. Here I found cutaway diagrams of the interior of the Upholder/Victoria Class of submarines as well as details of their crewing, capabilities and equipment. The Canadian Navy also supplied the structure of MARLANT, vessels in the Atlantic Fleet (especially the Tribal Class Destroyers), and lists of Ranks and responsibilities. I simplified the internal structure and workings of the submarine Quebec, however, and added an escape pod to the fin that I stole from the ill-fated Kursk and the Russian Typhoon Class submarines I researched for my earlier Mariner adventure Titan 10. I also gained information about the Canadian Navy’s preferred small arms. And, of course, together with the CBC website, the details of the Chicoutimi tragedy whose influence on the plot is, I am sure, quite clear.
Another old favourite of immense influence was Wilbur Smith’s wonderful novel Hungry as the Sea. Sissy must owe something to Nick Berg’s massive tug Warlock but she too has a more modem Internet-based source - the SMIT website which gives details of the SMITWJS ocean-going tugs. The same is true of the Yokohama Fenders which, again, have their own website. Though, as with Sissy and Quebec, I have allowed my own imagination, guided by the requirements of the plot, to vary things a little from the way they are in the real world.
