Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

  As casually as I could, making as light as possible of the U-boat situation, I pointed out that sooner or later to get to Africa we were bound to have to leave the waters the captain knew, for the open ocean. And it might just as well be sooner, for he was not going to gain what he thought in hugging the coast.

  With a savage war at sea already raging, all the coastal lighthouses which made practically a broad White Way of the Florida coast, were surely now extinguished to avoid aiding the U-boats. Without those friendly lights the Florida coast would be strange and dangerous ground to him, not the familiar waters he had piloted over so many years. And to that argument, I added what others I could on saving fuel and saving time by the shorter route.

  What finally convinced the skipper, I don’t know—probably it was the vision of that well-known Florida coast suddenly become the unknowable. At any rate, after much pondering he reluctantly agreed to head directly for San Juan, and with a sigh of deep relief, I thanked him for the coffee and immediately left his cabin. It seemed an unpropitious time to go generally into submarine dangers, of which the captain apparently was deeply contemptuous, lest he become enraged and reverse his decision on the course.

  I got hurriedly out of the captain’s cabin to find that I was just in time to attend divine services which were being held that Sunday morning at eleven in the main dining room. Having something to give thanks for, I went below to attend.

  I found Major Abraham Goff of the Army—long, lanky Abe Goff, in physique and warm human sympathy for everybody not a bad counterpart of Honest Abe himself—officiating extemporaneously as chaplain, with some thirty or forty mixed soldiers and civilians as his small congregation. Recollecting the old maxim that the faith of the sailor has always been in inverse ratio to his faith in his ship, I could only judge that if more of our 380 passengers knew as much about our ship and her officers and crew as I now did, the attendance would be greater. Reverently I bowed my head as Major Goff, impromptu chaplain, led us in prayer.

  CHAPTER

  7

  AS WE STOOD SOUTHEAST AWAY from the Capes before a moderate westerly breeze, the freezing chill of the air began to moderate and by afternoon it began to seem there were some signs that we were leaving winter behind. At this I had no regrets (then) as, since leaving New York, I had already picked up a bad cold in the head. Besides, I was getting quite tired of going about all the time in a heavy Navy overcoat, which was a damned encumbrance to a life jacket, especially if one had suddenly to go overboard.

  But if the weather was getting better as the afternoon wore on and darkness fell and in our wake, America disappeared over the horizon, the war situation and the danger on the sea seemed to grow worse. The air waves crackled with news of mounting disaster. Into the radio room came reports of new torpedoings off Jupiter Inlet, Florida, calls from distant ships in distress, gruesome reports from shore of burning and derelict tankers drifting with the current, lighting up the evening skies like mammoth torches.

  By supper time we were well clear of Cape Hatteras and standing across the Gulf Stream into warmer weather, on the deep sea at last. Every other vessel had vanished from sight and we were alone on the ocean. I sniffed the warm air, went into my cabin to throw aside my overcoat for the last time for months to come, and beginning to feel much safer, though I still clung to my life jacket, I went below to supper.

  Meals on our ship were nothing to look forward to. Because of a greater passenger list than the dining room could accommodate, we ate in two sections, with an interval between sittings to clear up and reset the tables. That situation never bothered me, for, as one of the senior officers, I dined in the first section. What bothered everyone was that the steward’s department was as slovenly and lackadaisical as the deck force—the cooking was atrocious, the service the same.

  In spite of the fact that the Army was paying the steamship line $650 apiece as the passage for everybody aboard from general through civilians down to privates (which is considerably more than a first class passenger fare on an expensive luxury liner), the food served would have suited better a laborers’ camp in the backwoods. Our meals alternated mainly between unappetizing stew, corned beef and cabbage, frankfurters and sauerkraut, and pig’s knuckles and cabbage.

  This last dish was evidently the chief cook’s favorite. It was served so frequently that as the passengers’ disgust with the ship grew, she was shortly nicknamed the S.S. Pigs Knuckle, which, I may say, aptly characterized her.

  More pig’s knuckles for supper. As the weather had warmed up considerably outside, they were even less inviting than usual. I made a wry face and turned to. We could live on frankfurters, pig’s knuckles, etc., and surely before the war was over, we should fare worse. But what irritated all hands was the fact that with the ship being paid a huge sum for first class fare for everybody, the operators had nevertheless provisioned her for fourth class immigrants.

  The slapdash stewards carelessly slung on the food, served on none too clean dishes. There was no point in complaining to the purser about the service—it had already been frequently done, only to bring from the purser and the chief steward both, the plaintive reply that they had no control over their assistants and could get no discipline into them. Any attempt, so the purser claimed, to insist on decent service from the men hastily shipped as stewards before the ship sailed, would result only in a sitdown strike from his unruly assistants and no service at all. Since this lined up with the situation on deck, it seemed entirely possible.

  With these conditions, I made as short work of my unappetizing supper as possible, grabbed up my life jacket from beside my seat, and started from the dining room to make way for the second sitting. Fast as I was, most of the other passengers were faster. I had to push my way out through a mob of grumbling ex-diners already clustered in front of the ship’s canteen window, endeavoring there to buy from the purser something to top off their unsatisfactory meal.

  Thrusting aside heavy black-out curtains hung here and there in the passages to prevent the slightest gleam of light from showing outside should one of the promenade deck doors be opened, I reached my cabin. There I grabbed an orange from the shrinking store of fruit I had brought aboard in New York, and donned my life jacket.

  With that securely tied on, I went inboard and forward through the central passage, ducked between a pair of black curtains hung as a light trap inside the door to the deck, and turned the knob to open the door. Immediately the passage light behind me went out, so thoroughly had the ship been rewired to make effective the black-out system installed just before sailing. I pulled the door wide open, stepped through, and closed it.

  For a moment, in the darkness on deck, I saw nothing. Then as my eyes adjusted themselves to the night, I looked about. It was a gorgeous evening, warm enough in the Gulf Stream current to make an overcoat unnecessary. In the sky, Orion and Sirius glowed brilliantly dead ahead across the waves, while a gorgeous half moon was just setting in the ocean on our starboard side. In a few moments the moon was gone, leaving us veiled in the warm darkness of the night. The scintillating stars above and the slight phosphorescence of the waves breaking in foam against our advancing forefoot were the sole objects visible.

  Standing beneath the starboard wing of the bridge, my eyes now well accustomed to the night, I looked aft down the promenade deck past the outer cabin doors and ports. Not a trace of light showed anywhere through the locked outer cabin doors or their newly screened ports. Whatever else might be said about the S.S. Pigs Knuckle, certainly the shipyard mechanics had done a beautiful job in blacking her out for wartime service.

  No lurking U-boat, prowling on the surface at night when she herself was invisible, was going to be able to pick us up by a stray gleam and then, shrouded in her own invisibility and aided by her surface speed which far exceeded ours, close on us for a sudden torpedo attack and our destruction.

  Satisfied that at least one thing on the ship was “tops” for war service, I stepped out from under the br
idge wing for a better look at the stars. Hardly had I turned my eyes upward, when involuntarily my uneaten orange dropped from my agitated fingers and bounded overboard. There over my head on our beautifully blacked-out ship, was the starboard running light burning brightly in the night, shining for all to see miles away!

  Hastily I ran across the deck to take a look at the port light. There it was, full on also, its red radiance glowing even more brilliantly in the darkness than its green mate to starboard.

  I dashed up the ladder to the bridge to advise the captain. After all the money and labor that had been spent to black out the ship, and the dire penalties threatened any passenger who should even dare to smoke out on deck after dark, now, on our first night at sea in dangerous waters, some dumbbell of a quartermaster had neglected to pull the switch on the running lights and they were advertising our presence far and wide to all U-boats in our area!

  “Where’s the captain?” I demanded as I bumped into the mate on watch on the darkened bridge.

  “In his cabin, sir,” came the prompt reply.

  I fumbled in the gloom for the knob on the door leading aft from the bridge to the captain’s cabin, found it, knocked once, and swung it open. Like every other door, it was light-screened off. I closed the door, and sidled through the curtains, blinking involuntarily in the bright light suddenly greeting me.

  In a chair, reading, was the skipper. He looked up at me, surprised.

  “Captain,” I said hurriedly, “someone’s forgotten to pull the switch on the running lights! We’re steaming with the brightest lights on the ship full on in the middle of your black-out!”

  The skipper glared up at me, his red face instantly growing even redder with anger than his glowing port side light. Anger at such negligence I had expected of him when he heard the news. But what he said floored me.

  “Nobody’s forgotten anything!” he snapped out. “Those lights are on by my orders, and they’re staying on!” Abruptly he dropped his eyes to the book he was reading. So far as he was concerned, all discussion was over.

  The running lights on by the captain’s orders on a troop ship steaming through U-boat infested waters? What kind of madhouse was our country sending us to sea on?

  Had it not been for all that had gone before, I should have imagined I was crazy myself before I believed my ears as to what I had just heard. The lights on by the captain’s orders? But it was all of a piece with the unusable lifeboats, the proposed suicidal course via the Florida coast, and all the lesser idiocies I had already observed. There was nothing for it but to cajole the skipper somehow to turn out those lights. So ignoring my brusque dismissal, I asked mildly enough why he thought the Government had spent so much on an elaborate black-out system if it wasn’t a wartime necessity?

  The skipper, mad as a hornet over having his decision questioned, glared up at me again, but apparently as I was a passenger he could not throw me offhand out of his cabin, and some answer seemed required. I was flabbergasted to learn from him he was doing it because he was in nowise afraid of U-boats, that even if torpedoed he was sure his ship could not sink because she had some six watertight bulkheads.

  But running without lights! That went against the grain. He might get into collision with another ship. He might lose his license as a master for a violation of the Rules of the Road. Never would he do it!

  I nodded gravely as he blustered at me what he would not do. At least I had him talking now, and I was learning something of his antiquated inhibitions. Running without lights was nothing to a naval man. We did it often in close formation even in peacetime. Merchant officers in convoy would swiftly learn (many had already) in this war to get as used to it as we and think as little of it.

  So diplomatically, as casually as I could, I went to work on him. After all, I had been trained by the Navy, among other things, as a naval architect, I told him. I had worked on ship designs, had built them, had operated them, had helped salvage and repair them when they were in trouble in war and in peace. Then I had been a torpedo officer once, and I had a thorough knowledge of torpedoes and what they had done and could do to ships—warships, passenger liners, freighters.

  I could assure him that modern German torpedoes with the heavier warhead charges the Nazis now were using would tear such a huge hole in the side of his little ship that his few bulkheads might just as well not be there so far as saving her from quick foundering was concerned. Did he know what U-boat torpedoes had done to the British Athenia, a vastly bigger and safer passenger ship than his, on the very first day of this war in Europe? And to God alone knew how many more large British ships since in this war, not to mention the sad case of the huge Lusitania in the last war?

  And if all that did not satisfy him, he might consider the recent cases of our tremendous battleships resting now on the bottom in Pearl Harbor, built with hundreds of bulkheads each (as against his trifling five or six) for the very purpose of protecting them against torpedoes. I knew them and their maze of bulkheads by heart. What had Japanese torpedoes done to them in spite of all their bulkheads?

  Admiral Farragut at Mobile Bay might have been warranted in damning the torpedoes of the Civil War period and going ahead to attack nevertheless, but I could assure him that it wasn’t being done any longer. Every modern naval commander had a very healthy respect for torpedoes and acted accordingly, so did every informed merchant officer. A proper dread of torpedoes was with them a mark of intelligence, not of cowardice.

  As regards the collision danger of which the skipper was so afraid, now that we were away from the coast and heavily traveled routes and not steaming in convoy with other ships, to me it seemed negligible. At any rate, the probability of a collision as compared to the probability of getting torpedoed was trifling.

  Certainly, of these two possible hazards, our skipper as a prudent captain was going to choose the lesser. And as regards the danger to his license, I could assure him that running without lights was normal in wartime. Regardless of what happened running blacked out, his license was in no danger. But there was plenty of danger to his license should any survivors ever appear before an inquiry to testify that he was torpedoed running with lights on.

  “And that, Captain,” I concluded, “is about all I know on this situation. Now that you’ve been informed also, I leave it to your own sound judgment. Whatever decision you make, goes with me.”

  Of course, while I didn’t say so, I knew well enough it had to go with me, whether I liked it or not, since with the radio in the captain’s hands and no private messages permitted, there was no possible way of getting him overruled by shore authorities. But I felt rather sure now of the captain, whom I had fairly well swamped with data he couldn’t even argue over. His ignorance of ship damage in wartime was extensive. And I was certain that my final gesture of saving his face by resting everything on his own sound judgment would get him.

  Still standing, I looked down at the skipper for the decision. I didn’t get it. Befuddled but still obstinate, glaring angrily at me for having intimated he might lose his license if he didn’t comply, he muttered finally:

  “I’ll see. Maybe when we get far out at sea, I’ll turn ’em off.”

  “Thanks, Captain, for listening.” I turned to go. “It’s all up to you now,” and I vanished through the door, to take station out on the darkened forecastle where I could watch those ill-omened lights. I wondered how long it would take for the captain’s fears over losing his license for carrying lights to overcome his habits of a lifetime.

  Ten minutes later the running lights suddenly went out. In a complete black-out now, the S.S. Pigs Knuckle steamed on through the night.

  CHAPTER

  8

  MORNING DAWNED, TO FIND THE SHIP for the first time in her career well out on blue water and off soundings, far away from lighthouses, from buoys, from lightships, from landmarks, from near-by radio beacons, from every piloting aid by which her position had always before been plotted up and down the coast. Now it was
up to her officers to fix her position by celestial navigation.

  It was a beautiful day for it, with a moderate breeze, a following sea, and the sun in a clear sky on the port side shining over seas of a deep blue tinge running right out to a sharply cut horizon.

  Normally on a merchant ship, one mate only does the navigating, but here all four mates were clustered on the port wing of the bridge, sextants glued to their eyes, shooting the sun for our 8:00 A.M. position. Close at hand, the quartermaster stood with a watch to mark time for them when they called to him.

  From the near-by boat deck, I was watching them, when the skipper accosted me, more affable than I yet had seen him on the voyage.

  “Commander,” he invited, “wouldn’t you like to borrow my sextant and navigate yourself? You’re welcome to it.”

  “Thanks a lot, Captain, for the offer. Glad to take you up. I like navigation.” I accompanied him to his cabin, got his boxed sextant, carefully extracted the instrument from the box, screwed the sun telescope into the eyepiece, checked the index correction, and adjusted the shade glasses. Then I took my stand with the mates, braced my feet to steady me on the slowly rolling deck, and got three closely spaced shots at the sun, for which the quartermaster noted the time each time I sang out,

  “Mark!”

  With my altitudes and times, with the chronometer correction, and with the 8:00 A.M. dead reckoning position from the chart for data, I retired to my stateroom, lugging also copies of Bowditch and the 1942 Nautical Almanac borrowed from the skipper, to work with. Since only a Bowditch was available, I had to work out the sights by the old Marc St. Hilaire method, accurate enough, but tedious. Being somewhat rusty also over the formulas, this took me rather longer than usual. But with my morning position finally worked out and checked over twice to make sure there were no errors in the figures, I took it up on the boat deck to compare it with the positions of the four mates.