Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

  I found the second, third, and junior third mates all together in the second mate’s stateroom, still struggling with the problem, literally sweating over their formulas and figures. The first mate was nowhere around; evidently he had locked himself up in his own cabin for work in seclusion.

  I left the three mates worrying over their calculations, the while I wandered out on the boat deck again and into the radio room to learn what was new. There was plenty. About 6:00 A.M. the operator had picked up a signal from a vessel about fifty miles to the southwest of us, reporting she was being chased by a submarine and calling for help. Since then he had heard nothing further from that ship.

  The radio operator handed me a sheaf of other messages. There was a report of a sinking off Bethel Shoals; radio calls from another ship being tracked by a U-boat off Jupiter Inlet; a report from shore of a wreck drifting on its side off Jupiter Inlet; and finally, a general warning to all ships to keep clear of the Florida coast. I read the reports, handed them back to the radio operator. Evidently the unchecked U-boats were having a profitable morning along the Florida coast. I was certainly glad the Pig’s Knuckle wasn’t there, though I understood that even in February the swimming isn’t bad along the Florida beaches.

  I went back to see how the navigation stood. The second mate had given up completely; the third mate and the junior third had finally worked out something from their sights. I compared their positions with mine.

  The results were positively ridiculous—from our three positions, the ubiquitous S.S. Pig’s Knuckle was simultaneously at 8:00 A.M. at three widely scattered points on the ocean. Two of these positions were certainly crazy, and perhaps they all were, for none agreed very well with our morning position by dead reckoning alone. Our dead reckoning position, of course, might itself be badly in error, for during the night we had crossed the Gulf Stream, the swiftest ocean current on earth, with uncertain effect as to where the drift of that current had carried the ship.

  What was wrong with us? The second mate confessed he was too rusty on navigation to work out his position at all. He was out of it. Had the chief officer announced his results, I asked, against which the remaining three of ours might be checked? No, it seemed the first mate was still locked incommunicado in his own room.

  Hastily then I scanned the work sheet of the third mate. His trouble was obvious. He had made a mistake in the time equations and was off on the wrong foot from the start.

  I turned from his work sheet to that of the junior third mate. He also had bungled some figures, so his position was clearly erroneous also. Both the third mate and the junior third turned to on corrections, but the discovery of their blunders gave me little satisfaction. My own position was too far away from the dead reckoning point to suit me. The dead reckoning might be wrong, but not that badly, for at least an allowance had been made in it to take account of the normal Gulf Stream drift. Something else must be haywire.

  I looked again at all the computations spread out before us. Then I noted a strange thing. While all of us had taken our shots at the sun within a minute or two of each other under beautiful horizon conditions, our observed altitudes of the sun were in nowise consistent with one another. According to our sextant readings, the sun had been in four different places in the sky at once just before 8:00 A.M., and that couldn’t be, of course. Either the eyes of all of us were badly defective or there was something wrong with the sextants. Probably the latter was the trouble. I turned to the second mate.

  “I used the skipper’s sextant. Do you know how long since it’s been adjusted?”

  “Commander,” replied the second mate, a well-meaning, hardworking officer, but rather slow in figures, “to tell you the truth, I don’t know. I been on this bucket seven years now, and in all that time, there ain’t never been a sextant used aboard her till today. I never even had mine aboard before, and for all I know, there hasn’t been a sextant on board of her in them seven years till we shoved off for this voyage. That’s how I’ve forgotten what navigation I had to learn to get my license. This ship’s never been navigated at sea; she’s always been piloted on soundings. How long since the captain’s sextant’s been adjusted? I don’t know. I ain’t never seen it in use till today.”

  I listened, open-mouthed. What a ship to send to sea! First the lifeboats, then the course, then the running lights, now the navigation! It was obvious there wasn’t a really competent navigator on board her. Certainly the three mates before me weren’t, and the first mate couldn’t be any better than they or he would long since have come out of his stateroom to plot his morning position on the chart.

  Seven years, and not a sight taken on the ship! Probably there never had been one taken on her since the day, sixteen years before, when, fresh from the builder’s yard, the present skipper came aboard to commission her.

  I picked up the captain’s sextant, took it out on deck, glanced at it horizontally to test the index mirror, then vertically to check the horizon mirror. Both mirrors were out of adjustment. So were the mirrors on the second mate’s sextant, and those of the third mate’s. None of these three had obviously been checked for a long time. All were inaccurate. The sextant of the junior third mate (who had more recently got his license) was a new and much more modern instrument than the others; it was perfect.

  So all the sights we had before us to work on were taken with faulty instruments and were worthless except those of the junior third mate. After I had helped him correct his computations, he came out with a position which seemed reasonable, and that, by default, went down on the chart as our 8:00 A.M. position, since the second mate, the third mate, and I threw all our useless data into the wastebasket, and if the first mate ever worked out a position, he never exhibited it.

  I got the instrument tools out of the skipper’s sextant box, and went to work on the reflecting mirrors, so that soon I had his sextant properly adjusted to give accurate readings. At the request of the second and third mates, I readjusted theirs also, so for further navigation, we could at least rely on our sights. What results the mates might get in their computations from that point on, I could look forward to only with doubt. I had accepted the captain’s offer to use his sextant only as a lark for one sight; now I saw that I had better keep on navigating.

  We were having other troubles also. From practically the first day out of New York, the decks had been neither swept nor washed down. With 380 passengers using them, and some of the seasick ones none too successful in getting to the lee rail in time, the decks quickly resembled a pigpen. Routine sweeping and washing down were urgent, but the chief officer, a mild-mannered, inoffensive person of slight build and general futility in exercising his authority as first mate and executive officer on the ship, got exactly nowhere with his sullen deck force in getting it done. Neither did the skipper’s blustering have any better results.

  The recalcitrant seamen claimed they were overworked; unless they were paid overtime for it, the wash deck gear could go hang for all they cared. Neither the captain’s bullying nor the chief officer’s pleading had any effect on them and the filthy decks soon became unbearable.

  In this predicament, the passengers voluntarily took over. Squads of men, both soldiers and civilians, manned the wash deck hoses and the brooms. Regularly from the first few days out they washed down the decks each morning and swept down twice a day to keep the ship livable, while the idle deck force, contemptuous of their officers and unconcerned about the passengers, lounged about below, reading their seamen’s journals full of articles on how valiantly merchant seamen everywhere were co-operating to win the war. Very possibly on other ships, they were.

  Meanwhile, in the week since departure from New York, practically every passenger on the ship, civil and military, had come down with a bad cold in the head, and an increasing number were laid up with flu. The army surgeons aboard were tearing their hair, fearful of what an influenza epidemic might result in at sea. Inhalers, drugs, and attempted segregation of the flu cases seemed
to be doing no good.

  After supper, strolling for exercise on the darkened promenade deck, I bumped into Major Curtin of the Army, who had been detailed by General Scott to act as Safety Officer for the voyage. It was his job (assisted by a number of tough sergeants) to see that no one ever appeared outside his stateroom without his lifebelt; that black-out screens were kept in place; that no smoking occurred on deck after sunset; and that all hands turned out at lifeboat muster, which was now to be held daily.

  On this occasion as we strolled down the deck, since we both had colds the conversation turned quickly to that and the inability of the Army surgeons to check it. I suggested to Curtin that if aboard ship, with all its facilities, his surgeons could do no better than that, the troops were going to have a terrible time with disease when they ran up against field conditions ashore in Africa, which were reported pretty bad.

  Major Curtin stopped, looked around, noted some seamen near us, then took me by the arm and led me aft to the stern. There, with only the muzzle of our 4-inch gun over our heads and the foaming wake of the ship directly beneath us, we were certainly alone. Still, Major Curtin drew close to me, lowered his voice.

  “Don’t worry about Africa, Commander. I’ll let you in on something. It’s not our doctors, it’s our ship that’s the trouble! The surgeons have just put their finger on the source, and it’s going to be cured damned quick tomorrow morning.”

  “The ship?” I asked dubiously. I knew plenty was wrong with the ship and her crew, but what could they have to do with an epidemic of flu and colds?

  “Yes, it’s the damned Pig’s Knuckle that’s causing it. But keep what I’m telling you dark tonight. Our surgeons have tracked it down to the dining room and the galley. Those lousy stewards below haven’t been washing the dishes or the silver at all between sittings—just scraping the plates, rinsing ’em in cold water, and putting everything back that way for the second sitting. And even for the first sitting each meal the dishes don’t get washed in water hot enough to sterilize ’em; just a dip in lukewarm water, then a lick and a promise with a dirty dishrag to make sure the germs get well spread around. No wonder everybody on the ship’s got a cold, and more and more of ’em every day are going flat on their backs with flu!”

  Major Curtin paused a moment for breath in his indignation, took a second look around to see no one had come within hearing, then continued:

  “When they found that out, our senior surgeon and I went to see the chief steward about it. No luck. The chief steward said he couldn’t get his men to wash the dishes, let alone sterilize ’em. Too much work. Then we went to the captain about it. He passed, too. Said it was useless to try. What in hell’s the matter with the officers on this ship, I don’t know. Either they’re worthless or the crew’s got ’em buffaloed, or both, maybe. Anyway”—he lowered his voice to a whisper—“on the general’s orders, I’m doing something about it for the Army. Get down to breakfast early tomorrow and you’ll see something.”

  Being thus tipped off, I was first on hand in the dining room a little before seven next morning, when the first sitting was supposed to breakfast. The dining room was empty. There wasn’t a sign of food in sight. There wasn’t a plate, a knife, a fork, or a spoon to be seen on any table.

  The only person visible was the very agitated chief steward, running his hands through his hair, eyeing fearfully the closed doors leading forward from the dining room to the galley.

  I went to my place, sank into my seat, scanned the empty table before me. Then I looked at my watch.

  “Steward!” I sang out to the only other person in the room with me. “Here it’s seven o’clock and nothing for breakfast. What’s the matter with you?”

  Unsteadily and apparently shaking with fear, the ashen-faced chief steward stumbled over to my table.

  “Look!” I growled, indicating the table. “No plates, no silver, no food, no steward, no nothing! This is a hell of a way for you to run a ship!”

  “It’s not my fault, Commander,” he mumbled tremulously. “The Army! They won’t let me. With guns, too! Look in there!” And he pointed fearfully to the closed galley doors.

  I rose, strode over to the nearest door, pushed through it. There, dimly seen through clouds of steam filling the room, was Major Curtin, his back to the doors, blocking the exits, with four Army sergeants beside him, and each with an unlimbered .45 Colt automatic trained on the cowering stewards before them!

  Major Curtin twisted his head swiftly to see who had intruded, then swung it back again.

  “Morning, Commander. Breakfast may be a little late this morning,” he apologized. “These boys have just been persuaded it would be a good idea to wash all the dishes, so there’ll be no service till they’re through. They’re so anxious to do a good job now, they’ve decided to sterilize ’em, too, in boiling water while they’re at it, so there may be quite a delay. Sorry.”

  All over the galley, the stewards, with their eyes shifting constantly from those unwavering muzzles and the menacing faces of the squad of grim sergeants between them and escape, to the huge steaming kettles, were busy plunging everything in sight in the way of dishes and silver into boiling water. Evidently Curtin was right about the delay, but I guessed it would be the last one. From the looks on the faces of the stewards, I judged they had been persuaded also it would be a good idea to wash the dishes henceforth after each meal without further argument.

  And so it turned, out. But for the rest of the cruise, an armed sergeant was always present in the galley at dishwashing time just to see there was no backsliding. And our epidemic of colds and flu swiftly subsided.

  CHAPTER

  9

  OUR THIRD ‘DAY AT SEA, FEBRUARY 24, commenced with the wind blowing fairly hard, and shortly it had risen to a strong gale with about a 50-knot wind from ahead. The waves built up rapidly to give rise by early afternoon to unusually steep seas, with a remarkable breaking effect on their sharp crests. There was no rain, but the spray, cut sharply from the wave crests by the howling gale, drove like buckshot into the skin, drenched everything on deck.

  Soon the ship was pitching heavily, driving headlong in the seas and pounding hard each time her bow slapped down in the troughs. Naturally, with all this, the rails were soon lined with seasick passengers, and the dining room got very little patronage the rest of that day and the next, which helped in allowing the stewards to get accustomed to the new order of cleanliness below.

  But the greatest benefit of the storm was noted in the radio reports. Submarine attacks ceased as if cut off by a knife. Not for two days while the storm lasted was there a single report of a torpedoing. Evidently the U-boats found the remarkably steep seas not to then-liking, either for surface or submerged attack. Probably they were too busy ensuring their own safety to bother about endangering anyone else’s. Nevertheless there were two radio reports during the storm that the skipper relayed to me with great relish—two collisions had occurred off the coast.

  There was quite an “I told you so” grin on the skipper’s countenance as, without comment, he showed me these. But as none of the vessels involved had sunk and there were no details in the reports beyond their approximate locations, it was obvious the skipper didn’t know whether lack of lights or the storm was responsible, or even whether the collisions had occurred at night, and neither did I. So I grinned back and said nothing either. I noted that our running lights stayed out though, regardless of those two collisions, however much the reports of them may have bolstered the captain’s ego.

  On our fifth day at sea, in fine weather with only a slight wind, we steamed on, expecting to make San Juan harbor in the very early afternoon. In view of that, I took a careful set of morning and noon sights to determine our position, which I communicated to the skipper. But he decided to ignore it in favor of the junior third mate’s position, which placed us considerably to the eastward of my observations. The third mate had a position which placed us far away from either of these, and where the fi
rst and second mates thought we were, I never learned. Setting his course from the junior third mate’s morning position (in which the captain seemed to have most faith, though I advised against it), we kept on, headed for San Juan.

  At about 2:00 P.M., the high mountains of Porto Rico, a very large island stretching for a hundred miles in an east and west direction across our course, loomed up on the horizon ahead of us. Still keeping the course intended to take us into the harbor, the ship held on towards land. But as we got close enough to pick up the shore line through glasses, I noticed increasing uneasiness on our skipper’s beefy countenance.

  He had reason enough for it. The city of San Juan, Morro Castle towering above it on the seaward cliff and its lighthouse, all easily visible far out at sea to incoming ships, were nowhere in sight! Nor could he spot anything else, recognizable on the chart to fix its position. Before us in both directions stretched only a barren coast, void of all charted landmarks.

  Very agitated now by this mishap, the skipper nevertheless obstinately held his course unchanged, still hoping on close approach to pick up something identifiable to show him where he was. But finally there was no help for it. He had to ring up “Stop” on the engine room telegraph lest the ship drive hard upon the unknown shore now close ahead.

  A more ridiculous (if it had not been serious) scene I never saw on a ship’s bridge. There ahead of us certainly was the island of Porto Rico. But where were we? And which way, east or west, should the ship head to get to the city of San Juan?

  His face glowing red with anger, the outraged skipper glared questioningly for the answer at his four mates who had landed him in that predicament. The cowed mates, rightly enough uncertain of their navigation, couldn’t agree. Some dubiously suggested east, some thought west would be better.