Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

  I clambered from the side of the dock over the wooden walkway bridging the water beneath me, to the scaffolding inboard of the propeller. One of the British foremen handling the early shift greeted me.

  “That plate ain’t right, Cap’n,” he informed me, pointing to it as it hung from the crane hook. “We ’as to send it back to the shop ashore for ’em to work on it there again before we can erect it.”

  I looked at the plate. It looked all right to me.

  “What’s the matter with it?” I asked anxiously, for we had no extra steel, and if my shop ashore had cut that plate to the wrong size, especially if it had made it too small, it would be a major tragedy.

  “It ain’t got the knuckle in it,” he explained. “Cast your eye over this, Cap’n,” and he turned toward the Dido where right under our noses, the plate had to fit. “D’ ye see? There’s a sharp knuckle in the counter o’ this vessel which’ll come about six inches below the top edge o’ that plate. We showed that knuckle on the templet Willie made an’ sent ashore, only them Eyties o’ yours in the plate shop there forgot to knuckle the plate to suit the templet. It’s got to go back to be knuckled.”

  I knew that knuckle in the Dido he was referring to well enough. Her stern, from the quarterdeck down, was practically straight-sided till it reached a few feet below her water line; then the plating was sharply knuckled or creased inward to run at a considerable slope inboard and downward toward her keel. The top edge of our last steel plate came to about six inches above this horizontal knuckle line; of course, to fit the ship it also had to be knuckled over at the top so it could be riveted and welded there neatly and watertight against the plating already in place.

  “Oh, is that all that’s worrying you!” I exclaimed, much relieved. “Don’t bother to send the plate ashore. We’ll have to knuckle it over in place with sledge hammers. Just swing it over, secure it where it belongs, bolt it up, then rivet and weld the bottom and both sides up to near the top, and after that we’ll do the knuckling with sledges, with the ship as a jig to knuckle against.”

  The foreman looked at me as if I were crazy, or else perhaps knew nothing of shipbuilding.

  “Knuckle that thick plate over by hand?” he gasped. “Why, they got power machinery ashore to do jobs like that! All you have to do is put that plate in a keel-bender, put about 500 tons o’ pressure on it, and the keel-bender’ll knuckle it over for us in no time!”

  “Yes, yes,” I admitted, slightly peeved at the time being lost. “I know all about keel-benders. You don’t have to tell me how they work. Only there isn’t any keel-bender in the plate shop ashore. That’s why they didn’t knuckle that plate for you in the first place. And there isn’t any other kind of machine ashore either that could knuckle that plate, or I’d have it done. This is Massawa, not the dockyard in Alex. Now you get that plate swung over in place, secure it as I told you, then get some acetylene torches to heat the plate up red-hot along that knuckle line and put two of the huskiest men you’ve got swinging sledges on the hot iron to knuckle it up against the ship’s side. After that, we’ll weld it in place along the top seam and we’ll be all through. Now don’t lose any more time. Get going! I’ll be along again in about an hour to see how you’re making out.”

  With as stricken a look in his eyes as if I had just sentenced him to Massawa forever, the foreman turned and waved to the crane operator on the dry dock far above him to lower the plate further and then to swing it in. As I left, I heard him muttering,

  “No keel-bender? What kind o’ dockyard is this they’re wanting us to stay an’ work in?”

  I really could have told him, but I refrained. I ducked on the scaffolding to keep clear of the rapidly descending steel plate, climbed over to the side of the dry dock, and took my boat over to the Italian dry dock to see how Lloyd Williams and his crew were getting along in patching the bomb holes there. I had hardly been aboard that dock in five days; practically all my time since her arrival had been put in on the Dido.

  I nodded approvingly to Williams as I went over his job. Already a number of the huge bomb craters had vanished forever, permanently sealed over with new steel plating. But about half the bomb holes were still left, all the damaged steel removed but the holes on top in the floor still yawning chasms waiting for steel.

  “We’ll just about run out of steel by tomorrow, Captain,” Williams informed me. “Will there be any left over from that job”—he inclined his head toward the Persian dock—“that you can give us when she leaves?” he asked.

  “Nothing to talk about, Lloyd; just some scraps, maybe.” I sighed at our predicament. “I’ll try Alex again tomorrow. Maybe with the Dido back in their laps, they’ll feel grateful to us here and scrape up a few plates for us.”

  I got back into my boat and returned to the Dido. It was nearly 8:00 A.M.; I’d been gone somewhat over an hour. I disembarked and hurried over the side of the dry dock back on the starboard scaffolding, eager to see how much progress the men had made in knuckling that plate.

  My heart sank as my eyes fell on that plate. No progress had been made in knuckling it. True, it was now in place against the sloping lower shell of the ship, with most of the quilting rivets driven to hold it there. But its top edge stood sharply away from the shell there, with not a sign of a knuckling yet in it.

  I looked over the men on the scaffolding. It was crowded now with men—too many for anybody possibly to work. There were Smith and Edwards, their foreman, two English riveters who were certainly the huskiest Englishmen on the job, a torch operator, some sledges, and a torch. Everything was there that I had ordered to do that knuckling job, but there was no indication of any knuckling.

  “We’ve been waiting for you to come back, Captain,” said Smith somewhat apologetically as he noted my chagrin. “I’ve stopped ’em from driving any more rivets. We’ll have to cut out the rivets they’ve driven already, take that plate off o’ there and send it ashore somewhere to be knuckled. Nobody can knuckle it the way you said; it’s too thick a plate. It’s a job for power machinery.”

  “But there isn’t any power machinery ashore!” I burst out exasperated. “I told your foreman here that and he must have told you. You shouldn’t have stopped the job, Mr. Smith. I told ’em how to do it. Now let’s all of us get off this scaffolding and give your men a chance to get to work with that torch and the sledges. We’ve lost too damned much time already talking about this!”

  “It’s no use, Captain,” replied Smith, blank despondency written all over his grizzled face. “Here’s the two strongest men I’ve got and they say they can’t do it; nobody can. And I agree with ’em. It’s beyond human strength. I’d expected you to have that plate knuckled in a keel-bender ashore here, or I’d never have agreed to let ’em send the ship here instead o’ to Durban. Now we’re in a pickle. We can’t finish the job!”

  I looked at Mr. Smith in dismay. There was no question—he wasn’t being mutinous, he wasn’t being obstinate—the job was just completely beyond him. I turned to his two riveters, huskies both of them, though I was sure I’d seen better.

  “Can’t you men do that?” I asked of them, touching the protruding plate about in line with our heads. Both of them shook their heads solemnly.

  “No, Cap’n,” said the nearer of the two, “nor nobody else neither.”

  I looked from the dejected men about me to that troublesome plate which had to be beaten in or we couldn’t undock the Dido. If anybody was in a pickle, it was I. This was the last day. The captain of the Dido had already radioed Alex that next day he was returning to the Mediterranean. No doubt already in Alex, the C.-in-C. was arranging his warship movements to take account of that. Now not only would she not undock tomorrow, as these men saw it, but no one could say when she would undock—probably not till that recalcitrant plate had been removed from the Dido and sent on a round trip to Alex to be knuckled under the keel-bender there. We couldn’t get that big plate into a plane. If it went by freighter, it would take around
two weeks for the journey.

  What a lot of rot! I couldn’t believe they couldn’t do it. In the quarter of a century since I’d worked on my first ship, I’d seen men, many of them English and Scotch, do far more than that to steel.

  “So you try to tell me it can’t be done my way, eh? This is your last chance. Can you do it?”

  Everybody involved shook his head again.

  “All right then, boys; just move aside and clear this scaffold so somebody who can, gets a chance to swing a sledge! Pick out some seats along the side of the dock where you can all see without getting in the road, and I’ll show you something!” I turned toward the nearby stern of the dry dock where my new boat was tied up waiting for me.

  “Glen!” I sang out to my coxswain. “Get over to the Italian dry dock and tell Lloyd Williams to break Bill Cunningham and Horace Armstrong off whatever they’re doing and bring ’em both over here four bells with the biggest pair of sledge hammers they’ve got on that dry dock! Bring all three of ’em back with you; I’ve got a little job here for ’em! Shake it up now!”

  “Aye, aye, Captain!” With a wave of his hand to show he understood, Galvin shoved off and with the throttle all out raced away toward the other near-by dry dock.

  Silently all the Englishmen started to clear the scaffolding. I restrained their top superintendent.

  “You’d better stay here with me, Mr. Smith. You’ll want a close view, so next time you’ll know what men can do when it has to be done.” His wrinkled face incredulous but silent, the elderly dockyard superintendent picked out a spot on the end of the scaffolding where he would be clear but still close by.

  In ten minutes, the boat was back, and its three passengers disembarking. Galvin pointed out to them where I was up on the scaffolding over the starboard after propeller. In single file, Williams leading, with behind him Cunningham and Armstrong, each nonchalantly swinging a heavy sledge in one hand, they threaded their way past the British mechanics now perched on the side of the dry dock near by, and came over the walkway to the scaffolding where I stood.

  I looked at Cunningham and Armstrong approvingly, both stripped to the waist, both glistening with perspiration. They were tough guys, and over Cunningham particularly I had had plenty of headaches in the past. But now I needed a couple of tough guys and they were going to repay me for all my troubles. I had no fears.

  “Boys,” I said, “you see this steel plate?” and I laid my hand on its protruding upper edge. “I want it knuckled in flat against the shell behind it to let us weld this top edge and make the stern of this cruiser watertight so she can go back and fight.” I turned carefully around on the narrow scaffolding toward my late companions on it, now all ensconced some thirty feet away on various vantage points.

  “Now, boys, you see those Englishmen over there? It was their job to do this, only they say they can’t. And what’s more, Bill, and you, too, Horace, they say you can’t either!”

  Cunningham and Armstrong both took a brief look at the thick steel plate, then gazed belligerently at the onlookers. Neither of them cared much for Englishmen; they were all potential M.P.s to them. Already Lloyd Williams was lighting up the acetylene torch which lay on the scaffolding at his feet, applying the hot flame to the plate at about the knuckle line, heating the steel.

  “Them limeys say we can’t do it?” as soft in speech as ever, Cunningham asked of me. “Is that all you want of us, Cap’n?”

  I nodded in assent.

  Cunningham looked at the spot Williams was heating, then at the narrow scaffolding to get a proper stance for his feet. The sledge hammers the Englishmen had left there were in his way. He glanced casually at them, then contemptuously kicked them both overboard into the water covering the dock floor below. Compared to the sledge hammer he was carrying, they were only toys, too small for a man to work with.

  Lloyd Williams had a considerable spot of steel red-hot. Cunningham looked inquiringly at Armstrong.

  “O.K., Bill,” answered Armstrong, bracing himself while he raised his sledge, gripped it with both hands.

  “All right, Horace, let’s go!” said Cunningham, and with a terrific clang, his heavy sledge hammer came down against that hot steel plate. It sounded as if Big Ben himself had struck one.

  As Cunningham’s hammer swung back over his shoulder, Armstrong’s cracked down, and from then on it seemed as if Hercules and Vulcan themselves were rhythmically sledging away on that steel plate as Bill and Horace plied those ponderous sledges.

  Soon they had a gallery, with all the other British mechanics, practically the whole crew of the Dido, and almost everybody belonging on the Persian dry dock lining the rails of the Dido and the dry dock to watch them—everybody from Captain McCall of the Dido (whom someone had informed of impending disaster), immaculate in whites and gold-visored cap, down to practically naked Eritreans fouled with dirt and paint.

  The reaction on everybody, cruiser captain to naked savages, was the same. They were witnessing something not often seen—they were seeing men work. Never was I prouder of being an American than while I watched my two fellow Americans, the center of the awestruck attention of men of every race and every religion in the Middle East, beating that plate into place.

  Pausing only periodically while Lloyd Williams heated up new stretches of steel for them to swing on, steadily they worked their way with their sledge hammers along the fifteen-foot length of that plate. The task took them an hour and a half. At the end of that time, from end to end that heavy steel plate along its upper edge lay neatly in against the plating under it, beautifully knuckled over.

  With his last blow swung home to finish, Bill Cunningham rested his sledge negligently on his shoulder and turned again to me.

  “Anything else you want o’ us here, Cap’n?” he queried mildly.

  “No, Bill, that’s all. And thanks to both of you.” I could have kissed him for what he’d done, and Armstrong also.

  “C’mon then, Horace,” said Cunningham to Armstrong. “We’d better get going back to that Eytie dry dock an’ get some work in this morning.”

  CHAPTER

  45

  NEXT MORNING, AUGUST 25, COMPLETELY finished, H.M.S, Dido was undocked, having spent exactly six days on the Massawa dry dock. We were through with her in just half the time allowed us for the task in Alexandria. Hardly was she off the dry dock when another of Admiral Harwood’s armed supply ships, waiting already outside the harbor, took her place on the keel blocks.

  That day the Dido started back for her station in the Mediterranean, having on her return been absent from it a total of eleven days, as against the forty to sixty days she would have been missing from the war zone had she gone to Durban.

  Via Captain Lucas, R.N., NOIC in Massawa, the usual wireless to the C.-in-C., announcing her completion, went out.

  H.M.S. Dido undocked 0630 today. Kythera follows.

  A few hours later, a sweating British seaman from NOIC’s office caught up with me to thrust into my hands a wireless from Admiral Harwood in Alexandria:

  Your 0802/25. Pass to Ellsberg. Well done indeed. Great work!

  That, from a conservative British admiral, was certainly praise. The United States Naval Repair Base at Massawa at last had come of age.

  Shortly we were informed that we were also definitely allotted the cruisers Euryalus and Cleopatra, damaged sisters to the Dido. Our performance on the Dido had pushed Durban off the C.-in-C.’s list so far as further wartime maintenance of the Mediterranean Fleet was concerned. All the British mechanics who came down with the Dido had already been ordered to remain in Massawa to await the coming of her sisters—only Commander Mole and Mr. Smith had returned to Alex with the Dido. The commander went back to report firsthand on our performance; Mr. Smith because Massawa had proved too much for his aging body.

  With only a few days overlap in the Mediterranean to change stations about, H.M.S. Euryalus was sent to us, arriving September 5. We cleaned up her damage and sent her back, onl
y four days in dry dock, an even better performance than on the Dido, but, of course, by then we knew better what to expect and were prepared in advance for it.

  Last of all came H.M.S. Cleopatra, namesake of that woman who never failed to cause trouble to everyone who crossed her path. The Cleopatra ran true to her name. We repaired her and sent her away in five days, commencing on September 19, but she nearly ruined the Massawa Naval Base and everything in it, including me.

  She lost no time in causing trouble. Hardly was her stern half lifted out of water and I beneath it in a small boat scanning her half-exposed bottom for her damage while standing on the gunwale of my skiff, than a wave washing into the still partly flooded dry dock lifted my boat suddenly, bringing my left foot on the gunwale up with a terrible jolt right against the sharp lower edge of her bronze propeller blade there, nearly amputating my big toe and laming me severely.

  That was only the beginning. I got the work laid out and the repair job going with the British mechanics now under the immediate supervision of Lloyd Williams, without any difficulty. But at that unfortunate time, I received a peremptory order to proceed instantly to Alexandria for a conference there on some top secret matter.

  It nearly broke my heart to have to leave that cruiser docked in what I as well as everyone else in Alex and Massawa knew was a ticklish situation. I had no competent person I could really trust to shift the Cleopatra in dry dock when her repairs were done and it came time to drop her stern and lift her bow to finish the cleaning and painting job, which the Cleopatra needed more badly than her two sisters.

  But the orders permitted no delay, the conference was for one day only, and on the face of it, it looked as if I could get back in time to do the shifting myself.

  I had no fears about Lloyd Williams. I instructed him what to do on repairs, which had been already laid out as a five-day job. Where my knees shook was over Spanner, the English dockmaster. I warned him to watch the ship carefully and to let her alone; I would be back in time to shift her myself. Then I dashed to Asmara to catch an Army plane next day for Cairo via Port Sudan, the fastest route, where I arrived in the early evening.