North Star

by Hammond Innes

  It was no more than 25 miles to North Star’s new position, but it took us almost six hours. Twice Villiers talked to the rig and on each occasion Ed Wiseberg was not available. The anchors were still holding apparently, but they had done nothing further about the spare anchor and I got the impression they were simply waiting for the tug to arrive. I don’t know who he was speaking to, Sparks probably, but on the second occasion I heard him say, ‘Well, for Christ’s sake tell Ed I want to talk to him. He’s to get that bloody anchor rigged and over the side, then he’s got to think of some way of getting us on to the deck.’ I didn’t hear any more for our bows fell off the top of a breaking wave and a great burst of spray crashed against the bridge. Then he was beside my chair, leaning over me, peering down at the chart folded on my knees. ‘How far off now?’ His voice was tense, anger only just controlled.

  ‘A little over five miles.’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘Another hour?’

  ‘More,’ I said.

  ‘Then you must increase the revs.’ And when I shook my head, he said, ‘It’s past five already. At this rate –’ Our bows slammed again and he was sent flying across the bridge. But he was back at my side almost immediately. ‘It’s useless to ask Ed how he’s going to get us on deck. You got any ideas?’

  ‘We’ll see what the sea conditions are like when we get there.’

  I put down my pencil and looked at him then. He wasn’t scared, only very determined, almost desperate to get on the rig. ‘You any good at jumping and clambering up heights?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve done a bit of rock climbing. Why?’

  ‘They’ve got scrambling nets. I remember seeing them being unrolled as I was drifting past the rig. With a bit of luck Johan could get the ship in close enough for us to jump. That is if you’re prepared to risk it.’

  I was looking at him, but all he said was, ‘Good God! As simple as that. Why the hell couldn’t they think of it?’

  ‘Because they’re not seamen,’ I told him. And then, sensing that he was a man who needed to have action in mind, I said, ‘Half an hour from now, get on the blower to them and have them unroll the nets. And we’ll want oil. Tell them to have some containers full of oil ready to pour into the sea on the windward side.’

  There wasn’t much light left when we finally raised the rig. Visibility was less than a mile in steady rain, so that we saw it as a blur of light, the factory blaze just as I had seen it so many times, except that the tier of red warning lights on the derrick were no longer vertical, but tilted at a slight angle. I had Johan take us in close. The nets were down, hanging like a wide mesh curtain below the catwalk that ran the length of the crew’s quarters. Unfortunately, the nets faced north, almost into the wind. I was looking at the seas cascading through the columns, a welter of foam and broken water, trying to estimate the height of the waves against the meshes of the net. ‘There’s a hell of a rise and fall,’ I said.

  ‘What about the oil?’ he asked.

  ‘It won’t make any difference to the height of the waves, but there could be a little north-going tide left, so it may help. Tell them to start pouring it – but slowly, so that it spreads, and not on to the nets.’

  I had already briefed Johan and he was on direct engine control. ‘You think you can do it without the ship slamming against the columns?’ I asked him.

  ‘Ja. But can you make the jump?’ He was laughing.

  I looked at Villiers. ‘You realize, if you miss, there’s not much chance of being picked up?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s the same for you.’

  I looked at Gertrude. ‘If either of us misses the net and falls into the sea, you’ll only search clear of the rig. You’re not to take any chances with the ship. Is that understood?’

  ‘Of course.’ She was looking at me searchingly. ‘Are you fit enough, Michael?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

  She nodded, accepting my assurance. ‘Good.’ And that was all, no argument, no doubts, both of us in harmony, knowing what the risks were. ‘You’ll make it all right,’ she said smiling. ‘Both of you.’

  ‘I put you right into the net,’ Johan said.

  And he was as good as his word. He took the Duchess in a wide, slow turn upwind of the rig, and when she was stern-on to the waves and drifting down on to it, Villiers and I went up into the bows. Neither of us had life-jackets. We had both decided the restriction of movement outweighed the safety factor, but crouched on the stem of the boat, clinging to a ring bolt, I wasn’t so sure. The wave height averaged 14 feet, but it seemed much more, the movement very violent, a vertical lift and fall that was like riding the National on a giant steeplechaser.

  It seemed an age that we were clinging there, the rig gradually appearing to lean over us as the slant of our drift brought us under the superstructure, the net coming closer. And then suddenly we were falling off the top of a wave and the net was there, right above us, bulging, wide-meshed and streaming water. The bows touched it, dragging it taut, then something caught, tearing a gap in it, and we were rising again. I felt the screw going full astern and I yelled to Villiers to jump, saw him lean out and grab hold. And then we were on the net, both of us clambering like spiders in a web as the bows fell away beneath us. The net sprang tight under my hands and I clung there, not moving, feeling it rip again. Then suddenly it was slack, the trawler backing clear and another wave rolling in, water licking up to my seaboots and my body being swung under the rig, into the welter of foam thrashing through the columns and the cross-bracings.

  It was like that all the time we were climbing, our bodies swung back and forth, faces peering down at us, our arms aching, the roar of the sea and the damp smell of metal, the reek of oil. Then at last hands reached down, gripped hold of my arms, and a moment later I was standing exhausted on the catwalk beside Villiers. ‘Not as bad as I feared,’ he said, his dark, handsome features streaming water from the spray, his dripping anorak globuled with oil. He turned to one of the men who had hauled us on to the catwalk. ‘A complete change of clothing for both of us and a pot of coffee,’ he said. ‘In the barge engineer’s office, I think. I want Ed there and Ken’s assistant – what’s his name?’

  ‘Hans. Hans Smit.’ The high voice, the old-maidish manner; it was Lennie, the sick bay attendant.

  ‘Another Dutchman, eh? Well, get those clothes quick, and a couple of towels.’ Villiers nodded to me and led the way into the quarters, ignoring Lennie, who seemed scared and wanting to tell him something.

  It was quiet in the barge engineer’s office, no sound of the sea, only the hum of the power plant. ‘You reckon they can get that spare anchor rigged without any more casualties?’ he asked me as we stripped off our clothes.

  ‘Let’s get a forecast first,’ I said. ‘And then we’ll need to know when the tug will arrive and whether she can start the tow in the sea conditions then expected. There are three anchors still out. If we get another one rigged, that’s four to retrieve or cut loose before the tow can start.’

  A galley hand came in with coffee, followed almost immediately by a lean, sallow-faced man of about thirty with a crew cut and heavy horn-rimmed glasses. ‘Hans Smit,’ he said, ‘Sorry I am not there, Mr Villiers, when you come up, but I am talking vit the tug. Conditions are no good. It vill be at least twenty-four hours before he is here and he thinks he must go through Pentland Firth, zo it vill even then depend on the tide.’

  Villiers nodded. ‘What’s the latest forecast?’

  But Smit didn’t know. The last weather chart he had seen was for noon. ‘But is improving all the time, I think.’

  ‘What’s the helicopter situation then?’ Villiers asked. ‘Has Ed arranged to fly the drill crews off?’

  ‘No. Nothing has been decided. You see –’

  ‘Where the hell is Ed?’ I could tell by the tone of his voice that his patience was running out. ‘I want to see him – now.’

  Smit’s mouth opened, a look of surprise giving place to doubt. ‘D
idn’t Lennie tell you?’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  And at that moment the sick bay attendant came in with towels, a bundle of freshly laundered clothes, overalls, gloves and safety helmets. Smit turned to him. ‘Don’t you tell Mr Villiers?’

  Lennie shook his head, looking nervously round the room. ‘I tried, honest I did. But I couldn’t seem to –’

  ‘What is it?’ Villiers demanded. ‘Where is Ed?’

  And Smit answered awkwardly, ‘Ve don’t know. Ve think –’ He gave a shrug. ‘But that is just a guess. The last I see of Ed is at midday when he is eating alone in the mess. Ve don’t know what happened to him.’

  ‘He’s disappeared? Is that what you’re telling me?’ Villiers’ voice sounded incredulous. ‘You’ve searched –’

  ‘Ja. Ve search the whole goddam barge. Everywhere.’ Smit shook his head.

  ‘When was this? When did you discover he was missing?’

  ‘Ve don’t discover he is missing. You see, it is not like that. There are so many places on the rig, so many things he could be checking. Zo, it is not until I don’t see him for several hours –’ He shrugged again, an expression of helplessness. ‘Then I start enquiring. That was about vife this afternoon. He is in his office for a short time after the midday meal. Then as far as I haf been able to discover, the last person to see him is one of my engineers, who is checking No. 5 winch. Max says he saw him by No. 4. That is close to the stairway leading down under the rig.’

  There was a long silence then, and I was thinking of the last time I had seen Ed Wiseberg, sitting at his desk with the papers in front of him and that paragraph underlined in red, his luck run out, and now, on top of all his record of things gone wrong, this rig – possibly the last rig he would ever get – cut adrift and dragging, a barge engineer killed and two men injured. And Villiers, his boss, the man who owned North Star, who had given him the job, coming out in a trawler to risk his life jumping for the scrambling nets. I could see him walking down that iron stairway, the same stairway that I had gone down to my waiting boat, walking perhaps with that cocky swagger, but not into a calm sea – into a raging inferno of breaking waves. It was as good a way to end it as any, and I glanced at Villiers.

  His face was set, the shadow of this new disaster showing in the sag of his shoulders, in the shocked look of his eyes. ‘Start searching again,’ he said in a hard, tight voice. ‘Have every man on board who is in charge of anything search his particular area and report back to you when he has done so.’

  Smit nodded and went out quickly, obviously glad to escape, glad of the excuse to do something instead of just standing there trying to explain the loss of the top man on the rig. Lennie scuttled out after him and Villiers turned to me. ‘Not much hope, I’m afraid.’ All the vigour and decisiveness had gone from his voice. ‘And they’ll blame me, of course. At Scalloway, there were about half a dozen of them, reporters, and their questions …’ He shook his head. ‘I could tell by their questions what they were thinking.’ He picked up a towel and began drying himself vigorously. ‘Get some clothes on and we’ll go to the radio room and see about that forecast.’ It cost him an effort to make even that show of decisiveness and I knew that Ed Wiseberg’s disappearance had hit him very hard indeed.

  The latest Met. information was that the next depression was moving in from the Atlantic faster than expected and would reach us probably by midnight. It was already 976 millibars and still deepening, wind Force 8, gusting 9, possibly more. Two further depressions were building up in the Atlantic, one of 988 and the other 982 millibars. We were still in Telecommunications when Smit reported that all areas of the rig had been thoroughly searched and no sign of Wiseberg.

  ‘Are you sure they’ve checked everywhere?’ Villiers asked. ‘All the compartments with doors that could lock or jam?’

  Smit nodded. ‘I go down in the lift and search the torpedo compartments myself. All storerooms, refrigerator plant, ve even open the store on deck for sea safety equipment – he is nowhere on the barge.’

  Villiers didn’t say anything. He didn’t thank him. He just stood there, staring at the bank of radio equipment. In the end he sat down and drafted a telex message to Ed Wiseberg’s wife. He read it through, made several corrections, then handed it to the operator. ‘Send that right away please.’ And we went to the galley for a meal, which he ate quickly, hardly saying a word.

  Afterwards I went up on to the helicopter deck. It had stopped raining and the wind had fallen right away. I could see the trawler’s lights quite clearly bobbing up and down about four cables to the south of us. I was there about half an hour, thinking of the big Texan toolpusher, and about his wife and the sons that had been born in different oil areas of the world, a strange, wandering life. It must have required a lot of courage for him to end it in this alien element, going down into the seething surge of the waves beneath his last rig. And Fiona, the two of them so different, each seeking a way out.

  I felt sad and depressed as I turned at last to go below in search of Smit. The wind had already backed into the southwest and increased a little. It was raining again and I could no longer see the lights of the Duchess. I found the Dutchman in the radio room talking to Sparks and I suggested he get the spare cable and anchor ready just in case. Then I went in search of Villiers.

  He was in the barge engineer’s office again, standing at the table with Chart 1118B spread out in front of him. ‘If the remaining cables broke,’ he said, ‘how far do you reckon we could drift in 24 hours?’

  ‘Depends on the wind force.’

  ‘Of course. Say an average over the whole period of 30 knots and the general direction westerly.’

  I had joined him at the table, staring down at the chart. ‘I have a pretty good idea of the drift of a trawler. But this thing.’ I shook my head. I just didn’t know. ‘The windage must be colossal.’

  ‘What would a trawler’s drift be?’

  ‘Ignoring tidal current, about 1 to 2 knots – say around 30–40 miles over the full 24-hour period.’

  ‘And Papa Stour only 25 miles to the east of us. We could be on the rocks there in less than twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘Against the windage you have to reckon on the pontoons, the drag of the columns. It could work out about half the drift of a ship, perhaps even less. But if the cables don’t break under the strain, then the anchors will hold us – or if they drag, the drift will be slowed until the anchors hold again as we drag into shallower water.’

  ‘So we’re all right if the anchor cables don’t break?’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Better see if you can organize Smit and his men –’

  ‘I’ve already advised him to get that spare anchor ready. But I don’t think we should drop it unless we’re in real trouble, and then only in much shallower water.’

  We argued about that for a time. In the end he agreed. But as I was leaving to go on deck, he said, ‘So long as nobody gets hurt. I don’t want anybody else –’

  ‘Men don’t try and get themselves killed,’ I said sharply. ‘And no good warning them, it only makes them think about it and then they get scared. These things either happen or they don’t.’

  I left him then and went up to the pipe deck, where the engineers and a whole gang of roustabouts were working in the glare of the spotlights to wind the new cable on to No. 4 winch. It would have been better if they could have rigged it on No. 1 winch, which was facing due west now, but as Smit pointed out to me, it had to be a winch within reach of one of the two cranes, since there was no other way of hoisting a 15-ton anchor out over the side.

  It was past midnight before they had it all set up, the anchor shackled on and bowsed down to the deck. By then the wind was strong to gale force from the south-west. We all went down to the mess for coffee, then turned in. Yilliers and I had taken over Ed Wiseberg’s quarters and he was already occupying the upper berth of one of the two-tier bunks. It was very hot in the cabin, the blowers full on, and he
stirred as I switched on the light. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Blowing hard,’ I said. ‘And there’s a big sea running.’ Down here I was more conscious of the movement of the rig, a slow rise and fall, the floor of the cabin sloped and rolling slightly under my feet. ‘They’ve rigged the spare anchor and set a watch on all three cable tension indicators.’

  He grunted. ‘We’ll just have to hope for the best then.’

  I switched from the overhead light to my bunk reading lamp, stripped to my borrowed underwear and was asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

  It was Villiers who woke me, shaking my shoulder and telling me the last anchor cable had just parted. The light was on and he was fully clothed, his rig issue overalls gleaming wet, a safety helmet on his head. ‘What’s the time?’ I asked.

  ‘Just on six-thirty. The tension indicators were showing over three-fifty kips on the dials. I don’t know what that is in tons, but it was too much. The first cable parted shortly after four.’

  I swung my legs off the bunk, reaching for my clothes. ‘You should have woken me.’

  ‘Nothing you could do.’

  That was true. ‘What’s the wind force?’

  ‘Between 50 and 55 knots – a lot more in the gusts. And it’s coming out of the north-west now.’

  So the depression was passing to the north of us and moving away. ‘We’ll need to fix our position hourly to check the rate of drift.’

  ‘I think Hans is doing that. And the radio operator on duty is getting on to the Met. Office for the latest forecast.’

  ‘And the tug?’ I asked.

  ‘Hove-to off the north-east of Scotland. He says the Pentland Firth is out of the question and he can’t make the east side of Orkney because it means a beam sea across the entrance to the Firth.’