North Star

by Hammond Innes

  He waited while I finished scrambling into my clothes and then we went along to Telecommunications. It was the same operator I had met months ago and Hans Smit was still there. He handed me the weather sheet. Depression of 977 millibars almost stationary to the NE of the British Isles expected to clear all areas by noon followed by shallow ridge of high pressure with winds northerly 20–30 knots backing SW as deep depression of 958 moves in from the Atlantic. This depression still deepening and storm or violent storm conditions with hurricane force winds locally expected in sea areas Bailey, Hebrides, Faroes, Fair Isle within next 24 hours.

  ‘Any chance of getting helicopters out before that lot hits us?’ I was thinking of all the men we had cooped up on board with nothing to do. And the Duchess out there. She ought to run for shelter, now while she had the chance.

  ‘Depends what sort of clearance we get when that ridge of high pressure comes through,’ Villiers said.

  But we never got any clearance, and the ridge of high pressure did not materialize. All that day the depression to the north-east of us stayed almost stationary, and the wind did not lessen, drifting us south-eastward. It was impossible to stand on the helicopter deck, and clinging to the guard rail just outboard of the toolpusher’s office, I stared through slitted eyes at the waste of water below. I was accustomed to seeing heavy seas, but from the deck of a trawler, or in the shelter of its bridge. Perched up here, 60–70 feet above the water, I was looking down on to an ocean on the move, long lines of great shaggy wave crests marching endlessly, toppling and bursting, dense streaks of foam streaming out along the direction of the wind. Flurries of rain, and in between the rainstorms, I caught glimpses of the Duchess pitching madly, rolling her guts out, and I thought of Gertrude, worrying about that patch in the hull, worrying about the engines and how long the ship could go on taking it.

  Villiers had refused to let me order her to run for shelter. ‘She’s under charter to stand by us. She’s the only boat we’ve got, the one chance if we’re driven on to Shetland. What do you imagine people ashore will say if we let her abandon us?’

  That was what worried him most – what people would say. And it worried me, too. The ocean was on the move, wind and water and waves driving us south-eastward at somewhere between a knot and a knot and a half. And nobody coming to our aid. Nobody out here except the Duchess. And so I left it to Gertrude and Johan to make their own decisions. I talked to them, I gave them the latest Met. bulletin, our estimates of drift position; twice I had quite a long chat with Gertrude, but at no time did she suggest running for shelter. It was not even discussed.

  At one o’clock we listened to the BBC news, and again at six. It was a strange experience, slightly unreal, to hear the dispassionate voice of the announcer stating that the rig North Star, after striking oil, had dragged its anchors and was adrift in heavy seas west of Shetland. And that Vic Villiers, the ‘well-known and somewhat controversial head of Villiers Finance & Investment’ was himself on board the rig supervising attempts to re-anchor. No mention of sabotage. Nothing about the Duchess or how we had got aboard. Not even a hint of the danger threatening us, the extreme conditions we were facing. It was only in The World at Ten later that evening that the seriousness of our situation was indicated in an interview with the manager of the Aberdeen office and with a Shell expert on North East Atlantic conditions.

  By then the depression had moved away and the wind had dropped. The tug took advantage of the lull to cross the entrance to the Pentland Firth. It was now steaming north up the east coast of Orkney. But still over fifty miles away. And still no helicopter had taken off.

  Our position at this time was dangerously close to Foula. We had been monitoring our distance off all day, knowing that it lay in the path of our drift and was a major hazard. In the afternoon, when visibility had temporarily improved, we had seen the island quite clearly through the windows of the tool-pusher’s office, It was then about 3 miles to the south of us. Visibility closed in again, and after that we relied on radar. There was still two hours of north-going tide and gradually we were pushed clear of it, so that by the time we had listened to the news the north end of the island was almost 4 miles west of us. No danger now of the tide carrying us south on to the rock shallows of Hævdi Grund, only Foula Shoal still a possible hazard.

  For anybody going about his routine business in the body of the rig, or for the drilling crews who had nothing to do now but lie in their bunks, reading, and waiting for the next meal, it was very difficult to appreciate the danger we were in. There was a film being shown that night in the recreation room and Villiers took the opportunity to tell the men what was happening and what was being done on board and ashore to meet the situation. But he did not attempt to explain to them what conditions would be like in the morning. Though he flew his own plane, he still did not have any real idea of what a severe storm in the North Atlantic would be like. He could not even explain to them clearly why the tug was tucked under the lee of Orkney, only 40 miles away. To them, that made it four hours’ steaming. They talked about it, of course, as they dispersed and went to their bunks. But I could see they had no conception, everything around them so solid, so orderly, themselves cocooned in the hot warmth of the heating plant from the elemental forces building up in the night outside. They were technicians, and in their pride I think they really thought man had nature licked.

  We went to the barge engineer’s office then. Villiers had called a meeting of senior staff and it lasted just over half an hour. There were clearly only two ways by which we could reduce the speed of our drift. We could increase the seawater ballast, thereby lowering the height of the rig and so reducing the windage, or we could let go the spare anchor. Smit had already experimented with ballast control during the day, but as the waves had increased in height and strength he had been forced to de-ballast for fear the quarters would be stove in. He wanted to use the anchor. The others agreed. Finally, Villiers asked for my opinion.

  I didn’t expect them to like it. I wanted the anchor held in reserve as a last resort when we reached shallow water. I advised that all personnel be evacuated from the quarters up to the derrick floor and the rig submerged to maximum depth. All day I had been gradually coming to this view. I hadn’t suggested it before because of Foula. Until we had cleared Foula it might have increased the danger of our drifting on to the island.

  ‘If I submerged to maximum,’ Smit said, ‘and this depression becomes as bad as you say, then everything goes – quarters, mess, communications, offices. The deck will be swept clean of pipe. Everything will go.’

  ‘But not the rig,’ I said.

  He rounded on me then. ‘Vat do you know about it?’ During the last few hours he had been carrying a heavy load of responsibility and his face was tense and overstrained. ‘You know about trawlers. But this is a drilling barge. You don’t know anything about drilling barges.’ And he turned back to Villiers. ‘It is my responsibility.’

  ‘All right, Hans. It’s your responsibility, I agree. But what do we do?’

  ‘Let go the spare anchor, now, while it is more quiet.’

  ‘And if the cable breaks?’ I asked him.

  ‘Then the cable break. But ve don’t know about that until ve try. And you don’t know,’ he added, glaring at me resentfully. ‘You don’t even know the breaking strain of a 4 inch cable or ’ow many tons the anchor shackles are manufactured to stand.’

  It was difficult for any of them to realize what a depression of 958 millibars that was deepening could mean in terms of wind force. They were all of them, including Villiers, thinking of damage to equipment and machinery, the problems of replacement, the lost time, and in Villiers’ case I am quite certain the financial cost. At this stage their minds refused to face up to the prospect of total loss. They just could not envisage what it would be like stranded on rock in hurricane force winds. How could they, sitting there in the barge engineer’s office, no sound of the wind outside, just the hum of the power plant, the
movement under their feet no more than the gentle bowing of a colossus to the sea.

  And so Villiers agreed to let Hans Smit send the spare anchor overboard, and after that I went into the radio room and asked the operator to call the Duchess for me. It was Johan who answered, not Gertrude, and that made it easier. I told him to make up towards Foula and get into the shelter of the island. ‘You speak with Gertrude,’ he said. ‘That is for her to decide.’

  ‘No, it is for you to decide,’ I told him. ‘There’s nothing you can do for the rig. If anybody is swept overboard he’s gone. No hope of your saving him.’ And I asked him how the patched plates were standing up to the hammering. He admitted that Duncan had had the pumps going all day. ‘There’s worse to come,’ I told him, ‘and you know it.’ And I added, ‘Once it really starts blowing, you won’t be able to make up to the island against it.’

  There was a long silence while he thought it out. ‘Ja, okay. We lie under Foula. But you talk to Gertrude first. Over.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her when you’re safe in Ham Voe,’ I said. ‘Not before. Over and out.’ And I cut him off before he could argue further.

  Villiers’ voice, sharp and angry behind me, said, ‘You’ve no right to dismiss that trawler without reference to me. It’s under charter to stand by us –’

  ‘Under charter?’ I had turned and was staring at his tired, handsome face, seeing the selfishness of the man, his certainty that agreements, money, power, was everything. ‘Charters don’t buy lives,’ I said. ‘Have you any idea what it’s been like in that trawler today, what it could be like tomorrow? Do you want to stand in the toolpusher’s office, with the stability of this huge structure under you, stand in your shirtsleeves in warmth and comfort and watch a little ship founder with half a dozen people on board? Is that what you want?’

  ‘You’re thinking of that girl,’ he said waspishly.

  ‘Yes, I am. I’m thinking of her, of a Scots engineer named Duncan, of Johan, a big bearded Norwegian, of men who saved my life – and by their seamanship got you on to your bloody useless obsolete rig.’

  He was silent then, and I was suddenly sorry for him. ‘Do what you like,’ he said quietly, the anger gone and his voice lifeless. Then he turned and went quickly out.

  The spare anchor was hoisted over just before midnight. The wind speed was then 30 knots, gusting to 37. I took the reading myself. Unbelievably, the rig was not equipped with a proper anemometer, only a hand speed indicator for the use of the radio operator. Smit and his engineers, the crane driver and quite a little crowd of technicians and drilling crews were gathered round the winch. Villiers was standing a little to one side, a lone figure, his back against the guardrails. Nobody said a word as the needle suddenly came alive, swinging with a jerk round the dial, wavering and settling at around the 300 mark.

  The anchor was holding and there was a sigh of relief.

  Now that the wind had lessened the seas had become higher, the vertical movement of the rig under our feet considerable. As the crowd drifted off to bed I saw the indicator needle begin to move. Soon it was fluctuating wildly, reflecting the snatch on the cable as the rig rose and fell. Smit stood there watching, his face set. At one point the needle seemed to swing right off the end of its range. I think he was wishing then that he had waited until we were in shallower water, and I left him and went to my bunk, anxious to get some sleep while the going was good.

  Villiers came in just as I had put my bunk light out. ‘It’s holding,’ he said. ‘But the strain on it must be very heavy.’

  ‘It won’t last long,’ I told him.

  But there I was wrong. It held for almost 5 hours, for shortly after 01.00 the wind dropped right away. If the helicopter crews, who were supposed to be standing by at Sumburgh, had been quick off the mark, it is just possible they could have snatched most of the men off, for the wind stayed light for almost three hours. Just before first light, however, it veered rapidly to 200° and within less than half an hour it was blowing a gale from that quarter.

  The next depression was upon us and it had already deepened to 947.

  To appreciate the problems we faced that day, it is necessary to realize the large number of men we had on board; also their trades, because, in the event, our lives were to depend on some of the skills we could call upon. On board at that time were: junior toolpusher, assistant barge engineer, 5 rig technicians, 2 motormen, 2 crane operators, 8 labourers or roustabouts, 2 welders, 2 electricians, 2 radio operators, sick bay attendant, 8 cooks and quarters staff, 2 divers, and two complete drilling teams of 8 men. A total of 52. In addition, there was Villiers and myself and the service company personnel who had been flown out to operate the pressure tests.

  According to the log kept by the barge engineer, the anchor cable had finally parted at 05.42. But I didn’t see that until shortly after eight. Nobody called me, and when I finally opened my eyes, it was because Villiers had switched on the light. He was dressed and I could see by his face he had been up half the night. ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ he said after he had broken it to me that we were adrift again.

  I dragged on my clothes and dived up the tilted stairway to the toolpusher’s office. The wind was already screaming out of the south-west, rain and spray lashing the windows, and intermittent glimpses of the sea showed that the waves were shaggy combers 30 feet or more in height. A hurricane all right. I had brought the hand anemometer up with me and when I held it outside for a moment, clinging to the rail, my eyes half shut against the wind and driven spray, the force of it was already beyond recording. Back in the radio room I got the Duchess on the R/T and talked briefly to Gertrude. They had two anchors out, but even close under Foula the cables were bar taut and the surface of the water being lifted off the voe. ‘Will you hold all right?’ I asked her.

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. We watch and hope, ja? What about you, Michael?’

  ‘I can have a hot bath or eat myself sick, watch a film show, read a book –’ I stopped there, for Sparks was just changing the figures against the Low on the weather chart. It now stood at 941.

  And then Gertrude’s voice was saying, ‘But you have Shetland. It is a lee shore.’ There was a pause, and then she said, ‘Johan says the tide could help you.’ I told her I knew that and she said, ‘Fine,’ and signed off, wishing us luck. It was the last time I was able to speak to her.

  There was no Decca Navigator on board. North Star was not a ship. It was not equipped to ride the seas unanchored and alone, and once we lost sight of Foula the rate of drift was largely guesswork. I did some rough calculations, knowing there could be only one answer – total disaster. The rate of drift affected the time, the wind direction the place, but nothing could stop us hitting the rock-bound coast of Shetland – except possibly the speed and direction of the tidal flow.

  Smit’s view was the same as mine now – evacuate to the derrick floor and submerge to maximum depth. It was the only way to slow the rate of drift, to give us more time. Tugs were gathering, but even if any of them could have got out to us, there was no hope of fixing a towline. But when we reported to Villiers, who was lying stretched out in his bunk, it seemed impossible to make him understand the gravity of the situation. I thought at first he was thinking of the damage to the rig, the difficulty of raising finance, all the problems he would have to face when, and if, he ever got ashore. But it was more than that. He had withdrawn inside himself. In the heat of the cabin, in the warm security of his bunk, he had reached the point where he felt that if he ignored it all the storm would go away.

  But even down there, in the depths of the quarters, it was impossible to ignore what was happening outside. The howl of the wind overlaid the sound of the power plant, the crash of the seas pounding at the steel columns of the rig shook the whole structure, the noise of it so loud we had to shout.

  Finally he said, ‘All right, Hans. Do what you like. You’re the barge engineer. It’s your responsibility.’

  Hans shook his head, looking bewildere
d and scared. ‘My responsibility, ja. But vith you on board it is impossible that I tell the men to leave their quarters and go up into the vind. They vill not accept it from me.’

  Villiers didn’t say anything. He just lay there, his eyes closed.

  ‘You must tell them,’ Hans said. ‘To go out into the vind is like going over the top into battle. And the ballast control engineer, who vill have to leave after he has flooded the torpedo tanks, vill be lucky if he is not killed. They vill do it for you, but not for me – not vith you ’ere on board.’

  Villiers didn’t answer.

  Time was passing, and we had no time. I ripped the blankets off him and yanked him out of the bunk. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘For God’s sake tell them, now.’

  He stood there in his underpants looking vague. ‘We’re more than twenty miles from the coast,’ he muttered.

  ‘Seventeen,’ I said. ‘Nearer sixteen now.’

  ‘It’s not necessary.’

  ‘I’m telling you it is.’

  But he shook his head, unwilling to accept it.

  I grabbed hold of him then. ‘Why the hell did you bring me on board if you don’t accept what I’m telling you? I need you to advise me, you said. Somebody to take charge in an emergency. All right. The emergency is now and I am advising you. Get the men up to the derrick floor and submerge to depth.’

  He stared at me, his eyes blank. And suddenly I knew what it was. He was a financier, not a leader. He could read a balance sheet at a glance, could figure out assets and financial gain like a computer, he could talk a board of directors into submission by the cold logic of figures – but he was no bloody good with men. Last night, telling them about the storm to come, it had been facts and figures, not the reality of a hurricane blast and huge seas. Now, with the prospect of death a cold, terrible battering, he was opting out.