Into Uncharted Seas

by E. C. Williams

  He returned to the table, and said, “So have you made any progress toward uncovering the leak?”

  “No, it's all we can do is keep her from sinking. And we couldn't have done that for much longer if you hadn't come along.”

  “We'll save your ship, Captain Bowman.” Bowman nodded in gratitude, and turned his attention to his food and drink. He ate voraciously – apparently he had eaten nothing since the squall – and gulped down the rum-and-water gratefully.

  The Medical Officer and the XO arrived nearly simultaneously. “You didn't have to come yourself, Doctor. One of your mates would have done.”

  “Frankly, I was curious, Commodore. And I wasn't otherwise engaged.” This last won a smile from the men – the locution sounded oddly comic in this context.

  Marie did not add that when the word reached sick bay, she had felt a moment of panic that something was wrong with Sam, and nothing could have kept her from answering the request herself.

  “Please do something for Captain Bowman's hands, Doctor.”

  Girard, too, exclaimed when she saw the state of Bowman's palms. Then she quickly but gently cleaned the open sores, applied a soothing salve, and bandaged his hands so thoroughly that they became two balls of white linen. She then looked closely at his face and asked, “When did you last sleep, Captain?”

  “Dunno. Reckon it must have been … two days ago? About that.”

  “You need rest,” Girard said firmly, and turned to Sam. “Commodore, I recommend that this officer be sent to sick bay immediately. We can be sure he'll rest there.”

  Bowman protested vociferously that he was needed back on his vessel, and that it wasn't right that he should sleep while his crew worked on, but Sam said, “We'll take care of the Chaton, Captain. And I'll send over enough hands to relieve yours long enough for them to get some rest. I'll also send my cook over to prepare a hot meal for your men.”

  Bowman continued to protest, but his arguments tailed off from his sheer exhaustion. He was practically falling asleep at the table. So he eventually allowed Girard to lead him forward to sick bay.

  Sam had been on the verge of offering Bowman his own bunk, since he knew that he wouldn't be needing it himself for a while, but he had to admire Girard's deft manipulation of Bowman. From his experience of his own serious wound, sustained in the Moonlight Battle, he knew the moral ascendency the medical people could exert over their patients once they had them in sick bay, on their own turf, regardless of the rank of the patient.

  But the crew of the Chaton would be just as exhausted as her skipper.

  When Girard and Bowman had left, Sam turned to the XO and said, “Al, send enough hands over to the Chaton to relieve her crew. Ask Cookie to go along and take what she needs to whip up a hot meal for them in a hurry. And take a handy-billy to speed the pumping.”

  A “handy-billy” was a portable, self-contained pump powered by its own integral Stirling cycle motor. “Portable” was a relative term: it took three or four men to move it around. But it operated independently of either muscle power or an external power source, and was rated at 250 gallons per minute. With its help, Sam's sailors should be able to quickly de-water the Chaton's hold enough to find and patch the leak. Then they could turn their attention to a jury sail rig adequate to get her to Nosy Be in a reasonable time.

  Sam returned to the deck. The Albatros was now alongside the Chaton Doux, and the Boatswain had made the two vessels fast to one another, fenders rigged between, to facilitate matters. The two vessels drifted very slowly northward under the impetus of the mild breeze and low swell while the salvage work went on through the night.

  The Chatons ate the substantial meal Mrs. Wilson quickly prepared for them in their own galley with a good appetite – their own cook had been manning the pumps since the squall and they had had nothing to eat except hasty bites of cold food during all that period. They took to their bunks in the forecastle and slept like dead men for four hours, oblivious to the racket of shouted orders, the clanking of the hand pump, and the pulsating gush of the handy-billy.

  Sam, too, took a short nap. He knew that salvage operations would probably continue all night and into the next day, and the Boatswain, Mr. Terreblanche, was perfectly capable of overseeing this without any help from the Commodore.

  He had himself called with the midwatch, and went on deck, mug of coffee in hand – the indispensable Ritchie having, as usual, anticipated this requirement – to find the XO on the quarterdeck.

  “Why don't you take a nap, Al?” he said to him. “You must be tired. And we may be busy in the morning.”

  “Oh, I got my head down for a good couple of hours earlier, Commodore. I'm fine. I was just thinking of going over to the Chaton to see how things are coming along.”

  “Good idea. I'll come with you.”

  The two clambered up onto the rail of the Albatros, from which it was only a long step to the gunwale of the Chaton. Between the two vessels the fenders, intricately woven from lengths of old mooring cable, creaked and groaned as the schooners moved in the slight swell. They passed Albatrosses headed the other way, obviously just relieved of duty and headed straight for their hammocks.

  Once aboard the Chaton, they were met by the merchantman's boyish mate, who informed them that his crew had been called out, and after a hasty breakfast of coffee and rice porridge, had relieved the Albatrosses at the hand pump.

  “I'm keeping the watch topside – Mister Terreblanche said he'd stay below and keep an eye on the pumping.” With the resilience of youth, the lad, who had just arisen from a four-hour nap after about thirty-six hours straight of arduous labor, seemed as fresh as if he had slept for twelve hours.

  “What's your cargo, Mister … ?” Sam asked.

  “Veldhuis, sir. Chief, and only, mate. We're carrying mostly agricultural tools for Nosy Be. And some bales of linen cloth.”

  Sam was afraid of that. Like most merchantmen outbound from Kerguelen for one of the Mascarene islands, she carried mostly “weight” cargo rather than “volume” cargo – which made her much more liable to sink after not much flooding.

  “Is Chaton a tween-decker?”

  “Nossir. Just open hold, weather deck to keel.” That didn't help, either.

  “Commander Kendall and I are going below for a look.”

  Sam and Al went over to the open cargo hold between the two masts – or rather, between the lower foremast and the stump of the main – and climbed into it and down the after ladder. The hold was half full of greasy water, surface covered with bits of straw and other trash, sloshing back and forth with the swell. A few bales of linen cloth, sodden and nearly water-logged, floated, awash. Sam winced at the thought of those bales, worth thousands of francs apiece and destined to make clothing for Nosy Be settlers,, traveling safely for thousands of miles from Stewart Island to be transshipped at a Kerguelen port for forwarding onward – and now ruined, so close to their destination. The tools, invisible below the water, were probably salvageable but greatly reduced in value, since as soon as they were exposed to the air they would be covered with a bright red film of rust.

  Moored to the foot of the ladder was a makeshift raft, serving as a platform for the handy-billy. Hoses dangled from it into the water and up through the hatch over the side. The Stirling cycle engine was fairly quiet, but the sound of the water pulsating through the hoses made a loud swoosh, like a man's pulse greatly amplified. Tied to the forward ladder was another raft. On it, the Chaton's small crew labored at a chain pump, which rattled noisily as they worked the handles up and down. It, too, pumped water from the hold over the side.

  “How's it going, Mister Terreblanche?” Sam asked the Albatros's Boatswain, who was tiredly contemplating the pump.

  “Well enough, Commodore. I think we'll soon come at the leak – I see bubbles from time to time that may be caused by it. Trouble is, the pump intakes keep clogging up from this fu …. – this verdomde straw the longshoremen used in bundles for dunnage, when the sc
hooner was loading back in French Port. The cargo shifted when she was knocked down by the squall, o'course, and all that straw busted loose. Every time it happens I have to shut down the P-250 damned quick to keep her from overheating, and haul the hose up to clear the intake. Same thing with the hand pump forward.”

  “Why don't you knock off for a while, Mister T – grab a bite and a nap? I'll stay here and keep things going,” Kendall rasped.

  “That's mighty thoughtful of you, XO, but I'm OK. We'll come at that leak pretty quick, I'm thinkin', and I want to oversee the patching, make sure it's done right. Not that you couldn't, sir!” He hastily added.

  Al laughed, his damaged larynx making him sound like a rusty hinge. “No worries, Boats – I don't take offense. I know you're a better hand at that than me. How about we send you down some coffee, maybe a bite to eat, then?”

  “Well, I wouldn't say no to a cup of coffee, XO. But I'm not hungry – I ate breakfast with the Chatons.”

  The two senior officers climbed out of the hold, satisfied that everything was going as well as could be expected, and stopped by the Chaton's galley before returning to the Albatros. There they found one of Mrs. Weeks' mates washing up from the midnight breakfast he had just cooked and served. He came to a startled attention when he saw both the Commodore and the XO in the galley hatch.

  “Cookie, make a pot of fresh coffee, and send a jug of it down to the Boatswain. And put a shot of rum in it, too.”

  “Aye aye sir. Only I ain't got no rum, not on this boat. Leastways, it's all locked up.”

  “I'll send Ritchie over with a bottle.”

  They went topside and discussed the situation while automatically pacing the Chaton's afterdeck, her young mate respectfully staying clear.

  “They'll soon have pumped down to the cargo,” Al said. “Then the real work starts – unless we're dead lucky and the leak's above that level. If it isn't, we'll have to rouse enough freight up on deck to come at the leak.”

  “Does the Chaton have patching materials aboard?” Sam asked.

  “They have timber, and canvas of course, but no cement. I'll have some brought over once we get to that point.”

  “What about a jury rig for her? Any ideas?”

  “I'm thinking of making her a ketch-lugger,” Kendall replied. “A lugsail on her forward lower mast, and a jury mizzen lugsail, with one of our spare spars as a mizzen mast. Maybe Chinese lugsails if she doesn't have any big pieces of canvas. That should be a fairly balanced rig. Unless the wind hauls forward of her beam, she should be okay – slow, of course, but she was slow before.”

  “We'll have to stay with her until we've seen her well round the corner. She'd be easy meat if that dhow showed up again.”

  “Amen, Skipper.”

  They paced awhile longer, their conversation wandering to other topics. Then came a shout from the hold. Sam went to the hatch coaming and leaned over to hear the Boatswain call up that they had uncovered the cargo. Indeed, Sam could see that the floating bales of fabric had grounded on the now-visible sodden cloth bundles that apparently contained the tools that were the other part of the Chaton's cargo for Nosy Be. The makeshift rafts, too, were no longer afloat but resting at odd angles atop the bundles. The Chatons who had been manning the hand pump were working the intake lines of both pumps down through crevices in the cargo, in order to continue pumping out. The Boatswain was slowly walking along the starboard side, stepping carefully to avoid stepping into a gap and turning an ankle, stooping and holding a lantern close to the side. When he had examined the entire starboard side of the hold he looked up at Sam and Al and shook his head.

  He climbed out of the hold and said to Sam and Al what they already expected to hear: “No joy, sir. We're gonna have to rouse out at least the top layer to get at the leak.”

  “We better 'vast pumping, then, Boats,” Al said. “She'll be mighty tender once we get a bunch of that steel up on deck – we'll need the seawater in the hold to partly counter that.”

  “Wonder if she has permanent ballast?” Sam said, then turned to call over the young mate of the Chaton, and found him standing just behind, listening curiously to their conversation. Well, it was his vessel, after all.

  “Nossir,” he replied. “Just the iron keel.” Further questioning revealed that the mate was vague about the stability characteristics of the Chaton in the light-ship condition. Sam decided that Captain Bowman had had enough sleep, and passed the word over to the Albatros to call him out. It was just too risky to raise weights higher in the schooner without knowing in advance the effects on her stability. Even if the present mild weather stayed the same, the occasional larger-than-normal rogue swell could put her on her beam ends – a posture from which she wouldn't recover if they reduced her initial stability too much.

  A weary Bowman soon appeared, climbing over the Albatros's rail and hopping onto the Chaton's gunwale. He approached them, wiping sleep from his eyes, and without preliminaries demanded to know the situation.

  When he had been put in the picture, he revealed that the Chaton had, in addition to a cast-iron keel, bilge keels of the same material, so arranged and dimensioned that the schooner would take the ground upright, her weight borne on the three keels. Her thrifty owners had wanted her to be able to safely ground deliberately in shallow tidal waters in the tropics, so the crew could go over the side and clean the bottom, thus saving the cost of a dry-docking. The weight of the keels gave her the added advantage of still having a positive metacentric height – the measure of a vessel's initial stability – in the light condition. Very tender, but not dangerously so.

  “Then we've got to get enough cargo out of the hold to uncover the leak,” Al rasped.

  The Boatswain: “I'll get a tripod rigged over the hatch. With a three-fold purchase we should be able to handle the bundles of tools. What should we do with the cargo – jettison it, or stow it on deck?”

  “Stow it on deck,” Captain Bowman said immediately. It was the duty of a master to his owners and underwriters to mitigate losses from a marine accident.

  “Oh, hell no,” both Sam and Al said together, and pointed out that simply raising the weight, rather than getting rid of it, might reduce the schooner's stability dangerously.

  After some argument, a compromise was reached: the bales of fabric, which were probably beyond salvaging anyway, would go straight over the side. The bundles of tools would be stowed about the decks until they came at the leak, or until the schooner's stability, as estimated by timing her roll, was reduced to a dangerous level, whichever came first. If the latter they would have to stop work and reconsider their approach. Before this agreement was reached, the argument had gotten rather heated, all concerned being very tired and rather snappish. To sooth ruffled feathers, Sam sent over to Ritchie an order for coffee and rum for all hands at work on the Chaton.

  Sam also had the watch below on the Albatros called early, in order to send some hands over to give the Chatons a break. Bosun's mates from the warship busied themselves with rigging a tripod from spare spars to use in emptying the hold.

  The sodden bundles of assembled tools, and crates of ax-heads, hoe-heads, and machete blades, were heavy, and even with a threefold purchase it took several men tailing onto the line in the hold to raise them to deck level. There a man got a line around the hook, and several more hands heaved the bundle over the deck while the men below slacked away just enough to allow the load to swing over and land. This was tedious and finicky work; several times, the hands below slacked away too early, and the load fell below the level of the hatch coaming before it could be swayed over the deck, prompting much swearing and mutual recriminations between deck and hold.

  Pumping continued all along. The gangs on deck and in the hold gradually achieved a timing that allowed the unloading to go smoothly, if never quickly.

  Finally, the Boatswain shouted up that they had uncovered the leak. Mr. Foy, the Carpenter, and his mates had been standing by with lengths of canvas, bags
of hydraulic cement, sheets of plywood, and baulks of timber, ready to go into action to patch the leak. Sam, who knew the theory but had never had the opportunity to apply a concrete patch, went into the hold with them to observe the process.

  The source of the flooding was a stretch of plywood between two ribs, crushed and splintered. “Looks like when she was knocked down, a piece of the cargo, mebbe a bundle of them tools, flew into the side,” Mr. Terreblanche said. He was busily tearing off strips of canvas and stuffing them into the jagged gaps to slow down the leak. The seawater pulsed in with each slow roll of the schooner.

  The carpenter's crew got busy mixing cement and cutting canvas squares, and sawing a square of plywood and a baulk of timber to fit. Sam had a passing thought: had they already returned to all-steel ship building, something everyone in the industry confidently expected within a decade or so as the cost of steel and electric power for welding continued to drop, this wouldn't have happened. Of course, even once builders started launching all-steel vessels, it would be twenty years or so before the last composite ship was scrapped.

  When the cement was ready, the Boatswain stood back and the carpenter stretched a square of canvas over the hole and tacked it in place. He then slapped a coat of cement over it, overlapping the edges. Working quickly, before the water could force its way through, this process was repeated again and again until six alternating layers of cement and canvas overlay the leak. The atmosphere of the hold was oppressive; the men streamed with sweat as they worked. Sam, even though he was doing nothing but standing and watching, felt his shirt soaked through in the back and armpits.

  Then the square of plywood was pressed into place, and the timber brace put against it and banged down between the patch and a steel longitudinal stringer. All hands stood back, the carpenter's mates straightening up and rubbing their backs, groaning in relief.