Into Uncharted Seas

by E. C. Williams

  He didn't regard this as their optimal use, however; he had originally wanted to form convoys of northbound vessels at a specified meeting point, escort them as far as, say, Cape Bobaomby, and there rendezvous with southbound vessels and escort them south to safer waters. But owners and shippers had protested vehemently at the delays and port congestion this would entail, provoking French Port to forbid the practice.

  Even the manning issue was looking up, with the recent arrival of the Jean le Révélateur, which not only added a large vessel to the fleet, but brought with her nearly fifty merchant seamen from the Kerguelenian diaspora who had volunteered for the Navy – every man rated Able, and of military age. In addition, four mates and one master had accompanied them, candidates for midshipman's warrant or officer's commission.

  The Jean had been extensively re-fitted: her double row of junk-rigged masts replaced with a single row of five fore-and-aft rigged masts down the centerline, two cranes added for handling seaplanes, an oversized generator fitted, and two electric waterjet pods added, one on the inboard quarter of each hull, below the waterline. In spite of the engines, she had sailed all the way from Kerguelen, fuel being too scarce and expensive there to allow her to fill her tanks. Because she was so much less weatherly than a single-hulled vessel, even after being fore-and-aft rigged, she had had to sail on a broad reach through the Forties until she picked up the Trades, then tack back toward the Mascarenes.

  It amused Sam that, although the masts were designated, in accordance with traditional usage, fore, main, mizzen, jigger, and spanker, the crew, with characteristic irreverence, had simply tagged them with the days of the working week: Monday through Friday.

  A relief to Sam was the fact that the Navy staff in French Port had arranged for the Jean to be fully armed and equipped as a warship before her departure. In addition to the propulsion and lifting gear, and the rearrangement of her rig, she was armed with four semi-automatic 25 millimeter rifles for self-defense, in addition to a variety of small arms. Her offensive weaponry – four to six armed flying boats – had yet to arrive from Reunion. With them, the Reunionnais promised, would come flight instructors and mechanics. But so far there was no sign of either aircraft or personnel.

  While thinking about the Jean le Révélateur and what remained to be done to work her up for her role in the fleet, he had paused in his pacing and was gazing idly at her, anchored not two hundred yards from the Albatros in Hell-ville's outer harbor. The first thing needed was a change of name to something more, well, naval, not to mention the fact that her present name would inevitably be shortened to “Jean”, occasioning inevitable confusion with “Joan”.

  While he watched, and pondered a new name for her, a small boat was launched and pulled away from her side. He continued to watch, in idle curiosity, and noted that she appeared to be headed for the Albatros. He supposed it was her temporary master, come to pay a courtesy call – a visit well-timed for elevenses, followed by lunch.

  It became clear that the boat was in fact headed for the Albatros, and as it neared, Sam saw with some surprise that it had a woman passenger. Was it Marie Girard, having made a preliminary survey of Jean's medical facilities, and stopping by the Albatros to share a drink with old shipmates? No – the woman in the boat was fair, while Lieutenant Girard was dark.

  Then, with a shock, he recognized her. He stood dumbfounded as the boat came alongside and the fair-haired young woman, in white linen slacks that clung to shapely legs, and a bright, tropical blouse, climbed gracefully up the pilot ladder.

  “Hello, Sam,” she said with a bright but somewhat uncertain smile. “I hope I'm a pleasant surprise.”

  “My God! Maddie!” Sam exclaimed, and swept her into his arms. What started as a friendly hug ended in a long, passionate kiss that ended only when Sam suddenly became aware that everyone on deck had stopped work and was staring at them in surprise. He broke the clinch and stared at her fondly. She was as beautiful as she had been at their first meeting: auburn hair, green eyes, and a slender but womanly figure.

  “Whatever in the world are you doing here, Maddie?”

  “I came to open a local office of Campbell and Son,” she replied. This was the ship brokerage firm run by her father and brother. “I'll be fixing return cargoes for our clients.”

  “I had no idea you knew anything about ship brokerage.”

  “Oh, Sam – I've been working for Dad since he swallowed the anchor and started the business with Rob. Didn't you know that?”

  Embarrassed, Sam muttered that he didn't. Maddie reflected that this was because she had actually only started working for her father after she had come up with the idea of a Nosy Be office, and had crammed like a student for final exams to learn standard charter party clauses and all the other arcanae of ship brokerage. She felt a twinge of guilt at misleading him, but needs must...

  “Well, never mind – here I am! And I'm so happy to see you again, dear Sam.”.

  “And I'm delighted to see you.” At that moment, Bosun's calls twittered “up spirits”, and the crew bustled to get in line for their morning drink.

  “Care for a drink, Maddie?”

  “It's a bit early for me, Sam, but you go ahead.”

  “Coffee, then?”

  “Sounds delightful.”

  Sam passed the word for his steward to brew fresh coffee for two.

  “Come down to my day cabin, Maddie, where we can talk in privacy.” Every pair of eyes on deck were gazing fixedly at the pair, making Sam extremely uncomfortable.

  A pleasant breeze through the open ports made the day cabin pleasantly cool. The invaluable Ritchie quickly brought coffee, and a platter of fresh fruit as well, artfully sliced and arranged.

  “I gather you came north on the Jean le Révélateur?” Sam said.

  “Yes. It was a bit crowded – I had to bunk in with Mrs. Duval, the cook -- but all in all a pleasant voyage. I'd never been to sea on a double-hulled ship before. She was wonderfully stable. But we had to sail very much the long way round, since she was so unweatherly. It took forever to get here – we had to call at Mauritius for fresh food.” Maddie stopped short, aware that she was beginning to run on, and said, “But what about you, Sam? How are you?”

  “Oh, I'm fine, Maddie, dear. Never better. But tell me, do you have some place to stay ashore? And an office?”

  “Oh, yes. Dad contacted his old shipmate, Mister Chan, who's an agent here now, and he fixed everything up for me. I have an office convenient to the waterfront, with a nice airy flat above it – giving me a very short commute!. He even hired a clerk-typist for me. All I have to do is hang out our shingle and I'm ready to start fixing ships and cargoes.

  “But you haven't really told me how you are, Sam. I really want to know – I wasn't just making polite conversation. We heard at sea, by radio, about the tremendous battle for Nosy Be, and the Albatros's part in it. Were you wounded at all? I'd really like to hear all about it.”

  “No, Maddie, I wasn't wounded. As you can see, I'm all in one piece.” Sam went on to give her a summary of the battle. He concluded with, “But we'll soon be ready, at last, to strike back – a decisive blow, I hope. I'm sorry I can't give you the details as yet”

  Maddie was silent for a few moments. “And your friend the medical officer? Lieutenant Girard, isn't it – Marie?”

  Sam could feel the heat in his face and knew that he was blushing furiously. Seeing this, Maddie wondered if she had left things too late.

  “She's fine, so far as I know,” Sam said disingenuously. “She's now assigned to the Joan of Arc – swapped billets with Dr. Cheah, at least temporarily. I wanted to be sure Captain – or rather Commodore – Bill Ennis was getting the best of care. He lost an arm in the Battle at Anchor, and then, before he was fully recovered, he was hit with the news of his wife's death in childbirth, along with the baby boy she was carrying. It damned near killed him.”

  “Oh, the poor man! How's he doing now?”

  “Okay, so fa
r as I can tell. He wants to remain in command of the Joan. I haven't decided yet whether he's up to it.” The two were silent for a moment, then Maddie said, “Sam, I'm sorry to cut short our reunion for now, but I have to get my dunnage ashore and start settling in. I'm sure you'll understand.”

  “Of course, Maddie,” Sam replied, then went on impulsively. “The governor's throwing a gala party next week to celebrate our recent victory. Pulling out all the stops, apparently.” He hesitated, then went on, “It would give me great pleasure if you would accompany me.”

  “Thank you, Sam,” she replied with a brilliant smile. “That sounds wonderful. Of course I'd be delighted to go with you.” Maddie made her goodbyes with an air of abstraction; she was wondering where she could buy a suitable dress in Hell-ville.

  Dave Schofield and his little band of survivors from the Scorpion had been picked up within a day of taking to their boats by a Nosy Be fishing vessel, one of a dozen tasked with searching for them. They were sun-burned and thirsty, but otherwise healthy. He and his men had been made much of, their victory against overwhelming odds having helped tipped the balance of the overall battle in favor of the Nosy Be defense forces.

  Dave recovered quickly from the battle and his subsequent small-boat voyage, and called on Commodore Bowditch to ask for another assignment. He was still mourning for the Scorpion, the little dhow he had come to love, and he was bored out of his mind by his “convalescent leave”. Being busy would cure both those ills. He wanted to get back to work.

  “First of all, Dave, you're a lieutenant commander, as of the day of the battle, so you're owed some back pay,” Sam said. “And, by the way, you're out of uniform; get that extra half-stripe up.” Dave groaned inside; he had just paid out what he regarded as an obscene amount for the Navy's new dress uniform, finally adopted through Hank Dallas's urging, and now he would have to have it re-striped.

  “As I've told you, we're all very, very proud of you and your Scorpions,” the commodore continued. “If you're so anxious to get back to work, I'm prepared to give you your pick of assignments. You can have command of either the Wasp or the new Scorpion – we're going to employ them as shipping-protection cruisers. Both will have to remain awhile longer in port, to complete fitting out.

  “Or – given that so far you're the only aviation qualified officer in the Navy – you can have the Air Department on the Charlemagne.”

  “'Charlemagne'?”

  “Sorry – new name for Jean le Révélateur. She'll be the first air-capable vessel in the fleet. Not to mention the biggest vessel in the fleet. Al Kendall will be her CO. The Air Department will include all the aircraft, plus the pilots, mechanics and boatswain's mates to handle the planes on deck. The head of the department will report directly to the CO, not the XO. I know, I know – that violates the chain of command on a naval vessel. But Al will need first-hand advice on aviation if he is to be effective.

  “I don't have to tell you how important this is, Dave. Air power has the potential to even us up with the Caliphate, offsetting their tremendous advantage in wealth and population, enabling us to strike a blow that will force them to make peace, or at least leave us alone...”

  Dave needed no convincing. “I'll take it,” he said. “Thank you, Commodore. I'll try not to let you down.”

  This is how Lieutenant Commander David Schofield found himself, one bright morning weeks later, taxiing a Petrel flying boat away from the side of the Charlemagne, about to make his first flight.

  From the waterline to the nose, the Petrel looked like a graceful planing-hull boat – which it was, essentially – with her topsides covered, an open cockpit for the pilot (very cramped), engine (facing aft – a “pusher” configuration), a high wing, and high vertical and horizontal stabilizer. The fuselage was made of thin aluminum, the wings and stabilizers aluminum-framed and covered with canvas stiffened with shellac. The slim hull bulged out on either side, at the midships point, into what were called "sponsons”, a measure to provide stability to the craft while it was afloat. The aircraft was propelled by a single Stirling-cycle engine in a nacelle, mounted on a streamlined strut projecting from the top of the wing on the centerline

  And it had room for just one person – the pilot.

  It was this latter characteristic that made the Petrel such a challenge to learn to fly. Dave had memorized every line, feature, control, and meter of the aircraft; could predict (in theory) the effect of moving the rudder, flaps, and throttle; had sat in the cockpit for hours, manipulating the controls in response to shouted hypothetical emergencies from his instructor; in short knew it so well that he dreamed about it. In precise engineering detail.

  But once he got it airborne for the first time, he was on his own.

  It had never occurred to the designer, an eccentric genius named Rao, that while a single-pilot aircraft was desirable for the intended mission, it might be useful to have a dual-control machine in which to learn how to fly, with an instructor aboard to correct mistakes. Rao had designed and built a prototype, flown it himself, refined the design, and started to oversee the manufacture of the first batch of Petrels before he found the time to teach anyone else to fly. Rao, some mechanics, and two barely-trained pilots had accompanied these first warplanes from Reunion to Nosy Be to teach the Kerguelenian Navy how to maintain and fly them. So far, it had mostly been a process of self-teaching. Dave and his fellow trainee-pilots had spent hours in “ground school”, more hours working with the mechanics to learn the systems, and yet more hours taxiing slowly in circles round the anchored Charlemagne. They had gradually worked up to takeoff speed, then to the point where the aircraft was actually airborne at an altitude of a few feet.

  Now Dave, the “air boss”, as he was informally known, had the dubious honor of being the first of the trainee pilots to solo.

  Charlemagne was anchored well south of Hell-ville, between Nosy Komba and Nosy Tanikely, with plenty of open water for take-off room into the prevailing southerly. Dave turned into the wind and gradually pulled out the throttle. The little flying boat picked up speed until she was planing, and beginning to become airborne, skipping from wave-top to wave-top. More throttle, and she became fully airborne, the slight thump of each wave dying away as the airplane's motion smoothed out.

  So far, so good. Dave had accomplished this much before.

  Now, however, he did something he hadn't yet done: he pulled back on the stick, the water fell away below him, and the aircraft rose smoothly into the air, well clear of the surface of the sea. Now he was flying – not just skimming the surface at an altitude of a few feet, but actually flying. He felt a tremendous exhilaration, and had to force himself to concentrate on the airplane's few instruments.

  He climbed to an altitude of a thousand feet, then banked gently to starboard and made a wide sweeping turn to the north. Below him, he could see the Charlemagne at anchor, the three other Petrels clustered about her like chicks at their mother's side, all looking like children's toys from his perspective. He leveled off, and increased air speed to just under one hundred knots. As he flew over Hell-ville, he could just make out the white and brown faces of people looking up and pointing at him. The rush of air past his ears drowned out the sound of the Stirling cycle engine, and he thought this must be what it's like to be a bird. The conviction that he was born to do this, and nothing else, sprang fully-formed into his mind, and he offered up a heartfelt prayer of gratitude for Sam Bowditch and the Kerguelenian Navy – and even the pirates – for making it possible for him to do it.

  He circumnavigated Nosy Be, and buzzed the militia balloon station, as he had promised to do, seeing the balloon airmen below cheering and waving to him. He flew on and on, as euphoric as someone with a shot of rum on an empty stomach, wanting it to never stop.

  It did end, however. His cockpit VHF radio, a new gadget and always temperamental, suddenly crackled to life. He had switched it on as part of his start-up check-list, and it had worked during a test transmission, then r
emained silent until now. It seemed to sputter into the middle of a transmission:

  “ … Leader, Charley Leader, come in, over.”

  Dave flicked a switch. “This is Charley Leader, over.”

  “Charley Leader, check your fuel state! You must be flying on fumes by now! Repeat, check your fuel state! Over.”

  Dave glanced down at his fuel gauge. Right enough, the needle was hovering just north of “E”. That meant, he reckoned, no more than a few minutes of flying time left. This brought urgently to mind the fact that no one knew what the glide angle of a Petrel was. He guessed it was fairly steep.

  “Roger, Mother. Returning now,” he said into his throat mike as calmly as he could. He banked steeply and turned southward, heading back toward the Charlemagne. He reduced throttle until the Petrel was slowly descending. He made no effort to fly back to a point near the carrier, but just flew straight ahead toward clear water.

  Another thing he'd never done before: bring the flying boat down safely onto the surface of the sea from altitude. He gradually throttled back as the altimeter dropped toward zero, and the water came up to meet him. When he touched, it came as a surprise, the Petrel skipping gently from wave-top to wave-top until it lost enough way to become fully seaborne: a perfect landing.

  At that point, the engine coughed, stuttered, then stopped dead, and the Petrel coasted slowly until she became dead in the water. The carrier was several miles away. Presumably, the Charlemagne was just now launching a boat to come tow him home.