by John Schou
can almost hear captain Caspersen scream. But shouldn’t you be on the bridge now? Perhaps your absence is to blame.”
What a start of my travel. “But I should only come after Kronborg,” I stuttered.
Luciano laughed. “Better wait some minutes here till the smoke has cleared. At this point of any travel, the captain is always assisted by one of his lieutenants and Barbara, but although he alone carries the responsibility, he always finds a way to blame someone else for the trouble, in case such arises. Remember that if you are alone with him on the bridge – whatever then goes wrong, it’s your fault.”
“It seems the captain makes more than one mistake annually. Fortunately, we are not on the same shift in the first few days.”
“That may change soon. Suddenly, the captain feels drawing to the bridge and quite as suddenly, he loses inspiration – and he is the boss.”
“Tell me about the repair in Bremen, as you mentioned to Mr. Smith two days ago.”
“That was at the last trip with the old owner. We sailed to Southampton but in storm, we hit a sand bank east of the harbour. The captain claimed it was my fault.”
“Why that?”
“Because I was on the bridge with him as it happened. The same was Barbara and Igor. It was bad weather and we were approaching the harbour, therefore we were four on the bridge. We all warned the captain and when he finally listened to our warnings, it was too late, and then, as we felt the ground under the ship, he claimed it happened because he reacted as we suggested. The ship got a leakage – not dramatic, by the way. It could by its own force proceed to Bremerhaven, not quite Bremen, as you said. And because the repair was expensive, the ship was sold to ‘Frozen Line’ for the repair costs, which was anyhow too expensive. Coasters are not modern anymore and the crew is too big compared to the possible load. Then container-ships are rapidly loaded and unloaded, so that they are not spending so much time in the harbour. We have too many coasters to share an ever smaller market.”
“Such as exporting toxic waste to Africa?”
He looked worried. “That is certainly not ideal.”
I changed the subject. “And all of you were employed in the new company?”
“Yes, that was almost a miracle, although the wage was reduced 10%, until Mr. Smith managed this excellent increase. How did he do it?”
“He is even an artist in his field,” I said. But it really went too easy. “I better go up to my job, whatever it is.”
“Bring something along which can occupy you,” Luciano suggested.
“Good idea. One never knows.” So I went to my cabin to get a book, but first I looked if I still had connection to Internet through my notebook. I did, but there were no new mails. Then I went to the bridge. From the back of our corridor, there was an open staircase, ending with the door to the bridge.
I could sense a loaded atmosphere, with conversation suddenly stopping with my appearance. Mr. Kreschov had just left, but the other three were still present. That gave me the possibility to act as a superior – as a representative of the shipping company, of course, not as a sailor. The bridge was a large area, as wide as the ship itself, with large windows on three sides and two doors, down to the two short corridors. Now, I looked curiously around, and that cost me some respect.
“Are you looking for the steering wheel?” Mr. Krueger asked.
“You read my thoughts,” I confessed. The three other present laughed.
“Three years ago, such expectations were normal,” explained the captain. “Now it is all modernized. We have an electric-hydraulic drive for the rudder. Navigating a ship of this type is now a computer game. And navigating is also made a different exercise with satellite-positioning.”
‘Then how do you explain the accident by Southampton,’ I thought and I presume the other thought the same, because it was disturbingly silent for some seconds and Barbara and Johan smiled – excuse me that I use their first names, but we rapidly got acquainted, though I do not remember when.
The captain interrupted the silence. “Miss Anders can now explain her responsibilities. That includes the communication. I must go now; the ship, and the fate of all of us, I leave in the hands of lieutenant Krueger.” And after this heavy statement, he really left and the mood in the cabin immediately improved.
Barbara instructed me in her work, but I shall not try to explain it further. The most important detail was that the ship had E-mail contact to the rest of the world over satellite, and I rapidly sent Fred instructions, how to reach me. Apart from our own GPS-satellite positioning, we could see over the Internet all ships on selected areas of the sea, and not merely their existence as a point, but also their name, size and other details. “This is how the pirates select their prey,” she said. “Like the aircraft, we have a transponder which betrays all what they want to know.”
“It is of course more elegant than the old radar,” I concluded.
“But we still use the radar. There are small boats and big icebergs without such identification. We know whom we can expect to meet later on, but for the near area, the radar is still supreme.”
Then Johan told me about his work, or the absence of same due to the autopilot. “We tell where we want to go and the automatic makes the rest,” he simplified the matters. “Only in busy waters, approaching harbour and by change of course is manual steering preferable.”
“And by special waves,” added Barbara.
“Mind your own business, I’m now the captain here,” joked Johan and added, “at least when the other has left the bridge.”
Somehow, the time went. At noon, Captain Caspersen returned along with Konstantin Liegoff, and I had not even opened the netbook. It was time for lunch, if the two before-mentioned had left us anything.
At noon, it was time for my first real encounter with Liu’s kitchen, a meeting I had feared after the gastronomic excesses in Mr. Smith’s home and the higher circles I had frequented as his employee. My fear proved justified, but for Liu’s defence it deserves mention that he made the best out of having been forced to use foodstuff full of preservation chemicals. At least, the accessories were largely free of them, and Liu exerted big efforts to use fresh products. Since we just left the harbour, this implied meat for the first two days and often self-caught fish for the rest of the travel. Thus, the lunch at noon, as a warm meal, was quite tolerable, whereas breakfast and the cold supper to my taste were inexcusable. Anyhow, from day two of the travel, I had other problems.
After lunch, I had my siesta and after a brief cold supper, to which only the butter was free of preservation stuff, I had my second shift still in calm Danish waters (if Swedes and Norwegians will please overhear this remark).
Igor Kreschov was the commanding officer on the bridge in these uneventful four hours. He was not very talkative, but I pumped him for information about the deceased sailor, a young German called Heinz Koller, not even thirty years old.
“He had searched in the toxic waste in the fore cargo section. Captain Caspersen had forbidden him to go there, but that it was that dangerous was certainly something nobody could expect.” Igor paused. “On second thought, Heinz may indeed have searched something. He met someone in the harbour in Kiel, whom the captain forbade to enter the ship. I was on the bridge then and Heinz went down in the night as we were sailing, after Caspersen went to sleep.”
“Who were then in the second shift?”
“Luciano. We first decided not to tell anything about the excursion of Heinz, as he went ill that night. As he then died towards the morning, we told the captain and the rest of the crew about it. He ordered a seaman’s funeral and thought we should then proceed to Africa, but then we refused and demanded to turn around to the last port, that is Kiel. We then agreed on Copenhagen. The rest you know.”
“I am not quite sure that I know all. Why did you to sail further with this infested ship? For all the money in the world, I wouldn’t ...”
“And still, here you are,” argued Igor.
“If I had known about this incident, I wouldn’t be. I wonder if we are safe here.”
“Heinz talked about nuclear waste ...”
“Is there more, you didn’t tell me?” I cried. “That could be bad, but hardly immediately life- threatening. There is probably something else.”
“There was an awkward smell coming up from it. Tom – the captain’s dog, you know, was quite crazy about the fore cargo section, though it was closed as he was let around.”
“Still, also the dog was said to have been so ill that the captain decided to leave it on shore. It must be a very representative present from the industrial world, you are carrying to Africa, Massa, Sahib, Sir! How shall they unload it? How many casualties” shall it take?”
“It is difficult for a sailor to get a job nowadays. The global economic crisis has hit the shipping industry hard. And in order to proceed with this ship, we needed the cargo holds cleaned.”
“At whatever costs to the ignorant natives,” I concluded sharply.
Igor stared ahead in the dark and kept silent for a minute. “What do you suggest us to do?”
“To be honest, I have no idea yet. I guess Mr. Smith has a plan, but it would be good if I could mail him the latest details.”
“No problem. You can write E-mails from here as you do from home.”
“Including deleting them so that nobody can see what I have ‘confessed’?”
“As good and bad as from home – and we have no computer experts on board. The best we can offer in this direction is Barbara.”
“But the Internet is an open book for experts.”
“Even if it is, they haven’t got the capacity to search us all. Besides, you can also call by phone. I understood that you speak Danish.”
“Yes, but my boss hardly does. Besides, he doesn’t like to be called so late. I better write an E-mail to his assistant in Danish.” Fortunately, I had instructed Fred to read between the lines. “Do you happen to know the name of the captain’s sister in Denmark?”
“Emmy something, I believe, but I have no idea of her surname or where she lives.”
“OK, we’ll give him as much as we know and he shall find out the rest for himself.”
“Do you really think that is any help to him?”
“If he investigated you, he would soon know more about you than you yourself, including a complete psychiatric diagnosis. However, you are not the main culprit here, so he shall concentrate on other tasks.” So I wrote:
Dear Fred,
we have started the travel, and it is very exciting here in the unusual surroundings. Unfortunately, Tom went ill – the same disease as Heinz - and was forced to stay by aunt Emmy. They probably spent too much time in the strong winds in the front of the boat. I am looking forward to hear from you, in particular about the value I asked you. Cherio, Eric.
The clock approached ten p.m., and without wasting a minute in being too early, Johan and Barbara appeared on the bridge for their shift.
“You must change course in about thirty minutes,” Igor said.
“You look so worried,” Barbara observed.
“Eric spoke to my conscience,” he answered.
“Better a bad conscience than none at all,” Johan joked.
“It is really serious, Johan. Heinz will get a lot of company in Paradise when the poor black devils shall unload the fore cargo hold without protective garments. And maybe the scandal continues wherever the toxic waste is stored. Imagine children playing there or searching for values among the poisonous waste. I can’t help feeling complicit in a big crime.”
They all showed grave faces. I thought it necessary to comment. “Let us await the instructions from Mr. Smith. He already indicated that he expected the travel to be foreshortened, and I’m not going just to let it happen as Igor so vividly described. But
