by Tony Pollard
‘If it comes to war then the north is by far the stronger of the two powers. The coalmines, ironworks, arsenals – most of them are north of the Potomac. The south will undoubtedly be heavily dependent on overseas trade, and one of the few commodities she has to offer in return will be raw cotton. It logically follows that the north will use its navy to choke off this transatlantic trade by blockading southern ports and preventing any maritime traffic either in or out. That, sir, will be bad news for the British cotton industry and most importantly very bad news for me.’
‘So you intend to supply the south with the torpedo?’
‘Whoever owns that weapon will at a stroke have the upper hand in the war at sea. The sea lanes will remain open and, with her trade secure, the south may stand a chance of winning the war on land.’
‘So it’s all about your damned cotton mills.’
‘No, Mr Perry. Like most people, you fail to see the broader picture. If things are allowed to continue unchecked then the United States of America will very soon represent a dangerous threat to British overseas interests. But if the south wins autonomy in a civil war then a humbled USA will have an overtly pro-British neighbour to contend with. Of course, I expect the new Confederate States of America to be very grateful for my contribution to the war effort – the least they could do in the circumstances would be to offer me a monopoly on the cotton trade. And there you have it: business continues to thrive and the nation benefits as a result. Very satisfactory, wouldn’t you say?’
What little light there was in the duct disappeared as an eclipsing Catchpole, whose voice had suddenly grown in volume, stepped on to the grate. I was terrified that if he looked down he would see my face staring up at him. Instead, a blizzard of glowing embers fell into the space above my head. The devil had knocked the ash from a cigar into the grate. I turned my face away and stifled a cough but fortunately he moved on almost immediately. Suspecting he might return to do the same again, I shifted position slightly so that my face was no longer located directly beneath the grate.
My new location did not affect my ability to hear Catchpole. ‘Now, Mr Perry, don’t you think it time you were on your way? It is vital that you get the remaining torpedo out of harm’s way.’
I had heard enough.
Returning to my point of entry, I looked down to find Ockham seated on the Queen’s throne, his head tipped to one side in sleep. A gentle application of a foot to his shoulder was enough to bring him round.
‘Good of you to warm Her Majesty’s seat for her,’ I said, as he looked up at me through bleary eyes.
I gave him a few moments to stand and pull himself together, knowing full well that I was not the only one just returned from a dreadfully confined space. For a moment or two he bore the haunted expression that I knew must hang like a grey mask from my own face at every waking.
The detail of what I had overheard could wait and so I got straight to the point. ‘Perry’s taking the torpedo out of the river up to Liverpool on a boat. Have you heard of the Shearwater?’
Ockham was now fully awake. ‘The Shearwater? She’s a small screw-driven steamer, usually moored in the Pool. She was built by our old friends Blyth’s a year or so back. Don’t know who owns her now, but given she’s of the latest design it wouldn’t surprise me if his name was Catchpole.’
We arrived at the exit just in time to see Perry leaving through the gate, accompanied by the two men we had earlier seen standing outside Catchpole’s office. ‘He must be on his way to the boat,’ said Ockham. ‘If the torpedo is already on board then we have little chance of stopping him before they cast off.’
‘There has to be a way,’ I said, without having a clue what it might be. One thing was certain, though: we needed help.
Dodging back into the building, I asked for the use of pen and paper at the reception desk and then, handing the folded note to Ockham, instructed him to give it to one of the policemen hovering around the entrance. ‘Tell him that it must get to Inspector Tarlow immediately. If he shows any lack of urgency then let him know that the security of the nation is at stake.’ I could only hope that the terrier Tarlow would appreciate me throwing him a bone.
While he was delivering the message I dashed across to the House of Lords telegram office which was tucked away on the other side of the foyer.
When we were reunited outside the gates, I asked Ockham, who now appeared entirely reinvigorated, if he had access to a boat. He shook his head but then told me he had been using an old steam barge for work over at Millwall. ‘It’s a wreck and won’t stand a chance of outrunning the Shearwater,’ he said, guessing what I had in mind, ‘but if Perry is sailing from as far west as the Pool of London we may be able to get a headstart overland and then intercept him on the water as he heads downriver.’
During our hurried cab ride I told Ockham a little more of what I’d overheard while in the air duct, and only then did the full implication of Catchpole’s ambitions begin to dawn. ‘Whoever controls the sea lanes has the power to control the fate of nations. If he uses the torpedo to draw us into another war with America, he could bring Britain to her knees. The United States is far more powerful than it was back in 1812, and we didn’t do so well then either.’
‘And all to protect his damned business interests!’ exclaimed an exasperated Ockham. ‘Businessman be damned, he’s nothing but a bloody warmonger. He sat there in our midst feeding off all those ideas with the one clear aim of putting them to the worst possible use.’
By the time we arrived at Millwall our blood was well and truly boiling and we were doubly determined to see Catchpole’s plans foiled. There certainly seemed no better way to extract revenge for Wilkie’s and William’s deaths. The only problem was that neither of us had any idea of how we were going to achieve that beyond getting on to the river ourselves.
Some effort had clearly gone into removing the blackened remains of Ockham’s windmill, and after we crossed over the river wall it became apparent that the barge we were about to commandeer was to be used to carry the debris away. The flat deck was covered in carefully stacked piles of timber, much of it at least partially charred by the fire. Most conspicuous, though, was the dreadful iron casket which had once contained the body of Ada Lovelace.
‘The boilers are stone-cold,’ reported a grave-looking Ockham on his return from the engine room. He looked upriver and seemed only slightly relieved not to see the Shearwater approaching. ‘We can only hope he didn’t cast off straight away.’
It took us the best part of an hour to light the boilers and get up anything like enough steam to power the vessel. It was difficult to concentrate on the task, as every few minutes one or both of us would take a break from shovelling coal and watching pressure gauges to step up on deck and check the river. Vessels large and small regularly passed by, but all of these were propelled by either sails or paddles and as yet, thank God, there was no sign of a screw-driven vessel. Half an hour later and I was casting off and Ockham steering the vessel out into the Channel. If the Shearwater wasn’t going to come to us, we had decided, then we would go and look for her.
We were saved the trouble, however, as just as we pulled away from the jetty she steamed into view, coming around the bend. Her stack belched smoke but her sides and stern were clearly bereft of paddles. Ockham had already proven himself to be a proficient river man and so I had no reason to doubt him when he said she must be doing at least fifteen knots. Whatever rate she was travelling, it was fast, because even to my landsman’s eye there could be no doubt that she was approaching at unnerving speed. ‘All we can hope is that we can block her course and drive her into the shore.’ Ockham turned full on the wheel to take us out into the Channel, our rear-mounted paddle wheel turning faster now as he opened the valves.
‘He won’t be expecting us,’ he shouted over the noise of the engine. ‘I’m going to head upstream on a parallel course to his and then try and ram him before he realizes what’s happening. If I can hole her he’ll
have no option but to make for the shore!’
Pulling out my pistol, I checked that each of the chambers contained a bullet, hoping against hope that last night’s submersion in the river had done it no harm. There was little time for preparations, however, as Ockham ordered me to throw more coal into the hungry fire.
‘Careful you’re not seen!’ yelled Ockham when I made to climb out of the engine well on to the deck. His meaning was immediately obvious, as there was no more than a hundred feet between the two vessels and being recognized was a real possibility. Making as if to wipe oil from my face with a handkerchief, I walked as casually as possible across the deck until concealed from view by a pile of timber. By my reckoning our present course would take us along the port side of the Shearwater with a clearance of around thirty feet. But already I could feel us inching to starboard. The closer we got the more obvious our change of course became. Men had appeared on the prow of the Shearwater, and Perry was among them. Our intent had been understood and there was much shouting and waving as the Shearwater lurched away from us.
‘Brace yourself!’ cried Ockham, giving a sharp pull on the wheel. There was a dreadful crash on impact, followed by an ear-splitting squeal as the blunt prow of the barge scraped its way along the entire length of the other vessel.
Splinters of wood lanced into the air as bullets peppered the deck around me, and I looked up to see the Shearwater pulling away from us, her keel almost exposed as she pitched heavily to starboard. She had been scarred but not obviously punctured by our contact. The gunfire was being delivered by two men positioned on her stern. One of them was Perry, who by now could not have failed to recognize me. I replied with two bullets from the pistol, to no apparent effect.
Seeing that we had merely grazed the Shearwater, Ockham was taking out his frustration on the wheel, hammering it with his fist and cursing his failure. To the surprise of both of us however the Shearwater was not taking advantage of her close shave and speeding off downriver but was coming about in a wide circle.
‘They’re coming after us!’ I yelled.
Our course had steadied and was now taking us upstream. I ran up to the wheelhouse, hopping over the timbers now littering the deck. ‘Downstream, Ockham, we need to go downstream!’
Without question he put a spin on the wheel to bring us about, paying little heed to other vessels, which were forced to change course to avoid collision. By the time we straightened up, the Shearwater was close behind us. The riflemen were now shooting from her prow, bullets thumping into the timber blades of the paddle wheel.
‘Can we stay ahead of them?’
Ockham shook his head and pressed himself into the wheel as though trying to urge our lumbering vessel on. ‘But something’s not right,’ he added, glancing back over his shoulder. ‘They should come alongside and shoot us to pieces from a safe distance. What are they doing back there?’
‘Trying to shoot off our paddle wheel?’ I suggested as another plume of wood chips puffed from our stern.
‘I hope not,’ he said with a tired smile. ‘They’ll be chasing us all the way to France. We need more steam. Let’s see what this tub’s got left.’
I dropped down into the well again and shovelled more coal, finding it hard to believe that after spending all that time down in the engine room of my nightmares, here I was, humping the black stuff into the fires for real. After another half-dozen shovelfuls the needle on the pressure gauge shivered and then crept on. Returning to Ockham’s side, I reported that she would do no more. Nonetheless, the skipper seemed satisfied. ‘She’s picked up a fraction,’ he said, checking again over his shoulder, ‘we’ve pulled away a little. Look, we’ve widened the gap.’
‘What does it mean?’ I asked, now as puzzled as he about our pursuer’s behaviour.
‘It means we’ve hurt them. The collision must have ruptured a pipe or cracked a boiler. She can’t go any faster!’
When viewed on a map the bends and curves of the Thames resemble a great intestinal tract folded into the body of the city – an especially fitting analogy given the amount of raw sewage transported by the river. Now, for the first time since coming about, I took note of our position and looked out over our bow to see one of the most dramatic of these folds, at the tip of the Isle of Dogs, approaching. And there, across the island, on the other side of the marsh, was the sight I had been waiting for.
Rounding the promontory, with the grand Georgian facade of Greenwich naval academy on our starboard side, the massive hull of the Great Eastern hove into view. Brunel’s ship was not long returned from Weymouth, where she had successfully completed a fresh sea trial following her repairs and now, like a salmon returned home, was swimming again in the river of her birth. Even across half a mile of water and over the sound of our own engine we could hear the dull growl of the three engines buried deep within her. Though the paddle wheels were stationary the waves from their fresh backwash lapped at our hull. Having just minutes before cast off from her berth, she was now idling just outside the middle of the Channel with her bow pointing towards us.
‘My God,’ said Ockham. ‘She’s picked her time to go for a cruise.’
‘No, my friend,’ I replied, ‘we picked her time.’
He threw me a puzzled look and then ducked as a bullet slammed into the frame of the wheelhouse. The noise from the ship’s engines increased and the two great paddle wheels began to turn, each in opposition to the other. The river boiled as the ship slowly began to rotate on her central axis, and like the needle on a compass the bow swept across our front to point north, while the stern came round towards the southern shore.
‘What the hell is she doing!’ exclaimed Ockham.
I recalled that Brunel had once told me he was building a ship and not a bridge. ‘It’s Russell. He’s closing the gate.’ We both watched aghast as the 685-foot-long ship manœuvred in a channel which at high tide could be no more than 1,000 feet wide. But the tide was low and mudflats extended out from the south shore, leaving precious little room for manœuvre and ultimately the narrowest of gaps at the bow and stern – so little in fact that it looked almost possible to cross the river dryshod across her deck.
‘I sent Russell a telegram from the House of Lords,’ I said in answer to Ockham’s unspoken question. ‘I didn’t know how he could help but, given that Perry tried to blow up his ship, I guessed he would try something.’
Movement of the paddle wheels had almost ceased, but every now and again a partial rotation of the starboard wheel, which sat before us, was accompanied by the violent frothing of water to the stern as the screw worked in opposition to keep the vessel in position and prevent her from colliding with the shore. The Shearwater had come to a dead stop behind us and Ockham was careful to keep as much distance as possible between her and us and the newly created river wall to our front.
Perry was clearly not intending to sit forever trapped like a ship in a bottle, and as the Shearwater’s engine started up again I fully expected her to turn and head back upriver. There was also an increase of activity on her foredeck, where the removal of wooden panels from the sides of a cabin-like structure quickly revealed the boat’s true intent. There sat the torpedo, atop a ramp which sloped gently down towards the bow.
Ockham put the paddle wheel back into gear. ‘Damn it! He’s going to use the torpedo against us.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s going to launch it against the ship… finish her off once and for all.’
‘If that torpedo goes up, that’ll be our last chance gone.’
‘That can’t be helped, but if he sinks the ship here the Thames will be blocked for years.’ As if to illustrate the point the channel to the stern of the Shearwater was already becoming choked with river traffic.
Ockham needed only the briefest of moments to come to terms with our latest circumstance. ‘You’re right. We’ve got to stop him. All we can do is keep the barge between the Shearwater and the ship.’
‘That won’t work.’ I said.
‘She has a flat bottom. If the device swims at anything deeper than a foot it will pass harmlessly beneath us.’
Shallow beam or no, Perry wasn’t taking any chances and had begun to manœuvre the Shearwater clear of our stern, lining her up with a point on the ship just to the rear of the paddle wheel. To one side of the torpedo someone was pumping away at the box attached to the device by an umbilical, just as we had seen the night before at the yard.
‘They’re building up the compression. We don’t have long,’ I yelled, leaving the wheelhouse and dashing across the deck. ‘Try and put her in the torpedo’s path.’ Ockham turned on the wheel and watched as the torpedo slid down the ramp and sent up a column of water as it hit the river. ‘It’s in!’ he shouted. ‘The cigar fish is swimming!’
Working as fast as tired limbs would allow, I tied the rope hanging from the steam-powered crane around the iron casket but, lacking the knowledge to operate it, had to call on Ockham to do so. ‘We’ve got to get the casket in the water!’
With the vessel positioned astride the torpedo’s estimated course, Ockham joined me. At first he seemed unwilling, as though he were unsettled by the idea of sacrificing an object so closely associated with his mother.
‘We’re going to lose the heart whatever we do. But if the Great Eastern goes down then Liverpool will at a stroke become Britain’s first port. Are you going to stand by and let Catchpole benefit from that?’
It was enough to galvanize him into action and within moments the casket was in the air with my hand guiding it towards the side of the boat. The torpedo was fast approaching, its course now marked by a slight disturbance on the surface of the water.
‘A little more to the left…’ I gave the box a last push. ‘That’s it. Let her go!’
Ockham released the brake and, as the rope ran freely through the pulleys, the casket dropped like a stone before jerking to a halt like a hanged man at the end of his drop. With the casket suspended beneath the surface we both ran as fast as we could towards the stern.
