Scend of the Sea

by Geoffery Jenkins

  Alistair was eyeing me curiously. 'Look,' he said impatiently, 'if you were in my squadron I'd ground you for a psycho check. Every time the Waratah is mentioned ...'

  I decided to drop it. But I could not forget her, standing by those self-same photographs.

  'Forget it,' I grinned. 'You send me your pin-ups and whatever else you think fit for my mental health, and I'll promise you I'll hang 'em up. But you still haven't told me what really brings you to Durban beyond that wonderful cover-up phrase-manoeuvres.'

  Alistair seemed relieved. 'Very hush-hush.' He grinned a little. 'Bet you have only the fishes to confide in, anyway. My squadron is to make a surprise test of the air defences of every big port along the coast to see how alert they are to an attack from the sea. Russian penetration into the Indian Ocean and all that, you know. The Buccaneer is primarily a carrier aircraft, and it's built to fly under the conventional radar screens. So we're going to operate out to sea, as if the attack was carrier-based, and then come in low. See if Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London are awake to a surprise attack.'

  'East London?'

  Alistair eyed me sharply. 'What about East London?’

  'Is that your particular target?'

  'Oddly enough, it is. How did you guess?'

  I could have said, Bruce Fairlie and his airliner. Douglas Fairlie and his Waratah - the Red Rose of the Sea, he had called her affectionately, since she was named after the national emblem of New South Wales, the waratah flower -that is why I knew. I deliberately shook the shadows out of my mind. I had made my decision. The Waratah and her fate would serve me, serve the oil rigs. I would break her hold on me by wringing from the sea the secret of her fate ...

  I laughed. 'Good. Because that's just where I shall be, round about the same time.'

  'What do you mean?'

  ‘I sail tomorrow; you're due at East London the night after. I'll loaf a bit down the coast doing a little sea-bottom sampling so that I can be off East London when you come in for the attack. You can wave me goodbye for my voyage.'

  Alistair got up and slapped me affectionately. 'Dammit, that's just what I will do. Beat up this bloody little tin can before it gets beaten up by the sea! You've got some odd ideas at times, Ian, but I like the idea of this one! Let's make this a nice friendly, brotherly meeting.'

  'It'll be dark .. .’ I began.

  Alistair laughed. 'I'll give you my ETA for the attack, and you can be in position between the Bashee Mouth and East London. You can put on the ship's lights, and I'll risk the plane's when I spot Walvis Bay. Then we'll know it's each other, huh?'

  'I'll tell you what,' I added, ‘I’ll have all the lights on and in addition the floodlight aft near the radiosonde hut. Then you won't mistake Walvis Bay for any other shipping-and there's plenty up and down the coast.'

  ‘I’ll come in for the attack at zero feet over the sea,' Alistair went on excitedly, like a schoolboy out on a lark. 'That's what my height has to be so that the radar won't pick me up. I'll come in from the north-east, and we'll be far enough out to sea so that the defences won't see 'em. You can also serve a useful function by providing me with a datum point for the attack-I'll know exactly where I am when I pass over you. My instruments are set on the sea, you understand, so as to keep as low as possible.'

  Alistair's warmth and easy, extrovert manner turned us into a couple of boys plotting details of a raid into an apple orchard. We threw at one another speeds, positions, plots, times.

  'Nothing like a spot of Fairlie attack co-operation, eh?' grinned Alistair.

  I was glad I had suggested the rendezvous. I was getting as big a kick out of it as Alistair. The Waratah and the impending storm seemed very far away.

  Alistair turned to go. He jammed on his cap at a rakish angle, and then strutted mockingly back to the photograph of the Waratah.

  He threw a sham salute and made a noise with his lips like a beer can hissing.

  'Hail and farewell, you bloody Red Rose of the Sea,' he jibed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  'A ship without a soul.'

  The words took on in my brain the rhythmic thump, break and swish of the seas as they crashed against the bow of Walvis Bay, not coming aboard yet, but with a strange quality of menace-of growing menace-as they raced in from the south-west. I had cut the sea-bottom sampling operation an hour previously because of the increasing motion of the ship, and I didn't like the colour of the sky in the same quarter. Nor did I like the unnaturally high barometer. Usually, a south-westerly buster is preceded by a high barometer, then suddenly it goes down like a lift and, almost without warning, a gale is plucking like a thousand devils at one's ship and the sea. It was after midday and my rendezvous with Alistair was still a good six hours away, there would be no official weather warning to shipping (if it was to come) for another hour yet. As I stood on the bridge trying to size up the coming blow, the counter-combination of sea-strike and screw-thrust took on a beat which found expression in the words-as one frames phrases to the rhythm of a train's wheels - that turned round in my mind.

  'A ship - without - a soul.'

  Those were the words of some forgotten shipmaster, a phlegmatic, matter-of-fact man of the sea and of action, not given to extra-sensory things, when he first saw the

  Waratah on her maiden voyage in Australia. His own ship had been lying alongside a wharf in Melbourne and the brand-new Waratah had berthed alongside. In the tradition of the sea, and with some curiosity for the crack new ship of the Blue Anchor Line, he had gone to pay his respects to Captain Ilbery. Standing by the wharf, looking at the new liner, this captain had suddenly found himself awed. There was something about the new vessel which lay beyond his extensive knowledge of the sea and ships. ‘A ship - without - a soul.'

  Now, off the Pondoland coast, the words the captain had uttered to himself as he waited to go aboard the Waratah for a friendly noonday drink and chat thumped in my head to the measure of the gathering storm. I had sailed from Durban as I had arranged so light-heartedly with Alistair -as the Waratah had sailed - the previous evening. On her last fateful departure from Durban the passengers had entertained their friends aboard, the band had played, the ribbons had flown, and the farewells had been said-the last farewells in and to this world. By contrast, Walvis Bay had had only the Director of the Marine Institute to wave her goodbye, and she had slipped a hawser or two and slid silently out to sea. I had travelled at reduced speed down the coast, using the bottom-sampler as a pretext, in order to rendezvous, in the early evening about seven o'clock, with Alistair's Buccaneer between the Bashee Mouth and East London.

  What would the weather do?

  I handed the bridge over to young Smit and went to my cabin, which was also the chart-room. Pinned to my table was not the chart she had been at such pains to bring me, but my own, with its complex lines and figures. For a moment I stood looking at them; within hours, would that ominous sea and sky in the south-west put them to a fiery test?

  During the long watches when the weather ship had been on station in the Southern Ocean, I had plotted, on the basis of all the information I could gather, the exact course of the Waratah after she left Durban on that winter's evening of late July 1909. Side by side with her course, I had traced the nearly coincidental course of the Clan Macintyre, the last ship to speak to the Waratah a few hours before she vanished. Gridded above the two main courses I had added the tracks of the three British cruisers which had searched for her in the days immediately after her disappearance, and had struck far south-eastwards of the Cape in a competent square search on the assumption that she had broken down and been carried away towards Antarctica by the great Agulhas Current. Naval ratings had manned special crow's nests by day, and by night searchlights had swept the seas for the missing liner. I had also added the position of a liner called the Guelph off East London. On the night of the Waratah's disappearance this ship had received a garbled Morse lamp message which ended with the letters 't-a-h'. The identity of the ship which s
ent the message - known to be a big, fully-lighted liner on correct course for Cape Town-was never established. I had filled in, too, the track of the special search ship Sabine, a merchantman captained by a Royal Navy officer, which, after the fruitless search by the three cruisers, made a 14,000-mile, 88-day voyage through the seas and islands of Antarctica. She found - nothing. Fifteen steamers and two windjammers had been at sea between Durban and Cape Town when the Waratah vanished; their contribution to the mystery I had added in graphic form - courses, wind, storm. My father's projected track as he had flown southwards from Durban over the sea towards East London, ending at the approaches to the port, was precisely drawn in.

  It was not so much upon the ships that I concentrated now. I had taken to the Southern Ocean with me in Walvis Bay volume after volume of weather statistics dating back to the beginning of the records, which was after the Waratah had vanished. I resuscitated from oblivion every winter storm of consequence for half a century. They, too, were set off in graphic form 'on my chart, and each had its own separate colour.

  Of the storms in which the Waratah had disappeared there were only limited meteorological records. Yet I had painstakingly gathered information from the logs of as many ships in Cape waters at the time of the disaster as I could still obtain. I had also unearthed a copy of the official Board of Trade inquiry into the loss of the Waratah, and from micro-film records I had the day-to-day newspaper reports of witnesses at the hearing.

  The inquiry itself had been singularly barren of specific information on the storm; it had concluded vaguely that it had been one ‘of exceptional violence’.

  It was small wonder when Tafline came to my cabin that she should marvel that a man could spend months at sea with his only apparent companions some sterile books on meteorology; in actuality, the sifting and correlating of this huge burden of obscure, forgotten, time-sunk data had passed away my months on the weather station only too quickly. How could I explain this when she saw my Waratah chart with its 'lines and figures'; how could I explain it all to a girl whose name I then did not even know?

  Dominating all the other storms was the one in which the Waratah had vanished; I outlined it in black.

  Now, because of what was happening up on deck, that black-circled storm was being wrenched out of the sphere of academic doldrum to find expression in the wild waters and insane wind which would surely come. How much could I deduce from it? The official forecast I had heard earlier had spoken of a south-westerly gale off the southern Cape coast, but in winter one can count on four or five of them a month. There was no hint of anything exceptional in this one-yet.

  I held myself back deliberately for a moment on the threshold of plunging into deductions from that funeral-lettered Waratah storm. She had known none of this when she had stood by the cabinet where I had carefully stowed away all my facts about the Waratah - statistics, photostats, microfilms, comments, legend, a model of the ship even. Yet with some curious perception she had gone to my photograph of the Waratah. Why? Forces? Ultra-sensitivity to the pent-up transmissions of my own mind? She had called it grief, mistakenly, but still she had been aware of something pressing . . .

  About a year before, when searching ashore for Waratah information, I had come across a folded sheet of notepaper in an archive. It was a lover's note, written that last sailing day from the Waratah. The very sheet of notepaper came from the ornate lounge of the Waratah itself. As I opened the note, my awareness of what I have come to call 'forces' was overwhelming. I knew what that workaday shipmaster meant when he said the Waratah had no soul. The note was signed with endearments, 'for ever and ever'. There were no proper names. What pair of lovers, I asked myself, had the Waratah separated, 'for ever and ever'? That old captain had seen the Waratah herself, not merely a sheet of notepaper, to reinforce the sort of imponderable emotions I felt at the sight and touch of the note. So strange had been his feelings that he had called his quartermaster and asked him what he thought of the Waratah. Quartermasters, especially those of half a century ago, were a breed of men not given greatly to flights of fancy. They had come up in the hard school of sail; they were tough; the sea was their life.

  Looking at the pride of the Blue Anchor Line, the quartermaster replied quickly and simply, ‘I wouldn't sail in her for ten times my pay.'

  Smit knocked at the door with three radio signals. He came in, glancing inquisitively at my chart. As a yachtsman, he had that indefinable feeling for sea and weather which the plain man of steam lacks.

  'In for a blow, sir?'

  My assessment would depend on the signals he brought. If they fitted the template of Waratah weather which lay plotted in front of me...

  I shrugged before I read them.

  Smit said, 'I was round this way once in early winter, and it was bad enough then, especially in a small boat. I thought my last moment had come at the sight of some of those seas.'

  'It's a question of what happens to an ordinary-looking gale once it rounds the ankle of the coast,' I said. I grinned as he peeped shyly at the lines and whorls of my old storm fronts.

  'Doesn't seem to be any very unusual yet,’ he replied. 'Gale warning, Force 8-40 knots.'

  I knew exactly what it all looked like-on paper. I had been through it all a hundred times. But it was the clincher, those unread, apocalyptic messages Smit had brought and which I played with, which would provide the key, the dovetailing pattern, if it existed: I had sailed from Durban on what was a typical, mild winter's evening (warm enough to swim in the afternoon), no threat on the barometer, and scarcely a wind or sea worth speaking about So had Waratah. I had resurrected from oblivion the port captain's weather report of July 26th, 1909.

  5 p.m. barometer 28.860; thermometer 74; light north-east wind; harbour entrance, smooth; light north-easterly sea.

  My own log read:

  5 p.m. barometer 28.862; thermometer 73; light north-east wind; harbour entrance, smooth; light north-easterly sea.

  Nothing could be more identical.

  From the mustiness of old records I had found the log of the lighthouse-keeper of Cape Hermes telling of the weather that last fateful morning when, in sight of his light off Port St John's, Waratah and Clan Macintyre had exchanged their last signals. 'Hazy but fine,' the keeper had reported.

  A little while before Walvis Bay had steamed slowly past Cape Hermes. 'Hazy but fine,' I had logged.

  Before coming below, I had requested from East London, Port Elizabeth and Cape St Francis, the projecting 'ankle' of coast near Port Elizabeth, their sea and weather conditions that morning. These were what Smit had given me.

  I would have liked to have shared with Smit the secrets of my heavily-scored chart, but there was too much at stake.

  'I’ll join you on the bridge in a few minutes,' I told him. He looked disappointed and a little surprised that I had not yet read the radio signals.

  Of the weather the day before the Waratah had vanished, I had annotated the chart:

  Port Elizabeth - light westerly wind, smooth sea. I unfolded my radio signal. It said:

  Port Elizabeth - light westerly wind, smooth sea. I ran my finger down to the crucial Cape St Francis.

  Cape St Francis - gentle north-east wind, smooth sea. My signal read:

  Cape St Francis - gentle north-east wind, smooth sea. Last was East London, nearest port to where the Waratah disappeared:

  East London - gentle westerly wind, smooth sea. There was scarcely any need for me to read the third radio signal:

  East London - gentle westerly wind, smooth sea. That was Waratah weather coming up from the south-west to meet Walvis Bay.

  I knew what I had to do.

  I went quickly on to the bridge. The sky to the south-west was a diseased cobalt. The sea had a peculiar sheen, like a 'wet look' shoe.

  'Course, south-west, true,' I ordered Smit. I rang the engine-room telegraph. 'Revolutions for thirteen knots.'

  Waratah had been twelve miles offshore in her last fateful hours; I would
hold Walvis Bay twelve miles likewise; Waratah had been afloat at this point, and she had passed Clan Macintyre at thirteen knots, overhauling her and crossing her bows from the starboard, or landward, side. I would hold Waratah's course from now until . . . until... I paused. Only the Waratah gale could tell me that.

  I made a quick calculation. At her Waratah speed -1 could hear the quickened thump of the screws under my feet now -the Walvis Bay would be almost exactly at my rendezvous point with Alistair at seven o'clock.

  ‘I want you to make everything secure,' I ordered Smit. 'Lash down the radar sweep. I want a half-hourly report on the satellite gyro tracker. Rig lifelines along the foredeck and aft so that we can check the radiosonde hut. All unnecessary gear off the decks.'

  'Aye, aye, sir!' Smit grinned. 'Coming up big, sir?'

  'Mighty big, as I read the Indian signs,' I replied. I was a little anxious about the delicate satellite observing gear. It had never been used at sea before, and my two technicians aboard had undergone a special course on its intricacies. The basic principle was a platform which was stabilized by a master gyroscope, which held it pointed at a constant angle at the weather satellite as it made its daily pass between the heavens.

  ‘Double-lash the boats,' I went on. 'Also, bring up a couple of heavy tarpaulins from below in case of emergencies. Tell the cook to get a hand to help him, prepare hard-weather cold rations for the crew. I want hot soup and coffee for the night in the big vacuum flasks. Okay?'

  I picked up the speaking-tube to the engine-room. 'Nick? Can you rig an emergency battery circuit to the gyro platform?'

  I heard the engineer's whistle of surprise. 'What are you expecting, skipper - a visit from the Flying Dutchman!' I was to remember his remark, later.

  'You and the boffins worked it out in Durban in case we ran into trouble in the Southern Ocean, remember?'