The Cruise of the Albatros: Book Two of the Westerly Gales Saga

by E. C. Williams

  “Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a hundred things to do in sick bay.”

  She hurried away before he could see the tears in her eyes. If Sam had expressed the slightest desire to find some way to continue an intimate relationship, she would have instantly volunteered to resign her commission, if necessary – as much as she loved the Navy – and wait for him ashore, whether as his wife or his mistress. She felt, too, that it was foolish in the extreme for her to remain on the Albatros; she was afraid that Sam had only to ask and she would return to his bed. Indeed, she was quite confident of her ability to manipulate him into asking her, but not at all sure that she could resist the temptation to do so. She knew that the right, the only sensible thing to do to save them both much pain, was to exchange into the Joan, but she had found herself unable to insist on this in the face of Sam's obvious reluctance to have her leave the Albatros.

  She returned to sick bay, and her duties, deeply depressed. She could foresee a tense, frustrated, and unhappy cruise.

  Sam, for his part, was thinking along much the same lines. He berated himself for persuading her to remain on the Albatros when a transfer to the Joan was so obviously the only solution to their dilemmas, both personal and professional. He had known that even as he had begged her to remain – he couldn't help himself. The prospect of no longer seeing her on a daily basis, if only on a distant and professional basis, was too much for him to bear.

  Was he in love with her? If so, the way forward was clear: ask her to marry him and publicly announce their engagement. Kerg attitudes towards sex were bourgeois but practical. Once a couple was engaged, they could live together quite openly, for years if necessary, until it became practical for them to marry, and no social stigma attached even if the engagement was ultimately broken off. Marie could even carry on as medical officer of the Albatros while they slept together, without causing any scandal. There was ample precedent in the merchant marine for seagoing couples, whether married or engaged, serving in the same vessel. But would that work on a naval vessel, a ship of war?

  But more fundamentally, was he in love with her? He certainly felt tremendous physical desire for her, and a great deal of affection as well – but when he examined his emotions he realized that his deeper feelings for Maddie Dupree had not changed. Was it possible to be in love with two women at the same time? If so, he had to choose, because open polygamy was most definitely not socially acceptable on the Rock, however many Kerg men discreetly maintained both a wife and a mistress.

  And was Marie in love with him? Sam was not particularly experienced with women, aside from the brief in-port liaisons that had constituted his sexual history to date, but he held no romantic illusions about their sexuality; he knew that it was perfectly possible for a woman to enjoy sleeping with a man with whom she was not romantically involved, just as the converse was true. After all, she had quite readily agreed to end their sexual relationship after just one night together. Was that the behavior of a woman in love?

  It was all very confusing, and he went about his duties in a mental and emotional turmoil.

  Fortunately for them both, there was so much to do that they were forced to push their personal issues aside and focus on getting ready for the Albatros's upcoming cruise. With the sailing date rushing upon them, there were a great many things to do and very little time to accomplish them.

  In Marie's case, her loss of one intern, Georges Martin, and two SBAs to the Joan meant that she had three lompkinders to train, and a consequent re-organization of her little hospital. Her immediate problem was how to replace Martin in his collateral duties as training petty officer and LPO of “M” division. Martin, during his experience as medic for the landing force, had benefited from the example of LPO Landry's fierce and uncompromising leadership style, and had whipped the SBAs into shape from both the medical and naval points of view.

  Marie had re-assigned these duties to Annie Jeffries, whom she regarded as the best of the two experienced interns left to her, both female. Annie was a brilliant diagnostician and excellent at the kind of rough and ready surgery they often had to perform under time pressure. In fact, Marie had to admit, much as she hated to lose her, that Annie was now quite ready for her Medical Association boards and elevation to the exalted title of “doctor”.

  But Annie did not have a very forceful personality. The SBA's, unfortunately cursed with the macho attitudes towards women still common among Kerg working-class males, regularly took advantage of her pleasant disposition. Marie was thus often forced to intervene and bring errant SBA's up short with a round turn – a threat to bust them to ordinary seaman and return them to the deck and the tender mercies of the Boatswain and his mates usually did the trick – and at the same time try to inject some steel into Annie's spine. This, while trying to put too much in the way of medical supplies in far too little storage space; treating the ordinary steady flow of minor cuts, scrapes, bruises, and sprains; and “treating” (with placebos) the Albatros’s little band of malingerers and hypochondriacs, kept Marie constantly busy.

  Sam, too, was constantly occupied, although he had the benefit, in Al Kendall, of an energetic and competent XO. Kendall oversaw the loading of stores, the almost-daily restowing of the hold necessitated by their arrival (complicated by the fact that number one hold was reduced in area by the new engine room), initial training of the lompkinders, and, in his spare time (usually late into the evening) he struggled with the Boatswain over the watch, quarter, and station bill.

  Much of Sam's time was taken up in planning, with Mr. Daniel, the test firing of the 37 mm rifle. Workers from the shipyard were aboard, erecting a temporary blast shield of Daniel's design on the stern just forward of the wheelhouse. The shield, and the workers and their materials and tools, were sadly in the way, impeding normal on-deck activities to an infuriating degree.

  Sam also had a new lieutenant aboard, but he was not someone new to the Albatros: Michael Christie, formerly Midshipman Christie. The Mid had calculated that he would have the watchstanding sea time to sit for Master at the end of the last cruise, and had spent every spare moment cramming for the exam. He had then persuaded the KBS Board of Examiners to schedule his examination to fall within his leave period. The grueling exam, which included both written and oral portions, he had passed with flying colors.

  Both Sam and Bill had already marked Christie down as a candidate for early promotion, so on learning that he had acquired the necessary credential to be a commissioned officer, the two of them convened the very first lieutenant's board in the history of the Republic of Kerguelen Navy, and put the young man through another ordeal. Theirs was purely an oral examination, and overlapped in subject area somewhat with the master's exam he had already passed, but included such purely naval topics as gunnery, discipline, and Navy administrative procedures.

  Then they had sadistically made him wait outside the captain's mess of the Albatros – Bill had come over from the Joan for this historic event – for fully half an hour, to pace nervously and agonize over what he imagined were their solemn deliberations. Sam and Bill had agreed, immediately and without debate, on Christie's promotion, and spent the remainder of the time talking about other matters entirely. It was the last hazing of Christie's career as a gadget. When they decided he had suffered enough, they called him in and congratulated him as “Lieutenant Christie”, to his joy and relief.

  A second lieutenant's board was held for Midshipman Peltier. He was still a bit short of the seatime to sit for Master, but both Sam and Bill agreed that his performance in command of the motor sloop deserved recognition. After the oral exam, and the usual nail-biting wait, were inflicted on him, he was promoted to the new rank of “passed midshipman”, which meant that he would automatically be promoted to Lieutenant on being awarded his master's ticket, and made him the senior line warrant officer on the Joan.

  These were two of the pleasanter of the tasks that took up Sam's time; there were many more not nearly as happy. At last, howeve
r, they were ready for the shift out to Royal Pass, the seaward entrance to Morbihan Gulf, to conduct the test firing. The motor launch towed the Albatros to a point off the Prince of Wales peninsula, accompanied by the Joan's motor whaleboat, where all three vessels anchored in a north-south line, in about 25 meters of water, three miles apart. The smaller vessels had been provided with extra anchor cable for good holding at this depth, and Albatros paid out nearly all her cable. Sam, in consultation with Mr. Mooney, had chosen a time at slack high water for the beginning of the test, in order to avoid flood tide, when the tidal current flowing against the prevailing stiff westerly wind usually raised a steep, confused chop.

  The anchored vessels swung with the wind to head to the west, sterns pointing out to the open sea. Lieutenants Christie and Low took careful bearings of visible landmarks to fix the Albatros's position as precisely as possible. The positions of the small craft, to port and starboard of the schooner, were then fixed by visual bearings and distance off by Table 16 in Bowditch – they had erected their masts to create a measurable angle.

  The 37 mm gun was then run out along her tracks to a firing position on the starboard gun balcony, trained directly aft, out to sea, and loaded with one of the test shells from the series with the smallest propelling charge. Like all of the test rounds, the projectile itself was a dye marker which would color the splash a bright yellow for maximum visibility against sea and sky.

  At the estimated time of slack high water, Sam ordered the protocol for test firing to begin. Flag Bravo, a red swallowtail, was hoisted at the main as the agreed-upon signal to alert the small craft that firing was about to begin. The lookout in the maintop was queried, and reported “no sail in sight to leeward”. Then the word was passed, “All hands lay below”, and everyone except Sam, Mr. Daniel (miserably seasick but determined to see the tests through), and Lieutenant Christie, whose duty it was to take bearings on the shell splashes, took refuge below decks. These three huddled behind the blast shield which was made of two and a half centimeter thick planks faced with 7 millimeters of hardened steel plate. Sam and Christie looked aft, to note the shell splash, and Daniel, a pale green in complexion, with his bucket close at hand, peered forward at the gun through a narrow slit in the shield. He held one end of a lanyard; the other end snaked forward through a series of snatch blocks, giving it a fair lead, to the firing handle of the gun. They had rigged and tested this firing arrangement on the passage out to anchorage.

  “Ready when you are, Mister Daniel,” Sam said quietly.

  “Stand by. Three, two, one, fire,” replied Daniel, and pulled firmly on the lanyard. The gun fired with a dull “crump”, and a brilliant yellow splash bloomed astern, no more than a cable's length off.

  The word was passed, “Lay topside, the fire support party”, and everyone involved in preparation for a test firing poured up through the hatchways. Daniel and the Gunner hurried forward to inspect the gun's breech and barrel, accompanied by a couple of gunners who cleaned the gun carefully, and, when Daniel and Du Plessis had completed their inspection, reloaded it with a round from the next series of test shells. Flag Bravo was hauled down.

  In the mean-time, the small craft semaphored their visual bearings of the shot-splash to the Albatros, and Mr. Mooney plotted them on the chart. The range of the first round proved to be pretty close to Sam's visual estimate of 200 yards.

  Daniel returned aft, vomited perfunctorily into his bucket, and, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, said to Sam, “So far, so good; the breech and barrel, once cleaned, look good as new. Of course, the acid test will come with the more powerful rounds toward the end of the series.”

  The tests proceeded in this tedious fashion. The lookout at the maintop reported no vessels in sight to leeward, flag Bravo was hoisted, the deck was cleared of all extraneous personnel, and another round was fired. Bearings were taken and plotted, and so on. As each round in the ascending series was fired without any visible effects on the breech and barrel, attaining greater and greater ranges, Daniel became more and more pleased and excited until he forgot to be seasick. The final round in the final series was fired just after slack low water, and the beginning of the flood – perfect timing, for had they not finished the planned tests they would have had to wait through the flood until high water to resume, in order to have relatively stable platforms for the bearings.

  The final round attained a range of slightly more than five thousand yards – two and a half nautical miles. The breech, barrel, and firing mechanism still showed no ill effects, no sign of pitting, cracking or crazing. Sam was quite pleased, and Daniel was ecstatic.

  “Well done, Mister Daniel,” Sam said, extending his hand in congratulation. “A very satisfactory outcome indeed.”

  “Thank you, Captain. But you must congratulate the men at the foundry, as well, for executing my design to such a high degree of precision.”

  “I will, certainly. And now we must have another one of these, for the Joan of Arc. Assuming I can get council approval immediately, how soon can you have it ready for her?”

  “Helas, not for weeks, perhaps months, Captain.”

  “Well, never mind. Go ahead and get started on it, so it'll be ready when Joan next returns to the Rock.”

  “Certainly, Captain. We'll begin the day we receive an order from the Council.”

  This irritated Sam momentarily; did Daniel doubt his word that he would secure approval? Then, on reflection, he realized that a gun of this size represented a very large financial risk for Daniel. The foundry was his subcontractor, and would want a deposit from him up front. It was unfair to expect him to bankroll the Navy's armaments program.

  “Fair enough, Mister Daniel. I'll go see Madame Moreau as soon as possible, and get a firm order for the second 37 mm gun.”

  The Albatros, the motor sloop, and the motor whaleboat now heaved up their anchors, the small craft bouncing around in the confused chop created as the flood tide met the westerly swell out of the Gulf. The Albatros for the first time enjoyed the luxury of heaving away by electrical power rather than “Norwegian steam”, the newly-installed Stirling-cycle MG set sighing quietly to itself down in the engine compartment. The motor sloop then took the schooner under tow for the trip back to port. The strain on the towline steadied the sloop considerably in the confused sea, but the crew of the smaller motor whaleboat had a very wet and uncomfortable ride.

  The XO immediately turned the Carpenter and his mates to on disassembling the hated blast shield. It's components would be landed for re-use when eventually the Joan tested her own 37 mm gun.

  On the three hour trip back to French Port, Sam paced up and down the windward side of the quarterdeck, and thought about all the things that must be accomplished during the next week. For he had decided, without yet telling anyone, that the Albatros and the Joan of Arc would sail for the Indian Ocean in eight days.

  CHAPTER 14

  Sam felt a great sense of relief, of liberation, as Point Suzanne drew abeam to port and the Albatros made the first of a series of turns toward the north, working her way up the coast of the Courbet Peninsula toward the open Southern Ocean. He glanced astern and saw the Joan, two cable lengths behind, and knew she was preparing to turn in Albatros's wake.

  The past week had been a hectic one, and everyone on both schooners was exhausted and sleep-deprived; a long sea passage, even one through the Roaring Forties, would be restful by comparison.

  The two vessels had spent the past seven days maneuvering in the western Gulf and just outside Royal pass, learning from scratch the rudiments of sailing and maneuvering in company. They exercised, as they did so, the new Navy flag code, which utilized the flags of the ancient International Code of Signals, but with a new code book of two- to five-letter signals specific to naval requirements. The new code was necessitated both by the shortcomings of the ICS as a naval code, designed as it was for merchant ship communications, and by security considerations. The pirates had captured Kerg vessels, every one of wh
ich was required by KBS regulations to have a copy of the ICS on board, so it must be presumed that the pirates could immediately decipher any flag signal composed from the old code.

  In darkness, the two vessels communicated by flashing light, using the same code. The installation of the MG sets had allowed them to install bright combination search/signal lights that they could use without fear of draining their battery banks. They drilled at maneuvering in company, communications, and gunnery in both daylight and darkness, for seventeen or eighteen hours a day, coming to a safe anchorage off Point Le Clerc, inshore of the little islands of Antares and Murray, to allow the hands a few hours in their hammocks while a skeleton anchor watch was set for two-hour stints. Idlers who had started their careers as seamen, such as the Carpenter, the Sailmaker, and the SBAs, were pressed into anchor-watch duty, since they could grab naps during the day. This grueling week had been by no means enough to bring the crews of both schooners to a state of readiness fully satisfactory to either Sam or Bill – hardly surprising after only a week of training – but they planned to resume the drills once they had passed through the Forties into more temperate waters.

  Before this training schedule commenced, however, Sam had to engage in the kind of frustrating argument he had begun to refer to as “another arm-wrestling match” with the Council of the Republic. Sam had encountered stiff resistance to his request for a second 37 mm gun, to complete the armament of the Joan of Arc. Not even Councilwoman Simone “Mother” Moreau, the most pro-Navy member, so much so that she was becoming known as the “Mother of the Navy”, was eager to approve yet another very large expense. It was pointed out to Sam, with much flourishing of ledgers, that the Navy had already consumed the equivalent of ten years of normal expenditure by the Republic; that the Rock's resources were limited.