Long Way Place (Cannibal Country Trilogy, Book 1)

by Andrew Wareham

  At Gibraltar they had berthed at the bunkering quay, let the coal rattle down from the big storage silos on the dockside, directly below decks with almost no handling involved. Their main effort had been cleaning the decks afterwards to get rid of the coal dust that seeped everywhere. Only in the very small, out of the way places would they have to shovel their coal on board, and there would be coolie labour available to take the brunt of the work.

  The eight stokers relaxed together in a dockside bar – there was no point in going further, they had shore leave for no more than three hours. Ned sat back, quietly, out of the way, listening.

  Jim and Dick Smith, brothers, he thought, or perhaps cousins, or just sharing a not-uncommon surname, sat next to each other at the table they occupied, silent as ever. Jim never spoke, because he was very nearly moronic. Dick simply remained mute through choice, watching over Jim his sole occupation. They worked as a pair, always together. Next to them were Billy Brown and Knocker Edwards, wholly unalike. Billy in his twenties, open-faced, friendly and noisy, always singing or talking at the top of his voice, Knocker an older man, close to fifty, thin and tired, his face lined and strained, the job too hard for him now, but staying in it for lack of any other. Jock Bain sat next to Pug Harris, both drinking two for one taken by the other six. Jock was a simple booze-hound, an ex-miner who drank with a single-minded determination. Pug had been a fairground boxer, standing in his booth for years, fighting all comers – he was punch-drunk as well as alcoholic, his coordination slightly astray, his speech thick. Next to Ned was the stoker he worked with, Big Ben Robinson, an idle bully, more than six feet tall and strong and overbearing, confident that he could push the short, skinny youngster about, force him to do more than his share. Ned was biding his time, waiting for the right moment, knowing that it would come.

  Ned drank a couple of pints – Bass ale was easily available on the Rock and he had to drink something, to keep company with the others. They were not buying rounds, he discovered, watching Jock and Pug as they followed red wine with Spanish brandy, a dozen of each in the two hours they sat there.

  “Mine’s a brandy, Ned!” Big Ben trying it on, pushing him to a confrontation in front of the others.

  He was a head taller and at least fifteen stone of him to Ned’s nine. He was not fat – it was difficult to be fat in the stokehold, Ned suspected – but he was not quick on his feet. Ned stood, saying nothing, reached across as if to pick up his glass, suddenly flicked his arm up to Ben’s face, the short blade of the jack-knife he now carried a quarter of an inch from Ben’s eyeball, held unmoving.

  “You want brandy, mister – you buy it. Don’t piss me about!”

  He stood back, tucked the knife out of sight. The conversations that had broken off started up again, the bouncer at the door sat back and the eight stokers finished their drinks and left peacefully, no reference made to the little squabble.

  They sailed and Ned took care to be as quiet as ever, scrupulously did his full share of the work, watched Big Ben unceasingly, sure that he would try to avenge the insult to his dignity. The last thing the Bristol gang had said to him as they farewelled him had been a warning that the stokehold was hard, that there was always some bad bastard there who would try it on with a smaller man. Their leader had in fact offered Ned the knife, a peace-offering as Ned would be back when the Star made port at the end of the year. Ned had accepted the gift, openly acknowledging that they had been more than straight in their dealing with him – he said, very quietly, that he was obliged to them, they had a claim on him. They had shaken hands, formally.

  Across the Med and then the Suez Canal, temperature rising as they crawled their way through to the Red Sea. There the thermometer rose to one hundred and forty in the space of an hour.

  The Chief Engineer, Pearce, produced the bottle of salt tablets, watched them take two each at the beginning of each watch. He set a gallon jug of water aside for each of them, checked it at the end of their four hours, demanding that it must be empty. Pearce was about sixty, had grown up in steam, knew the Tropics in the stokehold, knew as well that the Red Sea was the worst place on Earth, had learnt just how easy it was to die there. They survived, the heat falling away to a bearable hundred and ten in the Indian Ocean. Ned decided that he had not an ounce of fat left anywhere on him, but he was better-muscled now than ever before, and he had never been a weakling.

  They reached Singapore, docked and waited to offload the cargo from the forehold, its hatch double covered in waterproofing and secured with a pair of thick iron bars padlocked to stanchions welded on in Bristol.

  “Gold bullion, that’s what it is,” Big Ben announced. “Must be, sealed up and locked away like that. They won’t be expecting no one to go for it, not ‘ere. Down through the bos’n’s store, back of the paint room, the hatchway there ain’t sealed – I seen it in Aden. Most of the deckies ‘ave got shore leave, it’ll be clear after dark. You in, Billy?”

  Billy, noisy as ever, seemed the obvious choice – irresponsible and wild.

  “No bloody way, mate! What would I do with gold? Even if that’s what it is, which ain’t certain. Leave it alone, mate, that’s what I’d bloody do!”

  Ben ignored Ned, asked the other five, received brief headshakes.

  “More for me, then – don’t look for bloody shares afterwards.”

  They bunkered that afternoon, busy, out of sight, sat back in their small mess room after eating their normal meal of corned beef hash, drinking tea from pint mugs. Ben made a display of putting on a black jacket, then slipped out of the forecastle quarters.

  Two hours later Pearce put his head into their mess, checked who was there. Ten minutes after that the bos’n, in his role of Master-at-Arms, came in.

  “Robinson ain’t coming back – bloody fool! The tell-tale light on the bridge flashed when ‘e opened the small door, and they picked ‘im up inside the ‘old. Military stores, so the Army came for ‘im. He swung at one of them when ‘e got dockside, knocked ‘im down and tried to run. He’ll get ten years, at least, in the prison ‘ere – ‘e’ll be dead in two. Bloody stupid – what did ‘e think ‘e was doing? Gold, ‘e said! Naval guns, for the fort they’re building – eight inch rifle barrels, thirty ton each, they weighs – did ‘e reckon ‘e was going to put one of they in ‘is pocket? They got to be kept really dry, no salt-water corrosion on their bearings, that’s why the ‘atchway had to be doubled. Never thought even ‘e’d be that big a twat! Two thousand tons that hold carries – there ain’t that much gold on the whole of the Earth! Any time we ever carries bullion, it’s in the purser’s safe, a couple of small bars.”

  They had no answer. They suspected, those who thought about it, that he had needed to show off, to prove what a hard man he was, satisfy himself, if nobody else, that he was tougher than the rest, to restate his strength, rebuild the face he had lost.

  Pearce called Ned into his little office in the morning.

  “You are younger than the others, and a damned sight more intelligent, Hawkins. Young Mr Stainer has completed his time as an apprentice and is being moved out of the Star, joining the Aurora as Third – she’s a passenger liner, carries the extra officer. Houghton is stepping up from oiler and greaser to artificer on the opposite watch with Elkins, the second engineer. I need an oiler and greaser to take his place, working my watch. If you make an effort to learn, you can move up in the engine room the same way they have – if you don’t, you go back to the stokehold. It will be easier all round. We have to take another stoker in place of Robinson, who is no bloody loss at all, and in Singapore he is bound to be a Chinaman – so now we can have a pair of them, working together. Do you want it?”

  “Yes, please, sir – I like engines, sir – I learned a bit about the car at Valley House when I was in the garden there.”

  “Good. The master will need to see you – he likes to talk to any of the hands who make a step up. Come with me.”

  Captain Stobart walked out of his quarters and
sat at the desk in the working cabin as Pearce led Ned in.

  “Hawkins – first voyage. Why did you come to sea, Hawkins?”

  “No choice, sir. I was born on the docks in Southampton, down at Northam, sir, managed to get out, in service, sir, as a garden boy near Winchester. I found out after a few months that I could stay there and be a gardener for all my life, at most I might learn to drive, to be second chauffeur, working for pennies and with nothing to look forward to. No trade, sir, not much schooling, so I saved up the wage I got and took a train, sir. If I’d gone back to Southampton I might have ended up back where I started – and in prison before the year was up, I expects, sir. So I went to Bristol and signed on in the stokehold. I reckoned that I could put me money together for a couple of years and sign off at Cape Town or in Canada or somewhere I could make something of meself. But this sounds better, sir.”

  “It can be better, Hawkins, will be if you make it so. Five years, thereabouts, and you can make a Third Engineer’s ticket, working your way up. Second and First need some education, might be more difficult, but Third can be done in the engine room – and that will give you a valuable trade in any of the colonies, Hawkins. I will keep an eye on your progress, Hawkins. Good luck to you!”

  Pearce stayed behind as Ned left.

  “Gutter rat, sir, and probably running from the law, but there’s something about him.”

  “A jack-knife, was the word I had, Mr Pearce?”

  “He’s only small, sir, but he’s hard enough, that’s for certain.”

  “Watch him, Mr Pearce – bring him on if you can, but get rid of him if he’s too handy with that knife. He’ll either make a good man or a very bad one, from the looks of him – but he’s only a boy yet. In age, anyway!”

  Ned changed his berth, moving out of the foc’sle space occupied by the stokers into a marginally more comfortable, curtained-off section for the engine room. The food was the same, corned beef in all of its forms on six days of the week, ham or pork on the Sabbath. The quantity was acceptable, and the taste did not matter – food was for eating, not enjoyment.

  The triple expansion steam engine was enormous, to Ned’s eyes, but he soon found that it was quite simple in principle. Water was heated, turned to steam which progressed through the three cylinders, each of increasing size, colder and less powerful in each, giving up its energy and then returning to water in the condenser and circulating back to the boiler. The expanding steam forced pistons to rise and fall and they turned the propeller shafts. Basically very simple, on paper. In practice every working part had to be lubricated so that it could move freely and had to be checked daily for wear, and replaced when necessary. The boilers had to be watched for temperature and the forced-air draught adjusted as necessary - they must be neither too hot nor too cool, and the water had to be pure – must be checked for salt every hour.

  Consumption of coal had to be recorded. Bad weather could lead to a demand for increased revolutions which used up more fuel and might force a course alteration to another, closer bunkering port. Poor quality coal of inadequate calorific value might have the same effect. Maintenance had to be planned according to the ports they would touch at – some had workshops that could be called in, others did not. Above all, the engineers had to be alert and thorough – if the engines failed through their neglect then the ship might die, especially in Far Eastern waters where the volume of traffic could be low and they might sail a fortnight without seeing another steamer.

  For the first years everything was new and wonderful. There was something to learn every day, and Ned found that he could learn, he had a brain, he could soak up knowledge, wanted to do so. He gained the engineer’s ear – could stand on the plate watching the dials, talking to the artificer or engineer amid the racket of shovels and pistons and bearings. He could tell from the noise of the hissing steam, and pick up a change in note, the sound of a bearing that was running hot or a pipe that was leaking. He gained the feel that told him something was out of kilter, the one vibration amongst many that was wrong. The practical aspects came easily to him, but the theory was hard. He lacked all mathematics, knew only simple arithmetic. He had no science at all – elementary school, which he had left at twelve and had habitually truanted from ten, had taught him nothing of physics. He read with difficulty at first, which had the advantage that he remembered every word, but his vocabulary was limited to such an extent that understanding came very slowly.

  He realised after a few months that he would have to get an education if he was to progress beyond the basics. He also realised that it would cost too much, would be impractical as an aim.

  The engine room could be no more than a means to an end, he decided. He would have to learn all that he could and then get out, much as the captain had told him.

  There was a lot he could learn, however, starting with the tools in the workshop. The engineer was expected to turn his own small spares, had a lathe, a grinder; he had drills, a machine saw and a small forge. All of the copper and brasswork was the engine room’s responsibility as well and he learned the basics of pipework and sheet metal beating, was kept busy, could not find the time to be bored.

  He had to put a minimum of time in to get his Third Engineer’s ticket. He was made artificer at the end of his first year, and sat Board of Trade examinations in each of the next three years, effectively every time they made port in Bristol. They were practical tests mostly, with very little theory, and he passed them with good marks, but each was, in the nature of things, harder, and he could see a brick wall looming in front of him.

  He spent very little money in these first four years, which was fortunate, as he earned only a small wage, and he had a hundred saved up on the day he received his Certificate. He took the magic piece of paper to Mr Pearce, seeking advice on what he should do next.

  “Brisbane, Hawkins – the sugar cane fields of Queensland all have steam boilers. There are a number of steam traction engines as well and there are coasters running between Cairns and Brisbane and Sydney. You are not going to progress much further in the engine room, not without going to college for at least two years, and you cannot afford that, I believe. A man of his hands, with a knowledge of steam and some acquaintance with internal combustion as well, can do very well for himself up on the Coast. This is my last voyage, as you will know – sixty four years old, next month, and there is a company pension waiting for me when we get back to Bristol. My successor will be a much better educated man than I, with, perhaps, less tolerance for self-made young Thirds. Time to move on, I believe!”

  Ned thanked him, said he would take his advice. He went next, under instructions, to see the master in his cabin.

  “You wanted to see me, sir?”

  “Mr Hawkins! I certainly did, sir. I would wish to add my congratulations to those you have already received. The Company has approved your appointment as temporary Third Engineer on the Star; only temporary, because we have an establishment of just two officers in the engine room. On completion of the voyage there will be another place for you – where I do not know, sir. My advice to you is that you should not return. Mr Pearce will have explained how much better you can do for yourself in the South Seas. He favours Australia, I incline more towards New Zealand, by the way. We are to make port in Sydney rather than Perth this run – another of our military cargoes. I would suggest that you might wish to talk with the owners of one of the little coasters that work the coast of New South Wales and Queensland, or perhaps try for a berth on a ship on the run across to New Zealand. There are a few whalers, as well, I believe, if you really need the money – not my cup of tea, however. I believe that ticketed engineers are at a premium in Australia at the moment. There is talk of the Australian Navy being made somewhat more independent of the Royal Navy as well – there is the makings of a steady career, Mr Hawkins. There are several profitable possibilities, of that I am certain.”

  “Will I be able to ask you for a reference, sir?”

  “You
will, Mr Hawkins. You have sailed with me for four years and have shown yourself not to be a drinker and to be willing to work hard and long hours when necessary. I will recommend you to any other ship’s master in the certain knowledge that I am sending a very good man to him. You are very young still, Mr Hawkins, do you actually know your exact age, by the way?”

  Ned grinned and shook his head. “Mum said I was born in the summer of ’86, sir, definitely the year before the Golden Jubilee. She reckoned the month might have been July, but that was about as close as she was likely to get. I make it that I was nineteen two months ago, sir, but it might be better if that was twenty-one when I gets to Australia.”

  “So it might, Mr Hawkins – your discharge papers, if ever you need them, will record that as a fact.”

  “Thank you, sir!”

  Sydney was busy – traffic almost as thick as in Bristol, bustling about the harbour, ships from England the bulk of the trade, but a couple of Russians and half a dozen of German mixed cargo carriers.

  “War, Mr Hawkins,” Pearce explained. “Russia has sent her Baltic fleet half way round the world to deal with the Japanese. The Japanese made a surprise attack on their Pacific Fleet, effectively destroyed it, but they are about to pay the price for their treachery! The Germans will have naval stores aboard, I would imagine, to deliver in the Indo-Chinese ports or possibly at Tsingtao, their treaty port in China. The Russians are obviously about the same business. Their colliers will be British – the tonnage of coal they need for a fleet cannot be supplied by any other nation, sir!”

  It occurred to neither of them that the Russian Empire might be defeated by the Japanese. Backward though they might be, the Russians were a great European power while the Japanese were the wrong colour and religion – the result was, they believed, foregone.