Kilo Class

by Patrick Robinson

  As he spoke the big whale moved forward with the ship, staying close in a kind of gesture of camaraderie. It was a huge demonstration of both might and majesty. And there was something touching about this docile giant. Bill and the women stood watching him, transfixed. “Christ,” said the Kansan. “Can you imagine going after him with a harpoon in a tiny whaling boat with two guys rowing…can you just imagine what it musta been like when the harpoon hit and that sucker charged forward?”

  “A bit more tricky than it is today,” growled Boomer. “Those Japanese butchers never give sperm whales a chance. They blow them apart from the main ship before they even have time to dive. That used to be the big danger to the guys from the old whaling ships…a big sperm whale like this guy can dive two thousand meters and stay there for about an hour and a quarter.”

  As if on cue, the whale suddenly arched forward, and they all heard his great sigh; it sounded like a long drawn-out SAAAAARRH, and then he was gone, his massive tail fin rising fifteen feet out of the water and then sliding slowly beneath the waves, almost without a ripple. And the ocean seemed strangely bereft without him.

  They scanned the water for a long time afterward, and ten minutes later, he blew again. They watched him four more times until he was on the horizon, edging his way north, one of the last of an endangered species—the largest of all the creatures on this planet, being slowly hunted to extinction.

  “I once debated the propriety of banging an ADCAP torpedo straight into a big Japanese whaling ship out in the Atlantic,” said Boomer. “To me, they’re just death ships, slaughtering the whales for no good reason whatsoever, except their own greed. But I decided not to do it in the end. Woulda looked pretty colorful on my résumé, wouldn’t it?”

  “Oh, outstanding,” said Bill. “Probably coulda kept it quiet. Called it a Black Operation—unaccountable.”

  But Boomer still looked thoughtful. “I hope they don’t get him though. I sure hope they don’t get him.”

  They sailed on without the whale for the rest of the evening, taking turns on watch until midnight, when they handed over the wheel to Roger and Jeff, who would work 0001 to 0400, and then 0400 to 0800. “Call me instantly if the wind gets up,” was Boomer’s last instruction.

  By 0800 the following morning they had made 280 miles from Port Elizabeth and were holding their southeasterly course. There was an ocean swell now as the water grew deeper, but there was little chop, and the only difference in the weather was the wind backing round to the west, and increasing to just less than twenty knots.

  “Hoist a reaching spinnaker, and see if we can make some serious headway this morning,” Boomer ordered. But shortly after 0900, the barometer began to fall. Bill, staring at his Antarctic Pilot, thought this might herald a whole series of depressions in which the wind might swing northwest again. He thought they would see some torrential squalls of rain. He was right about that, and the weather began to cloud over very quickly.

  They put up the number three jib in place of the ’chute, shoved it back into the “sewer” under the foredeck, and Boomer ordered all hatches battened. Bill Baldridge came on deck in his foul-weather gear and suggested everyone go below, except for Roger and Jeff, who were to reef the mains’l. Gavin was still asleep.

  Bill told them to trim the main out a bit and fit a preventer for heavy weather. “Be ready to take down the main if the wind goes above thirty-five knots.” They were ready for anything, except, perhaps, for the speed of the weather change. The wind suddenly gusted and increased, then howled in from the northwest at thirty knots, gusting to forty. In driving rain Yonder raced forward, making fourteen knots in huge swells. There were no high waves yet, none with the really big breaking crests that can be so dangerous. And Bill rather enjoyed sliding through these mountains of water, all alone at the helm. In a top-class sailing yacht like Yonder, he judged, he could handle just about anything.

  As he expected, the squall died as quickly as it had arrived. The skies cleared after less than ninety minutes, and the wind drifted back around to the west. They jibed without incident, and the sea slowly became less heavy. Glancing over his left shoulder he sensed another buildup of clouds to the northwest, which he judged might approach in a couple of hours. In general terms, their first serious squall had not been too difficult. He ordered the spinnaker to be hoisted again in the much lighter fifteen-knot breeze, which now blew over their stern. But the real difference was the temperature. It was just that much cooler, around seventy degrees, although the sun was high.

  Boomer and Laura came on deck together. Jo had fallen asleep again. Bill was glad of the chance to hand over the helm, take off his jacket, and have some coffee and French toast, which Thwaites had brought up to him.

  Boomer had his foul-weather gear with him, judging that they might end up in another squall before long. Bill wanted more coffee and went below, announcing he was going to take a break.

  He was an inveterate reader of newspapers and magazines, and he had brought a whole pile of them with him from Kennedy Airport. He had the Kansas paper, his local paper, the Garden City Telegram, the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Sports Illustrated, and a couple of midwestern farming papers. An article in the Washington Post caught his attention.

  It was long, and he read it right through. Then he yelled up to Boomer, “Hey, you read anything lately about that research ship which vanished down in the Antarctic ’bout a year ago…the Cuttyhunk?”

  “Not lately, but I know about it. Find something new?”

  “Not really, just a pretty good article in the Post…. guy seems to think she’s still floating somewhere, and he makes out an interesting case.”

  “Yeah, I read some stuff by someone coupla months ago. Is his name Goodyear or something?”

  “You’re thinking of the blimp, dingbrains. He’s called Goodwin.”

  “Yeah, that’s him. Goodwin. He wrote a series of syndicated features on Cuttyhunk. I read ’em all. He was saying that if the research ship had really gone to the bottom in her last known position in some bay down there, there must have been more wreckage come to the surface than a small piece of a deck life buoy.”

  “Right. He’s still saying it. And he’s also saying that if the ship really was under attack, then it must have been mass murder: thus far there have been no survivors reported. It’s almost unthinkable that no one has found out anything. Not a whisper. He thinks there’s more to it than meets the eye.”

  “I thought when I read the stuff last time, there was more to it. But Admiral Morgan did not agree. He thinks she went down with all hands. Anyway, save it for me, Bill, will you? I’d like to read what he’s saying now.”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll bring it up now and hold the wheel while you read it. It’s a real good mystery.”

  Bill headed back up to the cockpit with the Washington Post and handed it over to Boomer, who sat for fifteen minutes reading the long feature article. When he finished he said, “Yeah. This is definitely the same guy. He’s a staffer on the Cape Cod Times. This stuff is syndicated. As I remember he’s actually been down to Kerguelen.”

  “Well, he sounds like he’s done a lot of research. And he does make a point. It’s kinda difficult these days to wipe out twenty-nine people in complete secret, and nothing is heard from them, or their ship, ever again. Specially when everyone knows exactly who they all were and exactly where it happened.”

  “Yeah, and they signaled they were under attack, from the Japanese, who have since denied everything.”

  “Like their goddamned whalers,” muttered Boomer.

  “He makes that island sound pretty damned creepy, don’t you think?” said Bill.

  “Sure does. Says it’s the end of the earth. Nowhere.”

  “Well, Boomer. It might be the end of the earth to a guy in Hyannis, but it’s not the end of the earth to us. We pass close to it, coupla hundred miles to the north of us.”

  Laura, who had thus far listened in silence, sud
denly said, “Why don’t we call in, find the ship, rescue the people, and return home to universal acclaim? Jo can go on the Today show and explain to a grateful nation about the two Navy heroes she sailed with.”

  Boomer chuckled. “What does a guy have to do to get a cup of coffee around here?” Then he said, “You know, I wouldn’t mind having a look at Kerguelen. Would we have time, Bill?”

  “I’m not sure. But I’ll hop below and check out the chart, then I’ll bring the coffeepot and the Antarctic Pilot back up with me, and we can find out for ourselves.”

  “Thanks, Laura,” laughed Jo. “You’ve just talked these two nitwits into a nice little holiday on the most barren, desolate, freezing coastline in the southern hemisphere—there’s nothing there except penguins. I read that stuff about Kerguelen in the Cape Cod Times. And there was one fact I remembered—there is a gale force wind there every single day. The guy said it comes out of the southwest, across the high mountains, and then literally roars down the fjords.”

  “Yeah, well we probably won’t be going anywhere near the fjords,” said Boomer. “Matter of fact we might not even go inshore if the weather’s bad, except for shelter in the leeward side.”

  At this point Bill handed the coffee and the southern navigator’s bible up through the hatchway and then climbed through himself. “It’s a couple of thousand miles from here,” he said, “which at our present rate of sailing is about eight days at most. It’s not that far out of our way. Right now we’re heading for the south end of Tasmania, latitude 43.50S, on the Great Circle route, the shortest way. The northern approach to Kerguelen is on 48.85S—that would be about a couple of hundred miles north of us. If we alter course a couple of degrees right here, we’d hardly notice it. I guess it would be fun just to see it.”

  “Okay, guys, this is a democracy,” said Boomer. “Anyone hate the idea of going there?”

  “Yeah, me,” said Jo. “But I can’t wait. Change course, Captain, and let’s go find that Cuttyhunk.”

  They all raised their coffee mugs, and Boomer made an elaborate show of altering course two degrees to the north. Laura snuggled up to Bill in the corner of the cockpit while he studied the Pilot.

  They sailed in silence for a while until the former Lieutenant Commander Baldridge spoke up. “This place is unbelievable,” he said, looking up from the pages of the Antarctic Pilot. “Let me tell you something…our course will take us well north of Prince Edward Islands, which are quite big and warrant just less than two pages in the Pilot. Then we may pass within sight of the Îles Crozet, a coupla fair-size groups of islands fifty miles apart on longitude 45.60S, they got about three pages.

  “Kerguelen has more than three hundred islands and about a zillion bays and fjords. The Pilot names and advises on all landmarks, dangers, bays, potential anchorages, cautions—and it takes up nineteen big pages, fifteen of ’em just naming and describing the places. Can you imagine trying to find a sunk ship in there? It’d take about a thousand years.”

  “Yeah,” said Boomer. “Guess so. But I wouldn’t take this yacht in there. First of all, it’s not ours, and if we hit a rock or something, it would probably rank somewhere near me sinking the Japanese whaler on my résumé. But most of all, they are plainly dangerous, very lonely waters. Any traffic down there at all, Bill? Anything military likely to be around?”

  “I can’t see any traffic routes at all. It simply doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s not on the way to anywhere. Unless there is a specialist penguin feeder or something, I cannot see one reason why anyone should ever go there, except for scientific researchers like those Woods Hole guys.

  “Militarily? Jesus, there’s no one to shoot! I think the place is uninhabited. You couldn’t get an army down there, and there’s no place for an aircraft to land. The only thing that could get there is a warship, but I’d be amazed if there’s been a warship in those waters for sixty years.

  “According to this, there was a big, old whaling station down there in the last century, but I think Ahab and his harpooner Queequeg pulled out a while ago. Militarily there were three German warships down there, Commerce Raiders in World War II—the Pinguin, Atlantis, and Komet. The Brits chased ’em out and then mined the place in case they went back. The Pilot has mine warnings all over the place. Not for floating mines; they’ve all been cut and exploded, but the hydrographers seem to think there’s quite a few left rolling about on the bottom.”

  “Yeah, well that settles it,” said Boomer. “We’re staying offshore. Definitely. I don’t like loud bangs. Hey! You don’t think that’s what happened to the Cuttyhunk, do you?”

  “No chance. I believe Goodyear on that one. He says those guys must have been under attack, otherwise they would not have sent a satellite message to say they were. Also if they’d hit a mine there would have been wreckage all over the place.”

  “Right. There would have. One of those damned things can blow a ship to smithereens. When I was a kid in a frigate we once found four of ’em right under the surface in a bay in the Azores. The Royal Navy sent down a couple of minesweepers to clear them, and after they cut the wires we had a contest with rifles, see who could hit and explode one. I nailed one of those suckers from about a hundred yards, and I can still remember the spray from the blast raining down on the ship.”

  “Yeah. Well, we’re definitely not going inshore,” confirmed Bill. “I don’t like big bangs either.”

  “Well,” said Jo, “if you two wimps are afraid of a few underwater explosions, I guess Laura and I will just have to settle for a long offshore view of this romantic place. We’ll turn the CD up loud and hit the king penguins with a burst of Pavarotti.”

  “Don’t count on anything down there,” said Boomer. “We may not even see it. You get huge banks of fog, low cloud over the water, and sometimes even snow. I’m glad we all brought warm clothes. It can drop to freezing very quickly.”

  “What about icebergs?” said Laura.

  “We’re running well north of the Antarctic convergence,” said Bill, confusingly. “And we’re out of the northern range of the icebergs. You don’t see ’em much at this time of year, and I’d be surprised if we met any on our route. Might be a bit different if this were July.”

  By now the weather was closing in again. The spinnaker was down and stowed while Boomer was still pulling on his foul-weather gear, and the wind was rising out of the northwest as they jibed yet again. He yelled for Roger and the boys to “fit the tri-sail in place of the main.” Then he instructed them to get the mains’l below. “Don’t hoist the tri-sail…just have it well lashed in case we need it. Get the larger storm jib up and set. Then we’ll roll the jib away. Batten everything down, and get a couple of long warps ready in the cockpit for trailing astern…hold us down, right? From now on it’s full harness, clipped on, for anyone on deck.

  “The rest of you might as well go below…close the hatch…no sense anyone else getting soaked…I’ll take her for the next couple of hours myself.”

  He spoke to Roger Mills, told him to stand by in case the weather got worse. But he could feel the wind coming up, and he judged this next squall might be a bit worse than the one earlier that morning. He was right. The wind and rain came lashing in on big, breaking seas with great swells thirty feet high between trough and crest. Yonder rode them out easily enough, but Boomer kept the tri-s’l down, making less sail area to catch the forty knots blowing fiercely over the stern.

  He held the southeast course, with Roger Mills standing next to him in the cockpit. Forty-five minutes later he saw the crest of a big wave break right astern of them, with a great roll of steep, white water. “I want to stay before the wind if we can,” he said. “I had a look at that jib before we sailed…she looks good and she’s brand-new. Should hold okay.”

  The wind continued to increase and was soon blowing steadily at fifty knots. The sea was up too, big waves now cresting and breaking high above them astern. But Yonder kept rolling forward, staying out ahead, and Boomer sai
led her with a lifelong expertise that made it look too easy. Roger and Gavin stood next to him in the cockpit, still in driving rain, all three of them admiring the brilliant way this big new yacht sliced her way onward, shouldering off water that occasionally slid over the bow.

  Just before dark, Boomer felt the wind shifting. “Oh, Christ,” he said, “it’s backing round to the southwest, that’s not good.” At this point Bill Baldridge came on deck, battened down in his foul-weather gear. “This wind’s changing,” he said. “I’ll take her for a while, Boomer, but I’m afraid she’s going southwest. I can feel it. According to my navigation stuff, that means she’ll blow hard and colder, and we might get some confused seas…bump us around a bit.”

  “Yup. I was just thinking the same. Everyone okay down below?”

  “Fine. They’re both reading. No seasickness, yet. Laura says she’s never been seasick, but then some people don’t. But she’s only sailed a Scottish loch!”

  Boomer laughed. “Okay, Bill. I’ll go below, and you wanna arrange a watch change? Thwaites has early dinner for Roger and Gavin, who are then going to turn in. Jeff can come up here now, give me a hand, and take the wheel while we have dinner around 2000. And the boys can take over at midnight.”

  “Unless this gets a lot worse,” said Boomer. “Then we better get back here right after dinner.”

  Bill took over the helm, and as he did the wind seemed to come up fractionally, and there was a sudden chill in the air. “It’s backing around, right now,” he yelled. “STAND BY, JEFF! I’m gonna jibe onto starboard, get down on that winch and haul the jib sheets across, under control all the way. Then when she swings over, ease the starboard sheet to port…and stand by to let her go some more when I yell.”

  Bill turned Yonder a couple of ticks to starboard. The wind eased momentarily, then blasted around the trailing edge of the storm jib with a tremendous bang. Bill barked, “Right…now tighten it some…yeah, that’s good right there, Jeff…ease it a little…better…that’s real good. Hey, we just hit sixteen knots…shit, this baby flies, doesn’t she? Even on a storm jib.”