The Shipkiller

by Justin Scott

  Ogilvy stared at the water.

  “Pilot, my screws barely have purchase. They are partway out of the water and will remain so until I’m free of this inadequate channel and take on ballast. Therefore, twisting her around, as you so quaintly put it, may not be possible in this wind.”

  The pilot ignored the sarcasm. The captain had ample reason to be anxious. “Then we must stop before the turn into the Nab.”

  “It’s too late to stop.”

  “I beg your pardon, Captain.”

  “It’s too late to stop.”

  “We’ve four miles, Captain.”

  “Under the best of conditions I might stop her by putting both propellers full astern and trying to slalom from side to side. But with one boiler off the line, my propellers out of the water, the wind astern, and no space to maneuver, I do not enjoy the best of conditions. I haven’t the power to halt LEVIATHAN’s momentum, and even if I had, I couldn’t set anchors before the wind put me on the shoals.”

  “Are you telling me, Captain, that everything depends on restoring full power?”

  “I’m telling you that LEVIATHAN’s engineers will sort her out in one hour and until then you will experience some difficulty maneuvering.

  “And what do you suggest if they can’t?”

  “I suggest you return to my helmsman. He needs your instructions more than I.”

  The pilot spun on his heel and walked as fast as he could to the bridge house, praying that Ogilvy’s confidence was justified and glad that he was willing to stand aside. Apparently he recognized his limitations. A tanker captain spent most of his time on the open sea and only two days a month conning his ship through heavy traffic. He was not prepared for a close-quarters pinch in unfamiliar waters. That’s what pilots were for.

  A sudden blast of wind tore through the open bridge house. It was hitting the starboard hull now that the ship was angling toward the southeast. The helmsman was off his stool, anxiously playing his yoke.

  “She’s yawing across the channel, sir. I can’t hold her.”

  “Are there any tugs nearby? ” asked the pilot.

  “The closest is ten miles,” answered the second pilot.

  Too far. He was alone. And three miles ahead, visible to the naked eye and bright on the radarscope, were the flashing red and grouped flashing whites that marked the curving entrance to the Nab. Three miles. Forty-five minutes. A mile beyond were three closely spaced orange flashers that marked the channel itself past the turn LEVIATHAN couldn’t make at four knots.

  They drifted from side to side through the blackness while the helmsman struggled to control the slow-moving ship. The pilot helped as much as he could, conversing directly with him instead of through the third officer.

  “You can steer back across the channel, Helmsman. You’ve a bit of room here. . . . Good . . . Good . . . Steady up on one two zero now. . . . Good . . . Good . . . Steady. Hold her!”

  LEVIATHAN closed on a flashing white that marked one of the many wrecks that lined the channel. The pilot took a bearing on it. When it was time to turn, he stood beside the helmsman, where the man could feel his presence in the dark as they watched the compass.

  “Steer one one zero.”

  “Steer one one zero.”

  At first the compass inched slowly toward the new heading: 119, 118, 117. It stopped at 117. The rate-of-turn gyro slipped toward zero.

  “Carry on,” said the pilot.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The helmsman turned the yoke further, but the compass stayed at 117.

  “She’s not responding, sir.”

  “Hard aport.”

  “Hard aport.”

  The helmsman put the yoke over as far as it would go. His hands seemed absurdly large on the tiny implement. Tinged red by the overhead instrument lights, their heavy knuckles had the thickskinned swollen look of an old charwoman’s. LEVIATHAN continued to plow forward, pointing the southern edge of the channel.

  The pilot looked anxiously from the rock-steady compass card to the blackness straight ahead. The knots indicator hovered at four. He felt an unusual anger rising in his throat. What were they doing in the engine room? Why did Ogilvy remain on the bridge wing?

  He opened his mouth to order a crash stop. Both screws full astern wouldn’t stop LEVIATHAN in time, but it might lessen the impact. There were rocks on the shoals as well as sand and mud, and they would tear her to shreds. The tanker would spill tons of residual oil into the Solent. She might explode or drift loose and block the port for weeks.

  Then the compass card trembled past the needle and the ship resumed turning: 116, 115, 114. The distant bow moved like a giant shadow past the lights ahead, accelerating now, even as the helmsman eased the yoke back to arrest the turn. The pilot watched the compass. 112, 111.

  “Steady,” he cautioned the helmsman.

  110, 109.

  “Steady. You’re past the mark.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  But still the compass turned. 108, 107.

  “Bring her back,” said the pilot, growing alarmed. “Steady up on one one zero.” Would she never stop?

  “I’ve got her, sir.”

  The compass slid toward 110.

  “One one zero, sir.”

  “Steady as she goes.”

  He stepped closer to the helmsman. “Our next heading will be one five four. Can you do it?” he asked, aware that the third officer was listening anxiously.

  The helmsman glanced at the knots indicator, still quivering at four. “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Do you want stern power on the starboard?”

  “That and the bow thruster might help, sir.”

  The pilot walked out to the wing to find Ogilvy. Unless relieved by the captain, he was fully in charge of the ship while piloting Southampton and Isle of Wight waters, but he wanted Ogilvy’s help to determine what the enormous ship would do.

  The wind was shivering the wisps of white hair that hung below the captain’s hat.

  “What is it, Pilot?” Ogilvy asked, his eyes on the water ahead.

  “We must execute a forty-four-degree turn to enter the Nab. I suggest reverse power on the starboard screw.”

  “Do you now?” Ogilvy asked silkily. He turned and walked into the wheelhouse. The third officer hurried to him. “What’s your speed?” Ogilvy asked the pilot.

  “Four knots.”

  “Four and one half knots,” said the third. “It just went up.”

  “Which is it, Pilot? Four knots or four and one half?” Ogilvy took up a position at the window just to the right of the one through which the helmsman peered. The pilot stepped back and looked up at the overhead knots indicator. He went to Ogilvy.

  “Four and one half knots, Captain.”

  Ogilvy clasped his hands behind him and stared at the glass.

  The pilot left him and watched the knots indicator. The needle wavered between four and one half and five knots. The rate-of-turn gyro showed that the ship was holding steadily to its course.

  The pilot went onto the port wing. The hissing from the huge funnels seemed a mockery. He eyed the quick-flashing oranges for several minutes. When the ship passed between the buoys that marked the channel mouth, he returned to the helm.

  The knots indicator still read only five knots. The second pilot looked up from the radar.

  “Five cables.”

  Half a sea mile to the turn.

  “We’re coming into the Nab, Captain.”

  “Carry on.”

  The second pilot went out to the wing. He hurried back moments later. “First marker broad on the starboard bow.”

  “Ten degrees right standard rudder,” said the pilot.

  The third officer repeated his order.

  “Ten degrees right standard rudder,” answered the helmsman.

  “Sir?” asked the pilot, approaching Ogilvy at the glass. “Shall we reverse the port engine?”

  “No need,” said Ogilvy, gazing at the orange flash
ers. “LEVIATHAN will turn quite nicely at six knots.”

  The pilot stepped back and looked up at the knots indicator. The needle quivered at six knots. The captain couldn’t have seen it. He’d felt it. The legend was true. Cedric Ogilvy deserved LEVIATHAN.

  “Is there anything else, Pilot?”

  “No, Captain. Thank you.”

  “Number Three! See that the pilot gets off safely.” Ogilvy walked onto the port wing with neither a glance nor a word to anyone else on the bridge. The last the pilot saw of him was the white of his hat and hair, ghostly on the edge of the wing.

  Stung, he stalked onto the starboard wing, took a bearing, for something to do, and returned to the bridge house, where he talked the helmsman through the channel and pointed LEVIATHAN at the Nab Tower.

  Yellow light flashed from the chart room as James Bruce stepped out of the shadows and disappeared through the blackout curtain. He had been on the bridge all along, the pilot realized, watching. Moments later the first officer left silently. It was almost midnight. The bridge was deserted but for the pilots, the third officer, and the helmsman. Ten minutes passed. The second officer entered from the chart room and spoke with the third, preparing to take his watch.

  “Where’s the Old Man?” the pilot heard him ask quietly.

  “Port wing.”

  “Bloody hell, how long is he going to stay out there?”

  The tension was leaving the bridge and the young third said with a grin, “To Cherbourg, at least.”

  “God help us.”

  “Call the boat,” said the pilot. “Starboard side.”

  He gave the helmsman his last bearing. The black of the bow swung toward the blazing white sea buoy, covered it, and let it peep out on the port side. In the distance, the green lights of the pilot boat bounced through the darkness, closing at a broad angle.

  “We’ll go off the starboard side, Number Three.” He smiled in the dark. Now he was doing it, and he’d never been in the navy.

  “Yes, sir.” The third officer spoke into a phone, then threw some switches on the deck-lighting console. White light painted half a ship where there had been darkness, marking a path between the tower and a ladder midway to the bow.

  “Off you go,” said the pilot to his second.

  A few minutes later, the man appeared on the main deck, an insignificant-looking miniature figure who walked the gray pathways and joined several sailors at the head of the ladder. The pilot went onto the starboard wing to watch. The lights of the pilot boat closed with the black line of LEVIATHAN.

  Spotlights pierced the dark, lighting the water far beneath the ladder, showing a fiercely swirling sea. The launch, a narrow thirty-five-footer, cut through the froth and ran alongside, keeping pace with the moving ship. The wind whipped the sound of its twin diesel engines to the bridge wing. They sped up and slowed as the launch captain drew closer, then slowed to a hollow rumble as he made contact with the oil tanker’s hull. Angled against its dull red bottom plates, the launch held her nose to LEVIATHAN. A man appeared on deck, looking up, and the second pilot waved down at him and stepped through an opening in LEVIATHAN’s rail. The pilot went back to the bridge house.

  “Thank you,” said the third officer.

  “Safe journey,” said the pilot. He nodded to the helmsman, the younger one again, who gave him a relieved grin. Then he walked through the chart room, past the clicking banks of computers, past the second officer, who was examining his first English Channel chart while a cadet replaced the Solent chart, to the elevator. He rode to the main deck, where a waiting sailor accompanied him outside.

  It was less windy on deck and warmer. Suddenly lights illuminated the forward end of the ship. He heard a whine overhead, saw lights in the sky, and seconds later the Bell Ranger lowered out of the dark. Several sailors ducked under the whirling blades and fastened the helicopter’s skids to the pad.

  The pilot remembered the injured man and Ogilvy’s orders that the helicopter was not to land without his permission. He hadn’t been on the bridge when the call came, nor had he heard Ogilvy’s response. It was a reminder that his job was over and the ship was done with him, lingering a moment to let him off, then truly on its own, a place on the sea, beholden to no one.

  A steam winch finished raising the pilot hoist as the pilot reached it. He stepped onto a platform and glanced down. The pilot boat was a speck in the frothy water a hundred feet below. The ladder locked into place. The pilot turned around and stepped back onto the wooden rungs. That was the hardest part, turning your back to the precipice. He climbed down three rungs, one from the bottom of the ladder, gripped the side ropes, and called, “Ready!”

  Steam hissed. The ladder jerked suddenly, dropped, then slid down the side of the ship, gliding smoothly as small wheels rolled along the steel plates. The pilot held tight and glanced down. The deckhand was standing on the bow of the launch. He looked up. Far above, the sailor manipulating the ladder mechanism watched him descend.

  Had it been a lucky bluff? Was it Ogilvy’s good luck that the ship had gained sufficient speed to maneuver? It had come so close to losing control. He thought of the look deep in Ogilvy’s eyes. He dealt with captains every day. He met good men and stupid men, and arrogance, and fear. Ogilvy had taken pains to put him down. The pilot decided that LEVIATHAN’s captain was afraid. It said something for his common sense.

  The ladder jerked to a halt. The pilot stepped onto the bow of the launch and the deckhand steadied his arm. He edged along the cabin, gripping varnished rope handrails, and lowered himself to the stern deck. The big diesels roared and the boat veered away. The pilot looked back. LEVIATHAN erased the stars, stretching between the horizons like a black cloud.

  There were other pilots in the cabin. They exchanged quiet greetings. He sat next to his friend, drained. The launch ran a ways, pitching and rolling in heavy seas, then slowed and picked up the pilot from the Seatrain container ship. The new arrival spotted LEVIATHAN’s pilot.

  “I was running up your arse all night.”

  “We could have used the push.”

  “Blooming great pig,” muttered the second pilot.

  “Bad?” asked the man from Seatrain.

  The pilot nodded. “Bad enough.”

  It was over. He dozed on the way to Portsmouth.

  When they tied up at the brightly lighted dock in the naval harbor, each pilot dropped two 10p coins on the dashboard. The launch pilot, a master mariner himself, ritualistically protested the tip.

  “A pint for the lad,” said the pilot, nodding at the deckhand who was guiding them onto the dock.

  In the taxi to the Southampton docks where they had their cars, the pilot looked at his watch. 0200. It was an hour’s drive to his home in the New Forest. His wife would be long sleeping, but the ponies would come to the gate.

  James Bruce wandered the deserted corridors of LEVIATHAN’s lower bridge deck, brooding about Cedric Ogilvy, wondering if this would be Ogilvy’s last voyage and wondering, too, about the absurdity of judging a man who was conning a ship he knew he couldn’t handle himself. It was late. He saw no one in the library or the wardroom. The hospital was empty, the theater dark. The officers’ dining salon’s table was set for breakfast and the knives and forks tinkled faintly against each other as the empty ship’s engines built to speed. There was, of course, absolutely no motion from the sea. No sea, no roller, no swell budged the ship, though when he had last been on deck, a stiff west wind was raising a nasty chop on the Channel.

  The middle bridge deck, where the officers and petty officers slept, was equally deserted. He rang the elevator to take him to the captain’s bridge deck, where his own luxurious guest suite was located. The company expected him to report on Ogilvy in two days. Was he too old? Had he lost his grip? Should he be replaced? That last was a bit of poor joke because they didn’t exactly have a jostling queue of qualified men waiting at the quay for the berth.

  Certainly Ogilvy wasn’t the only ship captain in the
world with a disposition and petty nature. Had he guessed he had sufficient maneuvering power or had he been lucky? Had he deliberately set up the pilot and his own third officer to embarrass them? Perhaps, thought Bruce, he could entice the chief engineer to reveal exactly what had transpired when Ogilvy had called for more power. Not likely. The men were of equal rank and unless a real grudge was held, and Bruce didn’t know about one, the chief engineer would be circumspect in his reply. Nevertheless, he would try in the morning.

  One thing was beyond dispute. Lucky or not, Ogilvy was winner hands down when it came to handling LEVIATHAN. Bruce had boarded at Le Havre and had seen with his own eyes how the relief captain barely had control crossing the heavily trafficked Channel. Ogilvy made it look easy. Or was it a sham?

  The elevator door opened, revealing an oiler in a dirty boiler suit. He ducked his head and reached for the control buttons.

  “Which deck, sir?”

  “Go where you’re going,” said Bruce, stepping in. “I’m not in a hurry.”

  The door closed. The oiler played nervously with his blackened fingernails as the elevator descended toward the engine room, then cleared his throat as if he thought he was expected to speak.

  “Just takin’ a breath of air, sir.”

  “Oh?” Bruce said politely.

  “I go on deck whens I get a chance,” replied the oiler. He sounded Glaswegian Irish, thought Bruce. The lift descended slowly. Bruce fancied himself a casual man who understood the ordinary seaman, unlike a lofty disciplinarian like Cedric Ogilvy, but he felt trapped in the lift, unable to think of anything to say to the oiler, yet feeling the obligation.

  “Well, I imagine it gets rather hot down there.”

  “Oh, aye . . . but not so bad in the control room, sir. We pop in there for a wee cooldown.”

  “Yes, I imagine you do.”

  The elevator stopped and opened onto the roar of the engines, a deafening, deep, and thunderous din that obliterated the senses. It came as an afterthought that the thick and humid air was hotter than noonday in the tropics. While the body flinched from the noise and heat and the mind reeled at the enormousness of the place, the eye fixed on the air-conditioned, soundproofed control room in the midst of the machinery. Refuge.