Chapter 6
Hanging On
The waves are coming from different angles too. The age and the side-wheel design of the Gossamer actually helps its stability. Newer propeller-driven steamers have their sterns built out in an oddly flat way. It makes the rear end stronger against the increased torque of the props. But it also makes those ships extra vulnerable in bad weather.
The Gossamer has a rounded transom with a slight inward taper. As the leading edge of the storm passes, they somehow end up with a following sea. Their rounded stern divides the breaking waves instead of taking them like a slap. It also reduces the chance that the ship will be flipped end over end.
Being able to absorb a following sea is good news for the ship and its sailors. Victor remembers these design lessons from his short stay in marine architecture classes. Thus he also knows that the bad thing about a heavily rounded stern is that it can increase your chance of broaching, or being knocked over on one side. In a metal-hulled craft like this one, if you broach and don’t quickly recover, you may not recover at all. The sea can twist a ship as it tilts—just enough to spring a hatch or a porthole. An iron boat like this one is strong, but once flooded, it could go down terribly fast. A wooden ship, on the other hand, might be weaker against the waves, but at least it’s more buoyant. A wooden ship can be half full of water and it might still right itself. Riding low, a good wooden ship might be able to keep floating for a day or two, giving other ships time to find it. The crew might even have enough time to bail her out.
Victor can’t help but think about this boat taking on just enough water to groan its last, spiraling toward the bottom like a stone. Those who wait for them at home will end up waiting forever.
He finds some grease to rub into his injured hand. It soothes the burn slightly. Farley the engineer tries to cool the boilers a bit, barking orders in short bursts. The trick, in a storm, is to keep the engines running. The captain needs enough power to steer the ship and avoid taking the waves broadside. But you don’t want the boilers super-heated to the point that they’ll crack if seawater ends up flooding the compartment. It’s a delicate dance, and the crew performs it well, listening to the engineer’s orders and reacting, and hearing occasional commands from the captain, barked through a metal tube that runs to the bridge.
Small shovels of coal. Tiny adjustments to the pressure valves. Close that fire door sailor! Open that vent. Standing in ankle-deep water, they try to keep the machine in tune with its rapidly changing environment.
The side wheels on the Gossamer spin independently. Besides using the rudder, the captain can also speed one paddle and slow the other, quickly pivoting the ship on a dime if needed. But the ship will move like that only if the wheels can bite. In a steep wave, the paddlewheel on one side or the other may pull out of the water for a few moments, causing the ship to lumber unpredictably to port or starboard.
Farley is well liked for his skills, if not his demeanor. “Grab the loose gear!” the chief shouts to Victor as he grabs more grease from the bucket. Victor knows he’d better comply. If he’s not able to help the crew, then he’s dead weight in this emergency. Victor looks around. He sees boots, some loose tools, coal buckets, and more lying near the edges of the engine room. As the ship lumbers, these items start to roll around in the water that has collected on the boiler-room floor. He gathers everything he can see, hoping to stow them in lockers at the back of the compartment.
“No! Ya blooming ass, don’t worry about that shit right now. Topside! Batten the things on the deck first. If it looks valuable, toss it down the hatches. Anything looks like it’s worth less than five dollars, throw the damn things overboard, and be quick!”
Victor stumbles up two sets of ladders. Forcing the hatch open, he again steps out onto the open deck. Green water rushes into his face. Blinking and coughing, he falls to his knees. He finds it difficult to slam the hatch shut this time, but finally secures it. The deck is awash with foam and fear. Behind him he hears someone banging shut another hatch. The sound worries him. Can these be opened again? Is he trapped out here? He shakes off the dread and tries to work.
He spots another sailor farther up the deck, unrecognizable in a black slicker. The man shouts to him and points toward some ropes that wiggle atop the brine. The message is clear: Tie yourself off if you’re planning to walk topside. If you don’t, you might be washed overboard, and sure as hell no one is going to jump in after you.
Victor loops the rope around his waist and ties a good square knot. Staring at it for a moment, he ties another for insurance. If you can’t tie good knots, tie several. That’s what his father, Eli, told him.
The rain stings and penetrates deep. His hands are shaking. He can feel the spar deck teetering not just port to starboard but around its center point too. The whole ship seems like a slowly spinning dinner platter.
Working with the other sailor, he does manage to clear the deck, finding many small and potentially dangerous objects skimming along the boards. Pieces of scrap wood. Bottles. Hats and shirts. He throws most of them over the rail. A clear deck is imperative. When a wave breaks over the bow of any ship, it washes along the deck and out the scuppers. It’s usually a self-clearing system. But garbage can be washed into the scuppers too, blocking them. With no exit, the excess water can build up on the deck. A ship can suddenly gain several thousand pounds, making it top-heavy and much more likely to roll.
Victor is surprised. A tightly run ship would never allow loose items like these to accumulate on the deck. But here they are. He finally makes his way to one of the scuppers and pulls out what looks like a dead seagull. He looks up at the empty mast and then tosses the body overboard.
Victor has been on other voyages where the captain of those ships walked around at all hours, checking every tiny thing, lecturing the sailors, looking for problems at every turn—being total bastards but keeping everyone safe.
He suddenly realizes that he’s seen the captain of the Gossamer only once on this entire trip, for about five minutes.
When he finishes clearing, Victor pulls off his hat and stuffs it into a vent pipe over the galley stove, sealing that small hole as best he can. Just then the tip of a large wave breaks over the stern, sending a thigh-high river of cold salt water rushing down the deck, knocking Victor onto his back. He slides a few feet as water blasts up his nose. The Gossamer immediately starts to climb the next swell, causing Victor to immediately slide the other way, down half the length of the deck, on his back, headfirst. He panics at the thought of slamming into something and breaking his neck, but suddenly his safety rope stops him with a violent jerk—just short of the taffrail. He tries to grasp the rail but can’t quite reach it.
Instead he grasps the safety line and pulls, trying to take up the slack. Just then the ship reaches the top of the swell. Uphill immediately changes to downhill. The bow pitches into a new valley of water at such a steep angle that Victor can’t stand up. Instead, he slides forward again, this time on his belly. He holds his hands in front of him, feeling like he’s flying.
Victor has a sudden epiphany. Sailing is for crazy men. Only the certifiably insane should be out here in the middle of the ocean.
In some way that thought makes him feel better about his situation. He’s never been a sailor. He’s just a visitor here. That means this isn’t really his storm. It’s not his ship that’s in peril. Others may die at sea. But not him. Not today. He feels like he’s observing this danger from afar, waiting for the real sailors to suffer the consequences for their terrible mistake.
He grabs at the corner of the elevated wheelhouse as he slides past, fingers finding minimal purchase in a small vent. His body swings like a pendulum, crashing into the bulkhead, but he holds fast. Glancing up, he sees the ship’s first mate standing inside, staring at him through the window. He barely hears the first mate shout, “Hang on!” as he stares, wide-eyed, toward the bow. Victor realizes that another wave must be coming. Hugging the wall, foot braced
against a davit, he closes his eyes and feels the deck shake as the next wave crashes over, cold white foam hammering all around him. He feels the whole ship slip sideways and bump like a wild toboggan ride, falling into sea foam that seems to offer no support at all. The rushing sea leaves Victor cold, buried, and sore.
Foam like that is not good. He may not be real a sailor, but Victor’s been on the sea enough to know the waves are breaking hard now. The swells have reached such a height that they’re cresting over on themselves.
When a ship is facing only big swells, it can ride up and down and fight to stay upright. But when swells change into huge breaking waves, the angle of those “mountains of water” changes too. Things get too steep. Instead of just lifting, the water starts slapping. When that happens, it’s no longer a matter of staying afloat. It’s a matter of staying alive.
Chapter 7
Light, Elusive
After the steep, foam-filled wave passes over the deck of the Gossamer, the first mate rushes to the wheelhouse door, tugging at the locks. He reaches out into the storm, grasps Victor’s safety rope, and pulls him inside.
“Are you crazy?” he yells as he re-bolts the hatch. “What are you doing out there? You think that damn rope is going to hold you when we take the next big one?”
“I know! I know!” Victor shouts. “I was just helping clear off the deck. I didn’t think it would get this bad. Hell, it didn’t look this bad even five minutes ago.”
They both look toward the front of the wheelhouse. The captain has taken the wheel, white knuckles gripping it as he threads the bow carefully into each wave. “Aye,” the first mate mutters, “reckon none of us thought it would get this bad.”
“Anything I can do?” Just as Victor asks the question the Gossamer takes a wave directly broadside. Both of them are thrown toward the starboard side, crashing against the paneling. Victor has a fleeting image of his body swinging like a rug beater against the side of a stiff carpet. But the image is abruptly erased as he bangs his head. The captain manages to remain upright, hanging from the wheel and growling as he braces a foot against the wall. He fights to right the ship. Victor shakes the dazed feeling from his head and then pulls himself up using the large gimbaled brass compass. As he rises, he sees that the top face of the compass assembly has pivoted nearly out of sight. The compass is still facing up. It’s the ship that has tilted.
Slowly, impossibly slowly, the Gossamer manages to right itself, and the compass follows suit between Victor’s trembling hands.
“Aye, there’s a good girl,” the captain growls at the ship. “You stay upright now, ya hear?”
A strange thumping sound starts to shake the freighter. They all realize it’s coming from the port-side paddlewheel. The impact, which rolled them temporarily toward starboard, must have bent the housing, pressing the metal sheathing against the spinning port wheel. Not good news, but thank God the wheel can still turn.
“Get below,” the captain shouts to Victor and the other man. “If the engine room can’t use your help, climb down to the damn bilge and see if anything’s leaking. And if they can’t use your help there, just get to your bunks and lay low. Stay the hell out of the way.”
Victor nods, burned hand holding his bruised head as he trips down the short ladder into the second-level companionway. Spying two inches of water on the floor, he shouts up to the captain. The only reply is a grunt.
Water can always find a way in. Seal the ship tight, and the ocean still seems to find the very pores of the hull. The harder the waves slap, the more the sea forces its way in, rattling hatches and popping caulking from the deck boards. Two inches of water on the middeck might be nothing, or it might be everything. Victor will know more when he gets a bit lower in the ship.
He goes down, finds no real problem on the lower deck. Comes back up again, running toward the stern. One of the quirks in the design of the Gossamer is that the crew can’t walk the whole length of the ship on its lowest decks. There are watertight bulkheads between three sections, and they were built with no hatches. This keeps the sailors constantly climbing up and down as they move about the ship.
Back down again into the engine room, he finds the water is indeed deeper—now nearly a foot. Two sailors are bailing, pushing and pulling on the long handle of a double hand pump. This is a surprise because pumping of this magnitude isn’t usually done by hand. There is supposed to be a long belt running from the portside engine to a flywheel on a central pump station. Victor sees the big belt. It’s frayed and split, attached to nothing and lying in the water. His suspicion about how shipshape the Gossamer really is has just been confirmed.
Despite his injuries, Victor steps in to give one of the men a break. The three rotate in and out of the hand-pump station for the next twenty minutes. But they’re slowly losing the battle. Glances are exchanged all around. When you’re losing ground to a leak, everyone on board knows it, but no one wants to say it aloud.
The talk in the engine room is that the water is finding its way in somewhere near the damaged portside wheel.
“We need to get out of here!” Johnny C. finally declares. “The boiler will blow once the water reaches it.”
“Belay that!” Farley screams back “We’re not going to abandon the engine room. If we let that boiler tank blow, she’ll rip the sides out and we’re dead men for sure.” He looks them all in the eyes. “Pump harder, lads. For God’s sake, pump like your lives depend on it, because they sure as hell do.”
The men stay at their stations, working faster, sweating so much they seem to be adding water to the oily brine at their feet. Through the extra effort they seem to win the battle for a while. But exhaustion sets in. They slow. Others appear to take their places. But with each relentless ocean wave, more saltwater seems to ooze into their space.
During the chaos one of the smaller sailors has climbed down and squirmed into the crawlspace near the damaged paddlewheel. He stays low, slipping beneath the huge moving shaft, following the space toward the spot where the fat axle of the side wheel penetrates the hull. There’s water in here, but he manages to keep his head and a small lantern above the cold puddles. The sailor calls out when he finds two small leaks. The other men toss things from behind him, offering rags and wax, coal tar and shovels. The sailor takes everything that’s handed to him, packing what he can into the leaks. He demands more, and they throw him whatever they can find: shirts, ropes, even a newspaper. The cramped sailor then covers the packing with grease and more wax. His work helps stem the flow.
“I don’t think that was the main source of the leak!” he shouts as he claws his way out of the slot. “There’s no way all this water’s coming from just those small holes.”
The crewmen start looking elsewhere. On his next break from manning the pump, Victor joins a sailor he’s never met. The man is seeking someone to come with him to the lowest point of the ship, into the tiniest of crawlspaces down near the keel. Victor shudders. He doesn’t like small spaces, but he agrees to help.
They descend into the middle section where there is a deck hatch into the lowest bilge area. The other sailor kicks and scratches until he locates a flush-mount handle. Yanking open the heavy wooden door, he drops into a tight space, then edges forward in a squat. He has to hold his head high to keep it out of the neck-high water. Victor takes a deep, nervous breath and drops in behind him, gasping as the cold brine sends sharp prickles all over his body. He holds a lantern high, and the two of them waddle down the V-shaped slot for maybe eighteen feet, until they are actually under the main crawl that runs along the side of the paddlewheel. There, they see what they didn’t want to see. On the inside of the hull, beside the very bottom of the portside wheel, there’s a large dent in the hull. A pair of overlapping metal panels have split. Their rivets have popped. The leak is not unstoppable, but the amount of water spilling in is definitely more than what the pump men could ever hope to handle.
Victor learns that the other man, whose name is Ge
orge, is the ship’s resident expert at plugging leaks. He sends Victor back up the ladder, on a mission to grab several things that can be used to slow the influx. For the first time, Victor feels hopeful. Maybe things will get better now, if they can just hang on.
The ship lists at least ten degrees by the time he returns with a series of wooden wedges, plus some cork, rags, rubber, and wax. And he finds that the water in the slot is now nose deep. Nervously he squats and waddles his way toward the damaged plates. George the leak expert quickly takes the items from him. He holds his breath, dives, and desperately fills the split, determined to stop the flow. Victor takes a turn too. They dive and dive again, hands becoming numb as they work just three feet below the waterline.
Victor climbs back out, seeking even more rope and rubber. He sees other men run toward the stern. When he thinks about the amount of water he’s already seen in the engine room, plus what he’s just seen near the keel, plus what’s now spilling down the ladders, he feels a terrible sense of dread. But they’re patching the holes, aren’t they? And pumping too. Maybe that will help. He has to keep trying.
The hope is short-lived. He hears shouts and notes of panic in distant voices. Then he feels a slow, steady list. The ship tips an additional fifteen degrees toward the port side, and the engine starts to falter. Far above him he hears someone on the deck struggling with the lifeboat davits. Suddenly a hand thrusts up through the open hatch at Victor’s feet. Grasping that hand, Victor pulls George up from the keel’s bilge. The space has filled with water, and George has run out of air. The sailor falls to the floor, gasping, shaking his head no, and pounding the wet floor.
“Sooner! I should have found that hole sooner! God damn it!”
“We can seal off this full section!” Victor assures him. “Come on. We can at least seal off this and a couple of the other passages. Let’s move!”
Wreck of the Gossamer Page 3
