A Ship's Tale (48 page)

“Boris, you'd better dig out that paint again but be careful where you put it, we want it dry before we get to Dumbarton,” Harris ordered. Soon buckets and a variety of brushes, brooms, and mops were scrubbing away at the dirt and encrusted salt of years.

After the plane had left the work continued, with Bowman making periodic tours round the ship, pointing to this or that dirty brass, frayed rope or missing pins from the pin rails. Occasionally he would bellow for Harris or Boris and everyone pretended not to hear or see as he gave one or another of them a dressing-down for some neglect. Mostly he was there to give advice and encouragement. The boys started to get to know him as Captain, at times a figure to fear but always one to look up to and respect. I kept myself busy below decks helping Katherine with cleaning up the galley. I was rousted out by Harris for shirking and told to go and clean the lighthouses—the brass domes set over the navigation lights on the forepeak. This is a dirty job, and I was happy to answer a summons from Edward, who sent one of the boys to take my place.

“I've been looking at your calculation about the placement of the MTB,” he started, “and it checks out. But I was thinking, why does it have to be Drogheda, especially when it'll be only an hour off dark when she catches up? What do you know about horizons?”

My mind went searching back to my apprentice days and our elementary navigation classes and out popped an answer, “An observer with his eye level at five feet above the sea will have an approximate horizon of 2.8 miles, or as near as I can remember. I can't recall anything else, except that the higher you are off the ground, the farther you can see.”

Edward eyed me suspiciously, as if I were trying to take the mickey when he was in no mood for teasing. “You young whippersnappers don't know anything. The way you calculate a horizon is to take the height above sea level, get the square root, and multiply it by 1.224 exactly. How's that for memory?” he chortled. “The trouble is I don't know the height, and I need you to find it.”

I had a nasty feeling about what he was going to say next.

“Here's a ball of string. Go up and tie one end with a slip knot to the truck at the top of the mainmast and then come back down, unrolling the ball as you come.” He held out the ball to me as casually as if I was going for a walk along the deck. I started to protest and suggested one of the boys. “I'm not going begging to that Harris for something I don't even know is going to be workable. No,” he said firmly, “you're the volunteer, so up you go.”

Volunteer?

The lower shrouds and the ratlines up to the upper topsail yard were easy enough, but then I had to go outward on the futtock shrouds to work my body on to the top, a small platform where the topmast was joined to the mainmast. By that time I was sweating, the drops sliding down my face and back, and my heart was pounding. Next was the long climb vertically up the topmast shrouds, hoping that Boris had replaced all the old ratlines used as steps. I was past most feeling by this time and clung on to the royal mast for a while to get my breath. Then up another, I don't know how many feet, to the royal yard where I just sat, trembling with tension, trying not to notice the swing of the mast across the sky with the pitch forward. This was now exaggerated as the ship drove through the water. I cursed Edward.

I looked up at the last few feet of bare mast. There were no stays or lines to hold. By standing up on the yard and putting my arm up over my head, I could see that I was about a foot short of the truck. I wasn't going to climb unnecessarily, so I bent and tied the string to the top rail on the royal yard. I made my way as quickly as I could back down to the deck, unrolling the string as I went. As I jumped onto the deck, I found I was glad just to be standing there.

Edward had got himself to the foot of the mast and managed to pull the string reasonably tight without slipping the knot. He then tied a knot level to the base, pulled hard, and the string came down. While I'd been up the mast, he marked a line ten yards long on the well deck, and now started to measure the string. Once he'd finished that, he asked me for my estimate of the last few feet of the royal mast and rushed back to the chart room with me following.

He checked off his calculations, “Truck to yard, yard to deck, deck to keel. Right, that comes to 152 feet near as—damn it!” He said pausing.

The square root of this figure took time to calculate, but in the end we agreed the horizon from the truck to be about fifteen miles, using Edward's formula.

Edward said, “Let's get Bowman and Harris, and I'll tell them my idea.”

They were waiting next to the wheel and came in as soon as I put my head outside. Edward was a bit agitated and started off by saying that he thought he'd a good idea, only to be interrupted by Bowman and told to “Get on with it, ye daft Irishman!”

Edward scowled at him and continued, “I reckon the longer we're out of sight of that MTB the better, because there's no telling what those Admiralty twits have told them to do.” He pulled a chart across the table and pointed to a spot about forty miles due east of Dublin. “This is our approximate position at the moment. We might even see the Liverpool-Dublin ferry. I propose that when we are hull down from it, we start to change course westward, until we're about twenty miles from the imaginary line joining the centres of the gaps between Holyhead and Dun Laoghaire and between Peel on the Isle of Man and the Irish coast.” He drew the line on the chart, and then another parallel to it, twenty miles to the west. “It's now about 1200 and we expect that boat to be up with us about 1700. If we start bearing off a little at a time, it'll not be noticed by passing boats. And, when we get far enough away—that's fifteen miles by the calculation of the horizon of the truck on the mainmast of this ship as performed by me and Flynn here—we'll not only be well off the shipping lanes but also out of sight of the MTB. Taking it a further five miles away is to allow for a little bit of contingencies, like the MTB doing some sort of small search pattern based on that imaginary centre line,” and he ran his finger along it on the chart.

“If we say that we'll be on this parallel line by about four, then we should have, with any sort of luck, fourteen hours' sailing before first light tomorrow morning when the MTB can easily check which one of the many boats on his radar is really us. That fourteen hours, ending at 0600 tomorrow and counting on a speed of about twelve knots, like she's doing now, will bring us so close to Greenock that you'll be able to water their gardens from full bladders as you wake in the morning!”

In all the time I'd seen Edward and Bowman together, I'd never before known Bowman to be at a loss for words. He started to speak once but it wouldn't come. Finally, he planted himself in front of Edward and said, “Ned, may we never fight again. This time ye have really put us in the shade! Always twittering on about your charts and speed and this and that, enough to drive a body crazy sometimes, but now…” He thumped Edward on the shoulder and grinned at us. “Don't ye agree?” he asked.

I was excited, but thought the whole thing sounded too good to be true. Harris was also enthusiastic, but concerned about the narrows between the two little peninsulas, one west of Stranraer and the other south of Bangor. “It's only about twenty miles wide. The MTB could run back and forth, an hour each way.”

“I've thought about that,” Edward said. “We'll be going through while she's still deciding which direction to look. If we can keep up our speed, we should be through by midnight at the latest. I'm also proposing for the passage through that we put up extra lookouts and dowse the navigation lights.”

“Humph! That's a bit dangerous,” Bowman said. “I'll decide about it when we're there.” He got up, looking restless. “I'm going for a walk round the deck and enjoy the sun while it's here. Meanwhile, we need a watch to stand on the main royal yard as lookout, round the clock. Make sure he straps himself to the mast, and give him the best binoculars ye have with the hailer tied to him.” As Bowman walked away, Harris went to find a suitable boy.

By now more clouds had moved in, as the sun shone through the white cumulous and glittered off the white tops of the waves. The unhurried swells seemed to come from the north as they passed under our keel. Our bow wave was steady as the
Bonnie
Clyde
drove along under full sail at twelve knots pushed by a breeze, which grew stronger as it continued backing further south and west, something we'd anticipated as the lower pressure came in from the Atlantic.

A soft step sounded behind, and Katherine was beside me. I told her of the latest developments and how close we were to our journey's end. The time for worrying was over. We stood there, leaning on the rail, living in the moment, and waiting for what tomorrow would bring.

Chapter 29

OVERTAKEN

Our journey along the East Coast of Ireland had been uneventful. The successive lookouts on the royal masthead had seen nothing, and I was thankful when it became too dark for us to be seen and the last of them came down. For the boys, it had been a special part of their adventure and the competition to go up the mast had been pretty fierce. For me, picturing one of them falling had been an anxiety. We were below the horizon of the coastal towns, but a little before dark we could see the Mountains of Mourne off to the north-west and from what I could see they certainly looked as though they did, in the words of the old Irish song, sweep down to the sea.

As night fell, our lookout was cautioned to ring his bell for anything unusual. The wind continued to back and freshen as we made good time hour after hour. For now, Bowman agreed not to use the navigation lights. As we approached the peninsula east of Strangford Lough and started to bear out into the entrance of the North Channel, he ordered them lit, including the one at the foremast head. We were getting into the shipping lanes and crossed the routes of the ferries from Liverpool and the Isle of Man. The lanes were busy with freighters and tankers serving Northern Ireland and Scotland. It would be difficult for the MTB to try to investigate each one. We matched our course with the ships going north. As we got level with Larne, we changed course to nor'nor'east to bring us into the Firth of Clyde.

One of our greatest fears was about to come true.

The accident happened fifteen miles south of Arran and five miles west of the Ailsa Craig. It was six bells on the night watch, a real witching hour, if ever there was one! Those off watch were sleeping soundly, while the deck crew was with Harris, and Larry as lookout. The moon had waxed slightly fuller than the night before, but not enough to give more than a faintly luminous light to the whitecaps.

Whatever it was, we hit it hard enough for the
Bonnie
to shudder all down her length, and the scraping could be heard as we rode over it. Boris, being nearest the bottom of the vessel, was immediately awake. I came out of a dream with a jolt and tipped out to the deck. I could hear Harris's voice and got up to the main deck as fast as I could. Harris and Boris were down in the hold and I followed their voices. In the 'tween decks I could see lanterns round the generator and pumps. When I found Harris and Boris in the bilge, they'd just finished their inspection. They were holding lanterns over the water, trying to assess how fast it was rising. We still had no idea what we'd hit and I'm sure that no one could have seen it in the almost-impenetrable dark of the night.

“We've not been holed, thank God,” Harris said. “Maybe the steel plates below the waterline on the starboard bow have sprung and there's a steady inflow. I don't think the pumps can work fast enough to keep up, but we can do one or two things to try to help. Let's get back on deck.”

Bowman was already on deck while Harris gave him a full report. As they moved off together, I took the opportunity to go below to reassure Katherine. She'd know something had obviously gone wrong and was already in the galley trying to ascertain what had happened. I told her we'd struck something, but the ship wasn't going to sink, and then got back on deck.

Harris had just issued the order to close-haul the sails to the maximum possible. The wind was strong, coming from sou'sou'west and we'd been sailing all square to catch the maximum power. Now we were close-hauling on the port tack, which was going to slow us and throw us off course towards Ayrshire. We'd have to correct every few miles by letting out our sails again and moving towards Arran. This was an uncomfortable zigzag course, with a great deal of hauling in and letting out of sails. On the starboard tack, with the wind as it was, we were able to lift the starboard bow higher out of the water and so reduce the water intake.

Harris then had a word with me. “Flynn, I'm sending you and several boys down into the hold to trim the ballast. It's a rotten backbreaking job, but if we don't do it, we'll be so far down at the head that we'll scarcely be making headway. It's a serious leak, but so long as we can get to the builder's dry dock by late tomorrow, we'll not have the shame of seeing her sunk somewhere about Greenock, her keel on the bottom and her masts sticking up out of the water.”

The ballast was sand covered by huge paving stones, which needed two people to lift, but the worst part of working in the hold was the movement of the ship. Despite lanterns we'd strung up on the overhead beams, it was dark and there was a decidedly unpleasant smell. The enclosed space and the rising and falling of the deck above magnified the rolling and pitching. I was just thankful that we weren't in a storm. I lined up the boys in pairs and we started to move the paving stones from the centre and place them on top of those up against the port bulkhead. As a very rough guide, I made a plumb line from string and a piece of stone so that the boys could see that we were having some effect and that the ship was tilting to port. It was a long slow process and we quickly had to shed our heavy outer clothes as we worked. Bowman came down two or three times and tried to get in amongst us and help, but I told him firmly to go and be captain somewhere else.

After moving enough of the stones, the boys had a great time scooping up the sand with whatever implement they could find and throwing it over the piles of stones and sometimes over each other. Eventually Harris came down to tell us to stop and to check on the way the slabs had been piled.

He sighed. “There's no right way of doing it, except to tie these with wire rope and wedge them in place, but this'll have to do, and we just have to hope that we don't have any weather during the next twenty-four hours.” He called out to the boys, “Well done! It's been a great help.”

Up on deck, he told me, “We've given her a bit of a skew and with the sails close-hauled, it's reduced the flow by about half. The pumps are nearly keeping up with this. Boris has even managed to get one or two of the old hand pumps mended, but working those was quite a chore. Still, I suppose every little bit helps.”

It may have been my imagination but I seemed to feel the drag each time the bow dipped under the water and we were undoubtedly going slower. Edward said that our speed was about nine or ten knots and hoped that it would hold steady now that we had trimmed the ballast.

The wind had strengthened far more, but hadn't yet blown up the surface of the sea into anything more than whitecaps. Our passage through the water wasn't a pounding ride, but rather a slower pitching motion. This brought in long waves moving under us with a consequent longer period on the upward climb helping to keep the damaged bow out of the water. I went up to the bow and found Boris with a group of the boys using a bo'sun's chair to dangle themselves just over the water to inspect the damage.

I crept along the bowsprit and could see the heavy scar across the keel as it fell into the sea and then rose, streaming water. Boris said quietly to me, “Not far to go. We will make it. When we get to where the Firth narrows, the swell will die off.” Boris had an instinct for the right word or action at the right time. His usual silence made people forget he was around until there was trouble; then the first thought from everyone was always, “Where's Boris?”

I thanked him for the comfort and went to find Edward. As usual, he was in the chart room, surrounded by charts and calculations. This time he had good cause, for we were coming to the most dangerous part of our journey—not from natural hazards, but from other ships. From Little Cumbrae Island up to Greenock, the average width of the channel was two miles, and even narrower for sea-going steamers with their deeper draughts. Being unladen, our draught could not have been more than fifteen feet, so we could sail outside the buoy-marked channel, keeping a sharp lookout for any unmarked obstacles.

I asked Edward for our current position. He pulled up to the top of the pile what had to be the last chart we needed. A large-scale map of the Firth, from Bute to Dumbarton, that was marked for shallows, buoys, and the main channel. “Here we are,” he pointed to the chart, “We are about three miles to the south of Bute and Little Cumbrae. We should be well in sight of both, so let's take this outside and see for ourselves.”

We hung the chart over the rail next to the wheel, and there were the two headlands clearly visible almost dead ahead. Edward observed, “You can also see that this is a busy place.” It was. Within sight were three ships, one just going through the gap, one heading towards us, and one hull down astern.

“The advantage for us is that we have right of way, seeing that we only have sails and no engine. If a gust should swing us off course, then the other man must do all he can to get out of our way. Apart from that, though,” Edward added morosely, “it's still too damned crowded.”

It lifted our spirits a bit when we saw a freighter alter its course towards us, winking a message. As she came level, we could see the crew lined up at the rail, waving and shouting. The foghorn boomed from their funnel head, with puffs of steam rising in the air in punctuation.

In the morning we rose before daybreak to perform our various duties. We'd gone through a hard night and there was so much yet to be done. Katherine went to the galley to start the morning meal as I was about to return to the deck above to see what this day would hold for us. We were almost at our destination!

Suddenly I became aware that below decks was almost completely silent, apart from the creaking of the ship and the sound of the waves. No crew chatter, no arguments, no songs, nor any of the accustomed shipboard noise. There didn't seem to be anyone below decks. A strange and uneasy feeling came over me. I bolted towards the ladderway with all haste, reached the deck, and pulled open the hatchway.

There were small groups of lads doing some work, but mostly they were just standing about. It wasn't until I reached the helm that I could see anything definite. There was a lad holding the wheel whose face I remembered, though his name escaped me.

“What's going on?” I asked in surprise. Just then Larry appeared from the other side of the mast.

“Good morning, Mr. Flynn.”

I repeated, “What is going on and where is everyone?”

“You mean Mr. Harris and Captain Bowman?” he asked.

“Yes, that for starters.” I was getting this near-panicked feeling and there had to be some cause.

“Well, they're forward on the starboard side with Edward, and—” Before Larry could finish, I hastened to that position with an unusual sense of urgency. I was glad to finally see them. Brown Bear, enjoying the breeze blowing through his fur, watched me go by with interest.

“Morning there!” I sang at the group. “I was worried for a moment at not having seen you.” Everyone stood looking rather solemn, but acknowledged my presence and waved me over. In the centre stood Boris, who grabbed my arm and pulled me in closer to see what everyone had in view.

There it was, just as Edward had predicted.

Scotland in the distance! Green, lovely, and invigorating was the view. Why everyone stood there so unsmiling was still a mystery to me at that moment. I looked over at Boris. He then pointed out what I hadn't yet seen. On our starboard bow, working into position was a Royal Navy MTB. I had rushed on deck to find the enemy right at our gates!

There sat the long low grey shape of His Majesty's Ship MTB-175. They'd overtaken us at last, after a night of cat-and-mouse chasing and manoeuvring. We were nearly within sight of our new home, and the authorities now stood right before us in the Firth of Clyde, blocking our way.

In our present condition, every minute's delay brought the failure of the whole project closer.

I stood on the deck of the
Bonnie
Clyde
, watching the motor torpedo boat with a feeling of helplessness. Surely we were not going to lose everything now. Only fifteen hours ago we had it all before us, and now this. Robert walked up to join the group. Seeing the situation, he put his hand on my shoulder.

“So this is it then, eh?” he said quietly.

Bowman now turned. Seeing the faces round him and those of the lads in the crew, he paused for only a moment before showing why he was captain. “We're not done yet!
Everyone to your posts
! Ned, get on the radio as we discussed, and call up the tugs and our friends. Ask them to bring two pumps and all the petrol they can. Harris, take the wheel. We're coming to difficult waters and we'll be doing a mite of manoeuvring. Boris, get yer boys standing by on the lines and clear the braces. Robert and Flynn, go with Boris. Now let's have at it! This soon brings us through to Greenock, and Dumbarton is just up river.”

The patrol boat was trying to take up a position between the
Bonnie
and the shore to our starboard, possibly to prevent any course change. We still had a good wind and we carried on our way. The relatively calm sea from the night before had given the opportunity for the MTB patrol boat to cover a great distance. She'd missed us in the dark, and had anchored behind the island until she could see us approaching. What she might have forgotten was that a sailing ship can only lose way by furling sails or by a sudden turn of the head into the wind to take the sails all aback. We had no reason to do either. As we reached the main deck, Boris ordered everyone aloft.

“Why are you doing that?” I asked. “We can't outrun them now.”

Boris pointed towards the MTB. “You see deck gun?” I nodded. “Everyone up here, they not shoot unarmed boys. Maybe they want shoot masts to stop us. Now cannot. Boris will give them reason why no shooting.”

“Sounds a bit over-cautious to me,” I said, “but better safe than sorry. You should've been a tactical adviser.”

My compliment was largely ignored as he spread crewmen across the yardarms and released all available sail. Robert and I joined the living shield. Edward had run into the chart room, but now put his head back out to give Harris a course change, and we turned to port to steer clear of the MTB. Edward went back in again, presumably to call the friends and the tugs. I was intrigued by who the friends could be.