Against the Wind (19 page)

As we drifted away from the doomed ship, the inky, featureless night was suddenly punctuated with riotous explosions of color. From the bridge and the ever-rising stern, flares shot skyward. Orange and scarlet and brilliant blue-white signals of distress burst overhead. The howling wind instantly stretched them into streaks of color—banners illuminating the underbellies of the racing clouds.

Beneath the moments of glare I got fragmented glimpses of other survivors struggling to keep afloat. Bright amber life vests dotted the water with those who had fallen from capsized boats. A pair of sailors clung to a drifting raft. In the distance was a lifeboat sunken to its waterline, yet still afloat. The occupants sat stiffly upright, bracing themselves against the waves. As the flare’s brilliance faded, they seemed to be sitting without support on the surface of the sea.

Blackness descended again as the beacon was extinguished. By the time the next one detonated above us a breaker had rolled across the swamped craft. Like a magician’s trick, now it was empty…the survivors had disappeared.

15

LIFEBOAT NUMBER 7
NORTH ATLANTIC
AUTUMN 1940

I
could not make out how all the flurry of escaping from belowdecks and shuttling from place to place fit into three quarters of an hour. Time must have been standing still for me. As we rowed farther from the side of the ship, it felt as if I must be among the very last passengers to get away.

Yet I was wrong. Robert, sandwiched tightly between Mariah and myself, waved toward
Newcastle
’s railing. On the deck there a lone man struggled with a heavy life raft that was the last resort now that all the boats were gone. Single-handedly he muscled the wooden frame attached to metal pontoons up to the barricade, then heaved it over. It tumbled into the water, disappeared, then bobbed up again.

“Hurry, man!” Browne yelled. “There’s not much time!”

But instead of jumping for the raft, the man turned away and disappeared from sight. When he returned, he held a struggling, life-jacketed child under each arm, as if taking a pair of frenzied hens to market.

Raquel shrieked, “Simcha! Yael!”

In the two wrestling bundles I recognized the Jewish girls.

While we in Number 7 held our breath and prayed, the lone rescuer stepped over the rail with his charges and plunged into the sea. Even before they struck the surface our officer was yelling to the sailors to, “Pull, boys, pull!” He laid the tiller hard over to direct our course toward the trio bobbing between
Newcastle
and the raft.

Since I was neither rowing nor steering, I watched the man in the water with apprehension and hope. Mariah and I had to hold onto Raquel to keep her from jumping in the water.

The rescuer seized one child and tossed her onto the raft, then swam back and grabbed the other and did the same, before pulling himself onto the floating platform.

That was when I noticed the gaping hole in
Newcastle
’s flank, where the torpedo had entered and detonated. The rent in the ship’s skin climbed three decks upward from the keel past where my cabin used to be. While narrowing at the top of the wound, it was as broad as the length of a double-decker bus at its base.

How did the ship still stay afloat? How had it lasted so long and not pulled all of us instantly to the depths?

How had I and my girls survived the blast?

Mariah screamed and pointed. The water rushing into the cavernous mouth of the fissure had a tremendous suction. The raft with its three occupants was being drawn into the surging torrent and certain death!

We all knew death awaited the three on the raft. If they disappeared into the jaws of the cavernous chasm, they would either be dashed to pieces, crushed against the steel, or drowned when
Newcastle
slipped beneath the waves.

Raquel called the names of the children over and over again. While Mariah held Raquel’s shoulders, and I her legs, we could not stop her from digging her fingernails into the wood of the lifeboat’s gunwale.

Our officer urged the men to row harder, to put their backs into it, to break themselves with effort, but the waves breaking against
Newcastle
’s hull flowed backwards toward us, pushing us away.

I saw the man on the raft lift his head, facing the cauldron just before him. He knew the danger they were in. He was a strong swimmer; we had seen that when he retrieved the children from the water. If he abandoned them to their fate, perhaps he could save himself.

He made no move to do so. Instead he hugged the children closer and instructed them to wave at us.
Look there,
I saw him say, though I could not hear.
Look there. Rescue is on the way.

Could we possibly reach them in time? Already the raft had bumped one corner against
Newcastle
’s hull, bare yards from the chasm. The rush of water was sweeping them closer with each passing swell. With no oars and nothing to use for paddles, there was no way to maneuver out of danger.

An overturned lifeboat swept alongside the raft. What had happened to the occupants? There was no one clinging to the sharp keel or to the safety ropes floating from the sides. Whatever oars it had possessed must have disappeared when it capsized. Useless. Useless.

Then, as if drawn by invisible cords, the derelict craft pivoted toward the cavern of steel, making a precise turn. Angling directly into
Newcastle
’s side, the empty lifeboat passed the raft and plunged like an arrow into the opening…and jammed there on some jagged metal.

“Now! Now’s our chance,” Browne bellowed. “Give it all you’ve got!”

With the renewed effort Number 7 shot across the intervening space. Once more Raquel jumped upright, and this time we did nothing to prevent her. Her body extended far over the sides toward her children and she called to them. Yael spotted Raquel and leapt to her feet. The bobbing and surging threw the child off balance…right into Raquel’s outstretched arms. Mariah and Raquel dragged Yael aboard.

Our boat collided with the raft. Now I finally recognized the rescuer. It was Cedric Barrett, the British playwright. “Take the girl,” he said, choking on a mouthful of seawater. He lifted Simcha to her knees and held her steady until a pair of sailors plucked her to safety.

“Look out! She’s going,” Browne cried.

I glanced up at
Newcastle,
expecting to see the great hulk crash down on us, but he meant the cork in the bottle. The capsized boat that had given the raft a brief respite snapped in two, and the pieces were sucked out of sight.

Immediately the raft was yanked away from us toward its own destruction.

“Jump, man,” Browne urged Barrett. “Jump for your life!”

Barrett needed no further urging. Flinging himself upright, he leapt forward just as the raft smashed against
Newcastle
’s hull, but his jump was not far enough to reach Number 7. He fell in the water. Two oars reached out toward him. He grasped them both and pulled himself toward us as if they were the handrails of a bridge.

Moments later he was dragged out of the waves and Number 7 was rowed powerfully away from jeopardy, in search of others to rescue. Behind us the raft flipped up on end against
Newcastle
’s shattered side, waved a forlorn farewell, and disappeared into oblivion.

When Number 7 escaped the current jetting into
Newcastle
’s side, we were in an eddy of debris. Lounge chairs, bits of wooden slats from the decking, empty life rings and…dead bodies.

It was a grim task: checking each and every floating corpse we located for the remote possibility of life. Each encounter was made even more grim because of the momentary hope of another rescue. Officer Browne made it extremely clear: we were not taking any of the dead aboard. The lifeboat was already near capacity.

When I saw those who had been alive only moments—at most minutes—before, bobbing away in the wake, I shuddered. I was grateful I recognized none of them.

Browne directed our course to anything resembling a survivor. We searched each scrap big enough for someone to be clinging to.

Where were all the other lifeboats?
Newcastle
had still been moving forward while boats were being launched. Were they scattered over miles of ocean?

Where was the rest of the convoy? How far away was rescue?

I hugged Robert close to me. Raquel was closely hemmed in by her girls. Mariah continued to scan the horizon. Above the creaks and groans of the sinking ship she called out the names of her sister and her niece and nephew.

Almost without warning we encountered another lifeboat. We rowed over the crest of a swell and nearly collided with it. It was barely afloat. Surrounded by frigid water up to their waists, there were four occupants. Two were elderly passengers. Both were dead.

With a cry of excitement Mariah recognized her sister, Patsy, and her niece, Moira. Both were alive…but barely. Patsy was in shock. Moira was icy cold and unresponsive.

We took them aboard. Mariah and I stripped them out of their soaked garments, shedding our own coats to wrap them in.

“Michael,” Patsy murmured, when she could make herself understood past her chattering teeth. “Must find Michael.”

Mariah rubbed her sister’s feet and hands and fiercely promised to find the missing boy.

Sailor Matt Wilson commented, “She’s going.” My head snapped around. I was certain he knew Patsy was dying.

It was
Newcastle
’s final departure he meant.

Lights blazing, the ship’s stern rose higher and higher into the air until her decks were almost perpendicular to the sea. Waves lapped against the first of the two funnels; the forward third of the ship was already underwater.

New sounds of destruction were blown to us on the wind. Bubbles of air and steam hissed and screamed from trapped cavities inside the ship. Raquel bundled the girls close against the nightmarish sound of souls in torment. The floundering wreck gulped great gouts of sea.

Mariah rubbed her sister’s cheeks and patted her niece’s hands. She worked feverishly, as if afraid
Newcastle
’s sinking might still somehow carry Patsy and Moira into a watery grave.

The ship heeled farther to starboard as she sank. The second smokestack aimed itself at us. The radio masts reached out toward us as if even now
Newcastle
would claim us to accompany her into the depths. Involuntarily I drew back, though I knew we were a safe distance away.

The lights blinked once…twice…a third time…and then the blaze winked out, leaving only a blacker silhouette against the impenetrable night. At the last
Newcastle
was no more than a blank expanse of canvas in the center of a portrait of white-capped waves. Then she slipped silently away and was gone.

Raquel gasped and pointed. Pablo’s guitar drifted past.

I breathed a prayer for all those who had been lost in
Newcastle
…and for us.

As far as I could tell, we were alone on the vast, empty sea.

16

LIFEBOAT NUMBER 7
NORTH ATLANTIC
AUTUMN 1940

I
felt the most intense silence. I do not know how else to describe it. There were still the rush of the wind and the patter of flying spray. I felt the thud when Number 7 crested a wave and her bow fell into the succeeding trough.

No more shrieks of alarm.

No more rending steel and tortured machinery.

The world was now cloaked in stillness and in night.

I think we were all stunned. I know I was. There had been no time to sort out terror from relief, grief from shock. I looked around the boat again. There were perhaps twenty-five with me. Were we the only survivors? Had hundreds perished?

My mind refused to accept this conclusion. I had seen other boats being launched. There had to be more still living than this handful.

The reality of loss was brought home to me by Mariah’s expression of sheer desperation. She could not believe that Michael was missing. Perhaps she was afraid his death would kill her sister, who remained barely conscious. While the others looked numb, Mariah still exhibited frantic anxiety.