At the start of our turn, as our high stem had started to bear round on them, they must have thought for a few crucial moments that we were only yawing through the inattention of our helmsman. Probably her First Lieutenant had been too sure of his right of way as the ‘Stand on’ ship to worry overmuch at that stage. Then, as they realised with what must have been incredulously dawning horror that we were actually turning into our sixty-degree leg alteration, her officers had acted in a way which should still have saved them. According to Evans, the white water had boiled under her counter as she went to Emergency Full Ahead while, at the same time — presumably in an attempt to kick her after-end away from our bows — she had suddenly leaned over under full starboard helm. Then, just as he thought everything was clear, the mysterious forces of water pressure had taken over.
Mallard was a little ship. She was so light that she didn’t so much sit in the water as on it. I suppose a plan view of the relative positions of the two ships just before the moment of impact would have shown Mallard—under full starboard helm and ahead power — pulling across our bows from left to right. Cyclops, on the other hand, had already started to slow her swing due to my order to ‘Ease the helm’ a few seconds previously. In that instant we were still roughly one cable, or six hundred feet, away from her. Both Evans and I later agreed that she had done the right thing in starboarding as that way, in theory, she should still have stayed ahead of us and eventually drawn out of the radius of our swing. But then, as I’ve already said, no doubt a Court of Law could have pronounced learned judgment, given time to debate, but would an officer have acted any differently with the shadow of twelve thousand tons of rushing, juggernauting steel looming over his tiny cockleshell?
The bulge of water beyond our forefoot had hit Mallard first at her stern. When a big ship is travelling at speed a mass of displaced water is pushed ahead of her, acting with Gargantuan force on any object in its path. Mallard was such an object, sitting light on the surface as she was. The racing, compacted mass of our bow wave had caught her — already under full starboard helm — and pushed her stern farther and farther round like a cork thrown into a weir. The effects were disastrous. Round had swept her bows, round, round, round until, still under full emergency power, she had practically been facing us stem to stem. Then the force of her own engines had driven her remorselessly back into our path… right into the welter of rushing, roaring water under our razor forefoot.
It shouldn’t have happened. But then, theoretically, no collision at sea should. Collisions are invariably an accumulation of small, individually insignificant events which, if unnoticed, make up the formula for disaster. Like this one, where the corvette watchkeeper’s irritating elan had needled Evans into a disgruntled attitude towards his Royal Navy counterparts. Where Mallard’s inexplicable insistence on remaining so close off our bow had been further compounded by our misjudgment of her true distance in the waning light. Where the nebulous forces of water pressure, of ‘Interaction,’ had combined with the already exerted helm action to swing the escort’s bow through a fatally over-extended arc. Where…
Oh, what the hell’s the point? Those dead, drowned Navy men didn’t care how it happened.
Yet, strangely, it was what occurred after the impact that I remember most of all.
I remember standing searching frantically in the half light for the vanished corvette. Then the Captain came running across the wing and, seizing my shoulder, literally dragged me away from the wheelhouse door to allow him passage. I heard him bellowing to the man at the wheel while a dazed, petrified Brannigan still clung desperately to the whistle lanyard.
‘Hard to PORT!’ Evans screamed, lunging for the engine room telegraphs. The brass handles flashed in the last rays of the dying sun as he swung them back and forward, then back again to ‘Full Astern.’ By this time I, too, had joined the confused terror of the wheelhouse as the wheel blurred under McRae’s spinning hands. We had just commenced to heel over when the shudder came from the bows, and the shrieking and tearing of wood and metal and men came sweeping back over the canvas dodgers.
Something else was shrieking too, with the agonized cries of a wounded monster, and I realised it was that bloody siren on our funnel, still operated by an almost zombie-like Fourth Mate. It was eerie, the way he kept on pulling and pulling at the lanyard. Suddenly I couldn’t stand it any longer and smashed his arm down violently, yelling that it was too goddamned late for that! Then I felt guilty at the look on his shocked features as I remembered I’d told him to keep on till I said to stop.
The bows seemed to ride up slightly as we cut into Mallard abaft her ridiculous little funnel, then the line of the horizon jumped as our full, ponderous weight took over and we sliced down, down and through her galley and mess decks. Our carnivorous forefoot smashed into her engine room, tons of water-streaming rusty steel impacting down on them from the collapsing deckhead being the very last sensation her engineers must have experienced as they stood before their polished brass wheels and gauges. Then on and on, crushing even further through her oil-filled double bottoms and keel until, in a few fleeting, devastating seconds, Cyclops had ripped the corvette completely in two, yet conceded only a barely perceptible jolt to mark her passing…
The Captain ran past me again, face white as death, to the extreme starboard wing. I saw him leaning so far out over the sea that, for a sickeningly frightening moment, I thought he was going to overbalance and fall into the rushing black water below. Then he ripped his cap off and started beating the rail with it in an agony of frustration at our inability to repair the havoc we’d created. What made it even worse was that he wasn’t swearing or shouting — just smashing and smashing with the crumpling, braided cap; smashing down on the rail as though belabouring his own conscience through the medium of the ship.
We had begun to shudder violently ourselves now. Every window frame and loose object in the wheelhouse was chattering and jumping excitedly. It was the torque effect of our propellor shafts suddenly thrown under full astern power. They must have felt it too, down below, to have hit the engine controls so quickly… Oh, Christ! The screws. They were still spinning and by now the shattered bulk of Mallard must be sliding slowly aft along our flank. If one of our churning phosphor-bronze propellors even touched her… I threw myself at the telegraph and swung it desperately to ‘Stop Engines’… The jolting vibration ceased almost as soon as I took my hand away and the silence clamped down on the darkened wheelhouse with an almost physical grip.
Then McRae at the wheel said, ‘Wheel’s still hard to port, Mister Kent, Sir,’ in a shocked, quiet voice, and I shook myself free of the dazed horror that threatened to paralyse me. I saw them both — Brannigan and McRae — watching me dumbly and I knew I had to do something to break the sick tension.
‘Midships the wheel,’ I said, forcing my voice to remain as icy cold as I could. Then, to Brannigan, ‘Get down below… Take the Carpenter and sound the forepeak. Sound the forra’d bilges too, then report back here.’
The Fourth Mate blinked, then nodded and almost ran from the bridge. I glanced at the clock — only a few seconds had actually passed since the start of the nightmare… Where in God’s name was Athenian? She was still slamming up astern of us. Maybe they hadn’t seen anything to account for our crazy, gyrating course. Maybe she was still on a heading to bear down on us and anything that was left of the corvette. I ran out to the bridge wing and skidded to a halt.