Evans was in the middle of an early morning shave as I entered his day room. He struck his head round the bathroom door and I held the signal form up to him while noticing, somewhat wryly, that he really didn’t shave with his hat on after all, and he wasn’t in the nude this time either. He’d only been half-way through the operation but, right away, he came out of the little tiled area wiping flecks of lather from his face with a big fluffy Company towel.
‘In code, I hope?’ he grunted through the enveloping white folds.
‘Yessir,’ I nodded. He grunted and, walking over to the master’s small safe in the corner of the cabin, patted the pocket of his baggy shorts, fished out a bunch of keys and opened it. While he brought the lead-covered code book over to the desk — lead-covered in case we had to ditch it quickly — I noticed his orange and blue life-jacket lying on the settee instead of gathering dust in its usual place under the bunk.
Did that make him a coward too? I remember my first captain watching me cynically during lifeboat drill in Singapore Roads many years ago. I was sweating and redfaced with embarrassment at struggling with the awkward cork vests we had in those days. ‘I feel such a fool, wearing this in a boat, Sir,’ I’d muttered self-consciously.
He’d grinned understandingly and, getting up from the tiller, had slipped into his own. ‘You’d feel a bigger bloody fool without it, lad… in the water,’ he’d answered.
No, Evans wasn’t a coward. He just had good sense.
It took quite a long time for the Old Man to decode the signal and, when he threw the pencil down, he sat looking at it and frowning. ‘What the…?’ he muttered, then shoved it across the desk towards me. When I’d read it, I had to agree with him — it seemed one of the craziest survival strategies the Admiralty had conceived of to date, and that was really saying something.
I lifted my eyes and started back at the beginning in case I’d missed something crucial. But I hadn’t. Our future orders, planned out like a game of chess by some uninvolved desk sailor with little wooden ships on a shiny white plotting table five thousand miles away, were all there in the Old Man’s spidery scrawl.
COMSAW TO COMCONVOY H 24 S: REPLY YOUR MESSAGE TIMED 0235 HRS 29 5… PROCEED QUICKEST ROUTE QUINTANILHA DE ALMEIDA ISLAND PER ADMIRALTY CHART NO. 1369ZB HEAVY ESCORT WILL RENDEZVOUS WITH YOU ETA 1530 HRS 1 6 AT POSIT FIVE MILES DUE WEST OF ISLAND… UNTIL THEN YOU WILL WAIT REPEAT WAIT IN IMMEDIATE AREA DESIGNATED HOWEVER YOU ARE ADVISED POSSIBILITY OF CONCEALED ANCHORAGE CENTRE QUINTANILHA DE ALMEIDA LIMITED PILOTAGE INSTRUCTIONS AVAILABLE 1927 ISSUE SOUTH AND WEST AFRICA NAVIGATOR BUT CAUTION NO RECENT SURVEY DETAILS TO HAND… WOULD STRONGLY RECOMMEND YOUR ENTERING ANCHORAGE IF POSSIBLE BUT REQUEST YOU USE OWN DISCRETION HOWEVER MASTERS CYCLOPS SLANT ATHENIAN ARE ADVISED THEY ARE ABSOLVED RESPONSIBILITY FOR MISHAPS INCURRED SHOULD THEY EXECUTE ABOVE SUGGESTION… FINAL WARNING DO NOT REPEAT DO NOT MAKE ANY FURTHER NORTHING OR WESTING YOUR PRESENT POSITION DUE TO SIGNIFICANT ENEMY SUBMARINE ACTIVITY CONFIRMED THAT AREA GOOD LUCK AND GOOD HIDING SIGNED TRYST REAR ADMIRAL END.
And that was that!
‘Good God,’ I whispered, starting to feel numb all over.
‘Aye, you’ll do well to flatter Him, John,’ said the Old Man slowly. “Cause we’ll be needing His presence on the bridge pretty steady for the next three days.’
Evans pushed his chair back from the desk and walked over to the bridge voice pipe hooked above the bunk. ‘Send me down chart number 1369ZB please, Mister Shell… And ask my tiger to bring coffee for two to my cabin, will you?’
While we were waiting for the chart and coffee he went over to the crammed bookshelf on the after bulkhead and lifted down a heavy, red-bound volume. I glanced at it as it lay on the desk — the ship’s copy of the South and West Africa Navigator. Then he flopped back in his chair and looked at me. ‘And precisely what does that signal suggest to you, John?’
I pulled a face. ‘It suggests we’re going to work up a proper bloody sweat trying to keep out of the way of the U-boats for the next three days, for a start. And if we can’t get into that island the Navy talks about, then we won’t even have the advantage of being able to leave the Hun behind. If we’ve got to cruise in circles waiting for the new escorts, then if Jerry doesn’t get us the first time we pass he’ll have plenty more chances before the afternoon of the first of June.’
‘You seem to be in accord with my own summing-up.’
‘It’ll be like driving a scheduled bus on a circular route past a homicidal maniac with a shotgun and a bloody timetable!’ I affirmed emphatically.
Then the chart and the coffee arrived together and we sat in thoughtful silence as the Old Man’s Chinese steward poured the coffee. I remember hoping apprehensively that, this time, the shiny silver pot wouldn’t finish up on Evans’s fancy Egyptian carpet while we finished up on the bridge… or in the water! It was very warm in the cabin and my eyelids started to droop until I came round with a nasty, shivery start to find the tiger gone and the Captain immersed in the big book. I leaned forward and searched vainly for the sugar — damn! I’d forgotten we’d run out of that, too — while Evans ran his finger across the chart, then looked up.
‘More a sixth-form bloody history book than a navigational aid, this,’ he muttered, then stabbed his finger irritably at the chart again. ‘According to our three a.m. position the island lies roughly one twenty miles sou’ sou’ west of us… say about six hours’ steaming.’
I glanced at my watch. ‘Giving us an E.T.A. around 0930? We should raise it around one bell in the Third Mate’s watch.’
Sipping the coffee I pulled another face as he tapped the open book with his knuckle. ‘Did you know there was land that close to us? Before the signal, I mean?’
I nodded. I’d seen it often enough on the chart. In fact, on the small-scale projection it was often mistaken for a spot where someone had dropped their pencil point by mistake. ‘I wouldn’t really call it “land,” though. More a spit of rock a couple of miles wide from the look of it on the chart.
'They say Tristan da Cunha isn’t much more than that, and even it’s a tricky landfall.’
He became lost in thought for a few moments, then, lifting his eyes, said, ‘Well, Mister Kent. What do you think we should do?’
I shrugged. ‘We don’t seem to have much choice. That signal doesn’t leave any room for doubt. While presumably they have a more accurate appreciation of the situation directly ahead of us… though I still think it’s bloody crazy to go right down there, farther south. As far as I can see, we’re doing exactly what the enemy are trying to push us into.’
He got up, paced a few steps, then swung on me. ‘But we still have no proof, John. It’s all assumption, everything. At least we have only another hundred odd miles to run doing it the Navy way, then we just wait for the escorts. To me the risk seems marginally less by going for the island.’
I bowed to his decision, after all, he was the Captain. ‘Aye, aye, Sir. But I still wouldn’t like to put money on our chances, just circling in the open sea for three days. Maybe we ought to look at the pilotage instructions first, then decide if we can risk entering this enclosed anchorage the signal advises?’
He picked up a pencil and bent over the chart, laying off a course to the tiny speck that marked the mysterious and, evidently little-known, island of Quintanilha de Almeida.
‘Maybe we ought to get there first, eh, John?’ he murmured softly.
Five minutes later he had blown Charlie Shell up on the voice pipe and given him the new heading… told him to advise Athenian. I guessed the Second Mate must have been beside himself with curiosity as he swung the ship through yet another sweeping turn and the compass settled back in its, by now, almost permanent state of southerliness.