Most kept it hidden. Rather too well hidden, sometimes, I mused, so many of the sailors – particularly the ones who’d seen so much, suffered so much, had to tend to their dead and dying friends – feeling not quite able to articulate the shock and revulsion that I knew must regularly dance through their dreams. So I acted on what had now become a powerful instinct; I gave comfort where needed, in the shape of my physical presence and, increasingly, because sometimes the pain was buried deep, gave comfort where it wasn’t even known that it was needed.
It was the strangest thing – well, at first. I soon learned to understand it. I’d have a rating pick me up, seemingly at random, and then they’d pull me close to their face – their conscious mind assuming that they were petting me. And then that outbreath. That sigh. That realisation seeping into them. That, actually, it was the other way around.
If the communist garrison leader – a Colonel Kang – hoped to break the crew, and have the captain agree to his terms, he had underestimated the strength of everyone’s resolve. This was strengthened even further when, towards the end of June, three mail sacks got through to us, and better still came the news, following an otherwise fruitless meeting with Captain Kerans, that Kang was going to allow us to have delivered some of the reserves of fuel oil that were currently up in Nanking.
The captain, in a rare display of levity, almost clapped his hands together in glee. ‘Now that’s what I call a mistake!’ he told the officers. ‘I still can’t quite believe it, I really can’t.’
‘Perhaps there’s been an instruction from on high, sir,’ Hett suggested. ‘You know. Humanitarian grounds and that. It won’t look good if the men start dropping, will it?’
The captain scratched his head. I could see he was thinking about Kang. Though he’d not said it publicly, because he didn’t want to frighten the men, I knew he believed everything Kang did was threatening. That he would have no compunction, if we crossed him, about killing us all. ‘Hmm, perhaps there has,’ he said. Then his face fell. ‘Or perhaps he’s playing mind games again. I should have thought of that. We still have to get it.’
It would be a long wait, too, but knowing it was coming, and that it would make everyone’s lives so much more palatable in the increasing heat, raised everyone’s spirits right up again. Then, ten days later, we greeted the day – a rare fine one – with the sight of a tug boat towing a lighter, approaching from upriver.
It took a while to be sure, but as it drew nearer, a cheer went up all over the Amethyst, as it became obvious that what it carried was the promised supply of oil. At last we’d have the means to light and ventilate the ship properly – simple things perhaps, but, in our current straits, so important.
Everyone free to do so crowded the starboard guardrails. The happy expectation turned out to be short-lived, however. As the craft tried to approach our side, the tide had its own ideas about where the oil should be headed, thwarting every attempt to get alongside us, and pulling both tug and lighter away downstream.
There was no way it was going to get away without a fight, and, eventually, through the valiant efforts of the pilot (helped by Peggy, who barked encouragement throughout, possibly under the misapprehension that it held some dog food) the lighter was tied to us and the business of unloading it could begin. The only problem now – and it was a big one – was how that could be done. For all that the precious liquid was a godsend, every last drum of it, a little under three hundred drums would have to be hoisted on board and then drained into the oil fuel tank by hand.
But it was a challenge the men welcomed and they rolled their sleeves up willingly. They’d not had any decent exercise for some 82 days now, and everyone was feeling it. There was another wait first, because to do so at night would be too dangerous. With the dusk closing in, the captain decided ‘Operation Oil’ would have to wait until the morning.
No one seemed to mind the dawn reveille, and it was cheering to hear the determination and commitment in the crew’s voices as they began the mammoth task of transferring our welcome haul into the tank. It was a messy business; by lunch time there seemed to be oil everywhere. It was spilled on the decks, all over the crew and, less happily, up my nose – the smell of it being the nearest I decided I would like to get to it. It was hard enough to keep clean in the current conditions at the best of times, so I busied myself, as per usual, padding along all the still well-travelled rat runs, happy in the knowledge that the light and air and general lifting of spirits would help send the creatures back from where they came.
‘To C in C,’ the captain said to Jack, when, by around four in the afternoon, the last drop was safely sloshing where it belonged. ‘Fuel now on board. 54 tons. Operation commenced 05:00, finished at 16:00 hours, working nonstop throughout, 11 hours. They worked like TROJANS!’ he finished. ‘And make sure that’s in capitals, Flags. What an excellent day’s work.’
There was further good news when a message arrived by boat a short while later in the form of a letter asking the captain to attend a meeting in Ching Kiang, the Communist People’s Liberation Army’s HQ, the following day.
‘Might this be it, sir?’ Hett asked him, as they gathered in the wireless room. ‘Might we finally be given permission to get away, do you think?’
‘I hope so,’ said Captain Kerans. ‘Let’s hope for the best, eh?’
But his expression told me the rest of what he was thinking. That at the same time, we should prepare for the worst.
The worst happened. Captain Kerans returned from the meeting stony-faced and sweating. Far from an agreement, he’d returned with yet another disappointment.
We might have oil, but they were still demanding an admission from the British Navy that not only had we fired first but that we shouldn’t have even been there. That we had no right to be in Chinese waters in the first place, which was patently untrue. But as the communists were now controlling more and more territory around the Yangtse, their implacable stance held more and more sway.
There was even more; the captain had asked about replenishing our food stores, and was told in no uncertain terms that, as foreign merchant ships were no longer permitted to travel up the Yangtse, any ship – or plane – that attempted to go anywhere near the Amethyst would immediately be destroyed.
‘And, of course, he reiterated his usual threat,’ the captain said gloomily. ‘The Amethyst will also be destroyed if we attempt to move it. So that’s that. Another deadlock. I’m sorry to have to say so, but if we’re going to play Kang at his own game, there’s no choice. It’s going to have to be half-rations from tomorrow.’
The strain of our continued confinement was now making its presence felt right across the ship. Like the ensign that still flew above us, the crew – me included, because I was now on half-rations too – were getting droopy and ragged. Even Peggy was beginning to wilt – and she was usually immune to the extremes of temperature. I’d often catch her standing by a guardrail, looking wistfully at the sludge-coloured water below us. ‘She’ll be in the river – you mark my words,’ Petty Officer Griffiths kept muttering. ‘She’ll be in. For two pins, she’ll be in, for a swim.’
Still, Peggy, who managed to resist the temptation (just – I had no similar compunction) did what she could to cheer our friends up, as did I. But while we could curl up with our friends in the mess and watch them settle down to sleep, Captain Kerans increasingly seemed preoccupied and distant, mooching around on his own at all hours of the day and night.