The overlay was an orange film. Swamphen positioned it carefully. It showed a finger reaching out from the mouth of the Rhine into the North Sea. 'Then six months later, we measured again and found this.” Another overlay. The original area was now a brighter, deeper red and the area covered was noticeably larger. It was spreading along the valley where the Rhine ran under the North Sea. “Obviously, we need to look again and monitor the contamination. See how much comes down and how far it spreads. If it continues to spread at this rate, the North Sea fisheries may be permanently destroyed.”
The red patch of contamination glowered at the audience from the dark blue of the seabed model. Fox's voice was quiet in the room. “Do you think the Americans knew this would happen?”
“I very much doubt it. I don't think the Americans knew a quarter of what would happen when they planned the attack. Oh, they knew the initial results alright, but I think nearly all the long-term effects escaped them completely. In fairness, nobody could know all the aspects of what would happen in a nuclear until somebody tried one. I wouldn't say they experimented on Germany, just that it was a case of learning on the job as it were.
“When I was over there, one of their spooky nuclear planners told me that nuclear weapons weren't just big bombs, they were an entirely new class of weapon. Something unique in history. I think they knew the words but they didn't understand the full impact of them. We've got to find out just how bad these unexpected effects are.”
There was another long silence as the model cast its spell over the three men. Eventually Swamphen sighed. “You know the really ironic thing? All the studies we're doing on the seabed? Some of the American oil people saw them and got quite excited. They say there may be oil down there under the North Sea. Ironic isn't it. For most of this century, British policy has been orientated around getting oil from the Middle East. Now we may have an oilfield right on our doorstep. And if this contamination problem gets really bad, we may be unable to touch it.
Chapter Three World Going To War
Wallsend, Tyneside, UK
The riveters were the infantry of a shipyard. Like the infantry, their job appeared simple yet was really very difficult, there were thousands of them, and without them nothing of any significance could be achieved. Like the infantry, their day started early. John McMullen had got out of bed just after five, dressed in his woolen linings and trousers, his two-piece overalls and the inevitable muffler and cap. His wife had risen with him and adjusted his cap with the pride of a wife, seeing her man off on his first day back at a real job. It was still before dawn when he set out; guided by the widely spaced street lights, still gas in this part of town. As he walked down the street, more men came out of their homes, thickening the growing crowd that was drawn by brighter lights than those on the street. Lights shining through painted glass windows that drew the shipyard men down to their bars.
The pubs clustered around the yard gates were allowed to open at six, and what followed was as fine an example of industrial precision as any shipyard could hope to achieve. The doors of the pubs opened at six on the dot to reveal the long tables. Once, before the grim war and even worse peace, the tables had been loaded with cups of good strong tea and coffee, thick with milk and sugar, and beside them nips of rum or whisky. Now, there was only tea, weak, unsweetened and black while the nips were, well, the only way to describe it was 'something'. Home brew probably, the product of a still somewhere it was better not to ask about.
The men poured in and had just the time for a cup and a nip to scald their lips and throats before heading out again, their debt chalked up on the slates that hung behind the bar. McMullen wiped his lips on his sleeve as he left, running across the road before the yard gates locked at five past six. Woe betide the man who arrived after that time for his job would be lost, his place would be taken by another man who was already waiting in line for the chance. Then, the unlucky worker would be left with nothing but a cold walk home with empty pockets to meet an angry wife.
The two cruisers had arrived on Friday, warped in from the yard basin and tied up alongside the refit dock. Belfast and Edinburgh. Those were their names now but that wouldn't be for long. Their new nameplates were already waiting. Capetown and Pretoria. McMullen was on the Edinburgh work gang, an easier job than Belfast but more to do. Belfast, soon to become Capetown, had been mined early in the war, her back broken by a magnetic mine. She'd barely been repaired in time to make the run to Canada but at least she'd received some modernization while in the repair yard. The problem was there was heavy structural repairs, left unfinished from her mining, to be made inside the hull. Edinburgh hadn't been damaged so she was spared that, but she hadn't been modernized either so there was more minor work to be done before she would set sail as Pretoria.
“McMullen!” The gang foreman yelled and pointed at two plates waiting to be riveted. By the look of them, they would form pail of a new deckhouse. It would be built down here, then swung up to wherever it had to go. Nearby a fire was already burning fiercely, the rivet-heaters working their bellows and turning the lengths of steel in the fires. Glowing red hot they were yet not quite ready for use. Only when they turned white would they be thrown to the rivet catchers who would catch them in tins and ready them for insertion. Every so often a 'prentice would forget himself and try to catch a rivet in his bare hand. Then there would be a dreadful scream. For those working up top, the result of seizing white-hot steel in a bare hand was almost always a fall and a death. For those on the quay side, it was just a hand burned and crippled beyond use.
The steel plates weren't quite aligned properly; the holes drilled in them didn't quite match. It would have been the work of a second to shift them into line but the riveting gang were riveters and thus members of the Boilermaker's Union. Shifting steel plates was a job for a member of the Steelworkers Union and the start of riveting would have to wait until a couple of steelmen turned up to adjust the job. McMullen was lucky. As the siren went at quarter past the hour, two steelmen shifted the plates into line and there was a clang as a rivet landed in the cup.
As McMullen swung his hammer back he saw what appeared to be a snowstorm overhead, a cloud of white-hot rivets being thrown through the air to the men working on the gantries that surrounded the cruiser. Even as the howl of the siren faded, the deafening noise of a day's work at the shipyard started.
McMullen took his first swing. This was the critical bit. If the hammer didn't strike square, if the timing was slightly off, then the rivet would be distorted or loose. Not far behind the riveting gang was the check-man. He'd look at each rivet, inspecting it for tightness and accuracy. If it passed, he would take his white chalk and make his check-mark, a white tick across the rivet, a short down-stroke left to right then a long upstroke. If the rivet was suspect, it got an angry red cross. Then, that rivet would have to be drilled out and replaced. The system was simple. The riveting gang got paid for each white tick but fined double that amount for each red cross. Good riveters did well, bad ones didn't last long.