Thirty-three men, who could have been safe ashore, were sealed into that coffin of a ship. The time was three-fourteen. Just over one and a half hours to go. Surely it would hold off for that short time. I watched figures in oilskins bent double as they forced their way for’ard and clambered down to the tank deck. The open gap, with its glimpse of the beach and the blurred shape of vehicles standing in the rain, gradually sealed itself. The clamps were checked. The half gate swung into place. Now nobody could leave the ship. And as if to underline the finality of those doors being closed, messages began to come through.
Coastal Command first: Trawler ‘Viking Fisher’ in distress. Anticipate possibility of very severe storm imminent your locality. Winds of high velocity can be expected from almost any direction. Report each hour until further notice. Then Cliff crashed net frequency to announce contact with Faeroes and weather ship India. Faeroes report wind southerly force 10. Barometer 968, rising. ‘W/S India’: wind north-westerly force 9 or 10. Barometer 969, falling rapidly. Very big seas. CCN again with a supplementary forecast from the Meteorological Office: Sea areas Hebrides, Bailey, Faeroes, South-East Iceland — Probability that small, very intense depression may have formed to give wind speeds of hurricane
force locally for short duration. Storm area will move southwards with the main northerly air stream, gradually losing intensity. The outside world stirring in its sleep and taking an interest in us. Stratton passed the messages to Pinney without comment, standing at the chart table in the wheelhouse. Pinney read them and then placed them on top of the log book. He didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say. The moment for getting the men ashore was gone half an hour ago. Waves were breaking up by the bows and occasionally a tremor ran through the ship, the first awakening as the stern responded to the buoyancy of water deep enough to float her. And in the wheelhouse there was an air of expectancy, a man at the wheel and the engine-room telegraph at stand-by.
The time was twelve minutes after four.
The radio operator again. Base asking for Captain Pinney on the R/T. Pinney went out and an unusual quiet descended on the wheelhouse, a stillness of waiting. In moments like this, when a ship is grounded and you are waiting for her to float again, all sensitivity becomes concentrated on the soles of the feet, for they are in contact with the deck, the transmitters of movement, of any untoward shock. We didn’t talk because our minds were on our feet. We were listening by touch. Perhaps that’s why our ears failed to register how quiet it had become.
Through my feet, through the nerves that ran up my legs, connecting them to my brain, I could feel the tremor, the faint lifting movement, the slight bump as she grounded again. It all came from the stern. But it was a movement that was changing all the time, growing stronger, so that in a moment a slight shock preceded the lift and there was a surge running the length of the ship. It was different. Definitely a change in the pattern and it puzzled me. I glanced at Stratton. He was frowning, watching a pencil on the chart table. It had begun to roll back and forth at each surge. The bumps as we grounded were more noticeable now, a definite shock.
Wentworth came in. ‘What is it? I told you to stay on the quarter-deck with the Bos’n.’ Stratton’s voice was irritable, his nerves betraying him. ‘Well?’
‘There’s quite a swell building up.’ The youngster’s face looked white. ‘You can see it breaking on the skerries of Sgeir Mhor. It’s beginning to come into the bay. And the wind’s gone round.’
‘Gone round?’
‘Backed into the west.’
Stratton went to the door on the port side and flung it open again. No wind came in. The air around the ship was strangely still. But we could hear it, roaring overhead. The first grey light of dawn showed broken masses of cloud pouring towards us across the high back of Keava. The moon shone through ragged gaps. It was a wild, grey-black sky, ugly and threatening. Stratton stood there for a moment, staring up at it, and then he came back into the wheelhouse, slamming the door behind him. ‘When did it start backing? When did you first notice it?’
‘About ten minutes ago. I wasn’t certain at first. Then the swell began to …’
‘Well, get back to the after-deck, Number One. If it goes round into the south …’ He hesitated. ‘If it does that, it’ll come very quickly now. Another ten minutes, quarter of an hour. We’ll know by then. And if it does — then you’ll have to play her on the kedge like a tunny fish. That hawser mustn’t break. Understand? I’ll back her off on the engines. It’ll be too much for the winch. Your job is to see she doesn’t slew. Slack off when you have to. But for Christ’s sake don’t let her stern swing towards the beach. That’s what happened to Kelvedon.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
Stratton nodded. ‘This swell might just do the trick. If we can get her off before the wind goes right round….’
But Wentworth was already gone. He didn’t need’ to be told what would happen if the wind backed southerly — wind and waves and the breaking strain on that hawser a paltry forty-five tons. And as though to underline the point, Stratton said to me, ‘One of the weaknesses of these ships, that winch gear only rates about ten horse-power.’ He picked up the engine-room telephone. ‘Stevens? Oh, it’s you, Turner. Captain here. Give me the Chief, will you.’
He began giving instructions to the engine-room and I pushed past him, out on to the wing bridge and up the steel ladder to the open deck above. The lookout was standing on the compass platform staring aft, his face a pallid oval under his sou’wester. A ragged gap in the clouds showed stars, a diamond glitter with the outline of Tarsaval sharp and black like a cut-out; a glimpse of the moon’s face, and the wind tramping overhead, driving a black curtain of cloud across it. I went aft down the flag deck where the tripod structure of the mainmast stood rooted like a pylon, and a moment later Stratton joined me. ‘Any change?’
‘West sou’west, I think.’ I couldn’t be sure, but there was a definite swell. We could see it coming in out of the half-darkness and growing in the ship’s lights as it met the shallows. It slid under the stern and then broke seething along the length of the sides, lifting the stern and snapping the anchor hawser taut. Across the bay we could see spray bursting against the dim, jagged shape of the skerries. The wind was definitely south of west. I could feel it sometimes on my face, though the force of it and the true direction was masked by the bulk of Keava. Raindrops spattered on my face.
But it was the swell that held us riveted, the regular grind and bump as the ship was lifted. And then one came in higher, breaking earlier. It crashed against the stern. Spray flung a glittering curtain of water that hung an instant, suspended and then fell on us, a drenching cascade. But it wasn’t the water so much as the ship herself that alarmed us, the sudden shock of impact, the way she lifted, and slewed, the appalling snap of the hawser as it took the full weight, the thudding crash as she grounded again, grinding her bottom in the backwash.
‘I hope to God he remembers to slip the winch out of gear,’ Stratton murmured, speaking to himself rather than to me. ‘All that weight on it…. We’ve stripped the gears before now. I’d better remind him.’ He turned to go, but then he stopped, his gaze turned seaward. ‘Look!’ He was pointing to the other LCT, a cluster of lights in the grey darkness of the bay. ‘Lucky beggar.’ She had her steaming lights on and was getting her anchor up; and I knew what Stratton was thinking — that he might have been out there, safe, with room to manoeuvre and freedom to do so.