Later, we were driven away from the town in three lorries and dumped in the countryside seventeen miles from where we had been arrested. It took us the whole of the next day and part of the day after to find the cache of supplies we had made at the first warning that we were about to be arrested.
At no time during our involuntary visit to Afrim-occupied territory had we seen or heard any sign or hint of the women. That night, I lay awake despairing of seeing Sally and Isobel again.
It had been announced on the early news that the unidentified ship which had been sailing up the English Channel for the last two days had entered the Thames Estuary.
During the morning I followed the regular bulletins. The ship had neither answered nor made any radio signals since first being sighted. It was not flying any flag. A pilot cutter had gone out to it from Tilbury, but the men had not been able to board it. From the name on her bows, the ship had been identified as a medium-sized cargo tramp, registered in Liberia and according to Lloyd’s was at present chartered to a shipping firm in Lagos.
It happened that from twelve-thirty I was free to leave the college, and not having any appointments or lectures in the afternoon I decided to go down to the river. I caught a bus to Cannon Street and walked out on to London Bridge. Several hundred other people, mainly workers from near-by offices, had had the same notion, and the east side of the bridge was crowded.
As time passed several people moved away, evidently in order to return to their offices, and as a result I was able to move forward to the parapet of the bridge.
At just after two-thirty we were able to make out the ship, coming upriver towards the Tower Bridge. We saw that there were several craft in attendance around it, and that many of them were launches of the river police. A wave of speculation passed through the crowd.
The ship approached the bridge, which kept its road down. A man standing near to me had a small pair of field-glasses, and he told us that the pedestrians on the bridge were being moved off, and the road was being closed to traffic. A few seconds later the bridge opened just in time for the ship to pass through.
I was aware of sirens near by. Turning, I saw that four or five police-cars had driven on to London Bridge. The men remained inside, but left the blue lights flashing on the roofs. The ship came on towards us.
We observed that several men on the small launches around the ship were speaking to those on board through loud-hailers. We could not make out what was said, but the sound came to us across the water in tinny resonances. It became unnaturally quiet on the bridge, as the police sealed off each end to traffic. A mounted policeman rode up and down telling us to leave the bridge. Only a few of us obeyed.
The ship was now less than fifty yards from us, and it was possible to see that its decks were crowded with people, many of whom were lying down. Two of the police-launches had reached London Bridge, and were turned towards the ship. From one of them, a policeman with a loud-hailer shouted to the captain of the ship to stop his engines and to submit to a boarding party.
There was no acknowledgement from the ship, which sailed on slowly towards the bridge, though many of the people on the decks of the ship were shouting back at the police, unable to make themselves understood.
The bows of the ship passed underneath an arch of the bridge about fifteen yards where I stood. I looked down at it. The decks were crowded to the rails with people. I had no more time to observe their condition, because the superstructure amidships crashed into the parapet of the bridge. It was a slow, grinding collision, making an ugly scraping noise of metal on stone. I saw that the paintwork of the ship and its superstructure was filthy and rusty, with many panes of broken glass in the ports.
I looked down at the river and saw that the police-launches and two river-authority tugs had gone in against the hull of the old ship, and were trying to push her stern towards the concrete bank of the New Fresh Wharf. I saw from the black smoke still issuing from her funnel and from the white-cream froth at the stern, that the ship’s engines were still running. As the tugs made headway in pushing her towards the bank the metal superstructure scraped and crashed repeatedly against the bridge.
I saw movement on the ship, on the decks and inside. The people on board were moving towards the stern. Many of them fell as they ran. As the stern rammed into the concrete quay the first men jumped ashore.
The ship was wedged firmly between the bank and the bridge, her bows still under the arch, her superstructure against the parapet and her stern overhanging the quay. A tug moved round to the bridge, to make sure that until the engines were stopped the ship wouldn’t turn somehow and move back into the river. Four police-launches were now against her port side, and ropes and rope-ladders were thrown with grappling-irons on to the decks. The fleeing passengers made no efforts to remove them. When the first ladder was secured the police and customs officials began to climb it.
On the bridge, our interest was directed to the people leaving the ship: the Africans were coming ashore.
We watched them with a mixture of horror and fascination. There were men, women and children. Most if not all were in an advanced state of starvation. Skeletal arms and legs, distended stomachs, skull-like heads holding staring eyes; flat, paper-like breasts on the women, accusing faces on them all. Most were naked or nearly so. Many of the children could not walk. Those whom no one would carry were left on the ship.
A metal door in the side of the ship was opened from within and a gangplank pushed across the strip of water to the quay. From below-decks more Africans came out on to the shore. Some fell to the concrete as they stepped on the land, others moved towards the wharf-building and disappeared either into it or around its sides. None of them looked up at us on the bridge, or back at their fellows who were in the process of leaving the ship.
We waited and watched. There seemed to be no end to the number of people on board.
In time, the upper decks were cleared, though people still poured ashore from below. I tried to count the number of people lying, dead or unconscious, on the deck. When I had reached one hundred, I stopped counting.
The men who had gone aboard finally managed to stop the engines, and the ship was made fast to the quay. Many ambulances had arrived at the wharf, and those people suffering most were put inside and driven away.
But hundreds more just wandered from the wharf, away from the river, and up into the streets of the City, whose occupants knew nothing as yet of the events on the river.
I learned later that the police and the river authorities had found more than seven hundred corpses on the ship, most of them children. The welfare authorities accounted for another four and a half thousand survivors, who were taken to hospitals or emergency centres. There was no way of counting the remainder, though I heard once an estimate of three thousand people who had wandered away from the ship and tried to survive alone.
Shortly after the ship had been secured, we were moved off the bridge by the police, who told us that its structure was considered to be unsafe. The following day, however, it was open again to traffic.
The event I had witnessed became known in time as the first of the Afrim landings.
We were signalled down by a prowling police-car and questioned at some length as to our destination, and the circumstances surrounding our departure. Isobel tried to explain about the invasion of the next street and the imminent danger in which our home had been.
While we waited for permission to continue, Sally tried to soothe Isobel, who was taken by a flood of tears. I did not want to be affected by it. While being in full sympathy with her feelings, and realizing that it is no small upset to be dispossessed in such a manner, I had experienced Isobel’s lack of fortitude for the last few months. It had been understandably awkward while I was working at the cloth factory, but in comparison with some of my other former colleagues at the college, our situation was relatively settled. I had made every attempt to be sympathetic and patient with her, but had succeeded only in reviving old differences.