Villiers had refused to let me order her to run for shelter. 'She's under charter to stand by us. She's the only boat we've got, the one chance if we're driven on to Shetland. What do you imagine people ashore will say if we let her abandon us?'
That was what worried him most — what people would say. And it worried me, too. The ocean was on the move, wind and water and waves driving us southeastward at somewhere between a knot and a knot and a half. And nobody coming to our aid. Nobody out here except the Duchess. And so I left it to Gertrude and Johan to make their own decisions. I talked to them, I gave them the latest Met. bulletin, our estimates of drift position; twice I had quite a long chat with Gertrude, but at no time did she suggest running for shelter. It was not even discussed.
At one o'clock we listened to the BBC news, and again at six. It was a strange experience, slightly unreal, to hear the dispassionate voice of the announcer stating that the rig North Star, after striking oil, had dragged its anchors and was adrift in heavy seas west of Shetland. And that Vic Villiers, the 'well-known and somewhat controversial head of Villiers Finance & Investment' was himself on board the rig supervising attempts to re-anchor. No mention of sabotage. Nothing about the Duchess or how we had got aboard. Not even a hint of the danger threatening us, the extreme conditions we were facing. It was only in The World at Ten later that evening that the seriousness of our situation was indicated in an interview with the manager of the Aberdeen office and with a Shell expert on North East Atlantic conditions.
By then the depression had moved away and the wind had dropped. The tug took advantage of the lull to cross the entrance to the Pentland Firth. It was now steaming north up the east coast of Orkney. But still over fifty miles away. And still no helicopter had taken off.
Our position at this time was dangerously close to Foula. We had been monitoring our distance off all day, knowing that it lay in the path of our drift and was a major hazard. In the afternoon, when visibility had temporarily improved, we had seen the island quite clearly through the windows of the toolpusher's office. It was then about three miles to the south of us. Visibility closed in again, and after that we relied on radar. There was still two hours of north-going tide and gradually we were pushed clear of it, so that by the time we had listened to the news the north end of the island was almost four miles west of us. No danger now of the tide carrying us south on to the rock shallows of Haevdi Grund, only Foula Shoal still a possible hazard.
For anybody going about his routine business in the body of the rig, or for the drilling crews who had nothing to do now but lie in their bunks, reading, and waiting for the next meal, it was very difficult to appreciate the danger we were in. There was a film being shown that night in the recreation room and Villiers took the opportunity to tell the men what was happening and what was being done on board and ashore to meet the situation. But he did not attempt to explain to them what conditions would be like in the morning. Though he flew his own plane, he still did not have any real idea of what a severe storm in the North Atlantic would be like. He could not even explain to them clearly why the tug was tucked under the lee of Orkney, only forty miles away. To them, that made it four hours' steaming. They talked about it, of course, as they dispersed and went to their bunks. But I could see they had no conception, everything around them so solid, so orderly, themselves cocooned in the hot warmth of the heating plant from the elemental forces building up in the night outside. They were technicians, and in their pride I think they really thought man had nature licked.
We went to the barge engineer's office then. Villiers had called a meeting of senior staff and it lasted just over half an hour. There were clearly only two ways by which we could reduce the speed of our drift. We could increase the seawater ballast, thereby lowering the height of the rig and so reducing the windage, or we could let go the spare anchor. Smit had already experimented with ballast control during the day, but as the waves had increased in height and strength he had been forced to de-ballast for fear the quarters would be stove in. He wanted to use the anchor. The others agreed. Finally, Villiers asked for my opinion.
I didn't expect them to like it. I wanted the anchor held in reserve as a last resort when we reached shallow water. I advised that all personnel be evacuated from the quarters up to the derrick floor and the rig submerged to maximum depth. All day I had been gradually coming to this view. I hadn't suggested it before because of Foula. Until we had cleared Foula it might have increased the danger of our drifting on to the island.
'If I submerged to maximum,' Smit said, 'and this depression becomes as bad as you say, then everything goes — quarters, mess, communications, offices. The deck will be swept clean of pipe. Everything will go.'
'But not the rig,' I said.
He rounded on me then. 'Vat do you know about it?' During the last few hours he had been carrying a heavy load of responsibility and his face was tense and overstrained. 'You know about trawlers. But this is a drilling barge. You don't know anything about drilling barges.' And he turned back to Villiers. 'It is my responsibility.'
'All right, Hans. It's your responsibility, I agree. But what do we do?'
'Let go the spare anchor, now, while it is more quiet.'
'And if the cable breaks?' I asked him.
'Then the cable break. But ve don't know about that until ve try. And you don't know,' he added, glaring at me resentfully. 'You don't even know the breaking strain of a four-inch cable or 'ow many tons the anchor shackles are manufactured to stand.' It was difficult for any of them to realize what a depression of 958 millibars that was deepening could mean in terms of wind force. They were all of them, including Villiers, thinking of damage to equipment and machinery, the problems of replacement, the lost time, and in Villiers's case I am quite certain the financial cost. At this stage their minds refused to face up to the prospect of total loss. They just could not envisage what it would be like stranded on rock in hurricane force winds. How could they, sitting there in the barge engineer's office, no sound of the wind outside, just the hum of the power plant, the movement under their feet no more than the gentle bowing of a colossus to the sea.
And so Villiers agreed to let Hans Smit send the spare anchor overboard, and after that I went into the radio room and asked the operator to call the Duchess for me. It was Johan who answered, not Gertrude, and that made it easier. I told him to make up towards Foula and get into the shelter of the island. 'You speak with Gertrude,' he said. 'That is for her to decide.'
'No, it is for you to decide,' I told him. 'There's nothing you can do for the rig. If anybody is swept overboard he's gone. No hope of your saving him.' And I asked him how the patched plates were standing up to the hammering. He admitted that Duncan had had the pumps going all day. 'There's worse to come,' I told him, 'and you know it.' And I added, 'Once it really starts blowing, you won't be able to make up to the island against it.'
There was a long silence while he thought it out. 'Ja, okay. We lie under Foula. But you talk to Gertrude first. Over.'
'I'll talk to her when you're safe in Ham Voe,' I said. 'Not before. Over and out.' And I cut him off before he could argue further.
Villiers's voice, sharp and angry behind me, said, 'You've no right to dismiss that trawler without reference, to me. It's under charter to stand by us-'
'Under charter?' I had turned and was staring at his tired, handsome face, seeing the selfishness of the man, his certainty that agreements, money, power, were everything. 'Charters don't buy lives,' I said. 'Have you any idea what it's been like in that trawler 38Z today, what it could be like tomorrow? Do you want to stand in the toolpusher's office, with the stability of this huge structure under you, stand in your shirtsleeves in warmth and comfort and watch a little ship founder with half a dozen people on board? Is that what you want?'