Endangered Species (3 page)

The Bosun had the after end of the boat swung out and was exhorting the men to heave on the forward guy of the old-fashioned radial davits to carry the bow out over the ship's side. The boat swung clear, hanging over the black Atlantic twenty feet below, and they began to clamber into it.

There was a terrific noise, so unfamiliar they stopped and looked at one another for a petrified instant. Then more depth charges exploded on the far side of the convoy and the black hull of a following ship steamed silently past them, her wash spreading out from her bow and striking the sides of the
Matthew Flinders
. Plumes of water shot vertically and were torn across the boat-deck, dousing the already rain-soaked men who swore with true, seamanlike ferocity and began again to scramble into the lifeboat.

At the same instant a starshell went out and the unexplained noise grew louder, shaking the ship.

‘Lower away there!' yelled Captain Robson, motioning Mackinnon into the boat. A moment later the lifeboat began her jerky descent. A rising sea struck her and she was lifted bodily and swung outwards, away from the ship's side which rose now like a black wall beside them. Then the sea fell away with a suddenness that brought Mackinnon's stomach into his throat, the falls snapped tight and the boat whipped
the length of her keel and swung inboard, striking the rusty steel topsides, her frames cracking as she bounced off with a flexing of her gunwale.

‘Lower, lower!' Captain Robson was shouting and the boat resumed its progress until another wave caught her and, ready for it, Captain Robson roared, ‘Come up!', and the men on the falls threw the turns off the staghorns.

The boat wallowed into the sea and the falls were unhooked. The side of the
Matthew Flinders
seemed immensely high, looming up into the night sky like a great cliff.

‘Christ, she's breaking up . . .'

‘She's rolling over!'

Split in two as her exploding boilers tore her apart, some quirk of the destruction wrought to her ancient fabric caused her to roll away from the boat. The men who had lowered it and should have followed down the rope ladder went with her. It was over in a matter of less than a minute.

The lifeboat was alone on the empty, heaving ocean, the centre of a small circle of black sea circumscribed by a pall of rain and spray. The crumps of the depth charges of the counter-attacking escorts seemed much farther away and the starshells finally went out.

All that remained of the ship's company of the SS
Matthew Flinders
were two able seaman, the Chief Steward, three greasers, a fireman and Apprentice Mackinnon. He was sixteen years old.

He remembered few details after that nightmare evacuation of the old ship. Memory told him his exemplary conduct during those next few days had recommended him to the ‘Old Woman' and she, after the war, had insisted he became the Third Officer of the brand new
Matthew Flinders
.

Now, as his thoughts came full circle and he drifted off to sleep, he felt the prickle of disappointment that his ship no longer carried apprentices. The lack of them had been the
surest indication that the owners no longer considered there was a future for their ships, or cared very much. This was now proved by their voyage to the scrapyard. This, Mackinnon considered as he rolled over, was a tragic shame; true, the system had been abused to provide cheap labour and not even a war had prevented sixteen-year-old boys being exposed to its merciless rigours, but it had provided thousands of young men a chance in life . . .

It was history now and he was an old man approaching retirement. Slowly his brain relinquished its hold on consciousness and he drifted to sleep.

Dawn had found them quite alone on the heaving sea. The Chief Steward took nominal charge and the older of the able seamen sat aft at the helm. The rest of them huddled disconsolately on the thwarts shivering in the damp chill, for it still rained, a cold drizzle that obscured everything.

Once, and then so briefly that afterwards they could not be certain, they thought they heard the hiss of a bow wave and the grey loom of a ship, perhaps the
Aubretia
, sent back to quarter the wake of the convoy in search of survivors; but although they raised a shout, it ended in a senseless stream of blasphemy as the insubstantial apparition vanished.

‘It might have been a U-boat,' said Mackinnon, asserting himself for the first time and voicing a fear which, for him, was greater than that of impending death. He was too young to imagine death might be about to claim him; the fear of imprisonment in German hands was far stronger.

But as the day wore on he learned how very easy it is to die. The fireman, shuddering uncontrollably in his singlet, was dead by noon; a greaser passed silently from them an hour later. The very ordinariness of it filled Mackinnon with dread.

It began to dawn on him that the others in the boat did not expect to survive and were incapable of exerting themselves to no purpose. After three years of war they had seen others
die and there was a strange kind of comfort in numbers. The Chief Steward dished out water and biscuit, though for the most part they slumped helpless and hopeless in the wallowing boat, silently awaiting their fate.

Mackinnon had no idea how long they remained like this, for the rain swept over them for hour after dismal hour, until, as dusk overtook them, the sky began to clear. A blood-red sun sank towards the horizon.

The sunset reminded him sharply of yesterday, of the
Matthew Flinders
and his chums in the half-deck, of Taffy Davies and Dave Kingsley . . .

‘Almost home and dry,' Taffy had said.

‘We've got a compass, haven't we?' he asked Able-Seaman Bird whose crouched figure huddled over the kicking tiller gave a specious appearance of order in the boat.

Bird looked up at the first-trip apprentice and nodded.

‘Why don't we sail the boat then?'

Bird stirred, frowning, and shook his head.

‘We could get the mast stepped by dark.' Mackinnon saw intelligence kindled in the eyes of the men around him. It dawned on him how far inside their instinctive selves they had retreated. They had become feral creatures, each facing the inevitable end with a silent resignation.

‘Which direction do we steer then, son?' asked the Chief Steward quietly, his tone that of exhaustion. ‘D'you know?'

Mackinnon did not know; not exactly. His duties had been confined to cleaning his quarters and the bridge, doing odd jobs and mounting lookout duty in the bridge gun pits, to be ammunition server if needed. It had seemed a glamorous enough task, sitting by the Lewis gun as the old
Matthew Flinders
struggled along, belching black smoke in an attempt to keep up the speed ordered by the Commodore. Now it struck him that it might have been of more value to have known roughly where they were. He supposed he had actually possessed the information on the chit Captain
Robson had sent him to Sparks with, but the Master had been a man of old-fashioned prejudices. Apprentices were the lowest form of animal life and the chart-room was a hallowed sanctum . . .

Nevertheless, Taffy Davies was an apprentice of two years' experience and Taffy seemed, at least to young Mackinnon, to know everything. Taffy had said with his usual confidence, ‘Almost home and dry . . .'

‘If we steered east . . .'

‘We usually get sent up towards Iceland, son,' said the Chief Steward. You did not need a master's certificate to know that east of Iceland lay a lot of ocean before one hit German-occupied Norway. Mackinnon felt the older man's patronising rejection as a spur to anger. He was incapable of comprehending the Chief Steward's quiet courage in waiting for the end. He was an elderly, unfit man. War had called many back to the colours, and the red ensign of the Merchant Navy was the least glamorous, least regarded of them. The Chief Steward felt overwhelmed with pity for Mackinnon; the boy's youthful spirit would not allow him to die quietly.

‘Steer south-east, then,' Mackinnon persisted, a complex feeling of anger and adolescent petulance seizing him. He struggled forward and began unlashing the mast and the lugsail rolled round its yard.

‘South-east . . .' Bird looked up from the compass. ‘Maybe the kid's right.'

By nightfall the starboard lifeboat of the SS
Matthew Flinders
scudded south-east, the tiny glim of her binnacle light radiating hope on the face of Apprentice Mackinnon at the helm.

Taylor sighted Pulo Weh at 1030 ship's time the following morning and the lush green hummock lay on the starboard beam of the
Matthew Flinders
by noon. This proximity of the land released Stevenson from the necessity of attending the bridge for the ritual of taking noon sights. Instead he enjoyed a quick beer in the bar before having lunch and relieving Taylor in the endless round of the ship's routine.

There were several other officers already sipping their pre-lunch drinks. The Radio Officer was picking up a gin and tonic when he caught sight of the Second Mate.

‘Hullo, stranger.' He turned to the Chinese steward behind the bar. ‘Here, Woo, give Second Office' a nice cool beer.' The Radio Officer signed the chit and Stevenson gratefully accepted the dripping glass, grinning like a boy let out of school early.

‘Cheers, Sparks.'

‘Cheers.'

‘Any news from the big outside world?'

Sparks shrugged. ‘Rioting in Ulster, fuel shortages in Eastern Europe which are imposing great hardships on British tourists, and another load of Vietnamese boat people picked up in the South China Sea. SNAFU . . . situation normal all—'

‘All fucked up,' Stevenson completed the acronym. ‘I
know the graveyard watch go out of circulation but I'm not a complete zombie.'

‘Oh, scoff not, it's the best thing to be,' grinned Sparks, eyeing Stevenson over his glass. ‘I've ceased to react to news from Ulster and being stuck here scarcely gives me cause for concern for British tourists in Yugoslavia or wherever. Strikes me the bastards have too much money and too much time off.'

‘Who? The Yugoslavs?' asked Stevenson.

‘You are bombed out, old lad. No, the bloody British tourists.'

‘What about the Vietnamese, then?'

‘Oh, come on, Alex, do me a favour; you're bombed out on night air. The world's full of poor suffering bastards, isn't it? At the moment I feel one myself.' Sparks swallowed the gin and tonic and held his glass between thumb and forefinger, making it oscillate conspicuously. Stevenson took it and passed it across the bar.

‘Another gin, Woo, please.' As he signed the chit, Stevenson said, ‘Only think, Sparks, you'll have to find something else to gripe about after this trip.'

‘Oh, I reckon the wife will provide me with ample fodder for thought.'

‘Hullo, Alex.' Mr Rawlings, the Chief Officer, joined them. He was a man of raddled good looks, his once fair hair fading, the flesh of his face slackening its hold on the skull, his blue eyes beginning a slow retreat into watery sockets.

‘Beer?' asked Stevenson, not waiting for an answer as Woo automatically responded to the arrival of the Mate. He signed the chit and passed the glass to Rawlings. ‘I was just saying . . .'

‘He was just saying depressing things,' interrupted Sparks, ‘and I refuse to be depressed. This may be the last voyage, but I will not allow that to disrupt my lifestyle.'

‘It must do,' said Stevenson with a hint of bitterness.

‘Now look, Alex, these little lunch-time sessions of ours
have, for years, been an oasis of civilisation in a turbulent world. We don't want you swinging down from the awning spars spoiling things, do we, Roger?'

‘No, we bloody well don't,' said the Chief Officer. ‘Chap's got to have a
chota peg
. Keeps the flag flying, old boy.'

Stevenson was aware they were ragging him, but he refused to be drawn. ‘Well, I find it depressing,' he said seriously. ‘I mean in a few weeks we'll actually be doing this for the last time.' He looked from one to the other, expecting reaction. ‘I think it's a bloody shame.'

Sparks sighed and put his glass down. ‘So do I, Alex, so do I. I've left Mary and the kids in a bungalow on the Wirral three times a year for the last God knows how many years and I've complained every time we've parted. I've even tried working ashore, but it was a disaster.' He shook his head. ‘This has been my life and I've stuck it out and so has she, in expectation of better things at the end of it. Clearly we asked for too much.
I
didn't think it would end like this either.' Sparks buried his bitterness in his drink.

‘No, none of us did,' put in Rawlings guardedly. ‘That's what makes it difficult, it defies reason; it's completely incomprehensible. Great Britain needs a merchant fleet.'

‘Not that it ever gave a tuppenny fuck for its sailors, mind,' added Sparks. ‘Remember Nancy Astor.' He wagged an admonitory finger and they laughed. Whatever Mrs Astor's virtues as the first female Member of Parliament, she was held in permanent obloquy by the men of the Merchant Navy for suggesting they wore yellow armbands when landing from foreign voyages as potential carriers of venereal disease. Hers was an attitude felt to be typical of the regard the British had for its seafarers.

‘They,' Sparks went on, referring to the fateful, unnamed but blameworthy force that might have been the shipowners, the government, the British public at large or an amalgam of all three, ‘are hardly aware of our existence, let alone our becoming extinct. Anyway,' he made an attempt at
brightening with obvious effort, ‘now I know what it felt like to be a dinosaur.'

‘I knew there was something bloody odd about you,' joked Rawlings, signing for another round as the dinner gong sounded from the saloon alleyway.

‘Not for me,' said Stevenson, swallowing the dregs of his beer and hurrying below.