The Watch Below (6 page)
Authors: James White
VI
Approximately eight days after Gulf Trader had been torpedoed -- Wallis
had tried to sleep that number of times and this was the only yardstick
he had -- the doctor and himself returned from checking the contents
of Number Six to find that in their absence the dark-haired girl had
come to suddenly and had begun to ask questions. Dickson, who had been
lying in the dark so as to conserve his flashlight batteries, had been
so startled that he had both dropped the flash and lost the spanner with
which he was supposed to signal for the doctor. As a result he had had
to answer, as reassuringly as possible, the panicky questions of a girl
who was still in pain from her burns and who had just awakened into the
frigid, terrifying darkness of a sinking ship.
But Dickson had done very well.
While he was reporting the conversation to the doctor and Wallis it
became obvious that he had given the girl a fairly true account of their
predicament, but that the truth had been shaded so optimistically as to be
almost unrecognizable. Wallis could understand Dickson's reasons for doing
this, but it was beginning to look as if the girl had got the impression
that their present situation was more ridiculous than dangerous.
Dickson concluded, ". . . and she tells me that she is Second Officer
Wellman. As yet I have been unable to discover her first name -- I'm a
very slow worker, you know, and shy with girls. Would you mind shining
your light over here so that she can see how youthful and clean-cut I am?"
Blinking against the light of the doctor's torch, the Wren officer
turned her head towards Dickson's stretcher. She said painfully,
"Somehow I didn't expect you to be bald."
"That is my bandages, ma'am," said Dickson firmly. "And you're not
supposed to make me laugh. Internal injuries, you know."
"Oh, I'm sorry," said the Wren; then, "My first name is Jennifer.
Friends call me Jenny."
"Mine is Adrian," said Dickson. "For this reason I prefer to be called
'Hey, you.'"
While the conversation had been going on the doctor moved until his
mouth was a few inches from Wallis's ear. In a sarcastic whisper he said,
"I've a feeling we're intruding on something or other. Shall we go out
and come in again later?"
It was several minutes before the girl spoke directly to the doctor
or himself, and Wallis thought he understood why. For a very long time
Dickson had been to her merely a disembodied voice in absolute darkness
describing the horror of their position in such reassuring terms that
somehow she had not become uncontrollably afraid, and now the need to
see this person was so overwhelming that it far transcended simple
curiosity. But eventually she began to talk to Radford and himself and
they learned a good deal about her and the other Wren officer.
The blonde girl was called Murray, Margaret Murray. They were in
Communications together and had been on a course designed to make the
Service language and abbreviations of the R.N. and U.S.N. a little
more comprehensible to each other with a view to aiding future combined
operations.
That was the only reference she made to the future, and she did not mention
the present or past at all. It was natural to suppose that the memory of
the first torpedoing and being tied to the raft in the burning-oil-covered
sea was too recent and too horrible for her to want to dwell on it,
but Wallis got the impression that she was quite satisfied with the
present and future as depicted to her by Dickson and that she had no
inclination to look for a more detailed, and perhaps less optimistic,
picture from anyone else.
That "night" as Wallis settled down to worry himself to sleep it seemed
to him that his cold and clammy bed was fractionally more comfortable
and their many problems just a little less insoluble. It was difficult
to understand why this should be so. Perhaps the fact that Jenny Wellman
had begun to register more strongly as a young, good-looking girl than
one of the two hitherto unconscious patients had something to do with
it. Men tended to feel protective towards girls, especially injured,
nice-looking girls, and they also tended to show off a bit -- in this
instance to display more confidence and optimism than was normal under
the circumstances. There was also the feeling of sympathy which made men
want to hide the worst from them until the last possible moment. Not to
mention the fact that an outward show of confidence very often inspired
the real thing.
But unpleasant facts did not disappear simply because someone felt like
showing off in front of a girl. Sooner or later these unpleasant facts
would bring about their deaths. For the chance of being spotted and
rescued was a remote one. An aircraft seeing their long gray shadow in
the sea would report it, but as a menace to navigation rather than a ship
with survivors still on board. It was even more unlikely that they would
drift aground and be left high and dry at low tide. If they touched land
at all it was likely to be on the rocky Irish or Scottish west coasts
during a winter storm, when they would tear open their bottom. And while
it was true that they would never die of starvation -- they would die
of thirst before they ran out of air -- it was almost certain that they
would all drown long before any of these other fates overtook them.
It wasn't a time, Wallis thought, to feel even a little optimistic. . . .
After they had all had the usual freezing cold breakfast and the patients
were seen to, Wallis went to Jenny Wellman's bed and explained the functions
and purpose of the torch and spanner, adding that he was going to take
Dickson away from her for a short time. When he saw her expression he
told her that they would only be two tanks away and that they needed
Dickson's more detailed knowledge of the ship's construction to aid them
in a possible method of escape -- and if she liked she could keep the
flashlamp switched on all the time they were away.
A few minutes later when they were in Number Seven, Wallis said seriously,
"Last night before I got to sleep I had an idea, but I couldn't mention
it in front of Miss Wellman without -- "
"I quite understand," said Dickson, equally serious. "It wasn't suitable
for discussion whilst ladies were present. . . ."
"Dickson!" began Radford. He breathed heavily through his nose several
times but did not say anything else.
Patiently, Wallis went on, "This is a matter we should try to take seriously.
Both of you must realize that we are sinking. Gradually, of course,
because the hull is showing no indication as yet of a dangerous increase
in pressure even though we have stopped feeling the waves. But it is
only a matter of time before we reach the point where water pressure
from above will force us deeper whether we remain airtight or not.
"I've heard of it happening to subs which dived too deep," Wallis continued.
"They couldn't get up again even though they weren't holed and there was
nothing mechanically wrong with them; as a result, they kept on going
down until pressure caved in their hulls. At present our situation is
that of being trapped inside an outsize submarine which is unpowered
and sinking, but slowly. Somehow we must increase our buoyancy before
we reach the point of no return."
The doctor was watching Wallis silently. Dickson moved the flashlight
slightly but made no comment either.
"Down here we are not in a position to lighten ship by dumping cargo,"
Wallis resumed, "because we can't open the tanks without flooding them.
But if we go back to the submarine analogy and consider how a sub does
it -- that is, by taking on water as ballast in order to sink and by
blowing it out again with compressed air to rise -- we might work out
something using the storage spaces adjacent to the tanks. Most of them
must be filled with water by now, but if some of that water could be
forced out again we
should
rise."
"I don't know," said Dickson suddenly. All trace of
levity had gone from his voice. He went on, "A sub has
high-pressure pumps for that work. Can we build a pump
from the odds and ends available here, in time to do us
any good? And aren't we short enough of air as it is?"
Wallis said, "I wasn't going to use pumps -- even if we could make them
I'm doubtful myself about the time. And I wasn't going to use air. Maybe
this idea isn't feasible, so before I go into it I'd like more details
of the ship's construction. You were Trader's first mate for three years
while up to now I've been concerned only with the modifications to the
tanks . . ."
. . .
And if there hadn't been so many modifications
, Wallis added
silently to himself,
we would be lying on the bottom now like any other
torpedoed ship and none of us would have these problems to face
. . . .
The idea for an anti-submarine tanker had very likely originated with
some overworked character who had had a hard day in his small back room
and too many cheese-and-onion sandwiches for supper. He had dreamed of a
sort of super escort vessel sailing within the body of a convoy instead
of bouncing around on the fringe. The hold of this anti-submarine capital
ship would be packed with special Asdic gear that could be lowered through
the ship's bottom so as to avoid interference from the nearby convoy and
escorts. A simple device in the engine rooms of the convoy's own ships
would produce a distinctive and easily identifiable engine sound which, if
there were any confusion, would eliminate friendly traces from the plot.
The souped-up listening devices would be ultrasensitive and highly
directional and the length of Gulf Trader would give a base line that
would allow them to pinpoint any U-boat closely approaching the convoy
before signaling the enemy's position to one of the escorts. If the U-boat
were to come too close and there were no escort available to head it
off in time, Gulf Trader would have mounted new, and as yet untested,
Y-guns which could heave a depth charge for a distance of three or
four miles. Not even the wildest of optimists expected accuracy over
this distance, but it was thought that a U-boat commander faced with
someone trying to bracket him with depth charges, especially when there
was neither sight nor sound of an escort nearby, would be sufficiently
perplexed to dive below periscope depth and perhaps go away altogether.
In either event there would be enough time for a conventional escort to
make contact and do its work.
Wallis had been relieved of his destroyer command and had been given
the new ship with the promise of promotion to full commander when she
was commissioned. He had not been asked what he thought of the idea
generally, merely told that he was to try it out. He very much doubted
that their lordships, or any senior Naval officer for that matter,
would have given the idea a second thought if the situation in the North
Atlantic had not been truly desperate. As things were, however, they had
to try everything or anything once, no matter how crazy it might sound:
like trimming a 35,000-ton tanker to sail like a submarine. . . .
Although a small part of his mind had wandered away from the subject
for a few seconds, Wallis had continued talking, and now he summarized
his requirements.
"The compartments will have to be fairly large," he said, "and placed so
that we can check their degree of flooding by tapping on the tank walls
-- we want to know if our efforts are having any effect, and if not when
to try elsewhere. The compartments should be watertight on the top sides
so that pressure will force the water downward and out, and the pocket
of gas remaining will keep the water from entering again. If the top or
upper walls of a compartment are open, then the gas will escape and the
water will stay where it is.
"We'll use acetylene instead of air," Wallis continued, "because we
already have it under pressure in tanks, making high-pressure pumping
unnecessary, and we have no other use for it anyway. The tricky part will
be drilling a hole in the tank wall and inserting a hollow, tapering
plug with a valve at the wide end. We can manage the plug, but ramming
it into place while the hole is emitting a high-pressure stream of water
will be hectic. Once that is done, however, we can clamp the acetylene
tank to the hollow plug and open both valves until it is empty -- "
"This isn't an objection," the doctor broke in quietly, "but have you
thought of what would happen if we were found and our rescuers used
cutting torches on the walls of a compartment filled with pure acetylene?"
"Boom," said Dickson, grinning again.
Wallis shook his head. "We can always tap out a warning in Morse.
I'm much more concerned with our present lack of buoyancy, Mr. Dickson."
The mate was silent for a moment; then he said, "Very well. The fore and
aft coffer dams and the bilges, in order of accessibility. The intercostals
between the tank floor and the actual hull structure -- it's like a
single-layer egg box running the length of the ship, with the walls in
each division containing a three-foot hole to allow access for cleaning
out the bilges and for the purpose of saving weight. The upper edges of
these holes are about a foot from the roof of their compartments; so there
could be a considerable volume of gas trapped there if necessary. And if
you pumped in too much it wouldn't go to waste, it would simply bubble
into the next piece of the egg box and be trapped there.
"After the bilges," Dickson went on, "there are the storage spaces and
ballast tanks on each side of Numbers One, Four, and Seven. Some of these
are likely to be more watertight than others, so I would have to point
out their exact position to you. This would mean lugging me over a pile
of cargo, and maybe shifting some of it; therefore, the coffer dams and
intercostal spaces would be less trouble to begin with."
When he had stopped speaking Wallis took Dickson's flashlamp from him
and directed the beam around the walls of the tank. He said, "You've
been very helpful, Mr. Dickson, but I'm afraid we'll have to modify
your order of priority. The for'ard coffer dam is too badly damaged by
the torpedo which hit the forepeak. I don't approve your second idea,
for two reasons. One, because the air-filled spaces in the ship are all
well below the weather deck, so that we must already be in a dangerously
top-heavy condition and an increase of buoyancy at keel level could very
easily roll us over. The tanks would remain watertight if this were to
happen, but the odd pockets of air trapped about the ship would spill
out and our rate of descent would increase. Two, the gas trapped in the
intercostals would be constantly forced upwards by water pressure so that
there would be the danger of contaminating our air with acetylene. This
poison gas would be right under our feet. It is very difficult to spot
and seal off a gas leak compared to one of water, and if our aiir was
contaminated there is no way of replacing it.
Approximately eight days after Gulf Trader had been torpedoed -- Wallis
had tried to sleep that number of times and this was the only yardstick
he had -- the doctor and himself returned from checking the contents
of Number Six to find that in their absence the dark-haired girl had
come to suddenly and had begun to ask questions. Dickson, who had been
lying in the dark so as to conserve his flashlight batteries, had been
so startled that he had both dropped the flash and lost the spanner with
which he was supposed to signal for the doctor. As a result he had had
to answer, as reassuringly as possible, the panicky questions of a girl
who was still in pain from her burns and who had just awakened into the
frigid, terrifying darkness of a sinking ship.
But Dickson had done very well.
While he was reporting the conversation to the doctor and Wallis it
became obvious that he had given the girl a fairly true account of their
predicament, but that the truth had been shaded so optimistically as to be
almost unrecognizable. Wallis could understand Dickson's reasons for doing
this, but it was beginning to look as if the girl had got the impression
that their present situation was more ridiculous than dangerous.
Dickson concluded, ". . . and she tells me that she is Second Officer
Wellman. As yet I have been unable to discover her first name -- I'm a
very slow worker, you know, and shy with girls. Would you mind shining
your light over here so that she can see how youthful and clean-cut I am?"
Blinking against the light of the doctor's torch, the Wren officer
turned her head towards Dickson's stretcher. She said painfully,
"Somehow I didn't expect you to be bald."
"That is my bandages, ma'am," said Dickson firmly. "And you're not
supposed to make me laugh. Internal injuries, you know."
"Oh, I'm sorry," said the Wren; then, "My first name is Jennifer.
Friends call me Jenny."
"Mine is Adrian," said Dickson. "For this reason I prefer to be called
'Hey, you.'"
While the conversation had been going on the doctor moved until his
mouth was a few inches from Wallis's ear. In a sarcastic whisper he said,
"I've a feeling we're intruding on something or other. Shall we go out
and come in again later?"
It was several minutes before the girl spoke directly to the doctor
or himself, and Wallis thought he understood why. For a very long time
Dickson had been to her merely a disembodied voice in absolute darkness
describing the horror of their position in such reassuring terms that
somehow she had not become uncontrollably afraid, and now the need to
see this person was so overwhelming that it far transcended simple
curiosity. But eventually she began to talk to Radford and himself and
they learned a good deal about her and the other Wren officer.
The blonde girl was called Murray, Margaret Murray. They were in
Communications together and had been on a course designed to make the
Service language and abbreviations of the R.N. and U.S.N. a little
more comprehensible to each other with a view to aiding future combined
operations.
That was the only reference she made to the future, and she did not mention
the present or past at all. It was natural to suppose that the memory of
the first torpedoing and being tied to the raft in the burning-oil-covered
sea was too recent and too horrible for her to want to dwell on it,
but Wallis got the impression that she was quite satisfied with the
present and future as depicted to her by Dickson and that she had no
inclination to look for a more detailed, and perhaps less optimistic,
picture from anyone else.
That "night" as Wallis settled down to worry himself to sleep it seemed
to him that his cold and clammy bed was fractionally more comfortable
and their many problems just a little less insoluble. It was difficult
to understand why this should be so. Perhaps the fact that Jenny Wellman
had begun to register more strongly as a young, good-looking girl than
one of the two hitherto unconscious patients had something to do with
it. Men tended to feel protective towards girls, especially injured,
nice-looking girls, and they also tended to show off a bit -- in this
instance to display more confidence and optimism than was normal under
the circumstances. There was also the feeling of sympathy which made men
want to hide the worst from them until the last possible moment. Not to
mention the fact that an outward show of confidence very often inspired
the real thing.
But unpleasant facts did not disappear simply because someone felt like
showing off in front of a girl. Sooner or later these unpleasant facts
would bring about their deaths. For the chance of being spotted and
rescued was a remote one. An aircraft seeing their long gray shadow in
the sea would report it, but as a menace to navigation rather than a ship
with survivors still on board. It was even more unlikely that they would
drift aground and be left high and dry at low tide. If they touched land
at all it was likely to be on the rocky Irish or Scottish west coasts
during a winter storm, when they would tear open their bottom. And while
it was true that they would never die of starvation -- they would die
of thirst before they ran out of air -- it was almost certain that they
would all drown long before any of these other fates overtook them.
It wasn't a time, Wallis thought, to feel even a little optimistic. . . .
After they had all had the usual freezing cold breakfast and the patients
were seen to, Wallis went to Jenny Wellman's bed and explained the functions
and purpose of the torch and spanner, adding that he was going to take
Dickson away from her for a short time. When he saw her expression he
told her that they would only be two tanks away and that they needed
Dickson's more detailed knowledge of the ship's construction to aid them
in a possible method of escape -- and if she liked she could keep the
flashlamp switched on all the time they were away.
A few minutes later when they were in Number Seven, Wallis said seriously,
"Last night before I got to sleep I had an idea, but I couldn't mention
it in front of Miss Wellman without -- "
"I quite understand," said Dickson, equally serious. "It wasn't suitable
for discussion whilst ladies were present. . . ."
"Dickson!" began Radford. He breathed heavily through his nose several
times but did not say anything else.
Patiently, Wallis went on, "This is a matter we should try to take seriously.
Both of you must realize that we are sinking. Gradually, of course,
because the hull is showing no indication as yet of a dangerous increase
in pressure even though we have stopped feeling the waves. But it is
only a matter of time before we reach the point where water pressure
from above will force us deeper whether we remain airtight or not.
"I've heard of it happening to subs which dived too deep," Wallis continued.
"They couldn't get up again even though they weren't holed and there was
nothing mechanically wrong with them; as a result, they kept on going
down until pressure caved in their hulls. At present our situation is
that of being trapped inside an outsize submarine which is unpowered
and sinking, but slowly. Somehow we must increase our buoyancy before
we reach the point of no return."
The doctor was watching Wallis silently. Dickson moved the flashlight
slightly but made no comment either.
"Down here we are not in a position to lighten ship by dumping cargo,"
Wallis resumed, "because we can't open the tanks without flooding them.
But if we go back to the submarine analogy and consider how a sub does
it -- that is, by taking on water as ballast in order to sink and by
blowing it out again with compressed air to rise -- we might work out
something using the storage spaces adjacent to the tanks. Most of them
must be filled with water by now, but if some of that water could be
forced out again we
should
rise."
"I don't know," said Dickson suddenly. All trace of
levity had gone from his voice. He went on, "A sub has
high-pressure pumps for that work. Can we build a pump
from the odds and ends available here, in time to do us
any good? And aren't we short enough of air as it is?"
Wallis said, "I wasn't going to use pumps -- even if we could make them
I'm doubtful myself about the time. And I wasn't going to use air. Maybe
this idea isn't feasible, so before I go into it I'd like more details
of the ship's construction. You were Trader's first mate for three years
while up to now I've been concerned only with the modifications to the
tanks . . ."
. . .
And if there hadn't been so many modifications
, Wallis added
silently to himself,
we would be lying on the bottom now like any other
torpedoed ship and none of us would have these problems to face
. . . .
The idea for an anti-submarine tanker had very likely originated with
some overworked character who had had a hard day in his small back room
and too many cheese-and-onion sandwiches for supper. He had dreamed of a
sort of super escort vessel sailing within the body of a convoy instead
of bouncing around on the fringe. The hold of this anti-submarine capital
ship would be packed with special Asdic gear that could be lowered through
the ship's bottom so as to avoid interference from the nearby convoy and
escorts. A simple device in the engine rooms of the convoy's own ships
would produce a distinctive and easily identifiable engine sound which, if
there were any confusion, would eliminate friendly traces from the plot.
The souped-up listening devices would be ultrasensitive and highly
directional and the length of Gulf Trader would give a base line that
would allow them to pinpoint any U-boat closely approaching the convoy
before signaling the enemy's position to one of the escorts. If the U-boat
were to come too close and there were no escort available to head it
off in time, Gulf Trader would have mounted new, and as yet untested,
Y-guns which could heave a depth charge for a distance of three or
four miles. Not even the wildest of optimists expected accuracy over
this distance, but it was thought that a U-boat commander faced with
someone trying to bracket him with depth charges, especially when there
was neither sight nor sound of an escort nearby, would be sufficiently
perplexed to dive below periscope depth and perhaps go away altogether.
In either event there would be enough time for a conventional escort to
make contact and do its work.
Wallis had been relieved of his destroyer command and had been given
the new ship with the promise of promotion to full commander when she
was commissioned. He had not been asked what he thought of the idea
generally, merely told that he was to try it out. He very much doubted
that their lordships, or any senior Naval officer for that matter,
would have given the idea a second thought if the situation in the North
Atlantic had not been truly desperate. As things were, however, they had
to try everything or anything once, no matter how crazy it might sound:
like trimming a 35,000-ton tanker to sail like a submarine. . . .
Although a small part of his mind had wandered away from the subject
for a few seconds, Wallis had continued talking, and now he summarized
his requirements.
"The compartments will have to be fairly large," he said, "and placed so
that we can check their degree of flooding by tapping on the tank walls
-- we want to know if our efforts are having any effect, and if not when
to try elsewhere. The compartments should be watertight on the top sides
so that pressure will force the water downward and out, and the pocket
of gas remaining will keep the water from entering again. If the top or
upper walls of a compartment are open, then the gas will escape and the
water will stay where it is.
"We'll use acetylene instead of air," Wallis continued, "because we
already have it under pressure in tanks, making high-pressure pumping
unnecessary, and we have no other use for it anyway. The tricky part will
be drilling a hole in the tank wall and inserting a hollow, tapering
plug with a valve at the wide end. We can manage the plug, but ramming
it into place while the hole is emitting a high-pressure stream of water
will be hectic. Once that is done, however, we can clamp the acetylene
tank to the hollow plug and open both valves until it is empty -- "
"This isn't an objection," the doctor broke in quietly, "but have you
thought of what would happen if we were found and our rescuers used
cutting torches on the walls of a compartment filled with pure acetylene?"
"Boom," said Dickson, grinning again.
Wallis shook his head. "We can always tap out a warning in Morse.
I'm much more concerned with our present lack of buoyancy, Mr. Dickson."
The mate was silent for a moment; then he said, "Very well. The fore and
aft coffer dams and the bilges, in order of accessibility. The intercostals
between the tank floor and the actual hull structure -- it's like a
single-layer egg box running the length of the ship, with the walls in
each division containing a three-foot hole to allow access for cleaning
out the bilges and for the purpose of saving weight. The upper edges of
these holes are about a foot from the roof of their compartments; so there
could be a considerable volume of gas trapped there if necessary. And if
you pumped in too much it wouldn't go to waste, it would simply bubble
into the next piece of the egg box and be trapped there.
"After the bilges," Dickson went on, "there are the storage spaces and
ballast tanks on each side of Numbers One, Four, and Seven. Some of these
are likely to be more watertight than others, so I would have to point
out their exact position to you. This would mean lugging me over a pile
of cargo, and maybe shifting some of it; therefore, the coffer dams and
intercostal spaces would be less trouble to begin with."
When he had stopped speaking Wallis took Dickson's flashlamp from him
and directed the beam around the walls of the tank. He said, "You've
been very helpful, Mr. Dickson, but I'm afraid we'll have to modify
your order of priority. The for'ard coffer dam is too badly damaged by
the torpedo which hit the forepeak. I don't approve your second idea,
for two reasons. One, because the air-filled spaces in the ship are all
well below the weather deck, so that we must already be in a dangerously
top-heavy condition and an increase of buoyancy at keel level could very
easily roll us over. The tanks would remain watertight if this were to
happen, but the odd pockets of air trapped about the ship would spill
out and our rate of descent would increase. Two, the gas trapped in the
intercostals would be constantly forced upwards by water pressure so that
there would be the danger of contaminating our air with acetylene. This
poison gas would be right under our feet. It is very difficult to spot
and seal off a gas leak compared to one of water, and if our aiir was
contaminated there is no way of replacing it.
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