Twelve

 

Edward argued for a design that would make the craft lighter.

‘My skimmers,’ said Uncle Egg, ‘will be the lightweight boat of the future. Fast as hell. These are heavy boats. Designed for the navies of the world. War boats.’

‘No one’s at war, Uncle Egg,’ said Edward.

‘They will be before long, the way the Kaiser’s behaving. The French have a boat that does twenty knots, with a forward central-firing torpedo. Everybody wants them now.’

‘But Uncle Egg, if you want to sell these things as torpedo boats, aren’t we wasting time doing what we are doing? We should be selling them to the navy.’

Egg liked the idea. But getting the navy interested was more of a job than they had anticipated. When Edward finally managed to obtain an interview, he was dismissed with a condescending lecture.

‘The navy doesn’t deal in small boats,’ he was told. ‘We have the biggest fleet in the world and it’s made up of huge steel ships. If we were interested in going fishing, then we might consider your proposal, but we are too busy.’

Edward returned to Porthelt in a fury. ‘If those peabrained, self-satisfied arses don’t want them,’ he said, ‘what about selling them abroad? There must be someone – France, Holland, Denmark, even America, who’d be interested. And what about Italy?’ Edward deliberately left the Italians until last in case his eagerness made Egg suspect he might have other motives.

Egg smiled. ‘I think Italy might be a very good place to start. There’s a chap in Naples called Gaspare Boboli. Army man. Your father knew him. He’d be a perfect contact.’

With the two boats almost ready, Edward sent off a telegraphed message to Rafaela. ‘Coming soon,’ he wrote.

Within a day he received a reply. ‘Make it very soon. I send you kisses. Rafaela.’

A torpedo and launching gear arrived the following week.

‘Where did you get it all from?’ asked Edward admiringly.

‘Chap called Zaharoff,’ his uncle replied. ‘He’d sell you a battleship if you had the cash.’

‘It looks wicked,’ Sam said, staring at the shining cigar-shaped tube.

‘They are wicked,’ Egg agreed. ‘But not that one. The warhead’s full of cork and water.’

The launching gear consisted of two sliding chocks which held the torpedo, and two fixed chocks which secured it in position on the side of the vessel. The two fixed chocks were connected by a bar which carried the firing mechanism, and an electrical release system. On firing, the chocks carrying the torpedo slid out and dropped over the side of the boat so that the torpedo fell into the water.

‘What sets it off?’

Egg’s hand moved along the firing bar. ‘This. It carries a special gyro-starting tripper which sets off the gyro by means of a special starting lever fitted to the weapon. As the torpedo enters the water the air lever which starts the motor is thrown by a tremendously complicated device known as a piece of wire, made fast at one end to the boat; the other end’s looped over the air lever.’

‘Does it really work?’

‘Let’s give it a try,’ said Egg.

 

The weight of the torpedo reduced the speed by three knots but this didn’t matter because it still remained faster than most launches. The big problem was that steering was difficult and they found that no matter how hard they worked to keep the helm up the boat always had a tendency to turn to starboard. Trying the weight on the port side made no difference because then the boat turned to port.

‘We need a compensating weight on the other side,’ Sam said. ‘Could we carry two torpedoes?’

‘Too expensive,’ said Egg.

There was no time to do more. Egg had booked them aboard the SS Fabricius, due in Naples by the end of the month.