I tiptoed down the dark hallway carrying my suitcase and musette bag. I didn’t want to wake anyone. All the goodbyes of last night had worn out my nerves. I stopped to leave a letter to Phoebe and Ada on the hall table. There was a paper bag waiting there with my name on it. I guessed what was in it – leftover fried chicken and apple pie, wrapped up tightly in wax paper. Bless her heart; Dellaphine was taking no chance that I’d starve today. Unbuckling my musette bag, I tucked the food inside.
I stood on the sidewalk outside, waiting for my ride. Even with my scarf wrapped around my head and face, and my hat pulled down over my ears, my face was cold. Jiggling on the spot, I glanced up and down the dark empty street. The streetlights were shaded, casting a minimum of light – enough to keep you from tripping over a broken piece of sidewalk, maybe. I’d read there were no streetlights allowed now in London. You had to carry a flashlight everywhere.
It was five twenty-five a.m. when I saw the nondescript black Chevy sedan come around the corner and pull up in front of me. A large colored man in work clothes got out of the driver’s seat.
‘Lester!’ I said.
He grinned at me, showing several gold teeth. Lester was a messenger and driver at OSS; he knew every shortcut in the city. Our office, the Morale Operations Unit, was just one of many that depended on him.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. ‘At your service.’
I reached out and clasped his hand warmly. ‘I’m glad to see you,’ I said. ‘I didn’t get to say goodbye to you on Friday.’
‘I’m glad too, Mrs Pearlie. But then Miss Osborne said she didn’t trust anyone else to get you to your ship.’ He glanced down at my two cases. ‘That can’t be all you are taking,’ he said.
‘No, I’ve got a footlocker inside in the passageway.’
‘I’ll get it.’
‘Be as quiet as you can. I don’t want to wake anyone up. I’ve had all the goodbyes I can handle already.’
I watched Lester stride toward the front door and let himself in quietly. In the next minute I tried to memorize the look of the house where I’d lived for two years. Where my new life as an independent working woman had started. The front stoop, where there was just enough overhang to shade you from a downpour. The double window in the lounge where Phoebe had hung her Blue Star Mothers banner with two blue stars embroidered on it. The lounge itself – the only room in the house apart from the dining room where we had space enough to gather. Ada and I had surprised Phoebe by making slip-covers for the faded suite of furniture last summer. I had met Joe there the first night I arrived in Washington.
Lester came out of the house, carrying my footlocker easily on one shoulder. He stashed it in the Chevy with my suitcase before opening the car door for me. I scooched into the passenger seat, relieved to get out of the cold. Lester slid into the driver’s side.
‘So, where are we headed?’ I asked.
‘Ma’am, you got to tell me,’ Lester said, drawing a sealed envelope out of his jacket pocket and handing it to me.
It was a plain envelope with my name scrawled on it in Miss Osborne’s harried handwriting. My orders. Opening it, I read the short paragraph. I was to go to the Washington Navy Shipyard and board the SS Amelia Earhart bound for Great Britain. In approximately four weeks the ship would dock in Liverpool and someone from OSS would meet me and escort me to London. That was all.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘we need to go to the DC Navy Shipyard.’
‘Doggone,’ Lester said. ‘I was hoping it was Baltimore. I know a place there that makes the best mussel chowder.’
He started the engine and shifted the gears. We pulled away from the curb. I noticed a light on in the kitchen, where Dellaphine would be starting breakfast. It was Monday, so it would likely be Cream of Wheat with canned fruit and toast.
‘I’ve never heard of a ship named after a woman before,’ Lester said, as we drove south on Pennsylvania Avenue.
‘Well, when you build thousands of Liberty ships and you can only name them after dead people, you’ve got to dig deep for names,’ I said. I was pleased actually to be assigned to a ship named after Amelia Earhart. She was one of my heroes. ‘Did you know there are twenty-some of these ships named after colored people?’
‘I did,’ Lester said. ‘I seen the SS Booker T. Washington steaming down the river once. They must have run out of women’s names,’ he said, chuckling. ‘But you know about those Liberty ships, don’t you? They’re welded instead of riveted.’
Here it came.
‘I heard one of them seams didn’t hold and a ship just split down the middle and the two halves just sunk,’ Lester said, and then chuckled some more.
Liberty ships were built in modules from a British master plan and then welded together. The modules could be adapted to carry passengers, dry cargo or oil and gasoline. The ships were built so quickly and cheaply that no one expected them to last more than a few years.
‘You’re not scaring me,’ I said. ‘I’m sure the ship is perfectly safe.’ At least, more of them arrived at their destinations than didn’t.
As we drove down Pennsylvania Avenue, DC’s famous monuments and buildings loomed in the darkness. We passed the State Department and then the White House. It was lit by special lighting designed by General Electric, designed not to cast glare into the house and disturb the residents sleeping, or trying to sleep, in their bedrooms. The watch was changing; two Army trucks were discharging soldiers to take the place of those who’d guarded the President all night.
Pennsylvania Avenue swerved south for a bit, passing the massive Treasury Building fronted with tall marble Ionic columns, then angled southeast again. Past the Capital and the Library of Congress. Lester changed gears.
‘I’m about to turn on to New Jersey Avenue, Mrs Pearlie,’ Lester said. ‘Mrs Osborne asked me to make sure you didn’t want to change your mind.’
‘No, not at all,’ I answered. Although my heart rate picked up and my stomach roiled, I was still eager to take up my new assignment.
My first job had been at the Wilmington Shipbuilding Company and I thought I knew what a naval yard would look like, but I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when Lester pulled away from the army checkpoint at a government entrance and drove into the Washington Navy Yard. We arrived in time to hear whistles signal the change of shift across the 155-acre yard. Thousands of workers left their posts in more than a hundred buildings and dozens of ships, and thousands more took their place. The streets were packed with men and women, white and black, wearing work clothes and carrying lunch buckets, crowding on to buses to transport them home. Lester and I were stuck in traffic and I just gawked. As dawn broke, the yard’s floodlights cut off.
‘I know a shortcut,’ Lester said, shifting the car into reverse. He maneuvered away from the parade of buses and turned down a street that paralleled the yard’s perimeter fencing.
A few blocks south, the street dead-ended at the Anacostia River. We turned left and drove along its banks until we came to the docks and quays. They seemed to go on forever. Ships of all kinds lined up like sardines in a can, most being loaded with cargo and a few in dry dock being painted or repaired.
Lester stopped next to a colored longshoreman loading a reel of steel cable as thick as his arm on to a cart. A mule with one ear cocked our way was harnessed to the cart, ready to tote the wooden reel on to the nearby dock. He snorted at us, his breath steaming from the cold.
‘Do you know where I can find the Amelia Earhart?’ Lester asked him. ‘It’s a Liberty ship, supposed to depart today?’
The man pointed further along the waterfront. ‘About a mile down,’ he said. ‘It’s almost finished loading.’
The Amelia Earhart rocked gently at her berth. I had done a little reading up on Liberty ships once I knew I’d be traveling on one. Sure enough, this one was just as ugly as promised. It had an ungainly hull which accommodated five cargo holds. Three booms and a couple of davits with their dangling winches and chains looked like tall spiders crouching on deck, which was packed tight with jeeps, trucks and even a locomotive. What little room was left on deck was taken by the minimal superstructure amidships which wrapped around the engine stack and held the wheelhouse, the bridge and, below deck, the galley, mess, wardroom and berths for passengers and officers. Like most Liberty ships, this one carried artillery for its defense, a three-inch/fifty millimeter gun at the bow, a five-inch/thirty-millimeter caliber at the stern and eight twenty-millimeter guns that resembled oversized machine guns – two forward, two aft and four amidships. The guns were manned by an Armed Guard – forty or so Navy gunners commanded by an ensign. The crew, commanded by a master, numbered around sixty. The crew were merchant mariners, not members of the military, but with the war some were trained by the Navy.
The water almost reached the Plimsoll line on the Amelia Earhart, so it was nearly loaded. One winch maneuvered a crate on to the deck, where a couple of seamen manhandled it into an open hatch to lower it into the hold. Another winch lowered a dangling ambulance on to the deck, where it would be secured with steel cables to steel cleats to prevent it from rolling off the ship and into the sea.
Lester parked the car across the road from the ship in front of a plain brick building, which had the words ‘Waiting Rooms’ stenciled across the door. ‘You can’t board until the ship is loaded,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if we can find a warm spot for you to wait.’
We carried my luggage to the waiting room door, which had a sheet of paper stapled to it beneath the sign that read ‘Today’s Departures’ with ‘SS Amelia Earhart’ typed below. Lester opened the door and we went into a large room with benches on two sides with the usual sign over each: ‘White’ and ‘Colored’. A pot-bellied coal stove blazed in a corner. Only one woman waited there, a plain cardboard suitcase by her side, on the ‘White’ side. She was less than thirty, I thought, dressed in a tweed suit, wool tights and heavy brogues. Her thick wool coat and beret were draped over her suitcase. She was reading a book and didn’t even glance at me as I walked over to her.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, sitting down next to her. ‘Are you waiting to board the Amelia Earhart?’
‘I am,’ she said, finally making eye contact. She spoke in a lovely British accent. ‘It’s still loading cargo. The second mate came by and said it would be several hours before passengers could board.’
‘Lester,’ I said, as he set down my trunk on the floor next to my other suitcase, ‘you go on; I’m fine here.’
‘Are you sure?’ he said, looking around the room. ‘Aren’t there any other passengers?’
‘There are,’ the woman said, ‘but they went to the canteen for hot drinks.’ She dropped her eyes to a book in her lap, obviously avoiding more conversation.
‘I’ll go on, then,’ Lester said. I reached out and squeezed his hand. ‘You take care, hear?’ he said.
‘You too,’ I said. He touched his hat and left the room, letting in a cold blast of air when he opened the door. I stood at a window and watched him hurry to the car through the cold. He was the last person I would see from my former life in DC for a very long time.
The room was completely quiet except for the roar of the fire in the stove. A few minutes passed, and then my companion set her shoulders and looked up as if she had made a decision. She reached out to shake my hand, and I took hers. She had a strong grip.
‘My name is Blanche Bryant,’ she said.
‘I’m Louise Pearlie,’ I answered. ‘You’re English, obviously.’
‘Yes, on my way home. I’m from Winchester.’
‘I’m from North Carolina, but I’ve been working for the government in DC for a couple of years.’ Neither one of us volunteered any more information. This was wartime, when strangers didn’t talk about their jobs or much else, for that matter. We had secrets to keep.
A blast of cold air struck us as a young colored woman, barely more than a girl, came through the door carrying her suitcase and a large purse thrown over her shoulder. She was quite pretty, reminding me of Hazel Scott, the jazz singer. She had those faux bangs you make by rolling up the front of your hair into a fat curl. Another roll rested on her neck, all of it tucked into a knitted Dutch bonnet that covered her neck and ears. Just thinking about how warm it must be made my ears feel even more chilled. She wore a scarf that matched the bonnet’s blue-and-gray pattern, a heavy wool coat and thick tights with saddle shoes. She gave Blanche and me a warm smile as she carried her suitcase over to sit on the ‘Colored’ bench. I smiled back at her and Blanche roused herself enough to nod. But the young woman didn’t sit down after she put down her suitcase.
‘Ma’am,’ she said, coming over to me.
‘Yes,’ I answered.
‘Are you traveling on the Amelia Earhart?’
‘I am. My name is Louise Pearlie.’
‘I’m your stewardess, Grace Bell,’ she answered. ‘That trunk of yours – it needs to go in the ship’s hold. There’s a cart out front for the hold luggage. Didn’t you see it?’
‘No,’ I answered, and bent over to grab the trunk’s handle.
‘Let me help you,’ she said, taking the other handle. The two of us easily carried the footlocker out into the frigid air where I saw a hand cart clearly labeled for hold luggage for the Amelia Earhart. Together, we hoisted my trunk on top of the stack of large trunks and boxes already there.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how I missed this. I guess I had my head down to avoid the cold. Where are you from?’ I’d recognized from Grace’s accent that she was from my part of the world.
‘Hampstead, North Carolina.’
Just a few miles up the coast from my home. ‘I’m from Wilmington. I’m a government girl, been working in DC for a couple of years.’
‘I came north after I graduated high school so I could get a decent job. My mother picks crabs for the Hampstead Seafood Company and I didn’t want to spend my life doing that.’
Grace held the door open for me and we headed straight for the pot-bellied stove to warm ourselves back up.
‘I joined the merchant marine after Pearl Harbor,’ Grace said. ‘I live with my auntie on U Street. She has a flower shop.’
‘I didn’t know …’ I said, hesitating.
‘That colored women could join the merchant marine? You should know there aren’t enough white men to go around these days,’ she said, her hazel eyes twinkling. ‘When there are women passengers on a merchant ship, you got to have a stewardess to wait on them. Can’t have a man draw your bath.’
‘Do you know who the passengers are?’
‘A Dutch family, husband and wife and two daughters. Then there’s a salesman from the American Rubber Company. He’s back and forth to England. I’ve sailed with him before. And an elderly Irishman going home to retire.’
‘In the middle of a war?’
‘Yeah, I know. It’s wacky.’ Grace nodded toward Blanche, who’d hadn’t moved since we took my trunk outside, except for turning the pages of her book. ‘You’ve met Mrs Bryant.’ Grace’s tone was a little odd when she mentioned Blanche, enough so that I looked at her quizzically. ‘I’ve traveled with her too, on her voyage here to the States,’ Grace said, again in that strange tone of voice that sounded … well, not fearful exactly, but wary.
‘What about her?’ I said, lowering my voice.
Grace shook her head. ‘I’ve said too much already,’ she said, moving over to sit down on the ‘Colored’ bench.
I returned to my own seat. Blanche was so absorbed in her book that I didn’t speak to her. I pulled one of the new books I’d purchased out of my musette bag – a P.G. Wodehouse. I’d not read him before. A friend told me his books were quite humorous, and I reckoned I’d need a few smiles as I crossed the Atlantic to take my mind off submarines and storms.
Our little group of what the ship’s manifest called ‘casual passengers’ clustered at the foot of the accommodation ladder, the portable steps winched down from the deck of the ship to the quay, waiting to be permitted on board. I had no difficulty putting faces to the descriptions Grace had given me. The Dutch family were gathered in a small clutch, murmuring to each other. They didn’t look a thing like the plump, smiling Dutch boy on the paint can, though. All four of them, both parents and two daughters, were thin and pale. The wife leaned up against her husband as though she was too tired to stand. As if she’d been ridden hard and put up wet, as Merle would have said. The Irishman had to be the compact man with thick shoulders, calloused hands and white hair streaked with faded red. Another woman, whom Grace hadn’t mentioned, also waited to board. She wore a WAC winter uniform and a heavy army parka. I knew she was a nurse because of the emblem on her hat and the medical utility bag, marked with a red cross, thrown over her shoulder. I estimated that she was a few years older than me, which would place her in her mid-thirties. There was Blanche, of course. And finally a young man with slicked down hair wearing a heavy coat, fedora and a professional salesman’s smile. He was the first to introduce himself.
‘I’m Gilbert Fox,’ he said, offering his hand to everyone in turn. ‘Call me Gil. I work for the American Rubber Company. This is my third trip across the pond.’
The Irishman touched his worn tweed flat cap. ‘Ronan Murphy here. I’m retired. On my way home to Northern Ireland to live with my sister.’
The Dutchman half smiled at the group, his hands gripping his suitcase as if he didn’t dare let it go to shake hands. ‘Bram Smit,’ he said. ‘And my wife, Irene, our daughters, Alida and Corrie.’ I guessed that Alida was nearly eighteen and Corrie about twelve. ‘I hope we are permitted to board soon,’ he said, in excellent English. ‘We have just gotten off the train from Chicago and we are all very tired.’ Indeed, Irene looked as if she was done in. She leaned on her husband’s arm, closing her eyes occasionally.
The WAC nurse shook everyone’s hand firmly. ‘I’m Olive Nunn,’ she said. ‘I’m on my way to take up a hospital job in England. Don’t know what hospital yet, or even where it is. I’m traveling with you because the troop ship I was supposed to take couldn’t wait to depart until I got over a case of the flu.’
It was my turn. ‘My name is Louise Pearlie,’ I said. ‘I’m a government file clerk and typist. Going to England to file and type there.’
A sudden gust of wind carrying freezing rain drops blew over, as if to remind us that we were sailing at a very questionable time of year. Our group felt silent, all of us lost in our own thoughts. After a few minutes a grizzled seaman wearing a sou’wester opened the gate to the staircase. ‘Time to board,’ he said. ‘Come on up. The chief steward will meet you in your quarters.’
A couple of crewmen had followed the first to collect our suitcases and tote them up the staircase, leaving us with just our personal bags to carry. It was a good thing, since I doubted most of us could carry a suitcase up the metal stairs. It was too steep and the ship rocked in its berth. Then there was the wind.
As I climbed, I noticed a young man at the foot of the stairs talking to the steward who’d directed us to board. The youth was dressed like a seaman but wasn’t from the crew, although he looked as if he wanted the job. He carried a duffle bag over his shoulders. The merchant marine was chronically in need of manpower and our ship was likely short a couple of hands. The young man, his carrot-colored hair sticking out from under his cap, showed some sort of paper to the grizzled seaman, who then gestured him to board the ship. The young man was obviously elated: he jumped up several steps as he mounted the stairs. I guessed he’d been hired.
We scaled the portable staircase, hanging on to the rail for dear life to keep from being blown off. The climb up the side of the ship had to be three stories. By the time we reached the deck, Irene looked as though she couldn’t move another step. ‘Take your mother’s hat box,’ Smit said to his older daughter, who rolled her eyes at the request but took her mother’s box without verbal complaint.
Following the seamen carrying our suitcases, we threaded our way between the vehicles that crowded the decks. Sometimes the space between them was so narrow we had to turn sideways to get through. At last we reached some open deck space at the first floor of the superstructure, the small part of the ship devoted to people instead of cargo. I knew from my reading about Liberty ships that it contained the wheelhouse, bridge and the captain’s cabin. Below deck would be the galley, mess hall and officers’ wardroom, berths for the officers, and whatever berths were available for casual passengers – the motley assortment of civilians hitching a ride. Deep below the superstructure was an enormous three-cylinder engine and boiler; its exhaust stack rose right through the superstructure and towered over it.
Liberty ships could be configured in many ways, so there was no telling what we would find when we went below. A seaman opened a metal door and gestured us through. ‘The chief steward is waiting for you below,’ he said. We went down a metal staircase with a polished wooden handrail into a short passageway that was as cold as the air on deck. I was surprised by the space. Instead of the gray metal I’d expected, the walls and doors gleamed with warm oak. Brass lighting fixtures cast a welcoming glow. The brass handles on the doors and a brass finial on the end of the stair rail looked as if they’d just been polished.
Sure enough, the chief steward, a stocky, bald man, greeted us with the traditional ‘Welcome aboard!’ We gathered around him, packed in tight in the small space. ‘I’m the chief steward of this vessel,’ he said. ‘My name is Ray Pearce, but you should address me as Chief Pearce or just Chief. Let me go over a few things before I show you to your berths.’
You could sense us all slump. We were exhausted and wanted to get to our bunks.
‘I meant it when I welcomed you to this vessel,’ Chief Pearce said, ‘but we are at war and you are civilians who know nothing about the operation of this ship. Our job is to get our cargo to Liverpool, not to watch over you. You’re not allowed in certain areas of this ship, with no exception. We have five holds loaded with seven thousand eight hundred tons of “C” rations, “D” rations, boxes of thirty-caliber ammunition, crates of seventy-five-millimeter gun shells and hundred-and-five-millimeter Howitzer shells. You have no business being down there. The ’tween deck, which is the space between the ceilings of the holds and the main deck, is also off limits.’
I could hear my fellow passengers gasp. With all those munitions in the holds, if we took a torpedo hit, we wouldn’t have much chance of survival, that’s for sure. Pearce didn’t acknowledge our reaction.
‘The Amelia Earhart is powered by a hundred-and-forty-ton vertical triple expansion steam engine,’ he continued. ‘It has countless moving metal parts. The boiler is incredibly hot. Stay out of the engine room. It’s dangerous.
‘During the day you may gather in the wardroom when it’s not being used for meals. You are welcome to walk and smoke on the main deck. Be careful, though. The deck is packed with vehicles. There are cables, chocks, blocks and cleats just waiting to trip you up. And stay away from the gun emplacements. Don’t fall overboard because we won’t stop even for a minute to search for you. Oh’ – and here he gestured toward the staircase – ‘this is the only graduated staircase in the place. It was built a while back for a very important passenger who couldn’t manage ladders. Otherwise, you’ll need to use ladders to get from level to level. Use both hands and be careful. When you’re walking down the ship’s passageways, keep a hand on a bulwark at all times to help keep your balance. A bulwark is a wall to you.’
Chief Pearce paused for a breath before he continued. ‘Your room steward is Grace Bell. She’ll look after your berths and run baths and other such personal things for the ladies. Men, you are on your own for your personal needs. There’s a lavatory at one end of the hall and a bathroom at the other. You’ll be assigned a bath time by Steward Bell. In your room you’ll find a life preserver and a bucket. The bucket is for your use until you get your sea legs.’
The chief jangled a handful of keys. ‘I’m going to show you to your berths,’ he said. ‘You’ll want to unpack and rest, I’m sure. Dinner is at six o’clock. You’ll need to go down the ladder at the end of this passageway; there’s a passageway parallel to this one, and the mess is through the door at the end of the hall. You’ll see seamen going in. Go through the mess line with them, but civilian passengers eat in the officers’ wardroom. You can sit anywhere except the master’s table. You’ll see where to go.’ The chief picked a set of keys out of his handful. ‘Mr and Mrs Smit, this room here connects to the one next door. These are yours and your daughters’ rooms.’ Smit took the keys as if they were the Holy Grail. He unlocked the door and he and his family almost fell inside.
The chief didn’t waste time allocating our rooms and giving out the rest of our keys. I found myself fitting my key into an oak door between the two other women, Blanche and Olive. The two men, Gil and Ronan, were across the hall from us, next to the Smits.
I actually didn’t need my key, because inside my berth I found Grace Bell tucking in the sheets of my bunk. She was singing ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ softly to herself.
‘You have a lovely voice,’ I said to her.
She turned around. ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ she said. ‘I do love to sing.’
Grace had changed into a heavy wool dress, knit coat, wool stockings and her saddle shoes, but she was just as pretty as when I met her in the waiting room. Even dressed as she was, she had a slim figure, a lovely smile, a fashionable hairdo and nice makeup. Most men would call her a knockout.
My berth was tiny. Between the two of us and my suitcase, we could barely move.
‘Welcome, Mrs Pearlie,’ she said. ‘Let me put your towels under your sink and I’ll be done and leave you to rest. Let me show you where your life jacket and bucket are. And just so you’re prepared, there will be a lifeboat drill sooner rather than later.’
She opened a door to a small cabinet fastened to the bulwark near the head of my bunk. ‘Here they are,’ she said, gesturing to the bucket and life preserver. ‘Do you get seasick, ma’am?’
‘Sometimes,’ I said. These seas were going to be rougher than any I’d experienced in a fishing boat off the coast of North Carolina.
‘I’ve got some ginger if you need it,’ she said.
The top of the cabinet served as a nightstand. A small reading lamp and a metal ashtray were screwed to it. I didn’t smoke, but the ashtray would be a good place to leave my glasses, watch and Phoebe’s ring at night.
‘Did the chief steward tell you when dinner would be ready?’ Grace asked. ‘Lunch is long over, I’m afraid.’
I remembered the bag of leftovers Dellaphine had put on the hall table for me and felt my empty stomach urge me to eat. ‘I’ve got my lunch with me,’ I said.
Grace tucked towels and a washcloth in a cabinet which held the tiniest sink I’d ever seen. It wasn’t much bigger than a cereal bowl. ‘Hot water?’ I asked.
Grace straightened up. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘just cold. But you will be able to take a hot bath every day, thanks to the engine boiler. The women are supposed to take their baths in the morning, the men at night. I’d suggest seven fifteen. That way you can sleep until seven, and since breakfast is at eight, you can get dressed and get your coffee right away.’
‘That sounds good,’ I said.
‘You can wash your undies and stockings in the bath with you, too.’
I hadn’t taken my coat and hat off yet. ‘When will they turn on the heat?’ I asked.
‘Oh,’ Grace said, ‘I’m so sorry. There’s no heat.’
I must have misunderstood her. ‘What did you say?’ I asked.
‘The only spaces in the ship that are heated are the mess hall and wardroom.’
‘You’re joking,’ I said.
‘I wish I was,’ she said. ‘But this ship was fitted for a southern run and hasn’t been upgraded. And it won’t be. We must ration fuel. You’ll just have to wear layers of clothes. You have plenty of blankets and the exhaust stack from the engine goes right through the center of the superstructure. So once we’re underway it’s not quite as cold as it is outside.’
No wonder Grace was bundled up. ‘I’m going to need to get my trunk out of the hold. My heaviest clothes are inside,’ I said.
Grace hid a smile behind a hand. ‘You can’t reach your trunk, Mrs Pearlie. It’s locked in a cage in the hold surrounded by boxes of ammunition. But when the bosun’s store opens in the morning, you might be able to pick up some warm clothes. They’ll be seamen’s work clothes, though.’
I was exhausted. I’d gotten out of my cozy bed at four thirty in the morning, driven across DC to the Navy Yard, sat on hard benches in a waiting room for hours, finally got to my cabin, only to find I’d be crossing the icy Atlantic Ocean without heat. I was hungry and sleepy.
‘When you’re done unpacking, leave your suitcase in the hall and I’ll store it for you,’ Grace said. There was certainly nowhere to put it in my tiny cabin.
‘Oh,’ she said, turning as she was halfway out of my room, ‘I bring coffee, tea and cookies down every day at four o’clock. We have a great ship’s baker.’
After Grace left, I felt all my pent-up excitement and anticipation drain away. I quickly unpacked the contents of my suitcase into the drawer set in the base of my bunk. I was angry that no one told me I would need my arctic parka and wool gloves on board ship. I hated to think I’d need to sleep in my good wool coat. It had a real fur collar and it took me months to pay off my Woodies’ charge account after I’d bought it. If I wore it constantly for weeks at sea, it would be ruined by salt spray. Not to mention that it wasn’t going to be warm enough.
My musette bag with my personal items fit neatly into the drawer with my clothing and my tin of pralines. I put my big suitcase out in the hall. I didn’t hear a sound from my neighbors. Everyone must have been napping. Back in my room, I crawled into my bunk in my coat and wrapped two blankets around myself. Opening the brown paper bag Dellaphine had sent with me, I found fried chicken, a biscuit and apple pie. And a napkin. A cloth napkin, one of Phoebe’s many in a rose pattern. Phoebe loved roses. I would keep the napkin. It brought back good memories.
The first piece of cold fried chicken I unwrapped was gone in about three bites. The second piece I savored, knowing how long it might be before I ate fried chicken again. Dellaphine had packed two pieces of apple pie. I ate one and tucked the other one, rewrapping it in wax paper, into the small drawer of what passed as a bedside table. While eating, I had warmed up considerably, and when I lay down, I fell sound asleep.
I awoke to the sound of conversation and the rattle of dishes in the passageway. The coffee and tea must have arrived. Throwing my blankets off, I freshened up at the tiny sink in my cabin and went out into the hall. I found a clutch of my shipmates gathered around a pull-down table with tea, coffee and cookies in the passageway near the foot of the ladder. The table was hinged on one side so it could be stored flat against the bulwark, since you couldn’t possibly carry a table down the stairs.
Mr Smit was balancing four cups of tea and a stack of cookies on a makeshift tray, the lid of his wife’s hatbox, to take back to his family. Ronan Murphy had drained his first cup of tea already and stood expectantly, waiting for us.
‘Ladies,’ Ronan said, ‘will you be drinking tea or coffee?’
‘Coffee,’ Olive and I answered in unison.
‘Aha! Lucky for me,’ he said. ‘I can have another cuppa.’ He emptied the teapot into his cup.
‘Anyone up for a game of cards?’ Gil asked.
‘Not now,’ I said. ‘Maybe some other time.’
‘I’m still knackered,’ Ronan said. ‘I’m going to rest in my cabin and read a copy of the Irish Times I found at a newsstand at the train station. I’ll see you all at dinner.’ He carefully balanced his full cup as he went back to his berth.
‘Is your wife feeling better?’ I asked Smit.
‘Much,’ he said. ‘She’s napped all afternoon. So have the girls.’ He turned and walked gingerly down the hall toward his cabin, taking care not to tip his tray.
Gil and Olive stood at the table lacing their coffee with cream and sugar and adding cookies to their saucers. Gil still wore his heavy topcoat with a long scarf wrapped around his neck and over his head. Thick wool gloves stuck out of his pocket. Olive had on her army arctic parka. It was identical to the one packed in my trunk, unreachable in the hold.
‘How did you two know the ship isn’t heated?’ I asked.
‘I’ve crossed before on business,’ Gil said. ‘On this very ship, in fact.’
‘And I got a list from WAC HQ on what I would need on the crossing,’ Olive said. I’d had a list too, but it didn’t warn me about lack of heat. Was I just supposed to have guessed that the ship wouldn’t be heated? When I wrote my first letter to Alice Osborne, she was going to hear about this.
‘The coffee is still hot,’ Olive said, holding up the coffee pot. ‘It will warm you up. You know, you might be able to find something warmer than the coat you’re wearing in the bosun’s stores. And wool socks and mittens.’
‘I hope so,’ I said, filling my cup with steaming coffee. ‘Would you like to join me in my berth for a chat?’ I asked.
‘Love to,’ she said.
We wrapped up in my blankets on my bunk and sipped on our coffee, which was quite good. No added chicory, thank goodness. Olive dipped her oatmeal cookies in her coffee, but I liked to crunch mine. She glanced at my left hand. ‘I see that you are single, too. Are you an old maid like me?’ she asked lightheartedly.
‘I’m a widow,’ I said. ‘For several years now. My husband died before the war.’
‘I’m so sorry! He must have been very young.’
‘He was. He contracted pneumonia after a case of the measles.’ My husband was a Western Union telegrapher and was exposed to dozens of people every day. A customer brought her sick children into the office to send a telegraph to her mother, asking her to come help her, and that was all it took for my husband to catch his death.
‘Is that your engagement ring?’ she asked, gesturing toward Phoebe’s ring on my right hand. ‘It’s lovely.’
‘No, it’s a gift from my landlady,’ I said. ‘So why are you not hitched?’
Olive had finished her coffee and put the cup down so she could draw her gloves back on. ‘Dearie,’ she said. ‘I had an engagement go very wrong. Horribly wrong. Gothic novel wrong.’
‘I’m sorry!’
‘He married my sister instead. Really, I thought I would die. Instead, I left home and enrolled in nursing school so I could support myself. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I love nursing. I don’t mind being unmarried at all anymore. Do you have a beau?’
‘I do. I did. But then he was transferred and I don’t know where. He’s not allowed to write.’
‘How awful! And I can tell by the look on your face that you care deeply for him.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do. But I decided not to mope, so I took this assignment.’ I focused on flicking crumbs off myself and then took both our empty cups out to the gangway to put on the table for Grace to pick up. I didn’t want Olive to see my eyes.
We agreed to meet at the foot of our staircase to go to dinner.
‘How many bells ring for dinner?’ I asked. The ship’s bells rang constantly, with no rhyme or reason that I could tell.
‘I have no idea. I just look at my watch. Six o’clock.’
‘Should I knock on Blanche’s door and invite her to join us?’
‘I wouldn’t. She’s awfully unfriendly. Almost rude. She’s made it clear she wants to be left alone, so let’s honor her wishes.’
‘You’re right; she doesn’t want our company.’ I wondered what had happened to make Blanche so hard.
I laid out all my clothing on my bed, figuring out what combination of items would keep me the warmest. Darn it! I had packed for a heated living area and I felt like a fool. How was I to have known? In the end I kept on my cotton knit stockings, pulled on long underwear, a blouse – what a useless item to bring – and buttoned my favorite hand-knit cardigan over it. That cardigan was a shade of blueberry that reminded me of the only evening dress I had ever owned. Finally, I pulled on socks over my stockings and shoved my feet into saddle shoes. I could just imagine how disgusting all this would be if I wore it for days! But then I guessed I wouldn’t be alone. And Grace had said I could wash my underclothes when I took my bath.
I met Olive at the foot of the staircase. Together we found the ladder at the end of the passageway, descended safely and followed the scent of food until we found ourselves in line at the mess hall. The seamen wore no discernible uniforms, just heavy winter work clothes. But all of them had thick knitted watch caps and wool mittens shoved into their pants pockets. The Navy Armed Guard were easy to spot. They wore actual uniforms and carried sidearms. They were the only people on board who were allowed to carry guns and man the artillery on deck.
As we passed down the line, messmen wearing aprons over their jackets slapped food on metal trays for us exactly as they did for the seaman. Since we’d just left port, it looked as if some of the food was fresh – beef tips on real mashed potatoes, but canned corn and peas, and real milk. Rolls and butter, of course. I passed on dessert – chocolate pudding – since I had Dellaphine’s pie and pralines back in my cabin. We tried to speak to the seamen in line, but they were decidedly frosty toward us.
Olive and I went down the narrow space between the mess tables, which were already lined with seamen as tightly as sardines in a can, until we saw the door labeled ‘Wardroom’, which served as the officers’ mess during meals. We pushed it open and found a small crowded space with six tables and their chairs screwed to the floor. There was some sign of rank in here, mostly emblems on jacket sleeves and watch caps. The master, or captain, sat at the table near a double porthole with men I assumed were his officers. Gil was there, too. He must have had an invitation. Olive and I moved toward a far table where the Smits and Blanche were seated, but we were waylaid by the ensign in command of the Navy Armed Guard. I knew he was an ensign because of the single star on his uniform lapel and the gunnery emblem on his shirt.
‘Ladies,’ he said, ‘please sit with us. We would be honored.’ There were two other men at his table wearing naval winter deck gear, with their heavy coats hung over the backs of their chairs. I recognized the emblems on their coats: one was a radio operator and one a signalman. They stood up for us; the ensign pulled out my chair and the signalman seated Olive. I felt a little embarrassed, but the ensign was quite handsome and polite, even if he was a bit forward.
Once seated, the ensign introduced himself. ‘Ensign Thomas Bates, ma’am, at your service. Everyone calls me Tom. This is Signalman Fred Wilson, one of our radiomen. Our unit has three radiomen, and they are all answerable to “Sparky”.’ The men looked very young, even the ensign. Almost ten years younger than me, I guessed.
One good thing about eating with the military, I could see their surnames on their pockets. The merchant mariners wore patches on their work jackets that told me if they were assigned to the deck, engine or the steward, but that was all.
When we sat down, the three men passed us salt and pepper and butter and filled our water glasses. Olive and I accepted their manners with grace, and soon we were talking as we ate. ‘So where are you from?’ Tom asked us. Olive and I answered their questions while revealing as little personal information as we could. There were few women on board and we didn’t want to be the subject of conversation among the men.
‘And you?’ I asked, after Olive and I had finished our short biographies.
‘I’m from Newport News,’ Tom said. ‘This is a new assignment for me. I don’t know these men myself yet. They’ve just finished training.’
‘I’m from Brooklyn, ma’am,’ Sparky said. ‘And Signalman Oates here is from Chicago.’
‘You’ve come a long way, then,’ I said to Oates.
‘Not as far as some – my brother’s in the Pacific.’
‘Well, I’m glad you’re here to protect us,’ Olive said.
‘We’re responsible for guarding the entire ship,’ Tom said, ‘not just the people on it. Our boys in England desperately need the cargo we’re carrying, and the ship needs to stay afloat too, and make as many crossings as possible. I don’t mean to demean the value of human life, but the cargo and ship are just as important as the people on board.’
‘I saw the guns as we boarded,’ I said. ‘Somehow it doesn’t seem like enough.’
‘They have to be,’ Tom said. ‘There’s only so much room on deck. And remember, we’ll join a convoy in Halifax. We’ll have other cargo ships with us in a protected formation, flanked by warships, with air support. We’ll be in a slow convoy – a Liberty ship can only steam at about nine and a half knots. But we’ll make it.’
‘Did I hear you say Halifax?’ I asked. ‘Is that Halifax, Nova Scotia?’
‘Yeah,’ Sparks answered. ‘A little over six hundred miles from here.’
Oh my God. We’d be at a latitude of over forty degrees! How much colder would it be there?
‘You look a little pale,’ the signalman said to me. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No one told Mrs Pearlie that most of the ship isn’t heated,’ Olive said. ‘How cold is it in Halifax about this time of year?’
‘It ranges from fifteen degrees to maybe thirty,’ Sparky said. ‘Colder on the water, of course.’
‘Didn’t you bring warm clothes?’ Tom asked me.
‘Of course I did,’ I said. ‘They’re in my trunk in the hold – unreachable. I didn’t think I’d need them until I got to England.’ I didn’t want my shipmates to think I was chicken, so I quickly added, ‘I’m fine. I’ve got a wool coat back in my berth and I’ll just layer up. It’s not like I’ll have to take a deck watch or anything.’
The bells that signaled the end of the dinner hour sounded. ‘Thank you for asking us to sit with you,’ Olive said. ‘The way the ordinary seamen in line acted, we didn’t feel too welcome. As if they’d prefer not to have passengers on the ship.’
‘It’s an old sailor’s superstition that women on board ship bring bad luck,’ Sparky said. ‘And, of course, women and children have to be evacuated in the first lifeboat if the ship needs to be abandoned. That means the seamen themselves have to wait to evacuate until after the first lifeboat is successfully launched.’
‘And the seamen aren’t allowed to curse in your presence,’ Tom said, smiling. ‘That cuts their vocabulary in half.’
I thought Olive and I handled that little bit of information well, but perhaps our smiles were just a bit forced.
As the wardroom emptied, Tom turned to me. ‘Would you like to go up on the bridge deck? You can see the entire ship from there, and there’s a waxing moon tonight.’
‘Yes, I would. But I need to go back to my cabin and get my coat.’
‘I’m sure Signalman Oates will lend you his coat,’ he said. ‘He’s off duty now and I’ll get it back to him.’
‘Absolutely,’ Oates said, holding the coat for me while I slipped it on. I buttoned up the thick waterproof jacket.
‘Tell you what, Signalman,’ I said, ‘I’ll give you a hundred dollars for this coat.’
‘Sorry, ma’am, there’s not enough money for me to give up that coat. Not in this weather.’
I wondered what time the bosun’s store opened in the morning.
‘The bridge deck is two levels up,’ Tom said.
I grabbed at the handrails of both ladders and easily scrambled up them. When we reached the bridge level, Tom knocked on the metal door. A seaman opened the door and we entered.
‘Good evening, Deck Cadet,’ Tom said to the seaman. Then he turned to the captain. ‘Master Jacobs,’ he said, ‘can I show Mrs Pearlie our route?’
‘Certainly,’ the master said, ‘come in.’
I was surprised by the bridge. You could barely see outside. There was only a tiny square window looking out over the ocean. The wheel occupied most of the floor space. The bulwarks were lined with mysterious instruments with dials the size of dinner plates. The master was bent over a screen glowing green next to the wheel.
The master was much older than I had realized when I noticed him in the wardroom, but he seemed fit and moved well. His face was deeply furrowed by wrinkles, his hands swollen from arthritis. When he took off his cap, he had little hair. His eyebrows made up for it, though – thick, white and wizardish-looking. I guessed that he had come out of retirement when the war started. The captain’s cap he wore was the only thing that differentiated him from an ordinary seaman. It was a worn blue peaked captain’s hat with the emblem of the merchant marine, an anchor fouled with rope and framed by a wreath. Otherwise, he dressed in the same winter work clothes as his subordinates.
‘Welcome, Mrs Pearlie,’ the master said. ‘This is my first mate, Chief Harley Pitts, at the wheel, and navigating on this watch is Deck Cadet Willis.’ I knew that the first mate was the master’s second-in-command and in charge of the deck seamen. He was nearly as old as the master, but a much smaller, almost wizened man. He gripped the wheel with the wiry muscles of a man who’d steered a ship for many years. His forearms bulged like Popeye’s and a pipe jutted from the corner of his mouth.
The deck cadet, a young man with a crew cut whose nervous look broadcast that he was in training, moved away from the chart table so that Tom could show it to me. ‘Here we are,’ he said, pointing to a spot a few miles east of Washington. ‘We’ll steam along the coast,’ he said, tracing our path with his forefinger – north, of course, to Halifax. ‘We’ll join the other ships meeting there, then cruise to St John’s, Newfoundland, where we’ll join the main convey. From there we’ll set course for England. It will take us about nineteen days if all goes well.’
Popeye snorted. ‘That doesn’t count the time we’ll be docked in Halifax. Three days at least.’
That was good news. I could go ashore and buy warmer clothes!
‘Let’s go on out to the bridge deck,’ Tom said. The bridge deck was an open space where the bridge crew could have a full clear view of the ship’s deck and the ocean. Another navigational map was under glass at a small table. A telescope was mounted on the rail.
Outside, despite the wind and cold, the view of the ocean and sky was magnificent. The ocean was ink-colored, crossed with streams of azure. Foam churned by choppy waves sparkled in the moonlight. The waxing moon shone brightly and I could see on every side the silhouettes of other ships cruising north with us, their running lights aglow. Thousands of stars blinked in the sky. When I grasped the railing, it was encased in ice that penetrated my thin kid gloves.
‘The other ships near us,’ I said. ‘Are they headed to Halifax, too?’
‘Probably,’ he said, ‘they’re either other cargo ships or warship escorts.’ He opened a metal box secured to the rail and pulled out a pair of binoculars, raising them to his eyes. ‘Let’s see if I can tell.’ As he scanned the water Tom’s shoulders stiffened. Turning to me, he took my arm. ‘I see something I need to report to the captain immediately,’ he said, ‘we must return to the bridge now.’
Once inside, Tom spoke before the others had time to turn to him. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I think I saw a submarine.’
‘Really?’ the master said, turning to him. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘A silver cigar-shape near the surface. Moving.’ My heart rate ticked up, while the deck cadet went rigid. ‘Should we sound to quarters, sir?’ the cadet asked.
‘Let me take a look first,’ the master said. ‘The sea can look mighty funny in the moonlight.’ He reached for another pair of binoculars and followed Tom outside.
Popeye calmly continued to steer the boat. ‘What do you think?’ the cadet asked him. ‘Think there’s a submarine out there?’
‘One good thing about having an old master,’ Popeye said, ‘he’s already seen everything twice. Wait and see what he tells us when he gets back.’
I cleaned my glasses before peering out of a narrow window at the two men on the bridge deck, trying to determine from their posture what was happening. Tom was standing almost at attention with his binoculars raised to his eyes, but the master was relaxed, leaning over the rail, staring out over the sea, with just his naked eyes cupped between his hands, his binoculars hanging around his neck. He straightened up and clapped Tom on the back. As they turned to come back inside, I slipped away from the window so they wouldn’t notice me there.
The two men reentered the bridge. ‘It was a school of fish,’ Tom said. ‘Right under the surface. As they turned in unison, the moonlight reflected off them so it looked like a large object cruising under the water.’
‘Told you,’ Popeye said. ‘An old man – that’s who you want to captain a ship.’
‘I’m younger than you, you old sea dog,’ the master replied. ‘You just stay your course.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Back in my room, it felt like midnight instead of nine o’clock at night, or, as I should be thinking now, twenty-one hundred hours. I was knackered, as Ronan would say. It had been one of the longest days of my life, longer even than the day of my young husband’s funeral. I’d risen in the dark, driven through Washington, waited on hard benches in a waiting room for hours, climbed a staircase to the Amelia Earhart that felt like scaling a mountain, unpacked, met my shipmates, dealt with frigid temperatures and held my breath through a possible submarine sighting.
Sitting on my bunk, I had to talk myself into undressing before falling asleep. I pulled off my wool trousers and exchanged my stockings for long underwear and drew on corduroy dungarees. That was about the extent of my undressing. I’d take my stockings to the bathroom tomorrow and wash them out, and wear my second pair while the first dried. That way maybe I could stay somewhat ahead of my dirty laundry. I cleaned my eyeglasses, crusted with ice and salt spray, at my tiny sink. I’d need to be very careful not to scratch them.
Wanting to conserve my gin, I decided to have a praline instead of a drink. As I bit into it, I sensed the warmth and welcome of Dellaphine’s kitchen, but that didn’t last long and intense sadness quickly overwhelmed me. Why on earth had I agreed to do this? I did my bit for the war effort in DC. I had friends. I was warmer. Joe could return to DC at any time and I wouldn’t be there. Heck, I might not live through the crossing – what was the point of that?
After allowing myself an extensive pity party, I pulled myself together. I had considered all this when I was making my decision to accept the post in England. I was on my way there, and I would make the best of it.
I brushed my teeth and washed my face in my tiny sink, then went down the hall to the head, which, I discovered, had a porthole opened to the outside air for ventilation. The air coming in was arctic and blew directly on my bare backside. Back in my room, I slipped into my bunk and warmed up quickly. I fell asleep anticipating nine hours of sleep before taking a hot bath in the morning.