They were meeting and crossing the paths of other steamers that night and on the third, had consequently given up the practice of turning stern-on to all newly sighted ships. Whatever came into sight you examined carefully, and at anything like close quarters played safe by switching on navigation lights and following the Rule of the Road. After midnight there’d been a good moon, in any case; its loom had been silvering the horizon when Andy had been turning over the watch to Fisher, and it had been well up, competing with the sun’s first efforts, when they’d met up here again for morning stars. There’d been a few ships in sight then, and were again during Andy’s forenoon watch – as one might have expected, with vessels of all nations using Montevideo and Buenos Aires, Mar del Plata, Bahia Blanca, Rio Grande, Porto Allegre, Santos, Rio de Janeiro, Vitoria, Salvador, Natal, Recife; or, southbound, the Magellan Strait en route to Chilean and Peruvian ports.
Some playground for a pocket-battleship, he thought. With at least half of all this traffic flying the Red Ensign.
The Old Man came back into the wheelhouse from the bridge-wing, where he’d been taking a look at a Spanish passenger-steamer to which Andy had perforce given way, passing two or three cables’ lengths under her stern, just minutes ago. Skipper wearing his reefer jacket unbuttoned over an open-necked shirt and a pair of old grey flannels; Andy remembering that when he’d first met him – on Clydeside for the formal signing of articles – his rig had been a brown serge suit and a bowler hat. Coming to a halt in the wheelhouse doorway now and mumbling – holding a match to the bowl of his pipe – ‘Wouldn’t trust that crowd not to let their Hun friends know where the pickings are.’
‘Think Spain’ll come in against us, sir?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. No secret where Franco’s sympathies lie though, is it.’
She was back on course after that brief alteration, the helmsman intoning, ‘Two-six-six, sir.’ The Old Man said, ‘You were telling me, Holt – about your father, how he came out of airships, back where he belonged, you might say?’
Andy nodded. ‘End of that war and afterwards he was with Vickers – lieutenant-commander in the RN Air Service, but in an Admiralty team working with them – Vickers – on rigid airships. Meaning Zeppelin type as distinct from the old blimps, dirigibles. Metal airships – one of ’em crossed the Atlantic and back in 1919. The old man was in on that – at the time he said they were all cock-a-hoop about it.’
‘Old man? Your father? How old is he?’
‘He’s – forty-six, or –’
‘If forty-six is old, Holt, I’m Methuselah.’
‘Well – manner of speaking… No, not old at all… But what sent him back to sea was the R38 disaster in 1921. She broke up in mid-air, on her trials. My father would’ve been on board her but he’d cried off because of – well, family crisis, my mother nearly dying giving birth to my sister Annabel. August 1921 – her birthday, how I can put the date to it – the crash, I mean. He’s always credited my sister with having saved his life. But it put an end to all that military development, and he chucked his hand in.’
‘Mother pulled through all right, eh?’
‘Oh, yes –’
‘And he was taken on by Hogarths – Baron Line, you said – as what?’
‘Junior officer, uncertificated. But with his record he had a head start, sat for all his certificates, put in the necessary sea-time and – well, caught up pretty quick.’
‘Would’ve needed to, with a wife and two children to support.’
‘Well – just family stuff, this, don’t want to bore you, sir – happened he’d sold his inherited share of my grandfather’s farms in Herefordshire to his sister and her husband. So he had a bit behind him – bought the house we have now at Helensburgh, for instance.’
‘Lucky blighter. Lucky it was 1921, too, not later when we hit rock-bottom. Must’ve kept up his annual RNR sea training, too – accounting for the defence courses, eh?’
Andy nodded. ‘Since 1937 it’s been pretty well a full-time job. You’d have heard of him through that, I suppose.’
‘And Blood Line offered you a cadetship when you passed out of Conway.’
‘I was lucky too. Wasn’t the best of times, was it, thirty-four, thirty-five?’
‘It was a bloody awful time, Holt. And there were owners took full advantage of it. Most of ’em, you might say – kept their own bellies and pockets full while there were officers with masters’ tickets signing on as deckhands sooner than rot on shore, sell matches on street corners. But – low pay, foc’sl conditions not fit for pigs – a man could like it or lump it, there’d be a dozen trained seamen on any dockyard street corner only too ready to sign on in his place. Wouldn’t call it exactly ritzy now, but my God, compared to how it was…’
Becoming talkative, this Old Man. Initially he’d hardly opened his mouth despite spending a lot of time on and around the bridge when he, Andy, had been on watch. In days gone by the 0800 to 1200 and the 2000 to midnight watches had been kept by ships’ masters; and a third mate being new to it customarily stood under his captain’s eye. In fact, PollyAnna had been halfway through the Mediterranean when he’d realised he was being left entirely on his own, had evidently passed muster.
During the forenoon, Don Fisher mustered his seven-man gun-crew and drilled them with a dummy projectile, while the bosun made a target out of vegetable crates lashed together. That was put over the side, and with Fisher spotting and correcting, they fired six rounds at it, bracketing it with the fourth and fifth shots and dropping the sixth so close that the splash obscured it. This was at a final range of 5,600 yards, measured by the Chernikeef log, distance covered from the moment of dropping the target overboard; he’d had young Gorst singing out the ranges. The skipper had authorised the expenditure of six rounds maximum, since they had only a couple of dozen and no certainty of where or when they’d get more.
Cadet Janner had exclaimed, in the mate’s hearing, on the bridge-wing from where they’d been watching the show with plugs of cotton-waste in their ears, ‘That wasn’t at all bad, by golly!’ and Halloran asked him cuttingly, ‘Know much about it, do you?’
‘Not much, sir, no. But we did a gunnery course.’
‘Tell me this – why do we have it mounted aft, why not on the foc’sl-head?’
‘I’d say because’ – Janner screwing his eyes up, applying either memory or logic – ‘well, seeing as we’re civilians and the gun’s only for self-defence – on the poop because in any action we’d be trying to run for it?’
‘That’s the theory.’ A shrug. ‘If you can imagine us with our twelve knots running from the Graf Spee with her thirty?’
Andy wrote to his father that afternoon, before getting his head down for a couple of hours.
We’re new at all this, of course, complete beginners – at whatever there is ahead of us, I mean. All guesses and theory – not having experienced anything of the sort as yet, I just hope we’ll find we’re up to it. I suppose that’s what most men worry about, at such times. My skipper was at sea in the last one, so was the chief engineer – and the bosun, as it happens – but apart from those we’re greenhorns. You knew it very well, of course, and knowing where you are and what you’re in I guess you’ll already have seen quite a bit of this one. My captain, I may say without breaking too many rules about security, had wind just recently of the loss of an AMC but not her name, made a point of finding out before I heard of it, because it occurred to him that it might have been your ship; he is, I may say, a very decent sort. I think I mentioned before, he recognised your name, knew all about the defence courses you were running. He’s 59, by the way, been at sea near enough half a century.
Now I’m going to grab some kip, finish this later or perhaps tomorrow – when we’ll be within reach of a post box. Touch wood, we will!
Odd, he thought, his mind drifting as he transferred from desk to bunk, it felt as if he’d been writing to an older brother, rather than to his father.
Soon after four he doused his head in cold water and went up a deck and outside, leant on the now grey-painted rail that ran around this midships superstructure, looking down on to the fore-deck where the bosun had men at work overhauling and greasing winches and five-ton derricks – and on the foc’sl-head, the steam windlass and other anchor gear – prior to arrival in Montevideo and as likely as not having to use the ship’s own gear for discharging her coal. They’d evidently passed through more rain while he’d been sleeping; decks and hatch-covers were steaming, raising a mist that drifted astern over the sizzling, spreading wake. The swell was lower, as she approached the shelter of the land, the ocean not ridged, just heaving, like some great beast sleeping one off; there was very little movement on the ship, only this steady, rhythmic lunging, so regular you barely noticed it. Current would still be westerly, he guessed, but by sunset would need watching; even now, still 300 miles offshore, you might be getting into the southerly flowing Brazil Current, which complicated matters just off the Plate by coming head to head with what was known as the Falklands Current – an offshoot of the Cape Horn one.
Don Fisher’s concern, of course, not one’s own. Although next time – or in a year or two, say – it might be. He went inside, paused to light a cigarette then continued aft and down again on his way to the saloon. It was a substantial block of accommodation, this bridge ‘island’, including two two-berth passenger cabins intended originally for use by the ship’s owners or their more important customers – shippers, charterers. They were on the same level as the master’s quarters, i.e. one level below the bridge. One of them had been allocated to the chief engineer and the other to Halloran, freeing what would have been their cabins for use by Don Fisher and the second engineer, McAlan. Those were on that same level, as was a cramped three-berther used by the wireless officers, whose W/T office was immediately abaft it. Andy’s small cabin, and the third and fourth engineers’ and one shared by the cadets were on the next level down, which was also the saloon deck.
This one. Those four cabins, and the washplace, then the saloon, and abaft it the pantry and galley. He pushed into the saloon to get himself a mug of tea, and Fisher looked up from one he’d had his nose in.
‘Good grief. Bestirring ourselves, at last…’
He passed around the long table, en route to the pantry hatch. It wasn’t much past four; Fisher couldn’t have been down from the bridge for more than a few minutes. There were several others at the table – not that this was any sort of mealtime. ‘Tea’ – or supper – was normally laid on at five, although in harbour it could be as late as seven. Andy nodded to the assistant steward through the sliding hatch: ‘Tea please, Watkins.’ Then to Fisher, ‘Are we in the Brazil Current yet, d’you reckon?’
‘Time will tell. Should be, though, I’m allowing for it. Stars tonight will put us right. But listen – the bugger’s done it again.’
‘Which bugger’s done what?’
Shaw, third engineer – whose particular responsibility was the ship’s electrics – cut in with a supposedly German-intonated scream of ‘The Herr Admiral Graf Spee, no less!’ Fisher winced, shaking his head, and told Andy, ‘Distress call from a ship by name Taroa. Furness Withy, eight thousand tons, the Old Man knew of her. Six hundred miles west of where the Doric Star was caught – and the interval was thirty hours, so the Spee’s been on west-southwest at twenty knots.’
‘Coming this way.’
‘This coast, maybe. If she holds on.’
‘Not at twenty knots, she wouldn’t.’
‘Is that somehow relevant?’
‘The mate and I were pondering her likely movements, that’s all. Economical speed about fifteen, we reckoned.’
‘Might well be. Or could be twenty. Either way, by the time we’re ready to leave Monte –’
Shaw cut in again: ‘Sit tight and keep our knees together until she’s pissed off again, is what I’d propose.’
By dawn on the 4th, still with about twelve hours to go, the wind had veered northeast, same direction as the Brazil Current. Andy and Fisher took their morning stars and the results, in close accord, suggested a small alteration of course, which was conveyed to Halloran. Fisher noted the time and log reading, and laid the new track off on the chart.
‘Sets us back a bit. ETA at the dredged channel seventeen hundred, more like.’
‘Dredged channel?’
‘Here.’ He spread a new chart – 2001 – on top of the other. ‘See. Bahia de Montevideo. Channel’s here – five miles of it, leading due north. Our approach’ll be here, between English Bank and Rouen Bank, then hard a-starboard. Giving ETA at the channel’s outer end because that’s where the pilot meets us. Channel’s dredged periodically to thirty feet – soft mud, silts up like mad. Only good thing about it is you can’t seriously damage yourself on soft mud. But once in the estuary there’s not a hell of a lot of water anywhere… Your first visit here, is this?’
‘To Monte.’ He nodded. ‘Passed close by in the old Burntisland, though – when we came down from Rio and visited BA, remember?’
Buenos Aires being a hundred miles up-river and on its other bank. Argentina on your left, Uruguay on your right. From BA in the Burntisland they’d steamed on down to the Magellan Strait and up the Chilean coast to Santiago; himself a cadet, Fisher third mate. The Spanish war had been at its height: the bombing of Guernica, all that. Couple of years ago, but it felt more like last month – because, he guessed, he’d enjoyed what he’d been doing. So far, anyway, had enjoyed it. As he’d tried to explain to his father that day – he’d found himself in what felt like his own element, a role that suited him – seaman, working seaman with no frills, no bullshit, or at any rate very little – and definitely preferring the cargo business – tramping – which gave you the whole world as your stamping-ground, no port on earth you wouldn’t eventually get to know.
And no bloody passengers…
Fisher was telling him about Montevideo – ‘Likely thing, with coal, is they’ll want us to anchor in what’s called the Antepuerto and discharge into lighters. Agents may tell us when they answer the Old Man’s message, otherwise the pilot will.’
The Old Man had wirelessed last night to Messrs Todhunter and Rodriguez, Dundas Gore’s agents in Monte, giving an ETA of 1630. He might have amended that now, but had decided to let it wait, and in midforenoon received Todhunter’s reply. As foretold by Fisher, PollyAnna was to anchor in the Antepuerto. Todhunter looked forward to seeing Captain Thornhill, and would come out to the ship as soon as Port Health had cleared her; he’d meanwhile arranged for lighters to be alongside by 0830 local time on Tuesday.
He and the skipper were old friends, apparently. But not a word about the ship’s future movements. Could be a matter of discretion – no need to broadcast what could be discussed face to face in a few hours’ time. The Old Man acknowledged Todhunter’s message and gave him an amended ETA, main purpose being not to ruffle local feathers or incur extra costs by keeping the pilot boat waiting; and in the event he did not: the boat was coming down the dredged channel as they made their own approach – a splash of colour that resolved itself into a red-painted cutter under a red-and-white pilot flag. PollyAnna going dead slow at that stage, her master then stopping engines and finally putting her astern for half a minute, kicking up what might have been cocoa flooding for’ard along her grey sides, and stopping her half a cable’s length from a light-buoy that was named on the chart as the Whistle Buoy, marking the entrance to the channel. You could smell that mud. Meanwhile, Batt Collins down there on the fore-deck was putting a Jacob’s ladder over, then watching as the boat chugged in alongside; the pilot transferred himself to the ladder and old Batt leaned over to haul him up. Halloran there now too, touching his cap to the pilot before shaking his hand; pilot glancing aloft, checking that the blue-and-white-striped Uruguayan flag was up there – mark of respect, the ship being now in Uruguayan waters and jurisdiction. She was also flying the Dundas Gore house flag – a blue pendant with D/G in white – the yellow international code flag ‘Q’ for Quarantine, and on her stern of course the one that mattered, the Red Duster. In addition, her four-letter identification was bent on ready for hoisting – if the Old Man decided it should be hoisted at a later stage. Factors in this were that while there’d almost certainly be other British ships in the port, in which case identification might be appropriate – they could look her up, see who she was – there might also be Germans, and why provide them with information they weren’t entitled to? Although they could get it easily enough if they wanted to by looking it up in the Customs register; or even more simply by focusing a telescope on the name painted in black capitals on her bows and counter. The concern behind this was the possibility of German freighters going on the air on raiders’ frequencies with messages such as British freighter PollyAnna sailed for this or that port at – time and date, plus maybe cargo details. And wouldn’t they, if they could get away with it? The skipper had agreed, said he’d ask Todhunter what the form was when he came aboard.
The Old Man nodding down towards the pilot now, muttering to himself or Fisher, ‘Think he was a bloody admiral, wouldn’t you?’ Referring to the Uruguayan – smart white uniform, cap aslant rather as Admiral Beatty had worn his, and that jaunty manner. He was out of their sight then, following Halloran in through the screen door on his way up to the bridge. Pilot cutter meanwhile sheering off; sounds from below of those two clumping up. Andy joined Fisher at the chart, out of the others’ way. If they’d been going into the port itself and berthing alongside, Fisher, as second mate, wouldn’t have been up here, he’d have been down aft, in charge of the stern ropes and wires. Halloran’s station was on the foc’sl-head – would have been if they’d been berthing on a quay, still would be now, anchoring. Time – five-ten: should be dropping the hook by six, maybe – and with any luck the agent, Todhunter, would be bringing mail with him… Pilot now arriving in the bridge, looking, as he approached the Old Man, like some comic-opera sea-captain – as if he might start singing and dancing at any moment. Beaming smile exposing gleaming white teeth under a black moustache with up-curling ends, shiny black hair curling out around the edges of his cap, odour of Brylcreem or something worse redolent even from this distance of about fifteen feet.
Clasping the Old Man’s hand: ‘Captain Thorn-eel, we have been meeting before, I sink – vairy nice, vairy nice!’
Andy murmured, ‘Christ.’
Fisher said even more quietly, ‘I couldn’t have said that in Spanish, though.’
‘No. Nor could I.’ Wouldn’t have wanted to, either. But that was how Fisher was – prone to give everyone his due. Making it easy to see why he and Halloran didn’t hit it off. They were opposites in that and other ways as well. While he himself, he guessed, came somewhere in between – neither ‘proper’, as Fisher was, nor sour-minded like the mate. At least, one hoped…
The anchor splashed in at six-fifteen and was secured with seven shackles out by half-past; Port Health officials had visited and given pratique by seven, which allowed for the gangway to be rigged, starboard side aft, in place of the Jacob’s ladder, and for the motorboat to be lowered and moved back to that quarter. The Port Health men’s tug returning to the dockyard passed the agent’s launch on its way out; a small man in the launch’s sternsheets wearing a striped blazer and Panama hat would, Andy guessed, be Todhunter: and plainly was – the Old Man having seen him from a cabin window came down aft to welcome him.
There were half a dozen other ships in this Antepuerto: three British, two Dutch, one French. No Germans – although Andy heard Todhunter telling the skipper that a Hun was due in next day; he added that the port authorities would surely berth it well away from any of the others.
‘They’ve got that much sense.’
‘Glad to hear it. Though mind you, the lads running into ’em ashore –’
‘We’ve an answer of sorts to that, too. In any case, neutral port –’
‘Until we’ve sunk ’em all – or the bloody Graf Spee’s sunk all of us… Any news of that damn thing?’
‘Nothing certain. Rumours, of course. Believe me, we all keep our ears pinned back. My word, Josh, you’re looking extremely fit!’
‘Virtuous life, Mick, that’s the secret. Never too late, why not try it? That our mail you’ve got there?’
It was: the Old Man took it from him and passed it to Cadet Janner – one of those nearby keeping their ears pinned back – to sort and distribute. The Old Man’s own private mail, as well as official bumf from the owners, Admiralty and Ministry of Shipping, was in an attaché case that the agent was hanging on to as they went in through the weather door and up to the day cabin. There was always a lot of paperwork to be got through. Details of cargo, for instance, on bills of lading and the manifest – simple enough with a single bulk cargo, for sure, but by no means invariably so. Todhunter or his clerks would have to ‘enter’ ship and cargo at the Customs House – first thing in the morning, one might suppose. He’d also see to the ordering of fresh provisions and any other requirements – mechanical, electrical, medical, legal or financial; he’d have cash with him in that bag, local currency for advances against men’s wages, and so forth.
Andy had a letter from a girl by the name of Liza Sharp, who lived in Helensburgh and when he’d last seen her had been attending a secretarial college in Glasgow. He hadn’t read it yet, hadn’t even opened it. It surprised him that she’d have written – correspondence was something they hadn’t indulged in before, and he wouldn’t have recognised her handwriting – but there it was under ‘Sender’: Miss E Sharp, Helensburgh. There’d been some exciting moments with her last summer, and touch wood might be more; an intriguing thing was that she looked – or could look, when she wanted to – as if butter wouldn’t melt, whereas in fact she was pleasantly on the wild side. Another factor – not all that advantageous – was that his parents and hers knew each other and lived within a stone’s throw of each other; her father was a lawyer of some kind, with a practice in Glasgow.
Anyway, he’d read this later, when things had settled down. Another letter he’d noticed with interest was addressed to Halloran in a back-sloping hand which he’d recognised as the lovely Leila’s – whose last communication (or the last he knew of) he’d been invited to read – oddly enough – that evening in Calcutta. It had been one of three or four remaining unclaimed on the table in the saloon, where Janner had sorted them then taken the crew’s to their mess room below the poop. Anyway, the mate finally dashed in, spotted it instantly – not difficult, that same violet-coloured stationery – and snatched it up only seconds before Mervyn Clowes, third wireless officer, arrived with a message that the captain wanted him – Halloran – to join him and the agent up top.
‘Does, does he…?’
He was up there about twenty minutes; would probably have had a tot with them, while discussing aspects of ship’s business. It was close on eight o’clock when he came down and sent Gorst to the bosun with a message for all hands to muster on the fore-deck, where the master would address them.
Fisher asked him quietly, ‘Know where we go from here, do we?’
A nod. ‘Vitoria, for iron ore. From here to there in ballast.’
Andy looked at Fisher: ‘Vitoria – that’s –’
‘North of Rio. Say four days’ steaming.’
‘Graf Spee permitting.’ McAlan, second engineer, stubbing out a cigarette. ‘Where do we take the ore? Home?’
‘Old Man’ll tell you – if he wants to. Let’s get up there.’
The hands were milling around on deck, quite a few of them dressed as if they thought they might be going ashore. Which might be possible, if the skipper authorised it and boat transport in both directions was made available, and as long as the agent had brought cash with him. In the last day or two the skipper would have been working out, as he always did before making port, how much was owing to each individual – accrued wages less advances and deductions, including any fines for indiscipline or breaches of the terms of engagement.
You could hear car horns and music floating on the warm evening air, see lights all along the shore and around the bay. On the town side, this eastern part above and behind the port, neon lights blazed multi-coloured over cinemas, dance-halls, restaurants.
The Old Man, with a megaphone in his hand and the stout little Todhunter at his side, was on the railed walkway fronting his own quarters, two decks up. Halloran called to the bosun, ‘All hands, is it?’ and getting an affirmative, turned to look up towards the bridge. The last of the officers were still filtering out around him, and a wireless or gramophone from the nearest other ship – 300 yards away, but the sound came loud and clear across the water – belting out ‘Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby?’. Halloran shouted up through cupped hands, ‘All hands present, sir!’
‘So listen here.’ Old Man’s voice raised, trumpeted through the megaphone over the ship’s own familiar creaking, straining noises and the distant motor-horns, music and voices. The gramophone had gone silent for a moment, started up again now with ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’. ‘Won’t take long, this.’ He certainly did need the megaphone. ‘First thing you’ll want to know is when we’ve discharged our coal – commencing 0830 and taking maybe a week – we’ll be sailing light ship up-coast to a Brazilian port to load ore for Britain. That’s as much as you need know about it for now – and it’s for your private information, no one else’s. This place like most others has its share of Nazi spies, and we don’t want ’em tipped off when or where we’re going next – huh? Remember – answer no questions, and don’t be overheard talking about ports, routes, cargoes – it’s your lives at stake, uh? And mine… Well – this connects to point two, and should reduce that risk, and save you money. British residents here in Monte – businessmen, among them Mr Todhunter here, our Line’s agent – have set up a place of recreation for use by British crews. Calling it the Liberty Inn. Cut-price drinks and snacks, billiards, darts and table tennis, staffed by British residents who’ll give advice and local information. Regular bars and restaurants aren’t cheap, d’you see; what’s more, although Uruguayans are mainly on our side, there’s some as aren’t, and in the wrong place at the wrong time a man could find himself up against it. There’s local Nazis for one thing – and a Hun steamer of some kind due in tomorrow for another. We don’t want trouble if we can avoid it, and as for the local police – well, they’re neutrals, can’t take sides: get into a fight you could end up in quod as easy as a German could.’
He’d broken off, listening to Todhunter. Nodding then and raising the megaphone again: ‘Should’ve said. Liberty Inn run their own launch, collect and return between shore and ship, costs you nothing. That’s the launch there, lying off…’
Liza’s letter was warm but also pointless. She told him she’d recently met his sister Annabel at some dance in Glasgow and this had put it in her mind to write to him. She – Liza – was still at the secretarial college and intended to join the Wrens when she finished in a few months’ time, but with any luck she’d still be around when he got back. Annabel had said she was sure he’d be home long before that. She – Annabel – had been at the dance with a rather nice-looking RNVR sub-lieutenant – they’d been mostly naval people at the dance, to which Liza had been taken by her cousin Charles – and Annabel’s sub-lieutenant had told her he was ‘standing by’ a submarine then building in one of the Clyde yards. She’d had the impression that Annabel and this submariner were quite heavily involved…
Anyway that’s only gossip. Excuse to write and let you know I’m still around and looking forward to your return – hoping it may be soon, and that I have such lovely memories of last summer, Andy. Please do make it soon.
He pushed the letter into his pocket. Thinking, nice of her to have bothered… She had something in mind for him, obviously. Otherwise why bother? Give her a run for her money in any case. Why not? Man should not live by bread alone… Thinking of which, there was also – in and around Glasgow – another chum of Annabel’s, Sheila Gilchrist – oh, and one he’d met when he’d been out with – well, girl called Susan, Susan Shea – a girl by name of Paula – Paula West – who was really hot stuff… Thinking of her more than of the others as he headed for the bridge; he was duty officer on board tonight, one of whose duties was to check anchor-bearings every hour. With the wind as light as it was and in its present direction there was very little chance of the anchor dragging, but you still had to make sure it didn’t. The German SS Eisleben dropped her hook on the afternoon of the 5th at the western end of the Antepuerto, with the German merchant ensign – red with a black swastika in a white circle in its centre – drooping damply over her stern. She was riding high, obviously in ballast. It felt unreal, unnatural to be sharing an anchorage with the bastard, and having to tolerate the sight of that foul emblem day after day. ‘Bloody insult,’ was Batt Collins’ view of it. There’d been rainstorms during the day – a day stinking of coal dust and loud with the clatter of winches and steel grabs thudding into the holds then swinging up and over to drop half-ton loads thundering into the lighters. In the heavier downpours Batt would blow his whistle for the stevedores to knock off and ship’s crew to cover hatches, some of them having done so choosing to stand there in the rain, have themselves as well as the decks washed down. In the evening, strains of Nazi anthems – brass-band martial music, anyway – carried thumping across the anchorage from the German, and other ships turned up the volume on their own to drown it out.
Andy went ashore in the Liberty Inn launch at about seven with a crowd of others, including the two cadets and Halloran. They were all in civilian clothes, as was de rigueur in a neutral port; identifying themselves only by wearing on their jackets the new Merchant Navy lapel badge – silvered letters MN under a crown – which had been issued to them during the ship’s stay in Durban. At the Inn, which had formerly been some kind of warehouse, the four of them had beers and Janner’s customary soft drink together, Halloran paying for the first round and Andy for the second; Halloran holding forth on the fact he’d never had the kind of start they were getting, had never been a cadet, only a poor bloody apprentice, thirteen years old and five foot fuck-all, given all the filthiest jobs and no damned instruction, no help of any kind, whatever you’d wanted to know you’d had to find out for yourself. Interrupting this by jerking a thumb towards a grey-haired English-woman at a desk with a notice on it reading ENQUIRIES AND LOCAL INFORMATION, and challenging the cadets with a muttered, ‘Half a crown to the man who asks her where’s the red-light district.’ Neither of them was keen to take him up on it. He jeered, ‘I’d tell her. In the old town – Ciudad Vieja they call it – vicinity of Piedras y Juan Carlos Gomez. If you can get your tongue round that.’ Soon after this he announced that he was off; had wanted to give this place the once over, was all, and as church halls went, he supposed it wasn’t bad. To Andy then: ‘Don’t care to tag along?’
‘No. Thanks all the same.’
‘Once a year’s your lot, eh?’
Andy gave him time to get clear, then told the cadets he’d see them later and went for a look round on his own. Spent no money, enjoyed the bright lights and carnival atmosphere, politely declined a couple of invitations and got an idea of the layout of the town – this end of it at any rate. Then back to where the beer was cheap and not too bad – it was American, came in screw-top cans not unlike Brasso tins – and food came in such forms as baked beans with sausages, fish and chips, sardines on toast, apple pie and ice-cream. This time he joined Batt Collins, who had the carpenter – Postlethwaite – with him, and trotted out the old chestnut about beer being sent for analysis and the report coming back: ‘this horse is not fit for work’.
Wireless reception was erratic, in the Antepuerto anyway, and no listening watches were being kept. It was Todhunter who brought the news, on 7 December, of yet another sinking by the Graf Spee. Andy saw the agent’s launch coming out to them, and the diminutive, now familiar figure in its pork-pie hat in the sternsheets; he sent a man up to warn the Old Man that he had a visitor, and was at the gangway himself to meet him and take him up.
‘Well, Mick?’ The Old Man, buttoning his shirt, emerging from his cabin doorway. He’d dined ashore with the Todhunters last night, and had obviously been enjoying a ‘one-to-three’.
Todhunter said, ‘Came to tell you the Graf Spee’s been at it again. Here, see this.’
Transcription of a distress call. ‘RRR – SS Streonshalh – under guns of Graf Spee in 25 degrees 1 minute south, 27 50 west. Abandoning –’
‘Cut off at that point. Want to see it on your chart?’
‘Yes. Yes…’
Up to the bridge and to the table, where Andy spread out the appropriate Admiralty chart – number 4007 – and marked that position on it. The Old Man muttering, sliding steel-framed glasses on, ‘Martin Vas islands, vicinity of. Still making for this coast, not a doubt of it.’
‘And’ – Andy, pointing at the mainland – ‘due east of Vitoria, our next port of call?’ He checked it with dividers against the latitude scale. ‘Six hundred miles east.’
‘December seventh today. If we finish here on the twelfth – then four days’ steaming – sixteenth. But (a) the bugger won’t hang around twenty-five south for ever, and (b) we might have the Royal Navy with us by then – please God.’ A glance at Todhunter. ‘Know anything about this Streonshalh, Mick?’
‘She was up-river here at Rosario ten days ago. Took on five thousand tons of Argentinian wheat for London. She’s – was – three-eight-nine-five gross, owners Marwood of Whitby, and they’d routed her to Freetown to join a homebound convoy.’
‘Did your homework, then.’ Old Man patting his pockets, then giving up – pipe left in cabin. Gesturing towards the chart: ‘Freetown, though. I wouldn’t’ve routed her that way, knowing what was out there in the middle.’
‘Well,’ Todhunter protested, ‘no one could have known, Josh –’
‘After the Doric Star and the Taroa?’
‘Doric Star sinking was December second, Taroa on the third. As I said, she started out ten days ago, so –’
‘All right. Point taken. Thick-headed this afternoon. Something I had to eat last night, maybe. Any road, we know now, don’t we. Hope and pray the Royal Navy does, too. Thanks for coming out, Mick.’