Cold is the Sea (13 page)

But the huge vertical side of the tanker was also coming
sideways. If it continued it would inevitably strike. No danger of being pierced by her stem now, but the whole side of the submarine, her light tank structure, would be bellied in, ribs crushed and bent, its clean symmetry ruined,
Eel
's ability to float upright destroyed. She would be brought to the dock at Hunter's Point listing to starboard, her side smashed, instead of clean and straight as she should be. Hunter's Point could fix the damage, could build a new side if necessary, or replace the wrecked portion. But this was not the way the U.S. Navy had wanted to deliver the replacement for the
Orca
. Maybe Rich could reach the tanker skipper, or pilot, that seemingly impassive figure almost directly above. He, or whoever that was in some kind of uniform coat, looking as if mesmerized by the approaching collision, had not uttered a word, given an order, that Rich could see.

No megaphone. There should have been a megaphone. No doubt the tug carried one. Rich cupped his hands around his mouth, bellowed with all his strength. “Shift your rudder! Put your rudder right full!” Several times he repeated the words, pitching his voice at what he considered to be its best carrying level, straining neck, jaws and lungs to force the maximum response from his vocal cords. Once the pitch rose almost to a scream. No matter. Most people, except perhaps Keith and Buck, would call it a scream anyway.

There was some wind. The tanker's engines must be making noise. The tug's diesels were rumbling loudly behind him. The splashing of the water between
Eel
and the tanker was louder still as it was driven forward by the big backing propeller, was forced in white turbulence between the ships. The tanker was deep in the water, still moving forward with speed hardly slackened. The edge of her rudder post was barely visible under the counter stern. Her rudder was fully submerged, could not be seen. Had the tanker helmsman gotten the word? Had Richardson been able to reach through the noise and confusion? Again he shouted through cupped hands, his voice cracking with the effort.

A wave of the arm from the man on the tanker's bridge. He turned, shouted something toward his enclosed pilothouse. Richardson had to hope it was an order to his helmsman. Was
the rudder post turning? It was wet, gleaming. Rust-colored. No seaweed or bottom growth; a tanker's waterlines are much too variable for anything to attach itself this high. Because of the slick shine of the round vertical forging, it was not possible to tell if it was turning. Even if the rudder was now at last reversed, put hard over right toward
Eel
, there was little effect it could have in the time remaining. Stopping the slide to starboard of that tremendous bulk, with its 50,000 tons of momentum, would take several hundred yards of forward motion. She was still crabbing sideways, would hit
Eel
's thin ballast tanks soon.

Ten feet—five feet—separated the low-lying submarine from the overbearing steel cliff that was the side of the tanker. A huge, obscene, rust-streaked monster, nothing but an oil tank formed into a blunt bow at one end with an engine tacked on at the other, she towered shapelessly over the submarine and extended probably at least twice as far below the surface as above. From a fisheye view, Richardson thought,
Eel
must resemble a lifeboat just launched alongside. The thin canal of water between the two ships was insane with turmoil. Frenzied currents boiled to the surface, whipped themselves into frothing waves, surged into the narrow crevasse.

Because of her light condition, floating high,
Eel
's rounded sides were essentially vertical where they entered the water, but beneath the waterline, as above, they curved away from the tanker. The point of contact would come right at the waterline, right where the screw wake thrown up by the other ship's beating propeller would exert its greatest effect, obviously was doing so, for the water level between them was now raised, “bunched,” if such a word could be used to describe a fluid condition lasting only a few moments.

The tanker's bridge and her unconcerned skipper were now well past. Her speed had not perceptibly slackened, despite the thrashings of her propeller. Perhaps her crabbing motion had somewhat reduced, if indeed the rudder had been shifted, or maybe it was only that the tug was at last beginning to drag
Eel
sideways and away from the approaching bulk. That big single propeller, now. Good thing this tanker had only a single screw. Twin screws were more dangerous, because they usually projected beyond the side, but the single propeller was bigger and would
not be far below the surface, even with a deeply laden ship. And the tanker's stern was still swinging toward, although more slowly.

The water channel between the two ships had widened toward
Eel
's stern, but was correspondingly narrower in the vicinity of her bridge,
Eel
's widest point, where Richardson, Leone and Williams were standing, helplessly watching the oncoming catastrophe. No longer, however, did it appear the ships would strike broadside to broadside. Now, the rounded portion of the tanker's stern, where her ungainly middle section began its compound curve to meet the rudder and propeller cavity, would be the point of contact.

“Better step back, Captain,” said Keith suddenly. “There's a lot of overhang coming our way.” Rich felt two pairs of hands gripping his shoulders, physically pulling him to the port side of the bridge just before the overhanging stern quarters of the tanker swept through the place where his head had been. There was a scraping, grinding, metallic crunch, oddly similar to the noise of a cardboard box being crushed, and then a higher-pitched sound of sheet steel being dragged over a rough surface.
Eel
heeled far over to port, heaved sideways, stayed there. Towering overhead, her stern quarter projecting into the airspace above the submarine's bridge, crushing in its side plating, the huge ship scraped and ground past. In a moment she was clear, leaving a last indelible impression of the big letters emblazoned on her stern:
Forward Venture. Monrovia
.

Eel
lurched back to an even keel. The three officers dashed back to the now ruined starboard side of her bridge. There was still a tiny water channel between the two ships, and the submarine's rounded side was well into the concave space under the tanker's quarter. Richardson wondered why he could not hear, or feel,
Forward Venture's
big propeller blades slashing into the ballast tanks, instantly saw why. Water was no longer being churned up. The tanker had stopped her engine.
Forward Venture's
skipper, evidently not quite so heedless as Richard had been willing to believe, must have ordered engines stopped just before contact.

A quick evaluation. No visible dents or even scratches on
Eel
's smooth rounded side. With the tanker propeller stopped as the two vessels ground past each other, it was even possible that
momentary contact with the propeller had merely rotated it slightly to where the blades cleared. At worst, a single blade might be bent near the tip, and there might be a dent in the corresponding part of the
Eel
's underwater surface. The only visible damage was on the submarine's bridge, where the side plating had been smashed in and the TBT cavity crushed out of recognizable shape.

“Good thing he hit us on the bulletproof steel bulwark,” said Buck, grimacing. “That's pretty strong stuff. With the tug pulling, that bump pushed us out of the way. I don't believe we hit at all, down below, so there's really no damage.”

“That's what I think, too. This whole bridge is going to be ripped off in Hunter's Point when the snorkel is put in, you know. So, far as Brazil's concerned, there's no damage at all. Looks like old
Eel
's luck is still good.” The unalloyed relief in Keith's voice matched Buck's. Richardson also felt it. It would of course be necessary to alert the Navy yard people to check for underwater scrapes and dents, but the danger of crippling damage had passed.

Behind them, to port, a great froth of water continued to boil up along both sides of the tug. It had swung around so that the full power of its engine at Emergency Astern was pulling
Eel
away from the tanker. The tug's bow was high, unnaturally so. Its stern squatted under the pull of its big tugboat propeller and the strain of the towing lines.
Eel
was moving sideways in a fairly satisfactory manner—and the tug's diesels would need an overhaul when it got back to Mare Island. Now, the crisis past, Rich could see the tug skipper fumble with his engine annunciator. A moment later the wash from astern subsided. The man made a show of mopping his face, then picked up a megaphone near his feet.

“Any damage over there?” he yelled. “You look okay—any injuries?”

“We're all right!” Richardson yelled back through his cupped hands. “He hit us up high. No damage to the hull!” He paused. Now that the emergency was over, another emotion was sweeping through his body. The adrenaline which had been commanding him was still surging through his system. He could feel the hot, impotent rage. “You get his name?” he yelled.

“No! Too busy!”

“Well, I did! I'll file the report! That incompetent bastard ought to have his license lifted!” Rich could feel his hands trembling against his cheeks. Pilot or skipper, whoever had been conning the loaded tanker, should not get away scot-free. He should have known that his deeply laden ship could not have turned inside the approaching tug and tow, that the rules of the road required him, as the privileged vessel in a crossing situation, to hold his course and speed!

The tugmaster waved his megaphone in acknowledgment. Two men appeared on his forecastle and another pair aft to handle his lines as he began to maneuver back to his original position on
Eel
's port quarter.

“He sure belongs to the Don't Worry Club,” said Buck after a moment. “Me, I'm mad as hell at that tanker. What in the devil was that son of a bitch over there thinking of? Who taught him to handle a ship?”

“He was a fool, that's for sure,” said Keith. “Maybe we looked farther away than we were because we're so small compared to him. That's no excuse, though, even if he didn't have a radar.”

“He had a radar, all right,” Buck said. “I saw it turning on top of his bridge.”

“At least he reversed his rudder in time,” said Rich, the fury still strong in him. Then he added, “Good thing he had the sense to stop his engine, too, when he saw we were going to hit aft.” He could feel the anger leveling out, the hot blood cooling into more professional indignation.

“I'll bet he was thinking more of bent blades than the damage the spinning propeller might do to us,” said Buck, angrily. “Besides that, some of us could have been hurt. You were right alongside the periscope shears. You could have been squashed between them and the overhang of that big tub of his.”

The thought of personal danger seemed suddenly calming. The determination to make an official report of the incident was still fixed—it was his duty in any event, and the Brazilian Navy would no doubt want to know. So would the commander of the shipyard at Hunter's Point, who would have to allocate funds for whatever repairs were thereby necessitated.

Rich realized he was hungry too, as he heard Keith say, “Me, I'm all at once hungry. Do you think we might drop below
and have one last meal in our old wardroom? Things look pretty clear now.”

The prospect of leaving
Eel
's bridge unwatched went against the grain, but a short shouted conversation with the tugmaster from the main deck abreast his pilothouse took care of the matter. His instructions punctuated by massive bites from the spread of sandwiches before him on top of the binnacle, the warrant boatswain sent one of his crew members over to the submarine, where he could relay immediate information below by telephone. Once this was arranged, the operation of the ship's phones explained, Rich climbed down the familiar ladders into the control room, ducked through a watertight doorway and joined the others.

Keith and Buck had arranged lanterns in the corners of the tiny wardroom—strange how small it looked—and they had spread a white tablecloth on the green linoleum of the tabletop. The cloth had seen better days. It was yellow around the edges and along its prominent creases. “Where did you find this?” asked Richardson, surprised.

“We were wondering if it was still here,” said Keith. “Remember our last meal aboard, back in '45? There weren't many of us left, then, just a couple of the chiefs and two other sailors, plus Woodrow and the three of us. So all of us were around this table for that last breakfast. The lights were already out, too, just like now, and we had to use the battle lanterns. Anyway, after it was over we cleaned up, and I folded the tablecloth and stuck it in a drawer under my desk. That's where I found it, right where I left it.”

Keith's words loosed a compartment in Richardson's mind. Some locked door, as yet only imperfectly opened, suddenly flung itself wide. A naval career always involved leaving behind old friends, and old ships, and moving on to new ones. Knowing the day was coming when it would be necessary to turn the key on the ship and crew which had meant so much to him, knowing that things could never be the same anyway, he had nerved himself to go through the ritual. If he had been the only one to consider, he would simply have gone away. But there had been a decommissioning ceremony, a required inspection in company with the reserve force commander who was about to add
Eel
to
the list of ships of which he was nominally commanding officer. There was completion of the machinery history and the deficiency list, and a hundred other items invented by Navy bureaucracy for the better administration of its ships. All were now unnecessary, outmoded, no longer relevant. They were required because some regulation, or some senior officer, somewhere, said so. But few were actually of any earthly significance in the particular circumstance of the postwar decommissioning and mothballing of the
Eel
. The last thing of all was the official terminal entry in the log, which he had made himself.