Death of a Supertanker (12 page)

As the morning wore on the sky grew brighter with the rising sun but the fog, changed now from charcoal grey to smoky white, remained dense, moist and clinging. Nothing could be seen of the shore from
Ocean
Mammoth
and only occasionally were her foremast cranes visible from the bridge less than a hundred metres away.

The crew had been ordered to stand down from fire stations when it was evident that the danger of fire had receded. Now men were busy with hoses sluicing away oil slush splattered about the maindeck by PV-valves on tank tops, while others turned out lifeboats and made them ready for lowering.

Foley’s report on the times of high and low water did nothing to reassure Captain Crutchley. High water was at 0527, low water at 1132. The ship could not, he reflected, have struck at a worse time – close to high water on a falling Spring tide. Not only did this bode ill for salvage but as time passed and the tide fell the weight of the ship would bear more heavily on the rocks; already fractured steel structures could be heard straining and breaking, for the stresses to which the hull was subjected were compounded by the formidable swell. Under its impact
Ocean
Mammoth
from time to time shuddered and ground in protest.

Soundings taken round the ship showed that she was firmly aground on a rocky bottom for two-thirds of her length. From the bulkhead between numbers 5 and 6 tanks, aft to the stern transom, she was still afloat but with little water beneath her.

The pumpman’s report on tank soundings confirmed Captain Crutchley’s worst fears. From the forepeak aft to number 6 tank, every lower compartment was flooded. It could only mean that for more than half her length the bottom plating had been torn away or otherwise critically damaged. To the Captain that was not surprising. The momentum of a 320,000 ton supertanker at thirteen knots represented forces of enormous magnitude.

The slop and splash of thousands of tons of seawater moving about in the tanks could be heard on the maindeck and it soon became evident that the ship’s prodigious pumping capacity –
10,000 tons an hour – could make no impression on the flooding since much of the bottom was open to the sea.

In the course of an urgent conference between Captain Crutchley and Mr McLintoch, with Jarrett and Benson present, it had been decided that notwithstanding this setback the ship should be lightened as far as possible before the next high tide at 1731. Consequent upon this decision the emptying of some intact ballast tanks was begun, anchors were lowered on to the bottom and their chain cables run out to bare ends. Fortunately there was no list, the ship for the greater part of her length resting squarely on the bottom. The fore and aft level was, however, tilted so that seen from aft the maindeck rose gradually towards the bow.

During the morning Captain Crutchley spoke by radiophone to Nicolas Kostadis in London. The marine-superintendent – who had already received a cryptic report from the agents in Cape Town – appeared to be deeply shocked by Crutchley’s account of the stranding and the extent of the damage. He expressed dismay that
Ocean
Mammoth
with her highly sophisticated navigation aids should have run aground.

‘What on earth was the ship doing so close inshore in fog?’ he asked, his voice rising in plaintive disapproval.

‘That is a question I cannot at this stage answer,’ replied Captain Crutchley, adding with some asperity, ‘Nor would it help the ship if I could.’

‘Nevertheless it’s a shocking occurrence,’ insisted Kostadis, whose ill-concealed anger had sounded clearly over the six thousand miles between them.

They went on to discuss the steps to be taken to deal with the situation. Captain Crutchley would, it was agreed, at once get through to the company’s agents in Cape Town to ask for the despatch to the site of a marine surveyor and a salvage expert, and to request that salvage tugs be put on short notice. ‘I’ll confirm this to them by phone as soon as I can get through,’ said Kostadis. ‘But in the meantime you must get on with it. They should be able to reach you by the afternoon. They are to phone me direct from the ship as soon as they’re ready to report. We can then decide what has to be done. How is the weather out there?’

‘Dense fog. Calm sea. Heavy swell. Glass steady.’

‘Well, that’s something to be thankful for‚’ said Kostadis.
‘Cape Agulhas is no place to be in a storm.’

Captain Crutchley, who felt that he did not need to be told this by an engineer, made no comment and the conversation ended soon afterwards.

The reaction of those on board to disaster had been fairly predictable. The officers and engineers had remained calm, doing all that was required of them quietly and efficiently
whatever
their private feelings. The Cape Verdians, used to battling with the elements in the frail fishing craft of their islands, had responded well: rather better than the Goanese stewards whose nervous at times noisy excitement was noticeable. It was only among the passengers – the officers’ wives – that any real emotion had been displayed. Woken from sleep by the raucous blasts of the steam siren they had jumped up frightened and confused, hurriedly pulling on whatever garments were handy, grabbing lifejackets and making for their lifeboat stations. Only one husband was in his cabin when the alarm sounded and that was the catering officer.

Before the women had time to reach their stations and put on their lifejackets they’d felt the shuddering and jarring of the ship, followed by violent deceleration as she struck. Soon afterwards the fire-bells had jangled and it was then that Jean Simpson burst into tears and Doris Benson, who lived in a permanent state of terror of a tanker explosion, had become hysterical. Sandy Foley had rescued her from that by first slapping her face – something she had long wanted to do – and then, largely by the coolness of her own demeanour, pacifying her fears. That done, she’d turned her attention to Jean Simpson and succeeded in calming her too. Sandy was in fact very frightened, particularly as her husband had been missing from the cabin when the alarm sounded. She couldn’t understand how it was that he’d gone before the alarm. It was most unlike him to have left her in the lurch if there were danger in the offing. But she had no intention of showing her fear and to some extent it had been allayed by Freeman Jarretťs reassuring words a few minutes earlier.

Piet Pieterse the new steward, on his first voyage in any ship, had been in a state of mystified apprehension, but once it had become apparent that
Ocean
Mammoth
was neither about to sink nor explode, his ebullience and natural good humour asserted themselves
and he got on with his duties as if the stranding of a supertanker in fog was an everyday occurrence. He did, however, incur the displeasure of Figureido, the second steward, by whistling in the serving pantry. ‘You must not make whistling,’ said the Goanese. ‘Unlucky for the ship, especially at this time.’ Pieterse had felt that the ship couldn’t have been much unluckier at that time but, anxious as always to please, he stopped whistling and apologized.

While the fire alarm was still sounding, Jarrett, on his way down the stairway to Deck One, had met Sandy coming up. She’d clutched his arm and with troubled eyes pleaded, ‘What’s happened, Freeman?’

He had stopped for a moment, smiled sympathetically and given her arm a reassuring squeeze. ‘We’ve run aground, Sandy. No danger. Nothing to worry about. Just go along to your station quietly and try to calm the others.’

Then, strong, handsome and purposeful, he’d raced on down the stairway.

The Cape Town agents phoned the ship at eleven o’clock to inform Captain Crutchley that the marine surveyor and a salvage expert would leave for Cape Agulhas by helicopter that afternoon. Their ETA at the ship was 1430, provided the fog had by then lifted; if it had not the helicopter would land its passengers at Bredasdorp and they would do the remaining sixty-five kilometres by road. The light-keeper at Cape Agulhas would in that event arrange for a boat to take them off to the ship from St Mungo Bay, the small indentation off which the ship was stranded. Salvage tugs had been alerted, as had the National Sea Rescue station at Gordons Bay, 150 kilometres away. Newspapers and the SABC had already tried to get through to the ship, but the radio officer had informed the GPO Cape Town that
Ocean
Mammoth
could not accept such calls at the present time.

The Captain had been on the bridge continuously since the ship struck but now, having done all that was possible, he went down to his stateroom, leaving the third officer in charge of the bridge. With the fog persisting there was nothing for Alan Simpson to do but monitor the alarm systems and keep a general lookout. This, he decided wryly, meant looking hopefully into the blanket of fog which encompassed the ship. With the coming of
low water and the exposure of greater areas of rock, the sound of the breakers had grown in volume. Other sounds which could be heard were those made by auxiliary machinery, by crewmen working on deck, and occasionally the distant blare of foghorns.

Once down below Captain Crutchley went to the bathroom and bathed his eyes, changed into uniform and went through to his dayroom where he sat down to toast and coffee brought him by Figureido. The simple meal finished, he decided he could no longer delay tackling a problem which had been on his mind ever since the ship struck.

He switched on the R/T, made contact with the chief officer in the cargo control-room, and told him to report to his office at once. Jarrett arrived soon afterwards.

‘You sent for me, sir?’

‘Yes. Shut that door and take a seat, Mr Jarrett.’

The younger man shut the door and sat down facing the Captain, his hard hat on his lap, his R/T on the deck beside him. For some time Captain Crutchley stared at him in silence, his eyes anonymous behind the dark glasses. At last he spoke. ‘Mr Jarrett. The marine surveyor and the salvage expert are due on board at two-thirty if this fog has lifted. Otherwise they’ll come from Bredasdorp by road. Either way they should be here within two or three hours.’

‘Yes, sir. I’m afraid the ship is in a bad way. This low water has done her no good.’

‘I am aware of that, Mr Jarrett.’ The Captain paused, the concealed stare never wavering. ‘I want you within the next hour to hand me a written account of how the ship came to run aground during your watch this morning.’

‘Certainly, sir. I’ll get on with that right away.’

‘There is one question to which I must have your answer now, Mr Jarrett.’

The chief officer looked puzzled. ‘And that is, sir?’

‘Did you read my night order book before taking over the watch from Mr Foley at four o’clock this morning?’

‘Yes, I did. And I signed it.’

‘My orders required you to call me in the event of fog, and in any case before the alteration of course off Agulhas, did they not?’

‘Yes, sir. That is correct.’

‘Why then did you not call me?’

The chief officer’s face was a picture of surprise. ‘I did call you, sir. I reported the fog by phone. Told you of ships in the vicinity. That I’d placed an extra lookout. I explained why we couldn’t use the pneumatic siren. The defective auto-switch. You agreed we shouldn’t use the steam whistle aft because of the disturbance it creates. You told me you had a bad headache. That you’d taken some pain-killers – so that you could sleep – and wouldn’t be coming up. You asked me to keep a sharp eye on things. To let you know if I wanted you to come up at any time.’ The sentences came tumbling out in puzzled protest.

Captain Crutchley rose to his feet, a large formidable figure. ‘You did no such thing, Mr Jarrett. At no time did you report to me.’ His voice was firm, emotionless. ‘That is entirely a figment of your imagination.’

By now the chief officer, too, had risen. His expression as he regarded the Captain was a mixture of sympathy and surprise. ‘I expect the sleeping pills were more effective than you realize, sir.’ He hesitated. ‘I have a witness to our telephone conversation.’

‘A witness,’ said Captain Crutchley grimly. ‘You must be out of your mind.’

‘No, sir. Fernandez was on the wheel. He must have heard the conversation.’

‘I don’t believe for a moment that such a conversation took place, Mr Jarrett. You have been negligent and you are trying to cover yourself.’

Jarrett’s eyes narrowed and his voice took on a hardness which had not been there before. ‘I must decline to discuss this any further, sir. The court of enquiry will no doubt satisfy itself as to the truth.’

‘How dare you threaten me like that.’ Crutchley’s voice rose in unfamiliar anger.

Shaking his head as if mystified, the chief officer left the Captain’s office. For some time after he had gone Crutchley sat at the desk, head in hands. As he brooded over what Jarrett had said a small but insidious doubt took shape in his mind.

Could the sleeping capsules have so dulled his mind that the phone conversation was beyond recall?

The chief officer was back five minutes later to report to the Captain that chart No. 2083 – covering the approach to Cape Agulhas – was missing and that the day’s pages of the deck and Decca logbooks had been torn out. That was not all, he said; the course-recorder trace had been torn off and there was no record of the courses steered since 0200. He had last consulted the instrument at 0525, soon after altering course for a trawler. The trace was writing normally then.

‘All this has been done since I was on the bridge at 0540, sir‚’ he added in a resentful, suspicious way.

Captain Crutchley, still simmering from their recent clash, looked at him for some time before answering brusquely, ‘Who do you suggest did this?’

The chief officer shook his head. ‘I don’t know, sir,’ he said hesitantly, lowering his voice, and watching the Captain carefully. ‘It would be in the second officer’s interests that those records should not be available, wouldn’t it? He handed over an incorrect course at four o’clock. Just before we went aground he was in the chartroom.’ Jarrett’s voice was all the more deliberate now. ‘
In
his
watch
below.
He was also there a few minutes ago, and as far as I know he’s still there.’

The Captain’s anonymous stare continued to be focused on the chief officer. After what seemed a long time he said, ‘Would it not be more in
your
interests, Mr Jarrett? You were officer-of-the-watch when the ship ran aground.’

‘I take strong exception to that, sir.’

‘Take what you damn well please, Mr Jarrett. Now go back to your quarters and get on with that report.’ The Captain turned away, and the set of his mouth and jaw made it clear that the interview was over.

The chief officer seemed undecided for a moment. He picked up his hard hat and R/T, moved slowly to the door, looked at Crutchley once more with disbelief, and left the office.

No sooner had he gone than the Captain dialled the second officer’s cabin. Sandy answered. Her husband, she said, was on
the bridge. In the chartroom she thought.

Next Crutchley dialled the wheelhouse. The third officer answered.

‘Captain speaking. Is Mr Foley there?’

‘He’s in the chartroom, sir.’

‘Tell him to report to me right away, Mr Simpson.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

The Captain replaced the phone. It was not long before the second officer arrived, his face drawn, his eyes red-rimmed over dark pouches. He had not slept for twenty-four hours.

The Captain pointed to a chair. ‘Now, Mr Foley. I want you to let me have, within the hour, a written account of the events leading up to the stranding of this ship. Only in so far as you know them personally. I want no hearsay. In particular I want to know the ship’s position as plotted and logged by you at the end of your watch, the course and speed you then handed over to Mr Jarrett, and an explanation of how you came to be in the chart-room during his watch shortly before the ship ran aground.’

The second officer turned away from the Captain’s disconcerting stare and concentrated on a picture which hung on the foremost bulkhead. It was a full-rigged ship under sail, the original
Ocean
Mammoth.

‘I will do that, sir. But it’s going to be very difficult.’

‘Explain yourself, Mr Foley.’

‘I’ve just come from the chartroom, sir. The chart we used for the approach to Cape Agulhas has disappeared. So have today’s pages of the deck and Decca logbooks. They’ve been torn out. The course-recorder trace from two o’clock onwards is missing. Torn from the frame.’

Captain Crutchley’s mouth tightened. ‘When did you discover this, Mr Foley?’

‘About ten minutes ago, sir. It was the first opportunity I’d had of going to the chartroom. Because of something the chief officer said, I wanted to check the courses steered since I’d handed over to him at four o’clock.’

‘What did the chief officer say?’

‘When he came into the chartroom just before we ran aground I told him that someone had altered the figures I’d pencilled in against the course line. The two-five-seven I’d written had been changed to two-six-seven. He said I’d given him the course verbally as two-six-seven when handing over. He also said those
were the figures shown on the course-to-steer indicator.’

‘Well, Mr Foley?’

‘That was untrue, sir. I don’t make those sorts of mistakes. I’d drawn a course line of two-five-seven on the chart and written two-five-seven against it and in the deck logbook. Those were the figures I’d set on the course indicator and given him verbally.’

Captain Crutchley sighed audibly as he recalled what he had seen when he examined the chart and deck logbook in the chart-room soon after the stranding. His mouth tightened and he pushed the frame of the dark glasses further up the bridge of his nose. ‘Something very strange has been going on in this ship, Mr Foley.’

‘That’s exactly what I said to the chief officer in the chartroom before we ran aground, sir.’

‘Who do you think removed that chart, tore those pages from the logbook and the trace from the course-recorder?’

The second officer hesitated. ‘I don’t like to say, sir. But no one would have a stronger motive than the officer-of-the-watch at the time of stranding.’

‘You mean the chief officer?’

‘Yes, sir. For obvious reasons.’ A nervous smile flickered across the second officer’s face.

‘I see you smile, Mr Foley. Some might say the
obvious
reasons
could equally well apply to you.’

The second officer shook his head vigorously. ‘No, sir. That is not correct.’

As soon as Foley had gone, Captain Crutchley went up to the chartroom. He took possession of the deck and Decca logbooks, and the paper trace from the course-recorder for the period since leaving Durban up to 0200 that morning.

For those on board
Ocean
Mammoth
the most worrying time had been that between the stranding early in the morning and the order to stand down from fire stations which had come two hours later. By then it was evident that there was no immediate danger and though the fog persisted both crew and passengers began to adapt themselves to the new conditions. They had been reassured by the Captain’s broadcast and by Jarrett and Benson who were at pains to tell those they met as they went about their duties that there was no cause for alarm. Sandy continued to be a pillar of
strength among the wives to whom her calm and cheerfulness proved a steadying influence. She had now emerged as their undisputed leader.

Diaz, the bosun, a big-boned man with many years in tankers, feared and respected by his men, had had no difficulty in maintaining the morale of the islanders, and in this he’d been ably assisted by the pumpman and the storekeeper. Oddly enough it was Piet Pieterse, the newcomer and a stranger to ships, whose good-natured humour had done most to calm the worried
Goa-nese
stewards.

It was known that the ship was in touch with the authorities ashore, that when the fog lifted salvage experts would appear on the scene, and there was general belief that though
Ocean
Mammoth
was in serious trouble her great size was in itself a guarantee of personal safety for those on board. Even so there was a natural tendency for people to keep together; few remained in their cabins for company was comforting, and though every effort was made to keep crewmen busy there were not many tasks on which they could be usefully employed once the emergency measures had been seen to. Thus small groups of men gathered in different parts of the ship to discuss the disaster, often laughing and joking with forced gaiety.

After fire stations it had been announced that breakfast would be served as usual and it was not long before places in the saloon began to fill. The wives having dressed hurriedly and otherwise made themselves presentable, lost no time in getting there. But once the meal was over they moved into the bar-lounge and as the morning progressed it became the focus, the place where there was always someone to talk to. From time to time officers and engineers, free for the moment from their duties or passing that way, would join the women or form their own small groups in the lounge. The stranding was the sole topic of conversation: their thoughts when the ship struck; what the fog would reveal when it lifted; how had the ship gone on the rocks; who was to blame; what would happen next, and how and when would they be taken off the ship; would they be flown back to the United Kingdom or given passage in one of the company’s ships – and if so how long would they have to wait in Cape Town?

And of course there was humour. The catering officer’s wife told of how she had gone to her emergency station in a Japanese
kimono, barefooted, lifejacket in one hand and bra in the other; and having put on the lifejacket first had been confronted with the problem of the bra.

In a corner of the bar-lounge Gareth Lloyd and Abu Seku discussed some of the more esoteric aspects of the stranding over mugs of hot coffee.

‘Indeed, and it would be bloody Africa that gets in the way,’ complained the Welshman.

‘A great continent‚’ pronounced the Ghanaian. ‘Puts out a rocky finger and stops three hundred and twenty thousand tons of Western technological bullshit from fourteen knots in seven seconds. Wham! Bang! Wham! Like Ali, you know. Thaťs Africa, man.’

The suggestion of the catering officer’s wife that they watch a Morecambe and Wise show on closed-circuit television was turned down.

‘We can always see them,’ pleaded Sandy. ‘We’ve got a real shipwreck on our hands now. That’s much more exciting.’

‘Couldn’t agree more,’ said Jean Simpson.

‘Sorry, dear. I was only trying to be helpful,’ said the catering officer’s wife.

Sandy put her arms round her shoulders. ‘Of course you were. Perhaps later when we get bored with being shipwrecked.’

The atmosphere of comparative calm and acceptance in
Ocean
Mammoth
was rudely shaken when the meteorological broadcast to shipping was received at midday. It forecast dispersal of the fog but warned of the imminence of a south-westerly gale in the area which included Cape Agulhas. It required all the calm assurance of the Captain’s broadcast, reinforced by Sandy’s morale-boosting among the wives, to restore some confidence. But that confidence was, they all suspected, no more than a front. 

Everyone capable of intelligent thought was fearful of what was to come.