complements, each with a competent crew. member in command. It was as
much as he could do for them, and he turned his attention to the
logistics of the transfer.
The lifeboats would go first, six of them, slung three on each side of
the ship, each crewed by a navigation officer and five seamen. While the
great drogue of the sea-anchor held the ship's head into the wind and
the sea, they would be swung outboard on their hydraulic derricks and
the winches would lower them swiftly to the surface of a sea temporarily
smoothed by the oil sprayed from the pumps in the bows.
Although they were decked-in, powered, and equipped with radio, the
lifeboats were not the ideal vehicles for survival in these conditions.
Within hours, the men aboard them would be exhausted by the cold. For
this reason, none of the passengers would be aboard them. Instead, they
would go into the big inflatable life-rafts, self-righting even in the
worst seas and enclosed with a double skin of insulation. Equipped with
emergency rations and battery powered locator beacons, they would ride
the big black seas more easily and each provide shelter for twenty human
beings, whose body warmth would keep the interior habitable, at least
for the time it took to tow the rafts to land.
The motor lifeboats were merely the shepherds for the rafts. They would
herd them together and then tow them in tandem to the sheltering arms of
Shackleton Bay.
Even in these blustering conditions, the tow should not take more than
twelve hours. Each boat would tow five rafts, and though the crews of
the motor boats would have to change, brought into the canopy of the
rafts and rested, there should be no insurmountable difficulties;
Captain Reilly was hoping for a tow-speed of between three and four
knots.
The lifeboats were packed with equipment and fuel and food sufficient to
keep the shipwrecked party for a month, perhaps two on reduced rations,
and once the calmer shores of the bay had been reached, the rafts would
be carried ashore, the canopies reinforced with slabs of packed snow and
transformed into igloo-type huts to shelter the survivors. They might
be in Shackleton Bay a long time, for even when the French tug reached
them, it could not take aboard six hundred persons, some would have to
remain and await another rescue ship.
Captain Reilly took one more look at the land. It was very close now,
and even in the gloom of the onrushing night, the peaks of ice and snow
glittered like the fangs of some terrible and avaricious monster.
All right/he nodded to his First Officer, we will begin./ The Mate
lifted the small two-way radio to his lips.
Fore-dec. Bridge. You may commence laying the oil now. From each side
of the bows, the hoses threw up silver dragon-fly wings of sprayed
diesel oil, pumped directly from the ship's bunkers; its viscous weight
resisted the wind's efforts to tear it away, and it fell in a thick
coating across the surface of the sea, broken by the floodlights into
the colour spectrum of the rainbow.
Immediately, the sea was soothed, the wind-riven surface flattened by
the weight of oil, so the swells passed in smooth and weighty majesty
beneath the ship's hull.
