The two officers on the wing of the bridge could feel the sick,
waterlogged response of the hull. She was heavy with the water in her,
no longer light and quick and alive.
Send the boats away/ said the Captain, and the mate passed the order
over the radio in quiet conversational tones.
The hydraulic arms of the derricks lifted the six boats off their chocks
and swung them out over the ship's side, suspended one moment high above
the surface; then, as the ship fell through the trough, the oil-streaked
crest raced by only 6 feet below their keels. The officer of each
lifeboat must judge the sea, and operate the winch so as to drop neatly
onto the back slope of a passing swell - then instantly detach the
automatic clamps and stand away from the threatening steel cliff of the
ship's side.
In the floodlights, the little boats shone wetly with spray, brilliant
electric yellow in colour, and decorated with garlands of ice like
Christmas toys. In the small armoured-glass windows the officers faces
also glistened whitely with the strain and concentration of these
terrifying moments, as each tried to judge the rushing black seas.
Suddenly the heavy nylon rope that held the cone shaped drogue of the
sea-anchor snapped with a report like a cannon shot, and the rope snaked
and hissed in the air, a vicious whiplash which could have sliced a man
in half.
It was like slipping the head halter from a wild stallion.
Golden Adventurer threw up her bows, joyous to be freed of restraint.
She slewed back across the scend of the sea, and was immediately pinned
helplessly broadside, her starboard side into the wind, and the three
yellow lifeboats still dangling.
A huge wave reared up out of the darkness. As it rushed down on the
ship, one of the lifeboats sheared her cables and fell heavily to the
surface, the tiny propeller churning frantically, trying to bring her
round to meet the wave but the wave caught her and dashed her back
against the steel side of the ship.
She burst like a ripe melon and the guts spilled out of her; from the
bridge they saw the crew swirled helplessly away into the darkness.
The little locator lamps on their lifejackets burned feebly as
fire-flies in the darkness and then blinked out in the storm.
The forward lifeboard was swung like a door-knocker against the ship,
her forward cable jammed so she dangled stern upmost, and as each wave
punched into her, she was smashed against the hull. They could hear the
men in her screaming, a thin pitiful sound on the wind, that went on for
many minutes as the sea slowly beat the boat into a tangle of wreckage.
The third boat was also swung viciously against the hull. The releases
on her clamps opened, and she dropped twenty feet into the boil -and
surge of water, submerging completely and then bobbing free like a
yellow fishing float after the strike. Leaking and settling swiftly,
she limped away into the clamorous night.
Oh, my God! whispered Captain Reilly, and in the harsh lights of the
bridge, his face was suddenly old and haggard. In a single stroke he
had lost half his boats. As yet he did not mourn the men taken by the
