Vulcan's forge

Jack Du Brul Vulcan's Forge

May 23, 1954

The moon was a millimetric sliver hanging in the night sky like an ironic smile. A gentle easterly breeze smeared the acrid feather of smoke that coiled from the single funnel of the ore carrier Grandam Phoenix. The Pacific swells rolled the ponderous ship as easily as a lazy hammock on a summer afternoon as she cruised two hundred miles north of the Hawaiian Islands. The tranquility of the night was about to be shattered.

The Grandam Phoenix was on her maiden voyage, having slipped down the ways in Kobe, Japan, just two months earlier. Her final fitting and sea trials had been rushed so that she could begin paying off the massive debts incurred by the company during her construction. Built with the latest technological advances in safety and speed, she was an example of the new breed of specialized cargo ship. The Second World War had taught that the efficiency of a specialized vessel far outweighed the cost in its design and construction. The owners maintained that their newest ship would prove that these principles worked as well for civilian craft as they did for the military. The 442-foot-long ore carrier was to become the flagship of the line as the shipping business greedily expanded into the booming Pacific markets.

Soon after taking command of the Grandam Phoenix, Captain Ralph Linc learned that the owners had a very different fate in store for their newest ship from the one proposed to her underwriters.

Not long after the development of maritime insurance, unscrupulous owners and crews intentionally began scuttling their vessels in order to collect often substantial claims. The underwriters had no recourse but to pay out unless someone, usually a crew member feeling twinges of guilt, came forward with the truth. For sinking the ore carrier, the crew of the Grandam Phoenix would receive bonuses large enough to ensure their silence. If the swindle worked, and there seemed no reason it wouldn’t, the owners were looking at a settlement not only for the twenty-million-dollar value of the vessel, but also that of her cargo, listed as bauxite ore from Malaysia, but in reality worthless yellow gravel.

Captain Linc held true to his genre, a tough man with a whiskey- and cigarette-tortured voice and far-gazing eyes. Standing squarely as his ship rolled with the seas, he ground out his Lucky Strike. And lit another.

Linc had served in the U.S. Merchant Marine all through World War II. With losses rivaled only by the Marine Corps, the Merchant Marine seemed to be the service for maniacs or suicides. Yet Linc had managed not only to survive but flourish. By 1943 he had his own command, running troops and material to the hellfires of the Pacific theater. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he never once lost a vessel to the enemy.

At war’s end, he, like many others, found that there were too many men and too few ships. During the late forties and early fifties, Linc became just another Yankee prowling the Far East, taking nearly any command offered to him. He ran questionable cargoes for shadowy companies and learned to keep his mouth shut.

When first approached by the Phoenix’s owners, Linc had thought he was being offered the opportunity of a lifetime. No longer would he have to scrounge for a ship, prostituting his integrity to remain at sea. They were giving him a chance once again to be the proud captain, the master of their flagship. It wasn’t until the contracts had been signed that the company told Linc about the predestined fate of his vessel. It took two days and a sizable bonus for his bitterness to give way to acceptance.

Now stationed on the bridge, a cup of cooling coffee in a weathered hand, Linc stared at the dark sea and cursed. He hated the corporate people who could arbitrarily decide to scuttle such a great ship. They didn’t understand the bond between captain and vessel. For the sake of profit, they were about to destroy a beautiful living thing. The idea sickened Linc to the bone. He hated himself for accepting, for allowing himself to be part of such a loathsome act.

“Position,” Ralph Linc barked.

Before the position could be given, a crewman stooped over the radar repeater and said in a remote voice, “Contact, twelve miles dead ahead.”

Linc glanced at the chronometer on the bulkhead to his left. The contact would be the rendezvous vessel that would pick up the crew after the Phoenix was gone. They were right on time and in position. “Good work, men.”

He had been given very specific and somewhat strange orders concerning the location, course, and time that he was to sink his ship. He assumed the North Pacific had been chosen because of her unpredictable weather patterns. The weather here could turn deadly without a moment’s notice, building waves that could swamp a battleship and whipping up winds that literally tore the surface from the ocean. When the time came for the insurance inquiry, the rendezvous vessel would corroborate any story they manufactured.

“You know the drill, gentlemen,” Linc growled, lighting a cigarette from the glowing tip of his last. “Engines All Stop, helm bring us to ninety-seven-point-five degrees magnetic.”

This precise but inexplicable positioning of the vessel complied exactly with Linc’s final orders from the head office. They had given no reason for this action and Linc knew enough not to pry. The engine speed was reduced, the rhythmic throb diminished until it was almost imperceptible. The ship’s wheel blurred as the young seaman cranked it around.

“Helm?”

“We’re coming up on ninety-seven degrees, sir, as ordered.”

“Range?”

“Eleven miles.”

Linc picked up the radio hand mike and dialed in the shipboard channel. “Now hear this: we’ve reached position; all crew not on duty report to the lifeboats. Engineering, emergency shut-down of the boilers and open the seacocks on my mark. Prepare to abandon ship.”

He looked around the bridge slowly, his eyes burning every detail of her into his brain. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he mumbled.

“Ten miles,” the radar man called.

“Open the seacocks, abandon ship.” Linc replaced the mike and pressed a button on the radio. A klaxon began to wail.

The cry of a dying woman, Linc thought.

Linc waited on the bridge while the crew filed out to the boat deck. He had to spend a little time alone with the ship before he left her. He grasped the rung of the oaken wheel. The wood was so new that he felt slivers pricking at his skin. Never would this wheel achieve the smooth patina of use; instead it would become so much rot on the bottom of the ocean.

“Goddamn it,” Linc said aloud, then strode from the bridge.

Gone were the days of men scampering down cargo netting into boats bobbing on the surface of the sea. Ocean Freight and Cargo had spared no expense in outfitting their flagship with every modern safety device.

One lifeboat was already full of men and up on the davits. The winchman waited for a curt nod from Linc before lowering the boat to the sea below.

The warm night breeze blew smoke from Linc’s cigarette into his eyes as he climbed into the second lifeboat. The other men in the boat with him were subdued, ashen. They didn’t talk or look each other in the eye as Linc nodded to the winchman.

The winchman threw a toggle switch and the pulleys that lowered the lifeboat began to whine. The boat hit the calm surface with a white-frothed splash. Instantly two men stood up to detach the cables that secured them to the sinking ore carrier.