THE THIRD ATTEMPT: TRAGEDY STRIKES
There must have been considerable radio discussion between the
tug Master and our Captain. This time, we would do as the tug
Master had wanted in the first place, and use the
“sea length” of the anchor cable
to connect his wire to the ship. This would avoid the chafing of the
towing cable at the point where it left the ship.
For those who may not know just what the “sea length” is I will
explain. A ship’s anchor cable is divided into lengths. Each length is
about
fifteen fathoms
(ninety feet) long, and each length is joined to
the next length by a large heavy
shackle. When a ship goes to
anchor, the
Pilot with his local knowledge can judge the length of
cable required in the depth of water the ship will anchor in. He will
advise the Captain some thing like “We will need to drop the
starboard anchor, and use (say) three shackles. Thus when the third
shackle is seen going over the
windlass, the Mate (or the Ship’s
Carpenter more likely, since it is usually his job to operate the
windlass,) knows when to put the brakes on the windlass, and hold
the cable. This (three shackles) would allow plenty of cable to lay
along the bottom, and hold the ship where she lays. The “sea
length” is a much shorter length than fifteen fathoms, and is
designed for just such an emergency as we were in at the moment.
I’m not sure of just how long the “sea length” is, but it is probably
in the region of about six or eight fathoms – somewhere in the
region of about forty feet.
To separate the "sea length", we first had to lash up the anchor with
a very secure wire lashing to the nearest pair of bits. This involved
many turns of wire through the large anchor shackle, and around
the bits. Once the anchor was secure, we could then lower the
anchor under power by means of the windlass until the wire held it.
Once we were sure that the anchor was securely held by the wire
lashings, we could then start bringing up the anchor chain slowly,
and under steam, until the "sea length" shackle became visible. As
the windlass brought up the cable, we had to grab it with the long
chain hooks normally used by us when “stowing” the cable in the
chain locker, and lay it along the deck. Thankfully, anchor chain is
by its very nature quite heavy, and for the moment, we could just
lay it out on the deck, and choose a spot for us to work on the "sea
length" shackle.
The "sea length" shackle is a special shackle. We thought that the shackle pin was held in place by a dowel of
Lignum Vitae
wood that is very hard, but would be relatively easy to drill out
when needed. The
Carpenter applied his trusty hand drill to the spot where we knew the dowel
was, but he wasn’t getting very far. In the process, he discovered
that the dowel was indeed, made of brass, and not Lignum Vitae.
The Engine Room was asked for advice. They sent up an engineer
with better drilling equipment, and better drill bits. The
Engineer advised that the best way to get the dowel out was to drill in as far
as he could from either side, we could then knock out the large
shackle pin and separate the cable. Whilst he was doing that, we set
about securing the cable that was immediately attached to the
anchor to yet another set of bits.
All this took several hours. The weather was atrocious, and the
light was fading. Electric cluster lights were no good because of the
continual seas washing over every one as we worked. The Mate
came up trumps again with a “tot” all round, and because we
(sailors) had little to do whilst the Engineer was removing the
dowell, three or four of us were allowed to polish off the remainder
of the bottle in the shelter of the fo’c’s’le head, and have a “smoko” at the same time.
Even though the engineer had successfully removed the dowelling
from the shackle, the actual shackle pin took quite a bit of
dislodging. He tried hammering it from all angles, but decided that
if he hammered too much, he was just “splaying out” the end of the
shackle pin, making it much more difficult to remove. He sent
down to the engine room for a sack of cotton waste and a gallon of
paraffin. He wrapped the cotton waste around the shackle, doused
it with paraffin, and set it alight. To those of us with little or no
knowledge of basic physics, he explained that he was hoping to heat
up the shackle at a greater rate than the pin, thereby swelling the
shackle so that the pin would be easier to dislodge. Doing all this
with seas breaking over the fo’c’s’le head was no mean feat, but
after several attempts, he was successful, and the pin was removed.
We were then able to use the other end of the cable that was still
attached to the anchor. We took the cable around two sets of bits,
lashing it to its own part to avoid any slipping, and then ran it
through the fairlead. Once it was through the fairleads, we could
then re attach the tow rope, making it fast with the several “U”
bolts that we had used before. The remaining cable that was still
around the windlass, was then dragged back, and secured to its own
part, and the windlass brakes tightened up so the cable could not be
dislodged in any way, and induced to go backwards and into the
chain locker.
Describing all this has taken a couple of paragraphs, but the actual
work took us the best part of a whole day and a night. Freeing up
the shackle pin, and then having to handle the heavy anchor cable in
freezing winds, with seas breaking over us all the time just took up
far more time than any of us could have imagined. We had breaks
for meals and “watch below”, but the work had to go on. Certainly,
more than a couple of bottles of rum were consumed in the manner
I described before. The Cook was marvellous, having food ready
for us almost at the drop of a hat. Whilst there were up to a dozen
of us sailors available, this meant that we could relieve each other.
Even in an emergency, there is only so much room for about six
men to work in so we split up into two watches, and saw the job
through that way. The Mate and Second Mate relieved each other
at intervals, whilst the Captain and Third Mate did the same on
the bridge.
It was with much relief, and not a little bit of satisfaction that the
Mate made a final inspection of our work, and the tow line, which
was now attached to a length of our anchor cable was lowered over
the fo’c’s’le hand rails. Even doing this took time. We could not
just let about ten feet of anchor cable plus many more feet of
towing cable go over the side. It all had to be lowered over, and the
ropes we used to lower it were left attached to it. There were
probably ten to fifteen feet of anchor cable over the side, and then
the towing wire took over. Handling all this heavy stuff had been a
long and difficult task, and we were pleased to see the job finished
and actually working.
Without us even realising it, the weather had started to quieten
down a bit, and so by the time we had the towing wire fixed on the
morning of
February the eighth,
the tug was ready to start the
serious work of getting us to Halifax. We had assumed the probable
time of finishing, and so the men whose turn it was to go on watch
were ready for it, and we returned to our normal watch keeping.
The Foundation Franklin kept up a steady pace, and I think
we were probably making about three or four knots. By now,
although the seas had calmed down considerably, there was still
quite a strong wind blowing, with the ship making way, we now
kept a man on the wheel.
We made good progress throughout the day, with the weather
getting better all the time. The use of the short length of anchor
cable now strengthened our tow by making sure that the towing
wire did not have to chafe against the fairlead. With the better
weather, thoughts of yet another break in the towline were
receding. All through the day of the ninth of February, we made
excellent progress. Ship life was returning to something like normal
after the very turbulent experiences we had been through during the
past two or three weeks.
At some time during the day of the tenth of February, tragedy
struck again. Word came from ’amidships that the
Captain had died. Obviously, the trying
circumstances that we had been through during the last three
weeks, had been a very stressful time for the Captain who despite
being at the mercy of the weather, is always responsible for his ship
and the welfare of the crew. It is true that he had spent days on the
bridge, only going below for brief periods. The strain must have
been considerable. It seems that the Captain’s
“Tiger”
– his personal cabin
Steward – had gone into the Cabin for some reason or other, and found him
lying on the deck bleeding profusely from a wound in his head.
They think that even with the calmer weather, the Captain may
have lost his balance and fallen over, hitting his head as he did so,
and had not had the strength to summon assistance immediately.
We signalled the tug and presumably head office. The
Chief Officer, Mr Schofield,
took command of the vessel, but of course, he still had to do his
regular four to eight watches. Life went on. The question of our
“unjustified” loggings was brought up. The Mate – we couldn’t get
into the habit of calling him anything else – was now in a position to
do some thing about it (as he had promised to do,) but none of us
had thought it would have been in this manner. As it turned out,
within a day or so of us arriving in Halifax, he told us that all
loggings had been deleted.
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