A Twist of Sand

GEOFFREY JENKINS   (1920 - 2001)

A TWIST OF SAND (1959)

The South West of Africa has the most dangerous and desolate coastal region in the world. It is also, potentially, the richest. It is known, with reason, as The Skeleton Coast.

Fate gave one key to this forbidden place to Lieutenant-Commander Peace, R.N. He had been briefed, in conditions of absolute secrecy, for a deadly game of hide-and-seek with a new U-boat so far in advance of its time that the German High Command themselves distrusted it. It was this mission which brought Peace to the Skeleton Coast for the first time and it was then that the coast got into his blood. But it was only after the war when this obsession had drawn Peace back to the Skeleton Coast, that the possession of the same precious piece of knowledge forced him to undertake a perilous expedition over the most hazardous route in the world.

Geoffrey Jenkins has used the fascinating and unique setting of the Skeleton Coast as a background to a story which combines all the tension and suspense of submarine warfare with an adventure story of such imagination and power as will hold the reader spellbound.

All the characters in this book are imaginary and have no reference to any person, living or dead

AUTHOR'S FOREWORD

It is a fact that the German U-boat High Command tested experimental U-boats in Cape waters in 1941. Captain Johann Linbach, master of the German freighter Hastedt, was reported by The Star, Johannesburg, on 6th September, 1957: "During 1941, when Germany was testing a new model of submarine engine, six U-boats so equipped were sent to Cape waters .... only one returned."

The phenomenon of the "double sun" was recorded by meteorologists of the Pretoria Weather Bureau at Swakopmund, South West Africa, on 11th December, 1957.

Adiabatic warming of winter winds is an authentic meteorological occurrence in South West Africa. The colouring of the sea by the autumn bloom on plankton is also vouched for. It occurs in conjunction with gymnodinium, a deadly poison.

I have taken a liberty with the actual date on which the Dunedin Star was lost.

Pretoria, 1959

I Skeleton Coast

Twenty-one and a half feet.  I shivered.

The movement shook loose from the edge of my duffle-coat a bead of icy moisture which skidded down my cheek and splashed in a tiny bright spangle on the chart under the concentrated glare of the angled light. I shivered again, half in fear, half in discomfort. The fog was condensing everywhere, and I could feel its sharp tingle in my throat. Dawn in fog is the time for any skipper's fears; dawn in fog off the Skeleton Coast is the time of nightmares.

The drop of moisture made a north-westerly digression over the fold of the chart as Etosha rolled uneasily. Lying on it, the grey photostat page of the old log, with its neat, Victorian script, looked a little weary, despite its shiny rejuvenation at the magic wand of the camera which had plucked it from forgotten oblivion in a fusty London shipping office.

I slid the photostat of the ship's log under the 18-degree line of the chart as if, by placing it in the exact position where she had struck, I might gain some vital information from its meagre sentences.

"British steam vessel Clan Alpine. 13th January, 1890. Bound Tilbury to Cape Town. 5 a.m. Ship, drawing 2iœ feet, struck unknown object, thought to be a shoal, 18' 2" S, 11' 47" E. Position 326 degrees distant about 26 miles from Cape Frio. Doubtful. Making water in Number One hold but proceeding at reduced speed . . ." The one page of the Clan Alpine's log told all; it told enough; there was nothing later for my purposes.

Twenty-one and a half feet! Hell, that was little enough, and here I was with fully sixteen on Etosha's marks and in the same deadly shoal water. Three hundred and twenty-six degrees -- that would put the shoal about three to five miles offshore. If that was right -- I shook my head unconsciously  -- and another droplet splashed down in the fug of the chart-room, warm by comparison with the bone-chilling air of the bridge, where only a canvas dodger stood between me and the naked elements.