The Black Tide

After the sleeping stillness of the crew’s quarters the noise on the boat deck seemed shattering, the night full of the sound of breaking waves, the scream of the wind in the superstructure, and astern the continual uproar of seas foaming against the base of the cliff. It was very dark and not a light anywhere. I felt my way to the rail, standing there between the after davit and a life raft in the full force of the wind, waiting for my eyes to adjust themselves. The time was 02.19.

Gradually the vague outline of the ship emerged. With my head thrown back I could just make out the dark, shadowy shape of the funnel, and a little for’ard of it the mast poking its top above the side of the bridge housing. Looking aft everything was black, the cliffs and the mountains above blotting out any vestige of light filtering through the cloud. For’ard I could just see the gangway hoist and beyond it the shadowy outline of the hull stretched dark against the broken white of water far below. I thought for a moment I could see the outline of one of the jib crane masts and the manifold, but beyond that the ship disappeared into a void of darkness.

I waited there for a good five minutes, but I could see no movement. Finally, I faced into the wind, feeling my way along the side of the lifeboat to the rail at the for’ard end of the boat deck, following it as it turned across the ship until I found the gap where the midships ladder led down to the central catwalk. I went down it, and down another, shorter ladder to the vast open stretch of the upper deck, not daring to expose myself on the catwalk.

I had never been alone on the deck of a tanker before, always in company, and always either in daylight or in the blaze of the ship’s deck lights. Now, in the wind and in complete darkness, with the sound of broken water all round me, it was like advancing into a primeval void, and even though the tanker was quite a modest one by modern standards, the night made it seem huge.

I was pulled up almost immediately by the sudden

emergence of a crouched shape. It turned out to be one of the mooring winches and the figure beyond it one of the ‘dead men’, its head the wheel that guided the hawser from fairlead to winch.

I stood for a moment looking about me, checking for some movement, but it was darker now and I couldn’t see a thing. Already the dim shadow of the superstructure had disappeared, nothing visible anywhere except the nebulous outline of pipes running ahead of me and disappearing into the blackness. I felt very alone then, very naked and unarmed, the steel deck under my feet, the bulk of the winch and those pipes, nothing else visible and the knowledge that the deck went on and on until it reached the raised fo’c’sle where the captive crew had been brought up out of the chain locker and those two poor devils had gone over the side.

I moved on, walking slowly, feeling my way with each step. Even so, I found myself tripping over the small tank washing pipes called lavomatics that were stretched across the deck at regular intervals. There were inspection hatches for each tank and purge pipes to clear the gases, and at one point I barged into a slender, screw-capped sounding pipe that was about knee-high. The deck, in fact, was littered with obstacles for a man moving warily in complete darkness, and now there was a new sound. I thought for a moment it was somebody whistling and stopped abruptly, my heart in my mouth, but it was only the wind. A little further on the sound of it changed. It was like somebody moaning. All about me the wind

sighed and moaned and the sea made rushing, slapping noises, and at each new sound I paused until I had identified it, convinced that somewhere along this endless dark expanse of steel plating an armed guard lurked, my eyes searching ahead along the line of the raised catwalk for the tell-tale glow of a cigarette.

A shape emerged, grew suddenly tall and I stopped again. I was in the centre of the ship, following the line of the pipes. The shape was away to the right, very straight and tall, motionless by the starb’d rail. I crouched down, moving slowly forward in the shadow of the pipes. There was another shape to my left now. I hesitated, my heart pounding, feeling suddenly boxed

in.

I stayed like that for maybe a minute, the figures on either side of me frozen motionless like myself. Gradually it dawned on me that they were further away than I had imagined and much taller than any man could possibly be. The derricks — the jib cranes for handling pipe! I got slowly to my feet, trembling slightly and feeling a fool as I ducked under the manifold with its mass of pipes running transversely across the ship, big valves showing like crouched figures in the gloom as I negotiated the breaker that stops waves running the length of the deck. After that there were no more pipes, only the catwalk running fore and aft.