‘What’s your name?’ Stuart asked Dugan’s pal.
‘Eric Boyd, sir.’
‘You’re the boy that was in the R.A.S.C., aren’t you?’ I asked him.
‘Yes, sir. But I were in a Water Transport Company. I had charge of a schooner running cargoes between Corsica and Naples and up to Livorno for more than a year. And I was out with the boats when I was a boy.’
‘Speak Italian?’ Stuart asked.
‘Pretty fair, sir. You had to on them schooners. There weren’t nobody but yourself and a bunch of Ityes.’
Stuart glanced at me. I gave a slight nod. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Come and see me in the morning and we’ll fix up details.’
After supper that night Stuart brought out the armoury that Dugan had found. There were three Mauser rifles with a box of a thousand rounds, all tracer, two boxes of grenades and four of those little Italian Berettas complete with holsters and a hundred rounds of ammunition apiece. The rust was only surface rust. He started on the pistols. ‘Mighty useful find of Dugan’s,’ he said, and you could almost hear him purr.
Two months later I was to remember his words. At the time, however, I said, ‘There’s not a war on in the Med now.’
He looked at me with that slightly humorous lift of the eyebrows. ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said. ‘Remember the arms that were filched from us in Egypt, North” Africa and Italy. There are caches of weapons of every kind in practically every country in the Med. And we’re not all that popular in some areas where there wasn’t enough food. I won’t be going ashore without one of these little toys tucked away in my pocket.’ And he tapped the pistol he was cleaning.
Whilst he worked at the weapons, we held a brief board meeting. Our salvage worries were over. We had a ship now that could move under her own steam — not a problematical hulk lying on the rocks. And our thoughts were concentrated on how to make the best use of her.
It was agreed there and then that I should run the ship. In matters of seamanship he would come under me as my Number One. But that he should fix cargoes. He’d been in a solicitor’s office before the war and he was confident that he could avoid the normal pitfalls into which a one-ship concern might fall. We agreed to do the trip out with the skeleton crew of four we already possessed — Dugan and Boyd to come in on a profit-sharing basis. The rest of the crew were to be recruited in Italy where labour would go where there was food. We would sail for Plymouth as soon as I was confident the craft could make it and whilst I supervised refitting he was to go to London and get in touch with some Italian contacts he had with a view to our investing in a suitable cargo.
Two days later we said good-bye to our friends in Boscastle. We made Plymouth in just over twenty-four hours. The sea was calm and the engines ran without a hitch. Behind us we trailed our borrowed barge with the tackle that had enabled us to become a going concern.
It was the end of the first phase.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was a big moment for me, coming in to Plymouth again in a landing craft. And this time I was part owner of it. It did not belong to the Government. As soon as we had berthed, we sought Slater out in his office.
‘Ah,’ he said, as we were shown in by his writer, ‘I’ve been expecting you, Cunningham, for the past two days.’
I introduced Stuart to him. ‘How do you mean — you’ve been expecting me?’ I asked.
For answer, he picked a newspaper up from his desk and handed it to me. It was the Western edition of a London daily and right across one of the inside pages the heading read: Two Men Lift Landing Craft Off Rocks — Amazing Story of Hulk Refloated. There was a picture of the ship on the rocks at the head of the cove and another of her steaming into Boscastle. There were pictures of Stuart and myself and a picture of a man in a slouch hat which seemed vaguely familiar. The story took the whole page and in the middle was the by-line — Bill Trevor. I recognized the man in the slouch hat then — his picture was captioned in heavy type: And I Helped Them Do It.
‘So that’s what Bill does for a living,’ I said, and handed the feature across to Stuart. I remembered his enthusiastic use of a Leica camera which he carried everywhere. The picture of us coming into Boscastle was probably taken by a tripper. There had been plenty of cameras clicking as we had berthed at the hard that morning.
‘I’m glad to see he had the sense not to let on where you got the equipment from,’ Slater said.
I nodded. I was wondering whether the Admiralty would try and prevent our sailing the ship and what effect this publicity would have on our next need — a cargo. ‘Well, what about this dinner?’ I said. ‘They should be just about opening now.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Very good idea.’ He drove us into town and we finished up at two in the morning on board a destroyer with eggs and bacon, washed down with rum.
The next day Stuart left for London, and Dugan, Boyd and I settled down to the job of refitting. It was a job that completely absorbed me. For a month nothing else meant anything to me. And I was as completely happy as I have ever been.
No dry dock was available so we decided to fix the damaged hull plates ourselves. This suited me, for I was determined that the refit should be thorough and at the same time that it should cost as little as possible. Slater gave me every assistance. He made me free of any equipment I needed, gave me old plates and stanchions, enabled me to scrounge all the things that cost a lot if purchased new and yet are piled, rusting, in any big Navy yard — and we weren’t worrying about getting secondhand stuff. All I had to buy were spares for the engines, paint and the like. He fitted me out with ropes, hawsers, an anchor, door chains and many other things taken from wrecks and ships that had been broken up. We even managed to get a loud-hailer.
We took the old crate out of the docks and beached her on the sands of the Sound. With winches and jacks we tipped her over on to her side and by the end of three days her hull was sound, the rudders had been straightened out and the damaged screw had been exchanged.
I made a great discovery during those three days — Boyd was no mean hand at engineering. He’d had a year as a mechanic in a garage before the war and for the first three years in the Army had been driving and servicing transport. And then, of course, in the Water Transport Company he had been the engineer on board his schooner as well as the cargo supervisor.
And so, whilst Dugan worked steadily at the engines to get them absolutely as perfect as old engines that have seen much service and then been buried in sea and sand for a year can be, Boyd and I set to work to fix the superstructure.
Everything that was broken, bent or twisted we ripped off with an acetylene welder or axes. By the time we’d finished there was virtually nothing left of the deckhousing and bridge except the steel walls.
From that skeleton we began to build — new bridge supports were welded in, a new stack and mast rigged, a gyro compass installed, new steel ladders fitted. And then the bridge — we built that of steel plates and aft of the stack we erected a really roomy chart-house and wardroom that ran out on either side to include the wings of the bridge where the pom-poms had been. This ward-room was constructed of ferro-concrete, curved like an adobe aft to give the least possible resistance to a following sea that might sweep over the bridge. Stanchions were erected round the remainder of the bridge to carry a canvas awning to protect us from both rain and sun.
Soon after we had righted the boat and had started work on the superstructure, something happened which didn’t seem important at the time and yet was strangely linked with my fortunes.
I received a package from Bill Trevor. It contained letters addressed to us care of his paper. In his letter he apologized for not having told us that he was a newspaper man and intended to use us as copy and trusted that we were not offended by anything he had written in the article. ‘One or two of these letters, which I have been cad enough to open, are quite intriguing. Your pictures seem to have gone over big — you’ll find quite a number of girls have written asking to be included in your crew. Some have offered to put up money. And even better, some have included photographs. I like Judy — I’d sign her on as cook! And there’s a rather pathetic letter from a Mrs Dupont. I have done a follow-up story on the spate of letters you are receiving while you struggle with your own refitting …’