Philip McCutchan
Redcap
CHAPTER ONE
The road convoy from the north lumbered in through the gates, halting briefly for the police check. Moving on, the leading vehicle drew up at the jetty and a corporal of Sappers jumped down from the cab, walked back to inspect the big crate which was lashed down to the articulated trailer. As the truck carrying the armed infantry detachment pulled in behind, the corporal went over to a small group of men standing in the lee of the customs shed.
Singling out a soldierly-looking civilian, the corporal halted in front of him and gave a swinging salute.
“Reporting as ordered, sir. Convoy all correct.”
“Thank you, corporal. No trouble on the way?”
“No, sir.”
“Good.” The civilian turned abruptly, spoke in a crisp voice to an overalled party of Royal Engineers. “Right, you men. Get the crate aboard quickly now.”
Men moved towards the vehicle and began casting off the lashings.
The convoy had arrived alongside the ship in Tilbury Docks at 3:18 p.m. precisely, in a steady drizzle which soaked into the men along the jetties, ran in little rivulets between the coils of rope and the bundles of straw packing and lids of crates which littered the dockside, dropped down on the roof of the customs shed to spread its aura of English gloom, soaked into the weeds and the scrubby, coarse tufts of grass which grew between the rails of the sidings, made even the great new liner’s shining paintwork dull and damp and depressing as she waited there to go out across blue water into the blazing Indian Ocean sun.
Under this drizzle a crane, travelling on its greased rails and towering above even the immensely high sun-deck of the 50,000-ton New South Wales, edged into position on the dockside and sent down its steel hook to grab the slings. Once the crate was in the slings and was being lifted aboard into the liner’s specially prepared Number One hold, the soldierly-looking civilian seemed edgy. This man had about him an indefinable touch of the Eighth Army, which may have been simply an association of ideas resulting from the fact that he was decidedly sand-coloured and was not unlike a younger edition of Field-Marshal Montgomery; now he walked up and down in a kind of staccato fashion, his face turned anxiously upward at the crate swinging high into the air.
When the crate was over the hatch and going down into the hold he went up the gangway into the liner’s huge side.
The few members of the ship’s company who happened to have nothing to do and were therefore goofing along the rails, noticed that the crate was marked, in black stenciclass="underline" MACHINE PARTS. It carried several red-painted admonitions for careful handling, and it was addressed to the Australian Army’s Eastern Command in Sydney.
As soon as the crate was properly stowed, the liner’s Chief Officer saw the hatch-covers of Number One secured, and soon after that the tugs came alongside, the shore gangway was lowered, and the great bulk of the ship — first nuclear-powered liner to sail under the British flag — drew slowly away. She came astern into the basin and turned, then headed towards the locks to edge out into the London River and for the first time go alongside the Landing Stage ready to embark her passengers.
Next day, still under the same penetrating drizzle and lowering sky, the special trains from St Pancras drew into Tilbury Riverside station and the outbound passengers milled through the passport inspection and into the customs hall. One of the First Class passengers was a heavily built man with curiously penetrating eyes. He was balding and pasty and flabby, expensively dressed and with a taste for well-cut silk shirts and loud ties. His passport showed him as a Swedish subject. His name was given as Sigurd Andersson, his profession as refrigerator salesman. Because this was a special voyage there was a tight security net over it, and the immigration officials were being more than ordinarily careful; but Sigurd Andersson was used to this kind of thing and Ms papers were impeccable, so he had no trouble.
After the passengers were all aboard and men were standing by to send the last gangway ashore, the Master of the New South Wales, together with the river pilot, climbed slowly to his high navigating bridge, which towered over the Port of London Authority’s building and, with the huge hull, blocked out Gravesend from the Tilbury Landing Stage. Shortly after he had got there, his Staff Commander reached the bridge to report.
“All visitors and officials ashore, sir. All gangways gone, crew correct and embarkation completed.”
Sir Donald Mackinnon nodded, his square, weather-toughened face strangely troubled. He said curtly, “Right— thank you, Stanford.” For a moment the eyes of the two men met; a look passed between them and then the Captain said, “Here we go, Stanford.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sir Donald seemed about to add something else, but instead he turned away abruptly and spoke to the pilot. He asked, “All ready?”
“Yes, Captain, all ready now.”
The Master gave an order. Engine-room and berthing telegraphs clanged; the pilot, walking into the bridge wing, gave a signal to the tugs and water boiled up below their counters. The last links gone, the New South Wales, superluxury flagship of the Australia and Pacific Line’s fleet, moved very slowly off the jetty as the tugs pulled ahead, the great hawsers coming up bar-taut and dripping with river-water and rain; she moved slowly out into the stream on the first leg of her maiden voyage. As the crowds lining the long gallery above the Landing Stage sent up a subdued ripple of cheering, and waved handkerchiefs at departing friends and families, and smiled through tears, the great liner’s deep-noted siren boomed out her first melancholy farewell to England; then she drew away faster into the broad, grey-brown bosom of the London River under the forlorn ’Tilbury drizzle. A little later the ship — gigantic, tiering deck on deck, with one great streamlined buff funnel, and green boot-topping to set off her cream-coloured hull — moved down river under her own power as the Captain gave a quiet order and the A.E.I.-John Thompson direct water-boiling nuclear reactor, deep inside her structure, passed life to her shafts. She came down past Shellhaven, a giant among the minnows, bound for the Nore and away across the world for Sydney Heads and the Pyrmont quays, carrying well over three thousand souls.
And her peculiar cargo…
The Captain’s face, as he stared out ahead from his bridge, was still troubled, still anxious. God alone knew how trying a maiden voyage could be at the best of times. And Sir Donald Mackinnon had never carried so vital a cargo as now lay snugly secured in his Number One hold, a cargo upon which the world’s peace might basically depend; his mind ran ahead of his ship, ran ahead of the dreary London River to the grey-green of the Channel, ran along blue water to the Leeuwin, along the stormy stretches of the Great Australian Bight. The sooner he picked up the Sydney pilot, the better.
Sir Donald Mackinnon had never, in forty-five years of seafaring, been the kind of man who scared easily.
But this time he was frightened of his cargo.
Back at the Stage, when the liner had drawn away, it seemed as though a mountain had moved, a city gone to sea; it left a naked look, a stripped feeling in the hearts of the port officials and the Line’s directors and the V.I.P.’s who had watched her go. There was a buzz of feverish conversation among the ordinary God-speeders, those who had come to bid friends and relatives good-bye and wanted now to hide their loneliness beneath a veneer of gaiety and light-heartedness; there was an exhalation of relief from the highly placed officials, glad the great ship had begun her active life without a hitch. But a V.I.P. from Whitehall, a square man with a scarred face who was known as Mr Latymer and who had come down specially from the Admiralty but who, for the purposes of Press reports, had come merely as a private guest of the Minister of Nuclear Development, made only one remark. He made it in a nautical snap to an Undersecretary of State from the Ministry who was standing near him. He said, “Well — she’s away. I only hope to God nothing goes wrong — that’s all. Until she gets there, she’s our responsibility. All the way.”