December 11, 1941
The captain sits with half a raw potato in one hand, a small slice of lemon in the other. How quickly fortunes change. He looks up at the other men in the boat. Eight days. Is that what Chippy said?
When the second torpedo struck Captain Matthiesen had little choice but to abandon ship. The SS Lahaina listed heavily and one lifeboat was destroyed. He ordered the crew into the one remaining lifeboat. Far too many men for such a small craft.
As they pushed the wooden lifeboat away from the steel hull of the much larger freighter one of the men pointed to the near distance. Above the waves the captain saw the submarine surfacing, a rising sun painted on the side of its coning tower, crew scrambling on the deck to mount a machine gun. “Row!” the captain yelled “Get to the lee side of the boat”. Franticly those with oars pulled while the remaining men watched the submarine nervously. The captain turned to see those on the deck of the submarine struggling, unable to set the large gun in its mount amidst the pitching seas. The men in the lifeboat rowed desperately. Eventually the submarine crew gave up bringing the gun below deck. The submarine submerged and disappeared. The men stopped rowing and waited anxiously for signs of another torpedo or a submarine intent on ramming them but neither appeared.
The crew had returned to the foundering ship but she’d taken on water and the engines flooded. The captain knew in an hour she’d be sunk. They boarded and gathered only what they could find in the moment, several cans of water, a wooden box of vegetables and some fruit, several dozen eggs, and lowered the load into the lifeboat. The captain returned from the bridge with a chart and some instruments, a compass, a sextant and a chronometer.
When they were back in the lifeboat the men rowed away from the sinking ship as the captain took stock of the situation: 29 men in a lifeboat made for half that number and 800 miles from the nearest land.
“Maui”, the captain had said, “It’s our only hope. Maui.”
There was no response from the men. They’d left the Hawaiian islands a little over three days earlier loaded with molasses and timber bound for San Francisco. It was to be a ten-day trip the captain had taken many times but that was in a 400-foot freighter cruising at ten knots. Now they were in an overloaded lifeboat powered only by a dozen oars and a small sail. Maui might be the only hope but the men knew that hope was distant.
The captain had needed some affirmation, a sign that the men were with him. His eyes met those of the first mate who held the ship’s compass, steadying it between his legs. “Heading sir?” the mate had asked. Thank you, the captain thought. The captain unrolled the chart sheltering it from spray coming over the gunnels. He checked the ships last logged location. “Two five five” the captain had said. With an outstretched arm the mate pointed to 255 degrees, west-southwest, and men had begun to row.
After several hours the captain called to the ships cook who sat among what food they’d brought.
“Give us an inventory, Chippy. Set rations for eight days.”
“Yes sir, I done that, sir.” Chippy called, “We got dozens of eggs, some fruit, maybe enough for each man to have a slice of lemon for a few days. The potatoes will last for a week at half a potato a man. We got some water but not much.”
The men had heard the news but made no sound. The captain saw the first mate looking down at the compass between his knees. Finally Matthiesen said, “Well, we’ll make do. Thank you Chippy”.
Now the captain sits with his rations held in his two hands. He wraps his fingers around the potato and carefully around the thin slice of lemon, brings his loosely-clasped fists together and closes his eyes. After a moment he breathes “Amen” and begins to eat.
Midnight December 12 - Day 2
A stiff breeze blows spray over the sides of the lifeboat keeping the men perpetually damp and cold. Those not pulling on oars lean against the bench seats, against the gunnels or against one-another and close their eyes, exhausted. From the bow the captain hears “Damn it, man, I’m not your blasted pillow!” followed by the sound of shuffling and readjusting, thuds against the hull. To no one and to everyone a sailor says “I never knew how heavy a man’s head was until he tried to use me as a pillow.”
Noon, December 14 – Day 4
Chippy passes out the daily ration and, today, an egg. A few men crack the egg directly into their mouth and swallow hungrily, licking the shells. An Able Seaman cracks the egg and hesitates, smelling it before saying, “Chippy, I think the eggs have passed.” Chippy cracks the egg he’s set aside for himself and smells. Sure enough they’ve spoiled in the heat. He looks at the two dozen eggs in boxes at his feet certain they’re all gone. He looks at the captain. “Pass them all out, Chippy, you all can eat them if you like. They will only get worse with time. There’s no sense in saving them.”
Most men take their eggs swallowing hungrily. A few hesitate but ultimately, overcome with hunger, crack and swallow the eggs whole. Two hours later, several of the men are doubled over, retching.
December 15 – Day 5
There is shouting at the bow of the boat and then two men are fighting rocking the small boat.
“Someone help me, he’s got a knife!”
“It’s no use! It’s no use! We are done for!”
“Get the knife from him!”
More men jump into the fray rocking the boat still further, waves come over the sides. The captain can see the broad back of one man, a big deck hand that the others call The Bull, he is punching someone repeatedly, his arm pumping up and down like a piston, and then he stops, sits ,and turns to the captain. Other men pull away and are silent. They look back and forth between the captain and a body unseen between the bench seats.
Finally, The Bull speaks. “He aint dead”.
Another seaman speaks up. “He had a knife captain, he was trying to cut a hole in the boat. Trying to kill us all.”
“Restrain him,” orders the captain in a low voice. “Tie his hands and keep an eye on him. “
Those with oars return to rowing.
That night the captain hears a loud splash.
From the bow he hears “Jesus, he’s jumped over!”
The men stop rowing and all hands look out at the water.
“Can anyone see him?” yells the captain.
“He just jumped over the edge! I felt him move while I was sleeping and he just jumped!”
The first mate stands and pans a flashlight beam across the water but there is no sign of the sailor whose hands were bound to his feet. But for the sound of waves bumping the side of the boat the ocean is quiet and dark. After several minutes the first mate turns off the flashlight and sits. Some men look down at their hands, at their knees, others look toward the water. The captain clasps his hands and bows his head. Quietly he offers a short prayer. Finished he raises his head and looks at the men. After several minutes one of the men tentatively dips an oar in the water and begins to pull slowly. Others follow.
Dawn, December 17 – Day 7
The captain checks the chronometer as the sun rises above the horizon, he asks for a bearing from the first mate, he looks over his notes and makes an X on the chart. If his measurements are right, if his memory of celestial navigation has not failed him, they are on course for Maui but still so far away.
He looks at his men, some are rowing, some tending a small sail, some sleep, the first mate monitors their heading, but all look like tired, hungry and beaten, unshaven, vacuous eyes, torn clothes stained with grease and blood. Skin is sunburned, chapped. The food is nearly gone, only a few potatoes remain, slices of lemon, a small sip of water for each of them. It will only last another day. The captain feels helpless.
“Captain, I think he’s dead”
The captain looks up. The men stop rowing and turn to Alfred, who lies awkwardly against a life jacket he was using a pillow, his mouth agape, eyes shut. He could be sleeping.
“He hasn’t moved in an hour”.
Someone pokes at Alfred gently and then more firmly. Alfred does not move. The first mate leans across the boat giving Alfred a vigorous shake. The mate tries to lift Alfred’s hand but it remains stiffly in place.
The mate turns to the captain. “He’s dead for sure captain, Rigor set in already”.
The man sitting next to Alfred slides away, others draw back from the corpse. The captain looks at Alfred and then at the men. “We’ve no choice. We’ll bury him at sea.”
Slowly, carefully, the man sitting next to Alfred leans over to the dead man and pulls back his shirt collar. The captain is about to say something but stops. The man carefully finds the clasp of a small chain and removes a medallion from around Alfred’s neck, Saint Andrew, the patron saint of sailors. He folds the necklace neatly, placing it carefully in his breast pocket and then looks up at the captain. “I’ll give it to his wife” he says, “Fred’d like that”
Shortly after they let Alfred’s slip beneath the surface.
0800 December 18 – Day 8
Chippy passes out the last of the rations, half a potato and a slice of lemon. He looks into the empty wooden box. “That’s the last of it.”
“Thank you, Chippy.” The captain says. “You’ve done well.”
The captain looks across the horizon but there’s no land in sight. He looks down at this chart. Maui should be there. It should be right there.
December 21, 1941 – Day 10
The boy sees them from a ways off, in the early morning light, vague forms on the sand. A moment earlier he’d been poking along the wrack line to see what might have washed up or what critters might have been about the night before. He’d spotted the tell-tale trail of a turtle come ashore and he followed the trail up the beach. Now he sees an overturned boat a hundred yards distant, and forms on the beach, bodies, a dozen, more, he stops. Slowly he moves closer to them, straining his eyes to see more clearly, to provide definition to the forms. Bodies and a boat. Dead or alive? Friend or foe?
Coming into view a man, the boy’s father, rushes across the grass toward the boat on the beach. He’s carrying something, a shovel, no, a rifle. As he nears the forms on the beach he slows and then stops and turns. He’s yelling to someone at the house. He drops the rifle and runs the rest of the way to the beach. The boy sees someone else running toward the group, it’s Henry the farm hand, followed by a woman, the boy’s mother.
Soon there is more rushing to and from the beach. Official looking people in army uniforms, a woman who may be a nurse. Small groups gather around the forms on the beach.
In time the boys makes his way tentatively toward the group. The boy approaches his mother. She is tending to a man who sits in the sand, his back against the trunk of a palm tree. She kneels, beside him holding a small plate of bread and a few pieces of fruit as the man, holding a cup of water with two hands, drinks. The man’s unshaven face is blistered and chapped, his hands too are blistered. A large cut, no longer bleeding, extends across his forearm. His shirt is torn but the boy recognizes it from his visits to the docks with his father. That man is a ship’s captain, not Navy, one of the many freighters that come and go from the island.
Groups of men and women rush about tending to those collapsed on the beach. The men are whisked off on stretchers to ambulances and farm trucks that appear on the lawn. The commotion swirls around the boy, his mother and the captain as the captain sits, slowly eating , sipping water and staring vaguely across the beach to the sea. Eventually he turns to the boy’s mother and says. softly “When I saw Haleakala above the clouds at sunset I knew we’d make it. We just had to hold on a little longer. I prayed for Hillard but he passed just last night. And Del Tinto jumped overboard just as we crossed the reef. He went under and we never saw him again.”
The boy’s father approaches the threesome and places a small box next the captain. The captain looks down at the wooden box.
“Your instruments” the boys father says, “ Your sextant and chronometer.”
“And the ship’s compass?” the captain asks
“The first mate has it with him. Wouldn’t let it go”
The captain turns to the boy’s father and then to the sea. “He’s a good man that first mate. They're all good men.”
The boy sees a tear in the captain’s eye.
Afterword: This is a work of fiction based on an actual event as described in several newspaper accounts. The boy at the end of the story is Michael Castle Baldwin who was seven at the time the event occurred. The survivors landed in front of Michael's home. Michael's grandfather was Henry Perrine Baldwin, who is my great great grandfather. Michael would be a distant cousin of mine. One notable fact that I changed was that the submarine fired upon the SS Lahaina with a canon and not a torpedo.
Opmerkingen