Excerpt: The Ghosts of the Red Lightship

As the Coventry laid at anchor, awaiting the arrival of her sister ship the Daventry, Edwin busied himself at his watch, without distraction or dereliction, attending to all the commands and duties assigned to him in the engine room.  This was a place where Edwin understood everything.  The tall chamber that sited the huge engines, with the sequence of gear housing, main pistons and combustion panels, this was his domain.  The drive that impels forty thousand tons through stormy seas, here in the hands of Edwin Cotton. The pipes and pistons, gauges and boilers, all immaculate in the hands of Edwin Cotton.  His work was silent, focused, efficient, and reliable. There were no shortcuts, or dawdling, on his watch.  Tiny erroneous details were harried and chased back into perfection within Edwin’s mute performance.

The noise in the engine room was on a scale that defied measuring, or controlling. It was a million screaming metal transactions that ranged from the highest falsetto to the deepest sub-sonic kidney-bursting thrum. The sound seemed to quicken the air through which Edwin moved, everything vibrating with power meeting demand. Edwin waited by the gauges for the crossing-over of engine power, watching the synchronised swapping of pressures and temperatures, for the moment when he could shut an engine down for it’s daily routine maintenance.  Once shut down, the silent engine would surrender its innards to the dipsticks and wrenches as Edwin revived the engine’s performance and certainty.

The first torpedo left the U-boat with a recoil kick that sounded throughout the metal tube, submariners call this kick, “the knock on the door “.  And this torpedo was calling on the Coventry.

The klaxon horns sounded on the upper walkways of the engine room, so harsh that they even cut through the horrendous noise of the auxiliary engine. Edwin paused to look up as men scurried through the hatches that led to the upper decks, abandoning their duties. The klaxons spoke of incoming attack. Here in the Norwegian Sea, that could only mean U-boats with their torpedoes and a very high chance of being sunk. In the Atlantic these klaxons sometimes signified the lone strafing of a keen young German pilot, or the distant sighting of an unidentified war vessel. But here the klaxons would cause immediate bowel-emptying flight. The engineers were leaving in droves, pulling on lifejackets as they ran, taking the steep stairs upwards four at a time. A lone figure strode righteously between the engines, pausing to flick at a gauge here and there, taking no notice that the rest of the engineering crew had fled for their lives. It was a matter of honour for Edwin, as he had not been formally released from his duty. 

Edwin placed a waste bucket under the tappets sump panel, and pushed the sump plug release key into the slot. Being oily, it slipped from his hand and fell to the walkway. It made a sound. Like no other sound. He could taste this sound on his tongue. There was no more sound.