The Lion´s Disease
My name is Samuel Diggerson, 3rd officer of the m/s Punjab of London, which you most
certainly have heard a lot of, in connection to the famous journey. I hesitated
a lot to come forward but finally decided to give a better account than the
multitude of wholly inaccurate tales about what happened related to the fate of
this ship on the Atlantic & Indian Oceans. This is my story.
LONDON
HARBOUR
|
A |
ll this took place only years after the horrendous
pandemic, the Covid19, had paralyzed
the world. Economy had been slowing down, and the tricky disease made a lot of
people face death, sorrow, hunger, as well as homelessness.
In November of this year, Rattner & Rattner, the renowned and prosperous London Shipping
Agency, had hired me as an officer onboard the Punjab, a Handysize Geared Bulk Carrier. Minutes after being
appointed an officer at a visit to the Staff Employment Office, I set out to
find my ship from Emmet Street, where the office building was situated. I was
on foot, in light rain and some wind in the dusky remains of the Tuesday
afternoon, out for the vessel, which was an immense one, lying at anchor
outside the Northwest Pier of London Outer Harbor. I had been hired in an
extreme hurry due to a mishap on a red London bus on the morning of the ship´s
departure; the ordinary 3rd Mate – a man whose name I forgot - unprovoked got
busted up by a drunkard, and, because of a broken arm, was brought to the
hospital for surgery. The Company was in dire need of a replacement, and with a
terse notice, I, who was then 1st Mate on another Carrier - the Swanee - of the same size, but an oil
carrier, decided to jump in.
It was a commotion to try to reach the area. My
beloved Swanee lay by an anchor in a whole different part of the port. I went
by subway and by bus and on my way happened to end up on a small bridge, about
a hundred yards tall, in one of the harbor areas, viewing a large portion of
the London port from a distance. The harbor rested with thousands and thousands
of ships, cranes, sheds, and piers in front of me. Stairs and viaducts, trains
and carriages were seen everywhere, and miles of rails in grey and blue
nuances, covered by smoky fog, were spotted in all directions. How strange are
the cities, man built out in the plain and by the outpour of rivers! But they
were part of work, of human endeavor.
Work, this agreement between people, is often not
entirely rational or logical, yet it remains the only meaningful agreement
because, since primordial times, it has been based on reciprocity. This small
mutual agreement is quite fundamental. There has been, since the earliest
epochs, no other decency to be found in the world of humans anywhere in the
world than in the simple agreement of work. Some say that slavery was born the
day after work was invented. I realize that. Maybe so… But that does not affect
the nobility of Work itself.
The city, this immense organism, the actual big city,
skyscraper City, was the predicament, the condition, and the very place of this
decency and agreement, and in this decency, quite simply, marked by smoke, fog,
and a thousand smells, … marvelous. So this was the city of British decency, of
the decency of civilization, I thought, as I folded my collar against the wind,
which came in, gust after gust on this evening, from the West.
“Of all the
airts the wind can blow,
I dearly like
the West,
`Cause there
my lovely dearie lives,
The girl that
I loe´ best.”
I silently hummed. I always loved Robert Burns. My
father was from Edenborough. But as for myself, I have mostly been living in
New York.
Cooperation is beautiful. Capitalism is not.
Collaboration is healthy and decent. Decency is beautiful. The most beautiful
thing in life, next to love, is decency.
When I approached my future home, m/s Punjab,
now by foot on a distant busy narrow pier, I noticed that this ship, a
relatively modern and ingenious one, which my former boat, the tanker, was not,
with its 160000 deadweight tons was towering over far more modest and older
vessels, which also were part of the London fleet of conventional general cargo
ships. This fleet consisted solely of cargo compartments that could carry rare,
sensitive, and expensive goods long-distance. These goods typically include
famous cars, old airplanes, sculptures, racehorses, circus animals, and
ready-made building elements for bridges —in short, items that cannot be
transported across the globe by container ships.
When I was brought out to m/s Punjab by the company's
extra ferry, it was already late in the day, 08.00 pm, and I was at the first
real sight of her body, impressed by the size and beauty of the ship and, as I
thought, the ingenuity with which it was built. In the shadow of progress in
the money-intensive internet and communication industry, the ancient art of
ship construction has also been thriving.
I swiftly escaped from the ferry to a steel ladder, on
which I, with some effort, climbed up along the side of the vessel. Halfway up
a small door, which was set on the side of the ship and had the door neatly
shut behind me, a small elevator in seconds brought me right to the main deck.
The decks were perplexing, shining in light blue. Leaning towards the hatch of
one of the large, square cargo holds, which all four of them were neatly
covered with orange steel hoods, large as tennis courts, the Captain was
standing, together with the 1st officer, to welcome the new 3rd officer, who,
so late at night, was about to report himself to them.
The ship was magnificent, like a white castle. The
Captain was a man in his sixties, thus 25 years my senior, named Daniel H.
Stork. He was Irish and born in Dublin. This was his second journey with the
Punjab. He told me all this when we, after a walk around the remarkable wonder
of a floating castle, which it seemed like to me, were sitting in the gunroom,
one deck below, in the aft of the ship. He was a rather tall man, looked more
like an American, with dark hair and a piercing look in his blue eyes. Stork
had an air of seriousness about him but seemed, all the same, not entirely
without vanity.
Last five years, he had been with Rattner
&Rattner, mostly on container vessels. He had been the boss on many a
tugboat, cargo ship, and ferry and had enjoyed it. The grave but very talkative
Irishman said that he had often been flattered by being entrusted as a captain
by the Rattners on still more modern, still more expensive, and still more
beautiful ships. The executive director
of the Amsterdam office had asked him to take on the “Punjab” on a trip with to
Surabaya, on the island of Java. He thought it was a tough job, and he was
looking for a crew, and – through connections, I had been recommended to him as
a reliable chap, he said.
The ship was also in a hurry, though the Captain did
not tell me until many weeks later, when we had become friends, that it was
originally bound for Cherbourg when it should have picked up the manager´s
daughter. The latter had a yearning to be with the ship on its journey, this
time to the exceptional destination it had. The Captain had protested against
this, claiming that he was hired to take responsibility for the ship, which was
managed by a company and governed on reasonable grounds. He could not act in
his profession for a company that operates on grounds like “not waiting for
crew, because of the need to pick up the CEO´s daughter.”
Mr. Kaminsky then simply retorted that the Rattner
& Rattner Company always had a multitude of agendas, with getting the cargo
out for delivery being the main one. The other reasons were of less importance
but had to be waged in, he said. They always said things like that. Miss
Kaminsky should be picked up on the 22nd.
The Captain had not, in turn, answered to this; he
recalled but told Mr. Kaminsky that as soon as they had left London harbor, he
was the Captain. He merely hoped they would reach Cherbourg and Rachel
Kaminsky, he had added in a casual tone. “Ultimately, the Ocean decides.”
The Captain was a man of strong will.
The ship was painted white, including the hull,
deckhouses, hatches, masts, and rafters. The decks were blue. She was
enormously big, rectangular in shape like modern ships, very high, sturdy,
deep, and comprehensive. We were twenty-five people on board, twenty in the
crew, and eight passengers; the two animal tenders, Linda and Dorothy, were
included. On this trip, the Captain also brought his young, beautiful wife,
Ruth.
It was now October, the month of storms on the North
Sea, and “Punjab” had in the afternoon just haply gotten underway from
Amsterdam, via Le Havre, carrying lots of wheat, a couple of cars, and some
horses as well as some other animals, amongst them a lion. Then they added more
cargo here in London, more machines, an old airplane, parts of a submarine, and
more animals, while they unloaded the wheat. The lion was a lioness, brought
aboard, of course, in a cage. The cage was made of steel. The lion itself was
dressed in a suit, a green one, made of the thinnest tarp, and, although I just
spotted her very casually, as I was inspecting “my new backyard,” I felt sorry
for her. Taking a lioness from Amsterdam all the way to Java in Indonesia
seemed to me to be on the brink of animal cruelty.
All cargo was loaded into the four large compartments
by experts in loading cargo, airplanes, and animals. The animals were held in
hatch No.1, closest to the main deckhouse and the bridge, amidships.
Like most general cargo bulk carriers, which have some
4 or 5 holds covered by metal hatch covers, geared bulk carriers, such as the
Punjab, are mainly in the giant size range. All ships nowadays are too big.
They often have several cranes mounted, allowing them to load and discharge
cargo anywhere without shore-based equipment in foreign harbors. A typical
General Cargo Carrier of the geared bulk type has a crew of around 13-35. There
is a Captain; the Captain is in charge of everything. We always have 3-4 deck
Mates, and the 1st Mate is in charge of the cargo. The Chief Engineer is, of
course, in charge of the engine and systems. 3 to 4 other Engineers, 1st and
2nd Oiler, 2 to 4 deck crew, and 2 to 3
galley crew, plus Radio-Electronics officer, one Bosun, one Electrician, and a
Cook, a Steward, and 2 Steward’s
assistants. Some ships house a couple of deck-engine utility men extra.
The Punjab also carried a few passengers: two doctors,
who were also veterinarians and were mainly there to look after the horses and
other animals; one author of novels, Mr. Contour; and Mr. Schultz, a banker,
probably an acquaintance of the Rattner family or something. Initially, all
passengers were told they would have to stay in their cabins since Captain
Stork was busy taking command of a ship that was entirely new for him. Finally,
the company representative on board was Geronimo Weichsel, a supercargo clerk.
Stork wandered around the ship, and one could see by
the look on his face that he thought it was way too big by the way he watched
his craft. Even I thought it was not wise to build ships of this size. These
ships are made in Japan, and the Japanese know what they are doing, of course.
Only I wouldn´t say I like these seafaring monsters.
The doctors were a middle-aged couple, Mr. and Mrs.
Williamson. The writer, a tiny, slender boy from Texas, USA, named Paul
Contour, claimed he had written a novel set in Baltimore. We were later not
able to find it on Amazon or elsewhere, though.
Since it turned out that the only reason Punjab was
anchored up in this part of the London harbor was to wait for me, we, as soon
as I had accepted to be a member of the crew on this ship, which was set for
Surabaya, Java, we raised the anchor, telephoned for a tugboat and for
navigation aid out through the Thames and out into the English Channel.
The weather was windy, but the magnitude of the vessel
impressed the forces of the Sea, and we withstood any influence, either from
waves or wind, and our maneuver out into the open Sea was like gliding out on a
dancefloor.
------------------------
26th of October.
I was standing in the night on the poop deck only
hours after we departed from the port, watching the many-colored clouds in the
sky. The lights of the small cities ashore were slowly gliding by as we sailed
southwards in the English Channel, more precisely, the Strait of Dover. We thus
ultimately headed for the Atlantic.
I had earlier introduced myself to the rest of the
crew, which, besides the Captain and the 1st officer, Mr. Midas Sully, who just
looked stone-faced at everything, all were of the average competent kind. I also learned the name and face of the 2nd
officer, Alfonso Ruiz.
The stone-faced 1st officer, Sully, with hazel eyes,
was a strange character. He was a tall guy, fifteen years my senior; big black
tousled hair, whiskers, and light grey eyes. He spoke in a hollow voice and was
a significant, dominant type of guy. He said he had seen my credentials and
said that he just like me had attended Christ College.
Alfonso Ruiz, a young fellow from Paraguay, stood at
the steering wheel, and we had put out a whole bunch of sailors on the lookout.
These waters by the French coast have heavy traffic by everything from fishing
vessels to tankers. We wanted at least to come through the Channel before some
of us went to bed that night. Sully and the carpenter stood aloft in the back
talking, puffing cigars. Longitudinally on the port side, two dolphins were
strangely spotted. They soon disappeared, though.
I ransacked my
memory. I thought I had met Sully on some occasions. But I did not know where
or when. He was significantly older than me - I was just thirty-five - so I
don´t think we had been in the same classes in high school or at the same
parties. I often let my thoughts go back to my year at Christ College because
it was only one year due to a catastrophe involving my family. I was not at all
sure if I had met him at all.
Amidships, a sailor shouted out in a harsh voice that
one of the horses had become sick. Some horses were located in large boxes in
cargo compartment number two, where there were also a couple of other animals.
In one of the boxes, one of those beautiful black creatures was lying on the
floor. If you know about horses, you know that they very rarely prefer to lie
down. If a horse is on the ground, it is either sick or dead.
When I got aboard, I had laid out the course on our
main chart and put up our destinations in our ancient logbook. We had told our
telegraph operator, Ralph Bartlett, to cable to our destinations. Later, I
could not find the chart. I told Sully. He could not find it either. Then I saw
I had accidentally placed my coat on it. Paul Contour, a vain red-haired fellow
with a very small, bent nose, who had eyes like a hawk, but seemed a little
mean, like a snake, laughed at me.
Just hours into this journey, this bode no good.
After dinner, which was a steak, we all ate in silence.
The Captain, who said he had a headache, withdrew with his wife. The latter
also felt sick and stumbled on a tall shipping threshold leading to the
Captain's departments, a small suite of three rooms on the starboard side of
the white ship.
“Well, at least we are on our way,” Ruth, who was
black and ultimately from Trinidad, daughter of a drummer, flustered in my ear,
before disappearing, probably in an attempt to make me feel cozy, despite the
strange atmosphere on board and my own hasty departure. I had only had time to
bring a fraction of my luggage due to the haste of the escape from London.
Every hour in port costs millions of pounds to a ship of the Punjab´s
magnitude.
She let her large, black, curly hair fall over her red
dress, smiled generously, and her large, healthy teeth shone in the light from
the small yellowish roof lamps. She now and then licked her upper lip.
“Sure,” I said, echoing my younger self. “It will be a
gas coming to Java.”
Just to be aware of Ruth made a man feel younger.
I then took a stroll on the deck. We were now well off
the coast and should be able to relax a bit.
I then met with the doctors, who were highly taken
aback by the sight of the North Sea. They flung bits of bread towards the
seagulls, but the birds just looked perplexed. In the corner of my eye, I
caught a glimpse of Sully, however, and I thought I could discover a wry smile.
This really was some boat, I thought to myself.
The next day we would reach Cherbourg for sightseeing,
Captain Stork had told us. They sent the luggage to Cherbourg for me to pick it
up at the mayor´s office, he said.
None of the crew knew the exact plan of the journey to
reach Java. This was all due to safety measures, according to what the Captain
and the Rattner man, Mr. Weichsel, had told us. The other officers and I were
just hired as crew, and the Captain is always the sole master of the ship. That
is—as it has always been—the rule of the Sea and is an anthropological truth.
The ship was now at her maximum speed and had moved freely
through the southwest trade in the Atlantic Ocean. I looked forward to the
sightseeing in Cherbourg. I had a distant relative who lived there. When I
stood on deck, trying to focus on the birds and on the two doctors Williamson,
I noticed that Mrs. Williamson rubbed her eyes and then, after a second of
hesitation, cried out in a loud, harsh voice:
“I cannot see a thing! I am BLIND!”
---------------------------------------------
Who am I, third mate ?
|
I |
am sorry to
interrupt my telling of the actual story, but I think it is right to do, to inform
you a little about myself at once. There are two main reasons for this. It is
because I am AS AN AGENT an essential part of the story you will read 1.) as an
agent on-board the Punjab, 2.) I am
the one who narrates the story, and – as we all know – the one who is the
sender of the message often has control over it, its content, the pitch, color,
and tone.
I am from Glasgow. My parents Espen and Elsa
Diggerson, both of them architects, raised me there. I was their only child,
apart from my sister Gwen, who – bright and beautiful as she has always been –
did not pose any trouble of any kind.
With me, it was different. I had no real interests and
no talents. I was not exceptionally bright and did not form any circle of
friends around me.
My parents grew exceedingly worried, and at last, they
decided to send me to New York to try to make me more competitive. At nineteen
years of age, I was transferred from the suburbs of Glasgow, with no prospects
or interests other than reading novels, to Queens, NY, where I began my real
education at Columbia University.
I intended to become an author, and my idol was – and
there was no question about that – Cornell Woolrich, the master mystery and
thriller writer, whose book “Fright” I thought was the best book I ever read,
and hence, the best novel that was ever written.
After a year, it turned out that I had absolutely no
talent for writing.
I then looked around for a real education. I soon
found that being a sailor nowadays was not only reserved for boys who had grown
up in canoes and on fishing boats but also a modern, quite technical
occupation, with a good salary, regulated work hours, and a solid pension.
I decided to try to become a sea captain.
I asked Gwen about it. She said:
“Definitely! If it is not just another of your whims,
that is!”
-----------------------------------------------------
I rushed up to Mrs. Williamsson to assist; however,
both she and Mr. Williamson showed me away.
“Now let´s see, are you really blind, Tonya? Honey!”
Nicholas, her husband, said, almost in a mocking way.
He waved his hand before her eyes as she was standing
by the railing, clutching it with both her hands, but turning her head one way
to the left, one way to the right, in what seemed a desperate try to be able to
perceive anything of the outer world.
“Oh, I see now; on the right side, I can see.”
“On the right side…?”
Nicholas Williamson mumbled, disgruntled in disbelief but definitely
more serious. His small face, a little reddish, was ridiculed by his abnormally
small nose, which always had a tremble. The head was small, too, in relation to
his body, which was 195 cm tall. Of course, as a doctor, he had known about
one-sided blindness, homonymous hemianopsia, which, if not a symptom of stroke,
is often just a hysterical condition. Still, he seemed to think that this did
not usually occur during action, but more when a person is tense and immobile.
Here they were amid wind and air, the giant ship
plunging southwards across the roaring Atlantic, and highly unlikely that any
partial blindness of that kind would ever occur, he seemed to think.
“Yes, Nick,” she panted, grabbing his flannelly coat,
”it is just so strange. I know, I know, it is odd.”
Now the Captain became visible on the stairway, high
up, and from this outpost he shouted:
“What is the matter, Mrs. Williamson?” in a high voice,
his thin black hair waving in the wind.
Midshipman Witherspoon, a young black man with a
mustache, came running, bringing a deck chair, in which Nick and I placed the
woman so troubled by her, at least for the moment, inexplicable condition.
Ruth Stork, Captain Stork´s wife, also came rushing
from the ship's aft, which she had a particular flair for, and took out a small
bottle of whisky, containing at most 2 deciliters of fluid, from her handbag.
Tonya, who saw (!) the tiny bottle, waved her away with a gesture of dismay.
“No-no, no whisky. This will pass.”, she said. ”This
will pass by itself. It is probably just a tension of the ocular nerve, or the
brain itself”, she said, broadly anatomically.
Sickness is in itself something quite out of the
ordinary. It is an aberration, and it is not very common either. And life is
such that the rareness of sickness and the sadness of many sicknesses do make
sicknesses since they are a threat, a thing handled with as much fear as
superstition. Doctors are welcomed, and doctors are feared. Doctors live amid a
non-ironic duality, unlike anything the human community has ever produced.
Doctors are people with a strange profession, and they are men and women from
Hell and Heaven.
Mr. Nick nodded professionally.
After a couple of minutes, Mrs. Williamson was
escorted by her husband to their quarters, which were far below deck on the
starboard side of the enormous m/s Punjab, which continued its journey heading
southward in the light breeze that caressed the faces of the rest of us, who
were standing on different decks.
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