Merchantmen-at-arms : the British merchants' service in the warBone, David W. (David William)
History
Merchantmen-at-arms : the British merchants' service in the war
Bone, David W. (David William)
Merchant marine -- Great Britain; World War, 1914-1918 -- Naval operations
On the second ship the receding water-line exposes the damage to her
engine- and boiler-rooms. A litter of coal and oily scum showers from
angles of the wrecked bunker and stokehold to the floor of the dock, and
leaves the fractured beams and tubes to stand out in gaunt twist and
deformity. Through the breaches the shattered cylinders and broken
columns of the engines lie distorted in a piled raffle of wrenched pipe
sections, valves and levers, footplates, skeleton ladders, and shafting.
The mass of distorted metal has still a shine and token of polish, and
these signs of late care and attention only serve to make the ruin seem
the more complete and irremediable.
An hour later a strident power syren sounds out from roof of the repair
'shops.' The workmen, hurrying to 'check in' at the gates, scarcely
glance at their new jobs on the blocks of the dry-dock. To them it seems
quite a commonplace that the round of their industry should suffer no
halt, that the two seaworthy ships they completed yesterday should be so
quickly replaced by the same type of casualty for their attention. The
magnitude of the task--the vast extent of plating to be sheared and
rebuilt, the beams to be withdrawn or straightened in place, the litter
to be cleared--holds no misgivings. Short on the stroke of 'turn to'
they straggle down the dockside to start the round anew. With critical
eye, foremen and surveyors chalk off the cypher of their verdicts on the
rusted displaced remnants; the gangs apportion and assemble with tools
and gear; the huge travelling cranes rumble along on their railways, and
lower slings and hooks in readiness for a load of damaged steel.
With the men lined out to the gangways and filing down the dock steps,
chain linking in trial over the crane sheaves, and the bustle of
preparation on ship and shore, everything seems set for an instant
beginning--but no hammer falls as yet. There is, first, a sad freight to
be discharged; not all the crew of the ship with the wrecked engines
have gone to the pay-table. Three sombre closed wagons are waiting by
the dockside, and towards them down the long gangways from the ship, the
bodies of an engineer and some of the stokehold crew are being carried.
The weltering flood that held them has drained to the dock, and busy
hands have searched in the wreckage where they died at their post.
We have no flags to honour, no processional march to accompany our dead.
Their poor bodies, dripping and fouled, are draped in a simple coarse
shroud that hardly conceals the line of their mangled limbs. Awkwardly
the carriers stumble on the sodden planking and rest arms and knees on
the guiding hand-lines. The workmen pause on the ship and gangways and
look respectfully, if curiously, at the limp burdens as they are carried
by.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account