Run the Storm by George Michelsen Foy

Author:George Michelsen Foy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

10

The seas Joaquin churns up at its center, according to the latest forecast received, must by now be well over fifteen feet in height, driven by winds of seventy knots. As night falls El Faro is navigating an ocean environment far less dramatic, but the wind is still increasing in strength. The swells from the northeast have not stopped building, they are approaching ten feet and the ship, which thanks to her sea-kindly lines still rides easily, is nonetheless feeling the storm’s deeper motion the way a person on a king-size mattress will jiggle when her partner, though on the bed’s other side, rolls or shifts.

In the galley, Lashawn, Quammie, and Jordan have prepared and served a supper menu featuring jerk chicken, rice and peas, a dish popular with the unlicensed crew, though less so with some of the mates—“It’s just food,” one of them comments dismissively. After the meal is officially over at seven thirty, they load the dishwashers and once again secure for weather, stowing anything loose or breakable in lockers or refrigerators.

Captain Davidson is still on the bridge when the watch changes at 8:00 p.m., and he oversees the transition from Chief Mate Shultz and four-to-eight deckhand Frank Hamm to Third Mate Riehm and AB Jackson. Davidson briefs the incoming mate on the San Salvador detour: “Before it got dark we altered course, picked a new route to get farther from the hurricane,” he explains.

The new course is 150 degrees. Their present speed is nineteen knots, which, as the captain remarks, is a good clip, though the ship is capable of more. The diversion should keep them well away, or forty miles in any case, from the storm’s center. “San Salvador is gonna afford a lot of lee. . . . We’ll just bust on to get down. . . . We’ll be passing clear on the backside of it. Just keep steaming, our speed is tremendous right now. The faster we’re goin’ the better,” the captain insists. “This will put wind on the stern a little more, it’s gonna give us a push.” Even tomorrow morning Davidson will repeat, almost as if he’s trying to convince himself, his ship “will be on the upside”; the storm will have raged on past.

In most disasters there exists a moment in the timeline, of which observers say later, “Here is where such and such a factor might have halted the chain reaction of accident.” And it’s tempting now to refer back to the broken anemometer, because if Davidson had benefited from a constant, accurate read of wind direction, coupled with data from the (working) barometer, he soon would have realized that a consistent northeast wind and falling atmospheric pressure meant that the ship could not be “clear on the backside” of a tropical cyclone. But the anemometer is broken, and the idea of coming safety remains intact, for the captain at least: and surely the image in everyone’s mind as they hear the captain talk must be of clearing

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.