The Redeemed by Tim Pears

Author:Tim Pears
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781526601049
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2018-12-05T16:10:27+00:00

8

When the holes were finally sealed in February, six twelve-inch centrifugal pumps were set up on the floating dock. A further dozen six-inch submersible pumps were placed beneath the surface. Water began to be sucked out of the great warship, and continued, hour after hour. Over the days following thousands of tons of water were pumped out. It was not possible to say exactly when the ship might be salvaged, but after a week Ernest Cox and his team knew there should be some indication. Some movement. There was none. They stood on the floating dock.

‘Turn them off,’ Cox ordered.

Divers were sent back down. Sinc Mackenzie and Nobby Hall descended in the morning. At first they could not find a problem. No holes that had been missed or some other unforeseen problem peculiar to the battleship. Then they saw that water was seeping back into the hull, through tiny leaks in the pudding joints.

Leo Sercombe and Harry Grosset were the next pair to go down, on the afternoon shift. They were told to collect a plate and bring it back for inspection. They chose the one closest to the surface where the light was best, though the sea was choppy and it was not easy to begin unscrewing the first bolt. Leo was attempting to apply the spanner when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He looked up and saw Harry pointing. Leo obeyed the direction and saw small fish nibbling at the outside of the pudding joints. They did not unscrew the plate but went up to the boat and returned with a fishing net.

The fish were identified as saithe, a species of cod, and they had been feeding off the tallow that had been spread on the outside of the joints. Tom McKenzie had a tank set up in one of the sheds, filled with seawater and populated by saithe. Then he experimented with new sealants. After a few days he found that if he mixed a little Portland cement with the tallow the fish did not eat it. With this new mixture the divers painstakingly re-covered all the pudding joints.

Once the new compound was set, Ernest Cox ordered pumping resumed. The stern of SMS Moltke was embedded in the gravel and silt of the ocean floor, her bow up off the ground. On the third day of sucking water from the ship the bow began to rise. This was no good. If there was a quantity of water trapped amidships the ship’s back could break under the strain and she would be lost, her scrap worthless. Leo watched as Ernest Cox, Tom McKenzie and Ernie McKeown tried one thing after another.

To lighten the ship’s weight at the stern, the giant propeller was loosened, worked off the shaft and hoisted out. This did not seem to help. Water was let back in and the bow lowered, and a destroyer scuppered to add its weight to that end. They pumped the water out again until the ship began to rise but it did so in a volatile manner, rolling and see-sawing, and they let her down again.

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