Yanto's Summer by Ray Pickernell

Author:Ray Pickernell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Accent Press

Fourteen

BACK TO WORK

Nat Asnett was feeling good. His transition back to life on the tugs was progressing smoothly. On the Monday morning, he had joined his old tug, the Resolution, which he found had been converted from steam to diesel engines in his absence.

The great throbbing diesels were cleaner, easier to work on, and more efficient, but he found they lacked the charisma and the excitement of the old steam engines which he remembered with affection. Sam Torrence was the skipper now, and Nat liked him from the start. He was a short, stocky man of forty-eight, with a mane of red hair that warned of a terrible temper, and gave a ring of truth to the stories Nat had heard about him not suffering fools gladly. Sam seemed to take to Nat also.

They were both ex-Royal Navy, with Sam doing his bit as a stoker with the Grand Fleet during the First War, and had seen action at the Battle of Jutland. ‘I was in when they were needing ’em, not feeding ’em,’ he said to Nat with a laugh, during their first conversation.

The work was more or less the same as Nat remembered. Picking up the silt barges was a never-ending chore, because it was only the constant work of the dredgers that kept Sharpness viable as an inland port. Then there were the regular trips up the canal to Gloucester Docks, with cereal and timber barges which Nat remembered as the most boring part of the job.

It was on the Wednesday of his second week that the Resolution went out into the estuary for her first trip downriver since Nat had joined her.

A larger than average steamer bound for Sharpness had been told to lighten her load at Avonmouth before proceeding. To navigate the narrow deep water corridor, which snaked between the sandbanks that abounded further upstream, was difficult enough at the best of times, but an overloaded ship could make it downright hazardous.

The ship’s deck cargo had been offloaded into lighters, and the Resolution had been ordered to Avonmouth to bring them on up to Sharpness. This was the tug work that Nat liked best.

The normal working crew of the Resolution, when engaged on canal and dock duties, was three. Sam, Nat, and Sam’s only son, Terry, who was seventeen years old and a promising light-middleweight with the Berkeley Boxing Club. He was also the apple of Sam’s eye. When on river duty, a fourth member was called for, so prior to their departure, Otis Summers, or Hairpin as he was known in dockland, came aboard. Hairpin was a tall, skinny, gangling man of fifty, and had been with the waterways for years. Nat remembered him from his old tug days.

After waiting for high water in the lock, the great dock gates were opened and they moved out into the racing grey waters of the river. As they cleared the dock entrance, it began to drizzle. It was the first rain for some weeks and Nat found it refreshing.

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