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The Old Sailor © Pete Newton 2013

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The Old Sailor

By Pete Newton

You couldn’t see it from the road. Martin nearly missed it when he squeezed his way

along the tow path. It was half buried in the undergrowth beneath a bank-side

willow tree. An ancient green tarpaulin was stretched across the gunwales, but in

the years since it was tied, the fabric had faded and acquired a thick coating of

mouldering leaves and mud - so that it made the wooden skiff look more like a

compost heap than an elegant old vessel. Martin sighed. No wonder it had been

advertised so cheaply, it would need weeks of work to restore - and he didn’t have

that long.

As he dug around in the mud, tentatively trying to work out what state the

boat was in, he heard someone crashing through the undergrowth. A few minutes

later, panting and sweating profusely, the red-faced owner arrived:

“Hi. I’m Steve.” He said. “I didn’t even know I had it. We only realised when

we went through some old papers at the back of the cupboard. Seems it was

included with a load of other junk when we bought the house. We’ve only been in a

year, but now we want to move. It’s pretty enough here in summer - but no-one told

us it floods every couple of weeks in winter. Gave Marcie a breakdown. We have to

sell. No choice. I’m going to lose a bloody fortune.”

Martin stopped listening once the moaning started. Steve wasn’t a boat

person. Amazingly the skiff seemed to be in pretty good shape. It was so coated in

stinking, oily mud that it seemed to have been protected from the worst ravages of

wind and tide. He had expected the planks to have at least one hole, but try as he

might he couldn’t seem to find one. Hoping it wasn’t too good to be true he turned

to Steve:

“What do you want for it?”

Even though the boat was half buried, and Steve hadn’t the first idea what it

was worth, he still drove a hard bargain. Martin ended up handing over almost all

the cash he had with him - but at least he had finally got what he was looking for. He

arranged to collect it the following weekend. He’d need all day, digging it out was

going to be a big job.

On Saturday morning he drove back over with the Landrover and a trailer

they used to take bales of hay up to the seven-acre meadow.

He had to cut the tarpaulin off; it was so rigid with the years of rotten

vegetation that had stuck to it. Next came hours of digging mud from both inside and

out. By one o’clock Martin was hot and weary, and a huge pile of sludge now

squelched beneath the willow, but the skiff was finally clear of muck and looked

almost like the lithe craft it was supposed to be.

It took another hour of dragging and cursing before Martin finally had the

skiff on the trailer and tied down with the line he had brought specially. By the time

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The Old Sailor © Pete Newton 2013

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he got home it was almost dark. He decided to get it set up in the barn and start

work the following morning.

Ice was collecting on the stays and spars just as quickly as they could chip it

off. His hands were numb, his feet felt like blocks of ice - but he knew as much as any

of them that without the constant ice clearing the superstructure would get too

heavy and they risked capsize.

The journey to Murmansk took another three days. On the next night an

explosion in the early hours announced the arrival of another U-boat. The fireball lit

up the sky for a few moments and all eyes turned in that direction, then fell to the

deck as they imagined the terrified crew floundering in the burning water. There

wasn’t any point trying to rescue them. In these seas you froze to death in under two

minutes. Best to keep going and try to keep this crew alive. The grieving could come

later.

The harbour in Murmansk was a huge rectangular bay. All the ships of the

convoy tied up around its sides - merchants and escorts - and started unloading with

the eager help of the Russians. They knew the Nazis wouldn’t be long.

The first raid came an hour later. Wave after wave of Stukas, JU88’s and

Dorniers. Albert’s job was to help feed ammunition to the machine guns mounted on

the bridge wing. Every ship in the convoy poured bullets into the sky. The

merchantmen, like them, only had machine guns and the odd pom pom, but the

Navy ships were firing everything, even four-inch guns, at the attacking bombers.

The noise was deafening. After a while all Albert could do was concentrate on

dragging the heavy ammunition boxes into place and feeding the belts of bullets as

best he could. He was deaf from the constant explosions, buffeted by the wind and

drenched from the spray of near misses.

It was terrifying. He thought the raid would never end.

But after what seemed like an age - but really only about an hour - the last

plane dumped its bombs in the water and headed off into the distance. A hush fell

over the convoy. Albert’s ears were ringing. He sagged against the bulkhead, then

noticed a commotion rippling around the ships. Sailors were lining the handrails and

pointing out to sea. He turned in that direction.

During the raid, unseen by most, a JU88 had been shot down and had crash-

landed on the waves in the middle of the harbour. The pilot must have been either a

genius or the luckiest man alive, because the plane was still in one piece, and the

crew had managed to get out and were bobbing along beside it in their inflatable

rubber dinghy. They seemed confused, uncertain what to do.

But the assembled seamen knew the drill. All around the harbour ships

started dropping scrambling nets and the crews shouted and beckoned the aircrew

to “come over ‘ere mates..”

The Germans started paddling. But then a cold fist grabbed Albert’s guts as

he realised which way they were paddling. Other sailors realised too and the shouts

from the English merchantmen got louder as the crews screeched, implored even

begged for the Germans to change direction. But it was no good. The rubber boat

and its four occupants were ever-so-slightly closer to a Polish cruiser, and, ignorant

of the consequences, that was the way they chose to paddle.

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Albert watched with a sense of complete helplessness. There had been too

much death already that day. As the aircrew slowly paddled closer to the enormous

warship, the sailors began to move away from its handrails. Then, with sickening

inevitability, the main armament of the cruiser, four turrets of eight-inch guns,

swivelled to point at the tiny rubber boat and its four pathetic occupants. Albert

hoped it was only a threat, but next moment the cruiser opened up - with every gun

on the ship. The water where the Germans had been turned into a boiling cauldron

of spray as thousands of bullets of all sizes rained onto the same spot.

Albert turned away in disgust. The English ships would have dragged the

Germans from the water, dried them out, sent them back to England as prisoners -

but not the Poles. After seeing their homeland invaded, and their families oppressed,

their hate was so intense they couldn’t help but retaliate.

Once he got going, the job turned out to be easier than he had feared. First

he removed the remains of the sludge with the jetwash, then stripped the old paint

and varnish with a hot air paint stripper. Next he filled the dozens of small holes with

plastic wood and started sanding. Thank God he didn’t need to replace any timbers,

but the sanding was bad enough. He went through a dozen packs of sanding sheets

before he was happy with the finish. The next stage was caulking, filling the gaps

between boards so that they would be water-tight. Then more sanding and finally

the fun part - primer, paint and varnish.

It took three full evenings researching the colour scheme online before he

was sure it should be white for the main part of the hull, with blue lines along the

gunwales, and all over varnish for the inside, the thwarts and the transom. In all it

took the best part of a month, but he had to admit that when it was finished it really

looked like new. Just in time too.

After the attack the whole crew felt deflated. Usually they would feel elated

at emerging from the onslaught unscathed - but the incident with the German

aircrew had soured the mood. Albert walked around the deck helping to clear up.

They hadn’t been hit in the raid, but a couple of near misses had peppered the decks

with shrapnel. A particularly large piece had smashed the captain’s skiff to pieces.

Albert felt particularly distressed at that. One of his jobs had been to keep the

beautiful rowboat in top shape so that the captain always looked good being ferried

ashore. Albert had loved that little boat. Now it was just a pile of firewood. He wiped

a tear from his cheek. Dammit. After all the death he’d seen, here he was crying over

a pile of firewood. How stupid can you get?

When the day came he picked the old boy up from the hostel at ten o’clock

sharp. Albert hated it when he was late. The journey back to the farm was

uneventful, though he could tell the old man was fretting about something. The

nurses had told him that Albert was getting more and more forgetful. Martin

wondered how many more times they would make this journey.