Saved By Tea From The Sea

Tom had just finished the second watch on the battle ship, he felt parched from the wind whipping around him at warp speed for the last hundred miles.  Fastening his oilskins around his body, he ducked below.  Immediately the womb-like warmth encased him in its cozy caress.  Greeting stoker Brown briefly, he went below to the canteen where the sight of the urn belching out steam cheered him no end.  The young sailor poured a healthy slug of the beige liquid into a tin mug and followed it up with a splash of creamy milk.  He sighed satisfactorily. 

There, he was greeted by two old chums from his schooldays back home.  John was the cheerful joker in the pack, always upbeat and funny, Clive, the scholarly, bespectacled friend, serious and introverted.  In fact, he thought wryly to himself, they were exact opposites.  He wondered where he fitted in?  Was he the middle-ground guy?  The impartial diplomat?  The peacemaker? 

The banter of the mess deck was a welcome distraction after hours of concentration.  They had expected enemy fire all night.  And the U-boats were known to be in the area.  All-in-all it didn’t make for a restful night.  The boys took their sandwiches and mugs to a nearby table.   

“What did you see on your watch?” enquired Clive. 

“Nothing to report, I’m glad to say,” retorted Tom. 

The lads had been on cleaning duty in the mess deck.  Now that they had finished there was some time for a game of cards.  Sipping his tea gratefully, Tom glanced up to see First Lieutenant Jones pass by their table. 

“There’s a fine, full moon out tonight,” he chuckled. “I reckon I could do with some fresh air.” 

John followed him jovially up the gangway stairs.  

“Come on lads!,” he shouted, “let’s go see that full moon!” 

It was about the last thing Tom felt like doing.  He had spent the previous few hours straining his eyes into the murky distance.  He didn’t recall seeing the moon at all. It had been cloudy on his shift. Reluctantly, he and Clive followed.  The incessant howl of the earlier wind had died down.  The sea seemed calm and the moonbeams bounced off the water, sparkling like champagne into the distance.   

“It really is a sight to behold!” said First Lieutenant Jones. 

The four men stood at the guard rails appreciating the soothing, lapping sounds of the sea against the boat hull.  Sipping appreciatively at their mugs of tea, they chatted quietly. The sudden glare of an explosion, which seemed to come out of nowhere, caught them all off guard.  They were like bucks caught in the glare of oncoming lights.  Then the hull ripped apart with a sickening, tearing sound.  Tom turned to find that First Lieutenant Jones and his friend Clive were gone.  Almost like a vanishing magic trick, only this was real life.  His brain couldn’t compute what he was seeing and what it could assimilate.  John was hanging onto a rope ladder, seemingly unharmed.  He was looking blankly at Tom. 

The awfulness of the situation overwhelmed the two friends.  In slow motion, they realized that they needed to get life jackets on quickly.  The ship was starting to heel to port.  Men were staggering, stupefied up on deck.  There were men in agony with legs and arms broken.  There was a great big hole in the hull.  Water was starting to rush in.  John was trying to persuade another sailor, who couldn’t swim, to trust him and jump into the sea. 

Thinking quickly, Tom rounded up three lifejackets, one for him, one for John, and one for the other sailor.  It was the most somber Tom had ever seen his friend.  The lifeboat drill that they had practiced over and over, kicked in and they, together with other crew lowered one of the lifeboats down the side of the boat.  At least it was in working condition, thought Tom.  How many shipwreck stories hadn’t he read as a boy, where the lifeboats, at the crucial hour, were found to be useless.  He gave thanks for that and proceeded to pay out the ropes which held the lifeboats fast to the boat. 

The lifeboat should take a good thirty men, he reckoned.  The possibility that another torpedo could strike at any minute was in the back of all their minds.  With haste, they clambered aboard as soon as the lifeboat hit the water.  Luckily, they were still wearing their night watch oilskins.  But, as for rations or any other small luxury, well that was wishful thinking.   

From their lowered position, they could see the hole in the hull.  It was truly, an awful sight.  The whole galley was gone.  Where they had been sitting just ten minutes ago!  If Lieutenant Jones had not persuaded them to come up on deck at that point, they would also be dead.  The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on the men and they said a little prayer for their two fallen comrades and all the others who hadn’t made it.  How they even thought to do this in their shocked state was a marvel to Tom when he thought about the situation years later.  But they all owed their lives to lieutenant Jones. 

The shouts of men in the sea around them, the oil slick sticking to them and making swimming impossible, was awful.  Flotsam and jetsam, bits of clothing and shoes bobbed around their boat.  They rowed away from the sinking ship as fast as they could.  They knew the penalty for getting caught in the suction as the ship went down, which she was definitely going to do. 

Drumming up energy from the depths of shock and fear, the seamen rowed as far and as hard as they could.  The full moon lit up the tragedy like a stage set.  Only, it wasn’t.  It was real. 

The shock started to kick in and they began to shiver to a man.  Some men groaned in pain; others were quiet.  There was no warm tea to be had.  No warm blankets or comforting words.  They were out in the universe on an unforgiving, black sea with little chance of immediate rescue. 

John tried to see the positive side, apart from the fact that they were alive.   

“Well lads”, he said, “we are such a wee, small boat that those U-boats won’t find us.” 

Nobody laughed.  Tom must have dozed before dawn, when he awoke after a fitful sleep, he thought he heard a propeller in the distance.  But, no, it was his overactive mind.  Tom worried they were in the commercial shipping lane and might get run over by large ships.  They had emergency water and some dry biscuits, but that was all.   

Their boat was out of sight now.  She must have sunk, they reckoned.  There was no chance of saving any more souls.  Their lifeboat was as full as it could be, not a spare inch of space to be had. About 40 men were crammed into every available space.  They had no radio, they had no shade or any other navigational aids. And, they were heavily overloaded. 

John said he had done a sextant course in navigation.   

“Tonight, I will attempt to navigate by the stars”, he said magnanimously.  

The Mediterranean, where their ship had gone down, was much bigger than any of the men had thought.   

“It’s not a pond, is it?” said one chap. 

“No, it isn’t,” said John, “and it can get quite stormy sometimes.” 

“I think we need to get out of this shipping lane,” another fellow said. 

“Yes, I agree,” Tom assented, “and away from U boat alley.” 

They were all quiet for a bit.  They were feeling very vulnerable.  Exposed. Bald. And for many of the men, the shock that they had lost some of their childhood friends, was starting to kick in. The sun beat down on them.  Nobody had hats with them, they had been lost in the chaos.  John had the bright idea of making some four-cornered handkerchief hats.  The handkerchiefs were standard issue. This, at least, gave them some protection.  Very soon they looked like a boatload of British pensioners on a day out at the seaside.  But the atmosphere wasn’t jovial. 

The incessant thirst got to them all.  With no rain forecast, there was no hope of fresh water.    Then, the hunger pangs started.  After the shock subsided, they felt weak and shaky.   

They rationed themselves to a biscuit a day and two sips of water.  They rowed for an hour and rested for an hour.  That seemed to be a sensible decision, thought Tom.  They needed to preserve their energy at all costs.  After the sun had passed overhead at midday, a flying fish landed with a wet thud in their midst.  They regarded it in amusement.  It flapped and gasped and eventually died.  No one could yet face eating raw fish.  Not while there were still some dried biscuits left. 

“Very healthy, it is!  Eaten raw”, said John, “my dad used to just squeeze lemon over raw fish.  I never got used to the taste.”  

Everyone winced inwardly. They didn’t feel that desperate just yet. 

Tom ran his hand over his chin, it felt all stubbly already.  Looking at the rest of the crew, he realized that they all looked like shipwrecked sailors, which they were. 

 The heat of the day beat down mercilessly on them, but night time had its own challenges.  The mist and cold of the sea engulfed them.  They shivered to a man and their bodies started to ache with the effort of sitting upright for twenty-four hours.  Fighting and disagreement broke out now and again. 

Their backs ached from the unaccustomed action of rowing, which was difficult to do as their lifeboat was so full.  This was very different from life on a big battleship.  Suddenly it didn’t matter if you were the captain or the cook, everyone was on the same level.  They had all been reduced, by one stroke, to being survivors.  Or at least they would be, thought Tom ruefully, if they did survive this ordeal. 

John’s gallant offer of navigating by the stars paid some dividends.  The first night had been cloudy but after that they were blessed with clear, starlit night skies.  He took a bearing off the Southern Cross.  He admitted that he was rather rusty, having not used this particular talent since his teenage scouting days.  But they reckoned, they had nothing to lose. 

“By my reckoning,” John announced on the third day at sea,” we are making towards Spain’s southern coast.” 

“Are we out of the shipping lanes,” asked everyone anxiously, seeing themselves getting run over by and enormous freighter. 

“Not really,” came back the answer, “we will have to escalate the rowing and make for Valencia or thereabouts,” said John. 

Next day the motley crew of thirty-seven surviving sailors rowed every half hour.  Three men had succumbed to their wounds in the night.  It was burial at sea, and after a few prayers, they were gently lowered into the brine. 

A seagull perched at the front of the boat on the fourth day.  Despite a lunge by some of the sailors it managed to escape.  The survivors were starting to feel desperate for some protein, alive or dead.  Their earlier reticence with the fish had given way. Their energies were sapped by the rowing.  On the fifth day some flotsam from their boat floated by on the current.  Realizing that this was a Spanish bound current they rowed with it. Ah, Tom thought to himself, that’s what has been exhausting us, we have been rowing across this current. 

A smudge of smoke on the horizon on their fifth day at sea raised all their hopes.  It was a small fishing boat.  Far too small to rescue a boatload of thirty-seven souls.  They took out the flares from the locker but it was useless, they were damp. John stood up in the boat, dangerously rocking it from side to side.  He yelled and screamed at the top of his lungs at the little, smudgy boat.  He waved a piece of white rag that he had torn from someone’s shirt. 

“Careful”, one sailor said, “could be a Jerry boat,” 

“I actually don’t care at this stage,” John retorted, “as long as we get off this damn boat in one piece.” 

“That’s not very patriotic!” another sailor shouted. 

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Tom tried to cool the situation. 

Someone shouted from the prow suddenly. 

“Ahoy! That little boat looks like it's heading this way,” disbelievingly. 

To the utter relief and amazement of everyone on board, the little fishing smack had made a right turn and was steaming valiantly in their direction.  It appeared to be flying a Spanish flag.  There were five men on board, none of them spoke English. 

Once again, John the joker, came to the rescue by dredging up his schoolboy Spanish from prep school.   

“Hola!” he greeted. 

None of the other sailors could follow a word of what followed but it appeared that the lifeboat was about fifty miles off Valencia.  The captain of the fishing smack said he would try and tow them the last bit. He threw them a line and one of the sailors secured it around the prow. They sent a basket of dried fish across the line for the famished sailors to eat a little protein before the final stage.   

And so it was that the boatload of torpedoed battleship survivors, made its incongruous way, into the port of Valencia, towed by a small, Spanish fishing boat.  The relief they all felt was palpable.  Tom and the men, cold, oil-slicked and miserable were never more grateful to berth in a harbor.  The captain came down from his crow's nest and shook their hands to a man.  The reek of fish was everywhere but nobody cared.  The fishing boat was loaded to the hilt with his daily catch for sale at the harbor.  Out of a massive battleship of 700 sailors, only this small handful of lucky souls survived. 

The captain invited them back to his cottage.  It was small, cozy, slightly smokey smelling. Tom realized there was a fireplace inside the kitchen.  They shuffled in, glad to be out of the elements for the first time in ten days.  John had been their saving grace with his navigating and rudimentary Spanish. 

But, the cherry on the top was the captain’s wife making every last man a warm, steaming cup of hot, sugary tea.  She had some homemade bread to go with the tea.  Nothing had tasted so good. Every last man sighed with relief and gratitude that they had made it and at the end of the journey, to be greeted by a very welcome cup of tea, seemed surreal. They gave her a hug of appreciation and even though she didn’t understand them, she grinned back.  It was like a little piece of home had engulfed them in its warm embrace.