Lifeboat 7

LIFEBOAT 7

By

Stephen Studach

Copyright © Stephen Studach 1995

This ebook edition © 2015

All rights reserved

This is an IndieMosh book

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Cover art by Leonardo González

Licence Notes

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Dedication:

To the black art of horror pulp, and all of its practitioners.

Lifeboat 7:

1939.

Night, upon the vast dark sea.

Something large slides upon and through the swell of ancient, unfathomed depth, its course firm and steady.

The sea breathes deep, rising and restless, but its smoothness only broken slightly, its foaming teeth bared only on the crest of mild waves, and about the iron hulled shape that slices along upon its barely bristling back.

The sea a liquid twin to the mighty ocean of night. Distant storm clouds gather, thunderous, illuminated by the glaring cautions of internal and external lightnings.

The luxury steamship liner is low lit as it glides onwards, triple funnels blackly venting burnt offerings up and back on breeze to the elements.

As it passes there is the muffled sound of motors, turbines, generators, pulsing... Jazz music wafts and trails invisibly out on the air; Fred Astaire’s voice, cheerful singing ghost from a gramophone, urges Slap that bass! The musical message by George and Ira Gershwin fades as the liner moves on.

Disaster struck the large ocean liner late upon that night in the Atlantic. The night was abruptly lit with garish red flame. Destruction leapt up in red, orange and yellow, danced and expanded to chaos’ dreadful symphony. Rending, tearing, shouting, screaming. The ripping and warping of metal, small explosions of chain reaction. Crackling and consuming of fire. The awful listing, lurching, leaning of a dying ship. Smoke, steam, hissing and blood. Added to all this and the siren was the noise of human panic, blent with the general cacophony.

The passenger liner was a three funnelled ship with four screws and an eighty thousand gross tonnage. Steam driven, with a twenty five to thirty knot service speed. Twelve boilers, four turbo generators, four electric motors. ‘The Empress’ S.S. Lauriston, carrying fifteen hundred passengers, was a fine ship of her class that was now being meticulously demolished. Within fifteen minutes of the first blast and fire there were already twenty people dead.

Escape boats were lowered. Some made it to the flame lit ruddy waters, empty or near to. Others dropped from their ‘cradles’, with or without human cargo, falling disastrously, lines sundered, tangled or released unevenly. Yes, panic lent a full and generous hand.  Some of the life saving boats were left untouched, not even lowered by their pulleys. One or two others burnt, still held, aflame, in their radial davits. Such was the violence of the ship’s actions that many of the boats, free in descent or partially moored, gonged against the liner’s port or starboard like great fists of wood. Abruptly unmanned and unmonitored steel cable lines squealed in their own voices of panic as they dropped their oft overloaded live cargo, at speed, to the hard impact of the water seventy or eighty feet below. 

Some people leapt from the large liner, to take their chances in the chill water, a few afire as they did so, jumping or falling, burning and screaming. Shrieking, plummeting, human torches. But the sounds of terror, fire and rending and explosive report, were many and competitive. Screams here were a mere feeble accompaniment, if a regular one. Many of the engine crew had died in the initial blasts. The human turmoil on deck was akin to that of ants on a disturbed nest. Some of the crew frenziedly tried to organise and direct, giving orders to a multi-headed and legged beast that could not be controlled, other crew gave up or joined the howling beast of panic whose only wish, it seemed, was to flee and to destroy itself through fear. There were more than a few crushings and tramplings beneath such horror-driven hooves.

Explosions gave way to constant, busy flames. Thick acrid smoke swept all about.  Large gouts of steam burst up, dragon breaths of doom.

Finally a number of lifeboats were successfully launched, several grossly overloaded.  Even as they were lowered, people slid down their guide lines or leapt daringly, uncaringly, onto them. Once in the water the long, large wooden boats were rowed hurriedly clear.  The main boiler was perhaps yet to blow, the heart of the seagoing victim yet to give out and result in its death belch and spasm.

From what was hopefully a safe distance the motley and harried collection of people aboard lifeboat seven, a couple of whom had been fished from the water, watched, with stunned and horrified gaze, the liner’s last moments.

Around an hour later (it may have been an hour or considerably less than half that, for in such circumstances time is perverted), with the eyes of an eleven-year-old boy, one of the frantically assembled occupants of lifeboat seven saw the great main blast of the boiler which burst upwards blindingly and ripped through the central, vital part of the ship. He felt the concussion, his ears ached at the deafening blast. He saw shrapnel and debris, burning or scorching hot, fragmented pieces of – everything, flung and dropped for miles about. Everyone on the lifeboat had flinched or cringed at the booming, cracking blast, ducked or shielded themselves from the spread message and falling tokens of its news, though clear of most of these. All this the passengers of seven viewed even as they were drawn away by the risen sea currents. Taken clear of that scene which was lit for miles about by its centrepiece of flaming, hissing destruction.

Then, the boy, along with most, but not all, of the others (for a couple worked through their shock to keep the boat on some sort of a course, and one or two did not want to see) saw the ship list in what to them was a near impossible motion, as it rolled over on one side (to the point where its massive funnels took in the Atlantic in forced gulps) covering many of the yelling, screaming, tiny figures still in the water about it or in similar lifeboats, drifting, swimming or trying to desperately row free. Its great, tilting, black and red funnels belched smoke and steam, vast metal mouths of shipwrights’ hell. The liner, its white and blue luxury marred, ragged, smoke and blast besmirched, flame ravaged, bottom bound, now slowly considered submergence, to hide its shame and the atrociousness of the act, the rapine, that had been perpetrated upon it. Wounded deep in the bowels the ship let out a bellow from its vicinity that was more like the sound of a massive beast than a fair, ocean-going monarch. Then, amidst more explosions, the great stricken ship tilted up, bow slowly rising massively from the water, and with some last shuddering groans, geysers of steam and fiery wavings of adieu it slowly began to sink into its rippling, swirling grave, dragging many poor struggling souls in the water down with it…

Even as the upright edifice to folly was disappearing the ocean was delivering its own strong sweeps, to erase the blight of it and to scatter the survivors of its legacy, like ashes and still lambent coals upon water. The boy thought of his parents and his baby sister.

Disaster. It was Nineteen Thirty Nine and a large majority of the liner’s one thousand five hundred passengers and six hundred and fifty crew were, or soon would be, no more.  Many drifted in the waters, stunned or dead. The living, doubtful of rescue, awaiting exhaustion, exposure, or the sharks who would turn the water to a red stew of nightmare.  Some struggled in life-or-deaths with the smothering sea. Others clung to varied debris. The ship, for reasons known only to its captain and his few higher ranking officers, had not been on a standard course. Because of the times, the cruiser had been travelling minimally lit this night. There had not even been time to radio an SOS signal before the bridge had been devastated. A few flares went up, but, so far from busy shipping lanes, and in the face of nearing storm and military tensions, doubtful was their good. In sudden stillness the relatively flat areas of dark water would emit the sounds of calling, moans and crying for some time to come. More screams would come later as well, like chill freshets in the brined and liquid dark. A storm was now to be added to the surviving human woe. Wise ones in the survivor boats lashed down and prepared for rough weather. Only a handful of boats had fully escaped, these soon adrift from each other, scattered by the winds from the louring skies and the increasingly turbulent ocean’s threat and will.

Lifeboat seven was one of these.

Passenger List:

First day:

Sunlight, shattered and bright on water. Shimmering ghost of that light reflected onto a raw wooden hull, black stencilled upon those boards the proclamation: LIFEBOAT 7.

Save for a few small areas left open for air, a green tarpaulin seals the top of the lifeboat, like the taut skin on a drum.

The boat drifted. Having outlasted the storm, which had so cruelly been called up as if, by some ill will, in answer to the passenger liner’s sinking. The crashing, rising and falling of the savage sea and loud thunder and flashes of lightning had terrified many of those trapped in the boat beneath the stretched overlay of protective canvas, which several of the men had fastened over them at the gunwales or outer washstrake. The uninitiated had been particularly appalled, afeared and in awe at the spectacular demonstration of nature. They were placated and kept assured and fairly calm by the more seasoned seafaring veterans among them.

The storm lasted several hours. But, for all its crashing, thumping, listing and rocking, the double-ended lifeboat – pointy at both ends to divide oncoming waves, and equipped with built in ballast and flotation devices – weathered the ruckus well.

The unfamiliar route that their liner had been following had taken them along by the edge of maritime wilderness. By the time the storm was over they were well and truly out in it. Opening the canvas a little during the dark of morning, after the worst of it was over, a few of the men had looked out. But the ordeal had been exhausting and nerve-racking and most had settled into a near immediate sleep, much of the canvas, save for those few air openings, left securely fastened.

Yes, they were well into the wilderness now, the ‘wilderness of surge’. Where the wild beasts of water roam. They had been carried, and had drifted, out of regular shipping lanes God only knew how far.

Now it drifted, lifeboat seven, on an infinitely calmer sea under a bright and brightening sun.

It was ship’s purser John Philips’ short cut, sandy haired head that first poked, peeked, peered, out from a gap in the canvas.

Sunlight. Morning, not that early, perhaps eight?

Philips checked his wristwatch, hearing others moving about around and behind him in the now stale and overheated air of the canvassed confines.

His watch was, perhaps unsurprisingly, not working. But someone would have one that would be operational. The sun’s position told him that his assumption of the time was somewhere near correct. He began uncinching the canvas edge’s metal eyelets from their hooks along the boat’s outer lip. Not that it mattered much, the time. Other sleep muddled, groggy-headed men began to sit up, nod blurred greetings to him, mutter, help unfasten the canvas. Most of them probably headachy like himself from the stuffy enclosure and tight air. Philips knew from a former rough counting that there were up to fifteen bodies on board.

He flung a large part of the sturdy canvas back, half standing now, stretching cracking muscles and bones. In peeling back the tarpaulin he had noted blinking men, women, a boy, faces raw as pearls in a newly opened clam shell. The open air a refreshment, others joined him and further canvas was furled back like an odd sort of sardine can’s cover. Like resurrected corpses the others began to rise; some only to sit up, others daring a full stretch on shaky feet, all squinting in the sunlight.

One man, a stoutly made fellow of around forty or so, more active than the rest, had furled the canvas completely back and was rolling and tying it at the stern, ready for re-use if required. Philips recognised him as a crew member, not only from his blue pants and white T-shirt. Lincoln was it? Though dry now he and several others had evidently taken a dunking. He glanced at his watch again, alas, he couldn’t blame that for its inability. He’d managed to remain relatively dry this time. He could recall Lincoln – yes Lincoln, from engineering? – fishing himself out of the drink last night, as the Lauriston was still afloat and burning. And, quite a while after, he and a couple of others helping another – that young black man over there, out of the water.

Regarding the sun he thought they might very well want that tarp called into play again later.

Philips looked away from the more immediate matters for a few moments and out to the enormity of the larger situation.

No, he did not need a watch to tell him what was what here. What had happened, what their current predicament was. It was the same no matter what the time. Catastrophe. And the one great element that they were now involved with and would have to come to terms with, for however long a period.

The sea.

Miles of it in every direction, except up. And up, there was miles of sky.

The dark blue of the fairly flat, never still sea. Unchanging, null, void of anything save water and small wavelets. The light blue of the sky, for the present, cloudless, for as far as human eyesight could define.

The world, their world, was of two planes. Two states. Two elements. Air and water.  Motionless sky and suspending sea. The latter buoyed them up in its vast liquid grasp, the former merely blankly watched, with perhaps light whispers of comment. A blanket of blue insanity above them, a shifting mattress of darker blue-green below.

For the senses there was only this – endless, promiseless sky and sea to view, a light breeze to feel, or cold water, timber (part of their other world in microcosm), or canvas, the sound of creaking wood or lapping ocean at the hull, the taste of salt tang (which was more drawn in nasal passages and lungs than on tongue) the taste of fearful uncertainty.

But it was alright. They had a good chance of survival. John Philips had been through this once before, and he based any positive outlook upon that and his knowledge thus incurred.

Then Philips turned and noticed everyone else, or the bulk of them, this varied group of mostly strangers thrown together by a capricious fate into this small, gently moving world within a larger, much larger, one, looking about out there as well. The rest were looking at him. Soon all of them were. Perhaps his activity, the uniform of white shirt,  blue ship’s naval jacket and dark blue pants marked him as someone with leadership powers or some modicum of authority? Some of them at least would know him as the ship’s purser. Maybe they looked to him because he seemed calm, or because he, unlike quite a few of them, still had his shoes on. Shiny black ones, socks as well. Heck, he considered silently with a grin, I still have my underwear on as well, and it’s clean. He wondered thus about the rest of them.

Though his association with nautical matters was probably less than any of the other three crewmen he saw aboard the lifeboat (he recognised two and vaguely so a third) he knew that if they all worked together they could come out of this alright. He had, after all, done so once already.

Some of the others had started to talk amongst themselves, mingling, if you will.  Sitting, crouched or kneeling to various degrees in a twenty seven foot lifeboat gently bobbing God knew how far out in the Atlantic Ocean, it was certainly not a cocktail party.  At least none of them were hysterical or panicking, though some were very quiet and still.

Philips did a headcount again, more leisurely this time, as he looked about at the other occupants of the boat, smiling as some looked back at him, met his eyes with oft uncertain ones.

Thirteen in all including himself. Unlucky number he thought briefly in passing.  During the count he professionally considered more than the tally: three females, one elderly – in her late fifties at least – one child (he grinned and winked at the boy), three other crew members. One of the crewmen black – the only black on board – you had to consider Everything. Most everyone seemed in good shape, considering. Good. All seemed to have a brave face on it. Good.

They were in a decent vessel; sturdy, strong, and roomy enough with only thirteen passengers. Clinker-built, these boats were old but reliable and quite serviceable for their function. As with the majority of ships ‘The Empress’ had cut costs in some areas and allowed neglect to settle in as berth and cargo in others, therefore Philips was wary as well. However, he had much faith in the craft they sheltered in, the thin shield that would, for however short or long a time period, be between them and the elements. A shield comprised of oak, Canadian rock elm, copper, brass, galvanised iron and protective sealants. The unpainted, sealed and varnished timber boat, with its tightly joined fore-to-aft running planking, seemed to have weathered the storm quite well. He rapped his knuckles upon the outer timber as he surveyed the boat, for luck if nothing else.

The talk had dropped, almost to silence again. Propping himself in the prow of the boat the thirty-five-year-old John Philips took a deep mental breath and addressed himself to the rest of them. The time for introductions, explanations and general talk was here.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am John Philips, purser of... former purser of ‘The Empress’ S.S. Lauriston, which we all saw meet her maker last night. He noted an elderly man sitting on one of the thwarts or plank cross-strut seats, grinning at his adjustment mid-sentence. He was dressed in a white suit, holding a black leather Gladstone bag in his arms. He had a white panama on his head, round lensed spectacles upon his nose, and a neat moustache above his lips. This man had shoes on.

There was a rising murmur of talk now amongst the civilian passengers.

Until the elderly gentleman in white spoke, concise voice clear above the murmuring.

I for one, am happy to listen to whatever you have to say to us, Mr Philips.

The calm man in the panama looked about briefly at the others.

"As I suspect that we