Torpedoed: Chapters 14–20

The torpedo had been tyrannous and strong. Dozens of people had already died. But it wasn’t over yet. The storm was tyrannous and strong, too. And it wasn’t letting up.

And now here he was holding a dying woman in his arms, surrounded by bodies, being pelted with freezing rain and hail on a tumultuous ocean.

Eric and Jack devised a system of tying themselves in knots so they could stay on the raft as it went up and down the high waves.

Ship’s biscuits—or hardtack—are made of only flour, water, and a little salt. They are hard and dry and don’t taste like anything much. But if you can manage to get one down, it will fill you up.

The other lascar had managed to lash himself up, too, and he was still alive, but Bess thought he was delirious. He kept praying, saying God’s name over and over again.

There had been one great calamity after another, Bess thought. And then a huge wave came, and she was sure it was the end.

At some point Beth managed to entwine her hands in some rope, but Bess couldn’t get to the rope.

The Bechs didn’t know there was food on their raft. Sustenance would have helped keep their energy up, helped them stay awake.

The aunt had sent ecstatic letters saying she’d look after her and Louis.

There’s a red sail on the horizon!
Of course there isn’t, her mother said. It was probably a hallucination.

When his lifeboat was in a trough, Colin would imagine that when he rose up on the next wave there would be a ship.

What Simms and his crew didn’t know was just how bad the situation was: That so many lifeboats had not lowered well. That some had tipped over, dumping passengers into the water. That many had taken on so much water that children had drowned in the boats. That most of the children were clad only in pajamas.

The wake from a large ship could easily topple a raft or an unsteady lifeboat.

Meanwhile, the number of survivors continued to dwindle. Some lifeboats had no live people on them. Some, like Colin’s, had only a few.

They asked each other, Would you rather be torpedoed at sea or bombed at home? Torpedoed at sea! was the resounding answer every time.

A sailor picked her up and carried her to a room by the ship’s funnel, or flue. It’s where sailors went to warm up after coming off watch.

Simms continued to maneuver slowly through the boxes on the grid, the crew on lookout all around the ship, at the bow and the stern, starboard and port, in the crow’s nest. They saw nothing—just the empty ocean, no lifeboats, no rafts, no debris, mile after painstaking mile—for two hours.

He was so very cold. And immersed in salt water for so long, his skin had become very soft. Too soft. He couldn’t use his hands at all.

Was the boy delirious? Eric panicked. The thought was an ominous one. If Jack’s mind was going, his body was, too.

Perhaps, Jack thought, as weak and compromised as McGlashan was, he still knew the difference between an imagined sound and a real one.

“Clinging on for dear life.” That phrase was never so apt as it was for Bess holding on to the keel.

She didn’t tell Beth; she didn’t want to raise her hopes unduly.

They had been holding on for so long, they were stuck. She couldn’t budge them. So Albert Gorman carefully pried off her fingers, one by one, bending them back as gently as he could, releasing their grip.

Then Gorman and another sailor made a kind of harness for Colin, tying a rope under his armpits. Colin couldn’t help at all, and so they slowly and gingerly, very carefully, to do no harm, lifted him up.

She had made it through a harrowing twenty hours.

The doctor knew, of course, what a hard ordeal she had been through.

It was a grueling night for Louis and Rex and everyone else in their boat.

But for so many, for most, the loss was unfathomable.

The Children’s Overseas Reception Board wishes me to convey its very deep sympathy with you in your bereavement.

Hitherto there have been no casualties among the thousands of children sent overseas.

As a parent I can realise the anguish that this letter must cause you and the great sadness which will be brought into your home.

I should like to assure you how profoundly I, personally, sympathise with you and how deeply I share your grief.

The Children’s Overseas Reception Board wishes me to convey to you its very deep sympathy in your grievous loss.

Mary Cornish’s younger sister, Eileen Paterson, was bereft. Their mother had died when Eileen was very young. When their father remarried, Eileen took it very hard. From that time on, she had depended on Mary.

Eileen was married, with two small children, and she had been distraught when Mary went off as a CORB escort. She couldn’t wait for her sister to come back and be close by again.