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  Blue Blood

  Peter Tonkin

  Table of Contents

  Wolf Rock

  Chapter 1: The Bishop

  Chapter 2: The Run

  Chapter 3: The Howl

  Chapter 4: The Wreck

  Chapter 5: The Rescue

  Chapter 6: The Reef

  Chapter 7: The Time

  Chapter 8: The Loss

  Chapter 9: The Last Calm Day

  Chapter 10: The Falling Glass

  Chapter 11: The Gathering Storm

  Chapter 12: The Road to Lookout

  Chapter 13: Inquiry

  Chapter 14: Arrest

  Chapter 15: Snow Job

  Chapter 16: In Charge

  Chapter 17: Bail

  Chapter 18: Bank

  Chapter 19: Pleas

  Chapter 20: Directions

  Chapter 21: Disclosure

  Chapter 22: Desperation

  Chapter 23: Touch

  Chapter 24: Go

  Chapter 25: Whip Hand

  Chapter 26: Trial

  Chapter 27: Error

  Chapter 28: Killing

  Chapter 29: Taking Stock

  Chapter 30: The Hard Place

  Chapter 31: The Light

  Chapter 32: The Rock

  Cape Farewell

  Acknowledgements

  One

  Rogue

  Two

  Wave

  Three

  Catch

  Four

  Impact

  Five

  Raft

  Six

  Rescue

  Seven

  Driven

  Eight

  Contact

  Nine

  Catch

  Ten

  Calm

  Eleven

  Situation

  Twelve

  Jonah

  Thirteen

  Stirring

  Fourteen

  Hunter-Killer

  Fifteen

  Power

  Sixteen

  Wait

  Seventeen

  Love

  Eighteen

  Damage

  Nineteen

  Bulkhead

  Twenty

  Pressure

  Twenty-One

  Tension

  Twenty-Two

  Air

  Twenty-Three

  Storm

  Twenty-Four

  Cape

  Twenty-Five

  Farewell

  High Wind in Java

  Chapter 1: Angel Passing

  Chapter 2: Landing Site

  Chapter 3: Tai Fun

  Chapter 4: First Night

  Chapter 5: Sailing Plans

  Chapter 6: Pulau Baya

  Chapter 7: Land

  Chapter 8: Under Sail

  Chapter 9: Once Over

  Chapter 10: Fire Down Below

  Chapter 11: Slide

  Chapter 12: Impact

  Chapter 13: Pontianac

  Chapter 14: Council

  Chapter 15: Paddy

  Chapter 16: Orang-Utan

  Chapter 17: Ramin

  Chapter 18: Bambang

  Chapter 19: Fire

  Chapter 20: Makassar

  Chapter 21: Volcano

  Chapter 22: The Bugis Way

  Chapter 23: Pliny

  Chapter 24: Heat

  Chapter 25: Lahar

  Chapter 26: Hell

  Chapter 27: Jaunt

  Chapter 28: Flow

  Wolf Rock

  Peter Tonkin

  Copyright © Peter Tonkin 2005

  The right of Peter Tonkin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in 1997 by Michael Joseph.

  This edition published in 2019 by Sharpe Books.

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  For Cham, Guy and Mark, as always

  THE WRECK

  Chapter 1: The Bishop

  The distress call came in at the same instant as the dangerous weather alarm sounded. Richard Mariner lowered his binoculars and turned, striding in from the starboard reach of the brand-new SuperCat Lionheart’s bridge. For the last few moments, he had been looking back along his great vessel’s stormy wake, keeping watch on the distant, dancing arc of the Bishop’s Rock Light through the driving murk of the worsening weather and calculating the odds.

  He had felt no stirrings of premonition beyond a line or two of misquoted poetry ill-remembered from his school days which kept running through his mind with the persistence of a melody:

  ... the vessel struck with shivering shock.

  Oh God! It is the Bishop’s Rock...

  But he thrust such childish things aside now as he moved, still calculating grimly what best to do with Lionheart in the gathering gale. The experimental vessel’s proving-run down to Spain had been too widely publicized to be called off lightly. But the weather was getting fouler by the instant and even a massive SuperCat could founder under a westerly storm in the vicious Bay of Biscay. Only the huge supertankers and container vessels that passed them in steady and unvarying series, coming in and out of the Channel like coaches behind some unimaginable locomotive, could ride out Biscay’s spite with relative ease.

  It was time to run for safe haven by the sound of things unless the distress call was anything they could help with.

  Robin, Richard’s wife and partner, moved at his side, crossing to the radio to lean over the officer seated there, conducting a whispered conversation while Richard paused at the weather display. Only the years they had both spent at sea allowed them to move so swiftly and surely across the heaving deck.

  ‘What is it?’ Richard asked Doc Weary, his friend and associate, who was seated easily in the nearest of the twin command chairs; seated easily, noted Richard as he steadied himself on the console, but strapped in tight.

  ‘This.’ Doc’s great leonine head turned as his strong finger swooped down towards the weather monitor, killed the sound-alarm and dulled the flashing red warning signal. Then touched the button marked PREDICT. The weather-pattern displayed on the screen was projected forward in time by the advanced program in the computer that controlled the thing.

  The vicious swirl of the approaching Atlantic storm currently battering Lionheart with its leading outskirts, as observed from far on high by a series of weather satellites, tightened and intensified in computer graphic. The winds whirling around it gathered power and speed. Storm force became near-hurricane in an instant. And it all pounced eastward past the Fastnet Rock with most unnerving speed, coming in across the Western Approaches as though set on destroying them all at once.

  ‘When and where?’ grated Richard.

  ‘Two hours’ time. It’ll bottom out somewhere north-east of our current position back beyond the Scillies. Say just about over Wolf Rock,’ answered Doc, his Australian drawl becoming obvious in the longer sentence.

  ‘Wolf Rock,’ echoed Robin at once, her voice high, clear and strong against the howling batter of the head-on wind. ‘That’s where this distress call is coming from.’

  ‘From the lighthouse?’ Richard’s voice was incredulous. Not least because Wolf Rock, like the Bishop beside them, like all Cornish lighthouses, was automatic and unmanned.

  ‘No,’ Robin answered tersely. ‘From a vessel drifting down on to the shoals there.’ She looked up at Richard, her eyes apparently luminous in the dimness of the crowded bridge, the gold curls of her hair a-gleam in what little light there was, intensifying the pal
lor of her worried face. ‘Darling, I’m afraid it’s the Goodman Richard.’

  ‘Who’s going out to her?’ Typically, Richard thrust aside all non-essentials for the moment. And there were quite a few, for he knew the Goodman Richard and almost everyone likely to be aboard her.

  A new voice entered the conversation - that of Sparks, the Radio Officer who, like the SuperCat’s Captain, had been silent so far. ‘No one,’ he said. ‘All the RNLI lifeboats from Start Point to the Scilly Isles seem to be out already. There’s the chance of a Sea King getting over from the Royal Naval Air Station at Culdrose, but that’s about it and I don’t know what help they could be. There’s forty crew and—’

  ‘Sixty youngsters,’ grated Richard. ‘I know. She’s an adventure training ship. Four-master, square-rigged. Never goes out with less than one hundred souls aboard.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said Sparks dully. ‘The Sea King will be useless, then. Even the lifeboats’ll be hard-put to get that many safely off. Their main mast is gone by the board and the power’s down except for emergency back-up to the radio. They’re helpless by the sound of things.’

  ‘And even the St Mary’s boat is out?’ Richard’s voice was full of shock - but that only seemed to make it more decisive and energetic.

  ‘Penlee, Lizard, Falmouth,’ confirmed Sparks. ‘They’re even out at Sennen Cove, St Ives and Padstow.’

  ‘Vessels nearby?’

  ‘Mostly in trouble themselves - and being seen to by the lifeboats. Except for those, of course.’ Sparks nodded through the rain-swept clearview at the black bulk of yet another huge bulk transporter, sailing through the gathering darkness like a ship-shaped black hole, edged with glitters of navigating lights and gleams of tumbling foam. It had no real character except the faintest glimpse of a name - the something Maru, ill-lit on the cliff of the departing stern.

  They all looked at the mysterious giant. And they all knew there was no real hope of help or rescue there, for the great ships moved by almost planetary laws of motion. Even could one slow its massive progress or turn aside from its preprogrammed course, it was likely to do more harm than good, upsetting the rigid series of its fellows’ closely prescribed speeds and courses; unleashing the potential for collision and disaster of almost incalculable proportions. No. Though they owned some of the passing supertankers and had sailed upon others, Richard and Robin knew all too well that they could never expect help from those quarters.

  ‘Looks like it’s got to be us, then.’ Captain Tom Bartlett’s voice was quiet but commanding. Slim, slight and young, he was nevertheless a steely character, by no means overwhelmed by all the power and expertise of the men and women around him. Unconsciously echoing sentiments often expressed by Richard himself in moments such as this, he continued, ‘Someone needs to do something, and it looks as though we can do more than most. So let’s get on with it, eh?’

  Richard glanced around the bridge, calling to mind in an instant - and for an instant only - the specifications of the vessel whose skeleton crew they were. Lionheart was nearly three hundred feet in length. One hundred in the beam. She was hulled in aluminium - designed by the same team that fashioned Ferrari cars. Her twin keels sat ten feet below the restless surface for she was running in ballast now. Her four huge diesels produced over 5,000 kilowatts of energy and could thrust her forward at l00kph. And, best of all, she could accommodate several hundred passengers. So a hundred soaking kids and crew from Goodman Richard would be neither here nor there. If they could reach the drifting hulk in time. And if they could somehow get everybody off, in the teeth of the weather predicted by Lionheart’s red-flashing weather monitor. Get them off Goodman Richard and on to Lionheart. It would be a close-run, immensely dangerous undertaking.

  And there was one more - vital - consideration. ‘Just a moment, Tom,’ said Richard. ‘I’d like to draw a line here. This is your vessel and you’re the Captain. So it’s your decision and I agree with it. But I am the Owner and as such I am responsible at law for the hull and the safety of everyone aboard. I want you to know that. The order is yours. The responsibility is mine. Are you comfortable with that?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Tom Bartlett with no further thought or hesitation. He reached forward until his own seatbelt creaked and reached for the microphone of the hailer. ‘This is the Captain,’ he announced, his voice booming eerily through the empty, cavernous vessel. ‘We are answering a distress call from near the Wolf Rock Light. Engine room, I will need bow thrusters in a moment and full power soon after. Everyone else, batten down as tightly as you can. Now, prepare to come about.’

  ‘That was a bit pompous,’ whispered Robin a moment or two later. They were wedged on the opposite tilting bridge wing, beyond Sparks but close enough to hear his contact with the Goodman Richard; watching the Bishop’s Rock Light wheel towards them through the night like a meteor predicting the death of kings as Lionheart obeyed the first of her Captain’s orders.

  ‘Pompous,’ he admitted. ‘But necessary. With the new law on Corporate Killing as it is, we need to be clear where the buck stops if anyone might get hurt or - heaven forfend - killed. And you only have to look outside to see how likely that is.’ As if to emphasize his words, a wilderness of hail swept out of the screaming murk to shatter across the glass beside them like shrapnel, seeming to splinter even the passing beam of the lighthouse light.

  ‘And the buck stops with you?’

  ‘As CEO of Heritage Mariner, yes it does. You know it does. That’s what Corporate Killing means. If any negligence of commission or omission can be proved. Any failure of health and safety. And anyone dies. Criminal prosecution of the Chief Executive Officer. You were at the Full Board’s briefing. You read the Legal Department’s report.’

  ‘I thought there was something called Consent - like when you play rugby or enter a boxing ring; you agree to a certain amount of risk. I didn’t think the new law was supposed to slow up rescues and so forth.’

  ‘It probably isn’t. But it is designed to make us think - if not stop and think; to ensure we avoid foolhardy risks. And you can never be too careful. Anyway, Consent has its limits. What about that rugby player who was arrested for fouling the opposing winger and crippling him? Consent or no Consent, he ended up in prison for Grievous Bodily Harm or some such thing. He won’t be out for another year and more.’

  Robin paused, her eyes narrow, then she decided, ‘Perhaps we’d better make sure everyone aboard has a clear idea of what they’re getting into here...’

  ‘We have plenty of time,’ said Richard gently. ‘It’s forty miles back to Wolf Rock. That’ll take at least an hour in this. Even with the wind astern.’ The SuperCat gave a strange lurch and shuddered as though she had been booted up the behind. Robin staggered into Richard’s arms. He grinned wryly down at her. ‘Especially with the wind astern,’ he said, ‘the wind and a following sea...’

  The searchlight beam of the lighthouse found them out as he spoke, suddenly surprisingly close at hand, almost like a spotlight. The smile in his eyes faded and his face gathered into a frown.

  ‘...the vessel struck with shivering shock. Oh God! It is the Bishop’s Rock,’ he whispered.

  ‘You’ve got your Southey all mixed up,’ she answered bracingly. ‘It’s Bishop Hatto - and he gets eaten by rats. It’s the Inchcape Rock and that’s away up in the Firth of Forth off the east coast of Scotland. And, in any case, my darling, it’s the Wolf Rock you want to watch out for...’

  Chapter 2: The Run

  As Lionheart powered north-eastwards, running at full speed across the forty storm-tossed sea miles separating her from the Wolf Rock Light and the ship-killing shoal sweeping south-west from its foot, Richard was seemingly everywhere aboard at once.

  Following his conversation with Robin, he ensured that he visited everyone, individually and in groups, to talk over their responsibilities - and the dangers that those might lead them into during the rescue. To be fair, he had orchestrated an enormous number of rescu
es in the past - had survived as many hair’s-breadth escapes on land and at sea - and he had always been careful to brief his teams. It was one of the marks of his leadership. And one of the reasons he had survived as long as he had. He did little in these meetings that he would not have done in any case - but he was extra-sensitive, perhaps, to the crossing of some corporate t’s and the dotting of some legalistic i’s. Though, as it turned out, he was largely wasting his time.

  He appeared like a tall dark genie everywhere from the throbbing chamber of the engine room, where he held an intense conference with the Chief, to the echoing caverns of the untenanted car deck, where he stood alone and narrow-eyed, calculating. He even called in to the Chief Steward’s office and went on through into the shadowy and sketchily supplied galley to hold a hurried conversation with the men liable to find themselves supplying tea and sympathy - at the very least - to one hundred seasick survivors.

  But it was the bridge that remained the hub of his activity. Here he ran over with Tom Bartlett the plans he was constructing and constantly updating for the rescue. Plans that Robin and Doc became increasingly involved with - for they were effectively First and Second Officer here - sitting between the Captain and Sparks the Radio Officer in command responsibility as well as in physical fact. It was a testing run, after all, in spite of the iffy weather checks; something of a jaunt with a skeleton crew and a couple of friends out on a bit of a lark.

  But as it happened, that, too, was no bad thing, for between them Richard, Robin and Doc Weary had more experience than whole crews could normally command. Robin and Richard had both commanded supertankers, and knew the Western Approaches better than anyone else alive. Furthermore, they had both been highly trained in handling SuperCats as soon as Heritage Mariner had bought them in and set them to working on routes as near at hand as Dover to Calais across the Channel and as far afield as Thunder Bay to Chicago across the Great Lakes.

  Doc was the designer, architect - and the prize-winning captain - of the Katapult series of multihulls, whose popularity was part of the foundation of the fortune of Heritage Mariner, who produced them for the commercial market. Whose largest and greatest offspring, Katapult VI, all eighty feet of her - sixty-foot beam from one outrigger to the other - was being prepared in Southampton even now to win the next Fastnet Ocean Race hands down in little more than fourteen months’ time. There was nothing Doc did not know about the sea, its moods, and getting multihulled vessels effectively and efficiently through them. He had survived both the Fastnet of 1979 and the Sydney-Hobart of 1998 and done more - he had come near to winning both. Though that, against the cost, counted for little enough in his eyes.