possessed of an innate
72
Seawitch
kindliness would have been a distortion of the truth, for he was above all an uncompromising and single-minded realist, but one with no innate killer instinct. Nonetheless, there were two things that would at that moment have given him considerable satisfaction.
The first of those was that he would have preferred to have the Crusader at sea before pressing the sheathed button before him on the bridge. He had no wish that innocent lives should be lost in Galveston, but it was a chance that he had to take. Limpet mines, as the Italian divers had proved at Alexandria in World War II—and this to the great distress of the Royal Navy— could be devastating^ effective against moored vessels. But what might happen to high-buoyancy limpets when a ship got under way and worked up to maximum speed was impossible to forecast, as there was no known case of a vessel under way having been destroyed by limpet mines. It was at least possible that water pressure on a ship under way might well overcome the tenuous magnetic hold of the limpets and tear them free.
The second temptation was to board the helicopter on the Tiburorfs after helipad—many such vessels carried helicopters for the purpose of having them drop patterned explosives on the seabed to register on the seismological computer—and have a close look at what would be the ensuing havoc, a temptation he immediately regarded as pure self-indulgence.
73
Alistair MacLean
He put both thoughts from his mind. Eight miles out from Galveston he unscrewed the covered switch and leaned firmly on the button beneath. The immediate results were wholly unspectacular, and Cronkite feared that they might be out of radio range. But in the port area in Galveston the results were highly spectacular. Six shattering explosions occurred almost simultaneously, and within twenty seconds the Crusader, her stern section torn in half, developed a marked list to starboard as thousands of tons of water poured through the ruptured side. Another twenty seconds later the distant rumble of the explosions reached the ears of listeners on the Tiburon. Cronkite and Mulhooney, alone on the bridge—the ship was on automatic pilot— looked at each other with grim satisfaction. Mulhooney, an Irishman with a true Irishman's sense of occasion, produced an opened bottle of champagne and poured two brimming glassfuls. Cronkite, who normally detested the stuff, consumed his drink with considerable relish and set his glass down. It was then that the Crusader caught fire.
Its gasoline tanks, true, were empty, but its engine diesel fuel tanks were almost completely topped up. In normal circumstances ignited diesel does not explode but burns with a ferocious intensity. Within seconds the smoke-veined flames had risen to a height of two hundred feet, the height increasing with each moment until the
74
Seawitch
whole city was bathed in a crimson glow, a phenomenon which the citizens of Galveston had never seen before and would almost certainly never see again. Even aboard the Tiburon the spectacle had an awe-inspiring and unearthly quality about it. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the fire stopped as the Crusader turned completely over on its side, the harbor waters quenching the flames into hissing extinction. Some patches of floating oil still flickered feebly across the harbor, but that was all that there was to it.
Clearly Lord Worth was going to require a new tanker, a requirement that presented quite a problem. In this area of a gross oversupply of tankers, any one of scores of laid-up supertankers could be had just through exercising enough strength to lift a telephone. But 50,000-ton tankers, though not a dying breed, were a dwindling breed, principally because the main shipyards throughout the world had stopped producing them. "Had" is the operative word. Keels of that size and even smaller were now being hastily laid down, but would not be in full operation for a year
72
Seawitch
kindliness would have been a distortion of the truth, for he was above all an uncompromising and single-minded realist, but one with no innate killer instinct. Nonetheless, there were two things that would at that moment have given him considerable satisfaction.
The first of those was that he would have preferred to have the Crusader at sea before pressing the sheathed button before him on the bridge. He had no wish that innocent lives should be lost in Galveston, but it was a chance that he had to take. Limpet mines, as the Italian divers had proved at Alexandria in World War II—and this to the great distress of the Royal Navy— could be devastating^ effective against moored vessels. But what might happen to high-buoyancy limpets when a ship got under way and worked up to maximum speed was impossible to forecast, as there was no known case of a vessel under way having been destroyed by limpet mines. It was at least possible that water pressure on a ship under way might well overcome the tenuous magnetic hold of the limpets and tear them free.
The second temptation was to board the helicopter on the Tiburorfs after helipad—many such vessels carried helicopters for the purpose of having them drop patterned explosives on the seabed to register on the seismological computer—and have a close look at what would be the ensuing havoc, a temptation he immediately regarded as pure self-indulgence.
73
Alistair MacLean
He put both thoughts from his mind. Eight miles out from Galveston he unscrewed the covered switch and leaned firmly on the button beneath. The immediate results were wholly unspectacular, and Cronkite feared that they might be out of radio range. But in the port area in Galveston the results were highly spectacular. Six shattering explosions occurred almost simultaneously, and within twenty seconds the Crusader, her stern section torn in half, developed a marked list to starboard as thousands of tons of water poured through the ruptured side. Another twenty seconds later the distant rumble of the explosions reached the ears of listeners on the Tiburon. Cronkite and Mulhooney, alone on the bridge—the ship was on automatic pilot— looked at each other with grim satisfaction. Mulhooney, an Irishman with a true Irishman's sense of occasion, produced an opened bottle of champagne and poured two brimming glassfuls. Cronkite, who normally detested the stuff, consumed his drink with considerable relish and set his glass down. It was then that the Crusader caught fire.
Its gasoline tanks, true, were empty, but its engine diesel fuel tanks were almost completely topped up. In normal circumstances ignited diesel does not explode but burns with a ferocious intensity. Within seconds the smoke-veined flames had risen to a height of two hundred feet, the height increasing with each moment until the
74
Seawitch
whole city was bathed in a crimson glow, a phenomenon which the citizens of Galveston had never seen before and would almost certainly never see again. Even aboard the Tiburon the spectacle had an awe-inspiring and unearthly quality about it. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the fire stopped as the Crusader turned completely over on its side, the harbor waters quenching the flames into hissing extinction. Some patches of floating oil still flickered feebly across the harbor, but that was all that there was to it.
Clearly Lord Worth was going to require a new tanker, a requirement that presented quite a problem. In this area of a gross oversupply of tankers, any one of scores of laid-up supertankers could be had just through exercising enough strength to lift a telephone. But 50,000-ton tankers, though not a dying breed, were a dwindling breed, principally because the main shipyards throughout the world had stopped producing them. "Had" is the operative word. Keels of that size and even smaller were now being hastily laid down, but would not be in full operation for a year
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