Vignette 7: The Irish Sea

Seven—The Irish Sea



Men die; causes die; the most pathetic sight was seeing a ship die.

One bright sunny afternoon during the latter stages of the war, we were sailing in a convoy up the Irish Sea, bound for Murmansk by way of the River Clyde, the Shetland Islands, and the coast of Norway.

The rolling green coast of Ireland slipped by on our port side; the indistinct coast of England lay on the starb’d. A convoy of fifty assorted freighters, tankers, and motor launches sailed unconcernedly somewhere in between. I was on a freighter, a Liberty carrying a dozen locomotives. Highly maneuverable British corvettes flitted about the perimeter of the convoy like herders on a sheep run. Their presence induced a feeling of security.

In the midst of this complacent scene, the alarm “U-boats” flashed over fifty radio receivers and clutched at the hears of fifty crews. Fifty crews wondered where it would strike; fifty crews prayed that the corvettes would get it first.

As if in answer to these wide-spread and unspoken questions, a blinding explosion shattered that quiet afternoon. A gasoline tanker in the middle of the convoy, placed there because she was so vulnerable, had exploded like a giant firecracker; her insides had gone up in one big blaze, raining little bits of fiery debris on the calm Irish Sea. The blazing tanker settled back down on the water; she rested for a minute.

Then, poised like a sprinting swimmer at the starting line, she dipped her prow beneath the surface. . . for a minute. . . maybe two. . . maybe a lifetime. . . and plunged out of sight. Gasoline burned angrily on the surface, marking the tanker’s watery grave for a short time, and then was snuffed out.

Seven minutes had elapsed since the alarm was given. Now there were forty-nine ships who had not even had time to change course, and there was no evidence that there had ever been a fiftieth. Only an empty space in the convoy existed to speak for her.

Men my die, but their souls find “an house not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens,” guaranteed by the Supreme Architect. A good cause may die, but little bits of its intent and purpose become incorporated in other causes; thus they live on. A ship plunges to the bottom; she neither has a soul nor leaves behind any part of her to carry on. . . her memory? Memory is very short; she dies.