Death of a Supertanker Read Online Free PDF Page B

‘However, recriminations do not help. Let us get back to the point.’
    The Frenchman made small grumbling noises, sat back and prepared a cigar for lighting. During the subsequent discussion it became clear what the point was … the breakdown of Ocean Mammoth had provoked a crisis in the affairs of Inter-Ocean Crude and Bulk Carriers Ltd., whose finances were already stretched by the servicing and repayment of loans for the new supertankers. The company’s principal creditor, a consortium of Swiss banks, had a few days earlier exercised its right to increase the rate of loan interest. The breakdown was, in a sense, the final nail in the coffin unless the loan could be reduced substantially. The Board had bleakly to admit that the prospects of that happening were remote.
     
    Immediately after the meeting the chairman and the deputy-chairman , with Nico Kostadis and the managing-director, met in the latter’s office. There they engaged in long, earnest and confidential discussion before deciding that nothing could be done until Kostadis had assessed the situation in Durban. It was agreed that he should fly out to South Africa the next day. In the meantime the chairman undertook to approach the consortium to ask for less onerous terms for servicing and repaying the loan. It was appreciated that the chances of his accomplishing anything were precarious now that the news of Ocean Mammoth ’sbreakdown was out. But delaying action had become imperative.
    Time, reflected the chairman as he went out in the cold wet night to the waiting Mercedes, time was what they were gravely short of. Kostadis would have to work fast.
     
    Five days after the breakdown, life on board Ocean Mammoth in Durban had acquired a not particularly agreeable pattern of its own. The days and nights were unseasonably hot and humid and though this made little difference to the air-conditioned accommodation, it was sticky and enervating in the engineroom and other parts of the ship. Communication with the shore was not easy for the crew. An indifferent bus service, or taxis which wereexpensive and difficult to get, involved an eight-mile detour round the southernmost reaches of the harbour. Captain Crutchley had arranged with the agents for a launch service to cover the comparatively short journey between the Point Ferry Jetty and the ship, but it was a limited one and the last trip was at eleven-thirty each night.
    The sounds in Ocean Mammoth and the feel of the ship had changed. The hum of the turbines, the straining and creaking of the hull, the noise of the wind and sea, and the slow majestic roll had gone. Now the ship was still, small noises were amplified by the background of silence, so that footsteps on deck, the sound of crewmen laughing and talking as they worked about the ship, had become noticeable. There was an intermittent but distant banging and hammering in the engine spaces where the shaft coupling and damaged turbine were being dismantled by the contractors, and ship’s staff were using the opportunity to do maintenance work on auxiliary machinery; and in the accommodation radios and stereos poured forth endless streams of ‘pop’.
    Though the ship was in ballast the smell of oil fuel hung over her, pungent and acrid, like an unseen mantle. By the fifth day the interest, and for some the excitement, of an unexpected arrival in a new place had worn thin. The confined life on board, the sense of isolation from the city and its community, so close at hand yet so distant, were beginning to tell; tempers were fraying and friction among the men was affecting the behaviour of the women. They became touchy, bitchy, and tension between them grew steadily.
     
    Sandy Foley opened the door, came into the dayroom and stopped for a moment to frown at her husband who sat at a desk writing. He wore nothing but a pair of shorts and, irritated though she was, she thought how fit and strong he looked.
    ‘Why do they have to empty the pool now of all