14 - The Engine Broke

The Sound Is The Sailor’s Laughter

A Novel

For Andrew

e-book: “The Sound Is The Sailor’s Laughter”

The Sound Is The Sailor’s Laughter By Corinne Devin Sullivan

ISBN 979-8-9909558-0-6

© Corinne Devin Sullivan. 2024. All rights reserved.

Publication made by: CORINNE DEVIN SULLIVAN BOOKS

Published in the United States of America, in November of 2024.

Chapter 14: The Engine broke

What also happens to be inside that same envelope next to her bed is this…

Couldn’t miss telling this one. Hope you like my rendition of it. Love, Dad.

Stories from my time at sea. Written for wonderful Fiona, my daughter. (header)

Our crises hit us when we were about halfway to India. The day had started fair. By afternoon, it was hot. We were expecting to reach the Marshall Islands in about five days.

First Engineer Kingston Riggs was sprawled across his couch catching a nap. It must have been about a hundred and ten degrees now that we were far enough south to nearly touch the Equator.

Baxter was now rarely on-time in the engine room, due to needing extra sleep. Ever since whatever trouble he had encountered in the hold that night, Baxter told everyone he was sleeping off a bad fever. I let him have the sleep without any pressure.

That morning was the single day he made it there on time.

I asked, “You doing fine, son?”

He smiled big and told me, “Feel great. You?”

I turned things over to Baxter and let him work on his own for the first time in several days. Two of the Ukraine’s sailors, named Vanko and Ostap, were working with him. They got busy cleaning up a mess they had to deal with from an earlier oil leak that sprang active again.

Fiona, you wanted to help push the mop bucket around the place, but I insisted you follow me upstairs.

The ocean was flat. It was mostly calm our entire voyage. There was the exception of occasional rolling.

Aoife called any activity we encountered at sea, at all, “storms” and “bad weather” but they were each nothing to mention. Cost us ten thousand extra miles to make the voyage in that calm of a route. I didn’t think too much of it, until afterwards, when I reading about some storms that summer up north. If we had hit any of that, Sassy would have been sunk completely.

That day, I sat down next to Riggs. Fiona had already filled the ice chest with varied sodas and sarsaparilla.

“Grab us all some water bottles, Fiona!” Riggs called out when he saw you.

I grabbed myself a lime soda.

Kingston Riggs and I were really enjoying ourselves, laughing at the things we’d seen. Riggs wondered where exactly in the ocean we were at. Sometimes, in the Engine Room, we would lose track. He made a guess about our location. He thought we must be somewhere in the middle of the Philippine Sea.

Meanwhile, you were cleaning or taking care of some other chore by the ice chests.

Riggs and I were really laid back, just hanging in the hot air. I told a few stories. On a ship, when you get to talking with another sailor, sometimes it feels like it is no big deal to say the next thing that comes to mind.

The sun couldn’t touch us on the second deck. Still, it was hot enough outside to keep sweating no matter where you walked to. All the metal was brought up in temperature by the sun.

Fiona, you brought over more soda and the water Riggs asked you to get. You sat down for a minute or two in the shade, on the edge of the easy chair. Riggs enjoyed having you there. He pointed at you and gave me a thumbs-up as well as a big smile.

Eventually, you said you had to go back to the engine room. You looked at the deck for a long time.

I asked you, “Are you going to start your watch now?”

“In a minute. I feel a little sick.” You told me.

“Ghost surprise you again, Fiona?” Riggs asked.

Fiona, you turned to me, and you looked straight at my heart. After a minute you said something like, ““Mom has mahimahi. Erat caught some this morning. I got sick watching her clean everything.”

I turned up music by ZZ Top.

Man, we were just relaxed. Then, I switched the tunes over to Aerosmith, at Riggs’ request. Eventually, you walked off to start your watch. I could tell you weren’t having the time of your life.

I suspected you were indeed worried about the ghost at the bottom of the ship. Since I don’t deal in ghosts, I made a mental not to head down to the lower hold tonight and tell the thing to get lost.

Out of nowhere, Captain White appeared. Never had him stop by our recreation area before then. He even brought along a folding chair for him to sit on.

Riggs looked at me. I was studying the Captain’s face. Then, Riggs wanted to go. He shut off the music, excused himself. White asked him to stay, told us both he wanted him to hear.

That afternoon might have been the first time I had seen the Captain sober. He looked more relaxed. He had a friendly demeanor whenever he was playing it cool and taking it easy.

The captain launched into a long speech.

“We just about made it across. Chief, I got to compliment you because I didn’t want to say before—and I won’t lie: I didn’t think this ship would hold together. She’s just a piece of floating trash. That’s what the voice in my head tells me. Every day, I wake up and get started just asking myself what am I doing this for. The pay isn’t really that much more than what I used to make up in Alaska. She’s not a complete disaster. She’s been holding up. She’s holding up even though she belongs inside Triton’s war chest. And it’s thanks to all of you. I want you to hear it from me—"

BOOM!

–right in the middle of the compliment.

Sassy creaked. In less than a minute, smoke was billowing out the top. Swells of black, black smoke poured through from the engine. She began to drift. I could feel the momentum shift. We ceased to go forward.

The only time our captain ever said anything nice to us, the ship’s engine exploded.

Greatest mistake I ever made leaving Baxter alone with that machinery after he showed up on-time. It was terrible luck, and I should have known it would be so.

In the stairs, more smoke was everywhere. I couldn’t see a damn thing. I moved forward. I called your name every few minutes.

I can’t take this, I said it only to myself but it was another person’s voice going on in my own head.

I made it to the Engine Room. Baxter was still there. Thankfully, Fiona was safe.

The two ABs were also well and fine. They were assisting Baxter. Together, they had all managed to shut Sassy’s engine down before I arrived. I watched Baxter work, didn’t interfere. Somehow, I understood what he had to do.

All of Team Ukraine eventually had sifted through the smoke. Everyone had made it to the Engine Room to, hopefully, help us recover.

Captain White followed me down there. Standing mid the smoke and a quiet without the engines to fill it in the open air, the captain looked aghast. He was just close enough to watch me work, and then he flaked. I didn’t see him again. I never saw the First Mate either. Even my good friend, First Assistant Kingston Riggs, took one look, then yelled, and walked off.

Riggs shouted out, “I can’t take it! This ship is going to drown me!”

But there was quite a fire to put out that had already spread to the main deck. I got ventilation on down in the Main Engine before a few more vital things crapped out. Once things were a bit better, Baxter stood to the side while I inspected the Main Engine.

I said, “Kid, you’re not paid to be a socialite at a dance hall. Help me move this thing.”

And he did. That was the start of the process where Baxter was up most of the time, and I couldn’t sleep. Fiona, you stayed put but helped with anything I asked. The men from the Ukraine were a saving grace with their strength.

Finally, I saw the trouble. One of the pistons had busted. And that’s never a good sign.

A piston is full of lube oil. They pump, and the oil moves up from the crankcase, through the piston shaft, to cool things off. Then, the oil goes back down. With the thing split in half, it pumped oil all over the engine. The sizzling mess gave the black clouds that still filled our Engine Room and sifted inside many of the ship’s passageways.

Took a full day to find the trouble. We were working through the night, strung out and on the edge of a cliff. Everyone had to help. The engine is the size of a big room. There are six cylinders. It was the crown at the bottom of one of them that had busted in two.

Once we spotted the trouble we were looking for the spares were needed at once. In a little bit, everyone was staring at the single spare part on-board. I looked everywhere for others, and many more missing parts. That’s when we went to see the Captain who was hunkered in his berth. White told me the remaining spare parts were taken by the outfit back in Tacoma who also owned a ship of Sassy‘s kind. They had made a deal to purchase everything “extra” from the owner, just before we left. Of course, it all happened after we had spent a month setting the thing up.

I said, “That’s a bit like the old-fashioned treason and sabotage, White. Leave me alone. And I mean forever.”

He said, “Don’t blame me! It was everyone that jerk Friday had checking us out! They all got together on something and I thought they had told you what was up!”

I had inspected everything before we left. I marked it on my checklist three months ago. The missing parts had been ordered in. But if they didn’t have someone chaperoning every time a person came on board, vital pieces were sold off. A precious set of rings, and whatnot, were now missing, along with two more spare cylinders. It was totally nuts. My damn chain balls were gone, too.

Man, that made it rough.

You know what a piston is in an engine? You know how it goes up and down? The chain balls and the rings are the things that go around it, make it easy for the piston to go back and forth. It’s supposed to have five full rings. The rings on the old one were busted, except for one: the bottom one. That one was okay.

I thought about the other outfit in the shipyard. I saw it all—our predicament and the things that happened beforehand—sitting there with my daughter and all my friends, inside the smoke.

I could feel the movements of waves beneath Sassy. We drifted. A light rain would fall soon. Bad weather was on the horizon. We now had no forward thrust to guide our vessel. I couldn’t ask for a more terrible condition to get to work in.

The Ukrainians stayed with us in the Engine Room. They were clearly used to dealing with these types of problems. They rolled their sleeves up, and they even laughed. They got right to work.

Even if I couldn’t correct the ship’s problem the right way, I could pull that broken piston up, take the rod out, put our spare in its place. I would have to make use out of whatever I could throw together. If it turned out we couldn’t do it without the rings, then I would be forced to run Sassy‘s engine on five instead of six cylinder, something which is like an old sailor’s joke.

I thought about pirates. We were sitting ducks there, and I knew it.

Pirates could show up, take our ship, or break it up for the parts and sell off our fuel. We would be screwed, at that point, if one had stopped by.

Sassy broke down right in the place where that kind of event actually happened a lot. Pirates do approach vessels they know they can take over. They can strip the ship, take your clothes, throw you over the side, and you can’t really call anybody then.

You can send an email but when is someone going to show up? It was a two-week run for an American tugboat. Don’t think the company who bought Sassy is going to pay for that. I just had been around. I knew what happened. Not to Americans, typically, but, remember that Americans on vessels that looked like ours didn’t typically get into these waters very much. People with plans are in a hurry, and they go on the usual, faster routes. Most ships bear a familiar appearance. Meanwhile, ours looked like war.

The broken piston was a huge thing. Altogether, it weighed more than a ton. It had to be pulled out of the entire shaft, then turned upside-down to retrieve the parts we still needed, then discarded properly. That’s what we ended up doing. With our hands, without extra equipment, we pulled that piston up and out.

I took every ring I could off of the thing. I put the one good ring onto the replacement. I kept another that was broken a bit, but could still help, somehow. I put something together, piece by piece, using the broken bits. I did, and it actually worked.

On the third day after the crises began, the engine was repaired. It turned on properly and started running again. We checked through the systems. The engine was tested, and it crawled through its first slow run okay. Everybody watched. The air changed after it picked up and, for the first time since it had broken, the Main Engine began to move Sassy forward towards her destination.

I saw you. You were crying the whole time.

I turned on the music. I played “The Eagles, Love Will Keep Us Alive”. I played the entire album. Baxter and the men from the Ukraine belted every word.

I kept expecting Captain White to walk by. Thought we would hear something encouraging. He was nowhere to be found. He must have been thinking we were all dead anyway. They were probably all thinking something like that. The ship had been torn out of their control.

Don’t get me wrong about Riggs and the captain. They had been around the ocean forever. But neither of them had become a professional seaman. They each called themselves a fisherman. There’s a total, total difference.

When your ass is on the line, a seaman tends to be able to do anything he must to keep the ship afloat. Staying alive has always been my first policy. It seems to make things work.

A seaman will go to sea, and this is where he or she can live a life. Out here, in the middle of the ocean, it’s pretty much where you’re at as a person, and what you’re doing. It’s where your whole world is at. If a seaman has got a broken piston, he or she fixes the thing.

Boatmen are not often the same thing at all. They are always close to the shore, where they can call someone else for a tow. Somebody else takes it over, fixes things.

I was sure Aoife would take care of the people. She’d do something to make them feel better. She used that stuff on me, all the time, whenever I was ashore. It was very nice, anyhow.

The only thing a sailor depends on, every day at sea, is the forward motion of the ship. Other than that, life is painted limitless blue, and with no land in our sight.

Having you with me made all the difference. Really, that’s what it did, because you just knew I could fix it. You just knew it, and you believed I could do it, and you can’t buy that kind of thing.

Drifting for nearly three full days, that’s a scary feeling. There was so much smoke when it happened. When Sassy came back to life and dutifully pulled along, everyone was flying happier than a pack of pigs in the sky.

I watched that engine for some time. Eventually, Riggs clapped me on the back.

He said, “Get some sleep. I’ll take over.”

Then, I walked myself upstairs. The bridge was going crazy. The First Mate was intent at his tasks to bring the ship back on course.

She was going a bit slower. But we were making progress once more. And that felt terrific.

I followed everybody’s advice and slept. I took a shower first. I was a real mess.

When I finally got up again, it must have been about five in the morning. I picked up some coffee in the kitchen. Nobody was around.

Standing on the Main Deck, and feeling the sun whenever it came up, I almost forgot it had existed.

I took in the fresh air. There were no troubles. It felt good.

The water was slushing around the boat. We might have been making ten knots. That was about as high was I was going take our speed. Not until we made it to Singapore for better fix on the Main Engine would I dare to try.

Life was good again. It felt exhilarating. There was a peace but there was a lot of energy. Plus, the ocean was mesmerizing. All of it made me think of the music I play all the time. Maybe my feeling was something that makes people want to sing the big, hit songs.

Aoife appeared to tell me, “Thank you, Meade.”

She patted my arm. Then she hugged me.

I tried to talk to Aoife about all of it, but it was just totally over her head. Aoife had been scared out of the sailor mindset, just a bit. All of the people who couldn’t come down to the Engine Room to help us out were probably dumbfounded by what they couldn’t handle.

Aoife was playing it casual. She talked like she was still sitting in a coffee-house in downtown Seattle.

She said, “So, what’s on your plate today? Busy again?”

I rubbed her shoulders. Then, I asked her to get me another cup of Joe. She looked at me for a long time. Then she walked over to bring some coffee to me, and I gave her a thank-you kiss on the cheek. But she moved her cheek away. I didn’t comment.

I said, “And thank-you, God, for our steady good weather.”

I said it to the sky. Aoife had to smile.

Sassy was in terrible shape. It was a miracle we were moving. I thought about it.

I said to Aoife, “If a storm had kicked up when we were drifting, we would have bounced around like a cork.”

She only told me, “Fantastic. Thanks for letting me know.”

I like having Aoife with me. She’ll come on down to my room and sleep on my couch, or wherever, and that is okay with me, even though she’s divorced me three times.

I said, “Ship should be in Singapore in two days’ or thereabouts. Want to spend the night there?”

Aoife’s demeanor had changed. I noticed her smile shift right away. I sifted out of the Nineties a lot smarter than I was back in the Seventies, back when she and I first met.

For a while, we stood at the railing together, quiet. It was peaceful. A little bit of wind.

Aoife’s name is pure Irish, but she has a different background. She isn’t full-blooded Irish, but I still love her all the way through. I act like I believe everything she ever tells me about anything, really. Aoife is maybe the best friend I’ve ever had. Whenever we are far from each other, it doesn’t take us very long until we can sort of tell what the other one is thinking.

“Did you… see the Captain much while we were drifting?” I asked her.

Aoife looked back at the deepening sky. She wouldn’t say nothing, and it made me think.

WRITTEN AND PUBLISHED BY CORINNE DEVIN SULLIVAN

ISBN 979-8-9909558-0-6 e-book: “The Sound Is The Sailor’s Laughter”

© Corinne Devin Sullivan. 2024. All rights reserved.

Publication made by: CORINNE DEVIN SULLIVAN BOOKS “The Sound Is The Sailor’s Laughter” Published in the United States of America 2024. First Final EBook. Design by C.D.S. Website: www.corinnedevinsullivan.com