David Hagberg - Mutiny - The True Events That Inspired The Hunt for Red October

“I want you to call the harbormaster and alert him to the situation before it’s too late.”

Aksenov steps back a pace.

“If they make it out to the gulf there’s no telling where they’ll end up!” Firsov shouts.

“I’m sorry, sir, but the harbormaster has given strict instructions that he is not to be disturbed this evening.”

“Bljad, call somebody!”

Aksenov stares out across the river in the direction the Storozhevoy has gone, hoping against hope that either this is a nightmare or the ship would come back. But he’s not asleep in his bunk, dreaming all of this, nor can he see anything moving in the fog.

“Brigade Seventy-eight,” he mutters. It’s the navy detachment here at Riga that is responsible for all military security, especially security for whatever warships happen to be in port. It’s the next step up in the chain of command, and Firsov realizes that he should have thought of that himself. But time is racing by.

“Well, make the call. Now!”

The duty officer hesitates for just a moment longer, hoping that somehow the situation will resolve itself without him. But that’s not going to happen and he knows it.

“Yes, sir,” he says, and he walks to the guard post to make the first call alerting the Soviet navy that a mutiny has occurred aboard one of its ships.

Locked in the forward sonar parts compartment all evening, Potulniy has had time to think about the consequences, for not only Sablin and the crew, but also himself. After the mutiny aboard the Bounty, after Captain Bligh was set adrift with some of the crew, after he’d made the impossible voyage in a small open boat halfway across the Pacific, saving the lives of all but one of his men—after all of that—Bligh still faced a court-martial.

Bligh had survived and he was made to answer the same kinds of questions that Potulniy knew he would face if he survived.

“What actions did you take, or what actions did you fail to take, over the course of the previous twelve months, that would have driven your crew to rise up against you?”

“How is it that you failed to become aware of the conditions that led to the mutiny?”

“When the mutineer Captain Third Rank Sablin came to your quarters that evening, claiming that there was a CP belowdecks, why did you decide to personally handle the situation instead of sending a subordinate, therefore needlessly placing your person in jeopardy?”

“It is clearly documented that you were close to your zampolit; why is it we should not believe that you at least played a passive role in the mutiny?”

“Why is it that you did not have the support of the majority of your officers?”

“Why is it that you failed to keep a record of potential troublemakers?”

“Why did you allow your KGB representative to leave the ship before you had secured his replacement?”

“Can you honestly tell this commission that you were and are fit to lead men into a battle to defend the Motherland?”

“Can you honestly swear to this commission that you were and are a good Communist?”

“Why didn’t you give your life in defense of your ship?”

“Why didn’t you make more of an effort to escape and regain control of your ship? Or was it that you did not care about the outcome?”

The biggest blow after Sablin tricked Potulniy into entering the compartment and allowing himself to be locked in was the realization that it wasn’t just his zampolit who was guilty of mutiny. A substantial number, if not all, of his officers must have gone along with the insane scheme. Otherwise someone would have come down here to let him out.

There’d been a commotion out in the corridor earlier. He’d recognized Sablin’s voice and he tried to talk some sense into the man. But it hadn’t worked, and now they were under way.

They’d hit something, but as best Potulniy could judge it was just a glancing blow. No water is rushing into his ship from some gash in the bows, but the engines had spooled up way too fast for navigation in the confines of the river. If they hit something at this speed they could very well sink the ship, and he would die down here locked in a compartment with no way to get out.

Like most sailors, Potulniy has a particular aversion to drowning at sea. Getting blown up in some great sea battle or even dying in a train wreck while on leave would be infinitely better than drowning.

There isn’t much in the compartment, except for a section of hefty steel pipe about twenty millimeters in diameter and one meter in length. Two hatches open from this tiny chamber, one out to the corridor and one up to the compartment directly above.

Using the pipe as a pry bar, Potulniy manages to undog the upper hatch and climb up the ladder. This compartment is normally used to stow spare equipment for the electronic gear. But all those parts have been used, and the compartment is empty until they put in for a refit and load a new set.

But there is another hatch to the corridor, and Potulniy sets to work on this latching mechanism. It’s a wheel about the diameter of a big dinner plate. Turning it left causes the locking bars to withdraw from the receivers, allowing the hatch to be opened. But the wheel can be dogged down from the outside, making it impossible to turn.

After a minute or two with the pipe, the locking mechanism comes free, and Potulniy is able to turn the wheel.

The locking bars are withdrawn, but the hatch will not open. Something is blocking it, possibly a shoring beam.

At that point a nearly overwhelming sense of hopelessness and indignation and even rage threatens to overcome Potulniy. He attacks the door like a madman, smashing the heavy steel pipe against the locking mechanism. The racket makes it nearly impossible to think.

Between blows Potulniy hears someone shouting just outside in the corridor and he stops in mid-swing.

“Captain, you must stop!”

It is Seaman Shein. Potulniy recognizes the kid’s voice from the incident earlier this evening. “Let me out of here!” Potulniy shouts. “That is a direct order from your commander!”

“Sir, I can’t do that.”

Potulniy tosses the pipe aside and puts his shoulder into the hatch.

Once, twice, a third time, and he is rewarded with the noise of the wood beam falling away and the door budging open a few centimeters.

“Captain, no!” Shein cries. “I have a gun; but I don’t want to shoot you!”

Someone else is out in the corridor with Shein. Potulniy can hear them scrambling around. “Do you understand what you are doing?” he shouts. “You will face a firing squad.”

“No, Captain!” one of the other crewmen shouts, but Potulniy doesn’t recognize his voice.

Potulniy puts his shoulder against the door again, but this time nothing budges. They have replaced the shoring timber. There is no way he’s going to get out of there, and he knows it.

The mood among Gindin’s companions locked in the sonar compartment changed the moment the engines were started and changed again when the Storozhevoy actually got under way.

“Until that point the rest of them were dismissive of the entire incident,” Gindin says. “Nothing terrible was going to happen. In a few hours they would be released and everything would get back to normal.”

Sablin and Shein and some of the others would be placed under arrest, and Captain Potulniy would come down on them like a ton of bricks for not doing something to stop Sablin. Heads would definitely roll.

But now that they were actually under way, to God only knew where, everything had changed. Now they were in the middle of a full-blown mutiny. And the punishment for that crime was more severe than a slap on the wrist or even a few weeks in the gaubvachta —the brig. Men could be shot for such a crime. Men could lose their lives for simply not doing enough to stop the mutiny.