William Brinkley - The Last Ship

“Who said I was planning to bring anybody ashore, Mr. Thurlow?”

I could hear the hardness in my voice, and it must have been in my look as well for I saw the sudden fear in his eyes, fear of me. Well, that was all right, too. If ever exactitude in matters of discipline, than which nothing else can hold a ship together, were demanded, it was in this.

“All I meant, sir, was if just possibly here or somewhere else…”

“Mr. Thurlow.”

He stopped, I think truly aghast now that he had ventured there, in such forbidden waters. “Mr. Thurlow,” I said, and heard the cold edge. “When I decide something, and then when I decide it is time to tell you of my decision, I will do so. Do I make myself clear?”

“Entirely, sir. My fault altogether. I was out of line, sir.”

“Embark the men, Mr. Thurlow.”

We came up to where they were waiting at the boat. They stood in a desultory silence, their eyes ranging slowly back and forth over the island. I looked down the beach at our many footprints, winding away and out of sight, violations of the chaste sand.

“Do you think men have been here before, Captain?”

I turned, somehow startled. It was Barker, seaman apprentice, coxswain striker, only eighteen, a boy from Texas, literally the last hand, joining the ship in Norway straight out of boot camp at Great Lakes; had not, before coming aboard, even set eyes on the sea; lean and supple of body, tall, in any other society but that of sailors to be considered almost wondrously handsome, radiating an exceptional air of innocence. The question was almost as if, had they not been, how could they intend to be here now?

“If they were, it was a long time ago, Billy.” He was the one hand aboard everyone called by his Christian name, seeming that boyish, that young: nonetheless already on his way to becoming a fine seaman. My hand touched his shoulder, dropped. A gesture I would once not have made. “But—maybe it’s us—wherever there’s land somebody has to be first.”

He spoke almost shyly. “Yes, sir. I guess that’s so.”

I followed the men into the boat and we made for the ship. She rose gray and gallant beyond the blue-green lagoon, lean and alert, seeming to strain against the leash of her anchor, as if telling us that she was ready to up anchor on a moment’s notice. It was not so. The most brutal fact of all: so little fuel left. Still, she has done her job, I thought. She had brought us here, nearly a hundred degrees in latitude, from the frigid Barents to tropical seas, to all appearances sound in body and mind, if near, possibly, certain edges. Now I had to do mine.

All the rest of the day long, to the last of dusk, I kept the boats going back and forth from ship to shore, in a kind of series of liberty parties, such as they were, so that all hands could touch down on the island for an hour or so. So that all could feel the spectral, unreal thing 1 had felt: Land under our feet after four months on the oceans with only the decks of the USS Nathan James, DDG 80, guided missile destroyer, first of her class, beneath us. I stood watching the boats; stood looking, studying, in profound concentration, the stranger island, its plaintive scents drifting across to me, as if it should somehow be about to speak some counsel into my ears, saying either “Come and see” or “Stay away from me.” The one or the other. Knowing that it would say neither, holding steadfast to its impregnable air of mystery; knowing that the answer could come only from where answers always must in a ship off soundings—from within a captain’s secret all-lonely soul. Yet feeling surely it must be the former, how could it be otherwise: Remembering that moment when Lieutenant (jg) Selmon, gone ashore all alone with his instruments, staying overlong to make sure beyond all doubt of his findings, had finally returned, climbed the accommodation ladder to the quarterdeck where I stood awaiting him, and spoken in his quiet manner that imprimatur that took us a while even to comprehend before belief set in: “Captain, the island is uncontaminated.”

The memory so seared in my soul as to have become forever a part of me, as deep scars leave their rubrics upon the body; occasionally coming upon me suddenly, at unexpected times, but coming without fail at night, as ritualistically as the prayers children say on their knees before tumbling into bed; the very act of turning into my bunk presenting me with the terrible vision, clear as on a slide-viewer, of those four boats disappearing over the western horizon, swallowed up by the sea: 109 shipmates, two of these women, in a desperate, yes, in my view, fraudulent attempt to reach home, the mutiny led by an officer who I believed had deceived them. It was as if I had reached a compact with that remembrance to allow it its two minutes or so of daily reenactment if it then would allow me to find sleep; or perhaps a ship’s captain’s special knowledge that to permit it more was to surrender to it yet another victim, making it impossible for me to command. The tenacity of the memory was not altogether a negative thing, for it constituted also a warning that kept forever alert an absolute resolve on my part, exceeding all others, that it should never happen again with this of my ship’s company that remained; the memory rendering the further service of causing me to bear indelibly in mind that grim truth I had so imprudently, in an almost criminal negligence, let slide before: most mutinies are led by officers.

Nothing is more deadly to a ship’s company’s confidence in its captain than undue hesitation or procrastination. Thus well I knew the urgency of making my initial will concerning the island known, quickly, decisively, for any trepidations could only build and fester if the captain were seen as irresolute. The island’s first reconnoitering had implanted a cautious hope. I felt the prudence of a second appraisal. For that purpose I had sent Gunner’s Mate Delaney off, accompanied by Lieutenant Thurlow, in the early morning for a final assay of the grassy plateau. Since sea as well as land must prove fecund for us, Silva also I sent forth, seaward in a boat long before daybreak. One thing more. I determined that it was insistent that I take an exact and meticulous inventory of the ship as of this our moment of crossover. Delaney and Silva not being due back until noonday or beyond with their findings, I began on this matter.

To assist me in the first part of the task I would require Lieutenant Girard, my supply officer, and the lieutenant’s efficient if somewhat free-mouthed deputy, Storekeeper First Class Talley, and had so alerted them the night before. The three of us started on the task at 0600, when light was just appearing from beyond the east’s horizon, casting its halo of rose over the dark island which sat impassively awaiting our decision. Not until the sun had reached its blazing zenith, six hours later, did we complete the grim labor of tabulating what we had brought out with us, to last us for—how long?

When the Navy not long ago first commenced assigning a few women to ships, I felt it to be one of those incalculable fundamental errors that seem to be made only by civilizations in decline, a lapse profound and past comprehension in both the most elementary morality and judgment. The idea that we should take these embodiments—harbors, repositories—of all that is gentle and of final value in life, and God and Nature’s chosen instrument for the species’ very survival, and place them where they would be caught up in the ancient rough-and-tumble of shipboard existence, where peril was one’s daily bread, indeed where they might be maimed or slaughtered, and this act based on the concept that equality consisted in women doing exactly what men do: this seemed to me wicked to the point of malignancy, an abomination in the sight of the Lord and of pure reason, and a consummate fraud pulled off on half the human race by their own kind, abetted by a number of men masquerading as their champions. Besides these lofty moral considerations there lay a practical one. To add to the already immensely complex daily burden of operating a fighting ship a required ship’s company mixture of female and male appeared to many of us charged with the task an aberration little short of madness, comparable to putting ammunition stores alongside engine-room boilers. There was even this: any true sailor has learned long since the first lesson of the sea: never trifle with it, lest it turn on you. The sea is a tyrannical place, ruthlessly unforgiving of man’s frailties and miscalculations. I was not at all certain but that it might look upon this novelty—women aboard warships—as some kind of personal affront, a violation of the natural order, an act of hubris, an insolent challenge let loose upon its domain, not to be tolerated: and in its Olympian wrath in some fashion exact the terrible toll it never fails to levy for man’s arrogance toward it.