Assembling them beneath the twin barrels of the number 5 fourteen-inch turret, Gwillam Forte gave his party the benefit of his researches of the previous evening, when he relearned data about the U.S.S. Texas that had been long and thankfully forgotten.
“For all you landhogs who’ve never sailed blue water,” he said, “let me give you a quick rundown on the Texas. This is the former U.S.S. Texas, BB35, authorized by the Congress in an Act of 24 June 1910, keel laid 17 April 1911, launched 18 May 1912, commissioned 12 March 1914 in Newport News, Virginia. In a representative fighting year-1943, say-this ship carried a complement of 100 officers, 85 Marines, and 1,625 enlisted swine. It displaced 34,000 tons, had a length of 573 feet, a beam of 106 feet, and was 132 feet from the foretop to the water line. Its two counter-rotating engines could push this big loaf of bread through the water at up to twenty-one knots, but it usually moved at about ten nautical miles per hour, the speed of a middle-aged jogger who’s just spotted a mugger closing in. At that pace, it could sail halfway around the world without refueling.
“It could also hoist a lot of iron into the air. It has ten fourteen-inch guns like these two above our heads, in five turrets, shooting three-quarter-ton shells up to fifteen miles. In addition, it had something like thirty-five smaller guns, ranging from 20-mm antiaircraft guns to five-inch broadside batteries, lobbing fifty-pound shells up to ten miles.
“Now, reading from the fantail forward, you see two after-turrets with two naval cannon each, then the mainmast fourteen-inch battery with a catapult for the OS2U Kingfisher on top. The Kingfisher flew about one hundred miles an hour when scared; it took a brave man to fly her, and a skilled one to land in the curving wake of the ship. Then you have the ship’s single stack-smokestack to landlubbers-the mainmast, and finally the two forward turrets.
“A man-of-war is a self-contained community, a floating fortress that can wage war or run away from it. To keep a ship functioning efficiently requires many specialties, only a few of which are directedly concerned with shooting off all that impressive armament. Here on the main deck you have the gunnery office, bakery, galleys, spud locker, butcher shop, armory, air castle, admiral’s cabin, and other compartments easily accessible to the ship’s company on the lower decks. On the superstructure deck of the foremast, above the main, or weather, deck, is the captain’s cabin, gear locker, fruit locker, paint locker, and the motor whale-boats in their cradles. You-”
“Whaleboats?” Protock said. “You were hunting whales?”
“Only by accident, when we ran into one asleep on the surface. These whaleboats you see here, though, are direct descendants of the two-prowed craft whalers used two hundred years ago. Okay, up the ladder on the foremast is the signal bridge with the navigation office and the radar motor room, while at the next level are the combat-information and fire-control centers. Above them are the navigation bridge and chart house, radio shack, and pilothouse, and above that is the flag bridge, where the Admiral can keep his eye on the whole task force. Above all the rest, you can make out secondary battery control, forward battle lookout, main battery control, and finally, up on top, the radar antenna.
“All that stuff is in the foremast. In the mainmast toward the stern you find radar and fire direction apparatus, and the secondary conn from which the ship is controlled in case the pilothouse is knocked out of action-Any questions so far?”
There were-lots of them-but Gwillam Forte refused to answer the one uppermost in the minds of the twenty-three men until later that afternoon, when they had made a complete circuit of the ship, from the pilothouse to the engine rooms, and were back at El Caballejo having a beer to wash away the dust of the long hot day.
“Okay, Will, the suspense is killing us,” Ski Modeljewski said, wiping foam from his lip. “When are you going to tell us why you dragged us out into the hot sun to spend the day looking at that floating scrap heap?”
“A little respect from the white-hat jungle,” Forte said severely. “I’ll have you know that you’re speaking about the ship I love and, as it happens, command. Allow me to introduce the commanding officer of the flagship of the Texas Navy: me. All rise.”
From the assembly came a chorus of raspberries.
“All is now clear,” drawled Jimmy Rawlins, a Viet vet who had been hit by a castrator mine, but because he was uncommonly tall lost only two legs instead of his manhood. “You are captain of a ship without a crew. You want to press-gang us into the job. Wouldn’t that be cute-a crippled ship with a crippled crew.”
“Is that what this is all about?” Zeno Defrees asked. “Because if it is, I demand a promotion. When I was hit aboard the old Enterprise, I was a machinist’s mate second. Guarantee me three stripes and I’m game.”
“You’d sign up just to be machinist’s mate first?” Ski asked. “You must be around the bend.”
“I was thinking,” Defrees said stiffly, “of the three stripes of commander.”
“When you clowns are finished,” Forte said, “I’ll tell you the deal. In six years, as I mentioned, that ship will be part of the Texas Millenary Celebrations. It’s going to be fully restored. I need your help to do it.”
“What do we know about reconditioning a ship, Will?” a voice complained. “We’re disabled vets, not shipyards stiffs.”
“Now, this is not going to be a matter of a coat of paint and shining up the brasswork,” Forte said, ignoring the interruption. “I could turn loose a gang of shipyard types six months before the events are to begin, have them chip the paint, rerig the standing gear, brighten up the brass, but with all that taking place for months before, where would be the drama on opening day?”
“You want drama?” said Roebuck.
“That’s what I want.”
“Then have the old rust bucket towed away and sunk some dark night, and offer a big reward to the finder. Every skin-diver and shrimp fisherman in the southern U.S. would be gaffing one another trying to find her. The blood would attract the sharks, and- well,” he concluded lamely, when he saw Forte regarding him with narrowed eyes, “you want drama.”
“What I thought of was announcing, come opening day, that the Texas was being retired, that it would be towed away to the breaker’s yard on the morrow, and that everybody who wanted to pay last respects to this symbol of the state-and partake in a gigantic, free barbecue-should come down to see her off on her last cruise.
“Imagine the scene. . . . Hundreds of thousands of Texans line the banks of the Houston Ship Channel. Some are indignant, others philosophic, others merely curious. Tugs plod solemnly up the channel in two columns, swing in toward the Texas’s berth. A bugler mounts the gangway, climbs the ladder to the bridge. The crowd is hushed, tears mist the eyes of the old salts, the very wind is stilled, as he puts the bugle to his lips to play a funereal taps over the ship, soon to die.
“Instead, from the bugle comes the electrifying blast of Attention! A moment later the call is followed by Assembly! and from every hatch pour sailors in dress whites. They sprint down the deck to their muster stations and silently form, rank on rank, as their officers appear, swords drawn, to take command of their units. A Navy band materializes, marches to the forecastle, and plays the national anthem.
“As the last notes die away, the voices of the multitude stilled, the band strikes up ‘Anchors Aweigh.’ The crew breaks formation at the run, heading for its get-ting-underway stations. Lines are cast off from bollards and cleats. Engine room telegraph bells tinkle. A spume of black smoke spurts from the stack. The deep-throated horn sounds once, its echoes reverberating across the silent, expectant horde of Texans.
“The ship shudders from the vibration of its engines coming alive. The water of the slip churns as the great brass screws begin to turn. The ship backs down out of its berth, picking up speed as it swings around in the middle of the channel and slows to a stop.
“The turrets of the big fourteen-inch guns train to broadside. They slowly elevate to forty-five degrees. As one, the ten guns fire, a tremendous blast that rolls the ship over until its port side is awash. It rolls back, steadies, then another salvo thunders out across the assembled populace, smoke rings from the muzzle blasts floating lazily toward shore. Another, then another-twenty-one in all-are fired, the salute of a great ship to the state it symbolizes.
“On the twenty-first salvo, the upper deck undergoes a miraculous transformation. From bare masts streams a cloud of bunting, and suddenly the ship is dressed from stem to stern in flags all the colors of the rainbow. But this is not all: before the reverberation of the last salvo fades, the ship itself is transfigured. Its dull, dirty gray is obliterated in a flash, as if by a thousand brushes, and the ship is a gleaming white.