Free At the Midway by J. Clayton Rogers Page B

collision, Captain Hubbard of the Minnesota had begun easing back into formation... only to find the Florida running straight for him.
    Captain Oates and the two officers raced for the bridge.
    There was a great deal more clanging and frantic signaling that night before the divisions regained formation.  In Captain Oates' case, the situation was not improved by the fact that the Minnesota was the flagship of Rear Admiral Thomas, commander of the Third Division.  True, the Minnesota had nearly rammed the Florida first.  But in matters of rank, precedence had no standing.  Thomas took a thorough verbal thrashing from Admiral Evans.  As a consequence, Captain Oates received a crushing reprimand from Thomas.  Oates could not bring himself to reprove his exec, who was blameless, so he banned Dr. Singleton from the bridge.  None of which helped Oates, who the next day found his ship placed in the observation ward.
    And none of which changed the fact that when the sun rose and the fog cleared and the ships of the Atlantic Fleet were sorted out, the mystery schooner was long gone.
    And unexplained.
     
    VI
     
    1905 - 1907  California Current, West Wind Drift, Alaska Current
     
    Only once did Tremblin' Chandry try to give up whaling.
    When gold was discovered in Kotzebue, the passenger trade skyrocketed.  Pickings were fat on the gold run.  Having grown weary of whale blood and shiftless hands, Chandry hired himself out as skipper on a steamer of the Northern Lights Line.  Before shipping out with his first load of passengers, he spent a week tearing through the blind tigers and gambling dens of the Barbary Coast.  While absorbing alcohol in prodigious quantities, he also gleaned information from captains who had already worked the route.  The technical details little concerned him.  Men who sailed passenger ships were no better than freshwater sailors, in his estimation.  Always hugging the coast, seeing no more ice then a berg or two, these lubbers didn't know that north was neither true nor relative--not in the nautical sense and certainly not in the gut sense.  It was blinding, endless night.  It was blowing ice with dynamite and praying it loosened enough that you could free your ship.  It was the very end and the very beginning, and if you couldn't actually see the planet cascading down from the soles of your feet, the compass told you it was so.  North! What did they know of it?  They probably drank piss and thought it first beer.
    They did, however, offer useful tidbits.
    He learned that Kotzebue Sound could not be entered by any deep draft vessels; they had to anchor outside the shoals and wait until lighters and other shallow-bottom boats came out to pick up the passengers and cargo.  Between poor communications and adverse tides, that could sometimes take more than a week.
    The miners on board would be gamy with anticipation.  They'd heard that sailors up the sound found gold on their mudhooks when they hauled them in.  They went mad with the idea and more than one load of passengers had overwhelmed the crew and foundered on the shoals while trying to take a ship in.
    This said everything skippers needed to know about prospectors.  Men maddened by gold lust were more dangerous than men plagued by thirst.  Hence, they took the illegal step of drilling holes in their water casks, creating artificial shortages.  The crews approved of this, so long as they could stash their own canteens out of sight during the parched interim.
    "After a week offshore they're damn near comatose," one captain told Chandry.  "Quiet as lambs when the boats take 'em off."
    That was all Chandry needed to hear.  He staggered to his ship that very night and hammered holes in the water casks.  Next morning, the first mate roused him.
    "Captain, we got vandals been on board.  Put holes in our--"
    Trembling as he sat up--his mornings, after all, had given him his name--he cut the First off.  "Passengers all