The Strivers: Adventure in Science, and Significance Forging a Fueled Future for Mankind Book Ii

By Phil Wallace Payne

Civilization is in an energy crisis. Human beings have wasted away the majority of their natural resources, but without energy, the world will die. Who will come to the rescue? In secret, a technical team of geniuses has developed a way to harvest usable and never ending energy from polar seas. In concept, their mission is simple; in delivery, it proves to be difficult and possibly tragic. The Strivers tells a story of life, love, and the labors undertaken by a brave few who believe in the energy of the ocean. From diverse backgrounds, the team is brought together by a shared mission; they change each other, and relationships evolve that never would have flourished without the worlds energy crisis. They are inventors, but they are also human beings, looking for connection in an inhospitable place. With luck, the team will find a way to convert ocean energy into the next great fuel for mankind. If they fail, they will not only lose their own lives, but they will cause the extinction of planet Earth. Human life is in the hands of the strivers, who must harness the fury of the sea to save the world. Will they succeed, or will the weakness of their humanity make them fail?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477115022

Phil Wallace Payne

As a rocket scientist, Phil Wallace Payne directed 105 space launches, where he gleaned an extensive knowledge of different fuels. He has been a trans-oceanic navigator, sailor, and sea diver for many years. He currently lives on the coast of California.

Book preview

CHAPTER I

Of Death and Afterlife

Death and desperation are shackles (common) that wreck and wreak remorse on human lives. People think. They do their best with information in their minds. They often reason that reason runs their lives. In reality, time and circumstance, capped with impulse, tell where we go, with whom we lie, and what becomes the nature of our years.

Clarissa Becker suffered a first and then a second tragedy to her life.

With the last, the destiny of her daughter-in-law, Loretta, twisted unexpectedly through torture, loss, and tense time, finally to dock in a new love, to top sadness with tranquility.

Clarissa Becker’s first shock came as autumn winds wracked the two pohutukawa trees beside her house high on the south hills over the harbor of Littleton, in the south of South Island of New Zealand. And rain descended mercilessly a-slant on fury of wind.

Clarissa and Lawrence lived far above the harbor of Littleton but south of it, not so much farther from south embayments of the South Island end, its inlets and its furious seas. Lawrence, her husband, drove their Morris Minor over the mountains southwest and was clamming, a chore he anticipated each year, and practiced with large success. His ritual was to smoke and barrel abundant mollusk meats for noshing throughout the year, with guests, clients, local friends, and afternoon aperitifs.

Not a man of muscular vigor, Lawrence, at fifty-five, was designer of yachts and fishing boats. His hands were better adapted to pens and pencils than clam rakes, and his thoughts were engineering rather than meteorological. On an afternoon of fierce winds and breaking seas, clad in hip boots, mackintosh, and sou’wester, he was caught by a sudden surf surge and carried out to sea. Unable to get the boots off, he was pulled under and drowned.

Three men on the bridge of a fish cutter saw this happen but were inbound, at a distance, and had no means of helping except radio-sounding alarm. Lawrence was soon lost to view in surf. Tugs and trawlers he had created left harbors to search, but it was dark before they arrived. His body was never seen nor recovered, such was the undertow.

Clarissa was devastated. Her seagoing son and his wife, Loretta, as well as Lawrence’s boat works workers and a hundred Littleton neighbors came to mourn at the funeral—a funeral lacking a body. Bachelor men came with perhaps a tacit agenda, for Clarissa was still an attractive woman. Her face held beauty well at age forty-five, and her comely form retained slender and curvaceous attributes of youth.

Two months later, her only child, Arthur, twenty-five, vanished from the deck of the lobster-trapping vessel he and his partner/wife, Loretta, owned in concert with the bank in Christchurch. On the aft port rail, Arthur had one booted leg inboard and one out as he leaned over and tried to clean a deck-draining scupper hole with a large screwdriver. Lars Everestan, the older seaman piloting at the helm, was, at that moment, looking forward, not aft, in the enclosed bridge as they returned to port with a cargo of traps and lobsters. Moments earlier, looking around and back, Lars saw Arthur a-straddle the rail as he had seen him many times before. He piloted again, looking forward. He did not see Arthur disappear. Three others were aboard but below deck—Beardly Smith, deck man and engine mechanic; Fawley Hunter, lobsterman, deckhand, and navigator; and Loretta Becker, Arthur’s young wife, the cook and tally keeper. At twenty-two, blonde, young, and skilled, she was the seagoing cook who gave all of them enlightenment from her happy spirit and fed them all with gusto and creative talent.

On the intercom, Lars, while rolling the wheel, called all topsides to the bridge and circled back onto the wake. All eyes searched the choppy surface. They radioed for help, and other vessels came the five miles out to sea.

It was late in the day. Sea conditions were poor. All eyes saw no sign of him. All were crushed. Arthur, their ebullient friend, shipmate, partner, and employer, was lost.

Loretta, beside herself with grief, screamed incessantly as they returned to harbor, thence to crawl up the southern hills in her old Austin-Healey the last half mile and burden Clarissa with this second tragedy. It was hard for the men. It was a travesty for Loretta. She had no mental reserves to face her own stunned remorse. It did incite in her a keener understanding of Clarissa’s hurt and harrowing, now worsened. It now clearly defined that loss in death, which fate vouchsafed her mother-in-law. It sealed the mind of Loretta into the limbo of her own loss.

In weeks that followed, wife and mother of Arthur, now both living in the wind-wracked house of Arthur’s childhood, attempted to console themselves with the passing days and tedium of an unfriendly calendar. Reason? The boat, on which Loretta and Arthur had lived, had to be sold. Clarissa had invited Loretta to share the loneliness in the house of her dead son’s origins. Passing time was painful and of little help. These two women, not earlier close, lived together but at first just in their own solitudes of memory and regrets.

Then gradually, they began to talk about their lost men and the lives they had enjoyed with them. Loretta confided a fact unusual to people of Clarissa’s age, a frank confession more current today in the chatter and confidences of younger women. It was however common knowledge that the women of their island nation were usually no longer virgins by the age of eighteen. In speaking of her loss, Loretta evinced that though she had early sexual encounters with a dozen or so young men, it was Arthur who understood how to give her love and bring her to climaxes, maximum shuddering pleasures in coitus; and that others were either selfish or innocently lacking in this understanding of women’s needs, desires, and potentials for enjoyment, always taking rather than giving. She rued Arthur’s death and thought never would she find such another. She knew all along it had been love and happiness, much stronger than friendship or the rapture of their sexuality.

Ultimately, Clarissa elicited her own story of this element in her life though giving no open statement of early promiscuity. She hinted there had been adventures and allowed she had married Lawrence because he brought her high excitement, then crescendos, the highest points of pleasure on almost all occasions of their conjoining. She told that it persisted through their years, in that matrimonial privilege. She felt, in countenance of her loss, that she could not love another so intensely—ever.

Clarissa, at forty-five, and Loretta, at twenty-two, remained singularly attractive.

Lonely men of the area began to call and to court these two beauties. Small progress was made by some. Early borne commiseration between the two women somewhat soured. Their relationship gradually suffered a rancidity. This sprang mostly from the feelings of Clarissa. She noticed that men she long knew who were single—bachelors or widowers, more or less her age, people from years back—would arrive with interest in her but, seeing Loretta, would shift the focus of their attention to include the younger, making an effort (most of them) to seem impartial. Clarissa could see clearly that their interest was not only her surprise, but theirs. Finally, tactfully as possible, she suggested Loretta might find work again and, in work, would be distracted from her mourning. It was her way of asking Loretta to leave.

The winter did not relent. Wet weather dogged these dreary days. The gusting winds persistently tortured the pohutukawa trees, and the gray skies wept.

CHAPTER II

Seeking a Life Transformation

Loretta read the situation clearly. She also thought it was time for her to move on somehow.

She took a restaurant cook position in Christchurch. It was a change, and there were new learnings. However, the stable platform had much less challenge than meal preparation at sea. The job was too easy and the people of her work klatch too narrow. In this element of New Zealand, she had hopes for sequestering remorse, a desire to admire and to love again. But she saw few prospects for another real romance. Becoming bored, she stayed only two weeks. She longed for some kind of enriched life as well as a learning one. She dreamed of departure to a foreign land or lands but could not conceive a method and a destination. She knew some French but no Spanish nor Scandinavian, nor German nor Dutch. She knew little about foreign travel. She thought it would be opening a world to herself to travel and command one or two other tongues. It would, she thought, be a fine experience to go to Europe.

At this time, a large and modern freezer motorship, the Cobalt, entered Lyttelton, the harbor south of Christchurch. It began lading a cargo of frozen meat, sides of lamb, beef, and venison (the latter in high demand) destined, she knew, for German restaurants. Taking the wild bucks by rifle from helicopter had become a new industry of the South Island. The ship, large and white, lay quayside not many miles from the Becker house. An advert then appeared in the ˆChristcurch Express’seeking replacement of a cook for the Cobalt galley.

Loretta Becker donned her hooded yellow mackintosh, rainproof pants, and Wellingtons, crawled in her old car, and set out for the harbor. Parking, she went afoot, walking the pier length through blowing rain. There is cause to wonder how much or how little Loretta Becker could have guessed the changed destiny her actions this morning would make in her life.

At eight, it was raining less than it had during the night, but wind came across the pier in gusts, making management of her red umbrella difficult as she walked. The letters Cobalt crossed the stern of the ship above the words Panama City. The great ship, painted white and looking new to the young woman (compared to many of the rust-stained ocean workhorses she had seen), lay almost silent beside the concrete pier. From the ship stern, the flag of Panama, wet and heavy, alternately stretched to declare its four squares (one red, one blue, two white with stars) then slumped again to become less harried by the wind. Colors were electric before generally dismal aspects of the morning. These told sadness in shades of gray. Completely silent the ship was not. Her hawsers creaked and strained at their bollards with the force of the wind that pulled the ship off. That wind rushed with a moan in the high masts and antennas surmounting the wide aft bridge. The gangway platform was on rollers. With these motions, it alternately rolled toward the edge of the dock when the wind lasted long and strong enough to impel the eighty thousand tons of ship away to the north, then creaked its wheels as it slowly rolled back as wind relented.

The young woman stopped, observed this with caution, then stepped upon the platform. There was a bell addressed by an electric button. She pressed. It was minutes before a man appeared in cap and rain gear. He called down, Hello. What do you want?

I’ve come about the cook’s job.

He descended, a man of middle years but very lean and tall. She remarked the size of his feet on the treads of the gangway. He opened the chain across the ascending stairs. Come aboard. I’m Lowne, second mate.

I’m Loretta Becker. I’ve come about the job you advertised.

I’ll get Captain Gordonstone, he said, leading the way up the side of the ship. The size of his feet, she thought, indicated something of his penis length. A gust pressed. She had difficulty with her umbrella again and collapsed it. He caught her arm. It’s so big, the ship, she said, casting her glance along the length.

Yes, ma’am. It’s a big ship. But it’s all freezer space. We live here only in th’ crunch of space about this bridge. We haul meat to market. At the top he led across the deck to a small room, saying, Come in here out of the weather. Make yourself comfortable. The captain will be here in a moment.

When that man appeared, she was favorably impressed. George Gordonstone was not a large man but very sturdy, square-shouldered, and neat in his casual attire. His hair was combed, his blue-eyed gaze intent, clear. She thought him thirty-five or so.

Have you had experience cooking at sea? he asked.

"Yes. Not on a ship this size. I cooked on the Mary Ann, she replied. That’s a lobster boat, only about sixty feet. A big ship should be much stabler."

It will, but we go out into bigger seas. How many crew?

Oh, only six or seven, not so many.

We only have sixteen, Gordonstone told her. Your trips were long or just overnight?

Oh, many lasted three weeks. I’ve been cooking for the Hotel Gascoine restaurant now. I’d like to go to sea to see something of the world.

I see. And how old are you?

Twenty-two.

The captain got up and walked to the portholes, looking out on the dismal aspect of the docks on the weather side. With his back to her, he said, My cook of the last three years was from Poland, much older than you. She’s a tough lady. Got herself a husband in Christchurch. You get seasick?

Not so far.

You have references and a passport?

Yes.

She handed him a dossier, with her passport laid on top.

He studied the documents for perhaps ten minutes. In that time, she studied him. She felt a quiet enunciation—attraction. The passport, showing her picture and her full name, had a picture that did not capture her beauty. He looked up at last. He handed all back. Can you come to work tomorrow and be ready to leave the day after?

I sure can, she replied. You mean I have the job?

Yes.

Just then, Lowne came back into the compartment. Cyril, the captain addressed him, meet our new cook, Ms. Becker.

Mrs. Becker, sir, she corrected him.

Already met her, George.

And what about your husband? Gordonstone asked. Does he agree with your sailing away? What’s he do?

He’s dead.

Oh. I’m sorry.

Lowne also mumbled, Oh. A shame. You must be sad.

I am, she admitted.

Cyril will show you the small cabin down the companionway where you can bring your things, Miz Becker. Maybe the rain will stop. It’d be nice if you could be aboard early, fix the breakfast, get acquainted with the crew, walk the ship down, learn where things are.

I’ll be here late afternoon today, Captain.

Fine.

When he had gone, Cyril Lowne said, We’re waiting for a last quarter of our cargo. They’re freezing it now. Should be put aboard tomorrow. We’ll leave the day after, by morning light. You’ll need to look the stores over tomorrow. You got working clothes?

All right. I have a few things. I’ll be here this evening. Shall I just come aboard?

Just come up. Whoever’s on watch will be expecting you.

CHAPTER III

Sea Voyage Hell

At six bells, the morning repast, fortification for the day was ready. Loretta met the men with a mountain of food, breakfast English and American style. All were aboard for breakfast except for MacDougal, the radioman. He had to leave to journey south for a couple days’ venison hunt. Peake was there, the purser. He discussed her wages with Loretta and seemed to satisfy her with his number. He said to the general group he would be prepared to change money into British pounds for those who needed it, to see him before noon, eight bells.

Beal, the first officer, came in, nodded to all, began introducing the men she had not met to the new cook. There were Emiliano Corda and Pepe Alvarez, the two deckhands, both of the Philippines, squat, muscular men; Alvar Pedersen of Denmark; Holger Jannsson and Dietmar Koog of southern Sweden, able seamen, big men, strong men. Finally, there were the three German engineers. Since Cobalt was a freezer ship, she carried a great deal of machinery to keep her holds, capacious, compartmented, and well below the point of freezing. The ship itself had been built in Hamburg, and the machinery—three-diesel engines, massive refrigeration compressors, and all manner of backup apparatus—was German. Kurt Giebel, first engineer, was the leader and teacher of Wolf (Wolfgang Reimer) and Peter (Peter Treugel), technical men excellent in machinery matters, after the manner of German education.

As all were seated in the cramped cook’s galley, Gordonstone rapped on his water glass with his fork.

You all now know Loretta, our new cook. He looked around at the faces. While I have us together, I want to tell you we are not headed to England on the traditional Panama Canal route. Everyone stopped eating and waited. I have the company’s indulgence to go for the Straits of Magellan. That’s so I can stop a couple of days in Punta Arenas. You all can amuse yourselves there with the weirdness of that world. Most of you were with me there a year ago and have already met Beatrice, my wife-to-be.

To Loretta and Peake, who could not know, he explained, She’s the American girl down there making ultraviolet measurements of the ‘ozone hole.’ We’re going to be married there. Take a couple of days. Then we’re on our way to England again. Gordonstone did not drink coffee. He took a sip from his water glass.

East side of Tierra Del Fuego, isn’t it? asked Peake.

Yes. Fact is, direct, great circle route from here to there in the wintertime—now—will likely take us through some of the heaviest seas anywhere. Turning to Loretta, he said, "The Cobalt is a new ship with a double hull, strong enough to take it. But this will probably be a stretch of very big seas between here and the western entrance to the Straits of Magellan. It’ll be uncomfortable. Then looking around the room, he added, An’ anybody wants not to do it can have plane fare and expenses to London—not with pay, of course. Anybody wants t’ do that, tell Peake here this morning." All the seasoned crew thought something like, Well, we’ve seen lots of seas. No problem.

Nobody took him up on it. They began eating again. When they were completing, Beal stood up and gave a synopsis of the events of the day, the main one being the arrival and stevedoring aboard of the rest of the cargo. It would be containers of frozen lamb and mutton. They were to be lowered into their respective holds and there chained down by Corda, Alvarez, Pedersen, Jansson, and Koog, dressed against the cold in the freezer holds. He explained for Loretta’s benefit that this is to ensure against any shifting under heavy seas. He thought they ought to be complete by about four thirty, ready for a good meal and night of sleep before the morrow’s departure.

Next Day

With the morning tide, the motorship Cobalt departed Lyttelton. The former cook, stout Polish woman, arrived on the dock to see them off, Harold, her new consort, beside her. As the warps were hauled aboard, she waved and called out, Bon voyage! Harold waved though he knew none of them. They kept waving though, probably, Loretta thought, for different reasons. Using her side thrusters, the Cobalt inched away from the dock, assisted by force of wind. Loretta thought, I’ll bet she wonders if she did the right thing and thinks she’s going to miss this crew. And he’s probably glad for them to go so he can have her to himself. Just then, the men from the deck came up and in, pulling their caps off.

In the first moments of motion, Gordonstone, Beal, Lowne, and two of the three engineers were on the bridge, Lowne at the helm, his bony left hand just nudging the large spoked wheel. The ship responded kindly to his light touch. He had an eye for the direction of wind and its influence on the great white wall that Cobalt’s hull presented to it. Now his right hand engaged the large screws. Forward motion began. Wind force on such a large area is significant. Lowne knew how to compensate with the side thrusters. It was a sunny winter day for a change, windy, with tails of high cloud like brooms sweeping blue austral sky.

Two of those men on the bridge stood and looked out the side ports, watching harbor, land, buildings, boats, and ships at quayside pass behind them. Outside the harbor mouth, Lowne increased speed; the land dropped astern. Lowne, some thought, was slightly eccentric. The sea, it was reputed among others, was Lowne’s refuge, fleeing half a dozen wrecked marriages. Man of sunken cheeks and lantern jaw, he was eminently knowledgeable of the ports and passages of the world’s seas. He smoked more than his lungs liked and was smoking now, squinting, head cocked to keep the rising plume from his eyes. The men were silent, as men sitting or standing together sometimes are. They each had a stream of thoughts. They knew Lowne understood the handling of motorships in heavy weather. The low rumble, breathing of the diesel engines, made a gentle and pleasant vibration in this room that they called the bridge. Behind them, peering out other circular portholes, Loretta watched the land drop away then went forward to the bridge where now all the contingent had gathered.

The men knew without more words that giant seas stress steel fibers of even the newest ships. They did not speak of what they were thinking. That was anticipation of gray howlers assaulting Cobalt. They knew, with some feeling, if not quantitatively, that the immense power of uplift acts to challenge the casque that is the metal hull. Each of them felt Lowne understood vessels in a vicious seaway, how they are lifted by a local point, a stern or a bow. Each knew, because he had heard Lowne’s explanations and seen his performance, that motor ships of size cannot respond to commands of helm as rapidly as the weltering water giants demand. Each knew Lowne forgot little, his roughest passages, his experience with rogue waves, his encounters with devil storms. Each knew he anticipated the sea conditions that seldom came. They felt comfortable in that. They knew Lowne understood when to slow, to loiter, to lie hull down in heavy weather. They were not worried.

Beal stood by the big glass circle, which was the radar presentation. The green and glowing line traced out its map of the surrounding land as they departed, demarcating harbor falling behind and shoreline opening beyond as they passed through the aperture. Now the green-glowing map showed the substance of New Zealand dropping behind them.

Wolf Reimer listened to his engines critically, as he always did. His superior, Kurt Giebel, by reading a German newspaper, showed confidence that all machinery and engines were in good order. He had brought that paper from Christchurch. Gordonstone seemed immersed in thought.