H ungry, cold and traumatised, Ariel and Rebekkah huddled underneath the Wilhelm Kohler ’s wheelhouse. Further aft, some of the other children had sought shelter in the lee of the starboard wing. The rusty deck beneath their feet vibrated to the steady thump-thump-thump of the coal-steamer’s engine. The rain sheeted in from the south across the Black Sea, but the cold air was far preferable to the fumes of the cabin. From the pocket where he kept his father’s maps, Ariel carefully extracted a dry biscuit he’d saved from breakfast and broke it in two. As he passed half to Rebekkah, shouting broke out on the bridge above them.
‘For three months I’ve been telling you the main bearings are too hot! Always you want full speed, but if you keep it up, they will seize!’ Barzani’s black eyes blazed with anger. It was a battle that was as old as the steam engine itself. For Barzani, the overheated bearings spelled disaster. For the stubborn old Turk on the bridge, any slackening in the ship’s speed meant a bad-tempered owner and no bonus.
‘I’m the captain of this ship, mister, and you’ll follow orders. Maintain full revolutions!’
Barzani stormed off the bridge, his dirty overalls unbuttoned to his waist, sweat running down his dark, hairy chest.
‘Son of a bitch,’ he muttered as he clambered down the engine-room companionway. The thumping pistons, hissing steam and roar of the furnace were deafening, but amongst the cacophony, he sensed another noise. Like a great orchestral conductor detecting that an oboe was flat by a fraction of a tone, in amongst the thunderous cranking of the Wilhelm Kohler ’s machinery, the engineer had picked up a slight knocking. Aft of the great engine, a single gleaming drive shaft ran the length of the keel, encased by semicircular bearing caps the size of a small car. Barzani checked the blackened steam gauges above the furnace and reached for his battered oilcan. He headed aft, stooping to fit through the cramped bulkheads that enclosed the pulsing drive shaft. He reached the first of the massive bearing caps and felt it. It was hot – far too hot. Barzani injected just the right amount of oil into the filler cup on top of the thumping case. He stopped to shake his fist at the deck above him. ‘ Pic! Bastard!’ he swore, and he headed along the shaft towards the next bearing.
The Wilhelm Kohler reached the entrance to the Bosphorus late in the afternoon. The Strait of Istanbul, Mustafa Gokoglan knew, was one of the most dangerous waterways in the world. Sixteen headlands had to be negotiated along the seventeen nautical miles, and a surface current ran south from the Black Sea to the Marmara; but because of the different salt concentrations between the two seas, a second, deeper current ran in the opposite direction. Gokoglan alternately puffed on his pipe and sipped from coffee laced with raki, the powerful white spirit the Turks called aslant sutu, lion’s milk.
‘See, Ariel: a fishing village,’ Rebekkah said, pointing to their first sight of land since they’d left the Danube. The Wilhelm Kohler was less than 300 metres from the shoreline. Small, brightly coloured wooden fishing boats rocked in front of the fish market at Rumeli Kavagi. The rain had eased, and on the ridgeline behind the market, they could see houses beneath the plane trees. Further along, the ridgeline was dominated by a huge castle. The fishing villages on the European side gradually gave way to turreted wooden mansions; while on the Asian shore opposite, one of the former Sultans’ many summer palaces commanded the top of a steep hill.
A thick fog began to roll in from the south. Gokoglan yanked defiantly on the dirty length of rope hanging from the rusted roof of the bridge. Three short bursts of steam issued from the Wilhelm Kohler ’s funnel as the foghorn sounded an eerie warning, one that was immediately absorbed by the mists. In defiance of the speed restrictions, Gokoglan maintained course towards the Kandilli Turn, the notorious Bosphorus promontory that required a forty-five-degree change of course. Any ships heading south were blind to traffic going in the opposite direction. He peered into the gathering darkness, searching for the promontory he’d already passed, and the Wilhelm Kohler crossed into the northbound shipping lane.
Five deep blasts from a ship’s horn, the international distress signal for an imminent collision, reverberated through the fog. A large Russian freighter loomed out of the mists.
Gokoglan swore and wrenched the telegraph to emergency full astern.
In the engine room below Barzani leapt to the reciprocating lever and immediately brought the great engine to a stop in a cloud of hissing steam and protesting pistons. Just as quickly, he applied full throttle in the opposite direction. Whatever the engineer’s views of his stubborn and irascible captain, Barzani was responding to a fundamental law of the sea. Above the thunderous noise in the engine room, the frenzied dinging on the telegraph meant the ship was in danger. Barzani watched the con rods slowly gather speed. On the bridge above Gokoglan frantically spun the Wilhelm Kohler’s wheel to starboard, but as the huge Penn and Company engine reached maximum revolutions, the overheated bearing caps finally reached their limits. The number one bearing-case seized and shattered in an explosion of sparks. Freed of one of its supports, the glistening silver main shaft began to flex violently. Barzani rushed towards the reciprocating lever but he was too late. The shaft snapped just for’ard of the shattered bearing casing. Clear of the load of the propeller, the old engine reached revolutions for which it had never been designed. The little end-bearing in the number one cylinder was the next to fail, driving the con rod through the crown of the massive piston. The number two and three pistons shattered in sympathy and the engine disintegrated in an explosion of metal shrapnel. A lump of red-hot metal decapitated Barzani in a bloodied mist of escaping steam.
The Russian freighter hit the Wilhelm Kohler midway between the bridge and the stern on the starboard side. She sliced into the rusted plates in a grinding, sickening crunch. Rebekkah was knocked unconscious as her head slammed into one of the steel bulkheads. Ariel held his sister’s limp body with one hand and clung desperately to a stanchion with the other.
The Russian captain immediately ordered full astern and ever so slowly, steel grating and screeching against steel, the Russian freighter freed herself from the Wilhelm Kohler’s grasp. Tons of icy water flooded the aft coal bunkers and the Wilhelm Kohler listed alarmingly to starboard, the sea foaming through the connecting bulkhead doors that had been left open.
‘Launch the lifeboat!’ Gokoglan bellowed. One of the deckhands struggled with the ropes on the starboard lifeboat, but to no avail. Mustafa Gokoglan hadn’t conducted a lifeboat drill in years, and the pulleys in the davits were rusted solid. Gokoglan fled the bridge to the fiercely listing deck below.
‘Launch it!’ he roared, swinging on the ropes, but the small wooden boat hung drunkenly from the davits. The Wilhelm Kohler shuddered and rolled past forty-five degrees, throwing Ariel and Rebekkah, along with those children not trapped below decks, into the icy sea.
Ariel spluttered and coughed up sea water as he surfaced a short distance from the stricken coal steamer. ‘Rebekkah! Rebekkah!’ he yelled, frantically searching for his sister in the dark, oily waters.