Truth and Beauty 3-9

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“Three cheers for Captain O’Brian,” said the sub-lieutenant, once Jack was read in.

The captain blushed, but managed to restrain a smile. “Very good, Lieutenant Greensteet, you may dismiss the men,” he said. Once this was done he continued, “I’ll need to synch my sextant, so perhaps our next stop should be my cabin - er - quarters, and from there we may go round the brig.”

* * *

The captain’s quarters were at Roth’s stern: a great cabin all the way aft, with two smaller cabins forward of that, side by side and separated by a narrow passage. With its deal planking and the noble spread of the stern windows (no stern gallery in anything less than a carrier or a liner), the great cabin was the grandest room in the Roth. Besides the captain’s coach and sleeping cabin, two quarter galleries opened off it; the one to starboard housing his private toilet and sink, and the one to port his private shower. Piping and ductwork, decently shrouded by more deal, hung from the quarterdeck overhead, but in most places Jack found that he could stand up straight.

His day bag sat on a chair in front of a fall-front desk, with a midshipman’s hat on top of it. Jack frowned at the hat, moving it to a table and then ignoring it for the time being. He pulled his sextant from the bag, opened the desk, then plugged the sextant into the cable he found there. Once the synch app successfully launched, he turned back to Lieutenant Greenstreet. “Let us go round the brig,” he said.

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Truth and Beauty 3-8

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At the jetway’s end a red-coated marine snapped to attention as Jack approached. Jack touched his ID to the reader, and when the door rumbled open he had his first up-close look at the Roth.

His first impression was of age, age and obselescence. The airlock was cramped, with fading paint through which several sores of rust spread, giving the space an unhealthy look. Extra piping had been welded along one of the bulkheads - the piping was stainless, but even this had begin to rust. Richmond style locks were fitted to the doors, a device that had been growing obsolete when Jack was no older than Barus and Holley. He kept his eye on the amber light on the bulkhead and when the airlock’s inner door swung open he took a deep breath and stepped through the hatchway to his new command.

As soon as he crossed the threshold the bosun’s whistle began, piping Lieutenant O’Brian aboard. “Welcome aboard, sir,” said a tall, thin man, wearing the uniform of a sub-lieutenant. “I am Mister Greenstreet, subLieutenant of the Roth.” He stood bareheaded and saluting in a sort of crooked way. After a moment, Jack realized that this was due to his unnatural height, which forced him to stoop, even here on the main deck gangway. Even the sub-lieutenant’s face was tall and thin. At present, it wore a respectful but otherwise blank expression; Jack was an unknown quantity as far as discipline was concerned, and the sub-lieutenant had no desire to antagonize a man who might be commanding him for the next several years, perhaps in very trying circumstances indeed. Behind Mr Greenstreet stood the rest of the Roth’s officers, including Midshipman Holley.

Lieutenant O’Brian returned the salute. “Thank you, Mister Greensteet. If you could introduce the officers.”

This began a ritual ceremony in which each officer was named and stepped forward in order of precedence. They each saluted their new commander and he in turn saluted each of them. He caught the names of the master’s mate (Henreid) and the gunner (Veidt), but then the names began to mix and blur, and he quickly lost track of whether the carpenter was named Leigh or Lorre, and whether the engineer or the electrician was named Humphries. Thankfully, there is the muster book, he thought, noting with some relief that Mister Greenstreet had now introduced almost everyone; Jack’s arm was growing sore from the many salutes. “Very good, Mister Greenstreet,” he said. “If you will assemble the men I will read myself in.”

The bosun’s mate blew his call and the weird piping blew over the Roth’s PA system, now playing cadence to assemble the men. Mister Greenstreet led Lieutenant O’Brian along the gangway to a typically steep, narrow flight of stairs that led directly into the men’s berthing, recreation, and dining area.

Most of the men were already here. Jack’s, or rather Lieutenant O’Brian’s arrival was no secret, nor was the fact that he would have to read himself in to assume legal authority over the Roth and her crew. The men assembled in their places, toeing scuffed lines taped on the floor, each standing where his designated number was handwritten on the linoleum tiling. Gaps showed where men were missing, either on duty at stations they should not leave, on their way from the more distant parts of the Roth, off-ship on leave, or perhaps on the sick list. Many of the men looked jaded and groggy, with tousled hair; and at least one sported a mis-buttoned shirt: the watch below had clearly been asleep.

Midshipman Holley pulled a chair over to a microphone hanging from the ceiling, climbed up to switch the microphone on, then moved the chair back out of the way. Sub-lieutenant Greenstreet stepped forward to the mike: “off hats,” he ordered.

The order was superfluous; none of the men wore head coverings of any kind, but it was necessary, too, as the time-honored preamble to the reading-in of a new captain. The men straightened their backs and fell silent, watching the Lieutenant O’Brian as he stepped in front of the microphone, unfolded his commission, and began.

“By the right honorable Lord X_____, Knight of the Bath, Vice Admiral of the White, and Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s Vessels employed and to be employed in the Home Sector,” Jack read, continuing through to the end, marrying himself to the Roth and her crew and making his orders to them death to disobey.

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Drew's Fighting Ships: T2 Tanker

The T2 superfamily of tankers and fleet oilers were part of the Pitt administration’s second building program. Like other designs of the program, the name reflects this, T indicating tanker, and 2 indicating the second program. The superfamily includes several prototype and demonstrator vessels, four classes of civilian tankers (many members of which eventually saw military use), two classes of Navy tankers, and one class of fleet oilers. All of these vessels were based on a common design, and most included a now infamous weakness between frames 72 and 201. Poorly understood metallurgy, coupled in some cases with rushed, inferior construction technique, exacerbated this weakness, as well as obfuscating its nature. Many T2 did live full, productive lives, but enough of them failed, and enough of the failures were spectacular, that the opposition seized upon the class to discredit Pitt and force him from office. Today, the T2 is most important for its engineering and design lessons.

Design and Evolution:
The T2 was envisioned as a vessel that could build up Britain’s merchant fleet, then shrinking and wearing out under wartime austerity measures, while violating neither the letter nor the spirit of those measures. The design was fully compatible with Naval facilities of the time, could keep up with convoy vessels, and allowed for easy conversion to Navy service. Partial government subsidy encouraged civilian operators to participate in the building program, and enabled many cash-strapped operators to afford to replace obsolete and worn-out vessels, with the proviso that the Navy could purchase the ship at book value on 30-days’ notice.

The initially-approved design met all of these needs, producing, after a few prototypes, the Syracuse class of T2s starting in 2732. Syracuse class vessels featured 9 cargo bays; bay 1, at the bow, held two tanks, separated by a midline bulkhead, each carrying about 80,000 gallons. The remaining bays held a center tank of about just under 400,000 gallons and two wing tanks, each of 160,000 gallons, giving a combined capacity of a little under six million gallons of fluids.

The stern was dominated by a two-by-two arrangement of 1 GW thrust engines at the corners (often Kingfisher Astro series, though roughly-equivalent Rolls-Royce and Viscount engines were also used), with twin 0.5 MW Kingfisher Director engines on a rotating nose ring for pitch, yaw, and roll. Bays, wiring, and magazines for two 14 GW plasma-arc cannon per side were fitted, though the cannon themselves were not. (Cannon would be supplied by the Navy if the tankers were appropriated. Some civilian operators installed dummy cannon as a measure of protection, or less-powerful real cannon; and some appropriated vessels retained their Navy-issue cannon on their return to civilian life.) Twin 70 GW reactors powered the whole.

Builders laid 173 keels of this class, of which 144 saw completion. Three were destroyed on the stocks by enemy action, sixteen were cancelled mid-production, and the remaining ten were appropriated by the Navy prior to their completion, being converted into various prototypes and experimental vessels. The class came to an end as a casualty of the emerging design for what would become the Gravelines class of supercarriers, which required greater quantities of coolants and lubricants than the earlier New Orleans and Trafalgar classes.

A hurried redesign increased cargo capacity by close to 16% by cutting back frames 72 through 201 and disrupting the beam belt in the same area. An external “bilge keel” was added to compensate for the disrupted beam belt, a visible feature absent in the Syracuse class and the most obvious external feature (i.e. feature in absentia) of that class.

Of the ten incomplete Syracuse vessels purchased by the Navy, seven were built as prototypes of the evolving T2a design (the other three saw such extensive alteration as Special Projects experimental vessels that they are frequently excluded from the class). The last of these, Chapel Hill, had all of the main features seen in the T2a group, and some scholars consider Chapel Hill to be the class leader. The Navy, however, named the class for the first vessel ordered to the design, the Mount Pleasant.

Mount Pleasant class tankers differed from their predecessors primarily through their increased cargo volume, but other changes were also made, including dividing the crew’s berthing area into several smaller compartments for better gender harmony, and rearranging the bulkheads of the officers’ quarters. The class is also the parent class to the Navy’s Ticonderoga tankers. These vessels received cannon during fitting out at their builders’, featuring either Armstrong pattern cannon before about 2745, or Blomefield pattern cannon after. Since the Navy did not appropriate any Mount Pleasant class tankers before the middle of 2746, Armstrong pattern cannon are almost exclusive to the Ticonderoga class of T2s. Ticonderoga class craft were also equipped with 2500 gpm cargo pumps, rather than the 2000 gpm pumps seen on their civilian-built sisters, or the 3500 gpm pumps of the later Wichita class of fleet oilers. Builders completed 372 Mount Pleasant craft, plus another 77 Ticonderoga vessels for the Navy.

The New Hyde Park class of T2s were built, through Lend-Lease, in American yards. In many respects they were identical to the British Mount Pleasant class, with the important distinction that all structural (and many other) members were built to SAE dimensions. These dimensions gave the New Hyde Park craft a curb weight about 2% less than that of the Mount Pleasant craft, and about 3% greater efficiency, as the engines were the same for both classes. The Navy’s Melbourne tankers were also American-built and SAE-dimensioned, being related to the New Hyde Park civilian tankers much as the Ticonderoga tankers were related to the Mount Pleasants. Production numbers for these classes were 198 New Hyde Parks, and 42 Melbournes.

Thus far, the power plant and engines of the original Syracuse design had met the modest needs of a tanker, but by 2750 the T2s often found themselves as the slowest vessels of the convoy, and a re-engining and redesign was in order. Five Ticonderoga class vessels were refitted with 1.5 GW engines, but this was really more than the installed power plant could handle, and none of the conversions were deemed successful. After a catastrophic fire on board one of these vessels, thought to be related to an overtaxed reactor, the remaining four vessels were decommissioned and scrapped. Eleven incomplete Mount Pleasant tankers were appropriated before the installation of their power plants. Experiments with these vessels yielded the T2b series, fitted with synergy-linked twin reactors (then a new technology) each capable of putting out 75 GW independently, or 165 GW together. Four 1.2 GW engines (typically Curtis Industrie Shakespeares), still in a two-by-two at-the-corners plan, provided about 15% extra thrust over the T2 and T2a designs, enabling the vessels to keep pace with their convoys. The Manchester was the first T2 to be ordered and built with the new power plant and engines, and so became the class leader. Manchesters were identical, in other respects, to the Mount Pleasant class vessels they superseded. 98 were built.

The final member of the T2 superfamily is the Wichita class of fleet oilers. Intrest in using a T2 design as a fleet oiler had originally risen in 2736, when Curtis’s buyout of Julio-Novak threatened continued availability of J-N’s Red Ball oilers. Under heavy pressure (the government threatened to block the acquisition), Curtis agreed to continue producing the Red Ball, renaming it the JN-3, but increasing dissatisfaction with Curtis’s product led the Navy to revisit the idea of a T2 oiler in 2741, and again in 2743. Several prototypes were made by converting existing T2s, but none proved satisfactory and the government struck a ten-year contract with Wang instead.

In 2752, this contract was coming to an end, and the Pitt administration pressed the Navy for an in-house design. Electronic Transport Controls’ Source Four Engines were selected, rated at the same 1.2 GW as Curtis’s Shakespeare engines, but delivering 30% more thrust (drawbar). This was enough to enable the prototype vessels to easily keep up with the main battle fleets of the time, and the substitution of 3500 gpm cargo pumps and a second, larger hangar area (added at the expense of a sick bay, and by shrinking the avionics bay - functions assumed by the capital ships of the battle fleet in any case) produced a vessel capable of replenishment under weigh operations. The first vessel in which all of these features appeared, Wichita, became the class leader (not the first vessel ordered to these specifications from the ground up, in breaking with past T2 tradition). In total, the Navy launched 45 Wichita oilers.

Problems, and Retirement:
All members of the T2 superfamily, with the exception of the Syracuse class, had in common a structural discontinuity at frame 72, and again at frame 201. External bracing (the so-called “bilge keel”) was intended to compensate for this, but T2 tankers suffered structural failures at a higher rate than many other vessels of the time. Rushed, substandard construction was blamed at the time, and did have a role in some incidents (e.g. the Yarm-on-Tees), but others occurred on vessels built in careful, well-respected yards where the standard of work was high. Various additional theories were put forth, including the sulphur content of the steel used, and “built-in stresses,” but none of the proposals led to successful amelioration of the problem. Computer analysis completed in the early 2800s, based on improved understanding of the physical stresses of a craft in space, showed that the “bilge keel” bracing failed to adequately address the loss of structural integrity caused by the interruption of the beam belt when the liquid storage tanks were expanded, and this is now the accepted reason for most failures.

Regardless of the reason, by 2755 the T2 had earned a reputation as a poorly-built craft, prone to catastrophic structural failure, and various inspection and repair programs were initiated. Some of these helped, to a degree; but others perversely exacerbated the problem by focussing stresses on already weak areas of the hull. Orders for the design fell off. The last T2 launch (Owston Ferry, a Wichita class oiler) occurred in May of the following year.

Of all five classes together, approximately 1,000 T2 craft were built and launched over the program’s 24 years. The Navy divested itself of all of its T2 by 2762, though many continued with the Transport Board and civilian operators for many years after than time.

Truth and Beauty 3-7

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Jack, still busy with thoughts that made his face unnaturally grave, stared back, noting the blue coat, white collar facings, and unadorned shoulders that had so recently been the marks of his own rank.

“What’s your problem, Barus?” asked another boy, coming around a corner in the jetway, “did you fall down again, you -,” before he stopped, too.

“Holley,” said Barus, still sprawled upon the ground, “it’s him.”

But Holley had already reached this conclusion on his own. He ran back up the jetway and disappeared, shouting, “he’s here! Mister Greenstreet, he’s here!”

Jack stepped through the gate and allowed it to close. Barus looked to be about ten years old, Jack guessed, a little chubby, with unkempt brown hair and black eyes and a round, face, currently pale with shock. He sat unmoving, except to swivel his head to continue to stare up at Jack, who began self conscious. “Mr Barus,” he said, to break the tension, “you belong to the Roth?”

“Yes, sir,” said Midshipman Barus, moving to remove his hat and realizing that he was already bare-headed. Apologetically, he saluted, still absurdley sprawled on the ground. “Carl Barus Midshipman second class H-M-Brig Roth Lieutenant, uh, Lieutenant O’Brian sir.”

Jack returned the salute. “I am Lieutenant O’Brian. Perhaps you would be so good as to take my bag?” he said, hoping to induce the boy to stand, but Barus merely reached up from where he was. “I think you will find your hat just outside the gate,” Jack continued. “Once you have found it and put it on, please place it in my cabin and meet me on deck.”

The midshipman nodded. “Yes, sir," he said, saluting again, and Jack proceeded down the jetway to H-M-Brig Roth.

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STO'B 5-3 Captain Fitton

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Badger plucked her anchor from the ground and set sail out of the harbor. Less nimbly, Chasseur did the same. Philip sat in his cabin and sulked. “Yes,” he said when the sentry again announce Mr South.

“Steam is up, sir,” said the master, saluting and carefully looking over his skipper’s shoulder rather than at his tear-lined face. “Begging your pardon, but our coal bunkers are only about a third full, like, and our quarterly allowance is spent.”

“Spent?”

“Yes, sir. We refilled from the Cranberry, then half full from Chasseur, plus what came before your time, so to speak, is our full allowance. And we’ve burnt most all of that, sir, between the donkey and the main - we only carry ten ton or so. We might be able to argue that a new commander rates a new allowance but that doesn’t always take - and any way that won’t be till after we gets to Malta, at earliest. Best guess is most of a day of steam, at six knots, our most efficient speed.”

“I see.” Philip pulled a pencil from a drawer in his desk and scribbled some hasty multiplication on the corner of a piece of paper. “I will buy more coal in Malta, Mr South, there will certainly be time. Burn what we have. And Mr South?”

“Yes, sir?”

“In the future, er, please ask how to enter captured supplies.”

The master cleared his throat, but then his eyes glassed over and he saluted: “yes, sir,” and left.

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Truth and Beauty 3-6

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“Carry your bag for you, sir?” piped a small voice at his elbow.

Looking down, Jack saw a boy of perhaps eight or nine, dressed in a once fine jacket and shabby trousers. “Why not,” he said to the boy, pulling his sextant from the side pocket before handing the bag over (he had been robbed before, though never in a Naval facility). “I am bound for the Roth, he said. “Do you know where she is?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” said the boy. “She’s on gate five at terminal A. We’ll have to take the shuttle, sir, this is terminal C.”

Jack resisted a frown. All five terminals met in a central hub to form a lop-sided star. Gate numbers began at the hub. The shuttle circled around the far ends of the terminals. “How about I just give you the two shillings,” he said to the boy, “and we walk through the hub instead?”

“It’s three shillings, sir,” said the boy unashamedly, “and an ice cream.”

“Three shillings and an ice cream it is,” said Jack. Together, they walked down to the hub, Jack stopping from time to time to chat with people he knew, and buying the boy an ice cream at the soft-serve stand. By the time they reached gate 5A, both the boy’s hands and the handles of Jack's bag were sticky. Jack paid the boy his three shillings, plus the fee for carrying the bag, and the boy ran off to find another customer.

Jack considered the gate. On the far side of it lay the jetway to his command, and he was still sorting out his varied feelings on the matter when it opened to discharge a boy of perhaps twelve years old. The boy ran bodily into Jack, losing his hat and bouncing back through the gate into the jetway, where he fell to the floor.

“Can’t you watch where the-” the boy began, but as he looked up to see who he had run into the words died in throat, and his mouth and eyes spread into a trio of large, silent circles.

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STO'B 5-2 Captain Fitton

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By the time Phillip returned to the sloop that was barely still his, he was pale and shaking. He made the sketchiest of salutes as he was piped aboard, told the master (the officer of the watch) to make all steam for Malta, and retreated to his cabins, refraining only with difficulty from slamming the door.

He barely had time to order coffee before the Marine sentry announce Mr South. “Yes,” Phillip said, then rather less forcefully, “how may I help you, Mister South?”

The master coughed apologetically, but steam was not up. The wind served, however, if Philip wished to start under sail.

“Yes,” said Philip. “Whatever combination of steam and sail will get us there the quickest, in your professional judgement.”

“Yes, sir. And the Chasseur, sir, shall we signal her to follow?”

Philip nodded, not too curtly, he hoped. The master left, and Philip sat down on one of the stern lockers. Badger would probably need some weeks in the yard at Malta, more than enough time for Admiral Whyte’s orders to arrive in Gibraltar and for the lucky commander to sail back to Mahon to claim Philip’s sloop. And the Chasseur - even if the old dog refused to believe him on the Spaniard and the merchantmen, the Chasseur was tangibly true, but here Simkin brought in coffee on a steel tray. Philip poured himself a cup, wonderfully hot and strong, and stared through the stern windows at the tangible Chasseur, floating at single anchor.

Badger’s capstan gave a few preparatory clunks that echoed through the sloop. In his mind’s eye Philip saw the Marines assembling at the capstan bars, with the usual pushing and shoving as the men distributed themselves. Perhaps if he color-coded the bars, each with a matching colored dot on the capstan head, the Marines would have less trouble; perhaps he could find paint in Malta.

The Chasseur began to glide from left to right across his stern windows as Badger crept over to her anchor. “Up and down, sir,” he heard a seaman report; Wight, by the sound of the voice; and Mister South’s reply, “thick and dry for weighing.” In the window, Chasseur settled in the last pane on the right, rising and falling in the swell.

The fife laid in, and in his mind’s eye Philip could see the Marines straining at the capstan, Wight and the party at the cathead, the men in the hold coiling the anchor cable.

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