A Ship Must Die

Начало книги

The author wishes to thank those officers and men of the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal New Zealand Navy who gave their assistance.

The New Year of 1944 was only two weeks old but already it looked as if it might be one of the hottest on record. The sun which blazed down across His Majesty’s Australian Naval Dockyard at Williamstown was so fierce that it had stripped the sky of colour, and the crowded berths and wharves twisted and danced in an ever-changing mirage.

But it was Sunday, and the working parties about the dockyard were reduced to a minimum, leaving the ships to themselves, overlapping shapes of grey steel or vivid dazzle-paint.

The main berth was devoid of movement, the gantrys motionless like dozing storks, the massive wooden concourse all but covered with a litter of pipes, wire, anchor cable and debris of all sorts, a scrap-dealer’s paradise. Ships being refitted, others being constructed to fill the unending gaps left after four years of war. Veterans too, their hulls showing hasty repairs, others still displaying their scars. Splinter holes and buckled plates, where weapons and men had once stood and faced their enemies.

Читать дальше →