North Star (40 page)
Authors: Hammond Innes
Dawn found us roughly 4 miles east of Sumburgh Head, a battered wreck being carried slowly northward on the tide. An RAF Nimrod came over, flying low, and an hour later the first tug was coming up over the horizon. We raised a cheer as it steamed close alongside. But though we cheered the tug’s arrival, we were too cold, too dazed to do anything about it. The iron staircase to the derrick floor was gone, the pipe skid our only way down. Nobody had the energy to be lowered on a rope, to struggle through the tangled wreckage and get a towline fixed. We had been inactive so long that we clung to inactivity, immobilized by the long, dreadful night, by the memory of our fear, of death so narrowly averted.
It wasn’t for another two hours, when there were three tugs and a navy ship milling around us, that men boarded us and one by one we were got down from our refuge, lowered into
boats and taken on board the destroyer. Villiers was with me in the naval pinnace and I remembered my surprise at the extraordinary resilience of the man, the sudden return of confidence. His square-jawed face was dark with stubble, his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot from the shattering force of the wind, and his right hand, lacerated by a piece of flying metal, was still wrapped in the bandage Lennie had fixed. And yet he could talk about the future, about the huge possibilities of the oilfield
North Star
had found.
Maybe it was nervous reaction, words pouring out of him as he thought aloud, but I couldn’t help admiring him. If he had had phones beside him, he would have been rapping out orders, raising finance. ‘The rig doesn’t matter. If we lost half a dozen rigs, the cost of them would still be nothing. I’d still have merchant bankers falling over themselves to lend me money.’
‘If you lose rigs,’ I said, ‘you lose lives.’
But he brushed that aside. ‘We didn’t lose any. Not during the storm, not one. And the rig is covered by Lloyds. How long do you reckon it will take to get it repaired?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I answered tersely. I didn’t care about the rig. I was worrying about the
Duchess
, anxious to check that she hadn’t dragged her anchors and been forced to put to sea in that maelstrom of a night.
He pushed his hand up over his face, rubbing at the caked salt. ‘I have to think of the future,’ he said. ‘What this oil strike means to the company. A lot of reorganization, new management.’ He looked at me then. ‘Room for somebody like you.’ And he added, ‘I owe you a lot, Randall. And you’ve got brains, education, financial training, even shipyard experience. The knack of handling men, too.’ The boat was slowing now, manoeuvring to come alongside the destroyer, and he leaned forward. ‘Would you like to come down to London for a few weeks, get the feel of things?’
‘Whatever for?’ I asked dully, thinking of Gertrude.
‘I don’t know yet. The rig for a start. Somebody will have to
be cracking the whip. Then there’s the Shetland office. That will have to expand fast. It will be first priority, and I’ll need somebody with a Shetland background.’ He was thinking aloud. And then he said, ‘Anyway, you come down to London with me. I’ll be needing men like you.’
I looked at him then, realizing he was serious. ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. But I knew I wouldn’t. Not if I had Gertrude. I might be able to handle it, but I couldn’t see Gertrude fitting into the sort of life he was offering me. And Gertrude was all I wanted. That’s what the night had taught me. She was the rock I was now clinging to. Without Gertrude I would be adrift again. But together, creating something of our own – a service, up here in this wild, beautiful world we both understood. I was thinking of The Taing, that house, the ship lying off and the voe as I had once seen it, in moonlight from the bedroom window. That was what I wanted, my life worthwhile and with purpose. Not something handed to me readymade and only to be managed, something not my own.
I clambered up the destroyer’s side and asked the lieutenant who greeted us if I could use the ship’s R/T.
‘You’re Captain Randall of the
Duchess
, are you? Your ship will be up with us in about an hour. And I have a message for you. Will you check with Mr Villiers that she is to resume stand-by duty under the terms of the charter.’
I looked at Villiers, and suddenly we were both laughing.
NORTH STAR
is a natural progression from earlier travels in search of background. I was in Canada in 1950 when the discovery well at Leduc was flaring and the first rigs were moving into the Redwater field. The result was
Campbell’s Kingdom
. Six years later I was ashore in the Oman with the first oil expedition on the Arabian coast of the Indian Ocean and wrote
The Doomed Oasis
. It was inevitable, therefore, that I should become fascinated by the search for oil off the coasts of my native land.
I started writing
NORTH STAR
in the autumn of 1972 with the intention of finishing it late in 1974, but world events caught up with me – the Arab-Israeli war, the oil embargoes, the shortages, the price rises. And in Britain a miners’ strike and the 3-day working week, the unions bringing government down, a general election. Suddenly North Sea oil was on everybody’s lips, the one bright spot in the prevailing gloom. In these circumstances, I felt it essential to bring the book forward, and if any errors have crept in, then this is the reason.
However, I have had a great deal of technical help. Primarily I am indebted to Shell, and to Sir David Barran, who made me free of their
Staflo
rig on a long tow down from the Brent to the Auk. Later Tammo Appelman, their seabed expert, cleared up many questions of technical detail. Tricentrol’s chief exploration manager, A. F. Fox, was most helpful in pinpointing the location for
North Star
’s drilling west of Shetland, and I am also indebted to him for a final check on drilling technicalities. And in the north-west of Scotland Sir Reginald Rootes introduced me to the little Port of the North opposite his house.
North Star
was the name of my rig, and also my title, right from the first page of writing, and here I ran into difficulty. At a late stage I discovered that there was, in fact, a real rig called
North Star
. It was of the jack-up type drilling in the Persian Gulf and owned by The Offshore Company of Houston, Texas. However, their President, W. H. Moore, raised no objection when I wrote to him of my problem, and I would like to express my appreciation of his understanding and emphasize that there is no connection between the semi-submersible
North Star
rig of my story and his jack-up.
Finally, I would like to thank Charles Forret for his help over details of speech in Shetland, Mike Burton of Newington Trawlers and the Lowestoft Fishing Vessel Owners Association and Captain Meen for clarification of equipment and lay-out of the
Duchess
, Jim Mitchell of the
Hull Daily Mail
for court background, and many others who have been of assistance to me during the very concentrated period of writing this book, including all those on
Staflo
who gave me of their time and knowledge.
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781448156900
Published by Vintage 2013
Copyright © The Estate of Hammond Innes 1974
First published in Great Britain by Collins in 1974
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ISBN 9780099577829