The Black Tide [antikvár]

It was New Year's Eve. The last weather forecast had given wind south-westerly force 5 increasing to 6 with poor visibility in sleet or snow showers. Between Land's End and the Scillies, and already in to the northbound trafiic lane, the tanker Petros Jupiter, with 57,000 tons of crude for the Llan-darcy refinery in South Wales, made a long slow turn to starb'd, finally settling on to a course of 95®. Her cargo had been resold late that afternoon, but delay in obtaining signature on certain documents had meant that it was not until 22.54 that her master was informed of the transaction and instructed to alter course for Rotterdam. Less than an hour later, at 23.47, the alarm bells sounded on the bridge. Like many of the early VLCCs, the Petros Jupiter was just about worn out. She had been built for the Gulf Oil Development Company in the sixties, at the height of the Japanese expansion in shipbuilding. Her design life at maximum efficiency was about eight years and GODCO had sold her to a Greek company in 1975. She was now in her seventeenth year and, since rounding the Cape, steam leaks had been creating an almost permanent fog in the engine-room with the evaporator barely able to produce sufficient distilled water to replace the loss. The log would show that on two previous occasions loss of distilled water had been so great that the automatic cut-out on the single boiler had been tripped. For ships taking the inside route between Land's End and 13