In last week’s episode, the St. Paul began her dangerous Atlantic crossing. In this week’s episode, we return to the disaster still unfolding in Tanzania as the St. Paul races to the rescue…
It had been two days since John-Pombe made the four-mile journey with his injured leg across the muddy red clay roads that led from his flood-destroyed home to the bridge that spanned the Malagarasi River just below its confluence with the Ruchugi River. The flood also severely damaged the bridge so that it was no longer serviceable. John-Pombe had to stand waiting for hours with other victims while local fishermen ferried them across, a few at a time, to safety in the town of Uvinza.
John-Pombe had relatives in there, and he stayed with them now. Uvinza was a small town in western Tanzania highlands. Formerly known as Neu Gottorp during the German colonial rule, Uvinza was an ancient town known for its salt production, with a railway line built in the 1900s linking it to Dar es Salaam.
Now, however, with no end from the relentless rains, the rail line was also closed due to mudslides. The nearest major city was Kigoma, the city for which the Kigoma Region was named. It was over fifty miles away. With his injured leg, that was an impossible distance for John-Pombe.
He was a Ha person. Also called Waha or Abaha, they were a Bantu ethnic group, one of Tanzania’s largest. It was the tradition of his people to look after one another during times of hardship. However, with so many people displaced by the flood, taking care of another injured man placed a great strain on his relatives. Everyone suffered, and relationships were under stress.
But John-Pombe didn’t care about the burden he was causing his relatives. He didn’t care if his swollen leg ached and burned. He didn’t even care for water or the taste of food. He couldn’t sleep, and when he realized he no longer had the strength to walk along the riverbank looking for signs of his son Christopher, he lost the ability to even get up off of the mat his relatives laid outside of their hut for him to sleep on.
Normally this time of year, when the rains came, John-Pombe would tend to his coffee crop. He also used to grow some cassava, yams, and peanuts for his personal use and raised a few head of cattle and goats. But now, he just spent his day looking skyward and glowering at the dark gray clouds that seemed to pour rain without end into the raw wound of John-Pombe’s soul. Christopher had been his life, his constant joy.
John-Pombe’s wife was lost two years earlier to the sleeping sickness. Christopher was just growing to the age where he would follow John-Pombe around and try to imitate his father. This year they were going to hunt and gather honey… Christopher had her smile. Hot tears came fresh to John-Pombe’s eyes, and he buried his head in his arms and lay on the mat, trying to stay out of the rain that dripped from the corrugated tin roof of his relative’s hut.
David loved his tiny cabin, and he loved looking out the window at the slowly drifting cloudscapes as he finally dropped into a deep sleep. Maybe it was the gentle rocking motion of the St. Paul, or the distant hum of her engines, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept so well.
Still, he didn’t need much sleep, and during the quiet hours he had an opportunity to think deeply about things that typically got pushed aside in the normal day-to-day hustle required to make a living. Ranell had touched a nerve when he advised David to support these officers. I trust people, don’t I? He was indignant because he was proud of his military service. I always obey orders. But in the back of his mind, he knew Ranell was talking about something more than mere obedience, something David was truly reluctant to do.
The St. Paul was about seven hours into her Atlantic crossing when David heard Lieutenant Singh wake from his rest shift. Ever since the dressing-down he’d received, David tended to have a hyper-awareness of Singh’s presence on the ship. He wished he could avoid the navigator, but the ship was just too small for that.
“Whatcha cookin’ Doc?” Singh called aft.
Ranell called back from the doorway of the galley. “Good morning, LT.” There were some chuckles among the crew because it was nearly one in the afternoon. “For lunch today, we have Fortune Bay chowder. It’s a lovely thick potato soup that I’m making with the fresh mussels I got in Loring. I used a generous amount of bacon for balance. You’re going to love the smoky flavor.”
“I’ve never eaten so well,” Singh replied cheerfully.
“It’s one of my favorite Newfoundland recipes. I serve it with a toasted baguette.” Ranell made a sound like he was kissing his fingertips with gusto. “Go ahead forward, LT. Mr. Wilson will begin serving the noon meal presently.”
That was David’s cue to get dressed and go assist in the galley.
It only took a few minutes before David was loading a tray and backing through the door that led up the hallway to the main cabin. He arrived just as Singh was settling into a seat at the main table. It must be nice to have someone deliver your food to you as soon as you wake up. Captain Pruitt was already there. He was finishing up the morning watch as the co-pilot. After lunch, he would assume pilot-in-command duties for the afternoon watch, with Singh as his co-pilot. First Officer Foote was at the controls for a little while longer until he ate lunch and went on his rest cycle. These periods of overlap served as a vital link in the chain of continuity for the St. Paul’s flight operations and were always characterized by technical conversation as the incoming member was brought up to speed about the current flight conditions.
“How are we doing, Captain?” Singh asked.
“Excellent LT.” Captain Pruitt’s eyes fairly gleamed with excitement. “That tailwind you found out of Loring has us cruising along at about 15 knots over our maximum airspeed. Good work.” The St. Paul’s maximum top speed in still air was 60 knots, or just over 69 miles per hour. However, the increase in velocity gained by a tailwind could be added to her top speed relative to the ground, so the airship was moving 15 knots faster (about 17 miles per hour) than her maximum airspeed. It was no secret that Captain Pruitt wanted to prove that hybrid airships could make the Atlantic crossing faster and with less fuel than current models predicted.
David came out and placed trays with large bowls of chowder garnished with sprigs of parsley. Next, he placed a basket of warmed sliced baguettes. When he was done serving the captain and lieutenant, David picked a seat, Ranell joined them, and they all sat down for lunch together.
“Do you need anything FO? Maybe some coffee?” Ranell called up to the cockpit.
“No, I’m good, Doc,” First Officer Foote called back. “Coffee keeps me awake.” He was going to enter his rest shift soon.
“Is the weather pattern holding?” Singh asked the captain before taking a spoonful of chowder.
“It’s still holding, but that high-pressure system has been moving north faster than we predicted. We’ll have to adjust course soon or risk losing our tailwind.”
“Let’s take a look,” Singh said, pulling up a display screen with one hand as the other popped a baguette slice into his mouth.
Even though they were all sitting together at the table in the main cabin, the screen Singh used displayed the same interactive map showing the swirling weather patterns of the North Atlantic as the one on the flight deck.
“Are those hurricanes?” David asked, pointing to the three giant swirling vortices, one off the coast of Maine, one below the tip of Greenland, and another one off the coast of Africa.
“No,” Singh replied. “They’re just low-pressure systems. But there are probably some big storms out there.”
“Why’s that?” Why did I ask him about that? David inwardly cringed. I hate looking stupid in front of this guy.
But Singh just smiled. He seemed to love talking about the weather as though he found it endlessly fascinating. He was also skilled at explaining the complex phenomenon in terms a layman could understand. “When air falls from a high altitude, it increases the air pressure in that region. This is known as a high-pressure system, and it makes the wind blow outward from that area. See this big spot here just to the south of us? That’s a high-pressure system. High altitude air is cold and not very dense, so it can’t hold much moisture. You could say it’s ‘dry’ air. As it descends, the air heats up, and it becomes more dense and able to absorb more water, so high-pressure systems are typically dry and cloudless.”
“On the other hand…” Singh pointed to the same three swirling shapes David was looking at. “Low-pressure systems occur when warm, moist air is pulled up from the surface to very high altitudes. As the air expands and cools, it can’t hold as much water, so at around one degree Celsius, it condenses into cumulous clouds. This is the dew point. If the system is very active, the process will continue and form the large cumulonimbus storm clouds. All three of these systems seem very large to me, so I am estimating significant storm activity in each of these regions.”
“Weather radar confirms cumulonimbus formations, LT,” Captain Pruitt acknowledged, and Singh gave a little satisfied grin.
Encouraged by Singh’s willingness to explain things to him, David summoned up the courage to continue the conversation, even though he risked displaying his own ignorance in the process. “Is this map right, then?” David asked. “It looks like the St. Paul is headed right into that storm by Greenland. Shouldn’t we try to avoid it?”
But instead of Singh, it was the captain who answered David’s question. “Oh, the map’s right.” Pruitt leaned forward in his seat to stare intently at the patterns. “But we’re not heading into that storm. We’re heading around it, and we’re going to use that energy to slingshot us right past it.” David got the impression that while Singh charted the weather patterns, it was Pruitt who decided their route. I’m getting a sense of how these guys operate.
Since they were sitting together at the table, Pruitt took David by the shoulder and positioned him to where he could see a little better, saying, “See how all these lines spin around those low-pressure zones in a counterclockwise pattern?”
“Mm-hmm.” David nodded.
“That’s the Coriolis effect caused by the earth’s rotation,” Singh chimed in, “counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere, clockwise in the southern hemisphere.”
“LT, please overlay the isobar map,” Pruitt asked Singh, who clicked it instantly into place. Then the captain turned his attention back to David. “Each of these lines connect areas of equal barometric pressure. These are the isobars. Do you see how the winds follow the isobars around the areas of high and low pressure?”
David could see it. The isobar map came with a capital letter “H” to indicate the center of high-pressure systems and a capital letter “L” to indicate low-pressure systems. Now that it had been explained to him, he could visualize the low-pressure areas like gigantic mountain peaks, crowned with thunderheads, and the high-pressure areas like low dry valleys. It reminded him of the standard topographical maps the Army used for land navigation. “So, we’re basically sitting on the side of a big hill, only it’s made of air.”
“More like the side of a wave,” Singh replied, “with the water rising beneath us as we cut along the edge.” He made a slicing motion with his hand to illustrate as he lifted another spoonful of Fortune Bay chowder to his lips.
“This is called pressure-pattern navigation,” Pruitt continued discussing his passion. “Although the technique didn’t really come into its own until the early 1940’s when pressure and radar altimeters were first used, all the old Zeppelin Commanders used to know how to do it. It was pioneered by Hugo Eckener after World War I when he took the LZ-126 on a westbound crossing of the North Atlantic. He skirted the northern edges of the storms. To go east, we have to skirt the southern edges of the storms.” Pruitt turned to look out of the big windows of the main cabin as if he were searching for dark thunderclouds on the horizon, his grin wolfish and eager. “I like to think of it as storm surfing.”
As the men continued their discussion, David felt a tiny bud of growing camaraderie. It was the first time he’d felt this since coming aboard the St. Paul. They didn’t dismiss his questions, and they eagerly shared their enthusiasm for the subject. Even Lieutenant Singh is treating me like part of the team. There was still the lingering doubt, wisps of suspicion that the crew would turn on him somehow, but the routine of the ship quieted those concerns. Maybe I do have a problem trusting officers, he admitted.