Chapter 49
The hearing was then adjourned for half an hour : Hedley said he needed to review some documents but wanted to stretch his legs. His clerk had made him a pot of tea. After downing a swift cup, he rang his wife to ask how many bottles of wine he should pick up on the way home for their dinner party that evening.
Outside the courtroom, Black had approached Ashby for a word.
“I’m sorry if I’ve made things more difficult for you but they did ask me – and I had to tell them straight, one way or the other, whether I wanted to or not. I do hope you understand.”
“Please don’t concern yourself for a moment,” said Ashby. “I understand entirely. You were the underwriter and in your position, I would’ve said exactly the same thing.”
“Then why are you fighting the claim at all ?” asked Black, in wonderment.
“Because I didn’t write the cover – you did.”
And with that, Ashby exited to join Meredith, Wells and Riordan. They were debating how long it would take the judge to halt the case altogether. Riordan said it was likely to happen when Ashby was in the witness box. The judge would run out of patience when the subject of fraud was broached.
For the rest of the afternoon, Garrick examined the sinking. There were documentary records and statements describing the circumstances of the distress signal sent by the master of the Stratos and how this was responded to by those who heard it at the Portuguese coast guard and on the high seas.
This continued into the morning of the third day. Ransome’s next witness was the Captain of the Italian ship which had gone to the scene of the accident. Ransome spent the entire morning, getting the Captain to say that the distress call was genuine and that, at the time it was made, the Captain Stratos would have been on the point of going down. All of this was supported in a written statement by a Canadian Captain whose ship was in the area at the time and had answered the request for help.
After Ransome’s probing had ended, Riordan had only a few questions.
“Captain Santamaria, could you tell us what you saw when your ship arrived at the position given by the master of the Captain Stratos.”
“We saw niente – nothing.”
“There were no lifeboats or survivors floating in the water, no wreckage, pieces of wood, paper, clothing, nothing floating about in the ocean ?”
“Nothing. There is nothing – only a big oil slick for maybe, a hundred metres around the position we are given.”
“An oil slick – and nothing more ?”
“Nothing.”
“Did you find that surprising ?”
“Well, maybe yes and no. I thought we see lifeboats, maybe one or two with the Capitano and his crew – and lotsa things from the ship in the ocean. But the sea, she was clear. This make me think – the ship, she go down v-e-r-y quickly. The crew get no time to launch lifeboats to save themselves. The distress signal say the ship taking in lotsa water – they say the ship hit a reef or a wreck. Maybe this why she sink so quick.”
“Were those the precise words – “a reef or a wreck” ?
“Si, uh yes, they say those words.”
“And what was the weather like on the night of the sinking ?”
“The sea ? Rough – some rain but heavy swell. But to me, the weather is ok, no gales so this ship maybe she hits something, maybe underwater rocks.”
“Submerged rocks – did you see any ?”
“Niente – none.”
The Italian Captain was the last of the witnesses called by Ransome and Garrick and concluded the evidence for Hellas Global. It was now Plantation’s turn and it had only two witnesses – the Captain of the La Lisette – and Ashby.
The Lisette’s Captain, Jacques Danton stood upright in the witness box in a navy blue uniform. His jacket had brass buttons and gold braid near the cuffs. He’d grown a beard while his ship was in the Antarctic and his face was tanned and lined from battling the elements. The Lisette had been away from her home port of Le Havre for over six months and a few days in London were a welcome break for him, albeit a new experience of finding his way around the labyrinthine High Court building in the Strand.
Riordan explained how the La Lisette had been engaged by James Ashby before his death to investigate the sinking of the Captain Stratos and the circumstances in which it had occurred.
“Captain Danton, your ship is a research vessel which is equipped with sonar, radar, underwater cameras and divers. Did you use this to try and locate the wreck of the Captain Stratos ?”
“We did – we used all of it but for depths of more than fifty feet, in deep ocean and with strong currents, our equipment has limited use. Also, our divers cannot go below forty feet without suffering decompression sickness – in English, the ‘bends’. The Captain Stratos sank in over a thousand feet and that made it very hard for us to see anything on the ocean floor.”
“And so you were unable to locate the wreck ?”
“No, we were not.”
“Did you see anything at all relating to the sinking at the position given by the master ?”
“No, I regret – we saw nothing.”
“No parts of the rigging or superstructure, no pieces of cargo, no bits of wood, no personal effects of the crew ?”
“The only things our divers could see were what looked like a few oil drums and nothing else.”
“Oil drums ?”
“Yes, that was all.”
“And nothing else ?”
“No – not a single thing.”
“Does that seem unusual to you ?”
“It does – I only speak from my own experience naturellement but I would expect to see something which shows a large catastrophe in the area.”
“What do you think happened ?”
“Alors, the position given by the captain was probablement wrong. The oil drums might not have come from the Captain Stratos or if they did, the ship sank somewhere else.”
“What area did your search cover ?”
“With our underwater mapping system, five square kilometres.”
“And in that area, did you find any unchartered rocks, submerged wrecks or reefs which the Captain Stratos might have hit ?”
“No, we found nothing. Our examination of the area showed that the charts were correct.”
“If the master of the Captain Stratos got his bearings wrong – if the wrong position was given in the middle of a crisis when the ship was going down, where do you think it could be ?”
“Ha. Anywhere. It could be anywhere off the coast of Portugal – who knows where ?”
While Arthur Riordan was putting his questions to Captain Danton, Ransome had been busy going through his pocket-book, checking the expiry dates on his assorted credit cards, bank cards and store cards. He thought that what Danton had said, was so inconsequential that it didn’t even merit a glance from him. After Danton left the witness box, Ransome leaned over to Garrick and said “What type of suit do you prefer – single or double breasted ?”
Garrick said “Oh, it would have to be double-breasted.”
“Yes, they’re the smartest, aren’t they ? I always buy double-breasted suits too,” said his ‘leader’.
In the meantime, the judge decided that it was late enough in the day to call a halt at half past three. Riordan said he’d call Ashby to give evidence the following morning, the fourth day of the hearing.