Ghost ship full of cannibal rats could be about to crash into Great Britain

[krispos42]

117. Ah... some nostalgia

A destroyer squadron hunting the high seas for a hazard to navigation, a small passenger liner adrift in the North Atlantic shipping lanes. Plowing through the gray rolling waves, the swift, lean destroyers search for their prey. Lookouts on the bridge wings scanning the horizon with binoculars while salt spray periodically breaks over the bow.

Then, a dark spot on the horizon! The agile destroyer turns sharply and puts on speed, slicing through the water as black smoke streams out of the stacks. The dark spot moves aimlessly, making no effort to escape or attack. The captain orders the signalman to issue a challenge; an Aldis lamp flutters repeatedly as dits and dahs flow across the sullen sea.

With no response forthcoming, the captain orders action stations, and the destroyer echoes with alarms and footsteps as the crew prepares for battle.

Finally, the dark spot resolves into the derelict vessel. One of the destroyer's guns firing a warning shot; a spout of water appears a couple of hundred yards to the side of the derelict, and a distant "crack" of explosion is heard by the anti-aircraft crews.

With no reply forthcoming, no signs of life, and the potential for attack from a lurking German submarine, the captain orders "put her on the bottom smartly". The destroyer heals sharply and changes course by 45 degrees, bringing the rear turret into play.

At the captain's command, the three turrets opened up on the derelict. The battle-hardened crews sweating and swearing in their steel shells pumped round after round at the abandoned ship. Six long-barreled naval rifles pounded away, raising waterspouts all around the ship.

A 4.7" shell hits, sending debris flying in to the air. "B" turret has the range now, and a second shell detonates inside the stricken vessel seconds later. The flurry of shell spouts is tightening around the doomed ship. "X" turret finds the range, slamming a round through the forecastle that splits open the deck plates.

More shells pound home as all three turrets start scoring hits. The fifty-pound shells tear great chunks out of the superstructure and rip hull plates off. One of them kindles a fire from a ruptured fuel tank, and thick oily smoke joins the gray puffs of detonating high-explosives in obscuring the doomed vessel.

The empty ship is riding lower in the water now as cold, gray seawater gushed through ruptured seams and into the bilges. Rats and cockroaches, the only occupants of the liner, swarmed in the rising waters, desperately seeking safely in a hailstorm of shell fragments and steel splinters. Rodent corpses sloshed, killed by the shock waves of the 4.7-inch shells.

There was no safety to be found, though, as the structure of the ship, compromised by multiple explosive blasts, began to lose cohesion. Riding low in the water, she began to list, her upper works tilting towards the rapidly approaching destroyer. The gunnery crews continued to fire as fast as possible, inter-turret rivalry pushing each crew to challenge the nominal firing rate of 10 rounds per minute, per gun.

Finally, though, the captain ordered his crews to cease fire, and only a couple of minutes later the gunfire-ravaged wreck slid under the waves a final time. The destroyer's captain secured the ship from action stations, the quartermaster marked the location in the log, and the turret crews, hot, sweaty, and partially deaf, began the job of cleaning up the spent shell casings and swabbing out the naval rifles.

The destroyer swept past the small oil slick and debris field that, for a few hours, would be the last marker of the lost sea. Turning north-east, the sleek warship resumed combat patrol.