The following is a short story loosely based on the incident where the Nespelen was crushed between the ice shelf and an ice floe. The names used do not relate to actual individuals.

I shivered in the Antarctic cold. "Operation Deepfreeze" sure was a good name for this cruise, I thought. The wind was blowing off the ice shelf and carrying powdered snow into my face, but it didn't feel like snow, it felt like cold sand. I pulled the collar of my thermal jacket tighter around my neck and hurried across the catwalk that separated the bow and stern of the Navy tanker, U.S.S. Nespelen. I had no trouble seeing since the "night" of the Antarctic summer consisted of 24 hours of daylight.

The Nespelen was an AOG, a gasoline tanker, designed to supply carriers and air bases with aviation gasoline. She was 300 feet long and about 6o feet wide. Like many tankers, she had three distinct sections; the bow section contained the bridge and some sleeping quarters, the midships contained the well decks where all of the liquid cargo was stored, and the stern contained the engines and the rest of the crew's quarters. A catwalk joined the bow to the stern and was the only safe way to get from one to the other when seas were rough.

Underneath my feet were thousands of gallons of aviation fuel--someone had told me once it was like standing on hundreds of tons of dynamite. Just one spark and the ship would disappear. That was the reason I had given up smoking when I came on board. I was just too absentminded and I was sure I would forget, walk out on deck with a cigarette and that would be the end of me.

I reached the end of the catwalk, walked aft until I came to the hatch that led into the mess deck and struggled to undog the hatch to enter. My arms seemed to have no strength and my brain was not functioning well. I had spent four hours on watch and it had been a miserable time. The OOD, Officer of the Deck, in charge of the bridge watch had been very uptight. He was an ensign and had very little experience with conning (running the bridge while underway) a ship. The ship was now moored to the ice shelf much like we would be to a pier in port and that was the only reason that he had been left alone on the bridge. We were all a little worried tonight since the wind had picked up and it looked like the ice shelf that formed the other side of our little bay was moving toward us. The ensign had told the chief petty officer, however, that "ice won't hurt you unless you hit it." Never could a man be so wrong.

I yawned as I went down the ladder to the lower deck where the berthing compartment was. The compartment was illuminated with a red light that made it possible to get up at night and go on watch without losing your night vision. I undressed quietly and crawled under the covers of my bunk, careful not to disturb my buddy Paul who slept in the bunk above mine--barely five inches from my head. It wasn't long before I fell asleep.

"Wake up, wake up! Dammit, wake up! We're sinking!" the voice of the chief bos'n echoed through the compartment, and the urgency of his voice was reinforced by the urgent clanging of the alarm bells. The lights went on in the compartment and my eyes opened like a venetian blind that has been jerked rapidly. The PA system added to the din as a strident voice shouted, "Collision, Collision, this is not a drill! Go to your collision stations!"

I looked around to see the other sailors in the compartment lifting up from their bunks, disoriented, and, like me, scared. They tumbled out of their bunks, bumping into one another, cursing and shouting as they tried to get dressed. I dropped to the floor, ran to my locker and grabbed my dungaree pants and my thermal jacket, threw them on and then opened the drawer to my locker and pulled out three candy bars (in case we had to abandon ship) and my camera. I ran toward the hatch that was the only exit to the compartment and followed the others as they scrambled down the passageway, up the ladder and into the mess hall. Mr. Tompkins, the engineering officer, was standing there and pointing to the hatch to the outside deck.

"Get out and go to your emergency stations! Go as fast as you can!"

The sound of grinding ice and tortured steel gave impetus to his command. Sailors from the engine spaces joined my group as they rushed out the hatch into the frigid Antarctic air. Since they had just come out of the hundred-degree air that was the normal temperature of the engine room, they were clad only in T-shirts and dungarees.

"My God, my God!" one of the engineers shouted, "The damn bulkheads just came pushing in!"

I thought about how I would feel if I were below the water line and saw the steel bulkheads pushing in. I shivered and followed the others as they ran across the catwalk to their general quarter's stations. I quickly climbed to my fire control station above the bridge and then stopped to look around and see what was happening. The first thing I noticed was the strong smell of the aviation avgas (aviation gasoline)--a really bad sign. I looked down to the well deck where the tanks for the gasoline took up the middle part of the ship, and several of the officers were leaning over the rails to look over the side of the ship.

They all seemed to freeze as once more the ice ground against the sides of the ship and the steel plates groaned as they buckled under the pressure. The ice was also lifting the ship like some small toy, and tearing the metal of the ship's sides like so much cardboard. The mooring lines snapped, and the ship was being pushed forward by the tremendous force of the wind and the ice. Huge blocks of ice pushed up from the ice shelf as the ice itself yielded to the pressure. What was once a flat surface became many ridges and it was obvious that no one could survive long if they tried to walk across the ice shelf.

I pulled out my camera and began taking shots of the scenes around me. The avgas from the ruptured tanks had colored the water a deep purple that contrasted with the white of the ice and the blue of the sea. Two dead penguins floated in the water-gasoline mix. Their protective insulation dissolved by the gasoline, they had frozen to death.

"I just hope we don't get any sparks from the stack," said Tom, my buddy, who had moved to the rail alongside me. "We're gonna' be one pretty bonfire if that avgas goes up."

"Yeah," I replied. "I'm wondering why we didn't explode when the plates broke apart."

"You better wonder what will happen if the icebreakers don't get here soon and get us out of this mess. The way that ice is heaving and moving, I don't think we'd last too long if we had to abandon ship, and just forget about the lifeboats, they'd just be a bunch of splinters in that stuff."

"Thanks for lifting my spirits." I turned and began taking more pictures. "I might as well have a record of this in case we get out alive."

Tom shook his head and walked away as I continued to take pictures of the sailors and officers on the deck below. I jumped involuntarily as the ship's whistle sounded the emergency blast of three short whistles over and over again.

"I'm gonna' die here, " I muttered to myself. "I just know I'm gonna' die here." I had put on my orange life jacket, but I knew that a man could survive only a minute or two in the icy water.

"Attention, Attention. This is the Captain speaking." Everyone on deck instinctively turned toward the bridge where the Captain stood outside on one of the wings. "We have contacted the icebreaker Edisto and she is on the way. She's having a hard time because the ice is six feet thick, but she's doing everything she can and she'll be here in an hour."

"An hour," I thought. "We could be Popsicles in an hour, or hot dogs if that avgas goes up." I turned and went into the fire control shack where I kept a my personal stuff. I rummaged in one of the lockers until I found a pencil and paper and then sat down at the console and began writing.

Dear Mom and Dad,

If you get this, it probably means that I am dead. I doubt that you'll get it, but I thought I would write anyway. The ice is crushing the ship and we may not make it. You can smell avgas everywhere and 150,000 gallons are all around us. That scares me the most. I don't want to burn up. I don't want to freeze to death either, but I don't want to burn up. I want you to know that whatever happens, I was thinking about you. You made me so happy growing up. I really liked the Christmas present you sent. We have been running out of food and the Vienna sausages were so good that I ate both cans. It made me sick afterward, but it tasted good. Tell Jody and Bonny that they were good sisters and I loved them. I am not too scared, but I do wish I could see you all again.

Love,

Phil

I sat there and looked at what I had written. "Kinda sappy for last words," I thought. "Now what am I gonna' do with it. I found a plastic box that held spare parts, dumped them out on the deck and put the letter inside. I used a screwdriver to scratch my mother's address on the box, tucked it under my arm and went back outside. The cold air clutched me as if in anticipation of an eternal embrace. I shuddered and walked over to the side of the ship and looked out to sea.

I exhaled quickly in excitement. The Edisto was heading right toward us. Its gray shape rose up on the ice as it used its weight to crush a path. I wished I had binoculars so I could bring the ship closer. I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures again even though I knew that the ship would look like a small dot on the prints. It was so far away.

I stumbled as the ship gave another lurch and tilted to the starboard side. Now I could look down over the rail and see the damage. It looked like a sixteen-foot hole in the tanks. "Thank God it's not the engine room," I muttered. "We'd be heading underwater if it were.

"Lordy, lordy!" Tom said as he pointed toward the icebreaker. "Why don't those guys on the Edisto speed things up? We're sinking here and they're just taking their time."

"I guess they don't want to get too close. What with the avgas and all, I don't blame them much for being cautious."

"Well, I do," Tom said. Our ass is grass if this ship sinks. We'd just be so much roasted meat for the killer whales and the leopard seals."

I wished Tom would leave. I had enough bad thoughts of my own. I looked at the plastic box with the letter and thought about throwing it over the side now before the ship exploded. No, I would wait until the last minute. No sense in giving my buddies something to tease me about. "Scaredy cat. Thought we were going to bite the big bullet!" I could hear their jibes. They all liked to tease me anyway. "College boy. Knows a lot but don't know nothin'."

"Attention all hands," the captain's voice thudered from the PA system, "Muster on the starboard side of the ship. All hands except the special sea detail. The special sea detail will rig the landing nets so that the crew can get down to the ice. We will not, I repeat, will not abandon ship yet. This is merely a precaution."

The sound of running feet on the metal decks resounded from every side as the crewmembers responded without further urging to the captain's command. I stood for a moment looking first at the plastic box and then at the ice. I stuffed the box underneath my jacket and scrambled down the ladder to the tank deck. My camera flopped back and forth on the strap around my neck as I ran across the deck to the group that was already assembled there. "I won't get very good pictures from down here," I thought. "Oh well, no one's gonna' see them anyway."

"Hey, college boy!" Bill, one of the deck crew said as he turned to me. "Got any bright ideas? How we gonna' get out of this mess? Your education gonna' help you now?"

In spite of myself, I responded, "People have lived through shipwrecks down here before and there's help on the way. I guess I'm not as scared as you are."

Bill's buddies had to restrain him from hitting me at this intimation of cowardliness. A shout from the bridge interrupted what could have gotten messy. Once more the captain's voice came over the loudspeaker: "The Edisto's found a lead. She's making good headway. I think we're going to get out of here."

The whole crew rushed up the ladders and over the catwalk to the port side of the ship. The Edisto was approaching at what seemed a snail's pace as its bow rose up and crashed through the ice. It was close enough for us to hear the grinding splintering noise of the ice as it parted before the rust-spattered bows of the Navy icebreaker. I could also hear the loudspeakers warning all hands to extinguish any sparks that they saw. The crews of both ships were all too aware of the danger of explosion from the sea of avgas that surrounded them.

I began to think that maybe we were going to get out of this mess after all. I shifted my lens from shots of the Edisto to the happy faces of my crewmates who were slapping each other on the back in their glee.

Twenty minutes later, the Edisto was within hailing distance as she carefully cut the ice from around the Nespelen. The Nespelen was listing to starboard, from the weight of the seawater in her tanks, but gradually the ice broke away from her sides and she was sitting in an ever-widening lake of purplish seawater and avgas. "Out of the frying pan and into the fire," I muttered.

"Do you want to abandon ship?" the captain of the Edisto called, using his loud hailer. There was an immediate reply from the captain of the Nespelen. "No thanks. Now that we're loose, you better back away. You're putting out a lot of sparks." The Edisto's captain rushed to the wing of the bridge and saw the shower of sparks coming out of their stack. After some shouted commands, the water under her stern churned into a white froth and the Edisto backed away to a safe distance. The Nespelen rocked a bit and then settled down, floating again, but with a list to starboard.

I breathed a sigh of relief and started to take more pictures when I heard someone shouting at me. "Hey sailor, put away that damn camera and start throwing mattresses over the side. We're going to try to plug that hole in the side."

I descended the ladder to the next level and opened the door to the signalmen's berthing compartment. I tossed blankets aside and piled mattresses next to the door. Other sailors arrived and began throwing the mattresses down to the well deck where they were promptly thrown over the side and shoved into the gaping hole, which just as promptly swallowed them.

"I could have told them that," I thought. "Anyone knows, you've got to plug the hole from the inside."

Just then there was a shrill screaming sound as the ship's whistle sounded the signal that meant we were getting underway. With a shudder, the Nespelen moved away from the ice shelf, limping like an old lady with a cane. We had bent one of our propellers when the captain backed into some ice several weeks ago so we also had a vibration from the propeller shaft. The list become more pronounced with the force of the water against the sides of the ship. It was a thousand miles to New Zealand, our next port, and there would be some rough times ahead.

I surveyed the string of drifting mattresses that were being ejected from the hole in the side of the ship. They floated amongst the dead penguins and the debris the ship had left behind.

"Well," I mumbled, "at least I don't have to sleep without a mattress tonight."

"I doubt any of us will get much sleep," Tom appeared at my side again. "I just heard from one of the quartermasters that there's a big storm coming."

New Zealand seemed a long way off and I wondered if I would have time to write another letter if that storm hit us.