There I was, sitting quietly in the cabin when the door didn't open. It wasn't for the lack of someone trying to get in. Oh no! There were faint noises coming from the door area but none of them were violent - yet. The fact was, the door couldn't be opened from the outside until I decided that it should be opened. The noises stopped; my visitor had gone away. I mentally cursed the designer of the ship as I sat there. Mind you, there were a few things I could thank him for, but most of the rest of his design was rotten. The ship was built back in the thirties, when one would have thought that techniques would have progressed a little since Noah passed on. It was odd that, as ships developed, their designers began to forget the simple things that their predecessors had taken for granted. Who, in his right mind, would have built a ship which was unrepairable? I kid you not; that ship was designed to last for centuries, so no provision was made for any repairs at all. As no designer can think of everything, the ship I was in, included work by previous designers. For example:- The hand rails were made as they always were. There is no point in re-inventing the wheel, is there?
As you may have realised by now - these items (which were not designed by the ship's overall designer) included the cabin doors. It was just an ordinary cabin door design. There was a control to open it on both sides, it was made to withstand high pressure and the impacts of heavy objects. The olde worlde designer of the door had learned by other peoples' mistakes, and had included a few safety features. His door had not been designed to be fitted to a ship which would last for centuries. No way. The door was designed to be fitted to ships which might not last more than a year or two - a decade at most. In short, he had expected things to go wrong, and had made allowances for a large number of problems. Yes - one of those problems had occurred. Before I tell you what it was, I had better tell you something else: I'm a gardener.
I have cultivated plants of many varieties in my cabin for years. I was surrounded by a garden which I tended with loving care. Aboard ship it is necessary to have an interest, and I was reminded of home by my plants.
Two weeks earlier the ship developed an engine fault. It wasn't supposed to because it had been designed to last for centuries. As a result we were drifting helplessly with no hope of a rescue for weeks or even months. The engine, like most things on the ship, was unrepairable, but Eric decided to try to do something about it. Then there was another failure: the ship sprang a leak. Without the engine's power, it was impossible to use the pumps. There were only two places left which were safe - my cabin and Eric's cabin. Both cabins had identical doors which would not open if there was a large pressure difference between the inside and the outside. A valve could be opened on the inside to equalise the pressure, but that would have been pointless.
Eric had a suit on when he tried my door. I wasn't going to open my cabin to a vacuum - it would have killed the plants and vented what air was left. because of the ship's design, there was no way in which I could have saved my colleague's life. My plants saved mine.
Copyright (C) W. H. James 03/10/1984 Revised 08/06/96 & 30/11/98 (630 words) .
Wilf James,106 Jarden, Letchworth, Herts. SG6 2NZ, UK. E-mail wilf.james@net.ntl.com..
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