Sailors on the Inward Sea by Lawrence Thornton Page B

loss of Edward was compounded by Whelan’s death. Fox-Bourne had established a warm personal relationship with the ensign much like that which obtains between fathers and sons.
    The solicitor’s insertion was a masterful stroke, perfectly timed and executed and obviously intended to manipulate the board’s emotions by introducing the claims of grief. If the hearing had been a chess match, the solicitor would have won a major piece, perhaps the game, by gaining the board’s sympathy before the atrocity had even been mentioned. It was an altogether brilliant ploy, guaranteed to color the admiral’s opinions and even alter them, especially in light of the submarine’s sailing away from the survivors of Edward’s ship. It had seemed risky at first to suggest that Fox-Bourne was under such stress that his judgment was compromised, but that too was part of the strategy. The lawyer went on, saying that he had mentioned the issue to give the board a sense of the captain’s state of mind during the incident and to make clear that he had overcome his personal loss and was thinking only of the safety of his men when he ordered the Brigadier away from the site, which was littered with debris.
    â€œI understand,” said Worthy, “but the question we are here to address concerns the consequences of retreating whilst men were in the water. Perhaps Captain Fox-Bourne will give his recollections.”
    He was well aware of the German sailors, Fox-Bourne said, particularly aware given what had happened to his son’s comrades, but as commander of the Brigadier he was responsible for the safety of his men and Mr. Conrad. In his opinion the danger of running afoul of debris or mines that may have come out of the submarine as she broke up outweighed that faced by the survivors, many of whom wore life vests or clung to flotsam. Nevertheless, the moment hebelieved his ship was no longer at risk, he rang the telegraph to “neutral” and then, briefly, to “slow ahead,” closing the distance between the ship and the survivors as much as he dared.
    A wave of sympathy had surged up in Conrad’s heart while the lawyer spoke of Edward and Whelan. Their loss was magnified by the setting in the hearing room, especially the pictures of old ships and lost sailors to whose names theirs were added, swelling the long honor roll of the dead. But as soon as Fox-Bourne recommenced his testimony, Conrad’s emotions drained away. He had entered that room with no idea what to expect from the man, how far he was prepared to go in admitting his culpability or denying it. Now, sentence by sentence, word by word, he was learning. The story Fox-Bourne told was plausible, seemingly in accord with the facts, an apparently straightforward account that distorted everything that had happened between Scorsby’s request to lower the lifeboats and their appearance an hour later with the six glistening Germans, sickening him as it no doubt had the others, a calculated lie honed in consultation with the solicitor that ran beside the truth, invisible as air.
    Worthy thanked Fox-Bourne when he finished, adding that the board appreciated his candor. He then interrogated the junior officers beginning with Chambers, concentrating on the weather, the time that had passed between the Valkerie ’s sinking and the Brigadier ’s retreat, the distance Chambers estimated she had traveled away from the site, how far back toward it after Captain Fox-Bourne ordered a change of course. When he finished with Chambers he went on to Higgins and Scorsby, posing the same questions but interrupting them frequently for clarification, clearly disturbed by the divergence between their views and Fox-Bourne’s, bearing down on them about the nature and extent of debris—none of them reported seeing any; almost everything they said was at variance with Fox-Bourne’s testimony and sometimes flatly contradicted it. Itwas