The Evangeline Read Free

back of his empty chair, he fell into a long, thoughtful silence.
    ‘She was that good, the Evangeline ? There were no limits to what she could do?’
    ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Whitfield eagerly. ‘She was perfect. She could … No, I see what you mean. There was a limit, wasn’t there? She sank, so there must have been a limit—even for her.’
    Darnell motioned to the clerk, a plump young woman with a pleasant face. ‘Would you please hand the witness what has been marked Defence exhibit 17? Would the witness be kind enough to identify the document he has just been handed?’
    Whitfield glanced at the cover sheet of a thirty-page document. ‘ This is the report of the sea trials of the Evangeline .’
    ‘Yes, yes,’ said Darnell, flapping his hand as he turned to face the jury.‘Would you please turn to page six? Now, would you read the second paragraph from the top? Just the highlighted portion, if you would.’
    ‘“During the sea trials, after one day of heavy weather, water began to leak through the aluminium hull. A crack was discovered below the waterline.’”
    ‘Yes, thank you, Mr Whitfield. That’s enough. Now, let me confess to you,’ he said as he wheeled around and looked at him directly,‘I have seldom ventured out in a sailboat anywhere except here on the San Francisco bay. I know very little about them and nothing at all about their construction. I have, however, been told by people whose business it is to know these things, that if that happens—if there is a crack in the aluminium hull, and if the aluminium plates begin to pull apart—and especially if it happens in the kind of dreadful storm in which the Evangeline suddenly found herself—the only question is how quickly she is going to sink. In your considered opinion, is that a fair statement of the case?’
    ‘Yes, but that problem was dealt with.’
    ‘Dealt with? Yes, I remember; the shipyard investigated. One of the welding rods was used improperly. Isn’t that what they found? Something about a welding rod that should have been used to weld a stainless-steel fitting on the rudder was used instead on the aluminium plates of the hull?’
    ‘The problem was identified and fixed. It was just one worker, just one weld. The crack was fixed,’ replied Whitfield.
    ‘Yes, the crack was fixed—the one you knew about—but did anyone bother to check if there were other, similar failures? Wouldn’t the safest thing have been to X-ray all the seams, make sure that all of them had been properly welded?’
    ‘There was no need for that,’ insisted Whitfield.
    ‘No need?’ Darnell’s eyes narrowed into a penetrating stare. ‘You can say that now, after she went down like that, after all those lives were lost?’
    ‘They found the crack; they determined the cause! The people who built her were convinced that everything was perfect!’
    ‘But the question, Mr Whitfield—the question that I have been asking myself ever since I first read that report—is why, if they thought it was “perfect”, did they also offer to check every weld and every seam?’ He looked at Whitfield almost apologetically. ‘The only point I wish to make is that the shipyard was prepared to conduct a thorough investigation into the safety of every part of that aluminium hull, but the decision was made not to do so. Isn’t that correct?
    ‘Yes, I have to admit that it is.’
    ‘We are still left with the question, though: why, when you found out that your father was ill, when you found out that you had to fly back home, you didn’t simply put off the maiden voyage of the Evangeline ?’
    Perhaps not even William Darnell himself could have said whether he had deliberately begun his cross-examination as if he were an enemy, calling the witness a liar, so he could convince Whitfield now, when it counted, that he was—if not a friend, at least sympathetic—willing and able to understand that none of the things that had happened later were his