Word: amethyste
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...Price of Freedom. Canadian Journalist Lawrence Earl retells H.M.S. Amethyst's story (TIME, May 2, Aug. 8, 1949) with measured understatement. But what he learned from the 36 men & officers he interviewed is stitched into a record of human toughness and devotion that defeats even a dead-pan style. Some 80 officers and men were ordered ashore from the Amethyst, got to the Nationalist side and made it to Shanghai. It was those who remained aboard through the grim summer days who were finally to taste the excitement of the Amethyst's escape...
...Communists promised not to reopen fire so long as the ship stayed where she was anchored. From her new skipper, Lieut. Commander John Simon Kerans, who came down from the embassy at Nanking, they demanded an admission that the Amethyst had provoked the attack. This was to be the price of freedom, set and maintained in eleven frustrating, tea-drinking sessions. Kerans refused to pay. The steel ship became a furnace, as fuel ran low and the ventilators had to be shut off. As the carefully measured food ran out, the crew went on half rations. To Skipper Kerans...
...once the British Navy was powerless; three warships that had tried to rescue the Amethyst had been turned back severely damaged...
Then came the Amethyst's break. In answer to Kerans' pleas, the Communists delivered 56 tons of fuel oil to operate the refrigerators and ventilators. The 56 tons, Kerans figured, gave him just enough to reach the open sea. He decided to run for it. Luckily the Yangtse was in high water, but, even so, the tortuous, silted channel was a skipper's nightmare-especially without an experienced Chinese pilot. And even if Kerans had the luck to stick to the channel while ducking Communist artillery, there was still a boom of sunken ships to pass...
...Save the King." A little after 10 p.m., July 30, Kerans ordered "Slip cable!" Minutes later his ship was on her way. Soon after, the Communists guns opened up and Kerans felt a shell whoosh past his neck, but the Amethyst was untouched. Then she began to flood from a waterline shell hole suffered in the first day's attack. In the engineroom the depleted crew of eleven worked at temperatures up to 170 degrees, drank ten gallons of tea during the frantic run. In the chart-room, two men tried to pick out the channel with an echo...