Hey! It looks like you're new here. You might want to check out the introduction.
Show rules for this event
Beastly
Paul wanted to be the last to leave his ship. He wanted to hold to that tradition, even in the midst of their destruction.
It should not have happened. For a freighter traveling in secrecy, the sailing conditions now could only be described as perfect. A midsummer gale surrounding them, with dawn still a few hours away. The new moon above them offering nothing except an invisible vigil to the storm clouds that cloaked the whole sea for kilometers in all directions. None of their external lights had been lit, blackout curtains had been strung up for the ones inside. In conditions like this, whoever had actually seen them must have had eyes to put a hawk to shame.
None of Paul’s own lookouts had seen anything. Nor had any of the bridge crew. Paul had been on the bridge, though not technically on watch. The desperation of their voyage had necessitated the sacrifice of some creature comforts, and so a few cots had been arranged for the crew to nap, ready to be roused back to duty stations at a moment’s notice. Paul had been dozing in one, cap pulled down over his eyes, his right palm resting on his chest also covering the end of the length of beard he had accumulated during the trip. The rest of the crew sported varying amounts of the same sort of facial hair. Not one razor would touch one jawline until they reached home. A unanimous decision. Noted in the ship’s official logbook, no less.
The first explosion had thrown him from his cot. Knocked most of the rest to the floor. The whole ship heeling to starboard, away from the pain, that hell-almighty roar heralding the end. The second explosion coming about ten seconds later, the amidships section bucking upwards from the killing strike, the groan of sundering steel lost in the echo reeling through their heads.
Every bridge window shattered. Glass covering the floor, the crew, reflecting nothing in the darkness.
Even amidst the hot whirl of confusion, Paul knew, right at that moment, that his ship was lost. A vessel like this would only twist in such a manner if her keel had been snapped. No ship on the open sea could survive with a broken spine.
The order to abandon ship rang from his mouth with the authority ingrained from his years of command experience upon three different oceans. To his own ears, though, Paul thought it sounded like someone else spoke it. Some stranger in a sea on the far side of that new moon above.
The ship rocked back to port, listing, covering her wounds, an alarm klaxon now wailing from her topmost decks to her deepest innards. Even with the new and deadly urgency, Paul’s every last intention now focused on an orderly and total evacuation.
Even so, his intentions mattered not a jot in the face of the coming reality.
Only about five minutes had elapsed since the initial blasts. Paul and the rest of the bridge crew had made it to the main deck, joining with both a few of the surviving engineering crew and some of the other ratings, cold rain slicing across their exposed skin, when the third detonation happened. Not external, this time, but from deep inside the ship. Either cold water claiming the searing hot boilers, or a spark in a cloud of coal dust in the ship’s fuel bunkers, either cause producing the same effect. As the sea heaved around them, the ship’s weary hull finally broke in two.
The deck heaving beneath them. Pitching down. Paul shouting an order, even in his own mind he could not really say what he was ordering the remnants of his crew to do. Get to the boats. Probably. A wrenching of steel high above behind him and hands shoved him hard over the railing just as the ship’s funnel smashed down on the spot where he, others, had stood. Paul the only one falling. His words devolving into a scream as he dropped into the onyx sea.
Water swallowing him, filling his ears and nostrils. His white cap, the mark of his profession, his authority, snatched off his head. A darkness below him so absolute he felt his bladder release at the sight of it. No warmth from any of it at all.
He kicked towards the surface. His descent had not taken him far from the scene of the disaster. Paul’s head stuck up out of the water, the rest of him working furiously to keep from going down again. The waves would swamp him in moments.
He saw a lighter patch, moving up and down with the swells, to his left. Turning, he could see it now as a lifeboat. Empty, but upright. If any of his other crew still lived, they would be making for it right now. The new objective gave Paul’s mind the best sense of clarity it had had since the first explosion had awoken him. Even with the first bit of numbness beginning to settle into his nerves, he kicked off again. Making for a thin wooden salvation.
The sea cooperated with him, bringing the lifeboat closer and, in a brief moment of calm, enabling him to grab on to its side. His muscles burning as he pulled himself out of the icy water and into the boat. Looking up, he saw no one else inside, but a second later, he saw another pair of hands grasp the boat’s gunwale, and he quickly lunged over to help the other man out of the water. This proved to be his ship’s doctor, their only acknowledgement of each other’s situations being a quick, grateful nod to one another as they turned to look for other survivors.
In a little over a minute they had managed to pull three others out of the water, his ship’s boatswain and two of the stokers. Paul looked around, trying to see anything at all as the doctor checked the other men for any serious injuries. Trying to find anything all but impossible in the dark. Even his own wrecked ship, if any part of her were still afloat, as invisible as the sky above the clouds.
Light came.
First as a beam striking out of the blackness, low above the water, and finally as a pair of white flares arcing higher into the storm. Paul saw them, their brightness obscuring their source, and whipped his head around, seeking his ship. Finding her fast.
Spray slashed across Paul’s face, the midsummer storm commanding the waves to mayhem. He held on to the lifeboat’s gunwale as it rolled, threatening to spill its handful of occupants back into the sea. Not half a kilometer behind him, the capsized stern of their ship ascended, the single propeller still turning, the severed bow already flooded, tumbling dead and unseen into the deep. They all looked at her in her final throes. Most in the lifeboat had called that ship home for the better part of six, seven years. For Paul, it had been over a decade.
Even as the other four watched her, Paul looked back towards the light. Squinting, hands cupped around his eyes. The flares still high up, the beam moving across the surface of the sea. Searching. As it swept, he could finally make out the source of it all. Of the light, of the destruction, the death. At last, he saw it.
As he recognized it, a realization swam through Paul’s mind:
Sea monsters really did exist.
They did not come rising high out of the water, broaching in majestic horror. Instead, they shambled into the topside world, squatting low to the sea’s surface. They did not hoist a web of seizing tentacles into the air, but maintained a narrow, trim appearance. They were covered, not in a sleek layer of scales and spines, but in steel plates dotted with openings for their ballast tanks.
Using the searchlight as a guide, Paul saw another lifeboat, this one overturned, floating in the sea about maybe a few hundred meters off their attacker’s starboard bow. Even at this distance, he could see other members of his crew clinging to its sides. At least ten, maybe about fifteen, total. Paul turned back to his group of survivors, issuing orders to get the boat’s oars out and to start rowing towards their comrades.
As astute as Paul’s observation was regarding the nature of their assailant, he had, unfortunately, arrived at his conclusion too early
Only now would the real monstrosity of the night arrive.
As those in the lifeboat moved to prepare a rescue, Paul could see other movement. Hatches opening on the conning tower of their attacker. Figures in rain gear emerging. A flag being run up the staff attached to the conning tower, a flag bearing the familiar and contemptible cross of their enemy. Their attacker remaining stationary except to launch another pair of flares to replace the ones flickering out above. The searchlight tracking across the sea again, briefly settling on Paul’s boat before returning to the overturned lifeboat and fixing upon it. The enemy crew struggling with something. As Paul got his boat turned towards their shipmates, he could see, a little more clearly, that the crew on board their attacker were setting up some piece of equipment on the lip of the conning tower’s bridge.
A chill, not from the sea, but from within Paul’s stomach, started to flow into his blood. From the light, it had looked like something that had no business being set up to rescue shipwreck survivors. Their enemy could be cruel, sure, but they were still what would be described as a decent sort, they would not do something like –
The machine gun opened fire. The weapon, its water-cooled barrel pointing like some demon’s finger at the helpless, roared into the upturned wood and the men clinging to it. Every fifth round a tracer. Accuracy at that range being child’s play, even with the sea conditions.
They watched it happen. One of the stokers screamed, the ship’s doctor putting his fingertips to his open mouth. Paul, mind first blanked out by the shock of their audacity, lunged forward into the bow, falling on hands and knees and his eyes not wavering from the massacre. He did not scream. Face set taut and sharp, his voice locked out by a fury such as he would never know again singing out of his heart. After a moment, his voice returned and he bellowed to turn away, to get some distance on their attacker, try to use the sea action to lose them.
The overturned lifeboat foundered in an expanding crimson slick. As Paul’s boat came about, so too did their assailant. An increased churning from her stern indicating her engines had restarted, propellers spinning once more. Her searchlight still piercing the gloom. An occasional burst of fire from the machine gun as it found a single survivor or two still struggling in the icy sea and goddamn murdered them.
Paul bellowed again to row hard, clambering back to take the rudder as the others worked the oars. The waves could hide them. The darkness, too. Some miracle could still happen. However infinitesimally thin the chance, the chance still existed, and Paul would seize it with both rawboned calloused hands and use it to get the few of them home alive and use it to tell the whole world what had happened out here and use it to make sure the animal responsible would hang from the neck until dead and use it to –
The light, one final time, found them.
Oar power could not match diesel engines. The growing wave along their attacker’s bow showing her growing speed. They could not outrun her guns. Machine gun or deck gun. The thin chance disappearing into the same dark where they would all descend.
The light covered them. A moment’s last reprieve as another ammunition belt was loaded into the gun and the bolt racked closed.
They all watched it coming.
A few shrank back. A few others could only be still. Could only stare.
Paul, sorrow and terror streaming down his crumpling face and into the sea, stood in the heaving boat and raised a fist, a middle finger extended in the universal suggestion. His final act of defiance, in honor of his crew whom he had failed so close to home.
From his viewpoint, his finger ran over the flag whipping from the staff on the conning tower. Covering that infernal cross.
The Union Jack.
The Vickers gun roared a five-second stream into the lives in the boat. Fire ceased as the beast’s steel bow smashed through the little craft, reducing it to flotsam, leaving the pieces churning with the brine and blood in its wake.
A few hours later, dawn came, a thin strip of light squeezed between the receding storm clouds and the anxious horizon. The beast remained on the surface, sailing along in calm indifference on a southwesterly course away from what they had done. Fire at all of their backs.
New York Times article, 10 July 1918:
It should not have happened. For a freighter traveling in secrecy, the sailing conditions now could only be described as perfect. A midsummer gale surrounding them, with dawn still a few hours away. The new moon above them offering nothing except an invisible vigil to the storm clouds that cloaked the whole sea for kilometers in all directions. None of their external lights had been lit, blackout curtains had been strung up for the ones inside. In conditions like this, whoever had actually seen them must have had eyes to put a hawk to shame.
None of Paul’s own lookouts had seen anything. Nor had any of the bridge crew. Paul had been on the bridge, though not technically on watch. The desperation of their voyage had necessitated the sacrifice of some creature comforts, and so a few cots had been arranged for the crew to nap, ready to be roused back to duty stations at a moment’s notice. Paul had been dozing in one, cap pulled down over his eyes, his right palm resting on his chest also covering the end of the length of beard he had accumulated during the trip. The rest of the crew sported varying amounts of the same sort of facial hair. Not one razor would touch one jawline until they reached home. A unanimous decision. Noted in the ship’s official logbook, no less.
The first explosion had thrown him from his cot. Knocked most of the rest to the floor. The whole ship heeling to starboard, away from the pain, that hell-almighty roar heralding the end. The second explosion coming about ten seconds later, the amidships section bucking upwards from the killing strike, the groan of sundering steel lost in the echo reeling through their heads.
Every bridge window shattered. Glass covering the floor, the crew, reflecting nothing in the darkness.
Even amidst the hot whirl of confusion, Paul knew, right at that moment, that his ship was lost. A vessel like this would only twist in such a manner if her keel had been snapped. No ship on the open sea could survive with a broken spine.
The order to abandon ship rang from his mouth with the authority ingrained from his years of command experience upon three different oceans. To his own ears, though, Paul thought it sounded like someone else spoke it. Some stranger in a sea on the far side of that new moon above.
The ship rocked back to port, listing, covering her wounds, an alarm klaxon now wailing from her topmost decks to her deepest innards. Even with the new and deadly urgency, Paul’s every last intention now focused on an orderly and total evacuation.
Even so, his intentions mattered not a jot in the face of the coming reality.
Only about five minutes had elapsed since the initial blasts. Paul and the rest of the bridge crew had made it to the main deck, joining with both a few of the surviving engineering crew and some of the other ratings, cold rain slicing across their exposed skin, when the third detonation happened. Not external, this time, but from deep inside the ship. Either cold water claiming the searing hot boilers, or a spark in a cloud of coal dust in the ship’s fuel bunkers, either cause producing the same effect. As the sea heaved around them, the ship’s weary hull finally broke in two.
The deck heaving beneath them. Pitching down. Paul shouting an order, even in his own mind he could not really say what he was ordering the remnants of his crew to do. Get to the boats. Probably. A wrenching of steel high above behind him and hands shoved him hard over the railing just as the ship’s funnel smashed down on the spot where he, others, had stood. Paul the only one falling. His words devolving into a scream as he dropped into the onyx sea.
Water swallowing him, filling his ears and nostrils. His white cap, the mark of his profession, his authority, snatched off his head. A darkness below him so absolute he felt his bladder release at the sight of it. No warmth from any of it at all.
He kicked towards the surface. His descent had not taken him far from the scene of the disaster. Paul’s head stuck up out of the water, the rest of him working furiously to keep from going down again. The waves would swamp him in moments.
He saw a lighter patch, moving up and down with the swells, to his left. Turning, he could see it now as a lifeboat. Empty, but upright. If any of his other crew still lived, they would be making for it right now. The new objective gave Paul’s mind the best sense of clarity it had had since the first explosion had awoken him. Even with the first bit of numbness beginning to settle into his nerves, he kicked off again. Making for a thin wooden salvation.
The sea cooperated with him, bringing the lifeboat closer and, in a brief moment of calm, enabling him to grab on to its side. His muscles burning as he pulled himself out of the icy water and into the boat. Looking up, he saw no one else inside, but a second later, he saw another pair of hands grasp the boat’s gunwale, and he quickly lunged over to help the other man out of the water. This proved to be his ship’s doctor, their only acknowledgement of each other’s situations being a quick, grateful nod to one another as they turned to look for other survivors.
In a little over a minute they had managed to pull three others out of the water, his ship’s boatswain and two of the stokers. Paul looked around, trying to see anything at all as the doctor checked the other men for any serious injuries. Trying to find anything all but impossible in the dark. Even his own wrecked ship, if any part of her were still afloat, as invisible as the sky above the clouds.
Light came.
First as a beam striking out of the blackness, low above the water, and finally as a pair of white flares arcing higher into the storm. Paul saw them, their brightness obscuring their source, and whipped his head around, seeking his ship. Finding her fast.
Spray slashed across Paul’s face, the midsummer storm commanding the waves to mayhem. He held on to the lifeboat’s gunwale as it rolled, threatening to spill its handful of occupants back into the sea. Not half a kilometer behind him, the capsized stern of their ship ascended, the single propeller still turning, the severed bow already flooded, tumbling dead and unseen into the deep. They all looked at her in her final throes. Most in the lifeboat had called that ship home for the better part of six, seven years. For Paul, it had been over a decade.
Even as the other four watched her, Paul looked back towards the light. Squinting, hands cupped around his eyes. The flares still high up, the beam moving across the surface of the sea. Searching. As it swept, he could finally make out the source of it all. Of the light, of the destruction, the death. At last, he saw it.
As he recognized it, a realization swam through Paul’s mind:
Sea monsters really did exist.
They did not come rising high out of the water, broaching in majestic horror. Instead, they shambled into the topside world, squatting low to the sea’s surface. They did not hoist a web of seizing tentacles into the air, but maintained a narrow, trim appearance. They were covered, not in a sleek layer of scales and spines, but in steel plates dotted with openings for their ballast tanks.
Using the searchlight as a guide, Paul saw another lifeboat, this one overturned, floating in the sea about maybe a few hundred meters off their attacker’s starboard bow. Even at this distance, he could see other members of his crew clinging to its sides. At least ten, maybe about fifteen, total. Paul turned back to his group of survivors, issuing orders to get the boat’s oars out and to start rowing towards their comrades.
As astute as Paul’s observation was regarding the nature of their assailant, he had, unfortunately, arrived at his conclusion too early
Only now would the real monstrosity of the night arrive.
As those in the lifeboat moved to prepare a rescue, Paul could see other movement. Hatches opening on the conning tower of their attacker. Figures in rain gear emerging. A flag being run up the staff attached to the conning tower, a flag bearing the familiar and contemptible cross of their enemy. Their attacker remaining stationary except to launch another pair of flares to replace the ones flickering out above. The searchlight tracking across the sea again, briefly settling on Paul’s boat before returning to the overturned lifeboat and fixing upon it. The enemy crew struggling with something. As Paul got his boat turned towards their shipmates, he could see, a little more clearly, that the crew on board their attacker were setting up some piece of equipment on the lip of the conning tower’s bridge.
A chill, not from the sea, but from within Paul’s stomach, started to flow into his blood. From the light, it had looked like something that had no business being set up to rescue shipwreck survivors. Their enemy could be cruel, sure, but they were still what would be described as a decent sort, they would not do something like –
The machine gun opened fire. The weapon, its water-cooled barrel pointing like some demon’s finger at the helpless, roared into the upturned wood and the men clinging to it. Every fifth round a tracer. Accuracy at that range being child’s play, even with the sea conditions.
They watched it happen. One of the stokers screamed, the ship’s doctor putting his fingertips to his open mouth. Paul, mind first blanked out by the shock of their audacity, lunged forward into the bow, falling on hands and knees and his eyes not wavering from the massacre. He did not scream. Face set taut and sharp, his voice locked out by a fury such as he would never know again singing out of his heart. After a moment, his voice returned and he bellowed to turn away, to get some distance on their attacker, try to use the sea action to lose them.
The overturned lifeboat foundered in an expanding crimson slick. As Paul’s boat came about, so too did their assailant. An increased churning from her stern indicating her engines had restarted, propellers spinning once more. Her searchlight still piercing the gloom. An occasional burst of fire from the machine gun as it found a single survivor or two still struggling in the icy sea and goddamn murdered them.
Paul bellowed again to row hard, clambering back to take the rudder as the others worked the oars. The waves could hide them. The darkness, too. Some miracle could still happen. However infinitesimally thin the chance, the chance still existed, and Paul would seize it with both rawboned calloused hands and use it to get the few of them home alive and use it to tell the whole world what had happened out here and use it to make sure the animal responsible would hang from the neck until dead and use it to –
The light, one final time, found them.
Oar power could not match diesel engines. The growing wave along their attacker’s bow showing her growing speed. They could not outrun her guns. Machine gun or deck gun. The thin chance disappearing into the same dark where they would all descend.
The light covered them. A moment’s last reprieve as another ammunition belt was loaded into the gun and the bolt racked closed.
They all watched it coming.
A few shrank back. A few others could only be still. Could only stare.
Paul, sorrow and terror streaming down his crumpling face and into the sea, stood in the heaving boat and raised a fist, a middle finger extended in the universal suggestion. His final act of defiance, in honor of his crew whom he had failed so close to home.
From his viewpoint, his finger ran over the flag whipping from the staff on the conning tower. Covering that infernal cross.
The Union Jack.
The Vickers gun roared a five-second stream into the lives in the boat. Fire ceased as the beast’s steel bow smashed through the little craft, reducing it to flotsam, leaving the pieces churning with the brine and blood in its wake.
A few hours later, dawn came, a thin strip of light squeezed between the receding storm clouds and the anxious horizon. The beast remained on the surface, sailing along in calm indifference on a southwesterly course away from what they had done. Fire at all of their backs.
New York Times article, 10 July 1918:
FUGITIVE GERMAN STEAMER
SUNK BY ROYAL NAVY
Conflicting Accounts Emerge of
Survivors’ Ultimate Fate
OSLO, July 8 (via Amsterdam to London, July 9)—A report from Norwegian naval authorities has confirmed an earlier statement by the British Admiralty that the German steam merchant Regenfels has been sunk with all hands lost. Wreckage from the ship, along with the bodies of some of her crew, washed ashore on Jan Mayen Island on July 3.
The 6,000 ton vessel, owned by the German Steamship Company Hansa, had been interned in the city of Barranquilla, Colombia since January 1915. With the war situation of the German Empire growing desperate, the Regenfels’s captain, Paul Braunwald, delivered a letter to the local consul, announcing his intention to return his ship and crew to their fatherland. After receiving supplies and coal from unknown local sympathizers, the Regenfels escaped internment in early June. Despite a joint Anglo-American naval effort to trap her, she managed to exit the Caribbean and disappeared into the North Atlantic.
The ship’s whereabouts remained unknown until July 2, when the British Secretary of the Admiralty issued a statement that one of their submarines had reported sighting the Regenfels in the northern Norwegian Sea. An attempt was made to force the ship to halt and take her into custody, but the German steamer opened fire with a hidden gun. The submarine was then forced to launch a single torpedo which broke the Regenfels in half. Afterwards, approaching inclement weather forced the submarine to withdraw without looking for survivors. The initial Admiralty report stressed their condolences for the lost merchant seamen, and expressed their wish that more could have been done to save them.
However, the Norwegian naval report issued on the matter brings a more disturbing aspect to light. According to medical personnel who conducted examinations on the bodies recovered from Jan Mayen Island, many of them show signs of having been wounded by gunfire. Furthermore, some were wearing lifejackets, indicating that such an action likely took place after the crew had already abandoned ship. A private comment made by a ranking Royal Norwegian Navy officer indicates the belief that, if the crew were indeed fired upon in the water, it may have been in retaliation for the atrocity committed last month against the Canadian hospital ship Llandovery Castle, as well as similar acts of barbarism against the hospital ships Glenart Castle and Rewa.
A brief statement issued by Grand Admiral von Holtzendorff, chief of staff for the Imperial German Navy, offered his condolences to the families of the crew and concluded by calling for an investigation into a possible war crime. This was rebuffed by the British in another statement, this time issued by a special representative of the First Sea Lord, who declared: “It is not the policy of the Royal Navy to engage in unrestricted submarine warfare, nor is it standing naval policy to treat shipwrecked mariners in any manner other than with decency and civility. Any other accusations of impropriety are groundless. Englishmen would not do such a thing.”
Beastly
The introductory paragraph seems to be trying a wee bit too hard, but it concisely introduces both an outside issue and character reaction to it, so I can't honestly fault it.
And soon after, we get “Noted in the ship’s official logbook, no less.” – I like that. Wryly amusing, but not overbearing.
The prose of the attack is effective. It's also very effective at threading between concrete details and more abstract background narration, and putting each to good effect. It's gripping in its immediacy. My only complaint is “hot whirl of confusion” which sounds a little overdramatic. Yes, even for a ship being attacked.
“As astute as Paul’s observation was regarding the nature of their assailant, he had, unfortunately, arrived at his conclusion too early” This, too, struck me as a bit of a fumble.
Still things progress here to a effective bit of tension, followed by an unsurprising but still shocking finale.
A couple more times I feel like your excitement in the prose gets a bit carried away with itself. For example, this would work much better if it were kept short: “Fire ceased as the beast’s steel bow smashed through the little craft, reducing it to flotsam, leaving the pieces churning with the brine and blood in its wake.”
And then the end.
Oh, the end.
How disappointing. All of that excellent scene, and I was expecting something with a bit more depth than Look, it was the British murdering the Germans! as the shocking reveal. I was looking for something deeper and more insightful than a lecture that when nations go to war, both sides tend to commit atrocities.
And now, for all the technical competence displayed, I can't help but feel this story is all surface and no depth. Nobody can deny your chops, author, but (to please me, anyway) they should be put to better use.
The introductory paragraph seems to be trying a wee bit too hard, but it concisely introduces both an outside issue and character reaction to it, so I can't honestly fault it.
And soon after, we get “Noted in the ship’s official logbook, no less.” – I like that. Wryly amusing, but not overbearing.
The prose of the attack is effective. It's also very effective at threading between concrete details and more abstract background narration, and putting each to good effect. It's gripping in its immediacy. My only complaint is “hot whirl of confusion” which sounds a little overdramatic. Yes, even for a ship being attacked.
“As astute as Paul’s observation was regarding the nature of their assailant, he had, unfortunately, arrived at his conclusion too early” This, too, struck me as a bit of a fumble.
Still things progress here to a effective bit of tension, followed by an unsurprising but still shocking finale.
A couple more times I feel like your excitement in the prose gets a bit carried away with itself. For example, this would work much better if it were kept short: “Fire ceased as the beast’s steel bow smashed through the little craft, reducing it to flotsam, leaving the pieces churning with the brine and blood in its wake.”
And then the end.
Oh, the end.
How disappointing. All of that excellent scene, and I was expecting something with a bit more depth than Look, it was the British murdering the Germans! as the shocking reveal. I was looking for something deeper and more insightful than a lecture that when nations go to war, both sides tend to commit atrocities.
And now, for all the technical competence displayed, I can't help but feel this story is all surface and no depth. Nobody can deny your chops, author, but (to please me, anyway) they should be put to better use.
Genre: Historical Action
Thoughts: This was great, engaging, action-packed fiction... until it suddenly turned out to be equally good nonfiction. The characters are vibrant and human despite not saying much. The drama and tension of the situation is tight throughout.
I fell for the head-fake about who their attackers might be, and the twist hit me like a truck. But given the nature of the events, I think the article at the end is a necessary coda; it wouldn't carry the same emotional weight without that.
Tier: Top Contender
Thoughts: This was great, engaging, action-packed fiction... until it suddenly turned out to be equally good nonfiction. The characters are vibrant and human despite not saying much. The drama and tension of the situation is tight throughout.
I fell for the head-fake about who their attackers might be, and the twist hit me like a truck. But given the nature of the events, I think the article at the end is a necessary coda; it wouldn't carry the same emotional weight without that.
Tier: Top Contender
I'm not really sure what to make of this one, honestly.
Sure, it mostly worked. I mean, the twist surprised me, the action was fairly effective, this and that, all pretty good stuff.
However... I feel like that twist didn't really weigh a whole lot on my emotions? I mean, I already felt sympathy for your characters, and some horror at their attack. I don't think that would have actually changed, even if it had been played differently or what. So, although it surprised me, I'm not sure it actually changed any of what I thought, or made me re-think anything, or what.
As it is, that last third with the article didn't do a whole lot for me.
War is horrible. People can be beastly.
I feel like I already knew that, though.
Sure, it mostly worked. I mean, the twist surprised me, the action was fairly effective, this and that, all pretty good stuff.
However... I feel like that twist didn't really weigh a whole lot on my emotions? I mean, I already felt sympathy for your characters, and some horror at their attack. I don't think that would have actually changed, even if it had been played differently or what. So, although it surprised me, I'm not sure it actually changed any of what I thought, or made me re-think anything, or what.
As it is, that last third with the article didn't do a whole lot for me.
War is horrible. People can be beastly.
I feel like I already knew that, though.
An intriguing take on the prompt
Although it starts off saying the ship is in a gale, I really don't get that impression for the initial part of the story. Periodic mention of the rain on the windows and heaving deck would have helped, I think. When I read it the first time, for some reason I thought that the aggressor did have tentacles, so I was briefly thinking it was steampunk.
The descriptions are a double edged sword for this story. On the one hand, they are vivid and thorough. On the other hand, there is a fair bit of passive voicing and places where wordiness saps momentum. For example,
vs
With a second pass and some judicious pruning, though, you could really amp up the action.
The union jack was a nice twist, doubly so with the (apparently) historical nature of the piece. A quick google didn't turn up the reference, so I'm left a little confused. If it's real, that adds a chilling bit of punctuation to the end. If it's not, you did a very convincing job writing that article.
Decent overall, but needs touching up to bring out more of its potential.
Although it starts off saying the ship is in a gale, I really don't get that impression for the initial part of the story. Periodic mention of the rain on the windows and heaving deck would have helped, I think. When I read it the first time, for some reason I thought that the aggressor did have tentacles, so I was briefly thinking it was steampunk.
The descriptions are a double edged sword for this story. On the one hand, they are vivid and thorough. On the other hand, there is a fair bit of passive voicing and places where wordiness saps momentum. For example,
Only about five minutes had elapsed since the initial blasts. Paul and the rest of the bridge crew had made it to the main deck...
vs
Paul and the rest of the bridge crew made it to the main deck just fine minutes after the first blast...
With a second pass and some judicious pruning, though, you could really amp up the action.
The union jack was a nice twist, doubly so with the (apparently) historical nature of the piece. A quick google didn't turn up the reference, so I'm left a little confused. If it's real, that adds a chilling bit of punctuation to the end. If it's not, you did a very convincing job writing that article.
Decent overall, but needs touching up to bring out more of its potential.
So, a belated retrospective on "Beastly."
Before anything else is written, I wish to give my thanks to everyone who took the time to read this. Special thanks are in order for >>Scramblers and Shadows, >>CoffeeMinion, >>Not_A_Hat, and >>Ratlab for taking the extra time to post what they thought of this piece, whether it be positive, negative, or indifferent.
One of the criticisms from the last story I submitted here (and it was an aspect that, I am ashamed to say, was something that never once occurred to me during its writing) was that, the way the story's ending was written, tended to sap it of any surprise for the reader. In other words, I had completely failed to consider the reader's perspective. As such, one of the major reasons I wrote this piece was to provide the reader with the necessary twist that the last one lacked. If the above response is indicative of the majority, then it appears that this go-around was successful. The main point of criticism now lies primarily with this story's ending. This is entirely fair, but, such being the case, I would like to ask both >>Scramblers and Shadows and >>Not_A_Hat just in what way, exactly, they would have liked to see this story come to an end. The only other possible conclusion I have thought of thus far has been ending the tale with a conversation between two members of the submarine's crew over what has just transpired. Perhaps, depending on how it is done and my skill at writing such a thing, that might bring about the added depth and resonance that was found lacking. But, obviously, I am open to suggestions. As a further note, specifically to S&S, was the criticism that the "introductory paragraph seems to be trying a wee bit too hard." Given that this is a charge that was levied at a few stories on here, I am legitimately curious: Trying too hard in what way?
Additionally, there was the criticism that the story needs "a second pass and some judicious pruning," which it absolutely does. Going into Sunday of the writing weekend, I had about 400-450 words actually written down. Due to some personal tsuris which had left me in a mental flat spin for most of Saturday, I was largely convinced that it would be better to just scuttle the whole thing and try again in the next original mini-fic round. However, I managed to rally at work on Sunday, and, after arriving home, put on some appropriate music and hopped to it. Most of this was written between 11 pm Sunday and 6 am Monday. From flat spin to afterburners a-go-go, oh yeah! While I am still reasonably happy with this piece, crude as it is, I fully concede that it needs additional work before it might possibly be sent out into the world at large, and, again, I thank everyone for helping point out some of my blind spots here.
A note on the historical background:
The Regenfels and her master Paul Braunwald are completely fictitious. There was a real German freighter, the Erlangen, which attempted to sail home from Australia at the start of World War II. Its tale inspired the 1948 novel The Sea Chase, which was adapted into a movie in 1955 starring (of all people) John Wayne as the German ship's captain. Despite the fictional nature of the incident described here, the story draws some heat from the fact that such a crime could have conceivably happened. Between the Imperial German Navy attacking hospital ships (the three such ships mentioned in the fake newspaper article (the Rewa, the Glenart Castle, and the Llandovery Castle) were all real, and in the latter two cases, survivors from both ships were machine-gunned in the water by the U-boats that sank them) and the British Royal Navy committing various acts of unpunished cruelty (such as during the Baralong incidents, the affair with the crew of the Zeppelin L.19, and the alleged attack on survivors from the submarine SM UB-110), the brutality of World War I was not just a land-locked occurrence. Regrettably, these incidents tend to be generally unremembered, along with much of the war at sea.
In closing, I would like to note that >>CoffeeMinion's comment is probably the nicest thing anyone has said to me about my writing in a long time. About ten years, to be precise. It might not provide much insight for improving, but it is a grand and glorious thing to hear, all the same. It helps provide the fuel for wanting to improve.
Before anything else is written, I wish to give my thanks to everyone who took the time to read this. Special thanks are in order for >>Scramblers and Shadows, >>CoffeeMinion, >>Not_A_Hat, and >>Ratlab for taking the extra time to post what they thought of this piece, whether it be positive, negative, or indifferent.
One of the criticisms from the last story I submitted here (and it was an aspect that, I am ashamed to say, was something that never once occurred to me during its writing) was that, the way the story's ending was written, tended to sap it of any surprise for the reader. In other words, I had completely failed to consider the reader's perspective. As such, one of the major reasons I wrote this piece was to provide the reader with the necessary twist that the last one lacked. If the above response is indicative of the majority, then it appears that this go-around was successful. The main point of criticism now lies primarily with this story's ending. This is entirely fair, but, such being the case, I would like to ask both >>Scramblers and Shadows and >>Not_A_Hat just in what way, exactly, they would have liked to see this story come to an end. The only other possible conclusion I have thought of thus far has been ending the tale with a conversation between two members of the submarine's crew over what has just transpired. Perhaps, depending on how it is done and my skill at writing such a thing, that might bring about the added depth and resonance that was found lacking. But, obviously, I am open to suggestions. As a further note, specifically to S&S, was the criticism that the "introductory paragraph seems to be trying a wee bit too hard." Given that this is a charge that was levied at a few stories on here, I am legitimately curious: Trying too hard in what way?
Additionally, there was the criticism that the story needs "a second pass and some judicious pruning," which it absolutely does. Going into Sunday of the writing weekend, I had about 400-450 words actually written down. Due to some personal tsuris which had left me in a mental flat spin for most of Saturday, I was largely convinced that it would be better to just scuttle the whole thing and try again in the next original mini-fic round. However, I managed to rally at work on Sunday, and, after arriving home, put on some appropriate music and hopped to it. Most of this was written between 11 pm Sunday and 6 am Monday. From flat spin to afterburners a-go-go, oh yeah! While I am still reasonably happy with this piece, crude as it is, I fully concede that it needs additional work before it might possibly be sent out into the world at large, and, again, I thank everyone for helping point out some of my blind spots here.
A note on the historical background:
The Regenfels and her master Paul Braunwald are completely fictitious. There was a real German freighter, the Erlangen, which attempted to sail home from Australia at the start of World War II. Its tale inspired the 1948 novel The Sea Chase, which was adapted into a movie in 1955 starring (of all people) John Wayne as the German ship's captain. Despite the fictional nature of the incident described here, the story draws some heat from the fact that such a crime could have conceivably happened. Between the Imperial German Navy attacking hospital ships (the three such ships mentioned in the fake newspaper article (the Rewa, the Glenart Castle, and the Llandovery Castle) were all real, and in the latter two cases, survivors from both ships were machine-gunned in the water by the U-boats that sank them) and the British Royal Navy committing various acts of unpunished cruelty (such as during the Baralong incidents, the affair with the crew of the Zeppelin L.19, and the alleged attack on survivors from the submarine SM UB-110), the brutality of World War I was not just a land-locked occurrence. Regrettably, these incidents tend to be generally unremembered, along with much of the war at sea.
In closing, I would like to note that >>CoffeeMinion's comment is probably the nicest thing anyone has said to me about my writing in a long time. About ten years, to be precise. It might not provide much insight for improving, but it is a grand and glorious thing to hear, all the same. It helps provide the fuel for wanting to improve.
>>Hagdal Hohensalza I feel like the suggestions I might make here would change the structure of the story significantly. I think, though, that most of my dissatisfaction came from the twist feeling rather underwhelming. That may simply signal that I'm not your target audience, honestly; just because I don't like something doesn't mean it's 'bad'.
Anyways, if you were interested in re-structuring the whole thing, I'd probably suggest de-fanging the 'twist' completely. I don't mean making it the Germans attacking, or something like that, but instead of trying to surprise your audience with the situation, use it as a plot-point and focus the story on the personal tragedy in some way? Do more individual characterization, spend a bit more time with the men, stuff like that, to end with more of a character piece tragedy instead of a 'big idea' story.
Hopefully this is helpful? I dunno. Take this with a grain of salt, because I'm definitely not the person to ask advice for about tragedies.
Anyways, if you were interested in re-structuring the whole thing, I'd probably suggest de-fanging the 'twist' completely. I don't mean making it the Germans attacking, or something like that, but instead of trying to surprise your audience with the situation, use it as a plot-point and focus the story on the personal tragedy in some way? Do more individual characterization, spend a bit more time with the men, stuff like that, to end with more of a character piece tragedy instead of a 'big idea' story.
Hopefully this is helpful? I dunno. Take this with a grain of salt, because I'm definitely not the person to ask advice for about tragedies.