Brother Fish (98 page)

‘Private James Oldcorn was taken prisoner of war in fall 1951 whilst a member of the 24th Infantry Regiment, United States Army. He was imprisoned in a camp on the northern border of North Korea where the conditions were harsh. In 1952, Private Oldcorn, feigning sympathy for the communist ideology, infiltrated the Chinese camp administration and collected the names of prisoners collaborating with the enemy, including those clandestinely informing on their comrades. Even though detection would almost certainly have brought about punishment resulting in death, Private Oldcorn smuggled the list to fellow prisoners who could be trusted. They, in turn, broadcast the list to expose the collaborators, including undercover informers. This action seriously disrupted the Chinese Army's camp spy network, discomforted and isolated the collaborators and gave encouragement by his example to the majority of prisoners to continue to resist. Private Oldcorn's heroic achievement reflects great credit upon himself, his unit and the military service.'

The naval aide ceased reading and the president then remarked, ‘I hope that the members of the press present will see to it that those other four citations, for which there is not sufficient time to read here today, will be made known to the American public.' President Eisenhower then pinned the medal to a very embarrassed, but also very proud, Jimmy Pentecost Oldcorn's chest.

‘Den I wheel our good friend, Chuck Ward, to da position, an' he stand on his mechanical legs an' da naval aide done read his citation an' he get his medal an' also da same happen to da other soldier POW, Private Garcia. Now da flashbulbs dey is poppin', TV cameras dey whirrin', an' da reporters dey askin' questions like dey machine-gun bull-ets an' I is tryin' not to use mah hands an' talk real polite, an' journalists dey writin' down stuff wid der shorthand. Den afterwards dey got dis reception in da garden. Natch, da president he mostly been talkin' to the family of Master Sergeant Adams 'cos dat da proto-col, but before he go back into da White House he come over to where I standin' wid Chuck Ward an' his folks. Da one-time general of da whole world, 'cept o' course da Germans an' da Japs – not only dat but he also da Pres-e-dent of da United States of America – he comin' 'cross da White House lawn towards me! He stop an' he say, “Private Oldcorn, America is proud of you and I thank you for being a good soldier and more than that, an honourable man who cared about his brother soldiers.” Hey, man, any minute I's gonna wake up an' I back in dat prison camp an' Lieutenant Dinh, he shoutin', “You confess now!”'

It was grand having Jimmy back on the island and, of course, we had another medal party for him, and naturally half the island turned up uninvited. Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan brought a bottle of Krug from her precious hoard and the three of us and Gloria each had a glass. Gloria took a sip from her first glass of champagne and, resting her head on her right shoulder, thought for a few moments, took another sip, then said, ‘Well, blow me down – if that ain't something to take away your rheumatiz!'

It seems hardly worth saying, but the boat advertisement Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan wrote brought nearly thirty inquiries: twenty-four from the Hobart
Mercury
and the Launceston
Examiner
combined, and five from the little old
Gazette
– one of them, one of the four finalists. It had taken us all the time Jimmy was away to sort the finalists out. These four seemed almost too good to be true, and three of the owners were willing to come over to the island to enable us to sea-trial their boats. The fourth baulked at the idea of a sea trial, despite our offer to pay for the fuel to get to the island, the wages of one crew member to sail with the skipper and, of course, the provisions for the days out on the Strait.

Arranging to get the three boats to the island to sea-trial them took us another month and proved an ideal opportunity for Jimmy to relax and get over his nightmare tour of America. All three boats were good, and while they had a fair bit in common they also possessed marked differences. Finally we selected a sixty-five-foot boat called the
Janthe
owned by a bloke in his mid-thirties named Michael Munday who'd flown a Dakota during the Second World War. Mike was a fourth-generation fisherman. When I asked him why, if he loved the sea, he hadn't joined the navy, he replied, ‘I'm a fisherman, mate. My family have been fishermen for more than a hundred years – it's in my blood. Out here on the Strait and in the Southern Ocean I'm in charge, on my own – no bastard to tell me what to do. In the navy or the army it's all pack drill with some bugger kicking arse for all the wrong reasons. I reckoned if I couldn't have the sea to myself, the air was the next best thing. Surfing the clouds in a Dakota is almost the same. You're in control, nobody to tell you what to do.'

‘So why are you selling the
Janthe
?' I asked him.

‘Got an offer to fly for a mining company in New Guinea for six times what I'll make as a fisherman, with a house in Port Moresby and my kids in boarding school in Hobart thrown into the package.' He laughed suddenly. ‘Tell you what, though, look after my boat and I'll buy her back from you in five years when my contract's up.'

The
Janthe
wasn't a new boat, but the best of all things, a truly good old one. She was built entirely of Huon pine and, like all the older boats, was both sail and diesel powered. She had belonged to Mike's father who, like his son, had kept it in tip-top condition. She was fitted with a Lister low-revving diesel engine and a Paragon gearbox and they don't come any more reliable. Better still, she also carried a Kelvin Hughes echo sounder; they'd only just come onto the market and I'd not seen one before. Steve had pointed it out in a fishing magazine and we'd all speculated as to when we might get them in Australia. It said something for Michael Munday – something like that on board was not only a tremendous help to find the fishing grounds, but also an essential piece of safety equipment when navigating among the many reefs in Bass Strait.

‘What about the echo sounder, hey?' I remarked.

He grinned. ‘Wouldn't be there if I'd known I was going flying – cost several boatloads of cray to pay for and a lot of hassle from customs to bring in.'

‘I'll bet it makes a difference?'

‘You're damn right – I reckon it adds thirty per cent more to my catch.'

I pointed to the huge light mounted high up on the front of the mast. ‘Never seen one of those.'

‘War surplus, landing light from a C47, a Dakota,' he explained. ‘Cost a motser – don't use it often because it'll blind you at 200 yards, but in the big storm of '52 I reckon it saved us.' Most fishing boats have no light and some of the more cautious blokes fit a headlight from a car, but I'd never seen anything like this before. I even wondered if it wasn't a bit of overkill, like extra chrome on a motor car.

The sails too were in tip-top condition as was the gear on board, right down to the thirty craypots and the glass floats. We'd lucked in – Mike Munday was a perfectionist and you'd bet on him being a good pilot. It can't have been easy for him to part with this beautiful boat.

Mike was a big bloke himself and according to him, his father was even bigger, so the two bunks built below deck in the fo'c'sle were each long enough to accommodate Jimmy (just) while I had enough room to swing a cat. The
Janthe
also came equipped with an almost brand-new dinghy with a twenty-horsepower Mercury outboard that hung off the back on davits.

‘How come the dinghy's new?' I asked Mike. In an older boat the dinghy, which is usually used for fishing in areas too dangerous to take the bigger vessel, is generally a bit of a battered affair, usually fitted with a donk that's been reconditioned several times. Stupid, of course – a sound dinghy and outboard has saved many a life out at sea. But there you go, fishermen are always strapped for cash and the dinghy is where you cut insurance corners to lower the premium.

‘The old one was swept away by a freak wave in that big storm of '52 – torn right off the davits. The insurance paid out,' he replied.

This told me two things: the
Janthe
had not only survived one of the worst storms in the Strait for the past decade, but its owner also earned sufficient from fishing to insure his boat properly.

There was only one problem: he wanted 1500 quid more than we had estimated we would need. I'd given the Countess a carefully worked-out figure to which she'd agreed, but at the time she'd said quite firmly, ‘Jack, please don't cut corners. Take everything into consideration, but the figure you give me
must
be the final one.' I couldn't bring myself to go cap in hand to ask for more.

‘What about the boat without the dinghy?' I asked Munday, the point being that he'd have no trouble selling the beautiful little clinker-built boat also made from Huon pine and the almost-new Mercury outboard, or he could choose to keep the dinghy himself. ‘Put her on a ship and take her to New Guinea with you – the barramundi fishing on the Sepik River is supposed to be tremendous.' We'd easily enough find a good replacement with a reconditioned outboard.

But Mike was adamant. The bugger was about to make 15 500 pounds and he wouldn't budge. ‘The
Janthe
is the best cray boat, best fishing boat sixty-five foot or under, in Tasmania,' he asserted. ‘Can't have a shit bucket hanging aft, mate.' Then he added, ‘She's a proud lady – if you're gunna compromise her I'd rather not sell.' Pretty blunt, but you had to respect him for it.

We told Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan we'd decided on
Four Winds
, a good enough cray boat in different circumstances, just under fifty feet in length. We'd have to fit a new bunk for Jimmy, but even that would be a pretty tight fit. ‘Better practise sleeping with your toes curled,' I laughed. All the same, we were pretty disappointed.

‘That's nice, Jack,' she said, then added, ‘why?'

‘It's a good boat – all three we sea-trialled are,' I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

‘It's not what you want, is it?'

‘Yeah, all we'll have to do is build in a new bunk for Jimmy – there's just enough room.' I grinned. ‘I haven't told him we'll have to break his ankles so they'll grow back both of 'em turned thirty degrees to port.'

But she wasn't fooled. ‘Jack, it's been nothing but the
Janthe
all week, and now
Four Winds
? Michael Munday wants more than your budget, is that it?'

I nodded. ‘Yeah.'

‘How much more?'

‘Fifteen hundred pounds.'

‘Is it worth it?'

I had to be honest. ‘Nah. She's worth more than our budget, maybe 500 pounds more, but that's it. I've had several of the local fishermen and Steve go over her with a fine-tooth comb, and they agree.'

‘Let me talk to him, Jack.'

Two hours later Mike Munday came out of the
Gazette
office shaking his head. ‘Jesus, I'm a foreign correspondent,' he said, plainly bemused.

‘A what?'

‘A foreign correspondent – journo for the
Gazette
. What's more, it's cost me 1000 quid!'

I tried hard not to break up, but Jimmy kept a straight face. ‘Dat fine, man! Dat a good newspaper!'

‘It's a heap of shit,' Mike replied, scratching his head. ‘But then I'm not much of a writer, I suppose – always wanted to be, though. But there you go, too busy fishing.'

‘What does she want you to write?' I asked, curious.

‘It's what she calls a “regular monthly column” – “News from the Islands”. File once a month.' ‘File' was obviously a new word he'd just picked up from Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan, but you could see he liked the idea of calling himself a journalist.

Mike took the plane back to Launceston the following morning.

I drove him to the airport in the Ford Prefect. ‘Good luck, Jacko. It's broken my heart, but I'll get the
Janthe
back one day,' he said, shaking my hand as we parted.

‘Not if I can help it,' I replied, grinning.

‘Oh, by the way, Jacko, if ever you find yourself in a tight spot, big storm or something, and you've got to stay alert, look in the first-aid box – the Bex packets.' It was a strange thing to say – to stay awake wasn't why Gloria took Bex.
To each his own
, I thought at the time.

Later Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan explained how she'd persuaded Mike Munday to knock 1000 quid off his price. ‘Everyone has a secret something they'd like to do, but feels that there are more important priorities. Find out what it is and allow them to indulge the dream without disturbing the status quo and they'll usually cooperate.'

‘But 1000 quid? That's a helluva lot of cooperation.'

‘It's all about perception. In New Guinea they're not going to know the
Gazette
only has 2000 readers. They'll see Michael Munday's name and picture in print. Just as importantly, the people he needs to impress in Port Moresby will be reading about themselves. Munday is a namedropper – he wants a bit of notoriety. He'll make sure the paper lands in all the right places. I've promised him ten copies every month. We all want to be local heroes, Jack. Take John Champion. He dreams of making his Queen Island cheeses and cream the best in Australia. That's his ambition, but it's not his
secret something
. His secret something is that he will receive a knighthood from the queen as a thank-you from a grateful Tasmanian Government.'