Chapter 7
San Francisco; One Day Later
Yuri didn’t have three signed shipping contracts.
He had eleven.
He’d been in San Francisco only four days, but he’d learned almost immediately that the docks were marvelously fun.
They were always busy, with ships arriving and leaving at all hours.
The warehouses employed people who worked through the night, illuminated by electric lights on the docks and a mixture of gas and electric lighting inside the various warehouses.
It turned out all a man had to do was stop and spend an hour or so talking to one of the smaller vendors or warehouse owners, and he could come away with a shipping contract that was good for two or three years.
He was starting to see why Alexei wanted that metal barge so badly. He wasn’t sure he could offer another vendor a shipping contract unless they actually had an additional ship they could use to fulfill it.
Good thing his brother had all but purchased the barge already.
Things had been going so well at the docks that when Yuri finally made his way across the city to the Farnsworth Shipyard that afternoon, he half expected to find a gleaming vessel just waiting for a bit of polish.
Instead, he found himself staring at a sinking bucket of rust that would need an unimaginable amount of work.
The Farnsworth Shipyard itself was something of beauty.
A massive dry dock dominated the yard’s center, where a brand-new iron-hulled vessel rose from the scaffolding.
Cranes and hoists loomed over it, their long arms swinging materials into place, and a small army of workers swarmed the ship, some hammering rivets, others welding seams, and others securing steel plates to the ship’s frame.
He didn’t need to have a degree in naval architecture to know the ship was a marvel of engineering. Smooth steel plating stretched along its hull, catching the afternoon sun.
The vessel had money behind it. A lot of money.
He now understood why Alexei had been so impressed with Harold Farnsworth and his shipyard.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that the man had a lovely daughter Alexei had been writing to for the past six months.
Alexei claimed they were just friends, but if the two of them were to marry, it would give Alexei access to a new world of innovation in the area of naval architecture.
What a pity the ship Farnsworth was trying to sell them wasn’t worth two pennies.
The Emberfall sat in a neglected corner of the yard, a rusting heap that no one seemed in a hurry to fix. Its hull was streaked with corrosion and rust, proving that the vessel had been neglected in disrepair long before its shipwreck.
A gaping hole in the stern bore evidence of a brutal collision, and the metal plating was warped and buckled where something massive had struck it. The deck above the hole sagged too, and a thin layer of stagnant water pooled in the lowest parts of the hull.
Yuri exhaled slowly. Just what was he supposed to tell Alexei?
He understood why his brother wanted an iron- or steel-hulled vessel.
The shipping industry was moving away from smaller wooden ships like the ones their family built and toward large barges and freighters that could transport four times the cargo.
But they couldn’t purchase the Emberfall. No bank would lend them money for such a mess, and fixing it would probably cost more than their trading company and shipyard made in a year.
A man in a tailored suit and polished shoes approached. Yuri didn’t need anyone to tell him this was Harold Farnsworth. The man looked far too clean and professional to spend much time in the loud, dusty shipyard.
“Mr. Amos.” Farnsworth extended a hand. “I trust your journey to San Francisco went well?”
Yuri gave his hand a swift shake. “It did.”
“I told my manager to get me when you arrived. I’m sorry he didn’t. I wanted to show you the Emberfall myself.” Farnsworth gestured toward the barge, a smooth smile fixed on his face. “What do you think of her?”
“Looks like she needs a good bit of work, but I have to say, I’m rather impressed by your shipyard. I see why Alexei speaks so highly of it.” Yuri nodded toward the elegant new ship rising in the dry dock.
“Ah, thank you.” The man gave him a smile that looked a bit more genuine and less polished.
“She’s a work in progress. We’re always trying to improve things around here, but when I think back to where we started with only one dry dock and three workers thirty years ago, I have to say we’ve come a long way. ”
They certainly had. Yuri scanned the shipyard again. There was one thing he didn’t understand, and it was probably best just to come straight out and ask it. “With all the resources and workers at your disposal, why not restore the Emberfall yourself?”
“We’ve switched to building only steel ships.
It’s a superior metal to iron, as I’m sure you know.
We build two a year—each one made to order and spoken for before the first rivet is driven into the hull.
” Farnsworth gestured toward the workers swarming the pristine vessel.
“The Black Marlin will be heading to Shanghai this spring.”
That was a convenient excuse for trying to sell his family a leaky bucket of rust at an inflated price. “So what happened to the Emberfall, and how did you end up with her if you don’t want anything to do with iron vessels?”
“She was a storm casualty, and the owner owed me a bit of money. I said I would take the ship as compensation and had it towed back here before deciding there was too much damage for me to repair it myself. I need it to be gone as soon as possible. We should already be laying the keel and starting on the frame for our next ship, which we usually do right here, where the Emberfall is sitting. I know she’s a bit old, but most of the iron is solid.
I’d say she’s got another decade or so in her.
And for a man like your brother who’s looking to expand his fleet, she could be a fine investment. ”
Farnsworth’s “investment” idea would still cost his family thousands of dollars.
And no matter how thoroughly they repaired the hole in the hull, the rust climbing the frame and joints would take the ship at some point.
Yuri wasn’t enough of an expert in iron-hulled ships to predict exactly when that might be, but claiming the ship would last a decade was overly optimistic.
It would cost Alexei less to build a sixth vessel in their fleet.
“The iron itself is still quite valuable.” Farnsworth said, probably because he didn’t know what to do with Yuri’s silence. “And the structure can be reinforced. She just needs the right man willing to put in the work. I’m willing to strike a good deal to have it out of my hair.”
Farnsworth flashed him another smooth smile.
Yuri made a small humming sound, his gaze drifting from the Emberfall to the Black Marlin. It wasn’t that difficult for a shipyard that worked with steel to repair an iron vessel. All the tools would be the same, only the metal would be different.
“Mr. Farnsworth! Mr. Farnsworth!”
There was so much activity in the shipyard, it took Yuri a moment to spot the speaker, a short, slender man in a suit as ill-fitting as Farnsworth’s was pristine. He waved a letter in the air.
“I just received word from the Hollisters.” The man stopped beside Farnsworth, his chest heaving as though he’d just run a mile, though Yuri suspected he’d come from the office building inside the shipyard.
“And?” Farnsworth held out a hand for the letter.
“I don’t know.” The man, likely Farnsworth’s personal clerk, handed it over. “I didn’t read it.”
Farnsworth tore the envelope open and scanned the contents, then crumpled it in his hand.
“I assume they refused your offer?” the clerk asked.
“They’re fools.” Farnsworth’s lips pressed together in a flat line. “They’ve no reason to refuse it. It’s a perfectly good offer.”
The clerk winced. “Ah, for you, yes. But I’m sure they don’t want to sell their shipyard for a pittance of what it’s worth.”
Farnsworth was trying to buy a shipyard? Yuri rubbed the back of his neck. Why? He already had a beautiful one.
“They should sell it for a pittance. With Dwayne Hollister dead, they’ll lose the business.
” Farnsworth dragged a hand over his mustache, then nodded at Yuri.
“Sorry to bore you with this, Amos. We’ve been trying to acquire a small shipyard now that the owner is dead.
He had four daughters and no sons. No one there knows how to build ships. ”
“The foreman knows a great deal.” Farnsworth’s clerk pressed his spectacles higher onto his nose. “He did that repair work on the Houston, remember?”
“That’s not the same as having an owner who understands shipbuilding.”
“Perhaps, but they’d be foolish to sell so soon for the price you offered.”
Farnsworth scowled, then shoved the crumpled letter back at his clerk. “Raise my next offer by three hundred dollars.”
The clerk shook his head. “That will still be less than half of what the shipyard’s worth.”
“Yes, but it will be three hundred dollars more than I offered them last time.”
“You should offer more. If they put the shipyard up for sale on the open market, they’ll be able to get a much better price, and then you’d be competing against other offers.”
“Hollister has been dead for five months, and they’ve yet to try to sell it. That leads me to believe there’s a good chance they’ll take one of my offers without looking at other options.”
“Yes, sir.” The clerk left, and Farnsworth turned back to Yuri.
“Sorry about that interruption, Amos. So where were we?”
Nowhere. They were absolutely nowhere. The last thing he was going to do was buy the Emberfall, but he had a rather sudden interest in finding this Hollister family and touring their shipyard.