Hammond Innes: The Black Tide Quiz | Authors

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. The prologue concerns the oil tanker Petros Jupiter striking rocks close to the Longships Lighthouse. Which part of the British Isles is the Longships Lighthouse?

Answer: Lands End

The Longships Lighthouse exists. It is built on one of the Longships Islets which are a set of rocks just over a mile from Lands End. At low tide all seven are above water, but at high tide only three can be seen. Added to this, there are two more rocks known as Kettle's Bottom, which are always below water.
The Longships Lighthouse sits on the islet Carn Bras, an anglicisation of the Cornish name, which in turn means "big pile of rock".

Back to the story, the Petros Jupiter had a design life of 8 years and had been sailing for around twice that. It has struck Kettle's Bottom and oil is beginning to leak out.

2. The hero, as such, of this story is Trevor Rodin who lives overlooking the site of the shipwreck. His wife Karen dies in the first few pages when she sets the wrecked tanker on fire to save the coast and the wildlife. What does she use to achieve this?

Answer: Flame weedkiller, borrowed from neighbour

After the initial wrecking of the tanker, a public meeting is held nearby with the politicians and locals. Although the French have strict rules about transporting dangerous cargo through the English Channel, the British don't and the meeting achieves nothing except a promise to try and float the tanker the next day if it stays calm.

The locals all realise that this is almost certain not to happen as they can read the weather, and they know that a storm is brewing. Karen hears the result of the meeting on the phone and heads off to try and burn the oil slick, which she does with spectacular efficiency.

3. Rodin travels to Sheepen Place in Colchester to meet Barty Ferrers in the "Special Enquiries Branch". This is the intelligence department of which organisation?

Answer: Lloyds of London

As with much of Hammond Innes's writing, the detail and accuracy of location descriptions is high. The journey from Colchester station to Sheepen Place is spot on. Although I feel that the water tower "Jumbo" is more visible than the town hall spire.

The building he goes to still exists as described and, while I am unable to tell if it contained the Intelligence Department of Lloyds, it did produce the daily paper "Lloyd's List" until it became an online only publication in 2013.

4. At which London club does Trevor Rodin meet Saltley, the Marine Solicitor?

Answer: Royal Ocean Racing Club

The Royal Ocean Racing Club exists as Innes's has said in St James Place in London. Rodin never finds out the Christian name of Saltley, just that his initials are C R. Saltley tries to hire Rodin to do some amateur detective work for him.

5. After the Petros Jupiter is wrecked, two more large tankers go missing. The syndicate which covered the insurance of these ships has several nicknames, including the "Sinister Syndicate", but which other nickname is more often used for it (in the book)?

Answer: Virgins Unlimited

The syndicate mainly consists of wives and daughters of Lloyds Members, only some of whom are mentioned in the novel. Those that are mentioned are the wives of Saltley and Michael Stewart, plus Michael Stewart's daughter Pamela, who features a bit more towards the end of the book.

This is an unexplained complication. At this point it is clear that Saltley is married, but towards the end he is expecting to marry Pamela with no accounting for his existing wife.

6. Trevor subsequently travels to Nantes trying to track down the second engineer from the Petros Jupiter. What tattoo is the engineer described as having across his chest?

Answer: The word Formidable

Henri Choffel was the second engineer on the Petros Jupiter, but under a false name. Shortly after the shipwreck, Choffel stole a dingy to leave the UK. Rodin believes that he is guilty of scuttling the ship and is indirectly for the death of Karen Rodin.

Tracking Choffel as far as Nantes, Rodin meets Choffel's daughter and discovers that Henri Choffel is also a false name as he was originally from Wales. Hearing from another source about the tattoo, Rodin considers the possibility that Choffel was a Welshman who served on HMS Formidable as an engineer during his National Service. As it turns out this is correct.

7. Rodin catches up with Choffel when he takes a job as first mate on an unnamed tanker from an unspecified port. When he gets aboard he meets a Canadian, Rod Selkirk. Rod Selkirk is a former hunter who turned environmentalist after reading which book, written by a compatriot?

Answer: Farley Mowat - Never Cry Wolf

All of the options are real books, but only Farley Mowat is a Canadian author.
"Never Cry Wolf" attempted to show that wolves were not the savage killers that humanity tends to portray them. This was controversial at the time.

In the story the officers for the unnamed tanker have been recruited in two ways. They are either those who can't get jobs elsewhere due to their reputation within the shipping industry, or those with an environmental point to make.

8. Rodin and Choffel escape from the un-named tanker by dhow. Starting from the Hormuz Strait, where do they manage to beach the boat?

Answer: Gwadar, Pakistan

Gadwar is one of the first places in Pakistan after the Iranian border. The story is set in the 1980s when Khomeini had taken over Iran. It probably would not have been a good place for two westerners to land.

I said "they" but Choffel was shot as they left the tanker and dies before they reach the Pakistan coast. This causes Rodin some problems as it has been obvious that he blames Choffel for the death of his wife and has a good motive for killing him.

What I haven't managed to determine is what happened to the crew who were on the dhow when Choffel first boarded. Despite reading the relevant pages several times they seem to vanish into thin air in the middle of the chapter.

9. Both missing tankers have been repainted and reflagged. They rendezvous close to Europe, but where?

Answer: Salvedge Islands

The Salvedge Islands are a small Portuguese outpost in the Atlantic Ocean. English names for these are the Salvage or Savage Islands. They are real and can be found west of Morocco and north of the Canary Islands. They are designated a nature reserve, but Spanish trawlers have objected to this and confrontations have taken place.

10. The finale is the collision of the two hijacked tankers, whether by accident or design. Where does this environmental disaster occur?

Answer: Straits of Dover

More precisely the Sandettie Bank, south-east of Goodwin Sands and guarding the centre of the eastern end of the Straits of Dover.

As the entire story is written in the first person of Trevor Rodin, the motives of the environmentalists and the terrorists has to be inferred from Rodin's previous recollections of meeting them. The ecologists, whom Rodin sympathises with, want the governments to create and enforce laws to protect the oceans from oil discharges and shipwrecks. The terrorists' motive is not identified but as one of the two environmental campaigners known to be on board, Captain Pieter Hals is shot by the terrorists just prior to the collision, it may be assumed that the terrorists, not the environmentalists, were in control at the time of collision. Another possibility is that no-one was in control and that the collision was not intended.

Source: Author paper_aero

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor MotherGoose before going online.
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Hammond Innes: The Black Tide Trivia Quiz

"The Black Tide" concerns the pollution of the seas by oil, in particular from shipwrecked tankers, and the lack of political will to do anything about it, due to the demand for oil from the general populace.

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