Slow-moving, lacking defensive armor and with few watertight bulkheads, the Buckingham also was meagerly equipped for battle. She had only a few anti-aircraft guns and 20-mm machine guns, making her easy targets for both enemy bombers and submarines. Crossing the Atlantic unescorted by Navy ships in a convoy, the Buckingham was protected by a detachment of sailors, Naval Armed Guards. Their orders were no surrender or abandoning ship so long as their guns could be fired. If hit by a torpedo, the defenders tried to fire on the submarine that released it. Most often, the subs remained underwater until a merchant ship went down.
Lacking any sea experience, Barbara earned her berth across the Atlantic by peeling potatoes and cleaning pots and pans as a cook's helper. She took care to wash and bathe after the shipload of male merchants were asleep, going to bed each night and awaking each morning with two primary dreads.
One was that the ship might be bombed or torpedoed while she slept. Sailing on a powder keg waiting to blow up, it gave her some comfort to think that maybe the fuel for the bomber she hoped to fly over the English Channel was in the hold of the ship she was sailing on across the Atlantic.
The other dread, which became even more frequent, was that one of the crew might take too much a liking to her. She had heard that some sailors were "that way."
Working in the ship's mess kept her separated from most of the rest of the crew, but Barbara soon found her duties there put her in the most risk.
Her first night aboard, after finally falling asleep in her hammock, she felt a strong hand nudge her shoulder. Waking up in terror, wondering if the ship had been torpedoed, she saw it was Colm Fraser, the chief cook. A huge, hulking man with a belly like a beached whale, put his face so close to hers, she smelled the scotch on his breath.
"Want some ice cream, Laddie?"
She couldn't believe him.
"Last trip, my boy liked ice cream."
Oh, so I'm your boy, am I?
"Come on to the mess, and I'll give you a treat."
I bet you will!
Barbara thought it safer to stay in her hammock, until the cook placed his hand on her knee. She had kept her clothes on, and intended to for the entire crossing.
Fraser practically pulled her out of her hammock, and Barbara followed him reluctantly to the mess hall. He was as good as his word, serving her a pint of chocolate ice cream she really had not wanted. But she did not want to turn him down, or he might demand more from her.