Raging Sea, Searing Sky

by Christopher Nicole

  Raging Sea, Searing Sky

  Christopher Nicole

  Copyright © Christopher Nicole 1988

  The right of Christopher Nicole to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1988 by Severn House Pub. Ltd.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Author’s Note

  This book contains some sexually descriptive matter which may not be suitable to all readers.

  Except where they can be identified historically, the characters and events in this novel are the inventions of the author, and are not intended to resemble real persons, living or dead, or actual events.

  Chapter One

  The North Atlantic, 1915

  ‘Gee whizz,’ Shirley McGann gasped, clinging to her brother’s arm. ‘Isn’t she huge!’

  Shirley was only fourteen, although she looked older because she possessed the McGann height, and was inclined to think in superlatives, but Lewis McGann could not help but agree with her as he gazed at the ship, rising like an apartment block above the Hoboken skyline. Brought up in the lore of ships and the sea, and, since he had known he was actually going to sail on her, having devoured everything he could find written about the great Cunarder, he realised he had still lacked the imagination to envisage anything like this.

  Some eight hundred feet long, displacing thirty-one thousand tons, four great funnels rising above the boat deck — Lewis McGann knew only two of them were real — the Steam Ship Lusitania looked exactly what she was, the queen of the North Atlantic. On her maiden voyage, eight years previously, she had broken the record time for the crossing from England to America, and since then only her sister ship, the Mauretania, had challenged her.

  ‘Yeah,’ Lewis McGann agreed. ‘Some ship.’ And they were about to board her. ‘I wonder where Mom has got to,’ he muttered.

  Because the bustle and crush on the dockside was like a football scrummage, the noise booming, the dust eddying on this warm spring day, and Christina McGann had gone off to have their tickets checked and arrange for their boxes to be taken on board, leaving her only son in charge both of the luggage and his little sister. It was the biggest responsibility he had ever had in his short life, for Lewis himself was only fifteen. Like his sister he looked older, because he was already six feet tall and had clearly not yet ceased growing. This was the McGann trademark, the size of the family, and certainly the male members of it. Both Lewis and Shirley were yet unusual McGanns, in that they were dark-haired and dark-eyed, inheritances from their Spanish mother, but where Shirley had also fortunately inherited the perfectly cast features of Christina Diaz, Lewis took after his father facially, and possessed the rugged, somewhat craggy nose and chin of the true McGann. Face, size, and obvious physical strength made him an ideal guard, but as he had never had to use his strength aggressively except when playing games, he was not at all sure how he would handle the situation should someone either be rude to Shirley or attempt to make off with a suitcase. Brought up on the security of the family farm on Long Island, he had lived a somewhat sheltered life. Even a visit to New York was an immense adventure. But to regard New York just as a stepping stone to the ocean and then a world of angry turmoil beyond was breathtaking. He knew that Shirley, and even Mom, felt that too; their farewells to the rest of the family had been too excited for tears, and Mom had declined the offer of Uncle William to accompany them and see them safely on board — she was an experienced traveller and was content that there should be one, general, and final farewell in the privacy of the farm.

  So now they were on their way, and in addition to the desperate excitement of the coming voyage there was the heady awareness of being dressed for the first time in his life in a man’s dark blue suit instead of knickerbockers, even if he wore a cap instead of a derby — he had at least already begun to shave. Just as Shirley, in her white blouse and blue skirt, her neat little tie and her straw hat, looked a very grown up young lady. But where, oh where, was Mom.

  He gave a sigh of relief as he saw her, reassuringly hurrying back through a crowd, two porters following her, and it seemed several other people besides. Christina Diaz had been born the daughter of one of Cuba’s wealthiest planters, and as such, for all the luxurious splendour of her girlhood, had endured the traumas of the civil war which, with eventual American intervention, had resulted in Cuban independence. Lew had been born the following year, for during that struggle Christina’s love for Joe McGann of the United States Navy had reached fruition, and they had been married within a month of the cessation of hostilities. Thus she had achieved security, and was, her son was sure, a happy woman, even after a separation of several months from her husband — she was the wife of a sailor and accepted these things as her lot, and besides, they were now on their way to re-join Joe McGann.

  But her experiences, when she, in common with all other Cuban women suspected of being sympathetic towards the rebels, had been herded into concentration camps and there beaten and starved and even, it was rumoured, tortured — although Christina Diaz would never discuss the subject — had left their mark. In her middle thirties her hair, worn in the fashionable pompadour, was still jet black and smoothly waved, her complexion was flawless, the very real beauty of her features still turned every male head as she passed, as the sophistication of her pale blue travelling outfit, with its dark blue velvet trim and its flared skirt, the feather in her dark blue felt hat, attracted female glances. But there was more often than not a remoteness in her dark eyes, and a downward curve to her lips, which many people thought to indicate a coldness of character, but which could so entrancingly be relieved by her sudden, flashing smile.

  Today she looked as calm as ever despite the bustle around her, although she had to put up her hand to straighten her hat, while with the other she pointed to the pile of luggage. ‘Those, please.’ After sixteen years of living on the Long Island farm which was the McGann family home she still retained a trace of accent.

  The porters hefted the bags and set off. ‘Our cabin is waiting,’ Christina told her children. ‘We can board now.’

  She made to follow the porters, and found herself facing a young man who wore a moustache and a bright vest and carried a notebook, and who was raising his derby. ‘Excuse me, madam,’ he said, ‘but did I hear you tell the agent your name was McGann?’

  Christina looked him up and down. ‘That is correct.’

  ‘Charles Langham, Mrs McGann, the Herald. And these are your children? Now, say, Mrs McGann, are you sailing on the Lusitania?’

  Christina rather obviously had to resist the temptation to ask him why else he thought she was there, but she merely said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘May I ask why?’ the reporter asked, scribbling busily.

  ‘I am going to join my husband, in London,’ Christina said. ‘He is naval attaché at the Embassy there. Now, if you will excuse us...’ she stepped past him, followed by Lew and Shirley, but he hurried behind them.

  ‘Your husband is in the Navy, Mrs McGann?’

  ‘That is what I said, sir.’

  ‘And what does he think, what do you think, Mrs McGann,
of the notice that appeared in the newspapers this morning, warning passengers not to sail on the Lusitania?’

  Christina stopped, to look at him again. She might have known he would bring that up, and it was not something she wished discussed in front of the children. ‘I regard it as hokum, sir. Pure hokum.’

  ‘It was inserted by the German Embassy,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Possibly because they wish the ship to sail empty,’ Christina retorted.

  ‘And you’re not afraid a German submarine may capture the Lusitania?’

  ‘No, sir. It is not possible. The Lusitania can outsteam any submarine in the world, and most surface ships as well.’

  ‘Spoken with the certainty of a Navy wife,’ the reporter said admiringly.

  Christina led her children up the gangway and into the ship, where white-gloved stewards were waiting to escort them to their cabin. They were travelling first class, because Christina Diaz had always travelled first class, but there were many gradations of even first class, and their stateroom, although very comfortable and splendidly appointed, was still just a cabin and a long way removed from the suites on the upper deck.

  ‘Gee whizz,’ Shirley commented, as usual, trying the faucet and giving a squeal of mingled delight and pain as a hot gush came out. ‘What did that man mean about danger, Mom?’

  ‘He was being silly.’ Christina was busy directing the stewards where to put the cabin baggage; the trunks had already gone down to the hold. ‘It is all a stunt by the German Embassy.’

  ‘But was there a notice in the paper, Mom?’ Lew asked.

  ‘I believe there was,’ Christina told him. ‘Shall we go and explore?’

  Clearly it was not something she wanted to talk about, and Lew did not press it. But he was very aware of the tension of travelling across the, ocean in time of war, even if the United States was not involved. There was no doubt where the family’s sympathies lay. The McGanns had once been Irish rebels against the English, and as such the founder of the family’s fortunes, Great Harry McGann, on being forced to flee from his native land, had found it simple to make common cause with the American colonists when in 1775 they too had raised the flag of revolt. But that had been one hundred and forty years ago, and since then more than one McGann had married an English girl. In any event, in a family whose tradition was the Navy, a certain affinity for the British, possessors of the greatest fleet in history, was natural. The outbreak of war between Great Britain and Germany had made Lew’s heartbeat quicken, as Father had told him that there was a possibility of the definitive naval battle being fought — Germany too had a powerful fleet — which would make Tshushima, the only time in history that two modern, steam driven, armoured navies had engaged, seem like a skirmish.

  Lew knew all about Tshushima. If he had only been four when the Russian and Japanese fleets had encountered each other in 1904, as he was destined for Annapolis when he was eighteen, ships and the sea were his sole concern. He had learned seamanship sailing his own catboat on Long Island Sound, as had his father and grandfather before him; he had studied naval history and counted Admiral Togo, the Japanese victor of Tshushima, as the greatest living admiral; and he had studied ship design and construction to the detriment of the three Rs. But always with a feeling of sadness that the United States seemed less and less likely ever to have to fight a war in which all of the theories and traditions he had imbibed could be put to the test. There were simply no wars left to fight, for America, at sea. Even Father had fought in a naval battle, if the overwhelming victory gained by the United States Navy over the Spanish fleet off Santiago de Cuba in 1898 could be so called; Grandfather had fought in the Civil War at the side of Admiral Farragut, and reaching back into history there had been a McGann in action against the Tripolitanian pirates and on boat USS Constitution during her famous victory over the Guerriere, just as there had been a McGann at the side of John Paul Jones when he had taken the Serapis. But it was difficult to imagine an American fleet engaged in a modern war, because the United States had turned its back on the quarrels of the rest of the world.

  Thus Lew had been overjoyed when Father had been posted to the London Embassy immediately after the outbreak of the European War. Joe McGann had gone on ahead, both to take up his duties and find them a home, but it had always been intended that his family should join them as soon as possible; if the German Navy had immediately proclaimed a blockade of the British Isles, no one supposed they would be able to enforce it, and equally no one had any doubt the Kaiser would respect American neutrality. Yet Joe McGann was a cautious man, and he had required his wife and children to wait until firstly, all the German surface ships had been sunk or chased from the seas back into the bases at Wilhelm-shaven and Kiel, and secondly, to sail on the fastest ship available. This had to be one of the two Cunarders, but their sailings had also been suspended following the outbreak of war, while the British Admiralty had taken a look at the situation. With the destruction of Admiral Graf Spee’s squadron off the Falkland Islands in December 1914, however, and the gradual determination that the German submarine, or U-boat as it was being called, menace was not half so severe as had been supposed, at least out in the broad reaches of the Atlantic, Cunard had been given a green light. This was, in fact, the first crossing made by the Lusitania this year, which was an added cause for the excitement which pervaded the ship. Lew could well believe that if a warning notice had been placed in the newspapers by the German Embassy in Washington, it was simply a case of sour grapes. And meanwhile he was on his way to England, where he would actually be in a country which was fighting, even if there was of course no fighting in England itself.

  He had been mortally afraid that he might be left behind, so that his schooling would not be interrupted, but Christina Diaz had been educated in England, and was convinced English schools were the best in the world. She had in fact been agitating for some time for Lew to be sent to one of those intensely private establishments which were so quaintly known as public schools, and regarded the posting of her husband to London as a very favourable act of God.

  So did he. Reflections were swept away as he followed his mother and sister up the staircase to the next deck, and looked into the Louis Quinze lounge, at the huge, vaulted ceiling — a reproduction of Versailles — before emerging on to the first class promenade deck, the windows opened now to allow the May sunshine and the gentle breeze and the cheers of the crowds on the waterfront to filter through the ship, although they could be firmly closed in the event of bad weather...’Have you ever sailed on a ship like this before, Mom?’ Shirley asked.

  ‘Of course. I have crossed on the Campania and on the Caronia,’ Christina McGann told them. ‘Although neither was quite as splendid as this, I must say.’

  ‘Gee, I hope I get to travel as much as you,’ Shirley sighed, resting her elbows on the rail to look down at the dock, so far beneath them.

  ‘Of course you will,’ Christina said reassuringly.

  ‘But not as much as Lew,’ Shirley observed. ‘Gee, I wish I were a boy, and could go in to the Navy.’

  ‘The Navy never goes anywhere interesting,’ Christina said. ‘When you are eighteen, Shirley, you and I are going to take a tour of Europe, and go to Madrid, and Rome, and Vienna, and Berlin, and Paris, and London. That is going to be fun.’

  ‘Oh, gee,’ Shirley said. ‘Oh, gee whiz.’

  While I’m keeping watch on some lonely stretch of ocean, Lew thought, without regret; he would not have it any other way. But his attention was already being drawn away from his mother and sister, for coming along the deck towards him was a young woman.

  *

  Lewis McGann was fortunate in that, having attended the village school, which was necessarily co-educational, and grown up with a sister as well as several female cousins, as well as an intensely feminine mother, he was not the least afraid of or inhibited by the opposite sex. He had never of course investigated women in his adolescence — he would have been laughed to scorn
had he attempted to do so — but he had yet grown up in an atmosphere of revealed legs and sometimes more than that as he and his cousins, and Shirley, had waded the beaches of Long Island Sound looking for clams or bait, had sailed boats together, or even gone swimming together stripped to their underwear. All of which, as he had grown to an early manhood, had left him precociously aware of his masculinity, and of feminine beauty. And here was feminine beauty.

  She walked between, presumably, her parents, as they were tall and slim like her, and possessed the same features and the same blonde hair, in her case flowing in luxuriant splendour down her back. The features were strong, perhaps even aggressive, in their thrusting jaw and high cheekbones, but were rendered most attractive by the wide mouths and the straight noses and the high foreheads and the blue eyes. While the figures, the women’s cunningly concealed and restrained by the hobbled skirts and the loose bodices, yet suggested immense energy, in the way they moved. Without thinking he raised his hat, and the girl gave him a quick smile as they passed by.

  ‘Why, Lew,’ Christina remarked, with some pride, ‘who’s quite the young gentleman, then?’

  He would have liked to catch another glimpse of the so strangely attractive girl, but it was now late afternoon and the bustle was only increasing as more and more passengers arrived. In addition to his suit, Mom had outfitted him with his first tuxedo for this voyage, but apparently no one dressed for dinner on the first night out, and indeed it was difficult to tear oneself away from the deck as the evening began to draw in, and the band played, and the streamers flew, and the tugs took up their position, and the signs of imminent departure became more and more obvious.

  By now an impressive buffet supper had been laid out in the dining salon, but Lew found himself unable to eat very much as his stomach churned with excitement, and he watched the superbly uniformed officers taking up their positions. He, of course, would never be a merchant navy officer, much less a British merchant navy officer, but still, he could not help but imagine what a thrill it must be to command a ship as great as this, larger than the biggest warship afloat, and faster too, as Mom had told the reporter, a throbbing floating city which could be thrown forward at twenty-four knots, and which could smash its way through the fiercest hurricane.