The Cruel Sea

by Nicholas Monsarrat

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘First ship?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Lockhart answered, as the natural spokesman. ‘We’ve just come up from King Alfred.’

  ‘How long were you training there?’

  ‘Five weeks.’

  ‘And now you know it all?’

  Lockhart grinned. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Well, that’s something, anyway.’

  Ericson looked at them, more closely. They were both very smart: number one doeskin jackets, gloves, gas masks – they might have stepped straight out of the Manual of Training. They had talked of this question of dress, on the long journey up from the South Coast to the Clyde: their orders had been endorsed ‘Report to Admiral Superintending Contract-Built Ships’, and it had seemed politic to dress the part . . . The Captain, in his old serge working jacket with the faded gold lace, seemed theatrically shabby by comparison.

  After a pause, Ericson asked: ‘What was your job in peacetime?’

  ‘Journalist, sir,’ said Lockhart.

  The Captain smiled, and waved his hand round the room. ‘What’s the connexion?’

  ‘I’ve done a lot of sailing, sir.’

  ‘M’m . . .’ He looked at Ferraby. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I was working in a bank, sir.’

  ‘Ever been to sea?’

  ‘Only across to France, sir.’

  ‘We might find that useful . . . All right – take a look at the ship, and report to the First Lieutenant – he’s somewhere aboard. Where’s all your gear?’

  ‘At the hotel, sir.’

  ‘It’ll have to stay there for a bit – we won’t be sleeping on board for a week or so.’

  With a nod, Ericson turned back to his desk. The two young men saluted, somewhat uncertainly, and made for the door. As Ferraby opened it, the Captain said, over his shoulder: ‘And by the way, don’t salute me indoors when I haven’t got a cap on. I can’t return it. The proper drill is for you to take your cap off when you come in.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Lockhart.

  ‘It’s not vital,’ said Ericson. They could hear the friendliness in his voice. ‘But you might as well get it right.’

  When they had gone, he paused for a moment before returning to work. Journalist . . . bank clerk . . . trips to France . . . sailing . . . It didn’t sound very professional. But they seemed willing, and the older one, Lockhart, had some common sense, by the look of him. You could do a lot with common sense, at sea. And you could do precious little without it . . . He picked up his pencil again.

  4

  Lockhart and Ferraby walked across the dock and then paused, looking up at the ship. They saw her with different eyes. Lockhart could, to a certain extent, appraise her lines and her design: to Ferraby she was entirely novel, in every detail, and this, like a lot of other things, worried him. He had been married only six weeks: saying goodbye to his wife two nights previously, he had confided once more his uncertainty, his doubt about what he had taken on. ‘But darling,’ she had said, with that loving smile which he found so moving and so beautiful, ‘you can do anything. You know you can. Look how happy you’ve made me.’ It was illogical, but it was very comforting all the same. Everything about their marriage was like that. They were just getting over their shyness together, and finding the process singularly sweet.

  Ferraby had said goodbye to a new wife: Lockhart had said goodbye to nothing. He had answered ‘Journalist’ to the Captain, but he was not at all sure he deserved the title. He was twenty-seven: for six years he had scratched a living, freelancing in and around Fleet Street: it had taught him a lot, but it had not given him an ounce of security or a moment’s freedom from worry. He was not even sure that that was what he wanted, in any case. He had no parents living, he had no ties: the only woman he had taken leave of had said: ‘Why ever didn’t we do this before?’ as he climbed out of bed and into his uniform, in the cold London dawn. That had been symptomatic of his whole life: uncertain, impermanent, shifting in emphasis and intensity. He had joined up because there was a war: he had joined the Navy because he knew about ships – small ships, anyway – and could navigate. Now he felt happy, and free, and confident; and he liked the change.

  Ferraby, pointing, said: ‘What’s that wire thing tacked on to the mast?’

  ‘Some radio gadget, I suppose . . . Let’s go aboard.’

  They crossed the rough plank that served as a gangway, and jumped down onto the deck. Here and there it was still rimed with frost, and a hundred things were lying about it – oil drums, tool boxes, welding gear, oddments of equipment. There was loud hammering from a dozen places, and somewhere up in the bows a riveting machine was making a prodigious racket. Lockhart led the way aft, and they looked at the depth-charge gear – a replica of what they had worked on at the training establishment: then they went below, and presently found themselves in the cabin space. There were only two cabins, one with a single berth labelled ‘First Lieutenant’, and a tiny wardroom: the whole thing was cramped and full of awkward corners.

  ‘This is going to be damned crowded,’ said Lockhart presently. ‘You and I share a cabin, I suppose.’

  ‘I wonder what the First Lieutenant’s like,’ said Ferraby, looking at the label on the door.

  ‘Whatever he’s like, we’ll have to put up with him. He can make or break this ship, as far as we’re concerned.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Just by being bloody, or the reverse, as the fancy takes him.’

  ‘Oh . . . I liked the Captain.’

  ‘He loved you . . . Yes, he’s all right. The good R.N.Rs are really good.’

  ‘A lot of them don’t like us.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘The R.N.V.R.’

  Lockhart smiled. ‘Two years from now, we’ll do the picking and choosing . . . Don’t you worry about the V.R., my lad. It’s going to be our war, in the end. That’s the only way they’ll be able to man the ships.’

  ‘You mean, we’ll actually get commands?’

  Lockhart nodded, abstractedly. He was examining the wardroom pantry, which was inordinately small.

  A raucous voice over their heads shouted: ‘Below!’ The noise rang round the empty wardroom.

  ‘What a rough man,’ said Lockhart.

  After a pause the shout was repeated, on a higher note.

  ‘Is that us?’ asked Ferraby uncertainly.

  ‘I fear so.’ Lockhart walked to the foot of the ladder, and peered upwards. ‘Yes?’

  The red face framed in the companionway was not reassuring. Bennett was glaring down at him.

  ‘What the hell are you hiding down there for?’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Lockhart.

  ‘Weren’t you told to report to me?’

  ‘After looking round the ship, yes.’

  ‘Sir,’ prompted Bennett unpleasantly.

  ‘Sir,’ said Lockhart. He could almost feel Ferraby’s harassed expression behind him.

  ‘Is the other sub down there too?’

  ‘Yes – sir. We didn’t know you were aboard.’

  ‘Don’t wear a green coat with me,’ said Bennett obscurely. ‘Come up here – and double up.’

  Confronting the two of them at the top of the ladder, Bennett looked at them closely. He was frowning, and the rough Australian accent was prominent.

  ‘It’s your job to find out where I am,’ he began sourly. ‘Names?’

  ‘Lockhart,’ said Lockhart.

  ‘Ferraby,’ said Ferraby.

  ‘How long since you were commissioned?’

  ‘A week,’ said Lockhart. And added: ‘Temporary Probationary.’

  ‘I can see that,’ said Bennett disagreeably. ‘It sticks out like a—’ he produced a colourful smile. ‘Ever been to sea before?’

  ‘In small boats,’ said Lockhart.

  ‘I don’t mean —ing about in yachts.’

  ‘Then, no.’

  Bennett turned to Ferraby. ‘You?’

  ‘No, sir.�
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  ‘Wonderful . . . Which of you is senior?’

  ‘We passed out together,’ said Lockhart.

  ‘Jesus Christ, I know that! But one of you is senior, one of you is ahead of the other in the Navy List.’

  ‘We’re not in the Navy List yet.’

  Bennett saw Lockhart staring at him, sizing him up, and he did not like it.

  ‘You’re not out of the egg yet, by the sound of it.’

  Lockhart said nothing.

  ‘Well, we’d better find out what you can do,’ said Bennett after a pause. ‘Have you been round the ship?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many fire hose points are there?’

  ‘Fourteen,’ answered Lockhart promptly. He had no idea what the right answer was, but he was quite sure that Bennett didn’t know either. Later, if Bennett checked up, he would climb out of it somehow.

  ‘Very clever,’ said Bennett. He turned to Ferraby. ‘What sort of gun have we got?’

  ‘Four-inch,’ said Ferraby after a pause.

  ‘Four-inch what?’ asked Bennett roughly. ‘Breech-loading? Quick firing? Mark IV? Mark VI? Fixed ammunition?’

  ‘Four-inch – I don’t know,’ said Ferraby miserably.

  ‘Find out,’ snapped Bennett. ‘I’ll ask you next time I see you. And now both of you go back to the hut, and start checking C.Bs.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Lockhart. He turned to go, as did Ferraby.

  ‘Salute,’ said Bennett.

  They saluted.

  ‘I’m the First Lieutenant around here,’ said Bennett. ‘Don’t you forget it.’

  ‘An engaging character,’ said Lockhart on the way back. ‘I can see we’re going to get on like a house on fire – and I hope the bastard fries.’

  ‘What are C.Bs?’ asked Ferraby in a forlorn tone.

  ‘Confidential books.’

  ‘Why couldn’t he say so?’

  ‘He had a reason.’

  ‘What reason?’

  Lockhart smiled. ‘It’s a process of impressement.’

  ‘French?’

  ‘The French do it better . . . Vulgarly speaking, the motto is “Bull-dust baffles brains”. I must say he’s quite a performer.’

  ‘It’s not what I expected,’ said Ferraby.

  ‘You’re the sub-lieutenant around here,’ said Lockhart, mimicking brilliantly. ‘Don’t you forget it.’

  ‘But which of us is senior?’

  ‘I think I’d better be.’

  5

  With nightfall, a grateful quietness returned to Compass Rose. The noise of hammering died, the bustle subsided: the last workman hurried across the gangway towards the waiting tram – this was before the unending urgency of night shifts: the single watchman who remained, huddled under his canvas shelter on the quarterdeck, cursed the cold breeze which blew the charcoal fumes from his brazier directly into his eyes. The ship rocked gently to the stirring of the river: queer shadows fell on the deck, and moved, and were still again.

  Now the huge activity of the Clydeside ebbed to nothing: the river, lined with silent half-finished ships, deserted shipyards, and cranes stationary against a spectral sky, resolved itself into a backwash of the war. It was the end of one day – no better, no worse than other days: the ships a little nearer completion, the jobs advanced a single stage towards their end – and towards other jobs, in an unending series which would test patience more than skill, and endurance more than both of them. The Clyde had done this sort of thing before: now, in 1939, it was going to do it again, as a matter of course, without heroics. But this moment was only the beginning; poised on the verge of a six-year effort, there was still space to relax, and time to sleep at night.

  The nightwatchman, an old pensioner, grumbled and scratched and fell into a doze. He’d had his war – the last one: it was someone else’s turn now. Good luck to them: but they mustn’t expect miracles from everyone. Miracles were for young chaps: for the old, a decent rest, a decent sleep, were nothing to be ashamed of.

  In a public house in the noisy part of Argyll Street, near the railway station, Petty Officer Tallow and the senior engine room rating, Chief E.R.A. Watts, were drinking up before going off to their lodgings. They had been there since eight o’clock that evening: they had drunk seven pints of beer apiece: it had made not an atom of difference either to their diction or their bearing, save that Tallow was now inclined to perspire and Watts’ eyes were a trifle bloodshot. They were there partly because there was nothing else for them to do – they didn’t care for cinemas, and their lodgings were dirty and uncomfortable: partly because they liked the place, and could not have felt more at home anywhere. There was a great deal of noise in the bar. Tallow and Watts drank and talked in low grumbling tones. They had been grumbling, as well as drinking, since eight o’clock, and had mellowed very little in the process.

  ‘She’ll not be a happy ship, I can tell you straight.’ Watts was a Scotsman, grey-headed, bald, nearly through with his time in the Navy: his accent and Tallow’s, broad Scots and full-flavoured Lancashire, blended in rough harmony. ‘There’s not the makings of it. I’m not saying the skipper’s not OK, but that Jimmy’s a bastard. He was round my engine room tonight, blethering about a watchkeeping bill – and me with the bloody main shaft still opened up. Sooner I get my ticket, and settle down on the pension, the better.’

  ‘There’ll be no ticket while the war lasts,’ said Tallow. He took a pull at his glass tankard, and wiped his mouth. ‘If you’re warm, you’re in – for the duration.’

  ‘Well, there’ll be shore billets,’ insisted Watts. ‘Something easy, back in barracks – that’ll just suit me. The ship’s too small for my liking.’

  ‘She’ll be lively enough,’ agreed Tallow. ‘By God, you could hoist the whole outfit aboard Repulse, and not feel the difference.’

  Watts laughed. ‘I hope yon Repulse will be handy, if we run into trouble.’

  ‘We’re likely to do that, by the way they’re talking. Beats me how they can expect ships of that size to put up any sort of protection for a convoy. It took destroyers all their time, last war.’

  ‘There’ll be tactics,’ said Watts vaguely.

  ‘They’ll need a sight more than tactics, to come out on the right side. What’ve we got in the way of armament? One bloody little four-inch popgun, and a couple of rows of depth-charges. They’ll make rings round us.’

  ‘What gets me is the accommodation,’ broke in Watts, reverting to an earlier complaint. ‘We’re all mixed up together, and there’s not enough room anyway. There’s stokers messing alongside seamen – you know well enough they don’t like that, either of them. The fo’c’sle’s about six feet by four, there’s no canteen, no refrigeration, no forced draught. You can’t go from the mess decks to the bridge without getting wet through, and the galley’s right aft so that everything will be stone cold by the time we eat it. Whoever designed that ship must have been blind drunk.’

  ‘Wish the bastard had to sail in her.’ Morosely Tallow took a final swig at his tankard, and then looked across to the bar as ‘Time’ was called. ‘What about it? One for the road?’

  ‘Not for me. I’ve got to work tomorrow.’

  Outside, Argyll Street was noisy with people coming out of the pubs and stumbling about in the blackout. It was very cold: at the street corner a raw wind made them turn up their coat collars and put their hands deep in their pockets. As they made their way to their tram stop: ‘Heaven help sailors,’ said Watts piously. ‘Man, it’ll be bitter at sea tonight.’

  ‘We’ll know that soon enough,’ said Tallow. ‘A couple of weeks from now we’ll be crying our eyes out for Argyll Street, wet or fine. You just wait.’

  Lockhart and Ferraby were both tired. They had spent most of the day in the dockyard hut, checking lists of stores and charts and confidential books with periodic, maddening directives from Bennett to break off and do something quite different. The list of stores was interminable: the charts covered every oce
an in the world and there was, at the bottom of the box, a chart of the Black Sea. Lockhart, contemplating this, had murmured: ‘What a long war it’s going to be,’ and Bennett, overhearing, had countered: ‘It’ll be a bloody sight longer unless you stop nattering and get on with it.’ Later they had been sent back on board Compass Rose, to start on the accommodation plan – undeniably the First Lieutenant’s job: the working day had finished at six, with a sharp order from Bennett to be back in the hut by half-past eight next morning. As they had an hour’s tram ride from their hotel to the shipyard, it would mean a very early start to the day.

  Now, after late dinner, they were both lying in bed in the hotel room they shared on Sauchiehall Street: Ferraby staring at the ceiling, hands clasped behind his head, Lockhart smoking and thumbing through the Manual of Seamanship. Outside, the crude noises of Glasgow at night gradually diminished.

  Presently Ferraby stirred and, leaning over on one elbow, asked: ‘What are you reading?’

  ‘The Bible – our Bible,’ answered Lockhart. ‘There’s a lot in it which has to be squared with the actual facts.’

  ‘You mean, the First Lieutenant?’

  Lockhart laughed. ‘Oh – him . . . He’s feeling his way, the same as we are, only he’s making more noise about it.’

  ‘He’s certainly doing that.’ Ferraby lay back again. ‘I wonder if I could get my wife up here?’

  ‘Good idea. We won’t be living on board for some time. Why not ask about it?’

  ‘Ask who?’

  ‘Bennett, I suppose. Or the Captain.’

  ‘Bennett would say “no” . . . I was just getting used to being married.’

  ‘It must be very satisfactory,’ said Lockhart, without irony.

  ‘It’s more than that.’ Shyly enthusiastic, Ferraby could not disguise the true focus of his thoughts. ‘It’s meant everything to me, the last few weeks. I don’t know how I could have got through otherwise. She’s so – when you marry a person—’ he floundered, and then made an effort. ‘Haven’t you ever felt as if you must have someone you can trust absolutely – someone you can tell everything to, without – without ever feeling ashamed. Someone who’s the other half of yourself?’