Gone to Sea in a Bucket

by David Black

  But out there, in the dark of this beautiful spring night, might be German warships, conducting anti-submarine patrols; German crews actively seeking out intruders in their own waters; intruders exactly like this submarine that Harry, as watch officer, was in temporary charge of. Harry, responsible for HMS Pelorus and all who sailed in her, by order of her captain through His Majesty’s commission.

  Harry had looked her up in HMS Dolphin’s wardroom copy of Jane’s Fighting Ships before setting off to join her. And now he was aboard; part of ship’s company. Pelorus: 1,500 tons, surfaced, just over 2,000 tons submerged, and not far off 300 feet long, with a beam of thirty feet. Her twin propellors or ‘screws’ were driven by two 5,000 horsepower diesels on the surface, and two 1,600 horsepower electric motors, dived. It gave her a top speed of about eighteen knots surfaced, and little less than nine knots underwater. She also packed quite a punch, with six 21-inch torpedo tubes forward, plus space to carry fourteen re-loads, and two tubes aft. And in an open turret, just below him, mounted on a sponson just forward of the bridge, she carried a quick-firing 4-inch gun. A big boat by current Royal Navy submarine standards indeed, with a crew of fifty-eight; and right now, Harry was in charge.

  Harry was a long way from the second-year Glasgow university student who had walked into the recruiting office ten months ago. This time, a year ago, he’d been celebrating passing his first-year exams with a pub crawl down Byres Road, in a mob of young men decorously tipsy on weak beer, all tweed jackets and flowing university scarves despite the mildness of the spring evening. Now, tonight, he had the watch aboard one of His Majesty’s submarines, thirty miles off an enemy-occupied coast, and he was buggered if he was going to be treated like a child any more. He raised his binoculars again, another sweep, another check of the lookouts, another hour and a half before Swann was due to relieve him.

  Chapter Seven

  McVeigh, the navigator, watched Swann peering over the chart table like some comic bug in his red goggles. Swann was noting the course and speed and standing orders before going up to relieve Gilmour for the morning watch. Despite the hour, it was still dark enough for him to need the goggles; even though the control room was red-lit and in semi-darkness, anyone going on watch wore them while they waited for the watch change. The red light helped acclimatise your eyes to the night above; the quicker your night vision was acquired, the better. Red light because no one wanted a target to escape or an enemy warship to appear in the minutes it took a watchkeeper’s eyes to fully adjust to complete darkness. Swann, swaddled in an over-size fawn duffel coat, over the ubiquitous white pullover, crammed his not-yet-battered watch cap on his head and slung his binoculars strap round his neck before shooting up through the hatch without a word or a look McVeigh’s way. Insubordinate little bastard, thought McVeigh. But he said nothing, his mind being on other things.

  McVeigh’s thoughts were the boat’s course: zero-one-five degrees, steady. An invisible line projecting out across the sea, pulling them towards that x, scribbled by the Bonny Boy on the ocean blankness of the chart; a spot slap-bang in the middle of the entrance to the Skagerrak, scribbled before the Bonny Boy had retired to his curtained cubicle, not to be seen since.

  McVeigh had been with Bonalleck since Pelorus commissioned. Before that he’d sailed as a junior watch officer on a T-class boat. But he’d learned his trade as a seafarer before the war with Alfred Holt & Co., The Blue Funnel Line as it was known across the globe. With them he had sailed every sea lane between Liverpool and South-east Asia. He had his first mate’s ticket and was sailing as a second officer when war broke out; an experienced and highly competent mariner. That was how, in Bonalleck, McVeigh had recognised a kindred spirit, and that was why he was finding all this recent bloody nonsense so intolerable.

  The Petty Officer and two senior rates on Swann’s watch came shambling aft into the control room in their motley array of warm gear, and similarly bug-eyed in goggles. They acknowledged McVeigh, passed a few pleasantries about the day ahead, and after their own brief glance at course and standing orders, followed each other up into the pre-dawn darkness. McVeigh didn’t wait for the relieved watch to come tumbling down. Instead, he gave a quick check over the helmsman’s shoulder, nodded to the Planesmen and the outside ERA on the diving panel, and announced generally, ‘I’ll be with Mr Sandeman in the wardroom if anything comes up.’ And with that he was gone aft.

  The first Lieutenant was sitting hunched over the table in the tiny wardroom, little more than an alcove off the main companionway that ran fore and aft the length of the boat. The table was surrounded on three sides by banquettes, above them storage space for the crockery, the tiny but eclectic library, and the officers’ personal stores. A portrait of the king presided over the space. Sandeman had a mug of coffee steaming before him, and was lost in thought when McVeigh swept back the curtain that served as privacy for Pelorus’s wardroom. The look on McVeigh’s face told Sandeman all he needed to know about the conversation they were about to have.

  As he slid down the hatch into the control room after hours in the fresh sea air, Harry was hit by the familiar smell of diesel oil and men’s sweat. The rest of his watch had preceded him, and the control room watch change had already taken place by the time Harry’s feet hit the deckplates. He put his binoculars by the chart table and proceeded to mark up his star sightings and times on the log. These would assist McVeigh when he next came to plot their position on the chart. He then slid through the after hatch heading for the wardroom and food.

  Scanlon, the young Able Seaman to whom the role of ‘cook’ had fallen – or been thrust upon – was hunched over in the galley space. There was a savoury smell emanating from within that was powerful enough to master the permanent diesel fug: enough to know that Scanlon was re-heating a large mess of ‘train smash’ for the watch coming off duty. This powdered egg dish with canned bacon and tomatoes thrown in was the traditional early breakfast, and the first sitting had probably gone to the lads who had come up to relieve Harry. It was a submariner’s favourite but right now did nothing for Harry’s appetite, because Harry, standing on the other side of the wardroom curtain, had just lost it. They were at it again, the subdued voices of the ‘grown ups’ in muted discussion. Harry seethed. He was one of Pelorus’s officers and he was damned if he was going to be excluded any longer.

  ‘I say, Scanlon,’ said Harry, sufficiently sotto voce to rise above the thump of the main engines, but not to be heard in the wardroom or behind the captain’s curtains, ‘pour me a nice strong cuppa, please, then take the watch crew’s breakfast to them for’ard, they’re just getting out of their gear now.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Scanlon.

  You would never have been able to tell it from the young rating’s face, but he quite approved of Mr Gilmour’s order. Mr Gilmour hadn’t been aboard long, but the general consensus was he was ‘all right’, and most definitely not like that arse, Swann. Swann, who would never, until hell froze over, have thought of sending the watch crew’s breakfast to their mess, so that all they had to do after struggling out of their watch gear was to stuff their faces before turning in, knackered, and ready for a serious sesh of Egyptian PT.

  McVeigh was silenced by the curtain swishing open. Both he and Sandeman jerked like puppets at Harry’s sudden arrival. If Harry hadn’t been concentrating so much on his mission, he might have laughed at the comic, caught-in-the-act look that had startled these grown men’s faces, but it was come and gone in a flash. Harry sat, placing his cup before him, and looked from Sandeman to McVeigh, determined not to let any little silence deflect him from forcing his way in to their cabal.

  ‘I’ve marked up the log,’ said Harry neutrally.

  The two men recovered, waited for the other to say something.

  ‘Anything new on what happens after we reach the waypoint?’ Harry asked, referring to the x in the middle of the Skaggerak.

  ‘The Skipper hasn’t said,’ replied Sandeman, non-committally.r />
  ‘In case it leaks out to the enemy, I suppose,’ said Harry. He knew he was being insubordinate, but it was part of his plan.

  ‘You’re skating on thin ice, sonny,’ said McVeigh.

  Harry ignored him. ‘Is it because the Skipper is drunk?’ He was looking at Sandeman, however, not McVeigh. But he could see enough of McVeigh to see a brief turmoil of amusement and outrage work over his face.

  In the event, Sandeman pre-empted any comment. ‘What do you mean by “drunk”, Mr Gilmour?’ he said.

  ‘I used to crew on rich men’s yachts, I know how a gentleman holds his drink. I’ve seen it close enough and often enough. The glassy eyes and precision of speech, and the long lie-ins. Haven’t you noticed, sir?’

  Finishing with such a question was the final insult, and Harry had calculated it so. When you want something, and are determined to get it, be forthright. Don’t shilly-shally. That was another of his mother’s observations.

  Sandeman’s eyes arched menacingly, but McVeigh loved it. The barked laugh told Harry so.

  ‘Of course we know he’s drunk, we talk of little else, Mr Gilmour,’ he said.

  But it was Sandeman who took up the narrative: ‘Why do you ask? Is there something you think we should be doing about it?’

  And with these words, Sandeman made Harry feel as if he’d once again walked right into everything hidebound and stolidly ‘naval’ and unmoving and rigid and bloody stupid that this whole bloody racket was built on. Naval discipline and nowhere to go. Just like the wardroom of Redoubtable. It must have showed on his face, because McVeigh was smiling that removed, bemused smile he had. It served only to make Harry feel more forlorn and impotent. It also made him feel irresolute. Harry was trying to assert himself as an officer of this submarine, and he was feeling like a thwarted, wilful child. How did they get to do that?

  McVeigh’s expression didn’t waver. Sandeman had retreated to contemplating his coffee.

  ‘Mr Gilmour,’ McVeigh said eventually. ‘This. All of this: the armed forces, the Royal Navy; it only works because no one is in any doubt about anything. If you’re looking for rationality, flexibility, willingness to adapt, even just plain common sense, you’ve come to the wrong shop. There are the Articles of War and the Naval Discipline Act. And that’s it. Finish.’

  McVeigh nodded aft in the direction of the Skipper’s cubby. ‘He’s the Captain. And that makes him the sole, omniscient, in loco parentis representative on board of the entire might of the British Empire, the legacy of Nelson, the divine right of kings, will of parliament, and the blessing of the C of E. You might disagree. Have an argument – and quite possibly a very good argument – against the wisdom of his decisions. You might wish to point out the wisdom of your point of view, and the error of his. And in a sane world, a world ashore, there would be bodies you could appeal to, to press your case. Here, however, in the good old Andrew, such notions of democracy are liable to get in the way. We do as he says and if we don’t they have a name for it: mutiny. And we all know the consequences of that, don’t we?’

  Harry kept his mouth shut, which was the best thing to do right then. It sent the right message to the two men before him, men who were already wrestling with a very dangerous and seemingly intractable problem. Sandeman looked up and said: ‘Harry.’

  The use of his first name sent an involuntary charge through Harry, and he leant imperceptibly in closer.

  ‘Let me tell you why Mr McVeigh and I are worried,’ said Sandeman, speaking softly and with calm emphasis. ‘Submarines aren’t quite the same as the rest of the navy. We’re different, a navy within the navy. Because on a submarine, when we dive or go into action, the only bloke who knows what is going on is the Skipper, because he’s the only one looking through the periscope. Everything, the boat, the crew, they depend on the Skipper doing it right every time. On a submarine submerged, there are no lookouts to shout “look out”. Just the Skipper’s eyes and judgement. That is a lot of trust being demanded of a crew going into action, much more than aboard one of those surface skimmers. And it’s trust that has to be earned.’

  McVeigh interrupted, ‘And as you seem to have noticed, Mr Gilmour, our Skipper has not been playing the game in that department. He’s not talking to us.’

  He turned to Sandeman. ‘We might as well lay it out. If young Lochinvar here is smart enough to sense it, he deserves to know what’s happening, or at least what we think is happening.’

  Sandeman stretched back on the banquette in a strangely expansive gesture given their conspiratorial huddle until now. He clasped his hands over his white pullover and waved for McVeigh to speak.

  ‘We don’t know what our orders are for the patrol,’ said McVeigh.

  This might be Harry’s first war patrol on a submarine but he’d been diligent enough in his naval studies to bone up on what is supposed to happen when you put to sea to engage the enemy. And that was why he appreciated the full significance of McVeigh’s words.

  Harry was well aware that before a submarine sailed she was assigned her own patrol billet, so that two boats didn’t end up in the same square of ocean taking shots at each other. Patrol orders included pre-arranged radio-reporting times, intelligence on expected enemy shipping movements, and whose boats are in the adjoining boxes. There was the duration of patrol, time off the billet, transit course back to home waters, the rendezvous time and position to meet the armed trawler or motor gunboat they sent out to escort her back home.

  ‘Since we sailed, the Skipper has dealt directly with Sparks regarding the radio traffic,’ said McVeigh, with a distraction that said he found the fact barely credible. ‘Done his own encoding and deciphering – which by all rights should’ve been yours and Swann’s job. Not that he’s troubled the airwaves at all since we came off the Texel billet. Nor has there been any incoming traffic. Obviously none of this has been missed by the wireless boys, so the whole crew knows. And that means they’re thinking about it instead of thinking about being on a war patrol. And I am assuming even a submarine virgin such as you, knows that is not good.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Harry nodding.

  ‘Yes, sir, indeed,’ said Sandeman.

  ‘X marks the spot,’ continued McVeigh, referring to the notional point on the chart, in the middle of the Skaggerak.

  ‘What about it?’ asked Harry.

  ‘We think he has been given intelligence of Jerry shipping movements there. Secret stuff . . . something that has rattled him. Something so big he’s hoarding his torpedoes. We think that’s why we let the Jerry minesweepers go.’

  ‘If that’s the case,’ said Harry, looking from McVeigh to Sandeman, ‘then it’s even more important he tells you what’s happening.’

  ‘He’s after your job, Sandy,’ said McVeigh, smiling.

  But all Sandeman said was, ‘I know exactly what you mean, Mr Gilmour.’

  Harry retired to his bunk and was asleep when Pelorus dived for the day. By the time Harry was due back on watch above, it was another lovely cloudless spring afternoon. The submarine slipped relentlessly through the North Sea at a depth of fifty feet, moving at a steady four knots on her electric motors, course unchanged: a dark, monstrous, lethal shadow suspended between the surface and the not-so-deep, which extended now just a mere twenty-odd fathoms beneath the keel.

  They had been running some twenty hours now, heading for their new rendezvous. Above them, at one point, there was a distant sighting of fishing boats away to starboard, and then gone, but no target broke their limited horizon, nor enemy warship hunting her. Unseen and unmarked from above while within her steel hull the men who tended Pelorus’s progress went about their duties with the same precision as the pumps, gears and motors that propelled her. Their mood, however, was quite a different thing. Unspoken, uncertain, the crew fell to their work, driven now only by duty rather than any sense of eager mission. They only knew one thing right then: their Skipper didn’t trust them and that made it hard to trust him.

  H
arry slipped into the control room to relieve McVeigh, and waited by the Able Seaman messenger at the chart table as the shuffling gavotte of watch handover got underway: the two Planesmen were relieved, then the ‘outside’ Engine Room Artificer handed over to another Petty Officer Engineer on the dive panel. McVeigh briefed the new helmsman on the course, unchanged. Behind Harry the Asdic watch was relieved, and so was the Telegraphist’s Mate in the radio cubby. McVeigh did the routine handover to Harry and waited as he toggled the little handset mic to confirm that two of Pelorus’s Torpedomen – the broad designation the navy gave to its electricians (for reasons known only to fleet lore) – had taken over the watch on the two humming electric motors. Forward, the watch in the torpedo room confirmed their handover, and with that Pelorus was Harry’s. McVeigh vanished back down the companionway, too narrow for him to walk along shoulder-wide.

  Not yet four days on board, Harry still couldn’t remember names so didn’t have the comfort of feeling immediately immersed in the body of the crew. Yet he was grateful to be back on watch. He might still feel them watching him, monitoring his performance, measuring him against their own exacting standards, but that was fine by Harry. At least they were taking him seriously now. And the concentration necessary for standing a periscope watch stopped him from constantly watching himself as if he might unravel at any moment, unpicked by a world changed in recent months from his peacetime everyday to the turmoil of war; stop him constantly wondering at his own passage through it, from feckless student to fighting sailor.

  But right now it was, ‘check you are still grouped down’, and ‘steady on dead slow ahead both’, the engine-room telegraph ready to communicate any other order aft. The electric motors slowed to a speed that would not generate a ‘feather’ when the periscope went up, that tell-tale little white wake that said ‘submarine’ to a lookout on a surface ship. You checked with the Asdic cubby that there were no propeller noises in the water, then ordered ‘up periscope!’ A very quick 360-degree scan, searching for an enemy that might be close at hand and bearing down on you, or far away; and then down periscope, wait, then up again and another all-round check, this time of the sky, for some Dornier seaplane coming out of nowhere, hunting submarines just like his . . . All clear, so you turned the knob back to the horizon and began the slow ninety-degree sweep, west to north, eyes screwed to detect the first sign of a smudge of smoke, or the tip of a tiny hard vertical line: the masthead of a ship. If you missed it, by the time you came round again to that point on the compass a possible target might have escaped, or could be upon you, too close for the Skipper to set up an attack. Or if it was an enemy destroyer, too close to avoid its depth charges. Then down periscope, and wait, then up again, do the next ninety degrees, north to east, then down periscope. Never have the damn thing above the waves longer than you have to. Never give a competent lookout a chance to spot you; and wait; then the same drill again, working round the compass.