The Destroyers

by Douglas Reeman

  “Port ten.” Drummond could not take his eyes from her. “Midships.” To Wingate he added, “We will stand off a bit to show ourselves to the enemy. It may give Victor time to recover. “

  There was a chorus of shouts as two shells exploded directly on the labouring destroyer. The effect was instantaneous and complete. Funnels and masts, boat davits and deck plating were hurled about like sticks in a gale, and then as some internal explosion sparked off her torpedoes, the Victor seemed to fold up, the stern half sinking immediately in a welter of spray and steam, the forward half, complete with bridge and one unmanned gun, remaining afloat for a few more desperate minutes before it, too, rolled over and vanished.

  “Tell the chief to make smoke! ” He had to repeat the order as Wingate and the others stared dazedly at the vast circle of spreading oil.

  More shells were falling now, creeping nearer and nearer while Drummond swung his ship towards the enemy on a narrow zigzag.

  They must have hit the battlecruiser more than once, although with so much smoke and falling spray, rain and noise it was hard to tell.

  He watched the Moltke with cold fascination. Tall from the sea, bridge upon bridge, she was rushing towards him headlong, firing as she came.

  The two escorting destroyers were steaming away to the westward, probably to seek out the escaping M. L. s, or to cut off Warlock’s only chance of escape.

  He shouted, “Stand by to fire torpedoes!”

  He watched the oncoming ship and wondered how Warlock would look to her captain.

  “All ready, sir!”

  “Port fifteen!” He felt the ship heeling hard round. “Midships!”

  It was a bad angle of attack, but the German made a big target. It was all they had anyway. Apart from surrender.

  “Steady!” He crouched against the gyro, pressing his eye to the ice-cold sight. “As you bear! Now!”

  He kept his eyes fixed on the other ship, saying nothing until Hillier yelled, “All torpedoes running, sir!”

  “Starboard twenty!”

  Round again, and more great shells blasting the sea into towering walls of spray and foam.

  “Original course, Pilot. We’ll keep at her-“

  He coughed as a great bang seemed to come directly against the hull. Water cascaded over the decks, and he saw two men hurled from their gun and smashed lifeless against the wet steel.

  He blinked the spray and sweat from his eyes and watched as the big battlecruiser lengthened in his glasses. She had seen the torpedoes and was turning away. He saw the ripple of flashes along her side and knew that her captain was bringing his secondary armament into action. Then he had not seen the torpedoes !

  Almost as he considered the fact, two things happened. A thin column of water raised itself in line with the enemy’s bridge, and as his brain recorded that one of his torpedoes had found a mark, Warlock gave a great convulsive leap and began to slow down.

  On every side men were yelling and responding to orders. When he looked aft, Drummond saw that there was a great gap where the mainmast had been. X gun and its crew had been wiped away, and there was a crater across the hull big enough to hold a tank.

  Some men were already running aft, cringing as shells screamed overhead and burst angrily alongside.

  Wingate yelled, “Flooding in boiler room, sir! Fire in tiller flat, and sixteen casualties aft!”

  Hillier shouted hoarsely, “The chief says he can give you half-speed until-” He ducked as more explosions rocked the ship.

  “Tell him, thanks.”

  Drummond clung to the rail, watching the great battlecruiser circling round, her turrets swinging for the last salvoes. One torpedo might have slowed her still further. But it was not enough to save the Warlock.

  “The enemy’s signalling, sir!” Even in all the bedlam and danger Ives managed to sound surprised.

  Sure enough, the enemy’s big signal lamp was winking busily from one of her high bridges, and when Drummond turned he saw the reason.

  Steaming rapidly through Warlock’s screen of greasy smoke was the Lomond. Half submerged in funnel smoke and that from all the gunfire, it was hardly surprising that Moltke’s captain had mistaken her for one of his own.

  More crashes made the hull sway dangerously, and Drummond saw several of his men drop even as they dragged fire hoses to the growing plumes of smoke above the quarterdeck.

  He watched the Lomond increasing her speed as she turned slightly and headed towards the enemy. What was Beaumont thinking of? he wondered. If his intention was now obvious, his reasons were not. Watching the lone, battered Warlock trying to fight the impossible giant, or seeing in his own last gesture a chance to redeem himself?

  As he watched he saw something come adrift, leaping and swaying in the Lomond’s wake. It was the float, with some dozen figures clinging to it as it was almost capsized in Lomond’s wash.

  Wingate shouted, “That only leaves three on board, sir!”

  Drummond had already guessed who they were. Apart from Beaumont, there would be Jevers on the wheel and Warlock’s chief gunner’s mate, Abbott, the man who had lost everything when his home had been bombed.

  He felt a lump in his throat as he watched Lomond’s challenge. She was doing nearly thirty knots, and despite her changed outline held a kind of beauty.

  Two men who had everything to lose. One who had lost everything.

  The Germans had at last realised what was happenig. Their five-point-nines were being divided between Warlock and Lamond, so that by swinging his ship from side to side Drummond was able to continue to close the range.

  A shell slammed into the deck beside the wheelhouse, and he felt the pain lance up to his spine as if to break his neck.

  He shouted to Hillier, “Get down there!”

  Seconds later he heard a new voice from the wheel and then Hillier returned to the bridge, his uniform splashed with blood.

  He reported dully, “Direct hit, sir. All killed. Keyes, Mangin, all of them.”

  Wingate rubbed his eyes and said harshly, “Not Allan, too! “

  “Lomond’s hit, sir!”

  The German captain had left it too late. By sending his two escorts away to search for the M.L.s, by seeing in Lomondonly what he had expected to see, he had given his ship too little time to avoid collision.

  Lomond, blazing from a dozen points, her funnels buckled and broken, her hull a mass of splinter holes, charged the battlecruiser’s flank within yards of where Warlock’s torpedo had exploded.

  There was a sudden stillness, broken only by the distant rattle of automatic weapons as the Germans raked the listing, battered destroyer which was held like a ram against her hull.

  Perhaps then, and only then, did the enemy understand why a solitary ship had acted as she had. When they realised that no men ran from their action stations to surrender or jump overboard, then they could measure time in seconds alone.

  Abbott had always known a great deal about fuses.

  As he lay, bleeding from a dozen small splinters, he could see the great wall of depth-charges in their concrete emplacement quite close to his feet. He could see his wife and little daughter, too, even more clearly.

  In the shattered wheelhouse Jevers was trying to drag himself up the tilting deck towards the buckled door. He was sobbing quietly, willing the explosion to come and relieve the agony.

  Beaumont lay on his smashed bridge, his cap spattered with his blood, his hair moving across his dead face as the rain hissed across his wide, compelling stare.

  In his mind’s eye Drummond could see the three of them, so that when the explosion came it was almost a relief.

  The brilliant flash was seen many miles away by the force of fleet destroyers which were speeding into the Bay in search of Drummond’s little group of ships.

  It was seen and heard by the captains of the two German destroyers, who turned and headed towards the land, knowing that help was on the way for the remaining elderly ship with the unmatched funnels.r />
  Moltke had gone. Wiped away as if she had never been created.

  Hours later, as Ives read the flashing signal lamps from the line of destroyers, Drummond found time to wonder about all of it.

  Ives said, “From Caistor, sir. All evacuated personnel have been recovered. Your courage did the trick. “

  Drummond saw Sheridan leaning against the signal lockers, his cap in one hand, his head held back to suck in the air and drizzle. Wingate was by the compass, his face lined with strain. Hillier, too, was holding on to the screen, the fight gone out of him.

  Throughout the ship the company sat back and drew breath. They watched the oncoming destroyers, and later the arrowhead of escorting bombers. They were that important, but at the moment it did not seem to count. Some were thinking of friends killed or wounded. Others watched the dull sky and thanked God they could still see it.

  In the wheelhouse, its side torn open to the sea and sky, a seaman held the spokes and listened to Wingate’s helmm orders.

  At the rear of the wheelhouse, the coxswain, Tommy Mangin, and the chief quartermaster, Rumsey, lay together, arms and legs entwined, where they had fallen. A man had been blasted to fragments, another barely marked. One of the latter was Midshipman Keyes. He was found by the plot table, with the navigator’s yeoman on top of him. Keyes had had his eyes tightly closed. As if, Vaughan explained, he had heard the shell coming. In his hand was a picture of a showgirl. Like those you saw in the foyers of lesser-known theatres.

  When the doctor told Wingate about it later, he had said harshly, “She was Allan’s girl.”

  Above the bridge Rankin bandaged one of his spotters and thought of his wife. After this he would really change things.

  Mr. Noakes had died in the battle, cut down by a white-hot splinter even as he had shouted angrily at a cowering seaman. It seemed only fitting he should die angrily and bitterly. As he had lived.

  Tyson’s body was never found, and had probably gone when the shell had struck the ship by X gun.

  Owles took a pot of hot coffee to the bridge for his captain, but when he had been unable to pour it because of his hands shaking so badly, he had broken down and cried.

  For Drummond it had been almost the worst part. The final revelation of battle.

  He said, “Course for Falmouth, Pilot. Then we’ll make a signal to Admiralty. Smash-Hit completed. ” He touched Owles’ arm, trying to help him. “Moltke destroyed.” He hesitated, recalling the Lomond’s wild attack. “By Captain Dudley Beaumont. “

  Ives wrote it all down and then took Owles by the sleeve. “Come down with me. I could use a tot.”

  Many hours later, as the escorting destroyers reduced speed and allowed Warlock to complete her entrance into Falmouth alone, Drummond read through a whole sheaf of signals which had accompanied his ship as faithfully as any escort.

  Congratulations. Questions. Orders.

  He glanced sideways at Sheridan and said, “I’m being given another command, David.”

  Sheridan watched him, seeing the emotions crossing his strained features. “Congratulations.”

  Drummond continued quietly, “Something new. Not even completed yet. “

  He watched the land sliding out to greet them, the crowds lining the shore to watch the little destroyer creeping past the buoys. How silent they were when they saw the scars, the cruel marks of their sacrifice.

  She would be there waiting for him. He just knew it. She had to be.

  He said, “Warlock’s new skipper is already appointed.” He ran his hand along the teak rail, pausing to touch a jagged splinter-mark as if he was feeling a wound. “The ship will be going into dock for repair and conversion to long-range escort. Like your last ship, David.”

  “I see, sir.” Sheridan hesitated, knowing there was more, feeling Drummond’s sense of loss. “But to me she’ll always be a destroyer, sir. In the best sense of the word.”

  Drummond could not look at him. “She’s yours, David. Your promotion and appointment have come through. ” He reached out impetuously and added, “Take care of her.”

  Wingate had been watching them from the compass platform. He said quietly, “Ten minutes, sir.”

  Sheridan stepped away. “I’ll go forrard, sir.”

  Drummond nodded. He saw a seaman carrying Badger’s

  familiar basket along the iron deck. So many had died, but the

  cat had survived.

  Later, as the mooring wires went ashore and the waiting onlookers surged as near as they could get to the listing ship, Drummond stood alone on the deserted bridge.

  He took one last long look around, feeling the ship dragging at him and then just as quickly letting go.

  As he walked down the ladder a signalman held out a stained battle ensign. “The only one left, sir.”

  “I’d like Keyes’ girl to have it. Give it to the navigating officer.’

  It might help her to understand. To know what she had done to make a boy’s last days on earth happy.

  He paused at the brow, seeing Sheridan and Wingate, Rankin and Galbraith in his filthy boiler-suit.

  Sheridan said quietly, “I relieve you, sir.”

  Drummond shook his hand. “Then I will leave the ship.”

  He knew that there were many people waiting to see him, and he thought he saw Sarah being helped through the crowd by Kimber and Miles Salter. But for a moment he looked up at the battered ship and then gave a slow salute.

  As Sheridan had said. She was a destroyer. Now and always. They could never take that away from either of them.

  End