Sixty Minutes for St George

Home > Other > Sixty Minutes for St George > Page 2
Sixty Minutes for St George Page 2

by Sixty Minutes for St George (retail) (epub)


  Wyatt shouted, ‘Make the challenge!’

  Nick reached Hatcher at the Barr and Stroud. ‘All guns load, train starboard quarter and stand by.’

  Wyatt rapped at the coxswain, as the shutter on the light began to clatter, ‘Starboard fifteen!’ He raised his voice: ‘If we engage, Number One, it’ll be to port.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’ Nick told Hatcher to follow the bearing of the enemy on his transmitter and set range two thousand yards. He went back to the port fore corner of the bridge, the torpedo sight there, and got Gladwish on the navyphone.

  ‘Tubes stand by to port!’

  Porter yelled, ‘Ships are friendly, sir!’

  ‘Very good.’ Wyatt sounded disappointed. ‘Ease to ten. Four hundred revolutions.’ Mackerel rolled harder, with the sea on her beam now. Still turning… Wyatt had been taking her round in an almost full circle, starting from near west and turning through south and up to north-east in order finally to pass the strangers on a reciprocal course with guns and tubes all bearing. Nick said to the torpedo gunner, ‘Better luck next time, Guns.’ He hung up the navyphone. A lamp was flashing from the leader of the two destroyers; you could see their low black silhouette now without any need of glasses, and the froth of white around them. The lamp was saying, Take station astern, course south-west, speed fifteen. The leading signalman called it out word by word as it came in bright stabs of light and Mackerel still pivoted in a whitened pool of sea. Wyatt told the engine-room, ‘Three-sixty revolutions.’ Still keeping her under starboard helm, port rudder. ‘Pilot, where’ll that raft be now?’

  ‘Port quarter, sir, probably about a thousand yards. I can’t see it now, but—’

  ‘Signalman. Make to Moloch, Believe survivors on Carley float half mile south of me. Propose investigating before joining you.’

  Clatter of the lamp…

  ‘Midships!’

  Nick called down to the midshipman in the chartroom. ‘Grant, we may be picking up some survivors in a minute. Go aft, warn the doctor, and make yourself useful.’

  The ‘doctor’ was a young RNVR surgeon-probationer, a Scot named McAllister. If it hadn’t been for the war he’d still have been a medical student in Edinburgh. Nick cranked the tele-phone to the after steering position.

  ‘CPO Swan?’

  ‘Sir?’

  Swan, Chief Boatswain’s Mate or more colloquially Chief Buffer, came after Bellamy, the coxswain, as the destroyer’s second most senior rating.

  ‘We may be picking up some chaps from a Carley float, Swan. Get your gear ready and stand by.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir!’

  ‘Better call away whaler’s crew too. But have ’em just stand by the boat, don’t turn it out yet.’

  Moloch had replied, Carry on. I will stay with you.

  Wyatt grunted. He said, ‘Meet her, cox’n, and steer south.’

  ‘Steer south, sir…’ Bellamy dragged the wheel over, putting on opposite rudder to ‘meet her’, check her swing. Back again now, letting the spokes fly against the palms of his hands: ‘Course south, sir!’

  Nick asked his captain, ‘D’you intend to use the whaler, sir?’

  ‘Not unless I have to.’ Wyatt, like Pym, was searching for the float. An object so low in the water would be hidden in the troughs except in the brief moments when a wave-top lifted it; it must have been sheer luck that Pym had spotted it in the first place. Wyatt said, ‘We’ll give ’em a lee and haul ’em up… If we find ’em.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’ It would be a quicker job, if it could be done without lowering a boat, and speed was a priority consideration. A lot of ships had been lost already in this way – in these straits – because they’d stopped to save lives and become sitting ducks for U-boats… Swan knew the score: down there on the iron deck abreast the funnels he’d be preparing scrambling nets, one each side; his men would be lashing the top-ropes of the nets to ship’s-side cleats and leaving them rolled, ready to shove over.

  ‘Sir – gunfire!’

  Everyone on the bridge had seen it. Lighting the horizon and the underside of the cloudcap ten or twelve miles southward, where Mackerel’s short black bow was pointing. Well, south-westward. Yellow-red: more of it now, in the same place exactly, and to the right a glow rising, tinting the horizon yellowish-orange: steady, hanging there quite motionless. A crackling sound: like the vibrations of a thin sheet of tin: and more sparks: all of it so distant, impersonal, but that crackling was gunfire.

  Wyatt muttered, ‘Ship burning… Pilot, come on, where’s your Carley float?’

  ‘May we use the searchlight, sir?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Moloch signalling, sir!’

  The other two destroyers were on Mackerel’s starboard quarter, nosing after her, watching, keeping station there, white bow-waves easily visible to the naked eye even at this low speed. But they’d be feeling less patient now; Carley floats didn’t rate highly when there were German destroyers making hay down there… Porter called out the signal: ‘From Moloch, sir – You have five minutes to complete your search and rescue.’

  More gun-flashes in the south-western distance. Remote, mysterious. Now to the left of them – nearer Cape Gris Nez than the Varne – a twin pair of sparks, one red and one white, showed tiny like small gems glimpsed then lost.

  ‘U-boat signal, sir!’

  'Where?’

  Red and white Very lights meant U-boat in sight. Destroyers attacking the patrolling drifters and P-boats, Nick surmised, and submarines breaking through simultaneously on the surface. The floodlighting brigade down there on the deep minefield had orders that if they were attacked by surface forces one green Very light would be the order to extinguish all illuminations; there’d been firing, so by now one could reckon the lights would have been put out, and while the attention of the patrol vessels was still occupied by the raiders, U-boats would be pushing through. Nick could only see one answer: that the Hun destroyers ought to have been stopped before they got that far west… Something dark lingered in the circle of his vision: he swung the glasses back, and there was the Carley float, tilting on a wave-crest.

  ‘Float, sir, and men in it, fine on the starboard bow!’

  He lowered his glasses, checked with the naked eye, narrowing his eyes against the stinging wind. He could see it easily.

  ‘There, sir. Cable and a half off.’

  ‘Slow together!’

  ‘Slow together, sir!’

  ‘Go down and get ’em up like lightning, Number One.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’ Nick was already at the top of the ladder. He went down it like a sack down a chute, his weight on his hands on the rails – just – and feet skimming the rungs; he hit the foc’sl deck almost as hard as if he’d jumped, and turning aft he rattled down the short flight of steel steps to the iron deck. Here, abreast the twenty-foot motorboat, two sailors crouched beside the long sausage of rolled scrambling-net.

  ‘Chief Bosun’s Mate?’

  ‘Here, sir!’

  Swan appeared ducking round the for’ard davit. A big man, bulkier still in his oilskin, very little except he eyes showing above the ‘full set’ of his black beard. An impressive, piratical figure of a man. Nick told him, ‘Stand by this side. We’re almost up to them. Five men, I think.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir! Morgan – ‘Oneycutt – starboard side ’ere!’ Mackerel was losing way, and as she slowed her pitch and roll increased. The drone of her turbines fell away to nothing: you heard the sea now, and the wind, and the creaks and rattles.

  ‘Get the net over.’

  He was assuming as a matter of common sense that Wyatt would pick the men up over this starboard side. The raft had been on this bow when he’d spotted it, and since Mackerel had been pointing south with wind and sea from the south-west, this was the obvious way to do it. Nick watched the four sailors roll the bulky net over until gravity took charge and it thumped away over the side. Then he saw the Carley float.

  ‘There they are!'

 
Twenty yards away: and four men, not five, he thought. One was up on his knees, waving both arms above his head, two others were visible in silhouette against the sea and the fourth was a lumpy extension of the float itself. It could even be a dead man: surely at the moment of rescue anyone who could move would be upright and taking notice? The float swung upwards on a rising sea, tilted over: the men’s hands were grasping the rope beckets that ran round its circumference. Sinking in a trough now, as Mackerel soared upwards; with no way on, a lot of the movement was vertical, up and down, a motion to make itself felt in even the most hardened stomach. Nick asked Swan, pitching his voice up above the ship-noises and the weather, ‘Heaving line – near enough now?’

  ‘Might be, sir… ‘Oneycutt, get it over ’em!’ Nick saw Grant, the midshipman, coming for’ard with the doctor, and two men behind them carrying folded stretchers. Mackerel had stopped completely now. From the dark overhead loom of the bridge superstructure Wyatt shouted, ‘What are you waiting for, down there?’ Honeycutt had about a third of the heaving-line coiled in his right hand and the rest of it in his left: he swayed back, paused while the ship began to rise to another sea: then he swung upright, body straightening and right arm swinging over and the line flying out behind its weighted turk’s-head knot; forty or fifty feet away it fell neatly across the Carley float and it was the man who was up on his knees who caught it. Everybody cheered. Swan growled out of his beard at Honeycutt, ‘Pull ’em in steady now, don’t go an’ lose ’em.’ Behind Nick, Midshipman Grant asked nervously, ‘Shall I climb down the net and help them?’ Wyatt bawled again, ‘Get a move on, Number One!’ Nick told the snotty, ‘No.’ He watched the float come rocking in towards the destroyer’s side; if it hadn’t been for the froth of white around it, one might not have seen it even at twenty feet. But there was less movement on it as it came under Mackerel’s lee. Five men. The one sprawled on his back wasn’t a corpse, but he looked as if he might be wounded; two of the others were supporting him. Swan said, ‘You – you, Nye – get down there an’ grab a hold of ’em.’ What Grant had offered to do: but it was work for a strong man, not a kid who, conscious of his captain’s disapproval, contempt even, wanted to justify his existence. Nick remembered only too clearly his own mid-shipman days, that dreary gunroom up in Scapa, the dog’s life snotties had been forced to lead; he-had sympathy for Grant, and a corresponding distaste for Wyatt’s intolerance of him; but if that wounded man had to be dragged up the vertical and highly mobile ship’s side it would take two powerful men on the net and probably two more up top here to do it; the rescue had to be completed and Mackerel got under way again quickly, immediately; there wasn’t time for boosting the morale of a little midshipman who’d only get in the way. The first of the rescued men came up over the side, with Swan lugging at his arms; Nick asked him, ‘Is one of you down there hurt?’

  ‘Ah.’ A pale, narrow face turned to nod at him. ‘Skipper – got a leg chewed up.’

  ‘What ship, and what happened?’

  ‘Drifter Lovely Mornin’. Some murderin’ bloody ’Un’s what ’appened, mate.’ Swan had gone down on to the net to help Nye with the wounded skipper: another man came up over the side, and the top of a wave came with him, shooting straight up and then collapsing on the destroyer’s deck like a suddenly up-turned bathful of ice. Honeycutt swore, as he helped a third man over; behind him the first two were assuring McAllister, the doctor, that they were right as rain. Honeycutt grumbled, ‘That last ’un filled me seaboots!’ Below him, out of sight and half in the actual sea, Swan gasped, ‘Up with ye, lad. Us two’ll see to this cove.’ Nick shouted down to Swan, ‘Don’t bother with the float. Let it go.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir…’ Water surging up, frothing, leaping: Swan roaring ‘Grab ’old that arm, Nye! Grab it, ye clumsy—’ Another sea swept up, engulfing them, swirling to their shoulders before it drained away. A hoarse voice panted, ‘Easy, mates, easy does it…’ That was the wounded skipper as they hauled him up the side. Behind Nick, McAllister was telling Grant, ‘Take these four down to the wardroom, Mid. They can strip and dry off in blankets. I’ll be along presently.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Off ye go then, gentlemen.’ The doctor clapped the nearest of them on his shoulder. ‘Find a tot of rum for ye, by and by.’ Nick saw Swan and Nye come over the side, manoeuvring the wounded man between them. Grey hair and a surprised-looking, square-shaped face. Nick cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted up towards the bridge, ‘All inboard, sir!’ Wyatt didn’t acknowledge it, but the telegraph bell clanged and in a moment the hum of the turbines and the suck of the ventilators began to rise through the weather sounds. Nick crouched beside the prostrate skipper while McAllister’s assistants opened a stretcher on the deck and eased him on to it.

  ‘Can you tell me anything about the ship that sank you?’

  ‘Aye. Bloody ’Un. An’ sod ’em all, I say!’

  They had him on the stretcher. A stocky, solid man. Nick asked him, ‘How many destroyers were there? And heading which way after they’d sunk you?’

  ‘West. Varne, likely. Took a swipe at us wi’out ’ardly so much as slowin’ up. Four o’ the devils – you say destroyers now, but—’ he coughed, and spat out salt water – ‘more like cruisers. Big…’ McAllister murmured, ‘Fragment, was it… In one side an’ out the other?’ He was nosing at the injured leg. Nick said, straightening, ‘Put him in my cabin. Tell Grant to clear my stuff out of the way.’ He thought of a question he hadn’t asked: ‘Skipper, d’you know if they attacked any of the other drifters on the net patrol?’

  ‘Wouldn’t ’a seen no other. We’re that spread out now, d’ye see.’

  The net barrage was only thinly patrolled, now that so many craft were needed on the lit minefield. The Germans had happened on this one drifter, and used it for target-practice on their way by. Quite inconsequentially: the minefield patrol had almost certainly been their real target. And that was where they’d be now: where the shooting was.

  ‘Well done, Swan. You and Nye ’d better shift into dry clothes.’

  ‘We’ll stow the gear first, sir.’

  * * *

  On the bridge, Nick told Wyatt as much as he knew. Mackerel was following astern of Musician now, at something like fifteen knots. Wyatt dictated a signal down the voicepipe to the wireless office, addressing it to Moloch – whose captain was the senior officer in this division – and repeating it to Dover. It was plain enough that the destruction of the Lovely Morning had been shooting which had been seen from Mackerel’s bridge while she’d been weighing anchor; and it seemed probable that the four big German boats were Captain Heinecke’s.

  It looked as if it was indeed a concerted plan: south-westward, another pair of red and white Very lights had just floated up, hovered, vanished. A concerted plan that seemed at the moment to be working well – from the Germans’ point of view. Smash up the minefield patrol: first to put the lights out, for immediate purposes, and in the longer term in the hope of discouraging its continuance. Meanwhile, have the U-boats waiting, ready to slip through – quite likely in both directions, some on their way out to patrol in the Atlantic and some returning to Ostend and/or Zeebrugge and thence up the canals to their inland base at Bruges.

  There’d been a plan to capture those ports, and Bruges. Admiral Bacon’s ‘Great Landing’, which was to tie in with the Army’s advance towards the Belgian coast. But the Army had bogged down, at Passchendaele, and by the middle of October the scheme had been abandoned, much to Bacon’s disappointment.

  Wyatt muttered, watching a new outbreak of firing – more like due west, that lot, which would mean from the section of patrolled minefield between the Varne and Folkestone – ‘If he comes back this way—’

  He’d broken off: the hope, the longing to get to grips with the ‘Argentinian’ flotilla was too intense to be put in words. Every destroyer captain in the Patrol prayed for a meeting with ‘Herr Heinecke’… It was a fact. Nick realised, visualising the char
t – which by this time he could just about have drawn free-hand from memory, with all its buoys and shoals and known minefields, with reasonable accuracy – it was a fact that if the Germans were west of the Varne now and took the direct route homeward to the Belgian coast, this was the way they’d come. Mackerel, following in line astern of the other two destroyers, had crossed the net between No. 9 buoy and the Dyck – West Dyck – lightship; there was comparatively deep water under them now. Ahead, Musician’s wake was a greyish track ending in a small bank of white under her stern; and Moloch was visible to the right of her – a smaller, less clearly defined but otherwise identical shape that changed quickly, lengthening as she altered course, hauling round to starboard. Musician began to follow; Wyatt was silent as he watched her through his binoculars and waited for the right moment to put Mackerel’s helm over.

  ‘Port ten.’ He turned her with her stern cutting into the inside edge of the curve of wake, in order to end up – as she would do, carried by her own momentum – in the centre of it. The new course seemed to be just about due west.

  ‘Midships.’

  ‘Midships, sir.’ Bellamy let the wheel centre itself.

  ‘Steady in his wake.’

  No firing now. The straits were black, silent, empty of everything except these three destroyers. And at the same time one knew they were not empty, not by any means: there were literally dozens of ships down there, and four of them were Germans who’d have to retire eastward while the night was still thick enough to cover them. The German squadron, Nick told himself, could appear there – now – or now—

  Cold… Under a duffel-coat and a reefer jacket he had a towel round his neck with its ends tucked inside a flannel shirt. But the wet had got in there, as it always did. The upper half of his body might have had a film of ice on it; a single trickle was extending down his left leg. When there was work to do, you could forget about the cold; but it never forgot you, it waited patiently until you had time to acknowledge it again. Wyatt’s voice sounded hollow in the engine-room voicepipe: ‘Three-forty revolutions.’ Nick heard the reduction in speed repeated back. Mackerel had been getting too close up on her next ahead; it was possible that the corner of that turn had been cut.

 

‹ Prev