Sixty Minutes for St George

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

  There was a hundred-foot gap in the viaduct. The mole was isolated from the shore. Howell-Price grinned sideways at ERA Roxburgh: ‘Come on, pull!’ Roxburgh complained, ‘I’m no sailor, sir…’ Howell-Price, Sandford, Rogerson, Roxburgh and Cleaver were all laughing, or making sounds that passed for it; Sandford told the rowers, ‘Save your breath, you loonies. Pull.’ There was starshell-light now, and flaming onions from this end of the mole, but nothing close or bright enough to show up details here in the boat. Just as well, Rogerson thought. We’d scare each other silly if we could see each other. We should all be dead. From the time they’d been dazzled in the beams of those filthy searchlights he had imprinted memories of what the others looked like. Sandford particularly, who’d been hit and hit again and still incredibly held the tiller and held it straight: Sandford, Uncle Baldy, should have a VG, he thought, and when he wore it he’d wear it for them all. His own numbness was wearing off and he was beginning to feel, to hurt: if it got much worse it might be difficult to keep quiet. But there was also a feeling of great tiredness, and in opposition to that a certainty that one should not give way to it, that it was imperative to stay awake. It was quite rough, out here, and he wondered where they were going; the little boat was sluggish with all the weight in her, and she must have sunk lower in the water because waves were lopping over the bow behind him.

  ‘Boat ahoy!’

  A light trained on them, its beam dancing on the water. He thought, I’m delirious… On the picket-boat the elder Sandford shouted to his stoker, ‘Stop her! Slow astern!’ He hurried for’ard, beside himself with excitement and relief, and tossed a line across the dinghy. Roxburgh caught it. Howell-Price shouted, ‘We’ve several men quite badly hurt. Skipper needs attention urgently. So does—’

  ‘He’ll get it, don’t you worry.’ The skipper’s elder brother knelt, grabbed the dinghy’s gunnel; there were sailors behind him ready to get over and lift the wounded into the larger boat. Dick Sandford said in a surprisingly strong voice, ‘See to the others first. Cox’n’s worse than I am.’

  ‘All right, old chap. Here – easy, now…'

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Tow broke. Damn near capsized first. Miles back, right out at sea… Never mind, we’re here now. We’ll get you fellows to a destroyer with a doctor. My God, what a splendid job you’ve—’

  ‘What about C1?’

  ‘Broke her tow, too. She’s all right, though. Fed up, I’ve no doubt, at missing it. Anyway, who cares, you did it! You did it, Dick!’

  * * *

  ‘Tow’s fast, sir!’

  Nick bent to the voicepipe as shells came whirring through thinning smoke and their splashes sprang up to port. ‘Slow ahead together.’ The twelve-pounder let off another round: target the Goeben battery. Vindictive’s howitzers were blasting at that battery too; without their help things might have been a great deal worse.

  ‘Slow ahead together, sir!’

  ‘Keep the helm amidships, cox’n.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  Another salvo hurtled over: splashes all ahead, then one shell came late and short, burst on Bravo’s foc’sl: the capstan went up vertically, spinning like a huge top, splashed down a few feet clear of the bow as Bravo struggled to forge ahead with Grebe’s dead weight dragging at her stern. Bravo had lost her mainmast and the quarterdeck six-pounder; the superstructure that the after gundeck was built on, which was also the wardroom access door, had been smashed in and set alight, but the fire was out now and Elkington had reported that there was no internal damage. Just as well – and lucky: McAllister had a lot of wounded below there in the wardroom. Looking aft over the stern as the wire came taut again, Nick saw Intrepid, lit by starshell, settling inside the canal entrance; two cutters and a smaller boat – skiff, probably – were pulling away from her, out into the harbour. There was a lot of machine-gun fire from the shore, and shell-splashes that must be coming either from the mole’s inshore end or from that shore battery. An ML was laying smoke in there, and two others were heading to meet the blockship’s boats. Thetis had been abandoned, but they’d left a green light burning as a guide to help the other two past. Iphigenia had rounded the end of the mole, and was halfway across towards Thetis: she seemed to be getting in unmolested.

  The wire was taut and straining. Two shells dropped short of Grebe’s starboard bow, throwing a heavy rain of foul-smelling water across both ships. A starshell burst right overhead: with the smoke gone, they’d be punished again now; the Goeben gunners would want to make up for lost time and they wouldn’t be pleased to see their prey escaping. The wire quivered, bar-taut, and Grebe’s bow hadn’t moved yet.

  ‘Starboard five.’

  ‘Starboard five, sir!’

  Turning to port – or trying to – so as to head out at an angle and drag Grebe’s bow round, get her pointing out the way they had to go. Bravo’s engines were only at slow ahead, but to put on more power at this stage would be to risk parting the tow. Then they’d have to start from scratch again.

  ‘Damn…’

  He’d whispered it, to himself, as a searchlight fastened on them. Grebe’s middle funnel exploded in a shower of steel. That damned light… But she was moving, just a little, and it was the start that counted. Once there was some way on her, the inertia overcome, you could put on more revs. It was a sudden strain on the wire that one had to guard against.

  ‘Bosun’s mate!’

  Clark jumped forward. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Tell Maynard to shoot at that light until he hits it.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir!’

  Maynard, leading seaman, was the layer of the twelve-pounder. ‘Midships.’

  ‘Midships, sir.’

  ‘One-five-oh revolutions.’

  Flat out, for an oily wad, was about three-fifty. One-fifty would give her eight or ten knots on her own. Four or five perhaps with Grebe in tow. Straightening from the voicepipe he flinched as Grebe was hit again right aft. Smoke welled up from her quarterdeck. The twelve-pounder fired – going for the searchlight. Smoke was what they needed: not that sort, though. Stinking, blinding stuff, drifting seaward. Iphigenia was passing Thetis, and she was being hit: by the Goeben guns, probably, which would account for a slackening of the bombardment here. That was another hit on Iphigenia: the Huns had been getting too much practice, in the past hour, they were beginning to get the hang of it, God damn them! They’d cut a steam-pipe or something like that, in Iphigenia, you could see it pouring up, white in a searchlight’s beam. Grebe was coming round nicely now.

  ‘Starboard five, cox’n!’

  ‘Starboard five… Five o’ starboard wheel on, sir!’

  Inching her round. Increasing the strain by degrees, getting her on the move, in the process turning her so she’d present a smaller target to the shore guns. The searchlight left them: swept across the harbour, lighting patches of drifting smoke – an abandoned ship’s boat – sweeping on: fastening on an ML that was coming out stern-first from the canal entrance with tracer streaming at her from all directions and towing a cutter from her bow. Cutter and launch were both black with men. Iphigenia was inside the canal mouth: from this angle she and Intrepid were one solid black mass against the light of flares.

  ‘Midships.’

  ‘Midships, sir.’

  Elkington climbed into the bridge.

  ‘So far so good, sir.’

  'What?’

  He shouted, ‘Tow’s holding, sir, so far!’

  ‘You’ve done damn well.’ It was no more than fact. Elkington had got the line over, then the grass and the heavy wire, in half the time it might have taken. Under heavy fire that wasn’t as easy as the Manual of Seamanship Vol.1 made it sound.

  ‘What about casualties?’

  ‘Rotten, sir. Nine dead and—’ he hesitated – ‘about sixteen wounded.’

  Almost half the ship’s company. And nowhere near out of this hole yet

  The guns in the waist were silent now. Grebe was in the
ir way, and there were no targets they could bear on. The twelve-pounder sent one last shell crashing into the darkness: then that one was out of it too, blanked-off from its enemies by the smoking, smouldering ship astern.

  ‘Steer north-east, cox’n.’

  ‘Steer north-east, sir…’

  That would take them wide of the mole’s extremity, towards Phoebe’s and North Star’s patrol line to the east and north-east of it. Nick put his glasses up to see if either of them might be in sight, or even perhaps the flashes of their guns. He caught his breath: no more than four hundred yards off the lighthouse, one of them – impossible to see which – was stationary, and as he watched a sweeping searchlight gripped her, held her: shells burst all over her and all round her, for a moment she was hidden by their splashes and he thought, She’s done for… How the hell she’s got trapped in that position – she must have got lost in smoke perhaps, or – now he saw her partner, sister-ship, moving in at speed, laying a screen of smoke to hide her from that searchlight and the guns on the mole extension: he’d been stooping to the voicepipe while he watched it, all in the space of about four seconds: that smoke might save her, if she wasn’t already finished… He called down to the engine-room, ‘Two hundred revolutions.’

  ‘Two ’undred revs, sir!’

  ‘Number One, I think we’ll—’

  A flight of shells came screaming down and burst across Bravo’s stern. She seemed to convulse – to flinch and shudder, recoiling from the blows: flames leapt, died back, smoke expanded and came flying for’ard on the wind. Elkington shouted, ‘The wire’s gone, sir!’

  Something like a brick had hit his right shoulder. It had knocked him back, throwing him against the binnacle, and Garfield had reached out one arm to steady him. He heard himself order, ‘Starboard fifteen!’ He’d been about to say it when the thing had hit him.

  ‘Starboard fifteen, sir…’ Garfield spun the wheel round. ‘You all right, sir?’

  'Yes… Stop port. Number One—’ he couldn’t feel his right arm, or move it – ‘I’m going to lay smoke inshore of Grebe again, then go alongside, port side to his starboard side, and we’ll lash him to us. Stand by on the upper deck, please.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir!’

  ‘And I want a report on how things are below… Half ahead port, two-five-oh revolutions both engines…’ Bloody searchlight back again! He heard Garfield asking him, ‘Are you sure you’re all right, sir?’

  ‘Midships… Cox’n, don’t chatter at me.’

  ‘Midships. Sorry, sir.’

  The twelve-pounder was back in action. Shooting at the searchlight, Nick hoped. He actually hated it, that light, quite personally and viciously. He bent over the voicepipe: ‘Engine-room – make smoke!’

  ‘Make smoke, sir!’

  Bravo was on fire aft. But she still wasn’t as badly off as Grebe. Nick had to use his left hand to raise his binoculars. The right-hand side of his body was all wet: he could feel it running down. He told himself, pulling his thoughts together in order to clarify his intentions, his sense of direction and priorities, The blockships are in, our job’s done, in this state we can’t be of any practical use to the MLs in there, so the thing is simply to get out of it – with Grebe… The searchlight left them, swung to Grebe: there was a pom-pom firing at her from the beach. A starshell burst high over the middle of the mole: he saw a cutter pulling seaward, two MLs heading the same way, another stopped with a skiff alongside her and men being hauled up. He let his glasses drop on their strap and told Garfield, ‘Starboard ten.’ Black smoke had begun to flood out of both funnels. The top of the after one was shattered, and in the smoke you could see the glow from the furnace down below. For an old coal-burning oily wad there was nothing new in making smoke: only usually it wasn’t deliberate, it made senior officers curse and send offensive signals. All Bravo’s surviving guns were firing as she swung inshore. He thought, Better lay two lines of it, one parallel to the other… That way, it might last.

  ‘Midships.’

  ‘Midships, sir.’

  He felt ill, suddenly. A sickly weakness spreading from the gut. If one could have been sick it might have helped. The racket of the guns was bewildering, deadening to the senses: something in his head told him Time to go round, lay smoke behind that lot… ‘Port fifteen.’

  ‘Port fifteen, sir.’

  Garfield was very steady, very calm. Bravo was lucky in her coxswain, Nick thought. Russell was a good hand too. Not as good a chief buffer as Swan had been, but—

  There’d been no mention of Swan in the list of ship’s company awards for Mackerel. Not that it would have made the slightest difference to Swan himself; but for his parents’ sake, his people: they should have been allowed some sign, some acknowledgement of the man’s quality. Too late now: and it all seemed so long ago. Shells screeched overhead; there were flames on Grebe’s iron deck. Her casualties must be terrible, much worse than Bravo’s. Now she’d vanished: the first line of smoke lay between them. It should be just as blinding to the Hun gunners. Nick thought he was falling: he held on with his left arm around the binnacle, bent his knees, slid down until the soft-iron correcting-sphere on this side was under his armpit. He let it take his weight, leaning towards it, resting for a moment with his eyes shut. It was amazing how the sick feeling drained away. Garfield boomed, ‘Captain, sir!’

  ‘Yes?’

  Opening his eyes, and hoisting himself up.

  ‘We’ve fifteen o’ port wheel on still, sir!’

  ‘Midships!’ He checked the compass-card quickly. ‘Meet her!’

  ‘Meet her, sir…’

  Gun-flashes ashore now. Bravo was inside her own smoke; it drifted seaward as it poured like black treacle from her funnels. And probably they’d made enough of it now: the next thing was to locate Grebe again.

  ‘Port ten.’

  ‘Port ten, sir.’ Garfield seemed to be watching him all the time, and Nick found it irritating. He took the chance of another rest as he leant against the voicepipe. ‘Slow together!’

  ‘Slow together, sir …’ The smell of the voicepipe increased the feeling of nausea. Bravo was turning to starboard into her own black, suffocating smoke. Elkington should have the wires and fenders ready down there by now. When they got through the smoke it should be easy enough to find Grebe, particularly if she was still on fire. He heard shells passing overhead, that cloth-ripping noise big ones made when they were passing masthead-high or higher. They must have been firing blind.

  ‘Midships.’

  'Midships, sir.’

  ‘Bosun’s mate.’ Clark moved towards him. ‘Go down and tell the first lieutenant to stand by.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir!’

  ‘Wheel’s amidships, sir.’

  Able Seaman Clark had only got as far as the head of the ladder; he was coming back. Sub-lieutenant York was with him.

  ‘First lieutenant says he’s ready and standing by, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ He glanced round the bridge. ‘Where’s our snotty?’

  ‘Aft, sir. Shell-splinter in his back.’ York was goggling at Nick’s arm and shoulder; Nick scowled at him, and turned away. It was a peculiar and very unpleasant sensation, to have feeling in only about half one’s body and no control over one arm and hand. The limb just dangled. Bravo broke out suddenly into clear night air: starshells were drifting over the harbour and a flaming onion soared over the canal mouth. There were shells bursting on the mole extension and he thought those must be Vindictive’s howitzers still at it.

  ‘Forty on the bow, sir!’

  Garfield was pointing. Grebe looked like a wreck, burnt out. Nick shouted, ‘Tremlett!’ The coxswain said, ‘He was hit just, now, sir, he’s been took down.’ It was like a dream one had had before: hadn’t Wyatt shouted at a dead yeoman? But he, Nick, hadn’t known anything about Tremlett.

  ‘Killed?’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir.’

  That wasn’t so bad, then. Signalman Jowitt asked him, ‘Sir?’r />
  ‘Make to Grebe, Please stand by to take my wires on your starboard side.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  ‘Sub, go down and assist the first lieutenant… Bosun’s mate!’

  ‘Yessir?’

  ‘Go down to the chartroom and bring me up a stool,’ He moved to the port side of the bridge, hooked his left elbow over the new protective plating – dented and scorched in places, it looked less new now: half the splinter-mattresses had been ripped or scorched away – and leant his weight on it. He called to Garfield, ‘Port fifteen. Stop starboard.’ Behind him he heard the clatter of the searchlight as his message was flashed to Grebe. He was glad he’d started it with the word ‘please’: Hatton-Jones was a touchy sort of man, he’d have objected to a signal from a junior that read like an order. Nick’s head jerked towards the mole: that was a new sound altogether – the high shriek of a ship’s siren.