by Peter Albano
“Very well.” Saxon shouted into the phone, “Left gun, ‘A’ turret—fire!” He threw a switch and a small gong much like the bell rung by an altar boy at Mass began to chime. On the third strike there was the sound of a great cathedral door slamming, a whoosh, and the director moved under the commander’s hands. Pencils, dividers, parallel rules, and the Dreyer machine vibrated and rattled. “Watch for the fall of shot,” he shouted at the men at the scopes.
Saxon disliked the British system of range finding: one round either short or long, observe, correct, fire another, approach target, straddle, and then main armament rapid fire. Everyone knew the Germans used the ladder system, which the commander felt was superior: main armament ladder short, main armament ladder over, down ladder, range found, main armament rapid fire.
“Over one-five-zero-zero,” Ramsey said, eyes glued to the range finder.
“Damn! Damn! That bloody machine’s always long,” Saxon exploded. “Give me another reading, Mister Booth.”
“Elevation two-three-three-zero minutes, direction zero-four-zero degrees, deflection three-four left, range one hundred minus fifteen thousand five-zero-zero yards,” Booth said staring at the Dreyer, perspiration beading in glistening lines across his forehead.
Saxon bawled the corrections into his phone. Again the acknowledgment, the chimes, the concussion.
“Five hundred over,” Ramsey said. Then gasping the most fearful words a man fighting at sea can hear, “They’ve opened up on us.”
There was a sound like the Royal Scot rumbling over a bridge followed by the unmistakable thunder of twelve-inch shells ripping the sea with thousands of pounds of high explosives. Then the clatter of steel splinters striking armor plate like thrown gravel.
“Close. Close,” Saxon muttered to himself. Unbelievably close for an opening salvo. Damn those Zeiss range finders. The Germans had the best in the world. The commander took a chance. Curling his hand around the pistol grip of the main firing trigger, he shouted into his phone while adjusting his dials, “Ship’s main armament salvo fire, elevation two-three-two-five minutes, direction zero-four-zero, deflection three-four left, range one hundred minus fifteen thousand five-zero-zero yards.”
Eight lights glowed. “Fire!” The gongs rang and he squeezed the trigger. With a shock like a collision at sea, eight 13.5-inch guns fired as one, rocking the ship from side to side. Snapping like a serpent searching for quarry, the drafting machine mounted above the Dreyer’s rate grid broke its lock and swung across the plotting sheet. Cursing, Ramsey rubbed an eye, bruised by the range finder’s eye pad. A yeoman of signals manning the new electric telegraphy phones staggered and fell heavily against the aft bulkhead while dust and chips of paint rained.
“Under! Under two hundred,” Ramsey shouted. “And they’ve increased speed—direction zero-four-two.”
“Deflection! Blast it, man—deflection?” Saxon bellowed angrily.
“The same, sir.”
“Very well.” And then to Booth, “Plot it.”
Quickly, Booth and his men reset dials and marked grids on the Dreyer. With a single twist of a clawlike hand, the young lieutenant turned the clock range screw and stared at the bearing plot grid all the while chewing his lower lip until it was flecked with blood. Then with his lips skinned back, he spoke hoarsely. “Elevation two-four-three-zero minutes, direction zero-four-one degrees, deflection unchanged, range fifteen thousand six hundred yards.”
“Very well.” Saxon called the changes into the phone as he adjusted his dials. Lights, chimes, and the trigger. The ship staggered and rocked.
The next four minutes—the last four minutes in the life of Commander Anthony Saxon, D.S.O., M.B.E.—were a lifetime compressed into 240 seconds. A lifetime of exhilaration and terror. Lion, leading her squadron, was locked in a duel with battle cruiser Lützow, which headed the German column. The Germans had the advantage of the sun behind them to illuminate the British and a mist haze to conceal themselves from the English range takers while the British used their superior speed to block the enemy’s route back to base at Wilhelmshaven and at the same time tried to maneuver the five enemy vessels into range of the Grand Fleet.
Unable to contain his curiosity and knowing at least forty seconds were required between salvos to bring the guns back to battery and reload, the commander grabbed his periscope and focused on the enemy battle line. Wide-eyed, he stared into a scene stolen from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, glassing five great behemoths, charging through shrouds of mist and black and brown clouds of fog, coal smoke, and burned gunpowder. And they flashed with lightning that rippled up and down their line as they salvo fired, lighting the smoke and mist with their fury while British shells crashed down among them, raising two-hundred-foot towers of water greened by the burning picric acid of exploding lyddite. Between glances, the lights, the chimes, and the trigger.
“We’ve ‘it her—by God, we’ve ‘it the bloody blighter,” came from the cockney voice of a spotter high on the mainmast. Saxon heard cheers.
Eye pressed to the rubber-lined eyepiece, Saxon saw flashes on Lützow’s bridge and more flashes on the forecastle. With the range down to 13,000 yards and with fifteen power magnification, he saw at least four 13.5-inch shells blast great chunks of plating, debris, and men high into the sky, twisting and turning, raining into the sea. But the German shells roared in, landing in evenly spaced rows, precise, regimented towers. Shocked, the gunnery officer watched as Lützow fired a full salvo and he actually saw eight 12-inch shells approach lazily like huge bluebottles, thundering into the sea two hundred yards short, two not exploding, richocheting and lolloping crazily over Lion. Her next salvo was over.
“Bracketed! The bloody bastards have bracketed us,” Saxon muttered as he squeezed the trigger.
He heard the cockney’s frantic report in his earphones. “Crikey! The fuckers ‘ave hit Indefatigable!”
Focusing far aft to the last ship in their column, Saxon saw a glow and then flames leapt from the trailing battle cruiser amidships. With horror, he watched as she vanished in a giant yellow-white pillar of flame that hurled “B” and “Q” turrets and most of her superstructure intact hundreds of feet into the air while strakes of plates, twisted wreckage, and men were consumed by a panorama of flames and spark-dappled smoke, raining and pockmarking the sea in a radius of at least a mile. Then there was nothing—absolutely nothing at all except the usual grave markers of the sea—casks, broken planking, shattered boats, debris, bodies, all bobbing as air escaped from the sunken, dead hull and erupted on the surface in huge green-gray geysers.
His numbed brain brought back something he heard Admiral Beatty say about the slaughter at Dogger Bank: “It was like egg shells battering each other with hammers.”
The howl of an approaching coven of banshees tore him from the lens and a cold snake unwound in his stomach as he realized Lützow had the range. Gripping the gun-ready board with wet palms, he held his breath, hunched, and pulled his head down into his shoulders like a frightened turtle. The other eleven men in the compartment all mirrored the gunnery officer, turning pasty white faces to starboard and the approaching hell. There was the sound of ripping canvas overhead. Detonations. The clank of metal on metal. Raining gravel.
“Over! They’re over,” came through the earphones.
But the shells were not all long. A defective barrel liner dropped one shot short and Saxon felt a single thud, followed by a deafening report as a large-caliber shell hit the foretop. Edwards and Strutt were hurled from their seats, the Dreyer table jumped up and down, snapping its deck bolts, and its Dumaresq calculator and rate grid clattered to the deck. Despite holding desperately to the gun-ready board, the commander was lifted from the seat as if catapulted, only held back from smashing his head into the overhead by his firm grip and the powerful muscles of his arms and shoulders. Then gagging on the nitric acid stink of explosives and twisting, he mana
ged to straddle his seat again and plant his feet on the deck. However, midshipman Ramsey screamed in pain and fell to the deck, gripping his forehead, blood oozing through his fingers from a gash ripped in his head by the crazily tilting periscope of the Barr and Stroud range finder, twisted and bent, hanging from the overhead by a single bracket.
Coughing acrid smoke from his lungs and blinking stinging moisture from his eyes, Saxon managed to say, “Henderson, Blakemore—help Mister Ramsey to the sick bay.”
Dazed, Ramsey’s two P.O.s pulled the midshipman to his feet and turned to the door.
The high, keening shriek of an animal in pain turned the commander to the Dreyer table. Sublieutenant Booth and his three ratings were all down. One, David Hollingsworth, a pink-faced tanner’s son from Camden Town, was a hideous confusion of angles. Crumpled on his side, his head was twisted on fractured vertebrae all the way around so that he stared at the commander over his left shoulder, eyes wide open like ivory billiard balls while his right leg was broken at the hip and stretched upward in an impossible kick, foot resting on the side of his broken neck. The yeoman was sprawled on top of Sublieutenant Booth, lower jaw smashed, exposing broken teeth and a shredded tongue. Again and again the yeoman screamed, choking, spraying blood, strangling on his own gore. The third rating sat numbly, back braced against the table.
Choking back a sour gorge rising in his throat, Saxon set his jaw grimly. “Out, Mister Booth—all of you. To the sick bay. We can’t fight a war with all this bloody noise.”
Gripping the Dreyer table, Booth and the uninjured rating slowly came to their feet. “And him?” the sublieutenant asked, gesturing at the grotesquely twisted corpse.
“He’s quiet. Leave him.”
Carefully, Booth and the rating pulled the gagging yeoman upright, undogged the door, and left.
Captain Chatfield’s voice in the commander’s earphones turned his head. “Main director—damage report.”
“Casualties. One dead, at least two wounded. Main range finder out, Dreyer table out,” Saxon answered. He turned to Edwards and Strutt, who had regained their seats and were staring into their lenses.
“Manned and ready,” they both said doggedly.
The gunnery officer spoke into his phone. “We can resume fire control from our Scott-Vickers gun director, sir.”
“Very well. The after director is out.” The rumble of an approaching salvo turned his head. He heard Strutt praying. Chatfield’s voice droned on, “Commander Saxon, I want. . .” There was a thud deep in the ship, a sound like an immense temple gong, and Lion leapt and twisted like a mortally wounded warrior. The gunnery circuit went dead.
“Blast it all!” the gunnery officer shouted, pounding his earphones with open palms. A strange voice stopped the hands in midswing and the commander sat like a Buddhist in prayer, listening—”. . . starboard side between frames forty-two and forty-six, a heavy shell has penetrated the side armor and burst in the starboard dynamo room, penetrated engine room three, cut through the fresh- and saltwater mains, severed the H.P. air pressure ring main. There is saltwater in engine room three—smoke, gauges can only be read by the aid of torches. . .”
“Damage control—blast it!” Knowing the ship’s electric telegraphy system had been damaged, he tore the earphones from his head and leaned over a clutch of voice tubes bolted to the left side of the gun-ready board. Opening one, he blew into it, raising a shrill whistling sound—a sound that grew and grew even after the commander stopped blowing. “These won’t be over,” he said grimly to himself. Both Edwards and Strutt were praying, but God had turned his back on Lion this day.
There was a bone-rattling shock, the clang of steel on steel, a flash, and an earsplitting roar followed by blackness, screams, Strutt crying “Mother,” unbearable heat, then pain as something massive struck Saxon’s chest, driving his breath from his lungs through a constricted channel that compressed his last breath into a shriek of pain and anger like the high, mindless keening of steam from a kettle. He felt himself lifted and flung skyward in a dream, turning and twisting into the cosmos. Then something darker than black engulfed him like the folds of a cloak as big as the universe.
Fifty seconds after leaving the compass platform, turret captain Lieutenant Geoffry Higgins entered “Q” turret through the single small hatch mounted in the rear of the turret above the barbette—a small opening protected by the massive steel overhang of the turret itself. Quickly, he moved to his station next to the emergency shell bin and in front of the range finder. Charged with adrenaline and churning with an amalgam of excitement and fear, he ignored his padded chair and stood facing a gun-ready board mounted on a partial bulkhead duplicating Commander Saxon’s. Next to the board was the firing key that had two positions: “Director” and “Local.” Below the firing key and appearing much like the ignition switch on his Rolls Royce Silver Ghost was the power supply key with two settings: “AC” and “Battery.” Overhead was his periscope and to his right stood a small table with a plotting sheet, drafting machine, dividers, and parallel rules. Above the table a calculator—a small Dumaresq machine—was bolted to the partial bulkhead with settings for elevation, bearing, deflection, cordite temperature, muzzle velocity, and all of the other factors required if ever the main director were knocked out of action and “Q” turret fired from local control. Below the calculator the big red fire emergency switch jutted from the panel. Connected to the magazines on a direct line, the switch set off a gong in the magazines that were flooded immediately by the “Chief Powder Monkey,” who simply turned a valve one counterclockwise turn, releasing tons of water instantly and inevitably drowning some of his men along with the explosives.
Snapping on his headset, Higgins looked down into the gun bay where his two gun captains manned their stations. Gunner Dennis Harwich, a burly black-haired youth from Bournemouth, was standing next to the breech of the right gun, hand on breech lever. The left gun captain was Gunner Stephen Chalmers, a bright-eyed, blond musician and music hall singer from Pembrokeshire. With an uncanny ear for music, he could sing the lyrics of scores of popular songs from memory: “Farewell, Leicester Square,” “Little Gray Home in the West,” “Oh, You Beautiful Doll,” “A Broken Doll,” “Tipperary” were just a few of the melodies he knew by heart, apparently learning the words after just hearing a song once. But he was not singing now. Instead, he was hastily adjusting his gloves and pulling down the long sleeves of the wool flash-resistant clothes every man in the sixty-man crew of the turret and magazines wore.
Geoffry loathed the tight, hot flash clothes that even fit down over his head and cheeks with holes for earphones. But if ever the powder. . . He shuddered, choking back the sour taste of vomit rising in his dry throat, mind racing with a strange confusion of thoughts. Why am I here? God, king, and country? Family tradition? It was more than that. And then he glimpsed a truth. War was a magnet to youth that must risk life to prove manhood while other men watched. And there was fear of missing this great event, this enormous exclamation mark in history. But he could die. Lose Brenda forever. Then the questions that plague all men just before engaging other men in the game of death called war raced through his mind: Will I stand up? Be brave? Conduct myself like a man?
Captain Chatfield’s voice rasped tinnily in his earphones, shocking him from his musings: “Main armament—director fire. All turrets acknowledge.”
With trembling fingers Geoffry reached up to the gun-ready board and threw the firing key to “Director” and the power supply key to “AC.” Then after hearing “B” turret acknowledge, he spoke into his phone, “’Q’ turret on ‘Director’ control and ship’s current.”
“Very well. All stations muster,” came back through his earphones.
Anxiously, he stared down at the left gun where Chalmers finally took his station next to the vaultlike breech. The gun was fully manned, the rammerman facing the breech and seated next to a lever reminiscen
t of an automobile’s emergency brake with two settings, “Ram” and “Withdraw.” In front of the rammerman and in direct line with his hydraulic ram and the breech was the loading tray, a curved polished brass surface like a baby’s bassinet wide enough for a single 1,250-pound shell or two 640-pound bags of powder. To the left of the rammerman, the powder hoist operator sat beside his powder cradle, ready to throw a switch that would dump two bags of powder into the loading tray. Behind the gun captain and in front of the rammerman stood the primerman, who loaded shells into the tray by pushing a foot lever activating a hydraulic lift that tilted and rolled a shell into the loading tray.
Geoffry darted his eyes to the shell hoist. Only one shell—coded black for armor piercing—was visible. But he knew the hoist was filled all the way to the magazine and the powder hoist, too, filled with silk-bagged cordite. Dangerous. Very dangerous. A mixture of nitroglycerine and nitrocellulose. The admiralty had replaced gunpowder and guncotton with the new propellant because of its slower burning, accelerating a shell along the length of the bore of a gun instead of decelerating, which was the tendency after the massive initial ignition of gunpowder. But cordite was highly unstable. Volatile. Even the introduction of a petroleum jelly-based solvent failed to slow the threat of “flash off” in the event of accidental ignition. The Germans encased theirs in brass; however, here, in Lion, Geoffry stared at flammable, old-fashioned silk bags.
And there was a scuttlebutt that after magazine fires ravaged Seydlitzoff Dogger Bank, the Germans had installed baffles in their turrets, baring flash downs to their magazines in the event of turret fires. But standing at his station staring down into the gun bay, Higgins saw loaded hoists, filled with shells and cordite, unimpeded all the way down to the magazines.
He heard the crater-deep voice of the magazine commander, Marine Major Francis J.W. Harvey, a tough veteran of Indian and South African campaigns, in his earphones: “Magazines manned and ready.”
