by John Winton
A voice counted out the last seconds over the broadcast.
‘Five. Four. Three. Two. One. . . Start!’
Puffs of smoke appeared at the cowlings. An engine fired and was joined by two or three more and finally by all. The sound expanded and beat against the island until the Beattys could feel it through their shoes and in their bones. The propeller blades swung slowly and idly, spun faster, until their individual profiles merged in a shimmering disc. The two rows of inanimate aircraft were alive and throbbing. The flight deck had come to life.
Yellow-jacketed directors signalled the chocks away and motioned the aircraft forward, round and up the flight deck towards the catapults. The directors stood at intervals to accept the aircraft from each other and pass it on to their successors.
The sound grew to an almost unbearable crescendo as the first aircraft came past the island and jolted on to the catapult. The bridle and hold-back were hooked on. The Flight Deck Officer held up a green flag. The aircraft flattened its wheels on the flight deck and strained against the hold-back while the pilot opened the throttle. At full throttle the aircraft crouched on the catapult with its engine screaming, quivering in an attitude of restrained power. The group of handlers squatting between the catapults put their hands to their ears. The Flight Deck Officer whirled the green flag.
The Flight Deck Officer glanced forward, then aft, and dropped the flag. The hold-back flew apart. The aircraft shot away, skimmed along the flight deck, out over the sea and climbed away from the ship. The Flight Deck Officer turned and held up the green flag again for the next aircraft already waiting on the other catapult.
One after the other the aircraft were secured on the catapult, worked up to full power and launched from the ship. The last aircraft dipped over the end of the flight deck, while the Beattys caught their breaths, and slowly climbed again, flying in a crab-like motion sideways and upwards. The flight deck was silent again.
‘Not good,’ murmured Tim Castlewood.
‘Does anyone ever get launched straight into the sea?’ asked Maconochie.
‘Occasionally someone gets a cold shot but it’s only very occasionally and even then nine times out of ten it’s something to do with the engine. It’s not normally the catapults. This ship has never yet given anyone a cold shot. Touch wood. Most of the cheap thrills come when they’re landing on. This particular lot are pretty good though. I don’t expect we’ll see any expensive sights today,’
The flying display continued. Aircraft took off and were put through their paces. They dropped bombs and fired rockets at a splash target. They power-dived and flattened out just over the ship. They flew past the ship in formation. Every hour a fresh detail took off and the previous detail landed on. The show was beautifully timed and carried out. The flight deck drill was impeccable.
‘It’s been a good day,’ said Tim Castlewood as they watched the last aircraft fly low over the ship and turn into the landing circuit.
The batsman stood out on his small platform, shaking his flags to stream them in the wind, and waited, arms stretched and feet straddled to receive the aircraft.
As the aircraft crossed the round-down the batsman’s flags cut sharply out of sight. The aircraft appeared to hang in the air, then dropped and a burst of vapour flew from each side of the wheels as they touched the deck. The aircraft bounced, struck the deck again, missed all the wires and in a slow lazy glide curved into the barrier.
After the first sound of tearing metal there was a moment of silence, a total suspension of movement like the sudden holding of a breath. Then simultaneously the shape of the aircraft dissolved in a gout of fire and the flight deck swarmed with running figures.
Hoses were run out by men who stumbled and scrambled in their haste. Two jets of foam soared out over the fire and were followed by two more and by two more until their streams merged and covered the aircraft in a blanket of foam. The heat of the fire was intense enough to touch the cheeks of the men watching from the island. A cap dropped from the island and floated downwards. It landed in front of one of the men in fireproof suits who trod on it, kicked it into the foam, and advanced onwards into the fire. The two men in the ponderous suits vanished into the smoke and re-emerged with the pilot between them. Standing dwarfed by the helmeted inhuman figures on either side of him, the pilot looked up into the island and smiled. Paul thought it a terrible smile, like Christian’s after the death of Apollyon.
‘Jesus!’ breathed Paul. ‘I thought he’d had it.’
Tim Castlewood nodded. ‘So did he, I guess. The Martians in the suits were pretty quick or he would have had his chips. Lucky it stayed the right way up. If it had turned upside down, I reckon that character would have had the chop.’
‘Bloody idiot,’ said a pilot wearing a beret who was standing near the Beattys.
‘Why, sir?’ asked Paul.
‘Playing to the gallery. Who does he think he is, a bloody gladiator? He’s damned lucky he didn’t bounce over the side, poling his stick about like a---.’
‘You there! You with that bloody idiotic grin on your face! That trog there!’
The Beattys and the other goofers turned to see who was shouting.
It was the carrier’s Commander (Air). He was a tubby man with white hair and cheeks the colour and roundness of a peony. He was known as the best children’s party Santa Claus from Lee-on-Solent to Lossiemouth but now, as he stood at the door of Flyco and shouted at the Beattys, it was hard to picture him in the part.
‘You, halfway down there! Stand back the rest of you!’
‘Me, sir?’ asked Maconochie.
‘Yes, YOU, blast you! What the hell’s the use of our making you trogs take your scrofulous caps off if you’re going to let go of them every time you hear a bang? Like a bloody girls’ school giggling and chattering and dropping your handbags! I don’t know where you’re going in the future, trog, but keep out of the Fleet Air Arm!’
Commander (Air) stumped back into Flyco and slammed the door.
‘Golly yes, said Tim Castlewood, ‘I’d forgotten about the cap. I knew there’d be a nausea about it. Get a grip, for God’s sake,’ he said to Maconochie. ‘Trog!’
The last flames had already been extinguished and the blackened, foam-smothered aircraft was surrounded by men with cranes and lifting tackle like scavenging ants, who hoisted the carcass up and dropped it over the side into the sea. Other men with brooms and hoses swept and hosed the foam off the flight deck and down into the scuppers. A third party removed the wrecked barrier and erected a new one. In half an hour no trace of the crash remained except a damp patch on the flight deck and a heap of torn wire near the starboard walkway.
The crash had been more spectacular than serious; less dramatic crashes had done more damage to other aircraft and had killed the pilots. But it made a deep impression on the Beattys. Those like Paul who did not wish to be pilots had had their objections given concrete and spectacular form and those who did, like Tom Bowles, were given food for thought.
A few days after the visit to the carrier, four Motor Torpedo Boats came to Dartmouth. They were under the command of a large black-bearded Lieutenant-Commander whom The Bodger greeted as an old friend and drinking partner. Although he had only come to Dartmouth for the night because he did not like the weather report and wished to renew his acquaintance with a few of the local hostelries, Blackbeard consented, after some talk and several beers, to take the Beattys out in his boats for a forenoon.
‘Provided,’ he said, ‘they’re not sick, don’t tread on my toes and don’t ask bloody silly questions. For you, Bodger, I’ll do it. Now tell me, Bodger, how the hell did you get this job at Dartmouth?’
Once out of the harbour, the boats opened up to forty knots, flinging clouds of spray to either side and leaving a broad path of boiling water behind them. Blackbeard showed off his boats as though they were chorus-girls. He made them turn in line ahead and abreast, keep close station at full speed, weave and dodge between each other
, and split apart and come together in station again. They practised torpedo and gun attacks on each other and exercised man overboard with a buoy.
After two hours at forty knots, the initial thrill had worn off. The boats had finished their evolutions and the cadets had been shown the torpedo tubes, the guns and the depth charges. There seemed nothing more to do except go back to Dartmouth. The Beattys were therefore relieved rather than alarmed when Maconochie created a diversion by falling overboard when the boats were turning at high speed.
When Blackbeard’s attention had been drawn to Maconochie’s head bobbing in the wake, his first proposal was apparently to leave him there. But when he saw that the other boats had also sighted Maconochie and were turning to pick him up, Blackbeard thrust his quartermaster aside and seized the wheel himself. He flexed his mighty fingers on the spokes, hauled the boat round by main force, and directed it towards the now sounding Maconochie.
The four Motor Torpedo Boats converged on Maconochie at a combined speed of more than seventy miles an hour. Just as it seemed that Maconochie was certain to have his head removed from his shoulders, Blackbeard throttled down and stopped. The other boats bucketed by, throwing sheets of spray and derisive shouts over Blackbeard, his boat, and Maconochie. Blackbeard tightened his lips.
Maconochie was hauled on board, dripping.
Blackbeard leaned out of his tiny bridge.
‘Come here, excrement!’
‘Cadet Maconochie, sir,’ said Maconochie, saluting.
‘I don’t care what your bloody name is,’ growled Blackbeard. ‘You listen to me. I didn’t want you in my ship anyway and it’s only because your training officer is a friend of mine and you’re on his slop-chit that I didn’t run you down just now. I don’t know which branch of the service you’re thinking of joining but don’t come in boats! Understand?
‘Yes, sir!’
The third visit of the term involved the Beattys in more personal effort. It was a four-day cruise in a destroyer of the Plymouth Local Flotilla. The Beattys were to join on Friday morning and leave late on Monday evening.
The cruise was treated as an evolution. The Beattys were prepared for it with lectures, demonstrations and extra kit as carefully as though they were all about to embark on a polar expedition.
The Chief Bosun’s Mate gave a lecture and demonstration of that most intricate piece of naval architecture, the hammock.
‘When you’ve got your ‘mick slung between two hooks, you stand on the right side of the ‘mick, that’s the left side looking towards the head, with your lashing in your right hand. Let’s see if you’ve got that.’
The Chief Bosun’s Mate passed along the row of cadets and still unlashed hammocks.
‘Get a bit closer, lad. That’s right. Then you takes your lashing in your left hand and you pass the end over your ‘mick with your right hand, bring it under and back to your left hand making half hitches all the way down the ‘mick as you go. Seven half hitches there should be, one for each day of the week. Now you try it. Pass it over, half hitch, pass it over. Half hitch Monday, passitover, alfitch Tuesday, passitover, alfitch Wednesday, passitover. Alfitch Thursday. Alfitch Friday. I knew it. I knew it! You’ve got it all balled up. I don’t see as how you could get it wrong, I don’t. Cor, what a bunch o’ coconuts. Never seen such a bunch o’ knitting. Now stand back a bit! Let’s have a look’ere you, for Chrissakes. Mention Wise Owl once more and I’ll crown you, I will!’
The Bodger lectured on ship life in general. He outlined the appropriate Beatty action for every major disaster, from abandoning the ship to an outbreak of scurvy. The Bodger enjoyed his lectures.
‘The sharp end at the front is called the bows and the blunt end at the back is called the stern.
‘Don’t call them lavatories, they’re heads, and they’re not portholes, you only have portholes in P. & O. boats, they’re scuttles.
‘Don’t forget to salute the quarterdeck when you go on board. It’s a very old service custom, the kind of thing people outside the Navy spend their time trying to find the origin of. Keeps ‘em out of mischief. For you and me it’s sufficient that it’s an old service custom. There’s no need to salute twice and ask permission to come on board like they do in American films, just salute and get out of the way and keep out of the way. I’ve heard that some of you haven’t been too successful in keeping out of the way of senior officers on previous visits. I recommend you do it this time. Keep out of the Captain’s way until after breakfast, in fact if I were you I’d keep out of his way all the time. He’s a very old friend of mine and he doesn’t like cadets, least of all Special Entry cadets. The Engineer Officer is called the “Chief but don’t let me hear any of you calling him that. He doesn’t like cadets either.
‘You will live on one of the messdecks and pretty sordid it will be too, I can promise you. Try to learn as much as you can from the ship’s company although I don’t imagine they’re very fond of cadets either.
‘If you have to abandon ship, it’s no good rushing for the Carley floats, there are only enough for the ship’s company. Wait for the pipe “Abandon ship, stand fast cadets” and then jump.
‘There’s nothing you can do about an attack of scurvy, anyway. You should have been drinking lime juice for the last six months and as they haven’t got any limers for you to drink in any case you’ll just have to lump it.’
The Beattys wondered what manner of ship this was, which seemed to combine the most sinister characteristics of an Arab slave trading dhow and the Altmark, and what sort of man commanded her, who appeared to be a crossbred of Captain Bligh and the Angel of the Lord.
The ship was the Rowbottom, a wartime emergency class destroyer in need of a good scrub down and a coat of paint. Her Captain was a pale Lieutenant-Commander with hair as red as Swinburne’s and a delicate complexion, as though he had just stepped from a pre-Raphaelite painting.
In spite of his saintly appearance, the Captain was hailed by The Bodger with an ecstatic roar of greeting as the Dartmouth boat came alongside.
’Poggles, old wineskin! How’s life?’
Poggles looked down from his bridge, whither he had retreated to ‘watch the advance of the cadets, and smiled weakly. He waved a weary hand.
‘Passing fair,’ murmured Poggles wanly. He raised the hand which he had not previously waved and took a sip out of the beer tankard he held in it. ‘Bearing up, you know. How’s yourself?’
‘Fine, you old lecher!’ roared The Bodger.
Poggles winced.
‘Come up and have a grog.’
Poggles had another glass of beer ready for The Bodger.
‘Cheers, Poggles.’
‘Cheers, Bodger.’
‘Where are the proletariat going to live?’
‘After messdeck. Same as last time. Not very palatial but there isn’t anywhere else.’
Poggles looked over the bridge parapet at the cadets coming on board. There seemed to be hundreds of them. They were swarming up out of the boat, humping their bags and hammocks. The iron deck was already alive with overawed cadets wondering where to go without getting in the way.
Poggles cupped his hands.
‘Petty Officer Moody!’
A tall Petty Officer who had been forced against the guardrail by the press of cadets looked up.
‘Show these cadets their messdeck.’
Poggles came back and resumed his beer.
‘Bolshie-looking lot you’ve got this time, Bodger?’
‘That’s the cream of England you’ve got there, boy.’
‘Don’t joke,’ said Poggles.
He sipped his beer meditatively. He was an imaginative man. He imagined the Beattys living in their messdeck. He closed his eyes and a faint shudder shook his frame. So might Bishop Hatto have thought of the rats swarming into his tower, knowing that the tower was stiff with rat poison.
Petty Officer Moody made no comment on the messdeck. He indicated it with his thumb and stood back for the ca
dets to go down.
Rowbottom operated with a reduced complement and the after messdeck was normally used for storing equipment. It had not been used as a human habitation for some time, not in fact since the previous term of Beattys had lived there, four months before.
One corner of the compartment contained several sacks of potatoes. In the opposite corner were three rusty valves and a red bicycle. A light dusting of dried peas covered the floor except by the ladder where there was an unidentifiable but sinister red stain.
The Beattys were left alone to stow away their gear while Rowbottom put to sea. It was not until the ship was outside the harbour that the silent Petty Officer Moody returned and made spasmodic visits to the messdeck. On each visit he selected several cadets with a jerk of his thumb and led them off.
Petty Officer Moody showed the cadets tiny hutch-like compartments in the bridge superstructure which were filled with machines which clicked and whirred. The machines were guarded by troglodytic little men stripped to the waist who perched on stools like gnomes and glared malevolently at the Beattys over the pages of paper-backed novels. Petty Officer Moody did not venture any explanation of the functions of either the machines or the men. The visit, if visit it could be called, was conducted in complete silence.
After a quarter of an hour of muteness, Tom Bowles asked: ‘How many gyro compasses has this ship got, P.O.?’
Petty Officer Moody stopped in his tracks. Then he turned and fixed Tom with a basilisk stare. He gazed at Tom menacingly for a few moments. Finally, and reluctantly, he spoke.
‘An officer doesn’t have to know anything,’ he said witheringly, as though he were addressing a child who was being wilfully stupid. ‘All you have to do is stand up there and say “Port Thirty” and then when we’re swinging good and proper say “Steer three-two-zero, Quartermaster”.’
