The gunner winked knowingly. ‘He would, wouldn’t he? Meanter say, it’s his party, ain’t it? Stands to reason he won’t run it down. But you’ll see.’
*
Next morning, on parade in the road outside the terrace, Sterne felt that the gunner might have been nearer to the truth than the captain. The men who had been ordered by a sergeant to fall in looked a motley crew. There were only about thirty of them and a number of these were wearing only bits and pieces of army uniform. Some were bareheaded; two were in woollen caps and seamen’s jerseys, one had plimsolls on his feet, while another was in wellingtons. All in all, he had never seen anything like it on a parade.
Strangely enough, the sergeant who had lined them up appeared to be quite unsurprised and started calling the roll as though nothing were amiss. Sterne was to learn later that the ill-clad men were survivors from a torpedoed ship and had lost all their kit. They were now waiting to be rekitted and sent home on leave.
The parade was pretty much of a mess in all respects. Reading from a clipboard, the sergeant called out the names, but several of those called were absent, apparently having already been embarked on some ship or other, while others were in fact present but not down on the list. It was obvious that the nominal roll was not being kept properly up to date, and Sterne got the impression that things were still very much in the process of being organised.
He had been there for two weeks, more or less killing time, when he was suddenly informed that he had been allotted a team of one lance-bombardier and four gunners, none of whom he had previously seen, and was to be embarked that day on board the S.S. Dagon. This also happened to be the day when the battery was to move its headquarters to Southport on the other side of the country and only one junior lieutenant had been left behind as a kind of rearguard to clear up any outstanding business.
Under his guidance they were transported on the back of an army truck to the naval depot where they were to draw their sea kit: hammocks, blankets, gumboots, oilskins and duffel-coats. In addition they were given a very basic civilian outfit of jacket, trousers and cloth cap for wear in any neutral ports to which they might go.
By the time all this gear had been collected it was well on into the afternoon, and they were now transported to a quay from which it was possible to see the S.S. Dagon moored between two other vessels some distance out in the river. A motor-launch was waiting at the foot of some very slippery-looking steps which might have been especially designed as a trap for hobnailed boots. And down those steps they were expected to carry all the kit that was piled up in the truck.
It was just not on. To the obvious disgust of the crusty and rather elderly man in charge of the launch, they began to drop the various items from the quay into the launch. One of the blankets missed its mark and fell into the water. It had to be fished out sopping wet, but the rest landed safely.
‘Now,’ the lieutenant said, ‘down you go.’
They descended the steps gingerly. There was green weed clinging to the lower ones and water was lapping softly against the stonework. Sterne caught that odour which he was to come to know so well, of a great river flowing to the sea. It stirred something in him, a desire he had once had as a boy of becoming a sailor, enchanted by tales of Drake and Nelson. It had remained with him, suppressed, thrust into the background, but still not quite dead. Now it came alive again, and in this odd way that old desire was to be gratified: as a soldier he was to become a sailor, a soldier-sailor.
The launch carried them to the three moored ships, and here another problem had to be faced. To get to the Dagon they would have to board the ship nearest to the shore. This vessel, without cargo, stood high in the water, and the great steel hull rose like a sheer cliff with nothing but a Jacob’s ladder dangling from the bulwarks to give access to the deck. A man could climb it, but not with the burden of his kit.
It was the lieutenant who pointed out the answer to the problem. ‘Send two men up to find a rope. They can lower it and hoist the kit.’
It was the obvious thing to do. The boatman had certainly known it, but he was sullen and not saying a word. He was just holding the launch alongside the ship and watching the proceedings with a cynical eye.
Sterne told two of the men to climb aboard, and they went up the ladder rather clumsily. They reached the top and vanished from sight. Time passed and the lieutenant became impatient.
‘Come with me, Bombardier. We’ll go up and see what’s what.’
They left the lance-bombardier to see to the kit and climbed the Jacob’s ladder. When they reached the deck of the ship the two gunners who had preceded them were just returning with a length of rope which they had found. They lowered one end over the side and the kit-hoisting operation began.
‘We’d better go and take a look at your ship, Bombardier,’ the lieutenant said. ‘This way.’
They crossed the deserted deck, the crew apparently being all ashore and nothing moving except a cat which came to see what was going on. A plank had been laid across the bulwarks to serve as a bridge between the two ships. Below it was a kind of iron-sided chasm at the bottom of which the dirty water was swilling around. The lieutenant walked across first with a nonchalance which might have been assumed, and Sterne followed, not looking down.
There was deck ballast on the Dagon, which was a three-island ship with well-decks fore and aft. The ballast looked like very poor slatey coal, and it had been dumped on the hatches and had dribbled down into the scuppers. Sterne had never imagined that ballast would be carried on deck; he would have expected it to be in the hold. But here it was; and very awkward it was to prove too.
‘We’d better find the captain,’ the lieutenant said. ‘If he’s aboard.’
The captain was. They found him in his cabin amidships. He was an elderly grey-haired man, who might possibly have been drawn out of retirement because of the emergency of war. His name was Wilson. The lieutenant introduced himself and Sterne.
‘The bombardier and his detachment will be manning the Bofors gun.’
‘But you know,’ Wilson said, ‘we don’t sail for another four days. I wasn’t expecting the gunners yet.’
‘Force of circumstances, I’m afraid. Anyway, it’ll give them time to settle in.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. The cook and the steward won’t be on board until morning. If they want some food I can maybe find something for them in the pantry.’
‘That will be fine, Captain.’
They took leave of him and went to have a look at the gun, which was mounted on a steel platform above the poop and had to be reached by way of a vertical ladder. It had a low steel surround in which were lockers for the ready-use ammunition. The gun was under a canvas cover, and when they had removed this it was revealed to be in a pretty dirty condition in spite of having been partially protected from the weather. There was condensation on the metal and a little rust here and there. Some of the soot which seemed to have laid a coating on every part of the ship had managed to creep under the canvas and deposit itself on the metal.
‘You’ll have to get to work on this,’ the lieutenant said. ‘It’s not had any care and maintenance lately.’
There was an old 4-inch breech-loading gun on the deck below, its barrel pointing over the stern. There were also two Hotchkiss machine-guns in boxes on each wing of the bridge, but none of these was Sterne’s responsibility. The lieutenant told him that there was a DEMS leading seaman and two ratings to handle that part of the armament. In the unlikely event of the 4-inch being needed for defence against a U-boat or surface raider members of the crew would make up the required number to operate it.
They went next to inspect the quarters, which turned out to be a wooden hut erected at the after end of the boat-deck. In this small cabin were six bunks in two tiers, a hinged board attached to one side to serve as a table, a collapsable bench to sit on and a washstand. This was the home he, David Sterne, was to share with five other men, of whom he as yet knew practically nothing apart
from their names, for a sea voyage of unpredictable duration.
Well, he had volunteered for it. There was a saying in the army: Never volunteer for anything. Perhaps there was reason in that.
*
Four days later the S.S. Dagon slipped down the Tyne and hit the swell of the North Sea. He was as sick as a toad, and it was little consolation to remember that Nelson was sick every time he went to sea. At least he had had a cabin to himself.
Chapter Fifteen – BALLAST
Three of the gunners were Scotsmen. Their names were McNab, Buchan and Douglas. Angus McNab was a tall, craggy, black-haired man. Rory Buchan was short and thick-set, with a pale complexion and prematurely white hair. Hamish Douglas was younger than the other two; a joker with red hair and a broad face.
The lance-bombardier came from Nottingham; his name was Joseph Carr. He was a quiet man, having little to say for himself. For a time Sterne thought he might be wise and intelligent but preferred to keep the wisdom locked away in his own head. Later he was forced to the conclusion that the head was pretty empty and that there was no wisdom to keep in it anyway. He wondered why the man had ever been given a stripe.
The fifth man was an East Anglian; he came from Norwich and his name was Albert Tuck. He was relatively old, being in his late thirties. He was also coarse, opinionated, unpleasant and thoroughly useless.
Not that any of them were much use when it came to the push, and Sterne had to resign himself to the fact that he had been dealt a bad hand. It was not altogether surprising; a lot of misfits had been weeded out of the light anti-aircraft batteries when the call had gone round for volunteers; it was only natural. He had had the misfortune to be landed with five of them. He wondered what Smith 124 was doing at that moment. He could have used a few men like him right now. But he would just have to make the best of what he had.
His seasickness passed fairly quickly and he was never to be bothered with it again. It had put him off smoking for a while, but when it had gone he went back to the cigarettes; they were free of excise duty when bought from the steward on board ship and consequently cheap to buy in tins of fifty. He smoked Capstan and sometimes State Express 777 or Senior Service. The old leading seaman, whose name was Gregg, rolled his own with cigarette tobacco that smelt like old rope burning.
They sailed up the east coast in a twin-column convoy of mixed coasters and deep-sea ships. The Dagon was a five thousand tonner and so old she seemed to be gradually turning to rust. Nobody bothered to scrape off the rust now; the universal grey paint was just slapped on top of it and after a while it came through again like a disease. The acrid smoke drifting back from the funnel had little pieces of grit in it. It caught at the throat and laid its quota of soot on the Bofors gun, which was uncovered and ready for action.
The convoy passed through the Pentland Firth by night and was attacked by a single German plane which they could hear but could not see. There was little response from the ships and the bombs all missed their target. The rest of the coastal voyage passed without incident.
Next day the S.S. Dagon anchored in Loch Ewe where an Atlantic convoy was being assembled. Leading Seaman Gregg, who was an old hand at the game, pointed out to Sterne the various types of ship gathered there in the shadow of the surrounding hills. There were some with the funnel near the stern and long catwalks connecting poop to bridge and bridge to forecastle.
‘Hell-ships,’ Gregg said.
He was a heavy, slightly stooping man with a deeply lined face. He had a full beard which was turning grey and a gunlayer’s badge of crossed gun-barrels on his sleeve, together with the anchor which signified his rank.
‘Hell-ships?’ Sterne said.
‘Tankers. You want to steer clear of them. They’ll maybe carry ten thousand tons of high octane petrol. Get a tin fish in that lot and up she goes, a proper Brock’s benefit. I’ve seen ’em. They set the sea alight. So my advice to you is, give ’em a wide berth.’
Sterne thought it was good advice, but the fact was that he would never be given the choice. If he was assigned to a tanker at any time in the future it would be useless to object. You had to take what came along.
*
There were forty merchant ships in the convoy that sailed from Loch Ewe when the anti-submarine nets at the entrance opened to let them pass. Once clear of the Western Isles they were formed up into eight columns, the destroyers and corvettes moving around them like collie dogs with a flock of sheep. In the middle was a larger ship, an armed merchant cruiser with six-inch guns for defence against surface raiders.
But this was destined to be a lucky convoy. The weather was good; no marauding Focke-Wulf Kurier found them and no U-boats attacked. Life for the gunners was uncomfortable in the cramped little hutch on the boat-deck, but comfort was hardly to be expected in the circumstances. Meals had to be fetched from the galley, which was if anything a degree filthier than the rest of the ship, and getting hot water for washing purposes entailed making a journey down several ladders to the engine-room in the bowels of the ship. Here the elderly reciprocating steam-engine did its work while the firemen in the stokehold fed the glowing furnace with coal and hoped no torpedo would suddenly smash its way through the hull.
But discomfort could be endured: the scrambling over the heaps of ballast, the climbing of swaying ladders, the watches on the gun in that narrow steel enclosure, the groping of one’s way around the blacked-out ship in pitch-darkness – all this was of no account as long as the vessel stayed afloat. That was what really mattered; not to have salt water pouring in through a great jagged hole in the side, not to be immersed in that hungry sea which had swallowed ships and seamen without number and could never be surfeited.
*
So the days passed and there came a time when the chief mate came to the gunners with an offer from the captain. The ship was now nearing her destination, which was Montreal, and it was necessary to clear the ballast from the well-decks before entering the St Lawrence River. If the gunners cared to take on the job they would be paid one pound each for their labour.
Sterne put it to the men. They were no longer doing gun-watches, being out of range of any German plane, and the task for six strong men with shovels looked pretty simple. They were all willing.
Sterne went back to the mate. ‘We’ll do it, sir.’
The mate gave a smile, which might have meant anything, and went away to inform the captain.
‘Easy money,’ McNab said. ‘We’ll do the wee job in a day. Two at most.’
The shovels were supplied by the bosun and they set to work, beginning with the for’ard well-deck, three men on each side. It took Sterne less than an hour to reach the conclusion that, whatever else it might be, it was certainly not going to be easy money, and the job was not going to be done in a day.
The ballast was hellish stuff to tackle. There were large pieces and there were small pieces, and there was some that was little more than dust. It was difficult to get the shovels into it, and then the load had to be lifted over the bulwark and tipped into the sea. It was back-breaking work, hand-blistering work, to which none of them had been accustomed. And much of the ballast had to be shifted twice or even three times, since it was impossible to fling a shovelful directly from the hatch and over the bulwark; it had to be first tipped on to the deck and shovelled from there into the sea.
Leading Seaman Gregg came and looked at them with a grin on his face. ‘Happy in your work?’
‘What do you think?’ Sterne said.
‘I think you’ve been had. The Old Man got me on that job once. Never again. You know how it is? If he don’t get rid of this ballast before we reach port he’ll have to pay through the nose to have it cleared by a shore gang. At six quid for the job he’s sitting pretty.’
‘You could have told me this before we took it on.’
‘You didn’t ask me,’ Gregg said.
Sterne thought about hitting him with the shovel, but thought better of it. It was not Gregg’s fault t
hat they had all misjudged the size of the job.
Tuck was in favour of their withdrawing from the contract. ‘I vote we chuck it in. I’ve had enough.’
‘No,’ Sterne said. ‘We agreed to do the job and we’re not going to back out now.’
‘I can’t do any more. I’ve got a bad back and my hands are sore.’
‘Ah, dinna be such a bloody milksop,’ Buchan said. ‘We’ll do it. We said we would, and we will.’
The others seemed to agree with him, and Tuck, seeing himself in a minority of one, gave in with a bad grace. The work went on. At the end of the first day they had made some impression on the hill of ballast but there was still a lot left. Next morning they were all stiff in the joints, but the stiffness wore off as they continued with the work. The sun was hot on their backs and they were sweating freely. The dust stuck to their sweat.
The convoy dispersed, each ship going its own way, and the S.S. Dagon ploughed a lonely furrow westward, the course of her passage marked by splashes on either side as each successive shovelful of ballast was tipped overboard. From their position on the bridge the officers could gaze down upon the sweating galley slaves below, but what they were thinking it was impossible to guess.
*
It took three days to clear the for’ard well-deck; and then there was the one on the other side of the mid-castle that had to be tackled. They were still hard at it when the ship entered the estuary of the St Lawrence River. They had been shovelling hard for six days when the task was finally completed and the decks were free from the hated ballast.
‘Three hundred and fifty tons,’ Gregg said. ‘That’s what you’ve shifted. It’d have cost forty or fifty quid in Montreal. Over two hundred dollars. But I expect you’re happy.’
‘Yes, I am,’ Sterne said. ‘Happy it’s finished.’
Chapter Sixteen – HOMEWARD BOUND
There was a heat-wave in Montreal; temperatures hitting ninety. The S.S. Dagon lay under the shadow of the monster silos and wheat poured into the holds in golden streams.
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