‘He’s the most selfish—’
She’d glanced round, at the door. Hugh heard it too: the telephone bell. He thought immediately of Nile, and that it might well be Tom Crick calling him back aboard. There was a clink out there in the hall as the old butler, McEwan, lifted the receiver. Hugh checked the time and saw that it was five forty-five, later than he’d thought…
‘Indeed he is, sir. If ye’d hold the line a wee moment?’
‘Sarah excuse me?’
He was out of the room, dodging the heavyweight McEwan as he crossed the hall. The receiver was hanging on its cord; he scooped it up, put it to his ear, stooped to reach the mouthpiece. Buchanan was a small man and he’d had the thing mounted too low on the wall for comfort. ‘Everard here.’
‘Crick here, sir. We’ve orders to raise steam. May I send your boat in?’
‘Yes. At once please, Tom.’
Hanging up, turning, he saw the butler hovering and Sarah in the doorway of the drawing-room.
‘I’m sorry, Sarah. I’ve no time even to thank your father for his hospitality.’
Sarah spoke to McEwan. ‘Would you tell Alec to bring the motor to the front, please?’
‘Certainly, m’lady.’
The old man lumbered away. Hugh took Sarah’s hand.
‘We’ve had so little time to talk. And ‒ what I began to say earlier—’
‘You should not have.’ She smiled. It was kind and friendly, nothing else. She laughed. ‘And now your country needs you!’
‘Sarah—’
‘Are you off to sea again – off to fight the foe?’
McEwan came shuffling ponderously back into the hall. Hugh shook his head. ‘No such luck.’
‘Shall I be seeing you again soon, then?’
‘I can’t tell.’ He saw her frown and added, ‘But stay a while? I’ll telephone when I can.’ He heard the car arriving, and as he let go of her hand his thoughts left her too, settled five, six miles away where a fleet was raising steam, recalling libertymen, would soon be hoisting-in boats, shortening-in anchor cables or passing slip-wires at the buoys. There’d be bunting fluttering from the yardarms, searchlights winking out their messages, boat traffic heavy for a while and then decreasing, dwindling until the capstans turned and bugle-calls floated across a darkening Firth which, when daylight came tomorrow, the citizens of Edinburgh would find empty.
Just this Rosyth force, he wondered? Or the whole Grand Fleet, the squadrons and flotillas from Scapa and Invergordon too?
Chapter 3
By May 28th it became clear that some considerable movement was on foot, and at noon on 30th May a message was sent to the Commander-in-Chief, Grand Fleet, that there were indications of the German fleet coming out. The position still remained obscure… At 5.16 pm a message went off to the Commander-in-Chief, and Senior Officer, Battle Cruiser Force, to raise steam, followed by a further wire at 5.40 pm ordering the fleet to concentrate to eastward of Long Forties ready for eventualities. The operations had begun.
Narrative of the Battle of Jutland
(H.M. Stationery Officer, 1924)
Another North Sea sweep; one was used to them by now. David Everard peered into the dimly-lit binnacle as Bantry, port screw going slow astern and the other slow ahead, swung her stern to starboard so that her bow would point south-east towards Hoxa Sound. She and the other cruisers and after them Hood’s battle cruisers and then the dreadnought squadrons, would be parading southwards through that two-mile gap during the next ninety minutes. It was nine forty pm. Ten minutes ago the destroyer flotillas had left their moorings and, invisible in the gathering night, streamed southwards through the destroyer exit, Switha Sound, while at the same time the light cruiser squadrons had weighed and started south. Boom vessels would at this moment be dragging back the great steel-mesh nets which guarded the fleet’s base against torpedo and submarine attack; beyond them, minesweepers had been busy for the last two hours, ensuring clear water as far down as Swona Island.
‘Light cruisers passing ahead, sir.’
Commander Clark, hunched in a wing of the bridge with binoculars at his eyes, made the quiet report. Wilmott, Bantry’s captain, raised his own glasses to watch the low, grey ships slide past. He was close on David’s right; his light-brown, neatly trimmed beard shone like gold in the binnacle’s soft radiance.
‘Pilot, how’s her head?’
David called down the voicepipe to the helmsman. ‘Stop port.’ He told Wilmott, ‘A point to go, sir.’ He’d been watching the slowly circling lubber’s line as it crept round the compass card. He called down again now, after a fifteen-second pause, ‘Stop starboard.’ None of the ships showed any lights. The routine for leaving the Flow in darkness, established in great detail in the commander-in-chief’s standing orders, could be initiated and conducted with few signals and no wasted time. Jellicoe had made his first signal at five forty pm, ‘All ships prepare for sea.’ At that point, a thousand different preparations had automatically been put in hand. At eight seven the second signal had come, ‘Fleet will leave harbour at nine thirty pm by the DT3 method.’ No further instruction had been necessary; with nine thirty established as zero-hour, all ships and squadrons knew the order of departure, the intervals at which they’d point ship, weigh anchor and move out. There’d be a gap of four thousand yards between the rear ship of each squadron of big ships and the leading ship of the next squadron following, and successive squadrons would pass alternately north or south of the Pentland Skerries, the last small, jagged bits of rock they’d see as they steamed east.
There’d been no wireless signals to alert the enemy to Grand Fleet movements. Even the Admiralty’s orders to Jellicoe and Beatty had been sent by land-line.
‘Cable’s up-and-down, sir!’
‘Vast heaving.’ Wilmott stooped, looking intently through his glasses. Bantry would follow astern of the ships of the Second Cruiser Squadron and act as one of them; they had to weigh and pass her first and she’d tag on behind. Tomorrow – Admiral Heath had passed the information by light some while ago to Wilmott – the Scapa force would be joined at sea by the ships from Cromarty, and when the rendezvous had been made Bantry would transfer to the first Cruiser Squadron, to which she now belonged.
‘Minotaur’s under way, sir.’ Nobby Clark spoke quietly. The whole movement, the whole Flow, was quiet. A watcher ashore, even if he should be on a shore as close as Flotta’s, might not become aware before tomorrow’s dawn that a single ship had sailed. Clark added gruffly, ‘And Hampshire, sir – and Cochrane—’
‘I see them, thank you… Tell the foc’sl stand by to weigh anchor.’
The sailor manning the navyphone to the cable-party said sharply into his mouthpiece, ‘Stand by to weigh!’ David called less urgently into his voicepipe. ‘Slow astern starboard.’ Bantry had over-swung a little. ‘Slow ahead port.’ His own orders floated back to him as the quartermaster re-intoned them, and he heard the clash of engine-room telegraphs down there in the steering position, felt the vibration through the soles of his half-boots as the ship’s engines were put to work. But not much was needed: he called down, ‘Stop both engines.’ One could imagine the engineers glancing at each other: what the ’ell they playin’ at, up there? He heard the commander’s voice from the bridge’s wing: ‘Shannon is about to pass ahead, sir.’
‘Weigh anchor.’
A muffled shout from for’ard; clanking resumed, as the last shackles were hove in. Shannon loomed ahead, her four tall funnels duplicates of Bantry’s – visible against the night sky as she passed.
‘Anchor’s aweigh, sir!’
They were waiting for the next report, and it came soon enough.
‘Clear anchor!’ Meaning that the anchor was out of water, in sight from the foc’sl and not fouled by anything such as another ship’s wires or cables. Bantry was in fact clear of the seabed, a free agent.
Wilmott muttered. ‘Carry on. Everard.’
‘Slow ahead together.’
Straightening from the voicepipe, David raised his binoculars to watch Bantry’s bow and Shannon’s track ahead of her. He felt the churning of the screws, a vibration right through the ship as she gathered way; fifteen thousand tons of her, and twenty-seven thousand horsepower inside a six-inch armour belt to overcome the vast inertia and then drive her – when speed might be called for, later – at her designed rate of twenty-three knots. At a pinch, she might manage a shade more than that.
Wilmott was impassive, immobile, watching Shannon through his glasses but leaving the handling of the ship to his navigator. David called down, ‘Port fifteen.’
Bantry’s bow swung to starboard just inside the wake left by Shannon; her forward momentum as she turned would carry her right into it, so that she’d finish precisely astern of that next-ahead. He stooped again: ‘Half ahead together.’
‘Half ahead together, sir!’ He ordered revolutions for twelve knots.
Astern of the cruisers would come Admiral Hood’s Invincible, Inflexible and Indomitable – they were up here from Rosyth, for gunnery practice, and Nile with her squadron of Queen Elizabeths had been sent south to take their place temporarily in Beatty’s force – and then the battle fleet led by Jellicoe in Iron Duke. While at this same moment Vice-Admiral Sir Martyn Jerram would be leading the Second Battle Squadron and Arbuthnot’s cruisers out of the Cromarty Firth, Invergordon. Beatty, presumably, would be putting out from Rosyth with his battle cruisers and the Fifth Battle Squadron, including Nile: and young Nick’s destroyer with them.
Nick’s pierhead jump into Lanyard still infuriated David. Obviously Uncle Hugh had arranged it somehow. Otherwise that bloody-minded little tyke who’d been about to go under report – which effectively would have put a stopper on his naval career – could never have been even considered for a destroyer job!
They ganged up – Hugh, Nick, Sarah…
Would Captain Hugh Everard, Royal Navy, have lifted as much as one finger to help his older nephew, David Everard? Would he, hell!
David bent to the voicepipe and called down, ‘Steer three degrees to port!’
Uncle Hugh, and Sarah. His own brother’s wife, for God’s sake. It had been skirt-chasing that had wrecked Hugh Everard’s career and marriage, years ago. Whatever he said, everyone knew that was the truth of it… Wilmott spoke suddenly out of the darkness, ‘Which side of the Skerries do we go?’
‘South of them, sir.’
They were passing through Hoxa Sound now, beacons flashing dimly on each side; no stars visible; wind south-east, force three. Bantry trembled under her engines’ gentle thrust; she’d begun to pitch a little, as if sensing the open sea ahead and lengthening her stride for it. Below, in stifling-hot boiler-rooms, stokers would already be glistening with sweat as they swung their shovels with piston-like rhythm into the banks of coal and slung it into roaring furnaces… The boom-vessels, trawlers which operated the net defences by hauling them to and fro to allow ships to pass through them, loomed up suddenly out of the dark. For a moment or two they seemed so close that one might have reached out and touched them before they fell away astern and disappeared. As Bantry passed the second pair, the outer gate, David called, ‘Porter – note the time, in the log.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
A useful lad, David’s ‘tanky’.
Wilmott ordered, ‘Secure the foc’sl.’
They’d be shivering with cold down there by now, but until a ship was clear of harbour an anchor had to be kept ready for letting go, in case of some emergency. Now it would be cranked home into its hawse-pipe, the screw-slip hammered on and tightened, Blake slip secured and lashed, lashings and securing tackles would be rigged between the two cables, port and starboard, hove taut and secured. Bantry was out now, her pitching to the long, smooth swell more pronounced as she steamed in Shannon’s wake towards Swona Island five miles ahead. It was in the vicinity of Swona that one felt the impact of the Pentland tide-rip, a current of as much as ten knots which, if the bridge and quartermaster weren’t alert and ready for it, could take a ship’s bow as she steamed into it and swing her clear around through sixteen points.
A new arrival on the bridge approached Wilmott. David saw that it was Harrington, Bantry’s first lieutenant, up from his duties as cable officer.
‘Foc’sl secured for sea, sir.’
‘Thank you. Pilot, are we falling astern?’
David bent to the voicepipe and ordered an increase in revolutions. He hadn’t noticed the slight widening of the gap between Bantry and the ship ahead of her. He told himself, Come on, wake up. It was an illusion that Wilmott had left it to him to take the ship out of harbour; the man was at his elbow, watching each move, every detail. Discovering – as a new CO had to, of course – whom he could rely on, who might need watching. He'd only taken over just over a week ago, and he’d not had his fourth stripe much longer than a month; he was a man bent on further swift strides up the promotion ladder, and David was aware that the coat-tails of a young, ambitious post captain weren’t bad things to snatch a tow from. So far, touch wood, Wilmott seemed to approve of his young navigating lieutenant. David told himself, I don't need my damned uncle’s help, I don’t even want it! I detest the lot of them!
They‘d see, one day – Hugh, Nick, Sarah – who had the whip hand. It might not be all that long before they saw it, either. As elder son and therefore heir to a baronet – father currently occupied in – or at least not far behind – the Flanders trenches, one was fully aware of the possibilities. The French were saying Ils ne passeront pas: but a Hun breakthrough at Verdun, where the bloodiest fighting of the war had been going on for months now, wouldn’t surprise anyone. Wilmott broke into his thoughts.
‘How many miles to Swona, Pilot?’
‘Roughly ten, sir, but I’ll—’
‘That’s near enough. What’s course and speed after we pass the Skerries?’
‘South seventy-three east, sir, seventeen knots.’
‘And our disposition?’
‘Number one, sir, with ourselves added on the starboard wing. But we’re to remain in close order ten miles ahead of
The battle fleet until daylight, and then spread out.’
Wilmott had known the answers before he’d asked the questions; the orders for the cruisers’ disposition had been passed by light from Minotaur while the fleet had still been raising steam. David bent his tall, thin body again, to put his mouth to the voicepipe. ‘Quartermaster.’
‘Sir!’
‘In a few minutes we’ll feel the Firth tide. Watch your steering very closely.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘Pilot—’ Wilmott again, ‘what revolutions will give us seventeen knots?’
‘One hundred, sir, near enough.’
‘Damned odd!’
‘Yes sir.’ The ratio of revolutions to speed was unusual, in this class of ship. Wilmott paced over to stand beside Clark, his second-in-command, and David heard him mutter, ‘I’d like to be past Swona before we fall out special sea-dutymen.’ He was coming back now. ‘Whose watch will it be?’
Aubrey Steel, who’d been loitering somewhere at the back of the bridge, answered the question.
‘Mine sir.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Lieutenant Steel, sir.’
‘Oh, Steel…’
When Swona was astern, and Bantry pounding along at seventeen knots on the new south-easterly course, David handed the ship over to Steel and went down to the wardroom. He’d have a cup of coffee, he thought, before turning in. As navigator one had no watch to keep, but one did have to put in a fair amount of time on the bridge – particularly with Wilmott watching like a bearded hawk… It was warm here in the wardroom. Overhead lights shone on white-enamelled bulkheads and on the high polish of the mahogany mess table; Bantry quivered as she rose and fell, driving rhythmically into a low swell and light headwind. Her padre, the Reverend
Pickering, was dozing on the sofa, Maudsley and Laidlaw – both watchkeeping lieutenants – were playing a game of Attaque, and Rutherford the surgeon lieutenant was fiddling half-heartedly with a jigsaw. Other officers dropped in and drifted out again while the ship relaxed into her cruising routine. There was an air of boredom; this was just another sweep, and the Grand Fleet would draw another blank, and then it would be Scapa again and next week another sweep… For the Grand Fleet this war seemed to be a matter of fighting not Germans so much as boredom. The Hun didn’t care to face the fire-power of the British dreadnoughts; he’d make his occasional sneak raid on the English coast, lob shells into Hartlepool or Scarborough and kill or maim a few civilians, but he’d always nip back quickly to his bases in the Elbe or Jade before anyone could make him pay for it. Time and again Jellicoe had led his fleet in sweeps across the North Sea, hoping to catch Germans in his net; or on coat-trailing exercises on the Hun doorstep tempting him to come out and fight. The Hun was wary; his strategy was to lure the Royal Navy over mines or submarines, or trick some detached squadron into facing the full weight of the High Seas Fleet. The Germans wanted odds clearly in their favour, in order to whittle down the superior British strength without risking losses of their own: and Jellicoe, who knew that the continued existence of British naval power was as vital to Britain and her Empire as a heart was vital to a living body, wasn’t being had. It was difficult to see much prospect of real action for the Grand Fleet’s big ships.
‘Hello. David.’
Johnny West, Bantry’s gunnery lieutenant. Plump, balding, cheerful. In a few months he’d be putting up the extra half-stripe that would make him a lieutenant-commander. It was still a bit of a novelty, a rank introduced in 1914 for lieutenants of eight and more years’ seniority. He’d flopped into an armchair next to David’s, and reached back to the table to grab yesterday morning’s Daily Mail. The wardroom door banged open again and Commander Clark came in, pushing the door shut behind him with his heel. A stocky, aggressive-looking man, he walked with a kind of strut. Blue-eyed, and red-faced from the cold night air, he stared round at each officer in turn. His glance swept over David, barely pausing; he nodded to Johnny West.
The Blooding of the Guns Page 5
