‘Ah!’ ‒ Johnson from… Lanyard’s funnels were pouring smoke; it curled down to brush the welter of sea astern, stream over Moorsom and spread wider, drifting in the slow-moving haze of all five destroyers’ smoke; it might just help to hide the next division until they burst through it, perhaps confuse the picture to German eyes. The distance between Lanyard and Nicator seemed constant so far, although down below there Worsfold and his engine-room staff must have been squeezing every ounce of pressure out of her. The sounds of battle were only a distant thunder now; the noise that ruled here was all ship-noise, sea-noise, wind-rush, the turbines’ scream and the fans’ roar and the thrum of vibration in the destroyer’s plates, mast, rigging: not separate sounds, but one great orchestra of movement urgency.
‘Take a look. But be quick!’
Johnson was holding the binoculars out towards Nick. He took them, leant back against the searchlight mounting to steady himself on the jolting bridge. It didn’t work: the mounting, solid as it appeared to be, was shaking like everything else. The only way was to balance on feet spread well apart and avoid contact with bridge fittings. He saw what Johnson had wanted him to see, had prophesied: a flotilla of destroyers was moving out from the head of the enemy battle cruiser line. The counter-move. Judging by the smoke pluming astern of them, they were moving, like this flotilla, at high speed.
Nick nodded as he handed the glasses back. The first lieutenant stooped slightly to shout into his ear. ‘Set the gunsights at ten thousand yards and I’ll tell you when to open fire.’ He pointed at the Barr and Stroud transmitter dials; ‘I’ll give you the early ranges too, on the leading ships. After that you’ll have to select your own targets and carry on in “rapid independent”. Understand?’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
He was anxious to get on with it, do it instead of talk about it. Johnson pointed: ‘Looks like we’ll have ’em approaching on the starboard bow, unless they cross over. Their object’ll be to force us to turn away ‒ which of course we shan’t do.’ He grinned. ‘Down you go. Sub.’
Nick wondered, as he climbed down the ladder, its metal runners singing like guitar-strings, whether that had been the first real smile he’d ever seen on Johnson’s face. He couldn’t remember seeing one before. Was this ‒ action ‒ what everybody lived for? Down here on the destroyer’s upper deck the ship’s motion, the sensation of her battering herself to destruction against sea, wind, and her own reluctance to move at such a speed, was even more pronounced than it had been up on the bridge. The sea’s surface was so much closer, the steel of the deck less remote from the actual motion than the bridge was, stuck up there on top of it. The highest curve of the bow-wave was higher than the actual deck, so that one felt less ‘on’ the sea than ‘in’ it: and the sound of the sea matched that of the ship, like the sound of a mill-race magnified a dozen times… Nick moved aft, past the slung whaler and the foremost funnel, and up on to the raised platform of the midships’ four-inch gun.
‘Layer! Leading Seaman Hooper?’
‘Sir!’ Hooper was a tall, thin sailor, stooped and narrow-shouldered, with a strangely triangular, narrow-eyed face. On his left arm he wore the killick-emblem of a leading hand above two good-conduct badges; on his right, the crossed gun-barrels and star of a gunlayer. He’d been peering over the top of the gunshield while the rest of the gun’s crew stood waiting in its shelter… From the bridge, Johnson timed it perfectly: as Hooper and his men turned towards Nick, the buzzer sounded. Hooper ducked to his receivers, and a second later shouted the order ‘Load!’
Nick stood back and watched. He saw that the shot-ready racks and cartridge racks had already been uncovered: shells lay nose-down, their brass bases gleaming. The number three snatched out the first one and slid it into the open breech; number four ‒ a stout, one-badge seaman with tattoos on the backs of his hands loaded a cartridge in behind it: number two ‒ young, fresh-faced, no badges ‒ slammed the breech shut.
‘Ready!’
They all looked cheerful, eager. Nick checked the readings on the receivers against those on the sights: range ten thousand ‒ on the dial that looked like a hundred – and deflection fifty right. It might become more, firing at a destroyer going flat-out in the opposite direction; at the full rate of crossing it could be at least sixty knots. But they’d most likely be approaching at an angle.
‘Layer. Here a minute.’ Out beside the gunshield, standing in the platform’s saucer-shaped rim. Nick found he could just see the oncoming German boats. They were pointing straight at the thirteenth flotilla now, while in the distance way behind them, several miles farther away and indistinct in the smoke-haze left by the speeding enemy destroyers, Hipper’s battle cruisers still pressed southwards.
‘See ’em there?’
‘Aye, sir!’ Hooper grinned. ‘I got me eye on ’em!’
‘You’ll get your open-fire order from the bridge. Follow receivers to start with, but when they’re really close you’ll have to shift from target to target and make your own corrections. Right?’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
He dropped down to the upper deck and headed aft, to see that the quarterdeck gun’s crew knew what was happening. Passing the ventilators, the roar of fans was almost deafening. It wasn’t much short of a miracle that Lanyard was keeping up with the more modern N-class boats ahead of her; under his feet ‒ in the engine-room and in the two boiler-rooms which he’d just passed over ‒ was where that miracle was being worked.
He looked astern, and saw Moorsom, well back from her station. She’d lost a cable’s length since he’d left the bridge. Beyond her ‒ but not far beyond ‒ the second division of the flotilla was coming flat-out on this division’s heels. If Moorsom didn’t watch out, they’d soon be overhauling her. Between him and those ships astern and in the same line of sight Lanyard’s wake was piled like a great heap of snow, higher than her counter, it managed the trick of staying that high while at the same time it melted constantly away.
‘Hey, Sub!’
Mr Pilkington, the gunner (T), was peering down at Nick from the searchlight platform between the two sets of tubes, the for’ard pair of which had been trained out to starboard and the after pair to port. Pilkington looked weird: at the best of times he had a gnome-like appearance ‒ small, short-legged, with a large head and fiercely bristling eyebrows ‒ and now he’d jammed his cap so hard down that its peak was almost covering his eyes. Nick nodded to him. ‘About a dozen Hun destroyers, Mr Pilkington.’
‘So we bin told, Sub,’ the gunner nodded. ‘An’ so I seen. What I want you to tell me, ’owever, is would there be a light cruiser wi’ em, leader sort o’ thing?’
Had there been one larger shape, to the right of the flotilla, in support of it?
‘There might be. I—’
‘Might be!’ Pilkington stared skywards, muttering his dissatisfaction. Now he was looking down ‒ for sympathy perhaps ‒ at his torpedo gunner’s mate, an outsize petty officer squatting toad-like between the tubes of the for’ard mounting. The same position on the after tubes was occupied by a leading torpedo-man, while the number twos, lacking fixed seats, leant beside their training handwheels. Nick moved on aft, and found that the stern gun was loaded and had the right settings on its sights. He explained the general situation and intentions to Stapleton, the grey-haired gunlayer, a three-badge able seaman. Stapleton told Nick, pointing along the barrel of his gun ‒ it was trained round as far for’ard as it would go ‒ ‘First customer’s pretty near in range now, sir.’
It was a fact. But Nestor, Nomad and Nicator would be the first to open fire; there’d be that much forewarning. Looking for’ard there. Nomad was in sight out to starboard, on what was going to be the engaged side; and she was closer, as if she’d fallen back, perhaps changing places with Nicator? Or she might have swung over to try a long torpedo shot at the battle cruiser line before the German flotillas got in the way… Nick looked around him, checking that the ammunition-supply party was ready wi
th the trap open. It was a circular hatch in the deck behind the gun, and it led down into the wardroom, which was the compartment immediately underneath. There was a similar trap in the deck of the wardroom, and below that were the after four-inch magazine and shellroom: the ammunition was passed up through the first hatch and through the wardroom, where a sailor on a steel ladder pushed it through to the supply ratings here on the upper deck. There were half a dozen of them, since the cartridges and projectiles had to be delivered to the midships gun as well as to this one.
And they ought to get some up there now, not wait for the midships gun to empty its shot-ready racks… He told the leading seaman who was in charge of the party. ‘Get a dozen rounds up amidships, before the shooting starts.’ He saw the movement start: a shout down through the hatch, and shells coming up, it was like pressing a switch and starting an automatic process… ‘Sub-Lieutenant, sir!’
A bridge messenger. ‘First Lieutenant says, when we engage the enemy would you start the upper deck fire-main, sir.’
‘Right.’
‘Shall I stand by it, sir?’
Why not. And then report back to the bridge. As Stapleton had observed, the fight would be starting at any moment now. He told the messenger, ‘Yes, please.’ But there was no sign of the enemy destroyers now: he started looking out on the port bow, thinking they might be crossing ahead; or perhaps this division had altered course just slightly, putting the Germans dead ahead? The purpose of opening the fire-main would be to have a continuous flood of water over the upper deck, thus making it less easy for fires to start. Nick wondered whether Johnson had had the boats’ tarpaulin covers filled with water too. Strangely, it seemed quite natural, now, to be going into action. As if one had done it before, and knew all about it. Maybe because one had imagined it so often, in one’s daydreams, since the age of ten or so?
Crashes were coming suddenly from ahead. Nestor, he guessed, had opened fire. More gunfire now, quite rapid, and the wind into which Lanyard was thrusting had a stench of cordite in it. Ammunition, he noticed, was flowing for’ard smoothly. But that tightness had returned to the pit of his stomach: it was infuriating, he’d thought he’d got rid of it: he told himself, Ignore it. Probably just physical, it’s not—A waterspout leapt, shattering the introspection: a second one; no, three ‒ forty or fifty yards abeam to starboard, and still no enemy in sight; the gun was trained to its foremost stop and there was nothing for it yet to bear on. It sounded like the two leading destroyers firing now, the crashes were too frequent to come from just one ship. The ammunition party had come to a halt again, having built up supplies at the other gun. Nick went inside the cover of the gunshield and stood behind Stapleton to see what, if anything, might be coming through on the receivers from the bridge. To his surprise, the range was showing as 060 ‒ six thousand yards ‒ well inside effective range. He went out again. He was out there just in time to see the stern gun of the next ship ahead fire on a for’ard bearing, and a second later he saw the leading German destroyer sweep into sight. The Hun must have been right ahead, or almost right ahead, and now swung a point or two to port to pass on a more or less parallel but reciprocal course to the British flotilla, which meant, if he held that course and the ships astern of him did too, they’d be shooting at each other as they passed at something like point-blank range. Lanyard’s bow gun fired. Nick opened his mouth to shout to Stapleton, and thunder cracked right beside him as the gunlayer let rip without waiting for an order. The midships gun had opened up too. There were three enemy in sight now; Nick could see the flashes of their guns, hear the almost continuous shooting from the thirteenth flotilla ships ahead, see waterspouts all round the Germans and the glow of hits too: the orange flare of bursting shells and black smoke streaming aft. The leading destroyer had been hit two or three times and she was swinging away, her bow down and her bridge – no, her waist, between the funnels ‒ pouring black smoke. The range was about four thousand yards now and water was sluicing over Lanyard’s iron deck, her guns firing as fast as they could load and fire again, the deflection increasing as the distance lessened and the bow-on angle opened. You got used to noise; it became simply what you had around you. Shell-splashes surrounded the next-ahead. This was Nomad, not Nicator, for some reason they’d swapped places and Lanyard was swinging out to starboard suddenly, closing-up on Nomad as if Mortimer intended passing her. Well, she’d gone out to port, or Lanyard had swung to starboard, before this ‒ otherwise she wouldn’t have been in sight from aft here. And she’d been hit: amidships, where her boilers were. Lanyard raced past her as she slowed; the action was all to starboard and the leading German destroyer ‒ no, the second, the first was out of it, she’d turned away and stopped, she was still being hit and she looked as if she was sinking: the nearest German was less than fifteen hundred yards away, all her guns blazing. The ammunition party’s leading seaman was bawling down into the hatch: Nick saw that the flow of shells had stopped, this gun’s crew snatching what they needed from the ready-use racks. Nick stooped, yelled in the man’s ear, ‘What is it?’ His face turned, mouthing something frantically, his words lost in gun crashes and the screech and explosions of enemy projectiles. Nick repeated his question, and this time he got an answer that he could hear. ‘Tryin’ to find out, sir, they don’t seem—’
Enemy destroyers abeam now, point-blank, waterspouts all round, the gaff with the ensign on it shot away and hanging, but Lanyard had been lucky. Nomad was stopped back there astern and someone was using her for target-practice. Nick had an idea that Lanyard had been hit for’ard; meanwhile her own guns had sent number four in the German destroyer line reeling out to port and listing. The guns’ crews were cheering as he flung himself into the deckhouse over the wardroom hatchway; he took the ladder in a single leap and crashed in through the latched-back wardroom door. He saw the trouble at a glance. The ladder to the ammo exit had come adrift, so they hadn’t been able to reach that deck-head hatch, and the two men who comprised the supply-link in here ‒ stokers, he saw, by their insignia, and both very young ‒ were struggling frantically to fix it. The bar which ran through its top and through two eye-bolts in the deckhead by the trap hadn’t been pushed through properly, so one end had come out and it had buckled. What they were trying to do was hopeless. Nick told them. ‘Leave it. Get the table under, and that chair on the table, quick now!’ They’d jumped to obey him. Remembering Johnson’s remark about new hands in the supply party he wondered whether they’d been trained at all. He helped them slide the table into place; then the chair was on it, and one of them up there while the other handed up ammunition from the lower hatch. Nick saw the stream re-started, then he ran for the ladder to the upper deck.
Halfway up it, the blast hit him. There was a moment before he realised that he’d been knocked backwards off the ladder. Dazed, bruised, scrambling back to it and starting up again. Torpedo? The explosion had been big enough. It was already, within seconds, indistinct in his memory, but it seemed to have taken time, to have had a certain duration to it. Behind him a voice asked. ‘What’s happened? What was that?’ Nick looked back and downwards and saw the surgeon, Samuels. The dressing-station and emergency operating theatre was Mortimer’s cabin, a dozen steps from the ladder’s foot: but ten minutes ago Samuels had been up near the midships four-inch; Nick had seen him there, just before the action started, when he’d been talking to Hooper.
‘I don’t know yet.’
At the top of the ladder he found that the steel hutch, the superstructure over it, had changed shape, its vertical walls concave, pushed in by the blast. He could hear guns firing, but the stern four-inch wasn’t ‒ wasn’t there! The deck was ripped where gun and mounting had been torn off it. Jagged, upturned edges of the deck itself, and littered wreckage of steel that might have been twisted around in giant hands and then flung down and stamped on. And there’d been men in it when that had happened, there were bodies and parts of bodies held in it, like animals caught in traps. The rush of wate
r from the fire-main entered this strewn, smashed area as clear water and flowed out bright red.
Samuels stood beside him, clutching his dark, curly head between both hands… ‘My God, what did this?’
‘Sir, I—’
A torpedoman ‒ the number two of the after tubes. Bent sideways as he staggered aft, holding his left side: all blood, ripped cloth and flesh. ‘I been ’it, sir, I—’
Samuels caught him as he fell. Nick felt as if he woke up at that moment; to the fact that the action was at its hottest and no ammunition could be getting to the midships gun. Also that those jagged holes in the deck, which were above the store compartments immediately aft of the wardroom, had water from the fire-main pouring into them; the fire-main had to be shut off. Ammunition for that gun was what mattered most. He crouched down beside the trap: the deck around it had been scoured, grooved its bare steel shone like silver. One of the young stokers peered at him through the hole and began, ‘Sir, is—’
The Blooding of the Guns Page 10
