Click was down below: he’d be reporting, when he had a chance, on the state of things. Damage-control was a second-in-command’s main responsibility. Hugh said. ‘Mid-hips, Pilot.’
‘Midships!’
Rathbone, Hugh had noticed, was very cool and steady. He’d rather thought he might be, when it came to it.
‘Ross-Hallet!’
‘Sir?’
‘Use the navyphone, tell Lieutenant Brook that within a few minutes I’ll be turning away so he’ll only have his after turrets bearing.’
Run for cover. If the next few minutes saw a continuance of good fortune…
‘Captain, sir, message from the Commander, sir—’
‘Wait.’ It was a seaman boy, one of Tom Crick’s party. Hugh said. ‘Port ten, Pilot.’ He looked back and down at the young messenger. ‘Yes?’
‘Shell burst in the W/T room, sir—’
Hugh interrupted him: ‘Chief Yeoman?’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ Chief Petty Officer Peppard was already on his way. Hugh told him. ‘Bring me a report as soon as possible.’ The W/T cabinet was inside the bridge superstructure but on about its lowest level, the shelter deck. Hugh looked back at the messenger, who rattled on. ‘It blew up into your sea-cabin, sir, and that’s all wrecked—’ Hugh thought, Oh, God… He wasn’t thinking of the loss of his sea-cabin, but of the fact he’d told Bates to wait in it until he sent for him. The seaman boy concluded his report: ‘Superstructure’s on fire, sir, but commander says ’e’ll soon ’ave it in ’and, sir.’
‘Very good.’ He looked round at Rathbone. ‘Starboard fifteen.’ By making the turns to port tighter, sharper than the ones to starboard, he was gradually easing her round; he wanted to get Nile round to a north-west course without making the intention so obvious that the German gunners might anticipate her movements. He also wanted news of Bates. ‘Midships.’
‘Captain, sir.’ He looked round quickly at CPO Peppard, who told him. ‘It’s like the lad said, sir. W/T room’s all smashed, and your cabin’s gone too, sir. The fire’s spread a bit but they’re gettin’ on top of it now.’
‘Casualties?’
‘One telegraphist killed, sir, three men ’urt. They’ve been took below, sir. Lieutenant Sallis was ’urt too, sir, an’ the PO Tel, they’ve been took down to—’
‘Ross-Hallet. Able Seaman Bates was supposed to be waiting in my sea-cabin. Go and—’ he paused, while the guns fired and fresh spouts of German shells went up on the bow: he was about to finish what he’d been saying to the midshipman when something big clanged into Nile’s starboard side. He met Rathbone’s calm, round eyes, and commented. ‘That one was a dud’n.’ Behind him, several men laughed. Amusement wasn’t difficult to trigger. Hugh said. ‘Port ten.’
Rathbone passed the helm order into the copper tube.
‘See what you can find out, Mid.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
The chief yeoman finished his report: ‘I was to tell you the commander’s gone aft now, sir. Spot o’ trouble – one in through the quarterdeck I believe, sir.’
‘All right, Peppard.’
Crick would tell him, when he could, what was happening below. In the meantime, nobody could handle ‘spots of trouble’ more ably than Tom Crick… A shell exploded on the roof of ‘B’ turret, which was only a few feet from this conning-tower’s hood and periscope. The smoke cleared: with his eardrums hurting, Hugh saw paintwork charred black but no other visible damage. Rathbone shouted fiddling with his earplugs, ‘Still have ten of port helm on, sir.’
‘Midships!’
‘B’ turret had just fired, with the others, and it was comforting to think that some of Nile’ s fifteen-inch shells would be smashing down into German ships…
‘Starboard fifteen!’
He glanced, round at the hatch. But it was too soon for that midshipman to have got back yet.
* * *
Lanyard rang dully, sporadically, with the percussions of the Grand Fleet’s salvoes. It was a distant sound, and intermittent. With the easier motion of the destroyer at this greatly reduced speed there was a sense, at least down here in the chartroom, of a lull in the storm of battle; a false lull, perhaps which might be shattered at any moment. Meanwhile, this job was hardly a pleasant one. Nick dumped the contents of Johnson’s pockets in a heap on the chart-table. There wasn’t much; a wallet with some letters in it, a notebook, some stubs of pencil, a pocket-watch and a ring of keys. Reynolds’ small possessions were similar, but included a silver cigarette-case and a metal match-container.
Nick weighed it for a moment in his hand. He’d seen Reynolds using this, in the wardroom, earlier this very day. Now it was an object to be packaged for transmission to the lieutenant’s next of kin, so that the body could before long be ‘committed’ to the sea. For the time being it was outside on the foc’sl, together with the body of Pat Johnson ‒ who’d seemed at first to be something of an ogre but who’d astounded Nick, this morning, with totally new aspects of his brother.
He’d never thought deeply about David; it had never occurred to him to try to understand him. Unpleasantness was all one had been conscious of. Coldness, hostility; resentment of his ‒ Nick’s ‒ existence. And since in any dispute David had always had their father’s backing. Nick had learnt to walk alone and avoid them both. Birds of a feather…Well, they were! And since that time in London, when he looked at his elder brother, what he saw in his mind’s eye was a girl’s face ‒ bruised, swollen, pulpy…
He put Johnson’s and Reynolds’ keys aside. They’d be ship’s keys – safes, pistol and rifle racks, the spirit store, and so on. Nick told Garret, who was helping him. ‘Grab a couple of those old charts and make parcels, would you? Put their names on ’em. This pile’s Lieutenant Johnson’s.’
Garret complied wordlessly. Mortimer had told Nick to see to this, and as an afterthought he’d sent Garret down to help him. Lanyard was on the disengaged side of the battle fleet, and it was a good time for patching up, clearing away, making good. And for such tasks as this.
There’d be five men for burial, when the time for that came. Two men aft as well as these; the torpedoman had died, and one of the for’ard gun’s crew, and the coxswain, CPO Cuthbertson.
The guns had been sponged-out and greased, ready-racks refilled, ammunition stocks counted. Jury voicepipes, hal-yards and wireless aerials had been rigged. A collision-mat had been spread on the quarterdeck and lashed down with a steel-wire hawser laced to and fro over battens across the damaged area. Spare splinter-mattresses had been secured around the bridge. Finally, Nick had organised the cooks and some of the ammunition-supply ratings into a canteen service to provide tea and bully-beef sandwiches to all hands at their stations.
Lanyard was lazing along now at no more than fifteen knots, keeping station on the port side of the battle fleet. The fleet had slowed, in the course of its deployment, to avoid ‘bunching’ as the squadrons slid into place in the great, unwieldy line. Six miles of battleships… And coming now was the crucial phase, the duel between the dreadnoughts. Destroyer and cruiser actions had drawn blood, cost lives and ships, and there’d surely be more of the same ‒ more dead, and more destroyed ‒ before darkness fell: but the heavyweights were in the ring now and the big fight, the contest for the world championship, was about to follow that earlier sparring and jockeying for position.
He’d seen his uncle’s ship, when Lanyard had overhauled her some while ago. Nile had suffered some hits, but looked none the worse for it; and the Fifth Battle Squadron would be out of harm’s way by this time, because the way Jellicoe had deployed his other squadrons had left the Queen Elizabeths no alternative but to tag on at the rear. But Nick could understand his uncle now, understand the strength of his feeling for the Navy; a few hours of action, some moments of fear followed by longer periods of extraordinary exhilaration: the sight of the flotilla attacking, that wild charge against the line of blazing guns: the entire experience of these last hours had convinced
him that the Service was – or could be, at times ‒ what he’d been told it was, believed it to be: and he had the key now to the riddle of Hugh Everard’s having retained enthusiasm for the naval service in spite of its having kicked him in the teeth.
* * *
‘My own fault…’
Hugh had said that to his brother, Nick’s father, at luncheon at Mullbergh, one day about four years ago. Nick. David and Sarah had been there too: Sarah had become the second Lady Everard only a few months earlier. She’d asked Hugh how he’d been forced to give up his career, and he’d answered briefly, quite dispassionately. She’d been indignant, cross with him, even, for ‘taking it lying down’. He’d smiled at her angry face, and Nick had seen the effect of that smile and the quick glance she’d immediately thrown at her husband. Hugh had murmured, ‘My own stupidity, perhaps I should say. Jacky Fisher being the man he is I should have ‒ oh been less ingenuous. Genius and rationality shouldn’t be expected in one individual you know.’
‘Are you saying Lord Fisher’s irrational?’
It was Sir John who was indignant now, glaring down the table at his brother. ‘Surely Fisher, of all men, is the most practical, down-to-earth—’
‘ln directly professional matters, yes. But where personalities are concerned ‒ why, Jacky’d smell treachery from a brick wall at a hundred paces with a clothes-peg on his nose!’
‘One of the greatest men of this century, in my view.’
‘I agree, John. Entirely.’
‘But you feel free to blame him for your own failure?’
At the time of this conversation Nick had been seventeen, and a midshipman, not long at sea. Nineteen-twelve… He remembered the impression he’d had at that luncheon table that his father was trying to belittle Uncle Hugh in order to reduce him in Sarah’s eyes: as if he didn’t want his new, young wife to think anything of her brother-in-law. In fact they’d become the best of friends ‒ not more than that, as David had been spiteful enough to suggest, but ‒ well, friends. Which hadn’t been enough, and still wasn’t, for brother David… But anyway, it had been some trifling indiscretion, a social thing and quite meaningless, that had aroused Lord Fisher’s displeasure. Displeasure and distrust: and Fisher was proud of his own ruthlessness. In 1904 Hugh Everard had been a member of the ‘Fish Pond’, a group of outstandingly promising young officers whom Fisher had inducted to the Admiralty and given influence and authority out of all proportion to their ranks or years; high-flyers all: and he promoted them over the heads of older, more experienced men, making enemies for himself and them in the process. ‘Favouritism’, declared Fisher, ‘is the secret of efficiency!’ With favouritism went despotism; at thirty-three, in 1904., Hugh had been a commander; in 1906, the year of his marriage, he was promoted to post captain, eight years ahead of the most favourable normal expectation. In 1907. Fisher broke him.
The damage hadn’t been permanent, as things had turned out now. For some years Hugh had worked for a shipbuild-ing company, but the war had brought him back to active service and the Falklands victory had re-established him as an up-and-comer and led to his being offered the command of Nile. Fisher, of course, had gone. He’d built this fleet, bulldozed it into being. But a year ago his quarrels with the First Lord, Winston Churchill, had reached a climax, primarily over the Dardanelles issue. Fisher had been opposed to the Gallipoli adventure right from the beginning. A year ago, goaded beyond an old man’s endurance by the young politician, he’d stalked out of the Admiralty for the last time, not so much defeated as bemused, an old dog snarling through broken teeth at enemies real and unreal.
* * *
Garret scrawled 1st Lieut on one package, and Lt Reynolds on the other. He asked Nick. ‘Reckon we’ll come off best, sir?’
‘Good God, yes! Of course!’
Garrett nodded. Somewhere ahead and to starboard a battleship’s guns fired one broadside, and fell silent. One could visualise the shifting mist-banks, the eyes pressed against periscopes and range-finders, searching constantly for targets. The signalman hardly seemed convinced: Nick explained to him that Jellicoe’s course was now roughly south-east, and that Hipper’s battle cruisers in the van of the German fleet had been bent off-course, eastward, first by Beatty and more recently by the deploying battle fleet. It was doubtful whether Admiral Scheer yet appreciated how powerful an enemy lay across his line of advance. The poor visibility was maddening to the Grand Fleet, but it might also be a blessing in disguise, hiding Jellicoe from Scheer. Meanwhile the German line, as Scheer’s leading division followed Hipper round, was an arc, a curve that started northwards and sheered away east as it flinched from the wall of advancing British dreadnoughts.
Garret reached for his enamelled mug of dark-brown tea. Nick asked him, ‘Rough up there was it when we—’ he glanced down at the parcels on the table ‒ ‘when we got that hit?’
Garret nodded as he put his mug down. ‘It’s the standin’, wi’ no work to do. Just waitin’ ‒ you get time to think ‒ like about if ‒ if you’re a married man, say…’
‘Yes.’ The tea tasted like liquid boot-polish. ‘I’m lucky, that way, with no ties. But you only just got married, didn’t you.’
Garret bit into a thick sandwich. The packages in front of them kept their voices low, reminded them of the bodies outside on the foc’sl between the for’ard four-inch ready-racks and the rattling steel bulkhead of this chartroom. Garret chewed thoughtfully, glancing at Nick and away again while his thoughts made a quick trip to Edinburgh, took a look at Margaret, and came back.
‘Don’t you have any—’ he hesitated, as if having embarked on the question embarrassed him ‒ ‘Any young lady, as it might be, sir?’
Nick thought about it. Chewing the last of his door-stop sandwich while Garret swirled dregs of tea around the bottom of his mug. Young lady… Did Greta Magnusson, the Orcadian crofter’s daughter, rate as a ‘young lady’?
It wasn’t the social aspect he was questioning. It was just that he didn’t think of her in such terms, any more than he’d think of Sarah, his stepmother, as a ‘young lady’. They were both well, different… ‘Young ladies’, as he’d understood the words, were the giggly creatures one met, danced with, played tennis with, and so on, in other large Yorkshire houses. He’d never yet met one he’d found at all interesting or more than passingly attractive, and in any case they’d always directed all their interest at his brother David. He was the heir, of course, and the good-looking, taller one; the one who danced better, played better tennis, and who didn’t keep falling off the horses which he was more or less forced to ride.
But Greta Magnusson belonged in the setting of the Orkneys. It struck him as he thought of her that if he was back there, next week, say, and told her all about this battle, how it had seemed and felt, and how he was suddenly feeling that he belonged, that this was the Navy he’d wanted, dreamed about and had begun to think didn’t exist at all ‒ well, Greta would have said something like, Och, is that so? and changed the subject at once, to fish, or sheep, or what her father had said yesterday.
Finishing the crust, he swallowed hard, making an effort of it to justify the length of time it had taken him to produce an answer. He shook his head.
‘Not really.’
* * *
In Nile’s ‘X’ turret, everything had been running as smoothly as it ever had, until the loading rammers jammed.
Cartwright had been feeling proud of his men: and not unproud of himself, for the way he’d trained them. However hard you worked at it, and however good a performance looked when it was a wood-and-canvas target you were shooting at, you always wondered how it would pan out when it was a live target that shot back at you. And this had gone off, so far, like the best of the practice shoots: except that there was excitement, elation and a terrific sense of satisfaction in them all. Not just because this at last was action, justification for all the weary months of training and waiting; but also that they were measuring-up, matching-up to the high
standards of their Service, fleet, ship. Those standards had seemed intimidatingly high, sometimes, but nobody was falling down on the job now. Nobody would, either; you could see it in their faces, in the swift, confident, skilful way they worked, keeping the guns firing ‒ firing fast and hitting.
Information came now and then from Lieutenant Brook in the control top to his turret officers, and here in ‘X’ turret Captain Blackaby passed it on to the men who worked the guns.
They’d been told during the last half-hour that the German battleships Grosser Kurfürst and Markgraf had each been hit several times. Those were the two at which Nile, Malaya and Warspite had been shooting mostly, during the run northwards. Also the battle cruisers Seydlitz, Lützow and Derfflinger were in poor shape now; Seydlitz particularly: she was on fire, four of her turret guns had been silenced, her secondary armament had been completely smashed, and shell-damage to her foc’sl had left her down by the head and losing speed. Von der Tann had no turrets left that she could shoot with: she was still in the line with the other battle cruisers, but she was toothless… And now Lützow, Derfflinger and Markgraf had all been hit again, during the last few minutes. ‘X’ turret’s crew cheered as the right-hand gun fired, flung back: the cage came up ‒ left gun fired ‒ number two of the right gun swung the breech open and Cartwright roared ‘Right gun STILL!’
He’d seen number two ‒ Dewar, of course ‒ open the breech too soon, before the gun had finished its run-out; the carrier arm of the breech had struck the rammer head, and metal-bound it. So the rammer had stuck and now the port rammer had too. Cartwright swore loudly and articulately as he flung himself off his seat. Until this moment, everything had gone so smoothly, easily; there’d been none of the silly over-eagerness which could be counted on to lead to this sort of jam-up and consequent delay. Up in the control top, Lieutenant Brook would be cursing when ‘X’ turret’s gun-ready lamps failed to light; Nile, for the moment would be firing three-gun salvoes, and Captain Blackaby, normally quite a patient man, would very shortly be exploding with Royal Marine-type fury. Cartwright shoved Dewar out of his way, taking some satisfaction in using a considerable degree of force; he snatched up a steel pinch-bar, and shoved its end in behind the rammer head. Then he jerked the lever over to the ‘Run Out’ position; and the rammer slid out, sweet and quick and no more bother. Cartwright brought it back again and out two more times, and there it was, gay as a lark again, right gun back in action.
The Blooding of the Guns Page 16
