The Blooding of the Guns

by The Blooding of the Guns (retail) (epub)

  Probably that was Jellicoe’s intention now. But he hadn’t much daylight left.

  Nick went back up to the bridge. Hastings was alone in charge of it, with a bridge staff consisting of two lookouts and one signalman. Mortimer, Hastings told him, had gone down to see what was happening in the boiler-room.

  ‘He’s getting slightly frantic again,’ Hastings spoke quietly to Nick, in the forefront of the bridge. Lanyards stubby bow, below them, was pushing like a snow-plough through dull-grey sea; at this speed there wasn’t much movement on the ship, only rattles… ‘I can’t say I blame him. We picked up a signal from senior officer Second Light Cruiser Squadron to the effect that the Huns ’ve gone about again ‒ so it could all start up again pretty well any time now, and here we are lolling around like something on a spring cruise… By the way, you’re doing all right. Mortimer likes you .You know you replaced a snotty, do you?’

  ‘I replaced a—’

  ‘Keep your wool on.’ Hastings bent to the voicepipe to give a helm order. They were altering now and then, not in a regular zigzag pattern but just an occasional change of course to make things slightly less simple for any lurking submarine. ‘Steady!’

  ‘Steady, sir… Course sou’-sou’-east by south, sir!’

  ‘Steer that.’

  ‘Steer sou’-sou’-east by south, sir.’

  Hastings straightened, turned his pock-marked face to Nick. ‘Poor old Mike Reynolds was due to move to another boat as first lieutenant. Mortimer had recommended him, and we’d just been deprived of our snotty. So the plan was, since you were suddenly available for some reason, that you’d take over the dogsbody jobs for a month or two, and then when it was considered you could pull your weight, Reynolds would leave us and we’d get a new midshipman. You don’t have to feel insulted or—’

  ‘Who said I—’

  ‘All right, then.’

  David would have felt insulted, according to Johnson. Nick thought, I may be like him, in that respect. It’s something I must watch out for. He wondered where David was now, whether Bantry had seen any action. ‘Hey!’ Hastings was using his binoculars, looking ahead, south-ward. ‘Hey, it’s warming up again!’

  Nick grabbed a spare pair ‒ he thought they’d belonged to Johnson ‒ which had been hanging from a voicepipe. As he raised them, he heard the gunfire: now he saw flashes, that now familiar red flickering. Hastings was shouting into the engine-room voicepipe, telling them to ask the captain to come up to the bridge. Nick checked the compass while Hastings was away from it: at least Lanyard was pointing in the right direction, at more or less the centre of the arc of flashes. The firing was still only intermittent, but its frequency and spread seemed to be increasing.

  Mortimer flung himself into the bridge, and snatched up his own glasses. Hastings told him, pointing, ‘Action’s resumed, sir. Can we use our engines yet?’

  ‘If we could, we would be, damn you!’

  Mortimer had snarled it. His hands holding the binoculars shook: Nick could almost feel the voltage of his frustration crackling out of him…

  ‘Damn-fool questions…’ He dropped his glasses on their Lanyard, raised his fists and shook them at the clouds. ‘It’s worse than that fool Worsfold thought. We’ll be an hour, at least…’

  * * *

  Derfflinger had been hit again; Hugh saw the flames shoot out of her. Lützow had dropped out of the action; Hipper had abandoned her, and it wasn’t likely she’d float.

  The guns of the Fifth Battle Squadron were all firing; their targets were Scheer’s battleships as they loomed out of the mist, vanished, reappeared. This damnable mist. But there was always some target in sight, to shift to, and everything that appeared was being shot at and hit, not only by the Queen Elizabeths; Revenge, Colossus, Neptune, Benbow, Superb, Hercules, Agincourt, Collingwood, Bellerophon, Royal Oak, Orion, Monarch, Centurion, Jellicoe’s own Iron Duke, Temeraire, Agincourt and Marlborough were all in it. Marlborough, who’d been hit a few minutes ago by a torpedo, was maintaining her station at the head of the Sixth Division and had just scored two hits on a König-class battleship which had since disappeared. And once again, the High Seas Fleet was being hit too hard and too often to do much in reply. Hugh was on Nile’s open compass platform, because there was virtually no shellfire to take shelter from. Because, also, he disliked the blinkered feeling that one got in the enclosed conning-tower; visibility was bad enough without having to peer into it through a slit in a steel wall.

  Tom Crick stood on his right, Rathbone close to the binnacle on his left. The chief yeoman, Peppard, was in the port after corner of the bridge, and Bates was hanging around there somewhere. Hugh was uncomfortably aware of a certain irrational quality in his current anger with Bates: he’d been enormously relieved to discover that his coxswain had not been in the sea-cabin when it was hit, and at the same time annoyed that he’d left it and gone aft without orders. Also at the back of the bridge now was the secretary; Colne-Wilshaw was taking photographs as well as keeping his diary notes up to date.

  It wasn’t only mist that was hiding the German dread-noughts, it was the smoke of exploding British shells.

  A navyphone flashed and buzzed. Midshipman Ross-Hallet answered it. There’d been no need, in the last ten or fifteen minutes, for communications or conversation; the Germans had appeared, and the fleet had known what to do about it. In Nile, Brook in the control top had set his gunnery organisation going without a second’s delay or a wasted word; and Jellicoe wasn’t a man to waste time with unnecessary signalling. Ross-Hallet called out the message from the control top: ‘Enemy destroyers seem about to launch torpedo attack on the bow, sir!’

  ‘Very good.’ Hugh got them in his glasses. A flotilla was emerging from the head of the German line, the gap between the four battle cruisers and the battleships; and it looked as if those surviving battle cruisers were turning towards Jellicoe’s line now: there were two flotillas of destroyers moving out to the attack. Scheer must have ordered offensive action up there in the hope of making Jellicoe turn away.

  As he would. If torpedoes were fired, he’d allow an appropriate time for their run and then order turns-away of two or perhaps four points, to allow the torpedoes to run harmlessly between ships and squadrons. When they’d run through, he’d turn back.

  Perhaps Scheer was planning another retreat, and using an attack by battle cruisers and destroyers as cover for it?

  Nile’s salvoes had a different sound to them now that ‘X’ turret came later by a split second, than the other three. And now the noise-level increased sharply as her secondary armament of six-inch guns opened up, to add to the hail of steel that was greeting the German torpedo craft as they moved out. Brook would be keeping up his fifteen-inch salvoes at the battleships: the six-inch guns had their own director towers, one each side abaft the foremast.

  Crick lowered his glasses, pointed towards the head of the enemy line, those four already badly mauled battle cruisers. They were steaming directly towards the British squadrons, actually charging them, and not all their for’ard turrets were still functional.

  ‘They’re trying to commit suicide!’

  ‘I believe Scheer’s about to run for it, Tom.’

  The guns of the whole British line were blazing continuously now, and making better practice than they ever did against towed targets. Scheer would be mad if he did not order another ‘battle-turn-away’. And those suicidal battle cruisers: Von de Tann had just been hit again, aft; Hugh had his glasses on her as she erupted in smoke and flame. Derringer, almost finished but maddeningly refusing to admit it, was being blasted from end to end. Seydlitz seemed to be about to sink; she was so low for’ard that her foc’sl had hardly any freeboard at all. He’d seen two ‒ now three ‒ of the attacking destroyers hit, and certainly one of them was foundering. And suddenly Hugh saw that his guess had been right. Scheer’s battleships were turning ‒ and not all to starboard! This retreat was haphazard, a desperate scramble of huge ships to escape
that pulverising cannonade.

  ‘They’re beaten. Tom.’ Hugh lowered his binoculars. He told Tom Crick. ‘We’ve broken ’em ‒ they can’t stand up to us!’

  The torpedo craft were laying smoke. It would cover Scheer’s retreat: it would also cover their own ‒ when they’d fired their torpedoes, they could slip back into it. And a third flotilla was launching itself now from the German line; as they were spotted, gunfire rose to a crescendo, until one heard no individual shots or salvoes but only a continuous roar of exploding cordite and bursting shells. Two more destroyers had been hit, and a third and one of the first to be hit had sunk. Astern, Hugh saw four British destroyers racing out to finish a Hun flotilla leader who’d been stopped, disabled, between the lines. He looked southwards again to see that the four battle cruisers had finally turned away, and were limping into the cover of the destroyers’ smoke. ‘Barham’s flying the preparative, sir!’

  Chief Petty Officer Peppard had kept one eye continually on the squadron flagship, and he’d just seen the blue-and-white striped flag shoot up to Evan-Thomas’s port lower yard. It was the emergency-turn signal, to avoid torpedoes. Hugh watched Malaya, his next ahead, as Nile’s answering pendant ran close-up. Malaya’s was up, and Valiant’s too now. To starboard there was no German in sight, except for a few destroyers mostly hidden in shell-spouts and smoke, but from the control top Brook must still have had targets in his sights, and all turrets were still firing.

  Another destroyer emerged from the belt of smoke: she was dodging to and fro, her bow-wave high and brilliant-white against surrounding grey-black drabness. Hugh saw a jet of flame as the popgun on her foc’sl fired. Then the sea ahead of her gushed up, and the rest of the same salvo smashed down into her vitals. She split open, disgorging smoke and a great pillar of escaping steam. When the smoke cleaned, there was no trace left of her.

  ‘Executive, sir!’

  ‘Starboard ten.’

  ‘Starboard ten, sir…Ten o’ starboard wheel on, sir!’

  Nile and the ships ahead of her were swinging away to port.

  ‘Midships!’

  ‘Midships, sir…’

  Midshipman Ross-Hallet answered a navyphone, and shouted, ‘Director tower reports torpedo passing astern sir!’

  ‘Very good.’ Evan-Thomas had timed his avoiding-action well. ‘Steady as you go.’

  ‘Steady, sir. Course sou’-west by south, sir.’

  Hugh watched the ships ahead, and waited for the signal to resume previous course. Jellicoe would obviously continue southwards now; or perhaps west of south, to keep closer to the enemy ‒ who had once again been turned, driven back, leaving the Grand Fleet massive and remorseless between them and their homeland.

  * * *

  ‘Keep the men busy,’ Clark had ordered. And he’d sent David down with the same instruction, after he’d destroyed the secret charts and books. The commander had then gone down himself, to take charge of the fire-fighting, leaving Lieutenant Scrimgeour on the bridge with young Ackroyd.

  Bantry’s upper deck was a scrap-heap of twisted steel; it hadn’t been easy to find spaces for all the wounded. Going aft for the first time since the action, David had been astonished at the amount of wreckage ‒ the funnels full of holes, mainmast holed too, the after searchlight blown right into the third funnel; he’d thought at first it was smoking, but that was steam leaking where one of the two steam-pipes on the funnel had been cut through. He saw that someone had lashed a Union Flag to the top of the mainmast stump. The topmast and topgallant ‒ which had carried the W/T gear ‒ had been shot away, and the whole lot of it, with shrouds, stays, aerials and lifts, had been dumped on the after shelter-deck and across the stern turret, buckling that screen door. The ship’s boats had of course all been smashed, and the ones for’ard had been burnt; the superstructure was full of holes and great black stains where exploding shells had scorched away the paint.

  West had set up his raft-factory right aft on the quarterdeck. Half a dozen Carley floats were intact, but that was all, and for a hundred wounded men the able-bodied ones were lashing together any buoyant materials they could find. Timber, boxes, mattresses, oil and paint drums were being assembled into catamaran-like shapes with sections of collision-mats, boats’ sails from the bosun’s store below, sections of plank ‒ stretched, nailed, lashed across as decking.

  West murmured, as they picked their way for’ard. ‘A lot of those contraptions may not float too well with the weight of men on ’em.’ David glanced at him, wondering why he didn’t tell them so, warn them. West answered the unspoken question: ‘Keeps ’em occupied. That’s the main thing we must do. Anyway, you never know, until you try it out.’

  He’d thought of a new way to keep the hands busy now: ranging the cable on the foc’sl. To make room for it, they were going to have to shift a lot of the wounded from there up to the battery deck.

  Petty Officer Toomey looked doubtful. ‘Won’t get many up there, sir. Dickens of a job hoistin’ the badly hurt ones up them ladders, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I’m afraid it has to be done. Toomey.’ West thought about it. Bland, plump, considering nothing but how to make the best of the situation. ‘The ones we can’t lift, you see, can stay on the foc’sl; just shift ’em aft as far as possible. Here, say, each side of the turret and in behind it. Eh?’

  Ranging the cable, which would be the first step to take in any preparation to be taken in tow, meant heaving the great, heavy chain up out of the cable-locker and ‘flaking’ it to and fro ‒ fore and aft ‒ on the foc’sl. There was very little chance of any ship arriving to take Bantry in tow, and there’d be no point anyway in one doing so; but it would cheer the men to see such preparations being made.

  West asked Toomey. ‘Blacksmith?’

  ‘Aft, sir, below, helping the chief carpenter.’

  ‘We can do without him if you get his tools. But pipe for the cable party, will you.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  West had a light of enthusiasm in his eyes as he turned to David.

  ‘No hope of getting steam to the capstan, so we’ll have to ship its bars and do the job by man-power. Well, that’s not such a bad thing, is it. If only someone had a fiddle.’

  The old custom was to have a fiddler up on the capstan, a lively shanty to bring the cable up by.

  David suggested, with his eyes on the smoky-grey horizon and a rumble of distant gunfire in his ears, ‘Why not the Marine band, instead?’

  ‘That’s a splendid idea!’

  If enough bandsmen could be mustered… West pointed: ‘I’ll put ’em up on the turret there.’ He looked round. ‘Braithwaite!’ Like everyone else. Able Seaman Braithwaite was listening to that gunfire. Someone for’ard shouted, ‘The ’un’s gettin it in the neck now lads!’ A cheer went up. West shouted again ‘Hey, Braithwaite!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Go after Petty Officer Toomey for me ask him to come back her.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir!’

  ‘Sing-song, sir?’

  A smoke-blackened face was looking up at him. The man was wrapped in a blanket which was patched dark-brown where his blood had soaked through it.

  ‘If you like, Edwards.’ West crouched down beside him. ‘But we’re going to get the cable up and range it. Then if some decent spark comes along to offer us a tow, we’ll be all ready for him.’

  They cheered again. A stoker with a bandage round his neck and shoulders called out hoarsely, ‘’ome by Christmas, lads!’

  Toomey came up the ladder at the foc’sl break. ‘New orders, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Toomey.’ West got up. ‘This is the bright-ideas department. I want you to muster all of the Marine band that you can get hold of and tell ’em to get their instruments up on the roof of ‘A’ turret here.’

  ‘Reckon that is a good idea, sir.’ Toomey rubbed his hands together. From somewhere aft came the shrill note of a bosun’s call, and the summons, ‘Cable Party muster on the foc’sl!’ West nodded. ‘Capit
al.’ With his left hand he raised his cap, and used the right one to scratch the bald area which through nine-tenths of his waking hours it hid. ‘Things are looking up, Toomey!’

  ‘Aye aye, sir!’

  David remembered that down below the engineers were still trying to get through to men trapped in compartments which were steadily filling with salt water.

  ‘Off you go, then.’ West stared round at the prostrate or reclining forms of the wounded. ‘Surgeon’ll get back to you chaps soon, now. He’s bound to deal with the bad cases first, of course. He’ll get round to you all soon enough, though.’

  ‘Good ol’ guns!’

  There was more cheering. West knew that in fact the surgeons ‒ the PMO and his assistant surgeon-lieutenant ‒ were working in the for’ard messdeck beside the seamen’s washplaces. They’d had to evacuate the main dressing-station aft, and they were labouring in cramped, over-crowded quarters lit by oil-lamps, struggling to ease the sufferings of hideously mutilated sailors and Marines, and knowing that at any minute the ship might founder. It was more than medical skill that doctors needed at such a time, it was ‒ West frowned, baulking at words like heroism. They were good people, that was all, and they were measuring-up well to the situation. He heard a sailor ask. ‘Anyone got a smoke?’

  West didn’t smoke anything but cigars, and he didn’t carry those on him. He asked David. ‘Have you?’

  David pulled out his case. It was silver, with the Everard ‘otter’s head crest on it. He flipped it open. ‘Not many. Half a dozen.’