A FLOCK OF SHIPS

by Callison, Brian

‘Bastards,’ I said again, thinking this time specifically of Mallard—but then, I wasn’t feeling very logical, and I guess it’s easy to be gallant and stupid when you yourself are steaming away from danger at twenty knots.

  Then something blew deep down in the entrails of the Commandant Joffre—probably her boilers—and everything seemed to come to an end all at once.

  The starboard railway engine went first, crashing almost vertically down on to its part-submerged twin and, between them, creating a tidal wave that itself threatened to engulf the little boats. The resultant loss of weight made the dying ship jerkily recover a few degrees and we saw the man on the funnel take off into the air like a wad of blotting paper from a kiddie’s ruler before his tiny, spinning, star-shaped body crashed back somewhere round the after end of the promenade deck.

  The funnel itself went next, keeling slowly forward and sideways, then crumpling into itself as it swept the bridge structure and monkey island into the hungry sea.

  I had one brief, intimate glimpse right down the gaping hole where her stack had been, deep down into the pipe-webbed machinery space—then she monstrously turned turtle and everything was white foam and steel derricks rearing from the oilslicked sea like discarded matchsticks, and somewhere underneath it all were sixty-odd Frenchmen with bursting lungs and mangled limbs .

  The rust-scarred double bottoms stared imploringly at the hot blue sky for one long, shocked appeal, then she went down by the head like an express train, while we listened to the lingering rumble of the internal explosions fading away as the boiling South Atlantic closed over the Commandant Joffre.

  It became very quiet on the Cyclops’s bridge right then.

  *

  The Old Man moved first, slowly replacing his binoculars in the varnished box under the rail and turning away. He took the gold-braided cap off and looked sad, a slightly ridiculous fat man in a pair of baggy white shorts and a dried foam beard. Someone was sobbing behind me and, when I swivelled round, it was young Conway. He’d never seen a ship die before, and the Frenchman had died hard. It had kind of dulled his interest in watching flying fish.

  ‘You should be out on the other wing when the Master and I are here, Conway,’ I snarled brutally, trying to cover my own sick horror.

  He gazed wildly at me from tear-bright eyes for a moment, then rushed blindly through the dark wheel-house. Brannigan hesitated, then followed slowly. I could feel his anger burning the back of my neck, but I wasn’t in the mood for apologies as I stared dully at little Mallard scurrying round the stained patch of oily wreckage like a bitch with worms chasing her tail. Then her siren whoop-whooped in a final lament and the white spray under her bows rose higher as she hurried anxiously after us and Athenian, still dipping to the slow swell broad on our beam.

  Glancing over the six cables of tossing water compressed between our twin hulls, I noticed that Bill Henderson and a group of her officers were staring aft too. There wasn’t much left to see by then though.

  I didn’t wave to him this time.

  *

  There were a few of the junior engineer officers at their places when I went below for breakfast, but the deck officers’ table held only the solitary figure of Larabee, the Second Wireless Operator. He glanced up and nodded perfunctorily as I sat down, then the saturnine face bent again and he dug viciously at his cornflakes. Sam Ling, the Mate’s Steward, appeared silently at my elbow and proffered a company-crested menu. I glanced at it, remembered the way in which the Commandant Joffre had taken her crowd down with her less than an hour before, and settled for toast and coffee. There wasn’t even any butter when that came so I poured myself a black coffee and gave the toast a miss too. Larabee raised his head again.

  ‘See the Frog go down, did you?’ he asked, still chewing stolidly.

  I swallowed a mouthful of the hot liquid gratefully, feeling the slightly acrid grounds stimulating the back of my throat. ‘Yeah,’ I answered shortly. I didn’t really like Larabee anyway, with his skull-like features and endless questions about how things were going in every department of the ship from engine room to bridge. He was only a bloody number-two sparks and these things were none of his damned business.

  He scraped his plate noisily. ‘She didn’t get off a four-S call in time,’ he said critically. ‘She should have put out a proper distress call, you know.’

  SSSS was the distress signal made by merchantmen under attack from a submarine, QQQQ meant attacked by armed raider, all the A’s for aircraft, and so on. I didn’t feel much like talking, and certainly not to Larabee, but I glanced at him sourly. ‘What did she need to put a call out for, Sparks? All there is of the bloody Royal Navy in the South Atlantic’s steaming right alongside of us anyway.’

  It wasn’t true of course—the Admiralty probably had at least another two ships somewhere between Africa and South America—but I wasn’t an RN admirer at the best of times. Who was it said that the only thing more obscene than an RN rating’s description of the merchant navy is a merchant sailor’s opinion of the Royal Navy? Larabee wasn’t put out either way.

  The morose face inspected with suspicion the plate of Spam and dried egg that the silent Ling had placed before it. ‘Bloody typical of the Frogs, mind. Gettin’ snarled up in their own rigging.’

  I slammed my empty cup down in the saucer loud enough to make Ferrier, the Third Engineer, glance over in surprise, then stood up and shoved my chair back, not wanting to get involved in an argument with anybody right then. ‘Just hope, if your time ever comes, Larabee, you’ll not be unlucky enough to get the chop from your own bloody wireless aerials.’

  He raised an unperturbed forkful of Spam and solidified orange-yellow compo. ‘Not me, Mister Mate. And I’ll get a proper signal off first too, don’t you worry!’

  I gritted my teeth and stamped out of the wood-panelled saloon, conscious of curious stares from the engineers’ table. The last thing I heard as I stepped out on deck was Larabee’s high-pitched voice, ‘Ling? Ling, you stupid bloody slant-eyed Chink. Where the hell’s my coffee ...?’

  *

  Eight bells struck as I reached the top of the bridge ladder.

  I strolled into the wheelhouse, where Brannigan was just handing over the watch to Curtis, the Third Mate. The four-to-eight helmsman, McRae, had already been relieved and had disappeared aft, presumably in search of breakfast and to regale the rest of the crowd with a highly coloured version of how the Old Man had appeared on the bridge wearing nothing but his hat and shaving soap.

  A still shaken-looking Conway was out on the starboard wing, talking in low undertones to his opposite number, Cadet Breedie. I felt a twinge of guilt about speaking so sharply to him while the Commandant Joffre was belching her guts out under the green Atlantic swell. Still, I’d had it pretty rough when I was a youngster too, back in the bad old days of the post-First World War shipping slump. We’d been damned glad even to get a ship—any ship—with or without an irritable first mate.

  Brannigan finished passing on the watch information. ‘Course 143. Emergency full speed until further notice from the escort. Right, Mate?’

  Curtis nodded gloomily. ‘Right, Mate. I have the watch ... An’ it’s deep fried Spam an’ yellow muck again for chow, while you’re on it.’

  The Fourth Mate pulled a face, ‘Jesus! That bloody steward must have a nest of powdered chickens laying them under the galley.’ He turned to me and raised an eyebrow, ‘Permission to go below, Sir?’

  I nodded, ‘Off you go, Four Oh. Er ... where’s the Captain?’

  He grinned before he slid down the ladder, ‘Gone down to put his clothes on, Sir. The rest of them anyway.’

  Conway coughed diffidently behind me and I turned. ‘Can I go below for breakfast, Sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, then seeing the hurt still burning in his eyes I jerked my head. ‘Conway!’

  He swivelled back, tight-lipped, ‘Sir?’

  I had meant to say something light to him, make him feel a bit better but, somehow
, after seeing the little-boy peevishness in his face, I just made things worse. ‘Conway. If you ever come that prima donna act with me again I’ll have you on double watches from here right the way through to Aussie! Do you understand me?’

  The kid swallowed nervously. ‘Aye, aye, Sir. Can I go now, Sir?’

  I nodded and watched him hurry down the ladder with the flat-topped cap still with its wire support in it and the Company badge gleaming with pristine newness. I hoped someone would tell him to whip out the stretcher then leave it under the shower for a few hours so that it would get all floppy and more like an apprentice’s headgear than a master’s. The badge would go green in its own good time after the salt had got into it. Resolving to get Breedie, the Senior Cadet, to drop the hint, I wandered into the chartroom, feeling a proper bastard.

  The Third Mate looked up from where he had been checking our dead-reckoning position on the chart. ‘Morning, Mister Kent.’

  I lit a Players from the fifty tin I kept on the shelf and stared moodily at the bearded old Jack Tar in the lifebuoy on the label, wondering if he’d ever suffered from sadistic officers who took their own fears out on helpless juniors. He probably had—the sea isn’t the calling for anyone who aspires to democracy. Now young Conway was well on his way to finding that out, by courtesy of my good self.

  Curtis took his cap off and riffled his hair vigorously. The pencil he had been using started to dance in the rack with the vibration and I remembered we were still at emergency revs, which would have old McKenzie, the Chief, calculating out his increased fuel consumption like a miserly investor who’d just found the interest rate going down two points. The extroverted Lieutenant Commander Braid must have been on the same train of thought because Breedie stuck his head in through the starboard door. ‘Mallard’s signalling, Sir.’

  Curtis crammed his cap back on and tumbled out on to the bridge, while I followed at a slightly more dignified Chief Officers’ pace. The sun was really burning down by now and the steel helmets had vanished from the corvette’s bridge, to be replaced by white cap covers.

  Breedie handed me the signal. COMESCORT TO MASTER CYCLOPS: REPEAT TO MASTER ATHENIAN ... REDUCE SPEED TO SEVENTEEN KNOTS ... ADMIRALTY ADVISE TWO REPEAT TWO U-BOATS IN AREA IMMEDIATELY AHEAD ... COURSE ALTERATION STARBOARD 5 DEGREES TO 148 DEG TRUE REPEAT 148 DEG ON EXECUTE SIGNED BRAID END.

  I looked at Curtis. The Commandant Joffre had been hit on her port side, now we were altering further to starboard, away from the African coast. It wasn’t good news. Anyone who went down now was going to have an even longer row to safety and I wasn’t the Bligh type of adventure-sailor. On the other hand, if we had to deviate at all, I would personally have felt safer leaving an even bigger safety margin.

  Curtis rested the Aldis on his forearm and flickered the acknowledgement as I lifted the voice pipe out of its clip in the wheelhouse. The Captain answered almost at once. ‘Signal from escort, Sir,’ I said. ‘Course alteration to starboard.’

  There was a short silence, ‘I’ll be right up, John. Just carry on as requested.’

  I hooked the voice pipe back up and pressed the engine room buzzer. When they lifted the receiver down below the background noise of the machinery seemed very loud. The voice at the other end rasped in my ear, ‘Chief Engineer.’

  ‘Kent, Chief. You can reduce to seven-five revolutions again.’

  ‘Aye? Thank Christ for that, Mate. The way yon fancy Navy man acts ye’d think we were a bloody oil tanker.’

  I grinned into the mouthpiece. ‘Well, you can take your kettle off the boil anyway, just as soon as you like.’

  The Chief must have run to his precious throttle controls because the vibration died down almost before I’d replaced the receiver. He was a real cost-conscious Company man was Henry McKenzie. Curtis appeared, framed in the wheelhouse door. ‘Mallard’s taken down the “Execute”, Mister Kent.’

  I nodded at the helmsman. ‘Starboard five. Steady on 148.’

  ‘Steady on 148, Sir,’ he echoed, putting the wheel three spokes over, and I watched as the bow swung slowly round. As the mast stopped steady on the shimmering horizon again I walked over and glanced in the binnacle.

  ‘Steady on 148, Sir,’ the quartermaster affirmed as I looked at the floating card under the bright brass hood. I nodded.

  ‘Watch her at that. We haven’t a lot of seaway to play with between us and Athenian.’

  I didn’t like the idea of our two ships sweeping along directly abeam of each other. Not at that speed. It only needed a few moments of carelessness by either helmsman, and magnetism or interaction could take over, drawing the two enormous steel hulls together. The theory was that it made us a slightly less spread-out target for any predatory submarine, although, at the speed we were travelling, he would even then have to take a snap shot at us from forward of the beam before we left him without a chance of catching up. It was a reassuring thought.

  Then I remembered that the captain of the Commandant Joffre had probably felt as optimistic as I did. Just before his ship lay over on top of him.

  *

  Breedie was chalking the new heading on the course board over the helmsman’s head when Captain Evans arrived on the bridge. He glanced briefly at the figures, then jerked his head to me and stepped into the chart-room. I followed to find him stretched out over the table, tapping the chart thoughtfully with the dividers.

  He looked up frowning, ‘Did Commander Braid give any reason for the course change, John?’

  I nodded. ‘Admiralty intelligence seems to think there are U-boats directly ahead of us, Sir.’

  He must have seen the doubtful look in my eyes because he raised his eyebrows queryingly. ‘But ...?’

  I shrugged. ‘The Navy must be one hell of a sure of their plotting to try and get us to skin past with less than a half point alteration. Maybe there is nothing to starboard apart from a few thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean, but I’d rather gamble on the possibility of a longer trip in a lifeboat to the West Africa coast than barely shave past an established danger area.’

  Evans chewed his bottom lip and looked at the chart again. The thin pencil line marking our progress was creeping up to a point roughly abeam of Mocamedes, to the north of the Angolan border. ‘Any substantial alteration now will mean a lot of ground to make up by the time we reach the Cape.’

  I knew what he meant. If we swung well away to our starboard hand at this stage it meant we had to make good the distance of two sides of a triangle against a straight run into our refuelling point at Cape Town. As it was, we were already running well to the west of the normal shipping lanes in order to avoid presenting the German Navy with an almost guaranteed rendezvous. Still—apart from the Chief Engineer’s penurious ulcers—I couldn’t see why we had to save miles at the expense of a proportionate increase in risk.

  ‘What’s a couple of days extra steaming going to matter, Sir?’ I queried.

  The Captain dipped into my tin of Players and graciously offered me one too. I mentally resolved to carry them in my pocket from now on as we lit up and he blew a long, thoughtful streamer of smoke at the tiny blob on the chart marking St. Helena. I could see he had something on his mind so I stared out through the open door at Athenian taking long, graceful dips into the slow swell as she clung to the dubious protection of our flank. It was all a game of chance, even in the way we were hugging each other for solace. A split second decision by some waiting Kapitan Lieutnant on whether he could take us best from the port or starboard side would mean the difference between Athenian or Cyclops crewmen vomiting pink lung tissue in the wake of their luckier sister as the black diesel oil burnt its way down to their guts. I shuddered involuntarily. Sure, I loved Chief Officer Henderson over there like a brother, but ...?

  ‘Have you ever wondered why we haven’t been zigzagging this trip?’ said Evans, watching me.

  I looked guiltily away from Athenian, hoping he hadn’t been able to read my thoughts. ‘Sir? Well ... I assume that, at seventeen knot
s, we’re presenting a pretty hard target anyway, without arsing about convoy-style.’

  He smiled and knew what I meant. All our previous trips during wartime had been in convoy, where the slightest suspicion of submarine activity had been the signal for periodic alterations of course in an attempt to confuse any ambushing U-boat’s attack plan. We’d also seen a lot of ships erupting violently to prove that theory didn’t always match up with practice! It was a bloody nuisance for the officer of the watch too, with twenty or thirty ships charging about all over the shop like panic-stricken cattle. But then—so was fighting a drowning man for a place on a Carley float.

  Evans shook his head, ‘Even vessels proceeding independently zig-zag almost continuously in submarine waters. And maybe, after the practice they’ve had, the Hun are getting better at hitting fast targets.’

  I thought again about the climbing spray against the hull of the stricken Frenchman a few hours before, and the pathetic little matchstick man on her funnel, and suddenly the importance of taking every possible precaution seemed very necessary, and to hell with the inconvenience. So, why were we being different?

  The Old Man saw the query in my face before I had time to frame the question. He wiped his red face slowly with a large blue hankie and eased the sweat-soaked shirt around his armpits. ‘We’re in a hurry, John. One hell of a hurry. Two days extra steaming just can’t be allowed on this voyage. You drew up the stowage plans—you know what we’re carrying in the forward strongroom?’

  I nodded. We had two very hot consignments forward, both brought aboard less than an hour before we sailed from Gladstone Dock. The first shipment had arrived in the traditional plain van, the secrecy having been somewhat dissipated, however, by the three Liverpool Constabulary patrol cars that had accompanied it. Treasury notes. Printed by the Royal Mint and shipped out to the Bank of Australia. I didn’t know how much there was but, judging by the number of steel-bound cases, there was more than enough to pay for Cyclops and a few more freighters if anyone wanted to start up a shipping company in style. I couldn’t see that there needed to be any rush to deliver them, though. Not if it meant risking valuable ships and men in a headlong dash on a straight, easily anticipated course through U-boat water.