Westbound, Warbound

by Westbound, Warbound (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  When he handed over to Fisher at midnight – 13 December now – Punta del Este bore 045 degrees at about three miles. In another twenty minutes, when it would be safely abaft the beam, Fisher would alter 27 degrees to port for the next stage of forty miles – three hours, roughly – to Cape Santa Maria. And when Andy came up again at five-thirty – making this customary dawn pilgrimage despite being well aware that with land fixes all the way, star-sights weren’t essential – Cape Polonio was abaft the beam at a range of about ten miles. From here on, in point of fact, distance offshore would be steadily increasing.

  Halloran asked him what he was doing up here – who wanted bloody star-sights? Andy could only tell him vaguely, ‘Habit, I suppose. Wide awake anyway, no point not.’ There’d have been a better answer, but what the hell, it had been a stupid question. Something to do, maybe, with Halloran himself only very rarely getting his own sextant out of its box. He had at the start of this voyage – had taken his own star-sights every evening, as was normal practice.

  Andy was at the chart now, checking the Cape Polonio light’s characteristics – as if it was his job to do so, which it was not – hearing Fisher and Gorst out there and deciding to leave it to them; he went out into the other wing just as the skipper hauled himself up into the wheelhouse, exchanging gruff good mornings with the mate and helmsman. Ingram, that was. The sky broad on this beam was getting lighter, with a colour-wash of mauve above an increasingly well-defined horizon – which Fisher would welcome, for his stars. Wind east or southeast, he reckoned, but very little of it. No white water, except around her forefoot and along her sides, ripples reflecting that peculiar colour. He’d come up, he admitted to himself, to see this growth of first light and maybe a pocket-battleship in black silhouette against it: had had that image in his mind in half-sleep, and if he’d stayed below probably wouldn’t have shaken it off, therefore might not have got back to sleep. What you wanted to see, of course, was that it was not there: hardly surprising, considering that for several days they’d all had such visions in and out of mind.

  Light was spreading laterally as well as brightening and reaching upward, and there was definitely no other ship in sight. Hell, why should there have been? Answer: because the bastard was out there somewhere – near or far, and could as well be near as far – and it was for ships like the PollyAnna that it would be hunting. Nothing either far-fetched or pusillanimous in recognising this: you’d got away with it, was all.

  So far, you had. Or thinking back to events in the Moçambique Channel, might say got away with it again.

  ‘Looks like we’re on our own, sir.’

  The bridge-wing lookout – Brooks, ordinary seaman. Lanky, flaxen-haired, he’d been a ‘lumper’ – baggage-handler – in Southampton, signed on as a galley-boy in some coaster, signed off – and on again as an OS in PollyAnna – in the Clyde in August. Pleasant fellow, played a mouth-organ quite well. Andy said, ‘We weren’t expecting company, this close inshore.’

  ‘Not in daylight, bosun was saying.’

  ‘Bosun’s right. Glad you chose this way of life, Brooks?’

  ‘Been called up by now if I hadn’t. Left-right, left-right on the barrack square, like. But – yeah, suits me well enough. Sir.’

  That was a lot of it, he’d noticed, in most cases – a dislike, even horror of regimentation. On top of that, in some cases – whether recognised or not – love of the sea and the attraction of ‘foreign parts’. All of which boiled down to the sense of independence – being one’s own man.

  Andy suggested, ‘By the time we get home you might be thinking of getting yourself certificated.’

  ‘Well – dunno, but –’

  ‘Earn a few bob more. Just about double your pay, in fact.’

  ‘Readin’ an’ writin’s no great shakes, see.’

  ‘Don’t need all that much. Except to know what goes down in your own papers. But if you wanted – must be chaps who’d help?’

  ‘Yeah. Reckon…’

  ‘Why not break the back of that first, then have a stab at certification?’

  ‘Certification’ meaning qualifying as Able Seaman. Which was no sinecure, certainly couldn’t be achieved in a dog watch, but could be the making of a man like Brooks.

  Getting towards six – 0559, to be precise – and much lighter than it had been. PollyAnna’s own greyness noticeable, whereas ten minutes ago you might have forgotten it, assumed she was as black as she’d been before all the scraping and painting in Calcutta. Salt-stained grey now, ploughing sea already glinting blueish in the first flush of the new day, which had of course to be brighter still sixty miles to the east, where although you hadn’t a notion of it at this stage, three other grey ships were steering in company for the Plate – cruisers Ajax, Achilles and Exeter. Todhunter might have mentioned them as comprising the South American Squadron, but you hadn’t been memorising any of that or taking notes, had none of those warships’ names in mind, no way of guessing that those three names would soon be ringing around the world and in such a context that you’d be more than ready to say, ‘Oh, we were there!’ Aware as you would be by then that Commodore Henry Harwood, flying his broad pennant in Ajax, had calculated from as long ago as the Doric Star’s sinking on 2 December that the Graf Spee might be expected to show up off the Plate by about the 12th, and that six minutes ago, at 0608/13th, Achilles having reported smoke in the northwest, he’d sent Exeter to investigate it and received at 0614 her signal: I think it is a pocket-battleship.

  Fisher joined Andy in the bridge-wing.

  ‘Not a sausage, eh?’

  ‘Short on sausages, this morning. Shot any good stars?’

  ‘Gorst has. Can’t have him resting on his oars when we were just beginning to make progress.’ Waving a hand eastward and upward: ‘Light comes quick around these parts, doesn’t it?’

  He nodded. ‘Lovely morning. Virtually damn-all wind.’

  ‘Precisely as forecast – for once.’

  ‘Yeah. Hey, what’s…?’

  Thunder, in the east?

  And again – like distant, rolling echoes…

  ‘Can’t be bloody thunder!’

  ‘Harder edge to it, isn’t there.’

  ‘Gunfire?’

  ‘I’d say so. Sainted aunt… Hellish long way off, mind you…’

  More of it then. Big ships’ guns in action – God only knew how far away. Or how big. But you could guess. He’d fairly leapt to the wheelhouse doorway: ‘Captain, sir …’

  * * *

  Those opening salvoes had been heard at six-fifteen and gunfire continued with varying intensity and intervals of never more than a few seconds through six-thirty, six forty-five, 7 o’clock, seven-thirty. The Anna’s off-watch crew all over her upper deck, foc’sl and gun-deck listening to it with their eyes glued to a horizon that stayed empty. Clean-edged horizon too, visibility exceptionally good, the land on the other side, a dozen or fifteen miles away, clear-cut even to the inland hills – a visibility range of twenty-five miles at least – but out there to starboard not a wisp of funnel smoke. So the battle – Graf Spee versus whom? – had to be a long way beyond that horizon; ships in action, needing full power, would surely be emitting smoke. Might be the cruisers Todhunter and the man in Cape Town had spoken of, Andy guessed; and by now, an hour and a half since it had started, men in them would have been killed and maimed, ships’ armour-plating blown away, hulls punctured, gear smashed, guns knocked out. Graf Spee’s guns, please God; but that might not be the case, one knew only too damn well it might not be. The rate of fire, he realised, was slackening, thunder storm petering out. He found himself face to face with the Old Man at this moment – had stood aside to make way for him coming back out into the bridge-wing – asking him, ‘D’you think cruisers could stand up to a battleship with eleven-inch, sir?’ The answer came over his shoulder as he pushed on out: ‘Don’t know they are cruisers, do we. As I recall it, there was talk of bigger ships. But’ – pa
using, glancing round with a blunt hand raised, two thick fingers crossed – ‘could, I reckon. Well enough handled, could, I’d say.’ Shake of the head: ‘Bugger’s got the reach as well as the weight, though, hasn’t he…’

  There’d been no thunderclaps now for several minutes. Time – seven forty-five. And he, Andy, had to take over the watch at eight, before which it would be as well to cram in some sustenance – a bucket of coffee and whatever else came to hand quickly and in quantity. No time to shave, or –

  ‘Plain language signal, sir – to all British merchant vessels from cruiser HMS Achilles!’

  Young Clowes, looking excited; the skipper snatched the flimsy sheet from him. Muttering it aloud to himself jerkily, as if having trouble reading Dewar’s or Starkadder’s scrawl: ‘German battleship – Graf Spee in position – that – steering to enter Plate estuary – speed twenty-two knots. Shipping advised stand clear…’

  Staring round as if bewildered – at Andy, Fisher, Brooks and Clowes – swivelling then to bawl to Halloran, ‘Graf Spee’s running for the Plate! They got her on the bloody run!’

  6

  The warning message to merchant shipping was put out again an hour later and repeated hourly throughout the day, but it was coming then from the Ajax instead of the Achilles. PollyAnna was well clear in any case by this time, plugging steadily up-coast on a northeasterly course with normal lookouts posted and all hands employed cleaning decks and holds – steam-powered saltwater hoses backed by men with buckets and brooms sluicing coal dust from decks, gear and superstructure into the scuppers, and from her holds into the bilges, pumps running to clean them out, initially staining the ocean in her wake. In the wireless room, meanwhile, the operators were shifting constantly between frequencies in search of intelligible reports of the recent battle, or at any rate of the phase of it that seemed to have ended at about seven-forty. The one clear picture you had at this stage, derived from that warning message, was of the Graf Spee pounding southwestward at twenty-two knots and British cruisers shadowing; to an extent it was almost all you needed, would be weeks or maybe longer before you’d have it explained that that signal had been made by the Achilles the first time because Ajax, Commodore Harwood’s flagship, who would have made it, had been dismasted, and was thus unable to use her wireless until she’d rigged a jury mast and aerials. Or that the Exeter had been ordered back to the Falklands for repairs. As the best-armed of the three – 8-inch guns, the other two having 6-inch – she’d been the Graf Spee’s primary target, in consequence of which at quite an early stage she’d had only one gun left in use – one of the pair in her after turret – and no internal communications, no gun-control circuits either; she’d been holed, had a heavy list, flooding in her forepart and internal fires. By the end of the engagement the one remaining 8-inch gun had been locally controlled by her gunnery officer who’d moved down aft from the smashed fighting-top to give his spotting directions via a small armoured hatch in the turret itself; he, the gunnery lieutenant, crouched at it on his knees with one eardrum burst and the other ear pouring blood.

  Not that the other two had got off lightly. Ajax, for instance, before her dismasting had been hit twice in her bridge and had had two of her four 6-inch turrets knocked out in a single direct hit from one of the Germans’ 11-inch. She and Achilles had been shooting fast and accurately while manoeuvring like destroyers to dodge their heavyweight opponent’s very much more powerful and very well directed armament, a crucial stage coming then at 0710 when Harwood had ordered them to close the range as rapidly as possible so as to take more of the heat off Exeter. You acquired bits and pieces of all this gradually: sparse facts embroidered with conjecture, backed maybe by logic, otherwise only probability. The upshot in any case being that they had ‘got her on the run’; and whatever the detail of it, the ultimate truth and glory was of Nelsonian spirit and tactics at their simplest and utmost having led to victory by a small, heavily out-gunned force against one of the most powerful ships afloat – well, in comparison to their capabilities anyway – and one who’d had no problems at all in handling herself against unarmed, defenceless civilian ships.

  This was the picture that had taken root and grown in his own mind, and others’ too, Andy thought, in the course of the long day, although it wasn’t easy to differentiate later between what you’d actually known of it or had partly guessed at, in some areas maybe adding two and two and making five. But there had been a lot of bits and pieces, especially later, sunset-time for instance, in the brilliance of its afterglow – a series of plain-language transmissions in English from a French passenger ship, the Formose: inbound to Montevideo, she was being overhauled by the Graf Spee on that same track, and therefore quite reasonably calling for help – in English – to the British cruisers which she had in more distant sight, black miniatures a long way astern but holding on doggedly, from time to time dashing in terrier-like to keep their giant adversary on the run. The French-accented broadcast rattling on, ‘Captain giving order for passengers put on lifebelts. Mamas taking children in arms with coverings of wraps. Now shells falling around Graf Spee – we see zem!’ The cry for help had become an excited commentary as the battleship rushed on by, the Frenchman’s outpouring ending with, ‘Oh, most heartfelt thanks to our British allies!’ While very much more formal, even stilted bulletins were coming out of London at about that same time and throughout the evening – typically one they’d taken in shortly after Andy had come on watch at eight, for instance, to the effect that the German pocket-battleship Graf Spee, having been brought to action at first light this morning off the mouth of the Plate by cruisers of the Royal Navy, had turned away under cover of smoke, apparently with the intention of taking shelter in Uruguayan or Argentinian waters; this was repeated at nine p.m. with the additional information that the Spee and her pursuers, reportedly now inside the Plate estuary although her captain’s intentions were still far from clear, were again exchanging broadsides.

  PollyAnna had left Rio Grande abaft the beam by this stage. Fifty-five miles offshore, course unchanged, showing no lights, her big propeller thrash-thrash-thrashing through black water glittering with stars. ETA Vitoria first light 17 December. Get the full facts of it all then, Andy thought, moving out into the port wing of the bridge to check that the lookout was on his toes. Then back in, through the wheelhouse and out the other side, exchanging a word or two with the lookout in that wing while using binoculars to look for movement on the gundeck. Which – all right, there was… Back in the wheelhouse, he found that during his brief absence the Old Man had come up, was at that moment agreeing with some comment the helmsman – Harkness – must have made. Harkness was older than most of his shipmates, a widower who’d left the sea at the time of his marriage and now come back to it. Old Man nodding: ‘Was, lad. Truly was. Make a good yarn for the kids and grandkids, won’t it. You’ve kids, haven’t you – yeah, two boys, I remember – living with your sister-in-law, right?’ Turning to Andy then: ‘All right, Holt?’

  ‘Losing just over a knot to the current now, sir.’ He gestured towards the land. ‘Not done badly though – Cape Santa Marta’s near abeam. Saw it a couple of times, ten minutes back. Pure fluke, of course.’ Had seen its light, he meant, the double flash every fifteen seconds which should not have been visible at anything like its present distance. Phenomenal visibility wasn’t unheard of on this coast – and at this time of year, presumably – but he hadn’t realised it could apply at night as well as by day. Almost 2330 now. Checking that in a side-glance as he cleaned the front lenses of the glasses, then put them up, resuming his own contribution to the looking out. Old Man meanwhile crouching below the level of the surrounding windows while holding a storm-lighter to his pipe.

  ‘Captain, sir?’

  Starkadder – second wireless officer – stepping off the ladder, hadn’t seen him until the skipper had turned, still at the crouch and clicking the lighter again, sucking its flame down… ‘Uh?’

  ‘Private to you,
sir. Plain-language message via the Cerro station.’

  The Cerro was the wireless station at Montevideo. Actually a hill with the remains of an old fort on top and the signal station built on that, on the bay’s western side. The conical hill was invaluable as a leading mark when making landfall. Andy was continuing his search of the horizon on the seaward bow while the skipper straightened himself and took the message over to the chart where he could read it inside the canvas light-screen. It could hardly be a change in their orders, Andy guessed; anything of that sort would have been sent in the owners’ code, not plain-language. Maybe it was his birthday or something, and Todhunter knew it… Starkadder muttering, however, in his fluid Welsh lilt, ‘Bloody amazing, is this. If it means what I’m guessing it does. You’d never have dreamt, not in a million years –’