Ship of Force

by Alan Evans

  Smith grinned lopsidedly. “I suppose it is pretty funny, to them.”

  “Maybe. But I blame that for the bad reputation the crew have ashore. The men get fed up and some drunk says a word too much and the fighting starts.”

  Smith was silent. Marshall Marmont was the ‘flagship’ of the flotilla with which he was to take ‘offensive action’ against Uboats. Her designers may have thought it just conceivable that she would be called upon to fight another ship, but hunt U-boats? No. She was supposed with her big guns to be a central strong point for the rest of his little flotilla. This was his ‘ship of force’!

  Garrick asked, “Have you been aboard Sparrow?”

  Smith was sorry for Garrick. He had got him into this. Left alone, Garrick might have got a destroyer command. Destroyer? Smith’s other ship was called a destroyer but — The fact was that back in the 1890s the navies of the world had been building torpedo-boats, fast little craft designed to attack and sink capital ships. Fisher at the Admiralty saw them as a potential threat to the British Fleets of big ships, demanded a vessel to counter them, and the result was the torpedo-boat destroyer, the TBD. Sparrow was one of these, one of the earliest ‘destroyers’, launched in 1899. At any high speed and in any bad weather these boats shipped water over the bows but their designers had foreseen this and so they had a curved hump of a foredeck — like a turtle’s back — to shed the water. So they called them ‘turtle backs’. These ships were also sometimes known as ‘thirtyknotters’ because they were designed for a speed of thirty knots. In her trials Sparrow just achieved that speed but had rarely done so later. For many years her best had been a bone-shaking twenty-six knots.

  Smith said, “I reported to the Commodore and then paid a flying visit to Sparrow. I know that she’s called Bloody Mary, and why.” Because her crew had an even worse reputation than the monitor’s for brawling ashore and because they were almost entirely Scots.

  “‘Bloody Mary, Queen o’ Scots,’” Trist had quoted when Smith reported to him. “Lieutenant Dunbar who commands her has collected a sort of Foreign Legion aboard her, Scots like himself with one or two Irish. You’d be hard put to it to find an Englishman aboard. Dunbar himself guards his tongue but to my mind he borders on dumb insolence. You’ll need to keep a tight hold on him and his crew.”

  Afterwards Smith had seen them and found Dunbar closemouthed, obviously weighing up this new Commander.

  Garrick said, “I’m afraid most of the brawling is between the crews of this ship and Sparrow, sir.”

  Smith knew that, too — bad news always got around. He shifted restlessly. “We’ve received sailing orders?”

  “Yes, sir. The Commodore has called for all commanding officers at nine.”

  “All right. Let’s make a start.” They went down into the pinnace and it headed for the port.

  Smith stood with Garrick in the well as the pinnace wound through the anchored shipping. He watched the low silhouette of Marshall Marmont recede astern as the pinnace headed for the port. Offensive action? With this — flotilla? It sounded more like a floating zoo with its men at each other’s throats, his destroyer the black sheep of the Dunkerque Squadron and his monitor a lame duck. Garrick said, “One of the ‘M’ monitors left this morning.” He pointed to a line of the ‘M’ class monitors, squat ships, low in the water like Marshall Marmont but smaller and mounting twin twelve-inch guns in a turret forward. “She was detached for ‘Special Operations’. That’s all anybody knows.”

  Smith nodded absently. He hunched his shoulders against the rain. Special Operations could mean anything…The pinnace ran into the port of Dunkerque, between the breakwaters and up the channel to pass between the bastion and the lighthouse. The French had an underground headquarters in the bastion. Close by was a French seventy-five-millimetre field gun, its wheels on a circular platform on top of a cone-shaped mounting so the trail hung down and the barrel pointed at the sky. The extemporised anti-aircraft gun was there because of air raids; this port needed all the guns it could get. It was bombed by Zeppelins and bombers, shelled by raiding destroyers and bombarded by fifteen-inch guns from behind the German lines in Belgium. It bore the scars. Twenty miles north at Nieuwpoort, the lines of trenches that faced each other across Europe ran down to the sea. In Dunkerque you could hear the mutter of gunfire that never stopped. At night the glow of the firing lit the distant sky.

  The Trystram lock lay to starboard and its gates were open to admit a Coastal Motor Boat to the basin beyond. The CMBs were berthed in there and the Commander surely couldn’t be happy about it; he would want them outside where they would not have to pass through a lock to get to sea. The CMB entering was one of the newer fifty-five-foot boats. Her ensign drooped at the yard because she was hardly moving as she slipped into the lock. But Smith knew these boats were capable of speeds up to forty knots and were the fastest vessels afloat. He could see the two torpedo chutes, not tubes, in the stern from which she fired her torpedoes. With her rounded hull curving inboard to form her deck and make her nearly a cylinder in shape she looked a bit like a torpedo herself, slim, fast, deadly. As she entered the lock someone flashed a light briefly from the quay above, showing the boat’s commander where he stood in the cockpit at the wheel. He was a very young man of course, probably a Sub-Lieutenant. Coastal Motor Boats were a very young man’s game. His oilskin glistened black with rain and spray and his face turned up to the yellow light was drawn. The light snapped out then and the CMB was lost in the gloom of the lock.

  Marshall Marmont’s pinnace thrust on up the length of the basin of the Port d’Echouage, past a tug and then the destroyers tied up at the quay to starboard, of which Sparrow was one. To port was the shipyard. At the head of the Port d’Echouage the way came off the pinnace as the engine slowed and she turned to slip in alongside the steps. Close by was the lock de la Citadelle that led to the basin where the French destroyers were berthed but right above was the quay where the fish market was held and its smell lingered.

  Smith, by virtue of rank, was first out of the pinnace but then Garrick came up and they started to walk along the edge of the quay.

  They headed for the Parc de la Marine and Trist’s headquarters, walking quickly. On their left was the old seamen’s quarter and as the doors of bars and cafes opened and closed they let out a murmur of sound and shafts of light, but for most of the time they were closed and the quayside lay dark and silent. There were gaps in the houses that made up the streets running back from the quay, marking where bombs had fallen. High above the town stood the Belfroi tower where the French had an observation post to watch for enemy aircraft or ships. But while they could warn of raiders, a lot still got through the guns and the fighters.

  Smith walked in brooding silence. Garrick would be wondering about Smith’s plans for the flotilla and the bitter truth was that he had none. Not for a creeping monitor and an ancient torpedo-boat destroyer. He knew Trist had plans for them.

  But Garrick asked, “This business of offensive action against U-boats, sir. What do you think about it?”

  Smith told him.

  * * *

  Behind them in the Port d’Echouage the tug Lively Lady was snugged-in against the quay across from the shipyard and only fifty yards from Sparrow. Victoria Sevastopol Baines woke in her tiny cabin aboard the tug and lay for some minutes staring up at the deckhead. She thought it needed a lick of paint and she’d tell George, the tug’s master, about it. She believed in keeping the crew of the Lively Lady on their toes. The devil found work for idle hands. She lay still but not idle, planning work for those hands. Besides, she was long past the age for leaping out of bed.

  Victoria’s middle name gave the clue to her years; she had been born as the news of the fall of Sevastopol reached England. At the age of sixty-one she preferred to let waking take its time. At the same time, normally she disapproved of sleeping during the day as being a foreign habit. This day, however, she felt justified because the Lively Lady had orders to sail t
hat night so she thought this little sleep was like the wise virgins tending their lamps. Well, the virgin part wasn’t to be taken literally. There had, after all, been Captain Baines and the Captain had been a full-blooded man: she had borne him four sons. He had also been master and owner of the tug Lively Lady so his widow owned her now — and commanded her. Strictly the tug came under the orders of the Royal Navy and strictly she was commanded by her master, George, because he was Royal Naval Reserve and had a master’s ticket. But Victoria who had no ticket at all, refused to accept such red tape. She commanded the tug and George and the Navy accepted it. Early in the war she had been outspoken about an officer’s seamanship and he threatened to have her sent ashore. She had bawled at him from leather lungs: “Ashore? Put me ashore? I’ll write to The Times about you, my lad! Tear a widow woman from her only means of livelihood and throw her on the streets? A woman that’s trying to serve King and country and has four boys at sea this minute!” That was how she started. He heard a lot more but not the end because he wisely hauled clear before then.

  Now she threw back the covers, knelt on the bunk and peeped out of the scuttle. The quay was a foot from her face and in the half-dark the pave of it gleamed wetly but the rain was not heavy. She thought a walk to stretch her legs and to get some fresh air would do her good. The Lively Lady was not due to sail for three hours. She drew the curtains over the scuttles because she knew Frenchmen got on to the quay and everyone knew about them. She crawled stiffly out of the bunk, a stocky lady set solidly on thick legs, and lit the lamp. In its light she peered into the mirror with sharp blue eyes and scowled at the bird’s nest of grey hair. She brushed it severely, setting it ship-shape in a tight bun. That done she washed and groaned red-faced into her stays, made all fast with two half-hitches then squeezed her feet into the high-heeled shoes. The young flibbertigibbet of a girl in the shop at Dover had tried to sell her a size six when she had worn a size five for close on fifty years. She’d even had the sauce to mumble some rubbish about her feet spreading. Fool.

  She pulled her dress on over her head. Her hat went on the grey bun with a pin rammed in either side to secure it. She picked up coat, fur tippet, handbag and umbrella and went on deck. “George!”

  Her bellow brought a tall, thin, sad man popping up from the hatch leading to the saloon.

  “Yes, missus?”

  “Do up me dress, George, there’s a good lad.”

  George stepped around her and fastened the buttons between her shoulders, helped her on with her coat. “There y’are, missus.”

  “Thank ye, George. I’m going for a breath of fresh air. Mind you see we’ve got steam for sailing.”

  “Aye, missus.”

  “Don’t let that Purvis feller get ashore to get drunk.”

  “No, missus.”

  “See you later then.” Victoria put up her umbrella and walked across the plank to the quay.

  George watched her go and said sadly, “Yes, missus.”

  She walked very straight in the back. As a young girl she had carried baskets of washing on her head for miles but that was far behind her. Her cronies in the Kent branch of the Temperance League knew her only as a woman of independent means and temper.

  She passed the destroyers tied up in the Port d’Echouage, some singly and others in trots of three or four, and came to Sparrow. She tip-tapped precariously over the pavé on her high heels and called out from under the umbrella, “Good evening, young man!”

  A voice answered from the head of the gangway in broad Scots. “Evening, ma’am!”

  She knew Sparrow and her crew and thought they were a nice enough lot of boys. A little bit wild, maybe, but boys will be boys. Through a gap in the buildings that faced on to the quay she could see H.M. Barge Arctic in the basin beyond with the Coastal Motor Boats nestling alongside and she wondered if Jack Curtis’s boat was in — was sure she saw it. She liked Jack Curtis and she missed her four boys, all of them at sea.

  She walked on, crossed two locks and the fish-market and headed for the Rue de la Panne. Where it opened on to the quay was a small bar called Le Coq. Victoria was less than enthusiastic about the name but she had found the staff courteous and respectful and it was comfortable, though now the windows were shuttered and the door closed because of the black-out. She paused outside the door to shake the rain from her umbrella and to unpin her blue-ribbon badge of total abstinence from her coat lapel and put it carefully into her bag. A little of what you fancy did you good and what the ladies of Kent didn’t see wouldn’t hurt them. Besides, they didn’t have to take a tug to sea. She peered back along the quay at a gangling RNVR figure striding long-legged towards her, recognised Jack Curtis and waved the umbrella at him, then entered Le Coq.

  “Good evening, M’sieur Jacques. Two large cognacs, please. Mister Curtis will be here directly.” And she settled behind her usual table opposite the door, sitting straight-backed as she had been taught with her hands in her lap, but surreptitiously easing the shoes from her feet.

  She watched the door for Jack Curtis and thought absently that there’d been a lot of pinnaces and boats below the fish-market and then remembered that Commodore Trist would be giving his orders and the boats would have brought the officers. Trist. She sniffed. Bloody man? Bloody old woman! Then she boomed, “Ah! Jack!”

  * * *

  Trist’s headquarters was in a big house in the Parc de la Marine. Trist’s office was in a long, spacious room with tall windows that must once have been a ballroom or banqueting hall. There was a scattering of chairs around the walls but the highly polished floor was empty except for Trist’s big desk and the highbacked chair behind it. He received his callers there, rising straight and tall, impressive. The wall behind his desk held a huge chart of the Channel and the North Sea. Smith thought uneasily that the whole setting was designed for effect. The long stretch of floor, the big, empty desk, the vast spread of the chart — why behind him, where he couldn’t see the damn thing? Now it was evening, the curtains drawn across the tall windows, but there were only lights at the end of the room where Trist conducted his briefing like an actor on a stage before the little group of officers seated in a semi-circle around the chart. Smith wondered again if it was all arranged for effect — the thought came then: mere window-dressing like his flotilla.

  Trist looked around at the assembled officers. He stood below the big chart holding a long pointer that he tapped in the palm of one hand and he looked very much the schoolmaster. His Flag-Lieutenant stood attentively by the chart, a thick file of instructions under one arm. Trist summed up: “So there you are, gentlemen. The main force under my command will fire on Zeebrugge while Commander Smith and his — flotilla, attends to Ostende. The tides are right and the weather forecast is — hopeful. There’s nothing we haven’t done before, but bombardment of these ports has driven the U-boats inland up the canals to Bruges and so hindered their operations.” He smiled coldly at Smith. “Offensive action is nothing new to this command.”

  Smith did not respond.

  Trist still watched him. “Questions, anyone?”

  No one spoke.

  “Comments?” And when still no one spoke: “Surely our new boy has some bright light from the world outside to shed on our little struggle here!” It was said jokingly but there was an acid edge to it. The Flag-Lieutenant smiled.

  Smith’s face twitched and Garrick sitting beside him stirred uneasily. Trist’s eye was on them. Smith said reluctantly, “Bombardments help, sir, but they don’t stop the U-boats, only make it harder for them. It’s just more difficult and takes longer for them to make the passage to the sea. They still get out.”

  Trist snapped, “Where the patrols are waiting!” And when Smith was silent, “Well?”

  The schoolmaster again — ‘speak up, boy!’ But Trist seemed an uneasy schoolmaster, uncertain — wanting to demonstrate his authority as if unsure of it? Smith answered, “A vessel on patrol finds it difficult to catch a U-boat. And so does a blockading
vessel. In both cases the ship is looking for a U-boat that could be under the sea and hunting her.” Trist was red in the face now but Smith pushed on. He might as well speak all of his mind and get it over with. “And blocking the entrance to a port is difficult if not impossible. A ship sunk in the entrance might stop a destroyer or cruiser getting out but a U-boat on the surface draws a lot less water and will get around the obstruction. No, sir. Since you asked my opinion, convoys I think are the —”

  “Convoys!” Trist chuckled, seeming relieved. “We have a prophet of the convoy faith among us, gentlemen.” He smiled tightly at Smith, confident now. “Convoys served in the days of sail but this is a modern war and the U-boat is a modern weapon. A convoy puts all your eggs into one basket. What a risk! Suppose a U-boat comes on a convoy of twenty ships, twenty fat targets? She’d wreak havoc!”

  Smith thought the schoolmaster was trotting out phrases he had learnt from another, determined to play safe, take not a step beyond the rigid letter of his instructions. Smith said doggedly, “I don’t believe that. It can be a well-escorted basket. If the same number of escorts patrol seaways they have thousands of square miles to try to protect and the U-boats pick off the merchantmen as they like.”

  And Garrick put in, “I agree, sir.”

  Trist looked at him, sniffed. “You would, of course, you’re a disciple. I’ve explained to Commander Smith the arguments against convoy, that it is too great a risk. However, the decision to be taken is not ours. We simply do our duty as best we can. But I respect your loyalty although in this case it is misplaced! And talking of loyalty —” His eyes slid back to Smith. “I do not see Mr Dunbar. Is there any good reason for his absence?”

  Smith had no answer. “I don’t know, sir.”

  “I see.” Trist smacked the pointer into the palm of his hand. “Well. Dunbar is your affair.” He said it with dislike. “See to it, please.”

  It was a rap across the knuckles for Smith before the other officers and he stared woodenly at the chart as Trist said, “Very well, gentlemen — until we sail.”