by Alan Evans
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Fast steaming was one way of eluding a waiting U-boat. Hercules had not received any such warning simply because she had no wireless. The lack of it was a curse. And there was no question of her running away from a U-boat: she was steaming full ahead now, as she had been since leaving Venice, and still only making nine knots or less. Geordie Hogg claimed ten knots were possible, but then only for a limited period. Smith climbed to his feet again, slung his glasses around his neck so they hung on his chest from their strap and stepped to the front of the wheelhouse. If there was a U-boat out there then another pair of eyes might help. He slowly swept the darkness with the glasses but saw nothing and lowered them to rest his eyes before sweeping again. The two men at the six-pounder in the bow were bulky, black outlines in the night, shifting as they moved to keep warm. He asked, ‘Has the gun’s crew had anything since coming on watch?’
‘Cocoa about an hour ago, sir,’ answered Menzies. ‘They’re due for another. It’s damn cold in the bow.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Smith remembered the ‘Contessa’ handing out cups of coffee to the ammunition detail at Porto Margherita. Helen Blair...
Davies said, ‘Looks like destroyers — more than one, maybe two or three in line ahead but I can see the leader. An’ there’s more smoke to port of them but our own smoke keeps coming between — blast!’
Smith shifted to stand beside him but was too late: the searchlight to the north had gone out and he could see nothing but Hercules’ funnel smoke drifting down like a curtain astern and to port. He asked. ‘What’s our position?’
Menzies answered, ‘About twenty miles north-east of Brindisi, sir.’
A flotilla of destroyers returning to their base at Brindisi, then, but fast overhauling Hercules. ‘Have that signal-lamp ready.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Davies lifted it from the shelf under the screen, one-handed, held the binoculars to his eyes with the other.
What about the other smoke astern? Smith held his own glasses ready. Hercules plugged along, the thump thump of her engines a gentle shiver of the deck under Smith’s feet. Davies said, ‘Here we go! And there’s another!’
Smith set the glasses to his eyes. The searchlight far to the north was sweeping again, defining once more the line of the horizon and Smith saw a ship against it, a dark silhouette under the banner of smoke from her funnels, the white water of bow-wave and wash. She was a mile or more away and fine on the starboard quarter so she was near bows-on to him, but — He asked, ‘How many funnels?’
Davies muttered under his breath, then: ‘Can’t rightly see, the way she lies. Looks like one — two.’
Smith shifted his glasses from the ship, sweeping quickly astern, intending to return and try again, tension gripping him now. Davies had reported three separate plumes of smoke. One of them was the destroyers to starboard. That left another ship or ships right astern and more to port. He checked his sweep as the drifter’s smoke swirled briefly away to port and gave him a glimpse astern but only of the loom of another ship, and further away. He swung the glasses back to the destroyer: she was still foreshortened but now.
Davies said, ‘Four funnels an’ two more boats astern of her.’ He swore as the searchlight’s beam was snuffed out and darkness covered the destroyers.
Smith said, ‘They’re Austrian!’ And: ‘Action stations! But no klaxons! Keep it quiet!’ There was always the million-to-one chance the destroyers might pass Hercules and not see her if she was silent. Davies shoved the signal-lamp at Buckley and started out of the wheelhouse. Smith called after him, ‘I want Mr. Archbold at the wheel! And no firing till I order!’
‘Aye, aye, sir!’ Davies went on the run.
The destroyers were Austrian because of their four funnels. The Italians had no destroyers with four funnels but the Austrians did, big, new boats that could make thirty-odd knots. These looked to be coming on at speed, better than twenty knots, and there was no escape for Hercules. In five minutes they would be up with her. What were they doing here? Three big, fast destroyers like the flotilla that escorted…
Smith shouldered his way across to the port side of the wheelhouse, seeing their faces pale in the gloom, eyes staring at him. He fetched up by Buckley. ‘What d’you see?’ He lifted his glasses.
Buckley grumbled, ‘Damn all but smoke, sir.’
Smith ordered, ‘Hard aport!’ Hercules’ bow swung, the deck tilting gently in the turn. She steered through sixteen points until the white water of her wake showed stretching northward. ‘Meet her... Steady... Steer that.’ He lifted the glasses. Now Hercules was headed north, running back along her wake. The smoke she made now and piled astern was not masking his view while that she made when running southward was dispersing, drifting away on the wind to the east and he could see through it.
Menzies said, ‘Ship fine on the starboard bow, sir! A big ‘un! No destroyer!’
She was not. Smith stared at her.
Buckley reported, ‘I can see them destroyers we’ve been watching all along, off the port bow an’ the leader’s less than a mile away.’
Menzies, searching: ‘A destroyer on the starboard bow! About a mile! Four funnels!’
Smith’s glasses found her, held her a second then swept back to the big ship. He could not be certain but it must be... He let the glasses fall to hang on their strap against his chest. ‘It’s Salzburg.’
She was steaming almost straight down on him inside her screening destroyers, three either side of her and about a half-mile from her.
Buckley muttered, ‘Jesus wept!’ He was rapidly sliding down the wheelhouse windows so the night air rushed in on them. At least their shattered, flying fragments would not add to the chaos when the action started. But one direct hit from Salzburg would obliterate the wheelhouse.
Fred Archbold came puffing up to take over the wheel from Ginger Gates, who ran aft to man the Vickers machine-gun mounted there. Smith briefly told the mate what was going on and he echoed Buckley: ‘Jesus wept!’
Smith asked, ‘What time is sunrise?’
Menzies answered, ‘Six oh five, sir.’
Good mark for Menzies. Smith realised that Salzburg was only sixty miles north of the Otranto barrage and closing the gap with every second. ‘Barrage’ was in this case just another term for a massive boom. This one was a fifty mile long line of buoyed and mined anti-submarine nets strung across the Straits of Otranto and intended to halt or limit the passage of U-boats from their bases in Pola and Cattaro to the Mediterranean. Sunrise was in less than three hours so before the first light Salzburg would be safely past Brindisi and have the barrage in range of her guns and those of her six escorts. He said, ‘She’s going to shell the barrage.’
The Otranto barrage was patrolled by motor-launches armed to deal with submarines, and drifters to handle the nets, drifters like Hercules, slow wooden craft, each with a six-pounder pop-gun in the bow. Salzburg and the destroyers would make target practice with them and the launches while sweeping along the barrage from west to east. Voss would wreck that as well, holing the buoys so the whole ponderous mass sank to the bottom of the sea. There might be doubt about the effectiveness of the barrage in stopping U-boats, Smith had some, but its destruction would nevertheless make life undeniably easier for the submarines and would be a triumph for Voss.
Menzies groaned, ‘It’ll be bloody murder!’
It would. Smith said, ‘Get the Chief on the pipe.’
Davies was working on the gun in the bow, others pouring up from below and scurrying across the deck to their action stations. Smith stooped over the engine-room voice-pipe. ‘Chief! Give me all she’s got!’
Geordie Hogg’s protest made the pipe vibrate in its fastenings. ‘She’s running full ahead now! Ye’ll shake the bottom out of her! Ye can’t ask her to perform like one o’ them Austrian destroyers.’
‘If you want to see an Austrian destroyer there are half-a-dozen closing us, and Salzburg’s in the middle of
them.’
Geordie’s voice came strangled up the pipe: ‘God save us!’
Smith straightened. There was an Italian squadron at Brindisi and Pickett with his cruisers. They would be quick to come out when Salzburg opened fire on the barrage but by the time they raised steam, got to sea, and steamed down to Otranto Salzburg would have finished her destructive mission. She would be over near the eastern shore and turning northward again to run for home. They would never catch her. He thought she had probably slipped southwards the previous night, stealing along the eastern shore of the Adriatic in the cover of the island chain that stretched down that coast. Then she had laid up in Cattaro during the day and set out to cross the sea this night so as to strike at the western, Italian end of the barrage. That way, as she destroyed she would be steaming away from the pursuit coming out from Brindisi. It was daring and effective. It bore the stamp of Voss.
Buckley said hoarsely, ‘I can see them destroyers clear. And Salzburg’s as big as a house!’
One destroyer leader was a bare half-mile away, broad on the port bow, the other to starboard. The rest followed their leaders in line ahead, screening Salzburg where she steamed between the lines. They would see Hercules at any second. And then? They would not open fire unless they had to, Smith was sure of that, because Voss would not want to give the game away by shooting-up one little drifter. But he dared not pass her by in case, just possibly, she was a naval patrol with wireless and could give the alarm. So — detach one destroyer to board this fishing-boat and make sure she had no wireless. That would be Voss’s solution, a bad one for Smith and Hercules because when the destroyer came alongside and saw Hercules was an armed drifter she would be scuttled and her crew taken prisoner.
He could not face that, and somehow he had to alert them in Brindisi and aboard the craft patrolling the barrage.
There was one way. He ordered Menzies, ‘Tell Davies that when I order him to fire he’s to aim for Salzburg’s bridge. Then you nip aft and take command of the Vickers, same target.’
‘Aye, aye, sir!’ Menzies dashed away.
Smith thought that Ginger Gates on the Vickers was well able to pick his target without Menzies pointing it out, but there was no sense in Smith, Archbold and Menzies all being in the wheelhouse. If it was hit then Menzies would survive to take command. Poor little bugger.
The destroyer leaders were now abeam to port and starboard, those second in the lines were broad on the bow. A light blinked aboard Salzburg and Buckley muttered, ‘She’s signalling, sir!’
Smith nodded, guessed who she was signalling to. His gaze shifted to port, to the line of destroyers there. A moment later came an answering wink of light from the ship at the tail of the line. So she had been ordered to swing out of the line when she came up with Hercules and deal with her. Smith was certain he was right, would bet his life on it. Then he remembered he was already betting the lives of all aboard the drifter.
The battlecruiser bulked huge off the starboard bow, majestic, sweeping down on them. She would pass less than a cable’s length away, charge past with little more than a hundred yards between them. Buckley shoved a handful of cotton wool at Smith who thrust plugs of it into his ears. Wisps of it stuck out of Fred Archbold’s ears but he heard Smith’s order, ‘Starboard ten.’ The wheel went over and the stubby bow of Hercules swung to point at the oncoming giant. ‘Steady… steer that.’
Davies crouched over the six-pounder. One of his crew had turned to stare back at the wheelhouse, Smith saw his face a pale smudge above the dark blue of his jersey. Smith made a funnel of his hands and roared, ‘Fire!’ The six-pounder spat flame and barked, jetted smoke and a second later there came the flash of the burst high on the bridge superstructure of Salzburg, the tall tower built around and forward of the foremast.
Smith shouted, ‘Hard port!’ The six-pounder fired again, and again as the wheel went over and Hercules heeled in the turn, brass cartridge cases bouncing and clanging across the deck, smoke swirling back into the wheelhouse, stinking of cordite, acrid. Then the heavens burst open as Salzburg fired her secondary armament. The six-inch and four-inch guns licked out long tongues of flame over the sea and the blast shook Hercules, whipped Smith’s cap from his head and staggered Fred Archbold at the wheel. Smith saw the sea lift in huge fountains to port as he clung to the screen and bellowed in Archbold’s ear, ‘Meet her! Steer that!’ He pointed to make his meaning clear and Hercules straightened to an even keel but bucking as she steamed down Salzburg’s starboard side and rode the big bow-wave rolling out from the battlecruiser’s stem.
Salzburg was rushing past only yards away; she was making better than twenty knots and Hercules nearly ten so they were passing at their combined speed of thirty knots. The battlecruiser loomed enormous, a floating steel fortress lit by the flashes of her guns so that the big gun turrets of her silent main armament were cut sharp in black silhouette high overhead. Tracers wove lazy, criss-cross patterns and the six-pounder was still firing, Davies and his crew shifting and leaping about the deck as they trained and laid the gun, fired, loaded, trained and laid.
They were past her, Salzburg’s stern sliding away and Hercules pitching and rolling in the churned white water of the battlecruiser’s wake. ‘Hard astarboard!’ Smith sent the drifter plunging across that wake and Salzburg’s funnel smoke rolled over them. It cleared and there ahead of them was the last destroyer of the port side screen. ‘Hard aport!’ Fred Archbold hauled on the wheel. The six-pounder barked and gun-flashes sparked along the destroyer’s hull. Hercules was turning but a shell splashed into the sea close off the starboard bow and hurled water inboard that fell on the six-pounder’s crew; Smith saw one of them felled by the force of it. Spray drove into the wheelhouse and into his face. It stank evilly. He felt the slam and shudder as Hercules was hit and ordered, ‘Hard astarboard! Check firing!’ The destroyer was blurring, merging into the darkness, a black shadow under her smoke with only her white wash to mark where she had gone, racing on southward.
The guns had ceased firing but Smith’s ears still rang. Hercules was tossed about like a cork in a sea made turbulent by the passing of the squadron, but now she was alone. And invisible. Smith swallowed and looked at the compass. They were steaming north-east. Far off the port beam the horizon was aglow where a searchlight was sweeping again. The men operating it would have heard and seen the gunfire. The alarm had been given and the Italians and Pickett’s cruisers would be raising steam to put to sea. Voss would know it and that his chance of a surprise attack had gone. He would be cursing the drifter but would go on to wreak what havoc he could in the brief space of time now left to him. Smith was certain of that.
‘Starboard ten!’ Smith brought Hercules around and back on her course for Brindisi. His voice was husky and his throat raw as if he had bellowed orders for hours but the action had lasted only minutes.
Menzies came into the wheelhouse, short of breath and trying to control the excitement in his voice as he reported, ‘We were hit twice, sir. One shell went clear through the fo’c’sle, in one side and out t’other without bursting. Another took a lump out of the stern. Only one casualty: young Gates had his arm laid open, by a splinter I think, but he kept firing the Vickers. The cook is seeing to him.’ Young Gates was only nineteen, true, but he was still two years older than Menzies.
He continued, ‘One destroyer, the last in the line to port, she turned towards us just before we opened fire but she swung away quick when Salzburg fired.’
She would. Some of those shells from Salzburg that had hurtled over Smith’s head must have smashed into the sea uncomfortably close to the destroyer screen. And of course the firing effectively countermanded any order to stop and board Hercules; that had become pointless. Smith said, ‘Very good.’
Fred Archbold muttered, ‘Bloody miracle, if you ask me.’
Smith remembered the bulk of Salzburg rushing at them out of the darkness, the stupefying shock as her guns split the night seemingly right over the
drifter. He supposed their escape could seem like a miracle to Archbold but once you accepted that Salzburg must be provoked into firing then it was clear Hercules had to be brought so close to her as to be under the trajectory of her guns, or almost so. The gunners aboard her would have been briefly dazzled by the flash of the six-pounder and Hercules was small, passing swiftly across in front of them. It was simple enough and they had been lucky.
There was no reason for Menzies to be staring at him like that. Smith growled, ‘What the hell are you gawping at? Tell Davies to secure that gun!’
‘Aye, aye, sir!’ Menzies scurried away from Smith’s glare and out of the wheelhouse.
Reaction gripped Smith now as always when the fighting was done. He did not want congratulations nor hero-worship because he knew he was no hero. This was the time when he looked coldly at the risks he had run and tried to swallow his fear. He shifted to a corner of the wheelhouse, his back to the others and scowled out at the night and the dark sea.
Hercules made good fifteen miles before the light and in that dawning Pickett’s squadron came tearing out from Brindisi, the four cruisers in line ahead, screening destroyers out on either flank, all of them streaming thick, black funnel smoke. They made an impressive sight in that first pale light, grim and urgent. Smith said, ‘Make: Hercules to Flag. Salzburg and six destroyers sighted 3.35a.m. Course south-east, speed twenty-five knots. My position — get that from Mr. Menzies.’
He waited as the signal-lamp clattered, saw the acknowledging flicker from the leading cruiser. Then the lamp on her bridge flashed again and Buckley read, ‘Identify ships engaged.’
Smith said, ‘Make: Hercules opened fire on Salzburg at 3.43. Salzburg broke off the action at 3.48.’ He saw Menzies’ monkey-grin but Buckley’s face was as straight as Smith’s as he worked the lamp, flashing the signal across the swiftly narrowing gap between the ships. Smith added, ‘Ask: What report from barrage?’
