Convoy of War (A John Mason Kemp Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  The news from Liverpool earlier had been shattering: she had wept for Peter and prayed for him to come to York but beyond one quick visit he had not done so. Now she prayed for his safe return, knowing nothing of the current state of affairs aboard the Stephen Starr. She knew her father worried too, though he didn’t say much. He was too preoccupied with his own state of ill-health, had too much to say on that subject to have speech for anything else. There were only so many hours in a day ...

  Mary Kemp worried too, down south in Meopham. John had a hard job to do, mentally and physically wearing, always at sea — but he’d been at sea all his working life. She believed he would come through the war: she had a strong belief in God and she knew her prayers were going to be answered, so her worries were more for John’s day-to-day life than his safety and eventual homecoming.

  In Thurrock in Essex Mrs Portway, as frigid as ever, had no idea that a girl called Mabel in Grays, not so far away, was worrying about her husband, although, when on Herbert Portway’s last leave she’d been shopping with him in Grays, there had been a curious incident that had bothered her for a while and had then been forgotten: Herbert, not looking where he was going, had bumped stomachs with a fattish young lady outside the Co-op, quite an accident, but there had been some confusion, startled looks from both of them and the young lady’s face very red, more as if they knew each other than reciprocal apologies between strangers over a bit of clumsiness. Had she but known it, that was Mabel. Mabel — a case of fat calling to fat perhaps, plus a certain mutual unattractiveness — was in love with Herbert Portway. They saw quite a lot of one another when his ship was in Tilbury: Mabel worked in Tilbury and it was comparatively easy for a second steward to find business ashore, comparatively easy for a second steward to find good excuses why he couldn’t get home to a wife in Thurrock and by no means impossible for that second steward to bring a popsie aboard to his cabin in the bowels of the ship. A shade more difficult in wartime perhaps than it had been in peace, but not impossible. As for Mabel, she had no ties and could always take time off work on the ground of feeling seedy. It wasn’t as though Herbert Portway was continually on the scene.

  Mabel was one of the worriers, whenever Mr Portway was at sea. She always feared the worse: he had come into her life some four years earlier, — she worked, as now in a laundry and Mr Portway had come ashore to negotiate for the laundering of the stewards’ gear, or the gear of such as were not on leave, the liner’s own laundry being temporarily out of commission due to a recalcitrant electric fault. It had been a case of love at first sight through the steamy mist of Mabel’s working environment, at any rate on her part. To Mr Portway she was just another bit of fluff that might prove willing and did. He seldom thought about her when he wasn’t with her, other than to hope to goodness she never got a bun in the oven and tried to pin it on him ...

  He wasn’t thinking about her or any of the others now, as the Ardara’s staff captain made Rounds in the place of Captain Hampton who was otherwise occupied on the bridge as the warship escort withdrew to the south.

  ***

  The naked feeling had come. Commodore Kemp watched as more signals were made between CS29 and the rest of the escort. A flag hoist crept colourfully to the cruiser’s starboard fore yardarm. Leading Signalman Mouncey trained a telescope on to it. Within the minute it was hauled down and Mouncey reported to the Commodore.

  ‘Executive, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Mouncey.’

  That was when the warships made their turn to port, increasing speed when they had done so. They steamed away through the gale, taking the three tankers with them. Kemp was lucky, he supposed, to be left with the RFA.

  ‘Williams?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Make to CS29: Good luck go with you all.’

  Mouncey said suddenly, ‘Rear-Admiral’s signalling, sir.’ He read it off. ‘May God have mercy on us all.’

  Williams asked, ‘Do you still wish to make your signal, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kemp said.

  He looked around at the bridge personnel — Hampton, Williams, the two Officers of the Watch, Leading Signalman Mouncey, the ship’s quartermaster and the bridge messengers and telegraphsmen. He looked out across the gale-torn sea at the accompanying ships plodding along for Halifax, all now wide open to attack. He felt very lonely. The two remaining destroyers steaming ahead of the convoy to port and starboard brought little feeling of security. There was a similar sense of loss throughout the ship: all personnel not on watch or caught up with Captain’s Rounds were on deck, watching the inexplicable retreat of the heavy cruisers and the destroyers and the old battleship wallowing in the troughs and cutting through the wave crests to fling the tons of water back over her fo’c’sle to swill around the fifteen-inch turrets now moving to the defence of the Prime Minister. Not that anyone other than those on the Ardara’s bridge knew anything about that; Kemp’s order had been strictly adhered to and no rumours had spread, no rumours, that was, that came anywhere near the facts. There was a similar situation aboard the rest of the ships of the convoy. Only the Commodore had been told; the masters and their crews were left to speculate. Aboard the Ardara there was a lot of speculation. To say that everyone was dazed would have been an understatement. It was unbelievable. Not unnaturally in the circumstances, the navy itself was taking the blame. A crowd of galley hands right aft on E deck, hanging over the guardrails of the open deck-space accorded the lower orders, were loud in their condemnation.

  ‘Bloody yellow-bellies — ’

  ‘Pissin’ off and leavin’ us to it!’

  The voice of common sense was there as well, insisting that there had to be a good reason, but it was shouted down. The only reason was the navy’s own safety. The anti-navy sentiments took no time to reach the naval ratings who manned the ancient six-inch LA guns and the close-range weapons. Twelve DEMS — Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships — gunnery rates plus two leading seamen qualified as captains of the guns first class, with the assistance of some members of the Ardara’s own crew trained for the job by naval gunnery instructors. These latter mostly manned the ship’s anti-aircraft armament, which consisted of three Lewis guns and four 40-mm Bofors, mounted along the boat deck, plus two light machine-guns mounted in the bridge wings. The six-inch were manned only in action but there were always four ack-ack gunners on watch. In general charge was a petty officer with the non-substantive rating of gunlayer — PO Frapp, a pessimistic man, a pensioner of the Royal Fleet Reserve, three good-conduct badges, indigestion, and elderly to be still at sea. He had first seen service as a seaman boy before the 1914–18 war, back in the Dreadnought days.

  A deputation waited on Petty Officer Frapp, complaining of hostility.

  ‘I know, lads.’ Frapp pushed his cap back and scratched at his head, grizzled grey in a fringe around a bald top. ‘Only to be expected, I reckon. Me, I’m looking for a reason too. Could be anything.’

  ‘Another convoy ... under attack somewhere south?’

  ‘No, that won’t wash. Each escort to its own convoy, that’s the flaming rule, lad. You don’t shift things around like that, rob Peter to pay Paul.’

  ‘There’s going to be trouble, PO. Some of us ... we’re going to hit back if that bloody galley rabble don’t shut their traps — ’

  Frapp shook a warning finger. ‘Cool it. We don’t want that sort of thing aboard. Tell you what. I’ll go and see that Williams, see if he knows anything. Or Mouncey, maybe.’

  ***

  Frapp’s journey to the bridge proved unnecessary. He was on his way when the Tannoy came on again — Kemp’s voice, speaking to the crew with the formal permission of Captain Hampton. He confirmed: no reason to be alarmed. The escort was required elsewhere, in waters more liable to contain German forces, and the convoy was not expected to steam into any difficulties. A situation report had just been received from the Admiralty: there was nothing indicated on the plot, nothing between the convoy’s position and Halifax. But as a p
recaution escorts would be leaving Halifax and were expected to rendezvous in forty-eight hours and take them over.

  That, as Frapp said, was something. Things weren’t so bad that they couldn’t get worse, he said with a misguided attempt at humour. Anyway, Kemp’s words had improved the atmosphere and the resentment against the navy simmered down. Then, just after the midday dinner, Frapp was sent for to go to the bridge.

  He went up at once and reported to Lieutenant Williams. ‘You wanted me, sir?’

  ‘The Commodore.’ Williams turned about, approached Kemp and saluted. ‘Petty Officer Frapp, sir, reporting.’

  Kemp came away from the bridge screen, returned Frapp’s salute. ‘Guns, Frapp.’

  ‘Yessir?’

  ‘As I said on the Tannoy, there’s absolutely no cause for alarm. But we must be prepared for any emergency, naturally. I know you’ve been carrying out exercises on passage, but now I want gun-drill stepped up. Exercise action twice each watch — day and night. Get your guns’ crews right on the top line — understood, Frapp?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘And another thing: I want you to reorganize your watch and quarter bill. I want both the six-inch manned with skeleton crews from now until we make the rendezvous with the escorts out of Halifax. It’ll no longer be good enough to have just the close-range weapons manned.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Frapp said.

  ‘If anything does happen, the convoy’s going to be largely dependent on the naval guns’ crews embarked aboard the merchant ships — that’s obvious. The destroyers can’t cover the whole convoy. All right, Frapp, thank you.’

  When the PO had left the bridge, Kemp told off Williams to signal all ships that they were to bring their guns’ crews to a similar state of readiness. By nightfall that day the weather had shown signs of moderating, returning to more seasonal conditions. The glass, which had started a slow rise, went up fast during the night and by dawn the sea had flattened considerably, with all the ships riding more steadily. Kemp, who had remained on the bridge throughout the night, remarked to Williams on the change.

  ‘Not so good, in certain circumstances.’

  ‘No, sir.’ There was no need to spell it out: they both knew what better weather could bring: The convoy was not, in fact, wholly in the clear yet. Hitler had some very long-range U-boats; also, it was not impossible, as Kemp knew, for a German surface raider to steal down through the Denmark Strait past Greenland’s eastern coastline and emerge into the North Atlantic to head for the convoy tracks. Not impossible, but perhaps not likely: in theory such a raider should encounter the armed merchant cruisers of the British Northern Patrol. The poor old AMCS ... they might be sunk but at least they would make a report and the main battle units of the Home Fleet could then be sent out from Scapa and the Firth of Forth.

  Kemp looked around: there was no one close enough to overhear. In a low voice he said to Williams, ‘I wonder what this meeting’s all about. Any ideas?’

  ‘Not a clue, sir. At a guess, I’d say Mr Churchill’s trying to prod the Americans into the war.’

  ‘That’s my idea too. A kind of grand alliance, reaching across the Atlantic. Well, I wish them luck!’

  Williams nodded. ‘Yes, sir, very much so. If the Yanks come in ... well, it would make all the difference. I suppose they’d share the escort duties for one thing?’

  ‘Yes. Just what we need. The poor bloody country’s bleeding to death ... and then there’s their army, all those fresh troops. Not good for Hitler at all!’ Kemp paused, lifted his binoculars and scanned the seas ahead and to either bow. Flattening out, but leaving the usual swell behind the departed gale. That sea still looked empty without the escort’s protection. He said, ‘D’you know, Williams, I’ve a feeling we’re on the coat-tails of history — of history about to be made.’

  ‘Perhaps we are, sir.’

  Kemp looked at his assistant’s somewhat blank face. ‘Does that do anything to you, Williams?’

  ‘Do anything, sir?’

  Kemp gave a sigh. ‘No. I see that it doesn’t.’

  ‘Well ... not really, sir.’

  ‘Pity.’ Kemp had plenty of imagination; he believed young Williams hadn’t any beyond his sense of self-importance and the dash he might cut with the girls when they reached Halifax. There was something of a Brylcreem image about Lieutenant Williams, as though the creases in his uniform trousers were of more importance than the conduct of the convoy. He was always very well turned out beneath the layers of wet-weather gear and this morning, with the weather so fine, he was simply beautiful. Kemp turned away and went into the wheelhouse for a word with the watchkeepers, still thinking about history, which meant a lot to him. Twenty-odd years after the event, he was still glad he’d been present when the German High Seas Fleet had steamed under escort of Admiral Beatty to its final anchorage in the waters of Scapa Flow: that had been history, so had the act of scuttling when a whole navy had opened its seacocks and gone down to oblivion in the hour of its total defeat. Kemp, as a seaman, was glad enough that he hadn’t witnessed that sad scene. There had certainly been no gloating from the British Fleet that day.

  ***

  Petty Officer Frapp had been allocated a cabin, all to himself, something he’d never been accorded before. In HM ships, you slept in a hammock unless you were the master-at-arms or managed to survive the rigours of the lower deck and the attentions of the enemy so far as to achieve the rank of warrant officer and above. Frapp really spread himself: it was almost like home. In peacetime some nob would have paid the earth for what he was getting for nothing, a nice single-berth cabin with a wash-basin on B deck ... talk about posh! On the chest-of-drawers — much better than a ditty box or locker for stowing personal things — he had set up his family photographs. Doris and the kids, though they weren’t kids any longer. Ron was twenty-one and already in the Andrew himself, if only as a leading writer in the Commodore’s office in RNB Pompey. PO Frapp thought writers a smarmy bunch, not unlike that Williams the convoy had been lumbered with, thought a lot of themselves and filed their fingernails and had smarmed-down hair. Very uppish with common seamen, especially when the latter had any queries about their pay and allowances. They talked double-dutch mostly, baffled brains with bullshit and implied that you had no education. They treated even seaman petty officers as idiots and many a time Frapp had wanted nothing in the world so much as to take one of the pansy little sods by the scruff of the neck and kick his arse all the way across the parade ground from the Pay Office to the seamen’s blocks and then stuff his face down a pan in the heads. It irked him continually that Ron was one of them.

  The girl, Else, was all right. Risen in the world — married a pilot officer in the RAF! Not that Petty Officer Frapp had any more time for the RAF than for writers, they were such a scruffy and indisciplined shower and never around when wanted, but an officer was a catch. Pilot Officer Pinkney, when they had met, had told Frapp rather grandly that he needn’t call him sir and had himself addressed Frapp as Dad, which Frapp liked — being called Dad by an officer was quite something. He had responded by calling Pilot Officer Pinkney son, after a bit of embarrassment and a tendency at first for the ‘s’ sound to be followed by ‘ir’.

  Petty Officer Frapp, down from the upper deck to catch up on some sleep, looked at his watch, a pocket-watch he’d bought for five bob in Gibraltar years before when serving in a battleship of the Mediterranean Fleet, the flagship Queen Elizabeth no less. Just about now, Leading Signalman Mouncey would be coming off watch, his place on the bridge being taken by his side-kick, MacCord. The bunting tossers were berthed with the guns’ crews, in a converted stateroom one deck up. Frapp left his cabin and went up the stairs — real stairs, in a ship! — and hung about in the vicinity of Mouncey’s accommodation, looking busy by shuffling a fistful of lists. Mr Portway wasn’t the only one who knew the game.

  Mouncey appeared. Frapp looked up. ‘Oh — you, Bunts.’

  ‘As ever was, PO.’


  ‘Better up top, eh? Weather, I mean.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Going to turn in?’

  ‘You bet I am,’ Mouncey said.

  ‘Don’t blame you, but ... look, sleep comes better after a tot, right?’ Frapp edged closer and gave Mouncey a wink. ‘Not a word to anyone, Bunts, but I got a bottle of Scotch in my cabin.’ Mr Portway, a power in the ship where the bar staff were concerned, had been co-operative. ‘Care for a nip, would you, eh?’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ Mouncey said. ‘Thanks a lot, PO.’

  They went down and Frapp shut the door firmly, waved Mouncey to a chair and brought his bottle from the cupboard that in peacetime would have held only the bedroom utensil, which in fact was still there. There was a chink of china as Frapp removed the John Haig. In the meantime Mouncey had been studying the photographs.

  ‘Nice-looking girl,’ he said, flipping a thumb towards Else. ‘Daughter, is she?’

  ‘Married to an RAF officer.’

  ‘You don’t say! Cor.’ Mouncey shifted target. ‘That your missus, PO?’

  ‘Yes.’ The less said about Doris the better; she was pure vinegar and her tongue was busy acid, never still. Scraggy as a daddy-long-legs with it. Frapp, his back turned to Doris, poured two tots. They all missed the daily rum issue, the lack of which was the principal drawback of being in a liner rather than a warship.

  ‘Cheerio,’ Mouncey said. ‘And thanks again.’

  ‘Bottoms up. Don’t mention it.’ Frapp drank, folding his lips one over the other in appreciation. Then he approached the reason for his hospitality. ‘Funny business, all this.’

  ‘What, PO?’

  ‘Withdrawing the escort like.’

  ‘Yer.’

  ‘Commodore doesn’t go much on it, I’ll bet.’

  ‘No. ’E don’t.’

  Frapp coughed. ‘I heard there was a signal ... ’