Convoy of War (A John Mason Kemp Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  One by one the ships of the HX convoy converged on the rendezvous and signals were exchanged between CS29, Captain(D) in the destroyer leader, and the Commodore. Kemp and Williams made a count as the ships appeared from their different directions under a bright blue sky: sixteen ships. The losses had been even heavier than they had feared. The HX had left Halifax with in fact more ships than the outward OB from the Clyde and other ports. Ships for home had been tagged on to them, fast ships that could maintain the speed required of a troop convoy. Two of the liners had gone: one was the Aratapu of the Mediterranean-Australia Line. The men aboard the Ardara would have lost many friends and shipmates. Kemp himself had sailed with her master, then staff captain, on many peacetime voyages through the Suez Canal to Sydney.

  ‘A bad day for you, sir,’ Williams said.

  ‘Yes. But now we have to get the Ardara home. I wonder where those bloody tugs are!’ Earlier a signal had come in cypher, indicating that the Commodore’s request was being met but giving no further information. Kemp thought about the water rising in the engine-room ... if the engines flooded, they would wallow around the ocean, more than ever a sitting target for the Nazis. By this time their position on the chart was well eastward of Cape Farewell and every turn of the screws brought them closer to the enemy’s air and U-boat bases along the coast of occupied France. Kemp paced the bridge as he had done for so many days, deep in thought. As he saw it, there were three alternatives open to him: as Commodore it was within his decision to alter the convoy’s route and he could order an alteration further south, to avoid the danger zone that lay between the convoy and the approaches to the Bloody Foreland on the north-western tip of County Donegal or to the Lizard for the northward passage of the Irish Sea for the Clyde. He could drop south and then make his northing from a safer position; or he could do the opposite and go north to start with, and then drop down past Iceland and Cape Wrath for the Clyde.

  But each held its own dangers.

  The southerly approach would bring him too close in to the French airfields; the northerly one opened up the possibility of a German pocket-battleship or such lurking in the Denmark Strait, ready to pounce.

  The third alternative was to maintain his course and chance the Luftwaffe. In this war, there was no safety anywhere at sea. All you could do was to try to peer into the minds of the enemy, of Hitler’s high command or his own personal hallucinations. The Führer was well known to have those brainstorms that he called visions or premonitions sent by God to direct him aright. And only God could tell what he had put into the Führer’s mind in regard to the Ardara and her consorts. In the meantime there were other considerations to be borne in mind: any deviation north or south would extend the time spent at sea, and the Ardara might not make it. Also, there could be no question of breaking wireless silence again — not now the convoy had re-assembled — to divert the ocean-going rescue tugs or the aircraft-carrier presumably now well out from her home base ...

  Kemp turned. ‘Williams?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Make to CS29 repeated Captain(D) from Commodore: Propose no alteration to route. Convoy will proceed as ordered for the Clyde.’

  ‘Yes, sir — ’

  ‘And then inform individual masters.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Williams stood there, pencil poised over his naval message pad. ‘Sir, the engines.’

  ‘What about them, Williams?’

  ‘We’re not maintaining the normal speed of the convoy, sir, and — ’

  ‘No. Not at this moment. But we shall. I propose to risk the bulkhead, Williams. If I dropped out, I would need to split the escort — our troops can’t be left without proper protection. To split the escort would be to put the other ships at too much risk. We must proceed in company.’

  ‘But — ’

  ‘That’s all, Williams. See that my signals are made at once.’

  Kemp turned away and walked to the starboard wing of the bridge. He had made his decision: like many a man before him, he could only hope it was the right one. So much, as always, depended upon luck.

  SEVENTEEN

  Mr Portway had had luck and he knew it: luck, plus a certain amount of personal physical push. He was sorry for the poor blokes that hadn’t made it, but he preferred not to think too much about them. He thought, nevertheless, of night steward Crump, Crump had bought it, his body wouldn’t be retrieved from behind the watertight section until the ship was in dockyard hands for repair. That was a bit of luck too: the principal witness for the prosecution would never give evidence now and Portway reckoned he was safe from all that. No official report had ever been made and Mr Pemmel could go and stuff himself.

  Which was how Pemmel himself was seeing it. Better to let the whole thing drop: better for Jackie Ord, better for the Line. Let Portway crow if he wanted to. He certainly wouldn’t broadcast anything and the crowing would be between the three of them. And Portway could sort out his matrimonial affairs all by himself and good luck to him. From what Jackie had said, it looked as though Portway’s wife would be the one to sort him out. Pemmel had visions of an empurpled face and a raised umbrella and a hand deeply in the till of house ownership after the divorce.

  On the bridge, Brigadier O’Halloran, much concerned by the loss of many of the troops aboard the Aratapu, was kept busy with signals to and from the ships of the convoy that had mounted a rescue operation to bring the survivors scrambling up the nets either from the lowered boats or from the sea direct. He was in a carping mood, hinting that the British Navy was to blame for the loss of the troopship. The army, he seemed to suggest, wouldn’t have let it happen. Kemp shrugged it off; they were closing home waters and soon the brigadier would leave the ship, taking his curious attitudes with him. Kemp’s hopes were rising; the engine-room bulkhead was taking the extra strain of higher speed and the pumps were still just coping. The sea was clear of contacts and so far no German aircraft had appeared. It wasn’t long before Kemp knew why: the coded weather reports came in on the wireless routines, bringing tidings of adverse conditions ahead. It was likely enough the Luftwaffe would be grounded — good news so far as it went.

  But Kemp and Greene, and Chief Engineer Burrows, had a strained bulkhead to worry about, a bulkhead open to the sea via the hole that had proved impossible to plug effectively.

  ***

  Burrows was watching carefully; like Kemp and Greene on the bridge, Burrows hadn’t left his place of duty for very many hours past. The engine-room was his kingdom and when the kingdom was threatened the king must be there. Burrows would never have it said that he’d skulked from a bulkhead that in his view might go at any moment. He could be wrong and he knew it; he wasn’t Jesus Christ. And he understood the reasons given by the bridge for keeping the engine-room manned and the screws turning. A hell of a lot of troops depended for their lives ... a lot of generals spread around an empire under threat depended on a supply of cannon-fodder. All true.

  But still!

  The water continued to slop from side to side, deepening almost imperceptibly, and there was the sea sound from immediately the other side of the bulkhead, a surge and slither and a curious drumming as the weather deteriorated as promised in the met reports. Bloody bad luck ... what was good against the dive bombers was a sight less good for damaged bulkheads and Burrows didn’t like the way the plates were sending up a sort of groan, a real sound of impending doom.

  Burrows looked upwards, through the maze of steel ladders. It was a long way to the air-lock and the exit to the engineers’ alleyway.

  ***

  Kemp put down the telephone from the engine-room, his face deeply troubled. ‘Where are those God-damn tugs!’

  Williams decided no response was required. With the Commodore he looked out ahead. The day was darkening unseasonably early thanks to the filthy weather they were steaming into. Cold and clammy and soon the rain would come. The seas were high and the Ardara’s stem was butting in deep and sending back heavy spray. Some hours earlier Kemp ha
d ordered a reduction in speed once again, had slowed the whole convoy for the sake of the Ardara’s engine-room. There was little risk now from the enemy: Hitler had been cheated by the weather. And the weather was the Ardara’s enemy as well.

  Kemp was speaking again, referring to that last report from Burrows. ‘Sooner them than me!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Down below, Williams. Talk about guts! The men who choose to go to sea in engine-rooms ... up here we’re in touch with the elements, with the fresh air.’

  ‘I see what you mean, sir.’

  ‘Do you?’ Kemp gave a harsh laugh. ‘I doubt if even I do! That damned engine-room ... it could become a coffin inside a few seconds. I’ve a good mind — ’ He broke off as an excited shout came from the signalman on watch. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Vessels ahead, sir! Fine on the port bow, sir!’

  A moment later identification came from the masthead lookout who should have seen anything before the signalman lower down. The telephone whined and Kemp answered it himself. As he slammed it down again he said, ‘The tugs. And the aircraft-carrier.’ He took up the telephone to the engine-room, this time not waiting for Greene. ‘Commodore here, Chief. Clear the engine-room. The tugs are coming up. We won’t risk it any longer.’

  ***

  Burrows put down the phone and once again looked up through the network of ladders. As a precaution he had sent as many hands as possible up those ladders, just to give them a better chance of making it to the air-lock. Himself, he had remained on the starting-platform with his senior second engineer. He passed the order that had come down from the bridge.

  ‘All hands, clear the engine spaces! Out and away!’

  As he said the words, he looked again at the bulkhead. He could have sworn there was a more pronounced bulge, even that the shoring beams were starting to bend, and the run of water down the sprung seams was becoming a river. Just about in time, he thought, just about in bloody time ... he ran for the foot of the nearest ladder, just behind his number two. The senior second went up fast while the others, already half-way up, climbed at the rush for the air-lock. As Burrows put a foot on the bottom tread of the ladder, his other foot slid on a patch of oil and he lurched sideways, his grip came off the ladder uprights and he spun along the plates just as one of the shoring beams bent and broke with a crack like gunfire, followed by the others, and the bulkhead bulged inwards. A solid wall of water suddenly released crashed into the engine-room, thunderously, devastatingly, smashing ladders and steam pipes, gauges and dials and machinery, breaking electrical circuits. The chief engineer’s body was hurled away to pulp itself against the still-spinning shafts.

  ***

  With the engine spaces flooded, and the ship down by the stern but held in the care of the tugs, Kemp came back once again to the Clyde with the remnant of the HX convoy steaming between the lines of the warship escort. Up the Irish Sea to the North Channel under leaden skies and a blustery wind, turn to starboard short of the great rock of Ailsa Craig to enter the Firth and move on past Turnberry and Ayr away to starboard, Arran and Inchmarnock Water to port, through the narrows of the Cumbraes, past Toward Point at the entry to the Kyles of Bute beyond Rothesay Bay, through the boom to proceed slowly for the anchorage at the Tail o’ the Bank. There was a press of troops and ship’s company along the open decks as the convoy moved towards journey’s end. Today Scotland looked grim and grey beneath its rain, no hint of the glories of snow-capped winter mountains and deep blue lochs, no hint of the skirl of the pipes to welcome the convoy in, the convoy that arrived as anonymously as the OB had left less than a month earlier.

  Not much in terms of time elapsed. Plenty in terms of war-lost men and ships, plenty to be laid eventually at Adolf Hitler’s door.

  Many thoughts went out across the sullen waters off Greenock as the Ardara moved in towards her temporary anchorage as signalled by the King’s Harbour Master. Williams looked at clouded skies and rain-slashed water and the depressing sight of Greenock on a wet day. He would get some leave before he accompanied Commodore Mason Kemp on another convoy; or he might get a new and different appointment. As to that he couldn’t prophesy. But he knew that he faced an uninspiring leave in Hounslow, listening to tales of ARP and the office — that was if he went home and he saw no other prospect unless he managed to pick up a popsie in Greenock or Glasgow en route for the south ... like Petty Officer Frapp, he was more or less doomed to a home leave. Not that Frapp felt quite that way, home was home and he was fond of the missus but he shrank from hearing her voice after the initial welcome to a returning hero from the sea. He knew her thoughts were of heroism or some such bunk, but she never wanted to hear the details — maybe they’d be too mundane and she didn’t want her illusions shattered, but whatever it was she preferred her own moans to his. Frapp’s son-in-law, if he was around, might be some solace, someone to have a pint with in the local even if he was a Brylcreem Boy. And after leave, what? Frapp knew the answer to that one: another bloody convoy, and another, and another after that, world without end. You just soldiered on, hoping for the best every trip until bloody Adolf wrote your name on a projy or a torpedo. Or you got through the war and then got chucked back on the civvy scrap-heap.

  Mr Portway, like the deceased ship’s doctor before him, had been having trouble with his bowels for some days and was not far off wishing he’d copped it behind that watertight bulkhead. If it wasn’t for the house, he’d leave his wife — transfer, like an appointment to a new ship, to Mabel. If she would have him now; in fact he knew from her letter in Halifax that she wouldn’t, daft bitch.

  Mr Portway had no loopholes at all. Maybe he would cut and run from the whole bang shoot and find another willing woman, up north. But there was still the house ...

  And Kemp?

  Commodore Kemp had tried to keep his thoughts at bay: the death of Burrows had shaken him. If he’d given the order to clear just a few seconds before, Burrows might have lived. That was something that was due to remain with him for a lifetime. There were others too: so many ships lost, so many other lives — even that sad suicide. Perhaps he, Kemp, couldn’t be blamed, but you always did blame yourself and wonder if you’d handled things right. He recalled how the doctor had rung the bridge, asking for Williams ... the natural reaction was anger but perhaps there could have been another response, a request to someone, say the purser, to go and keep the doctor company till he’d sobered up and simmered down. As the Ardara crept on past Princes Pier and Albert Harbour, other painful thoughts came to Kemp: Leading Signalman Mouncey, by now presumably home to a wife dead in Devonport; Redgrave ... but Redgrave of course was only one among so many, it was just the fact that his name had come to Kemp’s attention over the desperate efforts of the Stephen Starr to catch up with the convoy and not be what she was, a perishing nuisance. And the people ashore? The British public at large would never know about the HX convoy. No news would be released about the losses ...

  Williams approached the Commodore, looking troubled. Kemp asked, ‘What’s the matter, Williams? You look thoughtful.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Out with it, then, but don’t take too long.’

  ‘It’s all right, sir, thank you.’

  ‘Very well, Williams.’ Kemp stood motionless as the tugs took the ship up to her anchorage, the second officer watching the bearings on the azimuth circle. Any moment now the tugs would be cast off, the Captain would lift his red anchor flag and when he brought it down the anchor would rattle out on its cable in clouds of rust-red dust. Just before that happened someone switched on the BBC News and Kemp heard something about air raids over England. He caught Williams’ eye. ‘Did you hear the start of the news, Williams?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  So that was it, Kemp thought. He said, ‘Tell me.’

  Williams said, ‘Heavy air raids on London, sir. Widely dispersed.’

  ‘I see. Anywhere else?’

  ‘Kent, sir. They weren’t specif
ic. And Portsmouth.’

  Kemp nodded, his face expressionless. Kent was a large area, so was London. Meopham, Hounslow ... and Frapp lived in Portsmouth. You came in from a convoy, from a sea at war, to enjoy the blessings of the land for a spell, and all you could do was hope the blessings were still there and not scattered to the wind as in the case of Redgrave’s wife and children. Well — they would all know soon enough. Kemp brought his mind back from Meopham to see Greene lift his anchor flag and bring it sharply down in the final unspoken order of the convoy.

  If you enjoyed Convoy of War, you might be interested in In the Line of Fire, also by Philip McCutchan.

  Extract from In the Line of Fire by Philip McCutchan

  Chapter One

  It was all plain sailing still: all the way out from Scapa the Atlantic had been as clear as the skies. No U-boats, scarcely any wind — a winter miracle if a frozen one. This early morning, Dawn Action Stations had just been fallen out and the officers and ratings on the destroyers’ compass platforms and on the navigating bridges of the wallowing merchant ships of the convoy flapped their arms to keep the circulation going beneath the heavy duffel-coats and balaclavas; behind the gun-shields the crew stamped warmth into their sea-booted feet and thought of home and girls or beer in the pubs of Queen Street and Commercial Road in Pompey. Winter of 1940-41; and this weird respite in the almost continuous foul weather that harassed the North Atlantic convoys but at the same time gave them a strong measure of protection against U-boat attack. The hidden menace lay powerless in gigantic waves, but came eagerly to periscope depth the moment the weather was fair.