A few hours from Scapa inward bound, during the morning watch, the weather moderated as the ship steamed into the lee of the land, and the waters lay flat. Hunger returned very suddenly. Carmarthen was a canteen messing ship, as opposed to the general messing system in use aboard big ships; this meant that each mess prepared its own food, which was then taken to the galley to be cooked. This morning there was nothing Cameron wanted so much as fried eggs, fried bread and bacon. These he acquired when he came off watch and took them to the galley with his mouth drooling in anticipation. They were beautifully cooked, and he carried the plate to the long scrubbed table in his mess and set it down beneath the bottom-bulge of an occupied hammock overhead. Before he had taken so much as a bite, a stockinged foot emerged from the hammock and plunged straight into the bacon and eggs. There was a shout of anger from above, and Able-Seaman Tomkins glared down. No matter that he had worn the sock for no less than six weeks, day and night; it was spoiled and would have to be washed.
‘You bloody little perisher!’ Tomkins yelled down at Cameron. ‘Jus’ look wot you gorn an’ done to me fuckin’ sock!’
There was no come-back on that; Able-Seaman Tomkins not only had three badges but some forty-odd years against Cameron’s not quite twenty. Hunger simply had to endure; but there was always a laugh around the corner. One came that morning: a leading-seaman had gone ashore from the battleship Rodney in search of women, of. which Scapa held none. Desperation and long abstinence had driven the leading-seaman to make use, so rumour said, of a sheep, an act of bestiality which had been observed and reported. When the miscreant had been brought under escort to Captain’s Defaulters, his excuse had been that he had got drunk in the shore canteen — where in fact each man from the fleet was allowed two pints only of Brickwood’s beer sent up from Portsmouth — and thought the sheep was a Wren with a duffel-coat on.
After this interlude, and a run ashore in the Orkneys’ bleak desolation, it was back to sea again. And again after that, in continuously filthy weather. Again and again, until Cameron’s necessary sea-time was almost up. There had been some action, but nothing very spectacular; there had been the rounding-up of stray merchant ships whose engines had failed them, or whose steering was erratic. There had been false alarms from the Asdic, and false sighting reports from the lookouts that had sent the ship’s company to action stations and caused plenty of sour comment and swearing. And now, on this current run out of Scapa, it was apparently as peaceful as ever even though a highly important convoy was due to cross eastward with valuable cargoes from Halifax, Nova Scotia, a convoy that would be escorted home by Carmarthen and the other destroyers of her flotilla — an exceptionally strong escort that had drained other convoys of their protection — once the outward-bound merchantmen had passed beyond the area of attack. Placidly, in their eight columns — five of four ships each, three of five, the longer columns steaming in between the shorter ones at the convoy speed of seven knots — the ships advanced. With five cables between columns and three cables between individual ships in each column, the mass covered some five square miles of the Atlantic.
No attack until now: not until the busy Asdics had spoken and Cameron had sighted that feather of water made by a periscope. Carmarthen hurtled on under full power, Cameron still on lookout since his action station as per Watch and Quarter Bill happened to be the same as his three-watch cruising station, still sweeping his arc as the Asdic continued with its ghostlike wailing pings.
A moment later, nightmare burst.
With her captain, Lieutenant-Commander Hewson, now in charge on the compass platform, Carmarthen was streaking up to overtake one of the merchantmen on her way to engage the sighted U-boat with depth charges, and passing close, when a shout from the captain of Number Two gun on the fo’c’sle, looking like a daylight ghost in his white anti-flash gear, indicated a torpedo coming in from starboard, slap across Carmarthen’s hurtling bow. Just as the shout came, the torpedo struck the great wall-sided merchant ship. There was a huge explosion and a blast of super-heated air swept the destroyer’s bridge, bringing with it more lethal matter: slivers of blasted metal moving at the speed of light. Cries came from the decks, from the compass platform itself. Something bounced off Cameron’s steel helmet, which went spinning out into the Atlantic wastes. Hewson sagged in a corner with the top of his head missing; on the deck the Yeoman of Signals lay with his neck spouting blood, his head nowhere to be seen. Stephenson, Officer of the Watch, was lying across the guard-rail with his entrails spread wide. As Cameron looked in sheer horror, the body slid away into the sea, leaving its bloody trail.
Cameron looked all around in disbelief, then took in the fact that no officer was now on the compass platform; no petty officer either. Below in the wheelhouse, the quartermaster would be able to see events through the ports, but would be in need of orders. The other bridge lookouts had a dazed, uncomprehending look. Cameron went, shaking in every limb, to the binnacle and the voice-pipe. In action, the Torpedo-Coxswain would be at the wheel, and thank God for it. Cameron spoke down the voice-pipe. ‘Cox’n, it’s Ordinary Seaman Cameron here. Both officers are dead, and I —’
‘All right, lad, I’ll keep her clear of the convoy. You just stay where you are and act as a communication number. I’ll send a messenger and get Jimmy on the bridge pronto.’ Jimmy was the time-honoured lower-deck name for the First Lieutenant. And for Cameron’s money he couldn’t get there fast enough. As Cameron looked across towards the stolidly-steaming merchantmen of the convoy, a deafening noise and a blast of flame came from Carmarthen’s fo’c’sle. Jags of metal glowed red where the breakwater had been, and Number One gun leaned drunkenly to starboard.
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Convoy of War (A John Mason Kemp Thriller) Page 22
