The Lonely Sea: Collected Short Stories

by Alistair MacLean

  Three hundred miles to the south, Vice-Admiral L. E. Holland's squadron, consisting of HMS HOOD, HMS PRINCE OF WALES and six destroyers, were already steaming west-northwest at high speed on an interception course. The excitement, the anticipation aboard these ships was intense. For them, too, it was the end of a long wait. There was little doubt in anybody's mind that battle was now inevitable, even less doubt that the battle could have only one ending, that the BISMARCK, despite her great power and fearsome reputation, had only hours to live.

  With her ten 14-inch guns to the BISMARCK'S eight 15-inch the PRINCE OF WALES herself, our newest battleship, was, on paper at least, an even match for the BISMARCK. (Only her commander, Captain Leach, and a handful of his senior officers were aware that she was far too new, her crew only semi-trained, her 14-inch turrets, as new and untried as the crew itself, so defective, temperamental and liable to mechanical breakdown that the builders' foremen were still aboard working in the turrets, desperately trying to repair the more outstanding defects as the battleship steamed towards the BISMARCK).

  But no one, not even the most loyal member of her crew, was staking his faith on the PRINCE OF WALES. And, indeed, why should he, when only a few cable lengths away he could see the massive bows of the 45,000-ton HOOD thrusting the puny waves contemptuously aside as she raced towards the enemy. When the HOOD was with you, nothing could ever go wrong. Every man in the Royal Navy knew that.

  And not only in the Navy. It is seventeen years now since the HOOD died but none of the millions alive today who had grown up before the Second World War can forget, and will probably never forget, the almost unbelievable hold the HOOD had taken on the imaginations and hearts of the British public. She was the best known, best loved ship in all our long naval history, a household name to countless people for whom REVENGE and VICTORY were only words. The biggest, most

  powerful ship of the line in the interwar years, she stood for all that was permanent, a synonym for all that was invincible, held in awe, even in veneration. For millions of people she WAS the Royal Navy, a legend in her own lifetime… But a legend grows old.

  And now, with the long night's high-speed steaming over, the dawn in the sky and the BISMARCK looming up over the horizon, the legend was about to end forever.

  Safely out of range, but with a grandstand view of the coming action, the men of the NORFOLK and the SUFFOLK watched the HOOD and the PRINCE OF WALES, acting as one under the command of Vice-Admiral Holland, bear down on the BISMARCK and the PRINZ EUGEN. But even at that distance it was obvious that the two British ships were too close together, that Captain Leach of the PRINCE OF WALES was being compelled to do exactly as the HOOD did instead of being allowed to fight his own ship independently and to the best advantage, and, more incredibly still, that the closing course, their line of approach to the enemy, was all that a line of approach should not be. They were steering for the enemy at an angle broad enough to present the Germans with a splendid target but, at the same time, just acute enough to prevent their rear turrets from being brought into action, with the result that the BISMARCK and PRINZ EUGEN were able to bring their full broadsides to bear against only half of the possible total of the British guns.

  Even worse was to follow. The HOOD was the first to open fire, at 5.52 a.m., and, for reasons that will never be clearly known, she made the fatal error of concentrating her fire on the PRINZ EUGEN, and did so throughout the battle. The mistake in identification was bad enough, but no worse than the standard of her gunnery: the PRINZ EUGEN emerged from the action unscathed.

  The BISMARCK and PRINZ EUGEN, consequently, were free to bring their entire armament to bear on HMS FLOOD, who, because of her approach angle, could only reply with her two fore turrets. True, the PRINCE OF WALES had now opened up also, but the blunt and bitter truth is that it didn't matter very much anyway: her first salvo was more than half a mile wide of the target, the second not much better, and the third also missed. So did the fourth. And the fifth.

  The Germans did not miss. The concentrated heaviness of their fire was matched only by its devastating accuracy. Both were on target — the HOOD — almost at once, the PRINCE EUGEN'S 8-inch shells starting a fire by the HOOD'S mainmast within the first minute. The BISMARCK, too, was hitting now, the huge 15-inch projectiles, each one a screaming ton of armour-piercing steel and high explosive, smashing into the reeling HOOD and exploding deep in her heart. How often the HOOD was hit, and where she was hit we will never know, nor does it matter.

  All that matters, all that we do know, is what was seen by the survivors of that battle at exactly six o'clock that morning, as the fifth salvo from the BISMARCK straddled the HOOD. A stabbing column of flame, white and orange and blindingly incandescent, lanced a thousand feet vertically upwards into the grey morning sky as the tremendous detonation of her exploding magazines almost literally blew the HOOD out of existence. When the last echoes of the great explosion had rolled away to lose themselves beyond the horizon and the smoke drifted slowly over the sea, the shattered remnants of the HOOD had vanished as completely as if the great ship herself had never existed.

  So, in the twenty-first year of her life, the HOOD died. This, the first naval engagement of her long life, had lasted exactly eight minutes, and when she went down she took 1,500 officers and men with her. There were three survivors.

  PART TWO

  The destruction of the HOOD, the invincible, impregnable HOOD, came as a tremendous shock both to the Navy and the country at large. It was incredible, it was impossible that this had happened — and the impossible had to be explained away, both verbally and in print, with all speed.

  As details of the action were at that time lacking, no mention was made of the HOOD'S suicidal angle of approach to the enemy, the fatal mistake in identification that led to her firing on the PRINZ EUGEN instead of the BISMARCK, or of the fact that the standard of her gunnery was so poor that she failed to register even one hit throughout the entire engagement. Perhaps it was as well that these things were not known at the time.

  The reasons that WERE advanced at the time — and the source of inspiration of these reasons is not far to seek — were that the HOOD, of course, had been no battleship but only a lightly-protected battle cruiser, and, even so, that the 15-inch shell that had found her magazine had been one chance in a million. These explanations were utter nonsense.

  True, the HOOD was technically classed as a battle cruiser, but it was just that, a technicality and no more: the fact is that with her 12-inch iron and steel sheathing extending over 560 feet on either side and with her total weight of protective metal reaching a fantastic 14,000 tons, she was one of the most heavily armoured ships in the world. As for the one chance in a million shell, senior naval architects had been pointing out for twenty years that the HOOD'S magazines were wide open to shells approaching from a certain angle, a danger that could easily have been obviated by extra armour plating. The HOOD'S design was defective, badly defective, and the Admiralty was well aware of this.

  No such thoughts as these, it is safe to assume, was in the mind of Captain Leach of the PRINCE OF WALES as the smoke and the dust of the awesome explosion cleared away and the HOOD was seen to be gone. The PRINCE OF WALES was fighting for her life now, and her captain knew it. Both the BISMARCK and the PRINZ EUGEN had swung their guns on him as soon as the HOOD had blown up and already the deadly accuracy of their heavy and concentrated fire was beginning to have its effect. Captain Leach summed up the situation, made his assessments and didn't hesitate. He ordered the wheel to be put hard over, broke off the engagement and retired under a heavy smokescreen.

  'The ship that ran away'. That was what the PRINCE OF WALES was called then, the coward battleship that turned and fled: it is an open secret that ship, officers and men, during the remainder of the PRINCE OF WALES's short life, were henceforward treated with aversion and cold contempt by the rest of the Navy and this opprobrium ended only with the death of the ship and the gallant Captain Leach a bare
seven months later under a savage Japanese aerial attack off the coast of Malaya. The opprobrium was more than unjust — it was grotesquely and bitterly unfair. Once again, the Admiralty must shoulder much of the blame.

  In fairness, it was completely unintentional on their part. The trouble arose from their official communique on the action, which was no better and no worse than the typical wartime communique, in that it tended to exaggerate the damage sustained by the enemy while minimizing our own.

  Two statements in the communique caused the grievous misunderstanding: 'The BISMARCK was at one time seen to be on fire' and 'The PRINCE OF WALES sustained slight damage'. Why in all the world then, people asked, hadn't the ship which had received only slight damage closed with the one on fire and destroyed it. What possible excuse for running away?

  Excuse enough. The fire on the BISMARCK, while demonstrable testimony to the occasional liveliness of official imaginations, had, in actual fact, consisted of no more than soot shaken loose from her funnel. As for the PRINCE OF WALES's 'slight damage', she had been struck by no fewer than three 8-inch shells and four of the BISMARCK'S great 15-inch shells, one of which had completely wrecked the bridge, killing everyone there except Leach and his chief yeoman of signals. Furthermore, one of the PRINCE OF WALES's big guns was completely out of action, repeated breakdowns in the others led to their firing intermittently or not at all and the jamming of 'Y' turret shell ring had put the four big guns of that turret — half of Captain Leach's effective armament — out of commission. The PRINCE OF WALES, far from being slightly damaged, was badly crippled: to close with her powerful enemy, to expose herself any longer to the murderous accuracy of these broadsides would have been no mere act of folly but quick and certain suicide.

  The BISMARCK made no attempt to pursue and engage her enemy. With the HOOD destroyed and the PRINCE OF WALES badly hurt and driven off in ignominious defeat, she had already achieved success beyond her wildest dreams. A magnificent victory, a tremendous boost to the prestige of the German Navy and, in Goebbels' hands, a new-forged propaganda weapon of incalculable power — why risk throwing it all away by exposing herself to a lucky salvo that might destroy her turrets or bridge or fire control directors — or might even sink her? Besides, her primary purpose in breaking into the Atlantic was not to engage the Home Fleet — that was the last thing Admiral Lutjens wanted — but to annihilate our convoys.

  The rejoicing aboard the BISMARCK was intense, but no more so than the jubilation in the chancellory of Berlin, where news of this resounding triumph had been flashed as soon as the BISMARCK had broken off the action.

  Within an hour the news would be in the hands of every newspaper and radio station in the country. By the afternoon every person in Germany — and by the evening every country in Europe — would know of the crushing defeat suffered by the Royal Navy. An overjoyed Hitler sent his own and the nation's congratulations and admiration to the officers and men of the BISMARCK, and personally announced, amongst numerous other decorations, the immediate award of the Knight's Insignia of the Iron Cross to the BISMARCK'S first gunnery officer.

  Only one man held aloof, only one man remained untouched by the exultation, the exhilaration of the victory — the man, one would have thought, who had the greatest cause of all to rejoice, Captain Lindemann, commanding officer of the BISMARCK. Lindemann was unhappy and more than a little afraid — and no man had ever called Lindemann's courage into question. A gallant and very experienced sailor, reckoned about the best and the most skilful in the German Navy — and he had to be, to have command of the finest ship in the German Navy — he was filled with foreboding, a dark certainty of ultimate defeat.

  Although his ship had suffered no damage either to her guns or engines and was still the complete fighting machine, a shell, crashing through the heavy armour, and exploding in her fuel tanks had perceptibly reduced her speed and he feared he might not have sufficient fuel left for sustained high-speed steaming and manoeuvring — and Lindemann realized only too clearly that he would require all the speed and every pound of thrust the BISMARCK'S big turbines were capable of developing. He knew the British, he knew the tremendous regard and affection in which they had held the HOOD, and he knew too that, far from being intimidated by the appalling manner of her death, they would have been goaded into a savage fury for revenge and would not rest until they had hunted them down and destroyed them.

  These fears he tried to communicate to his senior officer, Admiral Lutjens, and suggested that they return immediately to Bergen, for repairs. Admiral Lutjens, for reasons which we will never know — possibly the elation of their great success had temporarily blurred his judgment and dreams of glory are notoriously treacherous counsellors — overruled his captain. They would go on as originally planned. So the BISMARCK turned southwest and pushed on deep down into the Atlantic.

  The Navy followed her. All afternoon and evening the NORFOLK, SUFFOLK and PRINCE OF WALES shadowed both German ships, sending out constant radio transmissions to Admiral Tovey, who swung his squadron on to a new interception course.

  The BISMARCK knew she was being followed, but seemed to be undisturbed by this. Only once, briefly, did she show her teeth. About 6.30 in the evening, she turned on her tracks in a fog bank and opened fire on the SUFFOLK, but broke off the engagement almost at once, when the PRINCE OF WALES joined in. (It was not realized at the time that this was merely a diversion to let the PRINZ EUGEN break away to a German oiler, where she refuelled and made her way safely to Brest.)

  The BISMARCK now turned to the west and the British shadowers followed, Admiral Tovey's squadron still pursuing.

  But Tovey's KING GEORGE V, REPULSE and VICTORIOUS were now only three out of many ships converging on the German capital ship.

  The battleship REVENGE was ordered out from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Vice-Admiral Somerville's Force H — the battle cruiser RENOWN, the now legendary ARK ROYAL and the cruiser SHEFFIELD — were ordered up from Gibraltar. The battleship RAMILLIES, then with a mid-Atlantic convoy, the cruiser EDINBURGH, down near the Azores and the cruiser LONDON, with a convoy off the Spanish coast, were all ordered to intercept. Last, but most important of all, the battleship RODNEY was pulled off a States-bound convoy. The RODNEY herself was going to Boston for an urgent and long overdue refit, as her engines and boiler-rooms were in a sorely dilapidated state: but the RODNEY'S great 16-inch guns, and the magnificently Nelsonian capacity of her commander, Captain Dalrymple-Hamilton, to turn a blind eye to what he considered well-meant but erring signals from the Admiralty were to prove more than counter-balance for the parlous state of her engines. The greatest hunt in naval history was on.

  Late that evening — just before midnight — Swordfish torpedo bombers from the VICTORIOUS, nine in all and led by Lieutenant-Commander Esmonde — who was later to lose his life but win a posthumous Victoria Cross for his attack on the GNEISENAU and SCHARNHORST — launched an attack against the BISMARCK in an attempt to slow her. But only one torpedo struck home, exploding harmlessly against the BISMARCK'S massive armour plating.

  Or so the official Admiralty communique claimed. For once, however, the claim was an underestimate. Baron von Mullenheim Rechberg (today the German consul in Kingston, Jamaica) but then the lieutenant-commander in charge of the BISMARCK'S after turret — and the ship's senior surviving officer — said recently, when questioned on this point, that the BISMARCK had been torpedoed three times by aircraft from the VICTORIOUS. Two of the torpedoes had little effect, but the third, exploding under the bows, caused severe damage and slowed up the BISMARCK still more.

  And then, at three o'clock on the morning of the 25th, that which both the Admiralty and Sir John Tovey had feared above all else happened — the shadowing ships, zigzagging through submarine infested waters, made their first and only mistake, broke contact and completely failed to regain it. The BISMARCK was lost, and no one knew where she was or, worse still, where she was heading.

  Later on that same morning, Admiral Lu
tjens addressed the crew of the BISMARCK. The optimistic confidence with which, only twenty-four hours previously, he had scoffed at Captain Lindemann's suggestion that they return to Bergen, had vanished completely. He was now a tired and anxious man, a man who realized all too clearly the enormity of his blunder. Incredibly, it seems that he was unaware that they had shaken off their pursuers — it was thought that they were still being shadowed by radar — and when Lutjens spoke the first overtones of desperation were all too clear in his voice.

  The British, he said, knew where they were and it was only a matter of time before their big ships closed in, and in overwhelming force. They knew what the outcome must be. They must fight to the death for the Fuehrer, every last man of them, and, if needs be, the BISMARCK herself would be scuttled. It is not difficult to imagine what effect this brief speech must have had on the morale of the BISMARCK'S crew.

  Why had Lutjens been so sure that capital ships of the Royal Navy were bearing down on them? In the first place, wrongly believing that he was still being trailed by the NORFOLK and SUFFOLK, he naturally assumed that they were guiding the British battleships to the scene. Secondly, the BISMARCK had just been in wireless contact with the German Admiralty — who, says von Mullenheim, were unaware of the true position — and had just received from them, doubtless on the basis of reports from Doenitz's U-boats, information about the whereabouts of her hunters which was not only misleading in itself but made doubly so by errors in transmission. British battleships were reported to be in the close vicinity and, acting on this false information, Lutjens ordered alterations in course which lost the BISMARCK those few irreplaceable hours that were to make all the difference between life and death.