The Lion at Sea

by Max Hennessy

  Towards the middle of the month the equinoctial weather became bad enough to lash the hundred-and-twenty mile stretch of water from Dover to the Hook of Holland to a fury and stir its grey waves to a cauldron of stinging spray and opaque spindrift.

  ‘In for a spell of bad weather,’ Poade observed. ‘Admiralty’s radioed that the Dogger Bank patrol needn’t be continued and that the seas are too bad for the destroyers, so that we’ve got to watch the Broad Fourteens on our own.’

  ‘Oh, bloody marvellous!’ Kelly glared out at the grey murk, uneasy, uncertain and angry. It was obvious to anyone with eyes to see that the submarine had advanced long since from infancy to pugnacious adulthood and to leave the old cruisers unescorted seemed to be a mistake of the highest order. ‘That leaves us without any protection at all and, on this beat, with the Dutch coast on one side and a minefield on the other, there’s no room for any variations of course. The Germans must know exactly where we are at any time.’

  Spray lashed across the deck and his eyes narrowed as he peered into the mist. Cressy was lurching through the waves, massive, ponderous and threatening, but they’d all heard the nickname they’d been given and he guessed that their threat was an empty one. The squadron was even under strength because Euryalus was in dock, and the flagship was running out of fuel and would soon have to turn for shore.

  ‘What happened to Winston’s idea that the Broad Fourteens could be abandoned?’ he said to Poade. ‘Are they using us to entice the Germans out so that Tyrwhitt can get at ’em, or are we here just because we’ve always had ships here?’

  Poade shrugged. ‘I expect our elders and betters know more than we do,’ he said. ‘Though I’ve been told that Roger Keyes was heard on the telephone saying “For God’s sake, take these bloody Bacchantes away.” We’ll be all right,’ he ended. ‘In these waters, submarines’ll be at a disadvantage and, if the weather moderates, one of Tyrwhitt’s flotillas will join us tomorrow morning.’

  The following morning, however, the weather was still bad and the message they received announced that Tyrwhitt’s flotilla had had to turn back to Harwich. ‘The flagship’s returning to base as well,’ Poade said. ‘For coaling. Drummond in Aboukir’s in command.’

  The wind was coming in fierce short gusts now, plucking the funnel smoke downwards across the bridge to make them cough and dab at streaming eyes, and the sky was high without a scrap of warmth to it, its empty greyness turning the water into an angry pewter that seemed to reflect the tall dark sides of the old cruisers. Square, ungainly, their high freeboard blunt and blank as cliffs, they dug into the short steep seas like angry bulls butting at a gate. There was a hard chill in the air and Kelly was in no mood to be forgiving.

  ‘Why doesn’t Aboukir signal increased revolutions?’ he demanded. ‘At this speed we’re a sitting target.’

  ‘Conserving coal,’ Poade said. ‘Admiralty order.’

  ‘It’s asking for trouble. Pity we can’t just zig-zag a bit. I always found it a damn’ sight harder to hit a rabbit when it jinked.’

  Staring at the chart, Kelly wasn’t as convinced as Poade that the situation was a safe one. As the three old ships steamed in line ahead, the eastern horizon was still dark with the gale blowing into their faces. The Chief Yeoman appeared and, as he handed a signal form to Johnson, Kelly noticed that his fingers were stained blue by the duplicator he used to issue the captain’s orders.

  ‘Germans are out again, Johnson announced bluntly. ‘Light cruisers, destroyers and submarines.’

  Under the narrow, old-fashioned cap, his face was keen, but there was an element of strain and worry, too, behind his eyes which indicated that he was as aware of danger as Kelly was.

  ‘They’ve been seen from Esbjerg, South Denmark, heading north. Jellicoe’s coming out, too, heading south past Flamborough Head towards the Horn Reef. It doesn’t involve us.’

  ‘It still leaves us isolated, sir,’ Kelly pointed out.

  ‘I doubt if we need to worry in this weather.’

  Late in the evening, another signal was received, saying that Tyrwhitt had started off again for the Broad Fourteens with his flotilla of destroyers and should arrive the next day. At first light the following morning, the Bacchantes were still heading northwards, anxious eyes on the western horizon for the first sign of the destroyers’ grey shapes to appear through the mist. As the middle watch ended, Kelly was staring round him, frowning. The waves looked black, racing in towards the ship like dark mountains of water, and he felt a tingle in his guts as he watched the sullen crests rolling past, exhilarated by the angry sea yet at the same time depressed by the absence of colour and the deep sense of foreboding in his mind.

  Poade was also clearly uneasy. ‘Seas are dropping,’ he said. ‘And that’s no help. It’s to be hoped Tyrwhitt arrives before the submarines start getting awkward.’ He glanced at the chart. ‘I’d have thought we’d be safer to head towards the destroyers instead of continuing on this course.’

  Kelly peered through the mist across the broken seas towards Aboukir. The old ships one behind the other reminded him for all the world of three elderly circus elephants performing a routine march.

  ‘What’s the course, Pilot?’ Johnson demanded.

  ‘Oh-four-five, sir,’ Poade said.

  ‘Speed?’

  ‘Ten knots.’

  ‘How far are we from the Hook of Holland?’

  ‘Twenty miles on the beam, sir.’

  ‘We’ll have to change soon or we’ll run aground at Ijmuiden.’

  The sky was the colour of old lead, darkening in the north to the colour of wet Cornish slate. Every time the ship pitched, the screws raced out of the water and there was a shuddering groan as the whole vast structure creaked and gave to the strain. There was a curiously depressing feel in the damp, salty air, and oddly there seemed no sensation of surprise as Kelly saw a fountain of water rise from the port side of Aboukir leading the line. It seemed somehow to fit in with the prevailing mood of the day.

  He had just turned away to glance at the chart when, through the murk, he saw the column of water and spray lift in a sudden mushrooming shape, a grey-white tower soaring high above the decks, almost as high as the funnel, thick, sullen and ominous; then he saw smoke coiling upwards, and with surprise, saw the cruiser appear to lift into the air with it. There seemed to be no flame and no explosion and it was a moment or two before he realised that Aboukir had been hit by something. Then Cressy shuddered as a vast shock wave punched at her massive hull and, immediately, men crowded the decks to stare across the dark uneasy water.

  ‘Aboukir’s struck a mine, sir!’

  The roar of the explosion came across the misty sea as he spoke and, as the smoke cleared, through the murk they noticed Aboukir had stopped and Kelly was surprised to see she was already heeling so far over to port her starboard plates were visible, glistening wet and red in the increasing morning light. The iron-grey water alongside her, churned to foam by the explosion, was dotted with black heads, and more men were appearing from below until her decks were teaming with running sailors.

  ‘I think they’re abandoning, sir!’

  Johnson snatched at his telescope. ‘Already?’

  Some of Aboukir’s boats, smashed by the explosion, swung in shattered wreckage from the davits. One of them had been lowered and stopped half-way down, and it hung lopsided and awkward-looking. A light began to flicker from the stricken ship’s bridge.

  ‘She’s signalling, sir. It is a mine and they want us to come closer to pick up survivors.’

  ‘She’s going, by God!’ Johnson said in surprise. ‘Stop engines! Get the boats away! Maguire, go with them! You’ve got a sound head on your shoulders! It’s got to be done quickly. Paymaster, we’ll need blankets, soup and hot coffee, and warn the surgeons to be ready! And double the look-outs! Aboukir might be wrong.
It might have been a torpedo.’

  As the way went off Cressy a bugle blared. The alarm gongs were sounding through the ship and she came alive with men running along the broad decks to the boats. Bosuns’ mates urged the men along, their pipes twittering as they ran.

  ‘Away first and second whalers!’

  The boats swung clear over the black water and the oarsmen and coxswains fell into the narrow wooden hulls. The second whaler was already dropping down the ship’s side, the falls screaming as if they were alive. Kelly clambered into the pinnace. ‘Lower away!’ he shouted.

  The waves shot up towards them, the wind snatching at their crests.

  ‘’Vast lowering! Out pins! Let go!’

  The boat dropped with a lurch on to the crest of a wave and, as it began to veer away from the black bulk of Cressy’s beam, Kelly saw that Aboukir was now down by the bow, the watery sun shining on the white figures of naked sailors walking inch by inch down her sides as she heeled over, some of them standing, others sitting down and sliding into the water which was already thickly dotted with the heads of swimming men and the sprawled white shapes of the already dead.

  Every one of Cressy’s boats had been lowered and mess tables, stools, spit kids, chests of drawers and chairs were being hurled overboard for Aboukir’s survivors to cling to. The main derricks, prepared in record time, were hoisting out boom boats and Kelly was just heading away from the ship’s side when there was another terrific crash. Hogue, cautiously approaching like Cressy to pick up the swimming men, also seemed to lift out of the water, and the shock jarred Kelly even through the timbers of the pinnace. A second or two later there was another crash, deeper sounding and heavier, and a great column of water and a cloud of smoke lifted from Hogue’s side. The third of her four huge funnels collapsed at once like a pack of cards and, as she began to heel over, she appeared to have been cut almost in two.

  ‘We’re in a minefield!’ the coxswain of the pinnace shouted.

  ‘Minefield be damned!’ Kelly snorted. ‘I’ll bet it’s a submarine and Cressy’s a sitting target.’ He turned to stare back at his ship, expecting her to get under way and move off, but she lay still, wallowing in the grey choppy water.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he burst out, as though issuing orders himself. ‘Get going!’

  Above the crash of the water, he could hear a sound from Hogue of breaking and splintering, as though every fragment of crockery, every chair and table, anything that wasn’t riveted to the bulkheads was being fragmented. She was already well over to starboard.

  ‘There must be half a dozen of the bastards,’ one of the seamen yelled, then guns started to fire over their heads from Cressy and they could see the shell splashes in the sea.

  ‘They got her,’ someone shouted.

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ Kelly yelled. ‘Pay attention to what you’re doing!’

  Aboukir was low in the water now, the sea lapping the bridge, and they could see men jumping from it into the waves.

  ‘She’s going!’

  Slowly, with ponderous majesty, Aboukir began to turn turtle. The dark water heaved and great gouts of it shot upwards from open scuttles, then there was a rending sound as her boilers tore loose, and she fell over on her side and settled upside down, rocking gently, lifting to the surface again so that men started to climb back on to her slimy red keel. Not many succeeded because it was too steep and too slippery and those who did were cut by barnacles, begrimed and exhausted, and choking from the sea water and oil they’d swallowed. Then, slowly, she slipped beneath the waves, taking with her most of the wild-eyed survivors who clung to her keel.

  Hogue, also by this time heeling to port, was firing at shadows and from below, as the pinnace pushed through the wreckage and began to haul gasping men aboard, Kelly could see deadlights being closed and more mess stools, tables, timber and anything else which would float being thrown over the side. Boats were swung out on their davits and yelling petty officers were shouting a mixture of orders. Hammocks splashed into the sea and men began to jump.

  At first it seemed that Hogue was not going to sink, but then they saw that the quarterdeck was awash and she, too, began to roll dizzily to starboard, flinging men across the broad decks to break arms and shoulders as they fetched up against bulkheads and stanchions. An explosion deep below water lifted her port side up and she lay almost on her beam ends, and as her gunners ceased their pointless firing they could hear shouts above them of ‘Abandon ship.’

  Putting the pinnace astern to clear the great leaning bulk, Kelly stared upwards. Hogue made him think of some vast block of buildings slowly tilting sideways towards him, then, as they drew away, he saw the captain walk over the side of the bridge and on to the bilge keel where one of Cressy’s cutters took him off almost dry-shod. Falling heavily on to her side, Hogue set up a great swell that swept towards them, lifting them on its crest as it rolled past. For a moment, the water lashed at the sides of the pinnace then, as the huge keel showed, wet and red and barnacle-covered, swinging slightly as the ship settled, Kelly drove in among the swimming men again.

  Awakening at last to the danger, Johnson had begun to take Cressy away at full speed in a zigzag past the area of wreckage and swimming men where her consorts had sunk. Her guns were still firing wildly and shells were dropping near her own boats.

  ‘Give her all she’s got,’ Kelly yelled to the pinnace’s engineer and they moved among the swimming men, dragging them aboard and distributing them among the cutters as they filled up.

  One of Hogue’s Dartmouth boys, wearing only a singlet, was shivering with cold and Kelly shook him to life.

  ‘Grab an oar, boy!’ he shouted at him. ‘Double bank! It’ll warm you up!’ and he saw the boy climb into a cutter and reach out to start heaving alongside a bearded, ear-ringed sailor.

  Cressy was firing over their heads now and he saw the splashes grow nearer. He turned to wave a hand in warning but at that moment the pinnace’s bows seemed to lift from a vast concussion below the sea and he saw seamen and planks and a brass ventilator hurled through the air. As the bows dipped again, he saw the timbers were shattered, then he was swept out of the boat by the rush of water that flooded along it, and was swimming for his life, the one thought in his mind the unfairness of it all – he seemed to be seeing more bloody war than was his share and to be sunk by his own side was just too much.

  He came to the surface, spluttering furiously. Cressy was hurtling past, a vast black steel bulk towering above them, pushing men and wreckage aside with her bow wave. He could see her rivets picking up the light, and her ungainly turrets trained to port, the guns moving slowly like the antennae of a great steel beast, stupefied and worried, but without the intelligence to discover the whereabouts of her undersea tormentor. On the bridge officers were staring down at him over the steel coaming, and barefooted sailors were running along the decks with ropes. Then, as she moved past, he saw an explosion lift her stern and the shock came through the water like a blow from a fist. Once more, in a sickening repetition of the other two torpedoings, a great column of smoke, as thick and black as ink, shot skywards as high as the towering funnels, and, working up to her best speed, the great ship came to a halt like a charging rhinoceros hit by a high velocity bullet. As her bows went down, an angry wave of water foamed over the forecastle head and she stopped dead, steam roaring from the funnels in a shrieking din. Then she heeled, righted herself momentarily, and finally, like Aboukir and Hogue never designed to withstand torpedoes, began the same dismal, taunting sequence of keeling over to starboard.

  Spitting water, almost weeping with rage, Kelly saw her start to dip below the waves like an oil drum split open at target practice, and men on her decks tossing over rolled hammocks to cling to as she began to sink. Slowly, she leaned over, checked, then went still further, the men at the guns still firing at an invisible foe. The Dartmouth b
oys, still in their pyjamas and looking like children, began to run for the side, and Captain Johnson, tall, wing-collared and old-fashioned- looking, appeared to be calming them as he walked among them, or instructing, directing, as though nothing had happened.

  Then, as her boilers tore loose in a devastating explosion, she turned turtle in the same sickening manner as her sisters, leaning over like a ponderous pendulum to splash down on her side in the water and continue turning until she was upside down. As she floated keel-up, a few desperate men, gasping and shouting for help, tried to scramble aboard but then, still rocking after her wild swing, huge fountains of water driven upwards through her scuttles by the compressed air inside her, she slipped quietly below the sea.

  As she disappeared, Kelly heard a rush of water like surf breaking on a beach and realised it was suction. He hardly had time to fill his lungs with air before it was upon him. His chest seemed to be bursting, and he had almost given up fighting when something told him to keep on trying and he started struggling afresh.

  As he shot to the surface, something bumped against him in the icy water and he found it was a hammock. He looked round for something more substantial and as a coir fender bobbed up he grabbed it and pushed himself on it to a piece of floating timber which seemed to be the centre of one of the ship’s targets and managed to flop across it.

  Clinging to the baulk of timber, he was consumed with angry bitterness. What bloody luck, he thought, to become a casualty after only six weeks of war!

  He was cold and numb and quite certain that all the feeling was going from his limbs, and he had almost resigned himself to drowning when he came to life with a jerk. This was a damn silly way to behave, he decided – giving up the ghost before he was properly gone. Once, as a boy, he’d fallen out of a tree and knocked himself unconscious, and had come round staring at the sky, convinced he was already dead. Then his brother Gerald, worried at his stillness, had given a nervous little kick at his behind. He had heard his voice – ‘Come on, young ’un, you’re not hurt – and had literally forced himself back to consciousness.