The Lion at Sea

by Max Hennessy

  Kelly’s eyes glittered. ‘I’m not joining the Brigade of Guards, sir.’

  The surgeon gave him a sour look and grunted. ‘Expect you’ll do,’ he growled. ‘At least you’ve got plenty of bounce.’

  There was still a great deal of euphoria in the air over the victory at the Falklands as the course began, but doubts about the Admiralty and senior officers began once more to creep in as rumour claimed there had been a great deal of luck in it and that Sturdee’s well-publicised imperturbability had, in fact, been dilatoriness so that he had very nearly missed his chance. He was even, it was said, being asked why he had allowed just one of Von Spee’s ships to escape. Jacky Fisher’s known viciousness appeared to be in control again and it seemed to be no bad thing either.

  The North Sea remained stagnant and still the lower deck’s ‘big smash’ did not come. The German Fleet remained beyond the mines in the Jade River, refusing to come out, though there were numerous alarms and excursions when they were reported on their way. Though the winter remained a quiet one, the war seemed to be spreading. Vast battles had been fought in Russia and, with Turkey now in, British and French warships were patrolling the Aegean in the hope of inducing Goeben to emerge through the Dardanelles. A few gun duels between warships and Turkish shore batteries found their way into the newspapers and there was a great deal of diplomatic activity to bring the Greeks in, but it was still the vast killing match in France that overwhelmed everyone. In a mere four-month period, the allies had suffered a million casualties and it suddenly occurred to someone that they were neither advancing nor killing Germans at a greater rate than they were being killed themselves and that it might be a good idea, instead of trying to hammer down the front door, to try to sneak in through the back. A plan was evolved to force the Dardanelles and in March the attempt was made by the British and French Mediterranean Fleets. It produced no great success and three allied ships were sunk at once and three seriously damaged. Somehow, the war didn’t seem to be going too well.

  By skilful concealment of his ignorance of some of the more elementary facts about electricity and the internal combustion engine, Kelly passed his examinations without much difficulty and promptly began to wonder if he’d done the right thing. It had been the extra few shillings a day that had first attracted him and then the thought that it might persuade their Lordships of the Admiralty that he didn’t want to be posted to a big ship. Experience had already shown him that submarines were dark, cold, damp, oily and cramped; full of intricate machinery, and giving, in the long run, only a small chance of survival.

  Then he realised he was letting his fears run away with him. Submarines had seemed much more fragile and rattly than he’d expected, very different from the sleek streamlined craft he’d imagined. Acquiring knowledge of them had appeared for the most part to be an attempt to understand the confusion of pipes and wires and to keep out of everybody’s way while they manoeuvred the training craft. In the end he had mastered most of it, but he recognised that most of what he would eventually know he would learn now that he’d finished his course.

  Leaving Dolphin, he was ordered to pick up a draft of men from HMS Vernon, an old three-decker which lay on the mud at the upper end of Portsmouth harbour and was the home of torpedoes and electrics. As he stepped ashore, Portsmouth looked the same as ever. The top masts of Victory could be seen over the square dockyard buildings and the ferry to Gosport could be heard clanking on its chains across the harbour. A train at the nearby harbour station shrieked and there was such an element of normality about it all, it didn’t surprise Kelly in the slightest to find Rumbelo grinning at him from the middle of the draft, the ribbon of the DSM on his chest, and when the rear rank started whistling ‘Anybody Here Seen Kelly?’ he had to grin back.

  ‘Hello, Rumbelo,’ he said, as he moved along the line of men. ‘You made it then?’

  His posting was as navigator to a newly-commissioned submarine, E19, which was lying in the submarine base at Parkeston Quay, Harwich. Since the quay formed part of the railway station, there wasn’t far to carry their kit, and there was no need to put in a word for Rumbelo because the captain, a long-jawed, black-haired lieutenant-commander called Lyster had already asked for him. An extraordinary figure in cricket sweater, knickerbockers, tartan socks and black-and-white beach shoes, Lyster introduced Kelly to the first lieutenant, a bearded cynic called Bennett, and stood watching, as though assessing his new officer.

  ‘You given to worrying about superstition, Maguire?’ he asked.

  Wondering what was coming, Kelly shook his head. ‘No, sir.’

  Lyster nodded approvingly. ‘Keep it that way,’ he said. ‘E19 was originally numbered 13 and on her trials she suddenly ran amuck and started porpoising all over Gare Loch. We couldn’t hold her. Forty seconds to thirty feet and then she was banging her guts out on the bottom and the next minute trying to leap out of the water like a porpoise.’

  Bennett grinned. ‘Quite a time was had by all,’ he said.

  ‘I refused to sign for her,’ Lyster went on, ‘and she went back to the yard. In the end, it was decided it was her number that was wrong and it was changed to 19. Since then she seems to be all right. You’ll find this is a good ship. Including you, we have a crew of forty-two, plus one terrier and two white mice, which the Admiralty allows on the ship’s books to give warning of chlorine. Having less altitude, as the Flying Corps says, they die before we do, you see. Unfortunately, the family always seems to increase to six and that’s not allowed in the regulations, and doubtless the clerks at the Admiralty are still working out what to do about it. It will be one of your jobs to winnow ’em out if they get beyond that figure.’

  He changed the subject abruptly to Rumbelo. ‘Noticed he had a DSM,’ he said. ‘Know anything about him?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I put him in for it. He’s an old friend.’

  ‘So much the better,’ Lyster said. ‘Makes for family feeling. Had leave lately?’

  ‘Before I did my course, sir.’

  ‘Well, you’re lucky. You’ll be getting some more. We all will. We’re due for the Middle East.’

  ‘What’s happening in the Middle East, sir?’

  ‘The Dardanelles.’

  ‘I thought that was over. The Turks sank half the Mediterranean Fleet with mines, didn’t they?’

  Lyster shrugged. ‘The army’s decided they know more about it than we do and they’re going to take over and make a landing. We’re being sent out with three other submarines to try to get through the minefields to stop Turkish reinforcements coming across the Sea of Marmara.’

  ‘We’ll never do it, sir.’

  Lyster smiled. ‘We already have,’ he said. ‘Norman Holbrook did it in B11.’

  There was an odd sort of wariness about E19. Even the newcomers to the crew had heard of her strange antics on her trials and it seemed as if they were all waiting for the next example of wild behaviour. The interior of the boat was a mass of intricate machinery that restricted headroom, with a passageway through the middle scaled off, section by section, by bulkheads. There was no space to sling hammocks and the crew slept wherever they could, among the machinery or on the boards of the central passageway which covered the batteries, while the wardroom was nothing more than a curtained compartment smelling of damp and diesel oil, containing a table where the navigating was done – as often as not with one of the machinists working alongside – one bunk, and a single chair where the officer off watch passed what little leisure time he had. Above, so that it was almost impossible to stand upright, was an array of pipes, wheels and dials and the all-important glass face of the depth gauge. It was about as big as a henhouse and just about as comfortable, and at sea they had to live on the ‘hot-bunk’ principle of rolling into the bed just vacated by the man who’d relieved them. Under way it was impossible to speak without shouting because the rush of air down the shaft of the
control tower, the whine of the steering gear and the roar of the engines drowned everything, and the stoker in the engine room even had to hit the steel plates of the deck with a spanner to attract the attention of his artificer.

  They carried out working-up exercises in the north Channel but there was no sign of anything untoward until shortly before they were due for leave. Standing on the bridge with Kelly alongside him, Lyster was admiring his black-and-white beach shoes. He was not hard to get on with but was a great chaser of females, a sarcastic, sardonic man who seemed inordinately proud of his strange footwear.

  ‘Bought ’em in Worthing,’ he pointed out cheerfully. ‘When I was spending a week-end with a girl.’

  Through the hatch opening they could hear the heavy diesel engines and the roar of the air they demanded and, below, a voice that sounded like Rumbelo’s was cheerfully singing a popular song which, with their destination known, had caught their particular fancy.

  ‘Oh, the moon shines bright on Charlie Chaplin,

  His suit wants pressin’,

  His shoes want blackin’,

  And his little baggy trousers they want mendin’

  Before they send him

  To the Dardanelles…’

  There was a lop on the sea and the sky was hidden by low dark-bellied clouds. In the distance the land had lost its tawny hue and was a dark blue-grey, like cooling iron fresh from the furnace. A slash of spray came over and Lyster spat the salt water from his lips and brushed the drops from his leather coat. ‘We don’t permit ourselves the luxury of ducking, Maguire,’ he said severely as Kelly straightened up.

  Occupied with thoughts of the Mediterranean, Kelly barely heard him. The war certainly seemed to move him about in great dramatic sweeps, but he was young enough nevertheless to enjoy the prospect. They were all well aware that the submarines were to be risked where the battleships had failed because they were cheap to build and more easily replaced, and if nothing else it would be different from tramping about the cobbled streets of Antwerp and from Cressy’s ponderous march across the Broad Fourteens.

  The sky seemed to grow darker as the clouds crowded against each other. The water looked black and oily and lifted sluggishly in the wind, and the line of the shore seemed to grow more ominously, menacingly, dark. The song from below had stopped, almost as if the drab colours above the conning tower had penetrated below to the crowded little world of pipes, wheels, and levers and subdued the singer. For a while they progressed at slow speed down-channel testing equipment then, without warning, Lyster called out, ‘Prepare for diving manoeuvre! Exercise alarm!’

  As they went tumbling down the aluminium ladder to land heavily on the deck plates, the klaxon shrieked throughout the boat and the machinists grabbed the valve handles and swung from them.

  ‘Take her down and steady her at fifty feet,’ Lyster said, slamming the hatch, and with a roar, water rushed into the tanks. The submarine dipped so quickly Kelly had to grab for the ladder to stop himself falling.

  The dive appeared to be unusually steep and he was watching the depth gauge over Bennett’s head when a shout, loud and urgent, brought his head round.

  ‘Outboard air induction valve doesn’t close, sir!’

  ‘That’s torn it,’ someone gasped and Lyster jerked upright.

  ‘She’s at it again,’ he said and, as the bow sank, a face appeared in the opening of the engine room bulkhead.

  ‘We can’t stop the leak, sir! Head valve must be jammed!’

  Lyster acted immediately. ‘Blow all tanks! Both planes to rise! Surface!’

  Within seconds the depth gauge needle had dropped to sixty feet, seventy, eighty, then the boat balanced briefly on an even keel and began to tilt towards the stern.

  ‘God damn this bloody tub,’ Lyster snorted. ‘There’s a jinx on her!’

  As the stern dipped further, Kelly began to slide aft and had to grab an overhead pipe. The boat was still tumbling towards the bottom, this time stern-first, her descent so steep that everything not fastened down rolled dangerously down the centre aisle. The two men operating the hydroplanes slid from their seat into the valve station and Rumbelo, flung through the forward hatch, clung to it with frantic fingers. His eyes met Kelly’s and Kelly was relieved to see they were steady. It made things seem better and he gave him a sickly grin.

  As the boat settled, Lyster’s head lifted slowly as if it were heavy. ‘Stop blowing,’ he ordered. ‘The boat’s out of control.’

  As E19 reached the ocean floor, a terrifying roar came from the engine room as water rushed through the leak, then the boat hit with a shuddering jolt and they sprawled on the deck, all of them tumbling and sliding helplessly about. The lights went out and for a few moments there was only terrifying darkness. Then, as the emergency lighting came on, they held their breath, blinking at each other in thankful relief.

  Bennett was gazing intently at the depth gauge. The vibrating needle had stopped at 100 feet, which was as far as it would go. Mingled with the heavy smell of diesel oil, there was now a new odour as fear opened pores and activated the sweat glands of the crouching men. With the rise in tension there was also a rise in temperature. Like animals feigning death, everyone had frozen into rigid positions and the control room was as quiet as the grave, the air hanging heavy like the still period before the beginning of a thunderstorm.

  There seemed something ominous in the long gap in information from the engine room. The usual funny comments didn’t come and men began to crowd in, their faces damp and drawn with strain. Still no one spoke. The silence had a glass-thin brittleness, and a heavy tension seemed to have settled over them. Beads of sweat showed on Lyster’s face and the muscles of his jaw stood out. His shoulders were hunched, and the lines at the sides of his mouth seemed deeper than before, the hollows under his eyes like coal smudges. In the silent control room the creak and tick of strained plates sounded malevolent, and an enormous sense of claustrophobia gripped Kelly so that he wanted to scream.

  They were all waiting tensely, Lyster bent down near the eyepiece of the periscope, ready to raise it the moment they regained control, and Kelly saw everybody watching him with wide eyes and grey perspiring faces. Still no one moved, all eyes firmly fixed on the commanding officer, waiting for the next order. The tension was agonising and the silence seemed to go on for hours.

  Then Lyster came to life at last. ‘Take the angle off, Number One,’ he said quietly.

  As Bennett struggled with the tanks, there was nothing the rest of them could do except wait. The seconds ticked by like slow ponderous steps, while they remained still, not speaking, not daring to speak, avoiding each other’s eyes. Then the boat lurched again and somebody out of sight shouted ‘Shut that bloody door!’ Struggling against the tilting deck, Kelly could see water running down from forward.

  Bennett was still working over the panel, desperately seeking an explanation for the boat’s behaviour and they were all acutely aware of the fatal danger of chlorine if the sea water should reach the batteries before they could surface. Kelly’s brain seemed paralysed.

  Lyster raised his head, frowning. ‘Submarines,’ he said sourly, ‘are sensitive fish. I’m told it’s possible to trim one so accurately that, by raising or lowering the periscope a few inches, the whole boat can be made to rise or sink in the water.’ He stared round him bitterly. ‘But not this one. Pilot, ask the engine room how long they’ll be.’

  Kelly was just struggling on hands and knees against the angle, bracing his feet against a pump, a valve, a convenient pipe, towards the engine room when a hollow voice announced, ‘Air induction valve working and closed, sir.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Lyster said. ‘Bring her up, Number One.’

  There was no further sign of difficulty as E19 rose safely to the surface. The tension dropped away like a discarded cloak and, though the smell of fe
ar still filled the control room, they dabbed at their perspiring faces, trying to pretend they hadn’t had a moment’s anxiety. As the conning tower broke surface they all breathed a sigh of relief, staring at each other with awkward grins, every one of them hoping he’d shown no sign of doubt, almost as if they’d been involved in some joint misdemeanour against the Navy, some group behaviour of which they could all be ashamed.

  Lyster was staring at the depth gauge with a deep frown, his eyes glittering angrily.

  ‘This bloody boat,’ he said, ‘needs looking at again. All the way through.’

  Four

  There was a blazing row on the casing of E19 with the engineering manager of the yard and Lyster going at it hammer and tongs.

  ‘Ten to one Lyster’ll win,’ Bennett offered as he watched with Kelly from the bridge. He has a very persuasive manner.’

  ‘He looks to me as if he’s about to shove the manager overboard,’ Kelly said.

  Lyster remained in a bad temper for the rest of the day and that evening the manager came back aboard with a group of workmen under a foreman. The whole lot of them looked chastened and faintly ill-at-ease and Lyster gave them no encouragement to cheer up.

  ‘Why is it naval officers consider themselves among God’s chosen few?’ they heard the manager ask bitterly in an aside.

  Kelly grinned. ‘Perhaps it’s because we are among God’s chosen few,’ he said.

  Lyster swung round to Bennett. ‘I’m sending the hands on leave at once,’ he announced. ‘If we wait for that bloody lot to finish we’ll miss our sailing date. See to it, Number One.’

  With the deck occupied by dubious-looking wires and boxes of tools, and overalled workmen cursing in every compartment, they sent off half the ship’s complement who made in an excited group for the station, like all sailors ashore heading for women and drink, searching for that something all sailors expect to find when they strike land and never do. E19 became a cold cheerless cylinder with Lyster, who seemed to prefer to forego his leave to sit on the workmen’s necks to make sure they neglected nothing, in a foul temper whenever he appeared from the depot ship. Kelly was pleased to welcome Bennett back and vanish with the second batch.