The Lion at Sea

by Max Hennessy

  A slight breeze had risen, as yet without malice but enough to ripple the water into minute corrugations, and as the temporary repairs were completed, they began once more to steam westwards. The North Sea looked grey and forbidding. There was no sign of the German fleet, just melancholy acres of dead men on the flat calm water, floating in their life jackets among the debris from their lost ships. All around them, over the horizon out of sight, other ships were also making their way home, ghostly in the mist, some of them wallowing under hundreds of tons of water.

  Then they passed the wreckage of a German ship and bodies of drowned German sailors, including two officers lying across a spar, floating about with caps and clothing and pieces of timber among the smear of oil and scraps of charred hammocks; and finally a drawer full of seamen’s documents and a raft with Black Prince painted on its sides.

  Nobody spoke. Nobody had time to speak. Every movement of the sea caused Mordant to sway and groan and, as the wind freshened, she gave a little lurch and Wellbeloved stared anxiously at the scar in case it was lengthening to expose her flanks still further. Once it extended beyond an upright riveted rib he’d marked, yet another compartment would be flooded.

  By this time Kelly’s back felt as if it were in a straightjacket, and his fingers ached with being clamped to the bridge rail.

  Wellbeloved appeared. ‘We’re making it,’ he grinned. He looked exhausted and blackened with dirt, his eyes red-rimmed, his tongue pink in the hole of his mouth.

  Below deck in an atmosphere stinking of scorched paintwork and burnt cordite, the first aid parties were still labouring over the wounded, and the dead were being collected and laid in rows on the stern. Their injuries were terrible. Some of them had been literally torn in half, or had limbs ripped from their bodies; some had been stripped naked by the blast. But the less injured were lying below on the mess deck tables now and those who could sit or recline were propped up with lifebelts.

  Despite the groans of the burned and wounded, the spirit of the unhurt vas excellent. They were all exhausted and hungry because the galley had disappeared and they’d eaten nothing but sandwiches for thirty-six hours. Nevertheless, as they collected the empty shell cases and cleared the decks of wreckage, one of the torpedomen produced an accordion and began to play ‘Keep The Home Fires Burning.’

  ‘How about “Anybody Here Seen Kelly?”’ one of the gunners shouted and, as he changed tunes, Kelly saw faces turned towards the bridge.

  ‘Good old Ginger,’ someone yelled. Kelly’s face twisted into a grimace of a smile, and he lifted his hand in an acknowledgement that seemed to wrench at the stitches in his back.

  ‘Rumbelo,’ he said gravely, ‘remind me to have it put about the ship that midshipmen and sub-lieutenants can be ginger but that when they reach lieutenant’s rank they become red-haired, while a captain of a ship is always auburn.’

  Rumbelo grinned at him, and he knew the bon mot would travel swiftly round the lower deck. It would do no harm. Sailors enjoyed a joke against their officers and it could only serve to bind them more tightly together.

  Toward midday a zeppelin passed overhead, silently, like a ghost among the low clouds, and one of the reservists in the crew, a man with Egyptian ribbons for 1882 on his chest and a vast bottle nose, started firing a rifle at it.

  ‘Why don’t you fix bloody bayonets,’ a derisive yell came from behind the wrecked funnel, ‘and charge the bastard?’

  At lunchtime they passed the bow of a destroyer sticking up out of the water, and soon afterwards steamed through an immense oily pool which marked the resting place of some great ship. During the afternoon Naylor announced that the dead were ready for burial. ‘Shall I do it, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ Kelly shook his head. ‘I’ll do it.’

  With a relief helmsman on the wheel, Rumbelo prised his fingers from the bridge rail and helped him down the ladder while Naylor took his place. The service was held in the waist of the ship, the sagging topmast swaying giddily above them. Those men who could be spared from their duties were standing bare-headed in two lines, several of them wearing bandages.

  ‘Rumbelo,’ Kelly said. ‘Stand behind me and make sure I don’t fall down. Sound the “Still.”’

  The survivors had fallen in on the port side. The wail of the bosun’s pipe broke the silence and a prayer book was pushed into Kelly’s hand. He drew a deep breath.

  ‘Forasmuch as it has pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the souls of our comrades here departed…’

  It hadn’t been Almighty God who’d taken the souls of their comrades, he thought as he intoned the words, it had been the German High Seas Fleet and the dummies at the Admiralty.

  As he finished reading, a murmur ran through the gathered men and as the bosun’s pipe twittered the bodies disappeared, sliding from under the ensigns into the sea with hardly a splash. The water closed over them as though they’d never existed.

  ‘Carry on,’ Kelly said as he turned away. ‘I’ll need the names, Mr Hatchard.’

  The bridge ladder seemed hundreds of feet high with thousands of steps and Kelly’s legs were like lead. He felt Rumbelo’s hand on his behind, pushing, and he made it with an effort. The place looked as if it had been through a reaper, with its wood and steel-work slashed by splinters and the dodger fluttering in rags.

  ‘You should be lying down, sir,’ Rumbelo grumbled.

  ‘I know I should. But I’m not going to.’

  ‘How’s your back?’

  ‘Stiff.’

  ‘You look like death.’

  ‘I feel like death. But I expect I can manage till we reach home.’

  The barometer had gone down, and the sky looked threatening with the sun hidden behind a hard grey pall dappled over with lumps of dark cloud driving from the west on the rising wind. By two in the afternoon, Mordant was pitching to the motion of crisp little waves, and occasional whisps of spray came rattling over what was left of the bridge.

  The motion was agonising and Kelly’s fingers were white as he gripped the bridge rail.

  Wellbeloved appeared once more, his face strained. ‘That bulkhead’s buckling and twisting like paper,’ he said. ‘And the shores are working loose. The boiler room bulkhead’s not much better.’

  Kelly made an effort to concentrate. ‘What do you propose?’

  ‘We’ll have to abandon.’

  ‘Not bloody likely. I’m taking this ship home. It’s the first I’ve ever commanded and I’m damned if I’m going to let her sink.’

  ‘You’ll never make it. The minute you go ahead again, the bulkhead’ll go.’

  They seemed to be beaten, then Kelly remembered the trip he’d made into Surrey with Charley before he’d joined the ship and the way they’d climbed the Hog’s Back in reverse because they couldn’t make it any other way.

  He grinned at Wellbeloved. ‘Let’s go astern,’ he said.

  ‘She’ll sink.’

  ‘She will not sink,’ Kelly snapped. ‘It’s up to you to see that she doesn’t!’

  ‘You can’t go all the way across the North Sea stern-first.’

  ‘We can have a bloody good try!’

  Wellbeloved’s tired face cracked into a grin. ‘I think you’re barmy,’ he said, ‘But if you’re game, so am I.’

  As Wellbeloved vanished, Rumbelo looked at Kelly.

  ‘You all right, sir?’

  ‘I’m all right, Rumbelo.’

  ‘How’s your back?’

  ‘Bloody painful.’

  In fact, it was stiffening now and Kelly sat down cautiously on the stool they’d given him. His eye and cheek hurt like hell and the sick berth PO’s stitching was dragging at the flesh of his back. He had to lean forward to ease his muscles every now and then and eventually, he knew, he’d set rigid, so he c
lung to the bridge rail, deciding that at least he’d set rigid in the right place. They’d probably have to prise him loose with a crowbar when they reached home, but that wouldn’t matter much so long as they arrived, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped so that he had a feeling he was going to survive.

  ‘We’ll have something to tell them at home, Rumbelo,’ he said. ‘When we get home.’

  ‘If we get home, sir. Pity it isn’t better news. Still I don’t suppose they’ll mind so long as we arrive. Biddy won’t, anyway.’

  ‘Why don’t you marry the girl?’

  ‘I might at that, sir. I’ve had about three of me nine lives already. How about you and Miss Charlotte?’

  ‘Not old enough, Rumbelo. Got to wait until I’m thirty.’

  ‘That’s hard, sir.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. It’s what makes admirals, Rumbelo, and I’m going to be an admiral.’

  ‘When did you decide that, sir?’

  ‘Just now.’

  Rumbelo grinned. ‘Does Miss Charlotte know?’

  ‘I think she always knew.’

  Wellbeloved dragged himself to the bridge. ‘You can try it now,’ he said.

  ‘Right. Slow astern both. Let me know if she holds.’

  The ship moved slowly astern. Getting home was going to be largely by guess and by God because they had no charts or compass and a stiff sea was getting up, but if they headed due west they were bound to hit England somewhere. In fact, Mordant steered much better than they’d expected and Wellbeloved popped up again alongside Kelly. ‘I think she’s holding,’ he said. ‘But, for God’s sake, no faster.’

  They were still staggering slowly home when darkness came again. The sea had risen a little and waves kept punching at Mordant’s blunt stern.

  ‘If it gets up much more,’ Wellbeloved said, ‘it’ll remove everything aft and make the stern uninhabitable. We’d better have the storerooms cleared of food just in case.’

  After sufficient food for the voyage had been salvaged, the stern portion of the ship was also abandoned and they set up camp for what was left of the crew amidships.

  Wet, exhausted and weary-eyed, they watched through the second night. It was impossible to prevent water finding its way below and every gallon in the after compartment decreased the buoyancy of the ship. By next morning, the wind had increased still more and Kelly watched with anxious eyes as they punched into the waves, wondering if they would have to abandon after all and his boastful claims were going to be punctured. The forward bulkheads were bulging and parties of men were constantly kept at work replacing and wedging up the timber shores.

  As the battered ship crept on, pushing her blunt stern into the sea, he clung to the bridge, aware that he’d changed overnight. He was in command now and he was behaving as if he were. He shivered, his body wilting under the strain of tiredness, pain and cold.

  ‘Rumbelo,’ he said. ‘Go to my cabin and find me a scarf.’

  Rumbelo disappeared. A moment or two later he was back. ‘It’s a wreck, sir. Water’s coming through a hole in the side. I brought you one of mine.’ As he fastened the scarf round Kelly’s throat, he handed him the picture of Charley. The glass was smashed. ‘I managed to salvage this, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Take it out, Rumbelo. I’ll shove it in my pocket.’

  It seemed to be a token of good luck. His last leave with Charley had been a period of mounting elation, with Charley behaving as though she might not live to see the next day; despite their new wariness towards each other, happy in a breathless but controlled excitement at everything they did together, her head tilted with delight at her own cleverness whenever she did something that amused or pleased him, wasting no time on irrelevancies, even the touch of her hand in his a perceptible caress. He’d never had anything but pleasure from knowing her and it seemed now that she might see them home.

  The weather began to grow worse and they began to have trouble with the shorings and the plugs for the holes near the waterline and Wellbeloved appeared at a rush.

  ‘You’ll have to reduce revs,’ he announced. ‘The bloody ship’s falling apart.’

  ‘It is not falling apart,’ Kelly said doggedly. ‘I’m going to get her home if I have to swim underneath her to keep her up.’

  During the afternoon, Rumbelo devised a mattress in the corner of the bridge and he snatched a fitful sleep, but he was on his feet again in the evening to fix their position. The first ship they saw was a trawler and Naylor hailed it and told it to stand by to escort them to safety.

  To their joyous disbelief, May Island came in sight during the evening, then they saw the faint blue streak of the Scottish coast. Exhausted, unshaven, wet and hungry, they gazed greedily at the thin line of land.

  ‘Thank Christ,’ Wellbeloved said fervently.

  A destroyer came hurtling out of the Firth of Forth to challenge them.

  ‘Make with the lamp, Lipscomb,’ Kelly ordered. ‘“Keep away from me. Your wash will sink me.”’

  The other ship cautiously moved round them, the men on her bridge eyeing the damage through glasses. At last she acknowledged and flashed back. ‘“Have ordered tug and hospital boat.”’

  When the tug arrived alongside, they were all snappy and irritable with reaction and fatigue.

  ‘Prepare to be taken in tow by the stern,’ the tug skipper ordered. ‘Turn your stern to the sea and stop engines.’

  A man with a lieutenant’s stripes stepped aboard and to his disgust Kelly saw it was Verschoyle.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he demanded furiously.

  Verschoyle smiled, clean, well-shaven and full of life. ‘Come to take over,’ he announced.

  Kelly drew himself up. He was dirty and his face was grey with fatigue and covered with streaks of dried blood, and he felt as though he’d never be able to move his back and shoulders again. ‘I’m in command of this bloody ship,’ he said. ‘I’m staying in command.’

  Verschoyle studied the bandages under his torn clothes and peered at his one good eye beneath the wad of cottonwool and lint. Despite the battered ship and the weary men, there was something terrifyingly enduring in the spirit he saw around him and he realised unwillingly that it stemmed entirely from this man in front of him to whom he had once felt superior. For the first time in his life, Verschoyle was conscious of a feeling of admiration. ‘Humility,’ he said, ‘was never one of your virtues, Maguire. By the look of you, you should be in hospital.’

  ‘I’ll go to hospital when we’ve finally made port and not before.’

  ‘Do you mean to say you’ve been handling this ship all the way across the North Sea?’

  Kelly gestured at the weary men with tired eyes and bowed shoulders moving about the waist of the ship. ‘We have,’ he corrected. ‘Me and these chaps.’

  As the steel towing hawser was passed across, he suddenly realised whom he was talking to and the old dislike flared up.

  ‘Why does it have to be you, anyway?’ he demanded.

  ‘That’s what I was thinking,’ Verschoyle said blandly. ‘So the feeling seems to be mutual. Are you badly hurt?’

  ‘I’m dying.’

  Verschoyle laughed. ‘You don’t sound very moribund, and I can’t imagine anyone ever being able to kill you. You’ll be around for quite a few years yet to make a nuisance of yourself to the Admiralty, I’ll be bound.’

  Kelly was silent for a moment. ‘I thought you were with Sturdee in Benbow.’

  Verschoyle shrugged. ‘Fell out. Had a few words. He’s such a conceited ass. I was posted down here to Queen Mary. She left just before I arrived. Seems to have been quite a good thing for me.’

  ‘You missed the battle. You don’t reach flag rank without battle experience.’

  ‘You’d be surprised. And, anyway, it wouldn’t do me
much good if I were dead, would it? They sent me and a few shorebound types to help you chaps in. There are such a lot of you.’

  Kelly glared at him from red-rimmed eyes. ‘We’ll manage without,’ he said.

  Verschoyle didn’t argue. ‘You always were a stubborn bugger,’ he said.

  Kelly stared at the grey northern coastline and drew a deep breath. ‘Anyway, who won? If anybody knows, I bet you do.’

  Versehoyle’s face became bleak. ‘God knows,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to say yet. Before I left, I heard Jellicoe had reported the battle fleet available for action again at four hours’ notice.’

  ‘That’s a lot of bloody good! There’s nobody to fight. He let ’em get away.’

  ‘Does seem a bit stupid, I suppose.’ It was the keen, intelligent Verschoyle speaking now. ‘We’ve been badly hurt. Arbuthnot’s gone. Horace Hood, too. As well as around six thousand others. Only one of Arbuthnot’s ships returned. The others are all sunk. And there are a hell of a lot of scars to be seen.’

  ‘We got a few ourselves,’ Kelly said stiffly.

  ‘I’d say you are a scar. With bits of ship attached.’ Verschoyle frowned. ‘Men landing from Warspite were jeered at by the dockies.’

  Kelly glared. ‘I wish we’d had a few dockies in Mordant when we met the Hun. The bastards wouldn’t have been jeering then.’

  They staggered into the Firth, the waves lifting over Mordant’s stern. The battle cruiser force had long since entered but none of the expected flags had been flying to indicate a victory and no bands were playing. Some of the vast 12-inch guns were cocked up in the air and mats covered their wounds, and it was a strange hushed place because even now no one was sure whether they’d won or lost.

  Verschoyle moved restlessly in his clothes. ‘Everybody’s blaming bad visibility,’ he said. ‘To say nothing of interference from mist and smoke, lack of anti-flash precautions, inadequate armour, bad signalling and just plain bad gunnery.’

  Kelly scowled. ‘Nobody’s mentioned the tedium of swinging round a buoy at Scapa Flow for so long every officer of spirit took all possible steps to get away, I suppose?’