Patrol to the Golden Horn

by Patrol to the Golden Horn (epub)

  ‘Oh …’ A chink of daylight. ‘A landing party?’

  The narrow head and its gold-peaked cap nodded.

  ‘You’ll have an explosives chap with you. But he’s incredibly green. I need someone with him who’s got a bit of savvy and can keep his head in an emergency. As you did once when you stole a trawler for me, eh?’

  ‘A trawler’s crew, sir.’

  ‘Quite. You did the job we wanted done.’

  A pause: Reaper peering down the ladder … It was difficult to believe in this business yet. It had been sprung too suddenly and unexpectedly. Nick sought escape in levity.

  ‘So, for “trawler” read “battlecruiser”, sir?’

  Reaper didn’t smile. He said gruffly as he started down the ladder, ‘You won’t have to steal her, Everard. Just destroy her.’

  * * *

  The brow down to E.57’s casing was a ribbed plank with the unusual embellishment of a rope handrail. Wishart flipped it contemptuously as he preceded Jake Cameron down the steep incline. ‘Guest-night stuff. They don’t realise we develop sticky feet.’ He stopped on the casing and a sailor in paint-stained overalls, emerging from the submarine’s fore hatch, edged past him with a bucket in each hand.

  ‘What’s that lot and where’s it going, Finn?’

  ‘Spud peelings, sir. Goin’ inboard, gash-bin.’ The torpedoman grinned. ‘Less the Frogs’d like it, d’ye reckon, sir?’ He went up the brow chuckling to himself: stocky, fresh-faced, in his early twenties. Wishart told Jake, ‘We’ve got a damn good bunch, you’ll find … Come on down.’

  Into the fore hatch, grabbing its upper rim and slinging themselves in feet-first on to a ladder that slanted down into the torpedo stowage compartment. Further for’ard, in the narrowing bow, were the two bow torpedo tubes; reloads for them were in here, one each side of the compartment. Behind the fish to starboard was the for’ard heads; opposite it, the officers’ cooking stove. Lockers filled other ship’s-side spaces, and any other gap not taken up with machinery and working gear had been crammed with crates, boxes, sacks of stores.

  In the centre of the for’ard bulkhead was the big, brass hand-wheel that controlled the shutter-gear, hull doors protecting the firing ends of the tubes; about twenty pairs of socks hung on its gleaming rim and spokes. Wishart frowned at it, and a leading seaman – a large man with a smooth face and thick brown hair – told him apologetically, ‘Won’t let us ’ang no dhobey topsides, sir, not in workin’ hours. Sailin’ tomorrer, makes it awkward.’

  ‘Who says you can’t?’

  The killick shrugged. ‘Inboard, sir.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with someone.’ Wishart told Jake, ‘Leading Seaman Morton is second cox’n … Lieutenant Cameron’s joined as navigator, Morton.’ He asked him, ‘Cox’n on board, is he?’

  ‘Gone to dinner inboard, sir. Shall I fetch ’im?’

  ‘Heavens, no.’ He moved towards the bulkhead doorway. ‘Let’s have a chat, pilot, while there’s some quiet. Then lunch in the wardroom inboard. Two o’clock there’s a briefing session in Captain Usherwood’s day cabin – you’d better join us.’ He went through into the control room. Jake had come from one of the older E-class boats, and this was a much more recent version, but the variations in her internal layout were small and it was all familiar. The smells and sounds were familiar too: like the creaking underwater noises as she rubbed herself against the cruiser’s side, and the oily smell that was part of a homey sort of warmth.

  ‘Ah-hah!’

  A small man – a lieutenant RN – looking up from paperwork spread around on the pull-out wardroom table and one of the bunks. Wishart nodded to him.

  ‘As you say, Number One – ah-hah. Here’s the johnny we’ve been waiting for.’

  E.57’s first lieutenant was small, sharp-faced; he had crinkly yellow hair, freckles and a belligerent expression. He stared at Jake like a hangman weighing up a customer for the noose.

  ‘H’m. Have to take ten or twelve gallons out of the buoyancy tank.’

  To compensate for Jake’s extra weight, he meant. Wishart introduced them: ‘Cameron – Hobday.’ They shook hands. Hobday was like some kind of dog – a bull-terrier, Jake thought, shaking a hand that felt like the knuckle-end of a wheel-spanner. Wishart suggested, ‘Let’s have a welcome-aboard glass of gin – d’you think?’

  ‘One excuse is as good as another.’ Hobday’s sentences came in short, clipped bursts, like sudden rattles of small-arms fire. He’d crossed the compartment to open one of the lockers above the chart table: Jake saw gin, bitters, glasses. He took the enamel jug from Hobday: ‘I’ll get that.’

  ‘Good man.’ Hobday began dripping Angostura carefully into three glasses, and Jake went for’ard into the TSC to fill the jug from a tap in the heads. A man his size could just squeeze into the tiny cabinet, when he needed to; now, he just reached in to the tap. Wishart asked him when he came back into the control room, ‘Know what sort of a lark we’re engaged on, do you?’

  ‘No. I’m hoping you’re about to tell me. Say when?’

  ‘When. Sit down, old lad. You’re at home now.’

  Home from home … He sat facing them across the pull-out table. This corner of the control room had a curtain that could be drawn around it, and it constituted the wardroom. Two bunks were fixed against the curve of the pressure-hull, with drawers and this table under the after one; below the other was a third bunk, which was itself a sort of drawer that could be pulled out when it was wanted or shoved in out of sight. This one was the third hand’s – Jake’s. Its disadvantage was that when it was out it blocked the gangway, and you had to get used to being walked over.

  He added water to his own gin. Plenty of it, knowing that later on today he’d have to check over all the charts they’d be likely to need, and the confidential books, signal equipment, compasses – everything in the navigator’s department… Wishart raised his glass: ‘Welcome aboard, old lad.’ He put the glass down again. ‘The point of all this, in a nutshell, is we’ve got to nobble the battlecruiser Goeben, alias Yavuz.’

  Jake let that sink in. He nodded. ‘So we’re going through the Dardanelles.’

  ‘That will certainly be the first step.’

  Hobday murmured, ‘No small step either.’

  Wishart swirled the faintly pink liquid around his glass. A stoker came from aft, glanced curiously at Jake, passed on for’ard. Hobday called after him, ‘There’ll be no dinner left for you, Peel, if you don’t run for it!’ He told Jake, ‘Stoker Peel. Twister, they call him.’ Wishart admitted, ‘We can’t expect the welcome mat to be out for us, certainly. What we know is that the Turks’ve put in new nets and minefields, and more guns on the beach than they had before, plus – so we’re told – hydrophone listening gear and fixed shore torpedo tubes. Also, their patrols have depth-charges now, which of course one didn’t have to contend with in ’15.’ He sipped gin. ‘We’ll simply – well, deal with interruptions as they arise, that’s all.’

  For two years, Jake reflected, no submarine had attempted the passage of the Dardanelles. With the abandoning of the landing operations, there’d been no need for it. Then after Goeben’s recent sortie they’d sent E.14 up after her. Saxton White’s boat. She’d been Boyle’s, in the earlier campaign, and Boyle had won himself a VC in her. From this last excursion, White and that veteran submarine had not returned.

  Jake said thoughtfully, ‘It must be considered fairly important that we should have another go at it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Wishart nodded. ‘You’ll hear all the background this afternoon. From that chap Reaper. He’s running the show – he seems to be some sort of specialist in planning unorthodox operations – and he’ll be going along in Terrapin to act as a command and communications base, in the Gulf of Xeros so as to shorten the wireless range.’

  ‘But surely we shan’t be – well, advertising our presence in the Marmara?’

  ‘Quite right.’ Wishart looked approvingly at his navigator. ‘We shall not. Not a
peep – unless Goeben provides us with a target or – God forbid – gets past us, westbound … No, it’s more for the benefit of the French. Louve – that’s the Frog submarine on the other side, and it means “She-wolf”, not some picture gallery as my uneducated first lieutenant chose to imagine – Louve is taking two evil-looking civilians to land somewhere or other and do heaven knows what. Political. This whole business is tied up with persuading the Turks to chuck their hands in, by the way. Reaper’ll be explaining all that.’ He shook his head. ‘These chaps they’re putting ashore look more like carpet-salesmen than politicians.’

  Hobday agreed. ‘Either of ’em ’d sell you his sister for the price of a pipe of opium, if you asked him.’ He snorted. ‘Personally I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Wouldn’t what?’

  ‘Touch either of their sisters with a barge-pole.’

  Jake asked Wishart, ‘Does anyone know where Goeben is exactly?’

  ‘At the Horn. In it.’

  ‘Above the bridge, where we can’t get at her?’

  ‘Two answers to that. One, she may not remain in cover. From the purely naval point of view, that’s a worry: she may try to break out again. Our chaps have reason to think it’s on the cards, in fact. And from our point of view – this boat’s, I mean – let’s hope she does, so long as we’re in position to have a crack at her.’ He added, ‘But they’re nervy about it, up at Mudros. When she last popped out, they were caught very badly on the hop.’

  ‘We heard there’d been a stink.’

  ‘Did you hear the admiral commanding the Aegean had been sent home?’ Jake shook his head. Wishart told him, ‘You probably know we’ve two old battleships based at Mudros. Lord Nelson and Agamemnon. Well, the admiral wanted to visit Salonika, and his own yacht was temporarily out of action, so the old idiot took Lord Nelson away with him. As good as sending the Hun an invitation to come out and make hay … Mind you, I’d have sent him home just so as not to have to see him dribble. Perfectly awful — chin running with slobber … But as I was saying—’

  ‘What about Saxton White?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He went into the straits after Goeben, didn’t he, almost on her heels?’

  ‘Yes.’ Wishart was silent for a moment. ‘But – oh, I don’t think it can help us much to talk about White, you know.’

  Hobday backed Jake up. ‘If we had some notion of what happened to him, surely—’

  ‘You know, as I do, Number One, that E.14 was lost and that Saxton White is almost certainly dead.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hobday persisted, ‘but until he went up, nobody had gone in there since – well, 1915, when we were doing it all the time. And as you’ve said, sir, the nets and minefields, and the shore batteries and so on will all have been changed, and—’

  Wishart peered into his glass, frowning slightly. ‘There’s a new minefield between Kum Kale and Cape Helles. We know that because we saw them laying it.’

  ‘If we could work out what White—’

  ‘He got through the Narrows and close to Nagara. That’s where Goeben had run aground. She hit a mine, you know, she had some minor flooding … She was stuck there, and bombs our ’planes dropped on her every day for about a week just bounced off her. During that week they were getting a boat fit to go up and torpedo her, and the only one available and within reach was Saxton White’s. But by the time he went into the straits they’d refloated her and she’d gone. We think he then turned about and started back. But we don’t know anything for certain, except they sank him. And just speculating, as everyone’s been doing ad nauseam ever since, doesn’t do anyone a shred of good. Saxton had bad luck at some point, that’s all.’

  Hobday waited to be sure that that was all his captain had to say. Then he argued, ‘If they turned back from halfway up the straits, perhaps that was the worst thing about it. I mean, if the Turks had detected them on their way up, and then they turned sixteen points and gave the swine another shot at ’em—’

  ‘Number One.’ Wishart’s easy manner was wearing thin. ‘Either I’ve been failing to express myself clearly, or you’re being particularly obtuse. The point I have been trying to make is that in my view it would be more helpful not to dwell on what might or might not have happened to E.14. All right?’

  Hobday blinked at him. He looked puzzled.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir. I—’

  ‘Where’d we got to … About Goeben being out of reach unless they shift her – and the French taking those odd characters with them …’ He told Jake, ‘We’ve our own landing party. Actually, we’ll be transferring them to the French boat, and the Frogs’ll do that part of it. But we’re taking a chap called Robins – an RNVR two-and-a-half. I gather he works for the Foreign Office in some way. He talks French and Turkish and thinks rather well of himself – perhaps not the ideal passenger … I may be wrong, of course … The second man’s a young Red Marine — Burtenshaw. Supposed to be an explosives expert and I believe he talks German. And finally this lad Everard, who seems to be Commander Reaper’s afterthought.’ Wishart asked Jake, ‘What’s he like?’ ‘Very decent.’ Cameron nodded. ‘Despite numerous medals – and having that uncle who’s the admiral—’

  ‘And a baronet for a father?’

  Jake showed his surprise. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Baronet, MFH, currently a brigadier in France. And this chap here is heir to the title and some huge estate in Yorkshire. If you spent several days in his company and didn’t know it—’

  ‘Not a hint.’

  ‘Well …’ Wishart glanced round the cramped compartment. ‘Be a bit stretched, to make room for three extra bodies. Still, it won’t be for long.’ He pushed his chair back. ‘We’d better go up while there’s still some food left.’

  * * *

  Commander Reaper glanced round the table. Nick Everard was on his left, and the French submarine captain between Nick and the RNVR lieutenant- commander, Robins. Burtenshaw, the Marine – he looked like a rugger player, and probably not long out of his public school, and very much under Robins’s thumb — was at the bottom of the table, while Jake Cameron, Aubrey Wishart and Terrapin’s captain, Truman, occupied its other side.

  Hobday had asked to be excused. He had a lot to do, and Wishart could brief him on any points that were new.

  Reaper murmured, ‘Smoke if you care to.’

  ‘Quoi?’

  He had to repeat it in French, to Louve’s captain. It was an embarrassing thing to have to do, because he’d just noticed, with a flicker of those deepset eyes in his bony, very English face, that Lemarie was already sucking a black cheroot. Odd, Nick thought, that he hadn’t noticed its stink before. The Frenchman was short, muscled, swarthy, in his early thirties, and he wore the three narrow stripes of a lieutenant de vaisseau on his epaulettes. Hard brown eyes … A tough customer, Nick thought; might be a Corsican. Getting the translation from Reaper he raised his thick eyebrows, shot a glance at the cheroot in his fingers, and stuck it in his mouth with a kind of snort as he looked back at Reaper … Reaper leant forward, and clasped his hands on the table in front of him.

  ‘My object in calling this meeting is to make sure we all have a grasp of the strategic background to the operation, the reasons for embarking on it and the absolute necessity of completing it successfully. Most of you already know your own sides of it; this is a matter of understanding the background from a common standpoint and, so to speak, in the round.’ He glanced down the table. ‘It’s also, of course, for the information of those officers who have only just joined us.’

  Robins muttered a rapid French translation into Lemarie’s hairy left ear. Reaper paused now and then to give him time to catch up; and sometimes Robins paused, ignoring bits he didn’t think worth translating.

  ‘I’ll begin with a reminder as to how Goeben came to be where she is.’

  He embarked on a résumé of the scandal in 1914 when Goeben, one of Germany’s newer battlecruisers, had been allowed to esca
pe into the Dardanelles, to then neutral and undecided Turkey, instead of being brought to action and sunk. Rear-Admiral Troubridge, the cruiser admiral, had been court martialled for it; but there was a body of opinion in the Service which reckoned that Troubridge’s superior officer, ‘Arky-Barky’ Milne, should have been held responsible. Nick’s uncle, Hugh Everard, had no doubt of it; and Jackie Fisher had said that he’d have had Milne shot. Though in fact – quoting Hugh Everard – there might not be many senior officers whom Fisher would not have had shot, at one time or another … But the messy business of Goeben’s escape was old-hat now – except to Troubridge, who’d been acquitted of all charges but still hadn’t been given another job afloat. Not a happy situation, for a descendant of the Troubridge who’d fought at Nelson’s side.

  Reaper, luckily, didn’t take the story back as far as Nelson.

  ‘There’s little doubt now that Goeben’s arrival at Constantinople was a major factor in Turkey’s decision to enter the war against us.’

  Robins snapped, without looking at anyone in particular, ‘I’m sure we’ve all accepted that premise.’

  Everyone except Burtenshaw glanced at him in surprise. Robins had very little chin, and the mouth above it was small, turned down at the corners. Dark hair, oiled, was swept back from a high swell of forehead. Probably very brainy, Nick thought, but also waspish, self-opinionated. He wondered why Reaper didn’t pull him up. But the commander only continued in his even, quiet tone. ‘The point I wish to make is that Goeben lying at the Horn now is still a factor in Turkey’s continuance in the war. There are positive indications that the Turks would like to arrange an armistice. As you know, Damascus fell several weeks ago to Colonel Lawrence’s Arabs; and now the Fifth Cavalry Division under General Allenby is advancing rapidly on Aleppo. More than halfway there, in fact … At the same time, we and our allies have changed the shape of things in France. So there’s an end in sight, at last; and if we can push the Turks into surrendering, it should come more quickly.’