Patrol to the Golden Horn

by Patrol to the Golden Horn (epub)

Grumman nodded, with that slow smile of his. ‘Right as rain, sir, thank you.’

  Hobday told Finn, ‘Fore ’planes amidships. Go and shake the cox’n and second cox’n. Then go aft, and if there’s a stoker awake I want him for the telegraphs. If there isn’t, shake one.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’ When Finn moved away, Jake slid into his seat. Wishart nodded. ‘Splendid. Bring her up, Number One. One hundred feet, to start with.’

  ‘Hundred feet, sir …’

  When she paused there, and while he made adjustments to the trim, the ’planesmen changed round.

  ‘Fifty feet.’

  The needle resumed its steady circling. CPO Crabb’s eyes were like knife-holes in his leathery skin as he recovered gradually from a short, deep sleep. Morton was yawning, slumped damply on his stool.

  ‘Stop flooding. Ease that rise, second.’

  ‘Flood-valve shut, sir.’

  Morton reduced the angle of rise on his ’planes. The boat was levelling at fifty feet. No scrapes so far. Higher up, there might easily be nets.

  ‘Close up the hydrophones.’

  Might be a patrol boat as well, of course, Nick realised. Just as well to listen for them before you pushed a periscope up under their noses. Hobday said over his shoulder, ‘Burrage – shake the leading tel. Cameron – shake Lieutenant-Commander Robins, ask him to move out of the cabinet.’

  The hydrophone listening gear was in the wireless cabinet. Wishart murmured as Jake went to its half-sized doorway, ‘Forty feet, Number One.’

  ‘Forty feet, sir.’

  Sounds of Robins questioning the need to move; and Cameron’s low-toned explanation. Leading Telegraphist Weatherspoon appeared, blinking owlishly through his thick-lensed glasses. Wishart told him, ‘Listen all round for propeller noises, leading tel.’

  He’d nodded; now he was in the cabinet, muttering to himself at the disorder in there. Robins was asking Jake what was happening and how far they’d come; Jake explained that they were coming up to get a fix, and led him to the chart. Robins was wearing uniform trousers and a shirt without a collar. Burrage was back at the telegraphs. Hobday, behind the ’planesmen, stood with his feet apart and hands on his hips: bouncy, alert, the look of a bantam cock … ‘Forty feet, sir.’

  ‘Very good.’

  Waiting for Weatherspoon’s report on the presence or absence of surface craft. And he appeared now in the doorway of the silent cabinet, headphones flattening his big ears against his high-domed head. ‘Nothing moving up top, sir.’

  ‘Good. But stay there now. Twenty feet, Number One.’

  ‘Twenty feet, sir.’

  The ’planesmen worked as a team, with Crabb putting the angle on her and Morton concentrating on the actual depth. The submarine rose slowly in a carefully-controlled ascent. If she came up too fast and overshot, broke surface, she’d be certain to be spotted from the shore. If that happened, by the time she reached the Narrows they’d not only be floodlit but also swarming with patrol boats.

  They might be, anyway. Twenty-seven feet. Twenty-six.

  ‘Stop port. Full field starboard motor.’

  Clink of the telegraphs: then Stoker Burrage’s report, ‘Port motor stopped, full—’

  ‘Raise the after periscope.’

  Nick, watching the processes of coming up to periscope depth, ignored Robins as he came over and eased himself into the chair that Jake Cameron had been using. Robins was rubbing his face and breathing hard, as if being turned out of the cabinet had imposed discomfort which he was stoically enduring. The periscope hissed upward. One could imagine the dark surface, glassy and reflecting starlight, and the periscope- top suddenly pushing up through it, a single eye peering into enemy territory. Wishart had cut the boat’s speed to the bare minimum that would permit control of depth-keeping, one screw just idling; he’d done it so as to reduce the size of the feather, broken water where the periscope sliced the surface. Twenty-two feet: twenty-one. The top lens would be out of water now.

  ‘Twenty feet, sir.’

  The after periscope was the little one — unifocal, with only one-and-a-half times magnification. It was the attack periscope, for use at close quarters, its small-diameter top less easy to spot than the full-size one.

  Wishart had swept round quickly. Now he stepped back, pushed the handles up, folding them so that the bottom end of the periscope would fit into the well, the deep tubular cavity in the control-room deck, that housed it when it was lowered.

  ‘Down. Up for’ard periscope.’

  Grumman pushed one steel lever back and pulled the other forward. Arctic oil under pressure hit one end of one ram and the other end of the second. The periscope wires, attached to the rams, ran hissing through their sheaves. Wishart had moved to the periscope: ‘Depth?’

  ‘Twenty, sir.’

  He’d done a complete circle in low power. Now his right hand twisted the handle round, switching in the sixfold magnification. He circled again more slowly, his left arm draped over that spread handle. ‘Stand by for some bearings, pilot.’

  ‘Ready, sir.’

  He got bearings of the land-edges of the entrance they’d come through, a summit to the north which could only be Achi Baba, and a cleft in the land-mass northeastward. This last one, Jake pointed out, must be the line of the straits, their future course to clear Kephez Point. Wishart had sent the big periscope down and joined him at the chart table as he put the bearings on. ‘This one as our course, sir — oh-three-eight?’

  ‘Looks good enough to me.’ Wishart gave that to Hobday as the course to steer. The boat was just levelling out at forty feet. Jake checked the run ahead of them: ‘Good for the next eight miles.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He might have been thinking that a great deal could happen before they’d got that far. You didn’t want to be pessimistic about it, but it could be a mistake to count chickens, too. As far as Kephez the chart showed no sounding of less than thirty-five fathoms, but after the point it got shallower; and in that area two years ago there’d been a minefield and a net barrage as well. It was reasonable to guess there’d be something of that sort there now.

  He moved back into the centre of the control room. ‘Slow ahead together. Hundred and fifty feet.’

  ‘Hundred and fifty, sir.’

  The telegraphs clanked over. Burrage intoned, ‘Both motors slow ahead, sir.’

  Nosing down …

  Chapter 4

  Something had fastened on to Hobday’s shoulder and was rocking it to and fro. He opened his eyes, focused muzzily on Jake Cameron’s ill-shaven face. Jake told him, ‘Coming up to Kephez. Wakey wakey.’

  He’d just shaken Wishart. And he’d sent a hand for’ard for Crabb and the second coxswain. As E.57 moved into the narrow end of the pear and the land closed in on her track, it was time for key men to stand-to again.

  Jake had explained the situation to Nick Everard and the Marine, Burtenshaw, who’d been up and about while Wishart and Hobday slept. Nick left the chart now, moved back to the ward-room corner as Wishart, humming some unidentifiable dirge, sloped across and let the chart table take his weight.

  ‘How far have we come since the last fix, pilot?’

  ‘Depending on tide, the five miles you reckoned on, sir.’ Jake added, ‘I’ve marked the DR.’ He moved back into the centre, to watch the trim until Hobday had pulled himself together. With men shifting around, even just a few of them, there were adjustments to be made.

  Wishart was studying the chart. E.57 was in something like thirty to thirty-five fathoms of water. Say, two hundred feet of it. Depth-gauges showed a hundred and fifty, at the moment. All right on the face of it: but if she was as much as five hundred yards to starboard of the track she was supposed to be on, the seabed ahead might shelve quite steeply upwards.

  Hobday took over the trim. McVeigh, the ginger-bearded Glaswegian artificer, had relieved ERA Bradshaw. Young Agnew, leaning against the bulkhead under the telegraphs, might recently have crept out from under a wet stone. C
PO Crabb slid in behind the after ’planes, displacing Able Seaman Smith, the tattoo’d torpedoman, without even looking at him. Leading Seaman Morton came shuffling zombie-like to the fore ’planes and tapped Louis Lewis, the wardroom messman and gun trainer, sharply on the crown of his scruffy head. He muttered, ‘Got it.’

  Lewis scowled at him. ‘Why’nt yer get a bloody ’ammer, make a job of it?’ Morton grunted as he took his place, ‘Will do, next time.’

  ‘Hundred feet, Number One.’

  ‘Hundred feet, sir.’ Hobday had got the fore-and-aft trim right; now he’d have to adjust her overall weight as she changed depth. Wishart went back to look at the chart again, and Jake moved over to give him room.

  ‘Like to get a new fix … But if we can get by the point without showing any periscope—’ Wishart tapped Kephez with the points of the dividers – ‘and well into Sari Siglar here …’ He’d paused. Jake knew he was thinking aloud and didn’t want anyone else’s comments. But he glanced sideways at him now. ‘Might as well get your head down, pilot. With any luck this’ll be plain sailing.’

  Robins was back in the wireless hutch. Burtenshaw had flaked out in the pull-out lower bunk that was supposed to be the navigator’s.

  ‘One hundred feet, sir.’

  ‘Very good.’ Wishart sat down in the armchair, and opened Burtenshaw’s volume of essays. Jake smoothed out the surface of Hobday’s bunk, and climbed up on it. He lay back and shut his eyes, thinking of the bulge of Kephez Point out there – up there, half a mile to starboard. He could as good as see it: and the black, still water, and Turk eyes watching the surface for movement, perhaps Turk ears listening through headphones … The risks were there: so were the chances, the random rations of good luck and bad … Anyway, if the dead reckoning was more or less reliable they’d have a run of about three miles now past Kephez Point and into Sari Siglar bay, where Wishart intended to poke the stick up for another fix. From that new departure, they’d set a course through the Narrows.

  He heard a kind of snort. Wishart muttered, ‘Actually read this stuff?’

  Jake turned his head, and Wishart realised – or thought – he’d woken him.

  ‘Sorry, pilot — didn’t mean to—’

  ‘He does indeed. Fairly revels in it.’

  ‘Extraordinary. Seems such a normal sort of chap.’ Jake craned over the edge of the bunk and looked down at Burtenshaw. Wishart evidently thought he was asleep too; but he’d opened his eyes, and seeing Jake looking down at him – and Everard too, who’d twisted round in his chair – he winked. Wishart was frowning as he leafed on through Tolstoy. Lying back again, Jake thought of the half-written letter in his drawer, and of that line You needn’t worry for two seconds about me, you know … Not strictly honest, perhaps. An outsider might well have had doubts about the survival prospects of anyone in these circumstances. But when it was oneself in the middle of it, one didn’t feel it to be so … He wondered, drifting out of actual thinking into a vague area between consciousness and sleep, whether when she read that line of assurance she’d believe it, or whether she lived in fear of losing him as well … He ought to write to her more often. Someone else had just told him that: he accepted it, murmuring assent, becoming aware only gradually of the emerging noise, voices sharpening, and the movement – rocking, shaking … But there were hours yet, at least two hours on this course before—

  ‘Stop together! Diving stations!’

  He was out of his bunk and passing that order for’ard, calling the hands, helping Burtenshaw to get the lower bunk shoved in out of the way, and now he was back in his own place at the chart table and Wishart had just ordered, ‘Slow astern together!’ Reality was displacing sleep and reactions that so far had been automatic, unthinking, and there were noises from the bow – external noises, scraping and a sort of steady grinding like metal being screwed up tight.

  He heard Wishart say, ‘We’re in some kind of net.’

  ‘Stern’s sinking, sir. ’Planes aren’t—’

  ‘Wire round ’em, sir.’ Morton was putting his whole weight on the wheel. Hobday said, ‘Leave it, for the moment.’

  ‘Stop starboard. Half astern port. Port twenty.’

  The rush of men to their stations was finished now. Jake saw some were in the condition he’d been in half a minute ago: newly wakened, barely understanding what was happening. Nobody was stupid enough to ask. Roost said, ‘Twenty o’ port wheel on, sir’, and Agnew reported, ‘Port motor half astern, sir, starboard motor—’

  ‘Full astern port.’

  ‘She ain’t answering, sir.’ Crabb had the after ’planes tilted to their full extent, but they were having no effect. Held by her snout in the net, the boat had no way on, and her angle in the water was increasing steadily as her stern sank lower all the time. The racing screw wasn’t shifting anything.

  ‘Stop port.’ Wishart shook his head. ‘Damn thing.’ He sounded disappointed but in no way anxious. ‘Have to try t’other way. Starboard twenty.’ He glanced at the bubble and told Hobday, ‘Get some out aft.’

  ‘I’m pumping on “Z”, sir.’ Hobday’s tone was mild too. He’d just about emptied the after trim tank, and now he had the pump sucking on the after internal main ballast, ‘Z’.

  ‘Twenty o’ starboard wheel on, sir.’

  ‘Half astern starboard.’

  He was trying to prise his way out of the mesh by twisting the submarine away from it. He’d tried backing straight out, but the net had clung to her. Jake, watching from his position by the chart table, could feel no movement other than the vibration of the screw. The net still held her, and one motor at a time with the batteries grouped down wasn’t enough to tear her free. Meanwhile, the net’s surface buoys would be dancing about like fishermen’s floats, and if any Turks were even half awake in their lookout posts on Kephez Point they’d be whistling up the patrols by now.

  Some nets were mined, and the mines’ detonators controlled electrically from the shore.

  ‘Stop starboard. Midships the wheel. Group up.’

  The two pairs of batteries could be connected either in parallel or in series. Grouping down gave 110 volts, grouping up 220. On the main switchboards now — one on each side of the motor-room – Dixon and Rowbottom would be snatching out the rows of huge copper switches, each switch throwing a blue crackle of electric spark as it broke, then banging over the grouper switch and slamming the others shut again.

  ‘Both motors stopped, sir, grouper up!’

  ‘Wheel’s amidships, sir.’

  Hobday’s yellow hair was standing on end: he had a habit of rubbing his head with both hands in moments of anxiety. He said, ‘Stop the pump, shut “Z” suction and inboard vent.’ He’d about checked the stern’s tendency to sink. He glanced round, with a grimace that looked like a smile, as Wishart ordered, ‘Full astern together!’

  ‘Full astern together, sir …’ Agnew, up on his toes for a bit of extra height, flung the brass handles round; the hum of the motors rose to a scream as the hands on the switchgear wound out the fields and the screws span fast in their own churned water. The submarine trembled, quivered, dragging at the net; if she broke free suddenly Hobday would have to flood that stern tank quickly through its kingston to stop her shooting up stern-first.

  But she was not coming free.

  ‘Stop both.’

  A few more minutes of full power might have drained the battery flat. Without power, the only thing a submarine could do would be to surface. Then she’d be blown to pieces by the shore guns. Jake swivelled round, leant with his forearms on the chart and began to study the coastline of the straits and the names of mountains and rivers. Mustchiof Tepe. Aski Fanar Bumu. Codja Flamur Tepe. Remarkable, to think that Robins could speak it. He wondered what size of wire the net was made of and how wide its mesh might be. Big enough for E.57’s bow to have thrust right in and for the folds of net then to have wrapped themselves round the hydroplanes. Yapildak Chai.

  Wishart said, ‘Have to enla
rge the hole. How much in “A”, “B” and “Z”, Number One?’

  ‘Less in “Z” now, sir, but otherwise all about half full.’

  Jake saw that Burtenshaw was looking keenly interested but not alarmed. That was good, suggesting that the Marine saw no alarm in any of the submariners’ faces. Nick Everard had resumed occupation of Hobday’s bunk: he was on his back, eyes open and staring at the deckhead. Those three tanks – the ones Wishart had asked about – were all internal main ballast, and each of them held about five tons of water when it was full. Jake had often thought about being caught in submerged nets but this was the first time he’d actually experienced it. He’d guessed it wouldn’t be a very comfortable sensation, and he knew now that he’d guessed correctly. Chai seemed to mean ‘river’. Wishart had told his passengers, If we get snarled up, we unsnarl ourselves … Burtenshaw must have believed him; he was bolt upright in the armchair with his eyes darting this way and that, watching the unsnarling process demonstrated. He’d just jerked sideways as a drop of condensation falling from the deckhead made a direct hit on his ear. Wishart ordered, ‘Stand by “A”, “B” and “Z” kingstons.’

  The order was being passed for’ard to the torpedo stowage compartment for ‘A’, back to the after ends for ‘Z’. ‘B’ kingston’s operating wheel was here in the control room, and Burtenshaw was having to move to let Lewis get at it.

  ‘Full ahead together!’

  The boat surged against the net. Grinding and scraping as the note of the motors rose. You felt the tremble in her steel, through all her hull and fittings. She was a live thing, straining muscle, a trapped animal struggling for life.

  ‘Stop both. Stand by those three kingstons. Full astern both!’

  Power coming on again. Hobday wearing that odd grin, gritting his teeth in anguish at the draining away of his battery’s strength. Wishart snapped, ‘Open “A”, “B” and “Z” kingstons!’

  Adding, as the sea rushed in to fill the tanks, about eight tons to her weight. Flinging herself astern, she was dragging at the net and at the same time – now, suddenly, dropping like a dead weight, plummeting stern-first, falling …