Patrol to the Golden Horn

by Patrol to the Golden Horn (epub)

  ‘Permission to go for’ard, sir?’

  ‘Carry on, TI.’

  He leant against the polished steel ladder. Peace and quiet, except for the murmur of Burtenshaw’s and Hobday’s occasional spasms of conversation. A heavy, drugging peace. Half of it was the stuffiness, warmth generated by the motors, batteries, breath. The leaking rivets were no worse than they had been. At a hundred feet sea-pressure might have made them much worse. Perhaps the trickles ran a little faster; but even that could have been imagined. It was what you expected to see, so you saw it. And as Chief ERA Grumman had observed half an hour ago, greater outside pressure might actually reduce the leaks by forcing the loosened rivets home.

  Jake didn’t believe it. He didn’t think Grumman had either … He heard Burtenshaw ask Everard, ‘You were at Zeebrugge, weren’t you?’ Everard must have nodded. Burtenshaw said, ‘I tried to go on that stunt. I did some work at Deal with Brock – well, what I mean is he was in charge of all that side – Brock, d’you know who I mean, the chap who organised all the flares and smoke, rockets and—’

  ‘I knew him quite well. At Dover. We all did.’ He’d heard Burtenshaw mention Brock before, in a conversation with Jake Cameron. Hobday asked him, ‘Did you know any of the submariners, the chaps who blew up the viaduct?’

  ‘Yes. Tim Rogerson.’

  Hobday smiled. ‘Same term, Tim and I. Well, well!’

  ‘He’s about a year, year and a half senior to me.’ It was Everard who’d said that. Adding now, ‘Quite a pal, actually. D’you know his sister Eleanor, by any chance?’

  ‘Can’t say I do.’

  Burtenshaw put in, ‘Wasn’t C3’s captain one of the VCs?’

  ‘Sandford. Yes.’ Hobday added, ‘Known in the trade as Uncle Baldy. Marvellous chap.’

  ‘Have to be, I suppose, to be picked for a job like that one.’ The Marine sighed. ‘Not my luck, I assure you.’ Hobday chuckled. ‘Not exactly long in the tooth yet, are you.’

  ‘Perhaps not. But the war’s likely to conk out soon, and all I’ve done has been loaf around such places as Deal!’

  ‘Not loafing about Deal now, are you.’

  ‘Thank heavens, no. But—’ Burtenshaw hesitated: Jake murmured, ‘Watch that depth, Finn.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ Jake thought, Daydreaming about some Pompey tart… Burtenshaw was saying, over in the corner, ‘Compared to a chap like you, Everard – and if you’ll forgive my mentioning it you’re not such an awful lot older than I am—’

  ‘Old enough to have been at sea before the war began, though.’ Nick said, ‘Over that period of time one could hardly not see a certain amount of action.’

  ‘You’ve done damn well, by all accounts.’ Hobday spoke without any sign of envy. ‘And one needs no powers of second-sight to see you following in your uncle’s tracks. Admiral Sir Nicholas—’

  He’d pronounced it Nickle-arse.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Jake turned, and looked across the compartment at Everard. He saw him shake his head.

  ‘I’m not sure the peacetime Navy is quite my mark. I – er —’ He was hesitant, looking at Hobday across the table. ‘I don’t know. I disliked Dartmouth, and Dartmouth wasn’t frightfully keen on me. I’ve a feeling peacetime service might be rather like that: polishing the brightwork, minding one’s p’s and q’s, being careful whom one knows and what one says to them, and — oh, I don’t know …’

  He’d heard himself saying it. He hadn’t previously voiced such thoughts, except to really close friends like Rogerson, and quite privately. It was this shut-off feeling, he thought: as if this was another world – isolated from the real one.

  Well, it was.

  Hobday said, ‘It’d be an awful lot to throw away. Being your uncle’s nephew is a terrific card in your hand. And your record’s fairly sensational. Those medals—’

  ‘Chaps with a lot of ribbons were looked down on, before the war.’ Nick’s uncle had told him this. ‘They used to call them glory-hunters. It wasn’t at all a thing to—’

  ‘Never mind about what happened before the war.’ Hobday wagged a finger. ‘If you wanted to make absolutely certain of reaching flag-rank yourself now, what you should do is marry an admiral’s daughter.’

  ‘Would you do that?’

  ‘If I found one I could stand. Why not? You’ve got to fit in with things as they are, you know.’

  ‘Well, that’s not my meat.’

  Jake Cameron, who’d spent several days in Terrapin as a fellow passenger with Nick Everard, saw it more clearly suddenly. It wouldn’t have been his meat, either. Not that he, Jake, could have had any such opportunity; Lieutenant Nicholas Everard DSO DSC Royal Navy was a baronet’s son and an admiral’s nephew, and Hobday was right, the cards were ready to his hand if he chose to pick them up and play them. Jake’s own options were the merchant navy or the alternative of some humdrum bread-and-butter work ashore. The two of them were miles apart. In spite of that, he felt instinctively that he and Nick Everard, if you cut through to the bone of it, were similar animals and might have more in common than – well, than Everard had with Hobday, say. Or Cameron with Hobday.

  Not that he in any way disliked the little man. There was just that sudden picture of a peacetime Navy, all yes-sirs and no-sirs and admirals’ daughters, and plenty of Hobdays willing to ‘fit in’ with it.

  Might that make the Camerons and the Everards long-term losers?

  He thought, Thank God for the mercantile marine!

  Or for the tedious shoreside job? How would one react to a straight choice between that and Hobday’s ceremonial sailoring?

  ‘Sir.’ Leading Telegraphist Weatherspoon saved him from having to resolve that less simple question. Weatherspoon had poked his head out of the silent cabinet; he had his headset pushed back off his ears. ‘Reckon we’re bein’ follered, sir. That trawler.’

  Hobday had gone over to him.

  ‘Joined on astern, sir. Come up gradual — I was thinkin’ I’d got some HE, then it’d stop, sort of before I was sure, an’ I’d think no, I’m wrong - then—’

  ‘Keep listening.’ Hobday went back to the other side and shook Wishart’s arm. ‘Captain, sir …’

  * * *

  ‘Stop port.’

  ‘Stop port!’ Agnew passed the order verbally. In an effort to keep as quiet as possible they weren’t using the telegraphs. This submarine was the mouse and there was a cat up there watching her every move.

  ‘Port motor stopped, sir.’

  That meant both motors were silent now. Wishart looked round at Weatherspoon, on his stool just inside the doorway of the silent cabinet. The leading tel nodded. ‘Still closin’, sir.’ Then his eyebrows lifted. ‘Enemy stoppin’, sir!’

  Which finally proved the point – that the trawler, or gunboat, was trailing them. Each time E.57 had stopped her motors, the enemy had stopped too. When the submarine’s screws had stirred into life again, a few seconds would crawl by before the slower, more powerful screw would resume its leisurely beat. They’d checked it out several times now — hoping for a different explanation. It might, for instance, have been some patrol vessel making its way slowly up-straits and stopping now and then to listen through its hydrophones. Like a fly-fisherman working a stretch of river. But it wasn’t so. Whatever E.57 did, the shadower kept his distance. His revs per minute increased when the submarine’s did, lessened when she slowed. On the whole he was stopped more often than they were; he was obviously taking care to keep astern and at his chosen distance.

  It was uncanny. Dislike for the Turk was mounting. You could see the anger in men’s faces when they looked upwards.

  McVeigh asked Wishart, ‘Mak’ a suggestion, sir?’

  Wishart glanced at the wild-looking Glaswegian, and nodded.

  ‘If we wen’ up tae periscope depth, might we no gi’e the swine a bash oot the stern tube?’

  ‘It’s a nice idea.’ Wishart shook his head. ‘But we want all our fish for Goeben. An
yway he’s a small target and he’s watching us already – he wouldn’t sit and wait for it.’

  The ERA wiped the back of his wrist across his nostrils. He nodded angrily. ‘Aye.’ Wishart said soothingly, ‘We’ll shake him off, by and by. Once we get into the Marmara we’ll lose him.’

  ‘Losing trim, sir.’

  ‘Slow ahead port.’

  ‘Slow ahead port!’ Finn passed it on aft from Agnew. Wishart joined Jake at the chart table. ‘Where do we think we are?’

  ‘Coming up to this point, sir.’

  It was about an hour since they’d gone deep and turned on to the present course. If it was a three-knot tide as estimated they’d be roughly level with a place called Kodjuk Burnu. It was on the southern, Asiatic shore, and at this point the coastline bulged into the straits, narrowing them to about three thousand yards.

  ‘Hadn’t realised.’ Wishart scowled at the chart. ‘Narrowest since we cleared Nagara.’

  ‘Yes.’ Jake pointed with his dividers. ‘And twenty-five fathoms is the shallowest mid-channel sounding we’ve come across.’

  The same thought was in both their minds. A narrowing of the waterway with a rising seabed was a natural place to block with nets. Jake suggested quietly, ‘That one may be following to see us get snagged up again.’

  ‘Let us hope not.’ The battery wouldn’t stand for much more of the net games. Wishart stooped, peered more closely at the chart. ‘Not a great deal we can do about it, old lad. Only way to locate a net, unfortunately, is bump into it… You know, I don’t believe this Kodjuk is a place, as such. I reckon it means “headland” or “point”. The burnu bit, I mean.’

  There were quite a few other burnus, here and there, and they did all seem to be headlands. Jake remembered afterwards that he’d been looking for others along the coastlines, hoping to find one that might disprove that theory of Wishart’s, and that Weatherspoon had just reported that the enemy had stopped his engine again – that word ‘engine’ was the last word, last moment – last conscious moment, before—

  It must have been in that moment that the mine blew up.

  As if all the sea they floated in had exploded. You had only one barely glimpsed flash of thought: finished, over! Your mind detonated … It was – total, so overwhelming that there was nothing else, nothing left or existing: the noise and impact and then the echoes and reactions all part of it, booming through hollow, shattered minds blanked-off from memory, will-power, consciousness. You were in it, part of it, you couldn’t fight it or resist or — reason, comprehend … It was dark, absolutely black, and the universe was rolling over: the sound of shouting from all directions was far away, remote, although it might have had your own voice in it. A rush of water broke through then, roaring like thunder for a time before it stopped dead with an enormous jolt: and now trickling splashing sounds growing fainter, fading into silence in the darkness, stillness. A swaying motion, and water-sounds soft and whispery through steel plating. In the rush of water – that hard, loud rush – he’d thought yes, this was how death came, how in his heart of hearts he’d always known it would; it was surprising now that he was dry and still drawing breaths and letting them gush out again. More voices suddenly, rising all together as if they’d been there all the time and now the volume was being turned up to normal: it was possible, he thought, that something had happened to his ear-drums. Now that had been a lucid thought: he clutched it and got more, an argument in favour of his ears being undamaged because otherwise he wouldn’t have heard the water-sounds, the small ones. Someone was shouting about lights, and immediately there was a second crash of high-explosive: but that one had been farther away, enormous enough by normal standards and with a rocking effect that followed it, but compared to the first one – nothing.

  ‘Dixon? Is Leading Seaman Dixon seeing about some lights?’

  Wishart’s voice. Insistent, but unexcited, rather as if this was another exercise, a practice evolution, one of his out lights, main vents in hand games. Jake struggled to his feet and began groping his way towards the auxiliary switchboard. Stumbling over someone who was crawling: cursing hard. A lot of cursing. Lights blazed suddenly: the main ones, not the emergencies. He found that he was facing the for’ard periscope, grasping its wires, his two hands slimy with its thick, grey grease. He thought he’d been unconscious, or semiconscious. The compartment seemed to be dry: and yet there’d been water forcing in – hadn’t there?

  ‘Check bulkhead voicepipes. Reports from all compartments, please. Are both motors stopped?’

  You could see men trying to control their breathing, accept the surprise of being alive. Jake went to the chart table and found all his bits and pieces strewn around. Water was dripping much faster from the deckhead than it had been before. ERA Knight had come to this end of the compartment to have a look at it; he was muttering, ‘Could be worse. Could be better but it could be worse, much worse.’ Nodding, as if he liked the sound of that. He’d patted Stone’s shoulder as he moved away: ‘All right, Andy lad?’

  Lewis had been lending his ear to a babble from the voicepipe in the for’ard bulkhead. He reported, ‘Dry for’ard except a leak on the starboard torpedo tube, sir. TI says ’e ’as it in ’and, sir.’

  ‘That’s good, Lewis.’

  Reality and normality returning as the elements of the machine recovered separately and began to mesh together. Hobday asked Wishart, ‘Shall we keep watertight doors shut, sir?’

  ‘For the moment, yes. Who shut them?’

  Lewis admitted, ‘I did this ’un, sir.’

  ‘Well done you!’

  ‘Polecat’ Bradshaw kicked the after door. ‘I got chucked ag’in it. Brought it to me mind, you might say.’

  ‘Good man, Bradshaw.’

  Burtenshaw put in diffidently, ‘I think Lieutenant-Commander Robins is concussed, sir.’

  Nick Everard said quickly, ‘I’ll see to it.’ He looked fairly dazed himself. Wishart asked, ‘Reports from aft?’

  ‘Nowt from after ends yet, sir.’ Stoker Adams was on that voicepipe. ‘No leaks nor nothin’ in engine-room an’ motor-room. Some fuses an’ that gone, LTO says. Waitin’ for after end’s report, sir.’ Adams was from Rochdale. Tall, stooped, yellow-headed. Wishart asked Morton, ‘That gauge shut off, is it?’

  ‘Aye, sir, but it’s bust, too.’ Crabb put in, ‘This one’ll do for ’im an’ all, sir.’ His gauge, the after one, showed a hundred and forty-three feet, and that matched the charted soundings off Kodjuk Burnu all right.

  ‘Pilot, go for’ard, see how the TI’s getting on and what the trouble is, and pass the word around that we seem to be intact and not much damaged. Tell ’em we’ll open bulkhead doors soon as we know a bit more about the state we’re in.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’ Jake told Lewis, ‘Warn ’em I’m coming through.’ The door had to be unclipped before you could open it. At the other end of the control room Lofty Adams reported, ‘After ends dry ’cept for leaking shaft gland port side an’ a spot of floodin’ back through the ’eads. They’re lookin’ after it, sir.’

  Wishart looked at McVeigh. ‘And the outside ERA will see to it more thoroughly in a few minutes, the lucky dog … Number One, don’t use the port screw unless we’re forced to.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’ Hobday called to Adams, ‘Tell the Stoker PO to see what Peel’s doing about the shaft gland, and to have all bilges checked and auxiliary tanks dipped … Lewis, I want Cole to come and check the battery tank.’ He added quietly to Wishart, ‘Seems we’ve been lucky, sir.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’ Wishart was peering at the bubble and the depth-gauge, and now at the other spirit-level, the curved one on the deckhead that showed any list to port or starboard. ‘Since so far as we know nothing’s been flooded, there’s no reason we should be bottomed, is there?’

  ‘We aren’t necessarily all that heavy, sir. A bit of pumping should bring her up. If the explosion pushed us downwards …’

  ‘I’d have sworn I heard a lot of …�
� Wishart shook his head. ‘We’ve this list to port.’ He looked puzzled. ‘Anyway, pump some out aft, let’s have her tail up and the screws clear. Pump on “Z”. If she looks ready to move, put a drop in “A” to hold her down. Can’t move before we know what’s happening up there …’ Glancing round for Weatherspoon, he found the leading tel waiting to report to him.

  ‘Can’t ’ear nothin’, sir. I don’t think the gear’s scuppered, but—’

  ‘Your own ears, perhaps?’

  ‘Not likely, sir. Didn’t ’ave the ’eadset on when it went off. But there was that bloke up top there, and now I can’t ’ear ’im, can’t ’ear nothin’, sir.’

  ‘Let me have a listen.’ Wishart took the headset from him, moving into the cabinet. Jake came back from the torpedo stowage compartment and tube space. Hobday had got the pump sucking on ‘Z’ internal main ballast now, and he beckoned him. ‘Captain’s using the hydrophone. Is it all right for’ard?’

  Cole had come through behind Jake; he was clipping the door shut. Jake said, ‘Sluice door on the starboard tube must have been jolted open and then banged shut again – enough to fill the tube under pressure and lift the relief-valve so hard it jammed open. Rinkpole belted it with a mallet and it’s all right now. Anderson fell between the tubes and I think his wrist’s broken … The fish in that tube – TI’ll pull it back and do a routine on it as soon as there’s a chance.’ He nodded. ‘That’s all. Shall I take a look aft as well?’ Hobday nodded, and Stoker Adams began to wrench the clips off the other door.