Orphans of the Storm (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  Donovan nodded and winced, “And ‘A’ and ‘B’ went earlier. ‘Y’ makes it a full house.”

  Now they recalled the damage they had witnessed as they moved about the ship during the action. Donovan said: “The bridge copped it.”

  “So did the Director and the Transmitting Station. I saw some of the operators out on deck.” The Director aimed all three turrets together while the Transmitting Station computed the range and bearing for each shoot.

  “We’re down at the head and listing. And on fire.”

  “I only know of one 4-inch gun that can still fire.”

  Hurst straightened and Donovan stood up beside him. They both staggered as Exeter heeled over, turning again.

  Hurst swallowed as he looked along the length of her. She was a tangle of wreckage from stem to stern, her guns drooping or cocked at odd angles, or silent without power to move the turrets. Smoke billowed from a score or more of rents in her hull and trailed behind her on the wind. For although she was desperately hurt her engines were still intact. Her bow was down by three feet and she listed to starboard because of the weight of water she had taken aboard which now washed heavily about in her hull, but she tore ahead at close to her full speed of thirty knots.

  The guns were silent. Hurst saw that Exeter had discontinued the action and turned away simply because she had no gun left to fight with. She had done all she could, all that anyone could ask of her. Hurst turned to peer across the waste of sea to the distant pocket battleship. Ajax and Achilles would have to handle her now. They were still in action. And the pocket battleship was still headed deeper and deeper into the estuary of the Plate with the two cruisers in pursuit, not trying to fight her way past them and out to sea. He wondered, Surely Exeter had hurt her?

  She had.

  *

  The Formose was a French liner of 10,000 tons, a lady no longer young, but comfortable, and not fast; she had a top speed of 15 knots. She was employed on the ‘milk run’ from Le Havre to Buenos Aires, calling at Casablanca, Dakar, Rio de Janeiro, Santos and Montevideo. She had sailed from Le Havre on 11 November and on the morning of 13 December was three days out of Santos and due to call at Montevideo that night.

  Hannah Fitzsimmons and Sarah went to the wireless office as they did every forenoon. Hannah had unashamedly used her feminine wiles and professional reputation as a war correspondent to gain them entry, pleading: “I need to know what’s going on in the world out there.” She also privately acknowledged that the presence of the slender and wide-eyed blonde girl at her side had helped.

  Hannah greeted the officer on duty with her usual, “Hi, there! Anything exciting going on?” But he ignored her, sat with one hand holding the headphones pressed close over his ears, the other gripping a pencil and printing a message in blocks on a signal pad. Then he pushed the headphones back, reached out to a telephone but saw the two women. He said rapidly, “Message from a British cruiser: To all British Merchant Ships, one German pocket battleship in position 34.40 South, 51.10 West, steering course 225 at 24 knots.’”

  Hannah and Sarah stood still and silent as he reported to his captain on the bridge and listened. Then he put down the telephone and explained excitedly, “We picked up an earlier transmission from the pocket battleship. She’s the Graf Spee. The navigator has plotted her position. She’s only thirty miles from us and running into the estuary as we are! It sounds as though the British cruiser is chasing her!”

  Hannah said softly, “Oh, boy! Looks like I was right about a story breaking down here. I just hope I wasn’t too right.” She eased herself up to sit on the edge of the operator’s table, swinging her long legs, and patted the space beside her for Sarah to come up.

  Sarah said uneasily, “So you think we might run into her?” She was not afraid because she knew nothing of naval warfare, was ignorant of the threat a pocket battleship might pose.

  Hannah pulled a face, “Well, she’s close enough, and running into the estuary same as we are. I hope she passes us by, because she’s about ten knots faster than this old girl so we can’t run away and she’ll sink us.” Then she dug an elbow into Sarah, “But it’s a big estuary, 120 miles across. There’s plenty of room for her to miss us.”

  They waited but no more transmissions were received. After a while they left the wireless office, ate lunch in the dining saloon then went on deck. Other passengers were lining the rails, watching for the first sight of land. Some of them, those who would be disembarking at Montevideo, talked of packing. They had not been told of the signals received that forenoon.

  Hannah and Sarah stood with them for some time then the girl looked down and saw her fingers gripping tightly to the rail. She pushed away from it and said, “We’re just straining our eyes and our nerves looking for that damned ship. I’m going to pack.” She saw Hannah hesitating and took her arm, “All right, you want a story, to be the first one to see her. Don’t worry, if she turns up we’ll hear about it soon enough.”

  Hannah laughed, “Guess you’re right there.”

  They went below.

  But by the evening Hannah had talked them onto the bridge. Once there they stood meekly quiet. They saw the uneasy restlessness of the captain and the bridge staff and sensed the increased tension in them when the smoke was sighted off the port quarter. Hannah had the powerful binoculars that always travelled with her. Through them they saw the ship come up under the smoke and heard the captain’s deep growl of recognition, “She’s a pocket battleship.”

  She grew bigger, looked swift and powerful, dangerous. One of the bridge staff said low-voiced behind them, “She mounts six 11-inch guns. A single shell from any one of them could sink us.”

  As he spoke Graf Spee’s guns jetted smoke and long slivers of flame. That was the first of three salvoes fired one after the other. They waited with the sick emptiness of helpless fear, knowing that if they were the target then death was rushing towards them and they could do nothing about it. But then the seconds ticked by and they realised the fire was not aimed at Formose. Hannah searched with the glasses and found more smoke on the seaward horizon, studied it and then passed the glasses to Sarah and asked, uncertain of what she saw, “Two ships?”

  Sarah watched and waited and then agreed, “That’s right. They’re well up over the horizon now.”

  Hannah said, “They have to be British cruisers, Ajax and another.” She laughed breathlessly. “Looks like I got my story. We’re right in the middle of a naval battle.”

  She was still making notes in the dusk, by which time the captain ordered them off the bridge. They stood on the upper deck with the other passengers, all aware of their danger now, all wearing lifejackets. The liner’s boats were swung out, ready to abandon her if she came under fire.

  The captain of the Formose had taken her as close inshore as he dared to keep her out of the way of the pocket battleship, but they saw her pass them and surge ahead with her ten knots advantage in speed. Her guns did not swing towards them. Soon afterwards she fired again at the distant cruisers. This time the flashes flared brilliant orange in the failing light and they heard the shrieking roar as the shells passed overhead.

  The sun went down and for a time Graf Spee was cut in black outline against the red afterglow. Sarah, peering through the glasses, shouted excitedly, “She’s been hit!” And Hannah saw the sprouting flame as the shells of the cruisers burst on the battleship. Then the silhouette blurred as darkness closed in and she drew still further away from the liner. For a few seconds longer they held her in the glasses, then they lost her.

  They listened and watched but they heard no more firing, saw no more long licks of flame. Sarah said, uncertain now, “I’m sure she was hit.”

  “I reckon so, too.” Hannah put the glasses away in their case and leaned on the rail beside Sarah. “She was running and heading for Montevideo, I guess. So she must have been hurt.”

  They were still there at the rail after midnight when the Formose entered the harbour of Montevideo.
The pocket battleship was already moored out in the stream and they stared at the scars of battle that pock-marked her superstructure and hull. Hannah said softly, “She’s been hurt all right.” Then she read the name on the stern: Graf Spee.

  *

  A young American, Mike Fowler, had set up a makeshift radio station in a little bar on the beach and was broadcasting the news of the battle to the world. Gustav Moehle, captain of Brandenburg, listened to the radio in the wardroom of his ship with his officers gathered around him. He heard Mike’s excited account of the arrival of Graf Spee in Montevideo and his description of her injuries as they appeared to him.

  Moehle could read between and behind the lines because he knew Graf Spee and the men in her. He interpreted, voice deep, “She’s been mauled. Langsdorff would never have taken her in if she wasn’t damaged.” He thought for a moment while the officers waited on him, silent. He said, “She’ll need help when she comes out again. I told you all earlier today that the damage done to our bow when Whitby rammed us had to be made good before we attempted a crossing of the Atlantic. Well, we can’t help Graf Spee with a hole in our bow that cuts our speed down below twenty knots. We would only slow her down. So those repairs are doubly urgent now.”

  Kurt Larsen was among the officers and felt the excitement and determination that gripped them all. Some of them were former merchant marine officers, men who had sailed all the shipping lanes before the war and knew the ports and the coastal waters. They were carried aboard because of that encyclopaedic knowledge, valuable to a raider like Brandenburg.

  Moehle turned to these now while continuing to address the wardroom at large: “These gentlemen have told me where the work can be done and we are on a course to take us there. This ship will be fully efficient and waiting off the estuary of the Plate when Graf Spee comes out. She will not be left to fight alone.”

  They cheered him.

  Chapter Ten – The River

  Smith strode back and forth along his allotted strip of deck, jacket discarded in the heat of the morning sun. He had spent his first night aboard Brandenburg comfortably enough. His gaolers had hard looks for the man who had rammed and crippled their ship but he had been well fed. He and the other two prisoners had been brought up onto Brandenburg’s deck for exercise the previous evening and now again this morning. It seemed it would be a set routine. Buckley and Véronique Duclos paced their own beats some twenty or thirty yards further aft. Smith was still kept separated from them.

  Their guards stood between, to keep them apart and to make supervision simpler. The Leutnant with his holstered pistol on his belt was taller than Kurt Larsen but younger. He watched Smith while the seaman carrying a carbine slung over one shoulder yawned away the time keeping a bored eye on Buckley and the girl. He obviously considered his duty a formality; how could a prisoner escape from a ship of war a hundred miles from any land?

  The Leutnant was more alert — or on edge. Smith judged the young man to be worried not so much about the possibility of an escape but of making the slightest mistake in his execution of this novel and unrehearsed task. He had never guarded prisoners before, let alone a captain who was a suspected spy. But he prevented Smith speaking to Buckley. So Smith could make his plans for escape but could not communicate them.

  Buckley was communicating. Smith could see him grinning down at the girl and her shy smile. The sound of her laughter came to Smith on the wind. He thought that, of course, she liked Buckley. He was a good man. And his devotion to Smith had brought Buckley to this pass. Nobody could have called him back into the Navy. He had volunteered.

  Smith looked about him as he strode out, turned on his heel, stretched his legs in that rapid pacing again. Moehle had said Brandenburg would soon return to Germany but at the moment she was heading south. The oiler, Lemvig, was not in company this morning, had left in the night. Probably to meet Brandenburg later for refuelling the cruiser at some prearranged rendezvous.

  He glanced at the sea sliding past either side of the cruiser’s bow. Moehle had rigged a patch over the damage there and Smith could glimpse the work done when he reached one end of his beat. It looked to be a seamanlike job and would be effective enough for cruising purposes. Even with that gash along her bow Brandenburg would be capable of close to twenty knots. Yet she was barely making ten. Why?

  And where was the raider bound? Buckley had been right and her engineers would not repair her damage at sea, not to render her fit for a winter crossing of the North Atlantic. So Smith believed she was headed for some neutral port for her repairs. That could mean the end of Brandenburg. As soon as she berthed her presence would be reported and the Royal Navy’s hunting groups would close in on her. She might well get clear of the port with her bow as good as new before the British ships got there, but they would be close behind her and snapping at her heels. The area of search for this raider, at least, would be narrowed down to a relatively small area of the ocean, not spread across its thirty million square miles.

  Yet Moehle was not perturbed. Smith could see him up on the bridge now, smiling and joking with Brunner, the Executive Officer. An act? Smith grinned, remembering times when he had affected unconcern though he faced disaster. Publicly beating the breast was not good for a crew’s morale. Moehle might well be putting on an act. Still …

  The Leutnant lifted his wrist and frowned at his watch, waited until the second hand ticked around and was upright at the exact time, then called an order to the sentry. The morning’s exercise was over. Smith swung on his heel to accompany the Leutnant, glanced up at the bridge again and this time saw Kurt Larsen looking down at him. Smith wondered why the Oberleutnant had been outside the house in Berlin the night it had burned? And he wondered again where his daughter was and whether she was alive? And when would he see his son, if ever? He might face a firing squad soon.

  He thrust those thoughts away as the Leutnant stood aside at the door leading below. Smith passed through and began the descent of the steep and narrow steel stairs. Part-way down his foot slipped and he fell the last three feet to the deck. He lay there for a moment, under the fire extinguisher that hung in its clips on the bulkhead. Then he rose stiffly, a hand clapped to one leg, as the Leutnant ran down the ladder and jumped the last few treads to land lightly at Smith’s side. Smith swore and grumbled, “Long time since I was at sea. I’m not used to these ladders.”

  The young man nodded, understanding; he had been given the duty because of his knowledge of English. Smith hobbled on and Buckley, now at the foot of the ladder, called, “Are you all right, sir?”

  Smith growled that he was then his door closed behind him. His leg was genuinely bruised but he thought that had gone well enough. He did not know if it would serve any purpose but you had to start somewhere.

  *

  On that morning after the battle Hannah and Sarah disembarked from the Formose and moved into two rooms in a hotel near the harbour, “Because—” said Hannah firmly, “—that’s where the action will be.” Then she went with Sarah to the British Consulate in the Bolsa de Comercio building and asked when the SS Whitby was due to dock. They were referred to the Shipping Advisory Department on the top floor. There they were told, “Whitby? Let’s see … No, her agents say she’s due on the fifteenth — tomorrow.”

  Outside on the landing again, Sarah asked, “So what do we do now?”

  Hannah was in no doubt: “And I thought you had the makings of a newspaperwoman! Now we work and make that editor of mine eat his words — and pay up!”

  They went down to the Consulate on the floors below, then to the German Embassy and from there to the Uruguayan Ministries of Foreign Affairs and for Defence. Lastly they went down to the harbour to stand in the crowds on the quayside and stare out at the steel monster lying offshore.

  Hannah had brought her binoculars and she peered through them at Graf Spee. “She’s pretty chewed up. Holes in her topsides, one in her bow. Here, take a look.” She passed the glasses to Sarah.

&n
bsp; The girl murmured, “I see what you mean.” Hannah glanced idly around her and saw a bar further along the riverside. Then Sarah asked, “What are they doing? Unloading something?”

  Hannah frowned and took the glasses. The crane aboard Graf Spee was swinging out what looked like crates to lower them to a tender alongside. Hannah re-focused the glasses and now the image came up sharp and clear. She saw the flags draping the ‘crates’ and said quietly, “Those are coffins.”

  They counted them, unwillingly: thirty-six. Hannah lowered the glasses and turned away. “Come on. I want a drink.”

  She led the way to the bar: ‘Manolo’s’. She did not get a drink. A young man sat in a chair perched on top of a table outside the bar. That way he could see over the heads of the passing sightseers. He held a microphone in one hand and was speaking into it: “… are bringing their dead ashore and I have counted thirty-six coffins so far.”

  He paused there and Hannah jerked at his trouser leg and said, “Hi!”

  He looked down at her: “Hello!”

  “Hannah Fitzsimmons.” She held out her hand.

  He changed the microphone to his other hand, then shook hers: “Mike Fowler.”

  “Are you NBC or what?”

  Fowler grinned, “I’m down here to record birdsong for a meat-packing company back in Chicago.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Want to bet?”

  Hannah pointed to the microphone, “So is that real? And if it’s real, is it just local?”

  Mike Fowler said happily, “It’s real, lady, and I’ve got a hook-up with the States that’s going out worldwide.”

  “Wow!” Hannah reached up to slap his back, “Congratulations!” And to Sarah, “Let’s go.”

  She hurried away and Sarah chased after her: “I thought you wanted a drink?”

  Hannah said grimly, “I did. But that guy is giving a blow-by-blow account. My editors in New York and London will be listening to it and wondering, ‘Where the hell is that Fitzsimmons dame?’ So the sooner I get some copy on the record the better I’ll like it. We’ll drink as we go.”