Pigboats

by Ellsberg, Edward

  “Well, he made an impression on Admiral Bayly, all right. That scrap was one too many; you gobs’ll have to do your fighting in Queenstown from now on. But I suppose it gets so damned monotonous out here, the gang all go ashore itching for a little action for a change.”

  A bell rang. The skipper lifted the cover of the radio room voice tube, called into it:

  “Bridge, captain speaking.”

  The quartermaster saw the captain suddenly stiffen up. Faintly he caught the message coming up the voice tube.

  “SOS. captain! Steamer Rolland being shelled by submarine, latitude 51° 10' north, longitude 9° 30' west.”

  Commander Ritchie sprang for the engine telegraphs, jerked them over to “Full Speed.” Glancing at the chart, he punched the approximate location given by the Rolland, hastily ran a line there from his position, paralleled it through the compass rosette on the chart.

  “Hard left!” he cried.

  Knowles spun the bronze steering wheel, the Walton heeled far over to starboard as she swung sharply to port. A shrill noise came from the firerooms, already the forced draft blowers were speeding up.

  “Steady on 273!”

  Knowles watched the compass card. 310, 300, 290, — the figures on the card shot by the lubber’s mark as the destroyer stern swung round under the kick of the hard over rudder. 280. Time to meet her. The slender bronze spokes whirled back through Tom’s fingers as he eased the rudder. 275. Tom looked at his indicator. Rudder amidships. A swift glance at the compass. The bow was still swinging from the rapid turn. Another twist of the wheel to check her, then Tom straightened away on the course.

  From abreast the funnels came the high-pitched scream of the blowers as they forced the air below into the roaring furnaces; four columns of smoke and flame streamed from the low stacks over the lee quarter. The ship shook to the vibrations of the racing propellers, and shuddered as she pounded headlong through the waves.

  In sheets, the salt spray swept across the bow, drenched the gun crew rushing to stations at the forecastle gun. On the bridge, the biting spray drove across the top of the weather cloths, cut sharply into the faces of the bridge watch as they peered anxiously ahead.

  There was a brief moment of activity as more men tumbled up from below, sprang to their stations at guns, torpedo tubes, and depth charge racks. A few sharp commands and the ready service boxes were unlimbered, the guns loaded. Amidships the detonators were shoved home into the noses of the torpedo warheads and the tubes trained out. On the stern, the preventer lashings were cut loose from the ashcans. In half a minute from the time the call for help came in, the Walton was racing westward, her crew tense at their battle stations, straining their eyes ahead, the same thought before all hands — would they be in time?

  Commander Ritchie looked anxiously at his watch. Twenty minutes yet to reach the position given in the message. He glanced at the revolution indicator. Four hundred and eighty r.p.m. ’Way over their designed speed. He looked out ahead, where their sharp bow was being pounded by the waves as they hurtled forward. Very thin plates these destroyers were made of. Remarkable that they stood the hammering at all.

  Tom gripped the wheel tightly, countered the waves with just a touch of the wheel. At that speed, a little too much on the rudder and they’d shoot far off the course before he could meet her. He glanced over the weather cloth to the forecastle below. Ensign Wilson, engineer officer, acting gunnery officer, acting everything else but skipper, was there with the gun crew. They were catching the spray all right. But the dull muzzle of their four-inch gun, at maximum elevation, waited only for the pressure of a finger from the gun pointer peering through his telescope sight, to leap into sudden life.

  The skipper was crouching over the voice tube again. Tom heard faintly a bell ring in the radio room below, a voice answer the call. In a crisp voice, the captain spoke.

  “Radio room there. Send this: ‘Destroyer Walton will arrive in twenty minutes. Do not surrender.’”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Indistinctly Tom heard the buzz of the sending arc as the message flashed out in dots and dashes. A pause, then from the radio room,

  “Answer from Rolland, sir, ‘Never!’”

  Tom glanced at his silent skipper, then looked forward over their plunging bow. A dull thud as they struck a wave, a sheet of foam shooting down each side, a cloud of spray dashing against the bridge. Tom, with the deck quivering beneath him, felt his blood tingle as he thrilled to the Rolland’s reply. He looked eagerly ahead. Still nothing in sight.

  Five months of patrolling and no submarines. Like fifty other seamen watching tensely, Tom wondered.

  Would they be in time?

  A buzz from below. The skipper dropped his binoculars, answered the call.

  “Radio room, sir. Another message from Rolland. ‘Outranged by submarine. Badly damaged. Hurry.’”

  A light smudge showed over the horizon, a little on the starboard bow. Tom spotted it.

  “She’s in sight, captain,” and without orders shifted his rudder a few degrees to bring the smoke dead ahead.

  A brief glimpse through his binoculars, then the captain leaned over the voice tube.

  “Radio room! To Rolland. ‘Will be there in ten minutes. Hold on.’”

  Again the crackling of the radio mingled with the shriek of the blowers. The cloud of smoke on the horizon became plainer. The radio man finished sending, closed the receiving circuit. Immediately the answer came in. The operator listened, wrote it down. Then instead of using the voice tube, he slipped the earphones off his head, clambered up to the bridge, handed the message to the captain.

  A little surprised, Commander Ritchie looked at it, then swore as he read:

  “Sinking. Look for our boats. Good-by.”

  Too late to help. But could they get the submarine?

  The Rolland came into sight, her stern nearly awash, her bow well out of water. A cloud of smoke and steam, pouring from her uptakes, showed that the sea was flooding the boilers. Drifting down the wind, the cloud formed a smoke screen abaft the Rolland, obscuring the sea beyond.

  The Walton shot through the smoke, raced by the sinking vessel.

  There on the surface, hardly a mile away, with her hatches open and her gun crew still on deck, heading for two lifeboats in the lee of the Rolland, was the U-38! Tom’s heart jumped. Erhardt at last!

  “Rapid fire!”

  A flash from the Walton’s forecastle. A shell screaming through the air struck just beyond the submarine and burst in a column of water that drenched the low-lying hull. The effect was magical.

  On the U-38, a startled officer leaped down a deck hatch abaft the gun, slamming the cover closed behind him in spite of the struggling knot of sailors who sought to follow. Tom could see the submarine start to settle in a crash dive as it jumped ahead, planing under. Another shot from the fast-approaching destroyer. The shell exploded with a roar, tearing the U-38’s chariot bridge to splinters. A third shot on the rapidly submerging boat struck the side of the conning tower, smashed it in. The U-38 heeled violently to starboard as she went awash.

  The U-boat’s gun crew, with their only entrance to the boat slammed in their faces, ran madly forward to escape the shells bursting on their bridge, only to find the boat submerging under their feet. In another second, the waves washed over the deck, sweeping the helpless men off into the sea. Two seamen, caught by the antennae, disappeared in a frenzy of frantically beating arms and legs as the U-38 vanished and the Walton’s shells ricocheted harmlessly over the spot. Firing ceased.

  In another moment the Walton shot across the roiled wake — all that was left of their enemy. As she crossed it, Commander Ritchie, leaning over the bridge rail, jerked the depth charge release and an ashcan rolled overboard astern.

  An instant, then an explosion. The Walton quivered as if struck by a giant sledge hammer; a huge geyser of water shot up a hundred feet astern.

  “Hard right!”

  Tom spun the
wheel; at full speed the Walton came about, lying far over on her beam ends as she turned. The ship made a complete circle and straightened away again where her bow shot through the mass of foam that marked the point where the first charge had exploded; the destroyer was on the course the U-38 was following as she disappeared.

  For a quarter of a mile the Walton followed, dropping an ashcan every hundred feet; swiftly then she made a short circle to starboard and a wider one to port — a figure eight which was marked out on the sea by a series of vast waterspouts as ashcan after ashcan was dropped astern and burst far below the surface, searching out the hidden submarine.

  As the Walton finished the second circle, her skipper rang up “Half Speed,” and steamed slowly back over the area he had bombed, while the eager gun crew searched the surface for signs of wreckage or patches of oil that would show their charges had struck home.

  But save for the few broken bits of the bridge torn away by their first shot nothing showed except wide-spreading patches of smooth water marking out on the turbulent surface of the sea, a huge figure eight. The skipper in the port wing of the bridge searched the sea anxiously.

  A thin wisp of spray blew from a crest on the port bow. Tom Knowles’ roving eyes caught it, saw a tiny wake following it a hundred yards off. As he looked, a stream of bubbles started to break surface, streaking a path toward them.

  “Torpedo!” he shouted, and jammed his wheel hard over.

  Too late. The streak of bubbles fairly seemed to leap across the narrow gap toward their side. A deafening explosion, the bridge heaved up madly. As the wheel ripped from his grasp, Tom saw the forecastle, torn bodily away from the destroyer, rise clear of the water, fall on its side and spill the gun crew into the sea as the rest of the ship drove over its shattered bow. The port bridge crumpled up under the shock of the explosion; Commander Ritchie pitched forward into the waves. For an instant Tom glimpsed the open sea where a moment before their bow had been; then a sheet of flame swept upward with a roar and enveloped the bridge. Seared and choking, Tom staggered back to escape the blaze, dived over the signal flag racks, tumbled in a heap to the steel deck below. The torpedo, breaking the ship in two, had torn open the forward oil tank and fired the oil, making a flaming torch of the forward end of the splintered hulk.

  Dazed by the explosion, stunned by his fall, the quartermaster lay motionless on the deck. A blazing inferno swept over his head, scorched his clothes. The fire started to work aft. Alongside, the ragged steelwork of their bow was visible a brief time as it rose from underneath the ship, then rolled sidewise into the lake of burning oil and keel up, took its final plunge. A few scorched bodies floated clear, drifted off in the waves.

  A short distance away, a swirl of foam stirred the surface and slowly passed down the port side. The U-38’s periscope, surveying the wreck, disappeared astern. No need to waste any more precious torpedoes on that blazing hulk.

  The flames leaped higher, the twisted plates of the bridge glowed red and started to sag. The paint on the foremast caught fire, the halliards glowed an instant, streaming from the signal yard like serpents’ tongues, then vanished in wisps of smoke.

  Abaft the bridge, confusion gripped the crew as smoke and flame shrouded the ship, and the Walton, with engines stopped and safety valves madly blowing off steam, rolled helplessly in the trough of the sea. The scream of the blowers died away to a low moan, ceased altogether. Silence reigned except for the crackling of the flames, where a moment before the din of battle had raged.

  In that silence, the leaderless deck force, surprised to find half their ship still floating under them, pulled themselves together, hastily ran out the fire hoses, and turned the streams on the blaze.

  A trickle of water, gushing from the bridge overhead, fell on the prostrate quartermaster and revived him. Slowly he pulled himself to his feet, groped his way to the rail, staggered aft along it. In a moment he emerged in the clear, his clothes smouldering, his hair singed, clinging weakly to the rail to support himself.

  Something bumped him. A sailor dragging a hose, stumbling forward in the smoke, accosted him.

  “Lend a hand, mate.”

  The dazed quartermaster regarded him blankly, but made no move. If he let go the rail, he felt he would collapse again.

  “Shake it up! Y’wishin’ fer all of us to burn to death?” The struggling sailor reached through the smoke, seized Tom, dragged him from the rail. “Here, lively now wid this hose.” But Tom, his support gone, felt his knees sag under him and he dropped to the deck.

  The startled sailor leaned through the haze, knelt over him.

  “Fer the love o’ Mike, it’s Tom burnin’ up!” Pete swung his nozzle on the prostrate form; in a trice Tom was drenched from head to foot. The cold salt shower brought him suddenly to. He pulled himself up, seized Pete’s hose, helped him to drag it along and train it on the fire.

  “Thanks, old man.”

  Pete made no answer, only pointed to starboard. Tom looked, saw several bodies floating in a sea covered with blazing oil.

  “Shure, an’ it’s lucky y’are y’re not wid thim,” breathed Pete, gritting his teeth and trying to keep his swollen eyes open as they smarted from the acrid smoke swirling all about.

  Tom watched the thin streams of water vanish in the flames, turn to hissing clouds of steam as the water struck the red-hot steel. They were making no headway; the fire, fed by oil welling up from the ruptured tank, was fast melting away the remains of the bridge and working aft.

  Tom thought rapidly. Just abaft the burning oil bunker was the magazine. The fire would not have to go much farther to touch that off. The magazine, jammed full with their war allowance of smokeless powder! And just beneath the spot where he and his shipmates were struggling with the hoses. When that magazine bulkhead got red-hot! Tom suddenly turned cold at the thought, looked hastily aft to where the life rafts, lashed against the galley deckhouse, offered a way out. They had better abandon ship while they still had a chance.

  He wondered. There were no officers left; the exec, had gone up with the forecastle gun crew, the captain had been blown overboard by the torpedo. The ship was already a wreck; no one could blame the survivors for quitting her now.

  The heat grew fiercer, drove them farther aft. One by one, the useless hoses were abandoned, and the crew, straggling aft, started to cast loose the Carley life rafts. A boatswain’s mate and half a dozed-seamen braved the flames blowing back over the galley deckhouse amidships, trying to swing out the motor-sailor stowed in the port skids.

  With Mullaney helping him, Tom limped aft, climbed to the after deckhouse, and began to cut the lashings on the raft there. The air there was better, his head cleared. He looked forward to see knots of struggling men working frantically to get the other rafts and boats free before the ship blew up. A blazing stream of oil drifted by to leeward.

  Tom’s gaze wandered over the side, watching it burn. The water was none too smooth; a stiff breeze and a choppy sea were there to make it tough going for the lads who had to cling to the rafts.

  Splash. The first Carley raft slid overboard, rose and fell alongside like a huge doughnut as the wreck of the Walton rolled heavily in the trough of the sea. A wild rush of forms shot over the low side, and in an instant the raft had twenty men clinging to it and was barely afloat.

  Tom turned again to casting loose the after raft. His blistered hands worked slowly. The last lashing led inboard over the deck; he ran along it to let go the toggle, fell over the pedestal to which the toggle was secured, reached out wildly to support himself. He caught something, felt it turn freely in his hand, slid to the deck still gripping it. He tried to pull himself up, looked mechanically at what he was holding. A wheel. The after steering wheel. He seized the hub, dragged himself up slowly, from force of habit tried the wheel. It turned easily. Disconnected of course.

  An idea struck him. He slid down the side of the deckhouse, stumbled down the ladder into the after quarters, ran back under the fantai
l to the steering engine. With trembling fingers he threw out the clutch on the drum where the wheel ropes led forward to the bridge, shoved the clutch over to the after steering shaft, and pushed home the locking pin. Back on deck he scurried, climbed stiffly up to the after wheel, tried it. His heart pounded as he heard the clatter of the steering engine below him, felt the rudder going over as he turned the wheel. He could do it!

  “Tom!” He looked over the side of the deckhouse. A group of men below were tugging at the life raft. “Wot in hell’s holding her?” yelled Pete. “Ain’t ye let go that toggle yit?”

  Tom left the wheel, ran to the edge of the little platform. Below him with Pete were half the black gang, just up from the hold at the wild cry to abandon ship. Tom looked at them hastily. Yes, there were the men he needed — firemen, engineers.

  “Belay casting loose that raft, boys. Gimme steam on the engines and we won’t have to swim. Who’ll go below again?”

  Amazed, the grimy firemen stared up at him, ceased tying on their life jackets. Chief Machinist’s Mate Austin, five hash marks on his sleeve, grey in the service, tossed his kapok jacket overboard.

  “I’m with ye, quartermaster. I’ll take the throttle.” He started forward. “Come on, Bill, come on, John.” He grabbed a couple of firemen near him. “The black gang’s game.” He ran forward to the engine hatch, disappeared below, while three firemen and a watertender following him dropped through the little airlock into the after fireroom. The quartermaster ran back to the wheel and waited anxiously.

  In a moment the low hum of a blower rose in pitch like a siren over the sea; soon a heavy cloud of black smoke started to pour again from the after funnel and mingle with the huge pillar of smoke and flame drifting aft from the wrecked bow.

  Tom hastily surveyed the situation. The Walton, rolling sluggishly in the trough of the sea, the waves washing over her port side, looked little like the trim destroyer of an hour before — twisted and blazing forward, wreathed in smoke, abandoned guns and torpedo tubes pointing in all directions, the motor-sailor hanging cockbilled from the port davits where the crew had left it as the flames drove them off the superstructure. Drifting away to starboard was one life raft, black with clinging men; a few heads bobbed in the waves nearby, swimming fiercely, trying to make the raft; farther off, driven aimlessly by the seas, floated several bodies; at least a mile distant an occasional glint of sunlight flashed from the oars of the slowly moving boats from the Rolland. A little farther away, the Rolland herself, nothing left now but her bow, was just sliding to her final plunge; while far to the northward, the U-38, on the surface again, was rapidly disappearing on the shortest line for Zeebrugge. Tom bit his lip savagely. With the U-38 under their guns, exposed to their ashcans, Erhardt had escaped, the victor!