‘Come down to slow both when you can, Number One.’
‘Aye, sir.’
Fraser, then: ‘E-boats, sir, not destroyers. On 140, 144, right to left – revs for like twenty, thirty knots –’
‘Not transmitting, then.’
‘No, sir, too fast.’
‘Yes.’ Initial chagrin at their not being the destroyers was mitigated somewhat in guessing this could be a preliminary to the heavier ships’ emergence. Also recognition that with the light fading as it was, there couldn’t be much prospect of a dived attack. Delay therefore essential: two requirements before one could surface being (a) darkness, and (b) absence of bloody Mas-boats.
‘Both motors slow ahead grouped down, sir.’
He’d grunted acknowledgement to McLeod. ‘Where now, Fraser?’
‘Green seven-oh, six-five, sir – still right to left –’
Circling, according to the picture in his mind. Wide, anticlockwise sweep of this gulf, engines screaming, slim hulls crashing across the choppy, darkening water. They were much more likely to be Italian Mas-boats than German E-boats, on this side of Sicily. Similar to E-boats – fast patrol craft, some very fast, one type credited with a speed of forty-seven knots – equipped with torpedoes, machine-guns and depth-charges, although they were too small to carry many, depth-charges being heavy, bulky things. The prefix MAS, according to Jane’s, stood for Motoscafi Anti-Sommergibili. Sommergibili meaning submarine.
Weren’t hunting this Sommergibili, anyway. If they’d had reason to believe there might be one lurking in the gulf they’d have reduced speed and begun an asdic sweep – pinging, seeking contact, which at high speed was impracticable. They couldn’t even have been listening-out on theirs as Ursa was on hers.
He told McLeod, ‘Forty feet.’
‘Forty feet, sir.’
‘Then let’s have one motor stopped –’
‘Aye, sir –’
‘– and switch to night lighting.’
Red bulbs replacing white ones, so his own eyes and the lookouts’ would be at least partially adjusted to night vision by the time he surfaced her. Angle on the ’planes, meanwhile, bubble in the inclinometer a couple of degrees aft. With dusk thickening – and as yet nothing to look at anyway – might as well play it safe. Didn’t stop one hearing whatever might be happening up there.
Fraser’s voice intoned, ‘Directly towards, sir. Green 75, green 80 …’
Having circled the gulf, he thought, now steering west. To round Cape Gallo, maybe? Either that, or they’d turn inside it. At the chart, the moving picture in his mind telling him they’d turn short of the shallower water this side of Gallo, be on course then to return to their starting-point, top end of the swept channel.
Meeting their chums there maybe, ostensibly having cleared their exit route for them?
Stupid buggers, though. What purpose served?
He could hear them now. Everyone could. Similar to the approach of a distant train, sound expanding on a rising note – Doppler effect – starboard side and here already – coming over now. McLeod rubbing the back of his neck, reporting, ‘Forty feet, sir.’
Crashing over. In other circumstances might have been alarming – often had been – but since these were totally unaware of the presence right under them of one of the 10th Flotilla’s more distinguished Sommergibilis –
Gone over. Falling note now, and contracting – port quarter, anyway somewhere abaft that beam. Helms over now, boys, or you’ll be running into Gallo, might regret it … Pencil-tip moving lightly on the chart, sketching their likely westward curve, then checking the bearing of the swept channel exit from Ursa’s position now. He asked Fraser, ‘Anything around 142?’
Trying that. McLeod meanwhile proposing, ‘Stop port motor, sir?’
‘Well, why not.’
Seeing as the less noise you made the better you heard whatever there might be to hear. The Mas-boats’ racket had faded to a distant, dying murmur. Presumably holding on, not turning inside Gallo.
Making for where, then? Trapani’d be in their range, all right. Or Marsala. Cagliari even, but not at anything like that speed.
Fraser told him, ‘Nothing on that bearing, sir.’
‘Port motor stopped, sir, starboard slow ahead grouped down.’
‘Very good.’ Saving amps as well as keeping quiet. He told Fraser, when the HSD had uncovered one ear, ‘Listen-out all round but concentrate on 140 to 145.’
Time, 2212. At the chart table, pondering the advantages /disadvantages of staying down another twenty or thirty minutes or going on up pretty well right away. It would be dark enough by this time, but a contingency to be wary of was a possible return of the Mas-boats – completion of joyride, tearing back around the headland. Change the whole setup: Ursa being as yet undetected, which was the way to be: once spotted, much less good. Even worse, to be stumbled on in the minute or two of surfacing, blind and helpless.
Would be a relief to get up there, though. Fresh air for one thing, start getting the battery up for another, and be ready for the cruiser if it did come out.
As likely now as it had seemed an hour ago?
Knowing the answer near enough, but still checking – dividers set at fifty nautical miles for each two-hour interval at twenty-five knots, and starting now – 2215. Answer being no, they wouldn’t make Cagliari before daylight, which one might assume would be the whole point of making a dark-hours passage.
At thirty knots instead of twenty-five, though?
The hell with it. He cocked an eyebrow at Fraser: ‘Anything?’
Shake of the head – hadn’t needed to hear the question. Mike said, ‘Twenty-eight feet.’
‘Twenty-eight feet, sir …’
At the scope – a glance at Ellery – and he had his eyes at the lenses, his body straightening in parallel with the brass tube as its top window broke surface. Tumble of dark water flecked with pearls and diamonds, streaky night sky roofing a close-up of jumpy surface, but horizontally – middle distance or beyond – damn-all. Three hundred and sixty degrees of that. He snapped the handles up.
‘Stand by to surface.’
Get up there, breathe night air, get the box in shape for tomorrow’s dived patrol. Not forgetting the Garibaldi, but not expecting it either. Facing this now – that he’d had a presentiment growing on him of having missed the bus. Could be wrong, but at this moment it was how he felt – maybe through having expected action and almost seen it coming, then had nothing out of it but bloody Mas-boats arsing around up there. Hearing McLeod’s orders and the responses to them: main vents checked shut, HP blows open, etcetera: thinking to himself in the motors’ hum and the aura of soft reddish light that if the sod was in there he might well be staying put, on station for action against the Gib convoy when that time arrived; in which case air reconnaissance from Malta would be likely to spot him there and Shrimp would leave Ursa here to mark him.
So in the end – touch wood …
McLeod had put both motors to half ahead.
‘Ready to surface, sir.’
2240 now. Ursa low in the sea’s white-streaked blackness, with four of her main ballast and ‘Q’ flooded, engines pounding in a way you’d imagine them being heard onshore in Palermo even; but in reality enfolded by the night and by the sea’s own murmur, audible to keen ears at maybe a thousand yards, half a mile, not much more. On course due west across the gulf’s wide northern approaches, sea-mist limiting visibility in some sectors, despite a wisp of brand-new moon showing occasionally between whorls of high, thin cloud. The Gallo headland from this perspective was like the hump of a whale’s back – whale floating in mist though, not water, the mist in fact confusing visibility as much as limiting it.
McLeod’s watch – having relaxed from diving stations to Red watch, patrol routine. Lookouts in the bridge Barnet and Simms – leading stoker – both in wool hats, sweaters, oilskins, glasses permanently at their eyes as they slowly swivelled, their backs against the periscop
e standards. One eternal truth being that maximum efficiency of looking out was a major factor not only in finding targets but in staying alive.
Like the U-boat they’d sunk in the Norwegian Sea in the course of Ursa’s work-up patrol from the Clyde. McLeod had had that dived watch, the first dog, made the sighting at medium range in a sea rough enough to have been making depth-keeping difficult. Within minutes of his startled ‘Captain in the control room!’ Mike had fired a salvo of four fish, hit the German amidships with one of them and broken him in two, the bow section taking long enough to sink for both McLeod and the coxswain, Swathely, at Mike’s invitation to have a brief sight of it through the periscope. There’d been no possibility of survivors, and part of the satisfaction had been that it had been outward bound from Bergen to the North Atlantic killing-ground where it would inevitably have made its own contribution to the month’s death-toll of British and Allied seamen. And if it had had one sharper-eyed or wider-awake lookout in its bridge, who might have spotted Ursa’s periscope of which several feet must have been exposed at the time for either McLeod or Mike himself to have had any view at all over the foam-crested ridges of that force 6 – those noncombatants’ deaths instead of the predators’. As it had been, forty or more Germans in one torpedo blast, for the want of a better-trained pair of eyes.
‘Bridge!’
McLeod stooping above the voice-pipe, still with binoculars at his eyes: ‘Bridge.’
‘PO Tel, sir. Cipher the captain will want to see.’
‘Tell him I’m coming down.’
‘Captain’s coming down.’
In the hatch, clambering down through the rush of air into the soft light and the jolting warmth. Lazenby was there waiting for him: also Swathely, Ellery, Fraser, all to put it mildly showing interest, the telegraphist offering Mike a sheet of pink signal-pad – pink for Secret – with his own blue-crayon scrawl on it. Mike held it under the chart light, read To: S.10, repeated Ursa, Swordsman, V. A. Malta, C-in-C Med and Admiralty. From: Unsung.
Unsung, for Pete’s sake …
Garibaldi-class cruiser torpedoed and sunk in position 38 degrees 51 N. 9 degrees 33 E.
‘Be – bloody – damned …’
Hadn’t meant to express his surprise aloud. Mightn’t have been audible, in fact: Lazenby was blinking at him as if he hadn’t caught it. ‘The one would’ve been our bird, sir?’
‘I’d say might have been.’ Putting that position on the chart. Melhuish had made his kill twenty miles south of Cape Carbonara, Sardinia’s southeast corner. The Italian would have been only an hour, hour and a half short of docking in Cagliari – and practically on Unsung’s eastward track. Which she’d have resumed, of course, would have got this signal out shortly after surfacing.
Bloody lucky. And hell, give the bugger his due, bloody marvellous … A glance at Lazenby: ‘Our bird if I’d called heads instead of tails. Lucky we had a longstop.’
And now forget Palermo, head for wider-open spaces. At this five knots, at least be out of the way of the Mas-boats if they came back – obliging one to dive, interrupting the battery-charge. Bring her round to something like north by east. On course for Naples, conceivably meeting traffic coming south from Naples.
Littorio-class battleship, for instance. That’d do nicely. Or a big, fat tanker. But warships of any kind, threats to the Gib convoy which must surely by now be imminent, or store-ships and especially fuel-carriers supplying Rommel’s army in the desert. He put Unsung’s signal on the clip, glanced at the clock – just past eleven – and moved towards the ladder.
‘Tell the officer of the watch I’m coming up.’
‘Aye, sir. Bridge! Cap’n on his way up, sir!’
Climbing – thinking about Melhuish and his triumph – flying start to his first operational command and joining the 10th Flotilla. The luck of being in exactly the right place at precisely the right time, of course. Mike telling himself then: Wiped my bloody eye, is the long and short of it, leave it at that … Out of the hatch now, in his ship’s swaying, salt-glistening bridge. Moon – a scrap of it – very low, shrouded in sea-mist but well below the skirting of cloud; would be disappearing into that mist in the course of the next half-hour but meanwhile was creating a danger sector astern where any U-boat discovering Ursa against its spread of radiance would have the drop on her.
Of which these three would be aware, of course. Jamming himself into the bridge’s starboard for’ard corner, putting his glasses up, searching that threatening stern sector past the squat oilskinned hump of Leading Stoker Simms: clearing his throat before telling McLeod, ‘The signal was to S.10 from Unsung – on passage Gib to Malta, if you remember. Sank our cruiser – early this afternoon, in spitting distance of Cagliari.’
‘Oh, damn it …’
Mike laughed. ‘Nonsense. Thing’s sunk, is what matters. Bring her round oh-two-oh, Jamie.’
‘Oh-two-oh, sir.’ Into the voice-pipe: ‘Control room …’
An alteration of a hundred and ten degrees, to take her out of the gulf and clear of Cape Gallo, to start Saturday’s dived patrol far enough offshore to intercept passing traffic as well as any to or from Palermo. Something like ten after eleven now, sunrise at about 0500; at this five knots, be about thirty miles offshore when one dived. Which would be a bit too far out, he thought: so alter back to a westerly course after say two hours. Cape San Vito attracted him, rather, looked good for chances of traffic from Naples or points north – Spezia for instance – heading to round Marettimo en route to Tripoli, Homs, Masurata and so forth.
‘Course oh-two-oh, sir.’
McLeod acknowledging: Mike sweeping slowly up the starboard side, his binocular line of sight passing over Simms’ head. Night vision barely up to scratch yet, after those minutes at the chart table. He told McLeod, lowering his glasses, ‘Two hours like this, we’ll alter to due west at 0100. I’ll put it in the night-order book.’
Below, he heard them ditching gash, the watch changing at midnight, Jarvis taking over at a quarter-past and McLeod smoking a last cigarette over a mug of kye in the darkened wardroom. Saturday now. While at the chart table to amend his night orders he’d also roughly plotted Unsung’s track to Malta, noting that she’d be passing under the QBB 255 mines tomorrow, Sunday. And berthing at Lazaretto in due course with a red bar on her otherwise virgin Jolly Roger. Which of course Ursa’s had too, on account of that workup patrol U-boat. Quite something – both of those – the breaking of the duck as one might call it. Compared for instance to the lousy start made by the highly respected David Wanklyn VC, who’d done his first few patrols in Upholder without hitting a damn thing. Shrimp, as whose first lieutenant he’d served pre-war in Porpoise, had been seriously worried as to whether he could justify his old friend’s continuance as a CO – considerable expenditure of torpedoes and nothing to show for it, miss after miss. Then Wanklyn had suddenly got his eye in, got the knack as Shrimp described it, never missed another trick.
One of the nicest, most modest COs afloat, with a ship’s company who worshipped him. Lost in mid-April of last year, somewhere north of Tripoli. Actually, a shocking loss.
McLeod had begun to snore. Probably join that chorus oneself, any minute now. Melhuish, though – rather a high opinion of himself, supercilious manner, in one’s recollection of him?
Hadn’t actually thought about him all that much. Hadn’t wanted to – easier not to, in all the circumstances. Hadn’t ever discussed him much with Ann, either. Out of resuscitated memory though – at Bill Gorst’s wedding reception, Gorst introducing Melhuish with ‘Charles is starting his Perisher this Monday as ever is. Doesn’t know what he’s in for, eh?’ And Mike shaking hands with him while actually rather more aware of the man’s incredibly attractive wife who was talking with Chloe just yards away – she’d noticed him, he remembered – noticed his interest in her – or Chloe might just have told her something earth-shaking like ‘That’s my brother Mike’ – anyway, he and Melhuish shaking hands, and Mike natural
ly enough congratulating him on having been selected for the command course – for which he did look somewhat young – Melhuish answering with ‘Thanks, but frankly it’s come none too soon – my own possibly biased view of course, but I have been in the racket quite some while …’
Ann’s hand in Mike’s, eyes smiling into his: ‘You’re Mike Nicholson. Your sister was telling me …’
Telling her whatever … But that had been where it started – right there in the first moment of their meeting, damn-all to do with Melhuish or his opinion of himself.
7
Milky first light hardening, the sea’s ruffled but currently unbroken surface reflecting it in morse-like flashes via the big ’scope’s lenses into Mike’s eyes as he circled. McLeod having dived her on the watch – at the trim now, confirming ‘Twenty-eight feet, sir.’
‘Stand by for some bearings.’ Eyes off the lenses for a second, a glance at Walburton who was on the wheel – reaching for a stub of pencil.
‘Gallo Head lighthouse.’ Quick look up at the bearing-ring. ‘Red 114.’ Blaze of sunrise on its distant whiteness – brick, stucco or whatever – and then ‘Right-hand edge Castellammare’ – same procedure – ‘Red 55.’ In both cases Walburton had murmured ‘Ship’s head 270’: true bearings were therefore 156 and 195. Periscope hissing down – Ellery’s right hand on the lever, left hand up covering a yawn – Mike moving to the chart to put those bearings on for what would be only a rough fix, the right-hand edge of that promontory being a long way from clear-cut or precise. All one needed, anyway: there being no navigational hazards around, and no problems in fixing her more accurately during the course of the forenoon. Cape San Vito for instance, by about midday. He noted in the log: Dived 0450, Gallo Head light 156 degrees 7.5 miles.
Submariner (2008) Page 11
