‘Stop one screw, sir?’
He nodded. ‘By all means.’ For minimal expenditure of amps, speed through the water no more than a knot and a half, enough to hold her in trim and for the periscope to make very little feather cutting through the surface. Ursa simply on her billet, where she was supposed to be – waiting, hoping, two-thirds of her crew asleep.
Jarvis, for one. Mike in the darkened wardroom, settling at the table, hearing a familiar sawing of wood and recalling an exchange between the two sub-lieutenants just recently – yesterday, might have been – Danvers asking Jarvis whether before he dragged some unfortunate female up the aisle he’d have the decency to warn her about his snoring, Jarvis replying that he wouldn’t have to, she’d know all about it long before things reached that stage.
‘But if she’s the kind that won’t?’
‘Won’t what?’
‘You know. Do it before.’
‘Be her lookout entirely, wouldn’t it. She’d have had every opportunity, I assure you – and if she was that pigheaded –’
Danvers grinning: ‘Determination to remain intacta until actually spliced isn’t normally seen in that light, old man. In fact it’s generally applauded.’
‘Not by me, it isn’t!’
Pointing at him: ‘You reckon any popsie worth her salt getting a close-up of that great red face –’
Barnaby shaking with mirth as he put plates around; Jarvis scowling at him. Mike, who’d been reading, had cut in with ‘Any promising candidates in the offing, Sub?’
‘Oh …’ Surprised by the intervention. Shrugging, then. ‘Well – I mean, one or two, but –’
‘That one in the Bay Hotel at Gouroch, for instance?’ Danvers confidentially to Mike: ‘Crikey, sir, you should’ve seen her …’
Cottenham interrupted Mike’s reconstruction of that dialogue: ‘Tea, sir?’
‘Why yes, thanks.’
‘Comin’ up …’
He didn’t feel like turning in again. It had been a quiet night – no return of the Mas-boats, no alarms. He’d dreamt of Abigail, woken when McLeod had been altering from 020 to 270 and a White watch messenger had shaken Jarvis, who’d then spent some time at the table hunched over a mug of kye. Mike struggling to make head or tail of what had been a confusing dream.
‘Char, sir.’
‘Thank you, Cottenham.’
‘Shame we lost that Eyetie, sir.’
‘Find a replacement, maybe.’
‘I’ll drink to that, sir.’
During the forenoon there were A/S schooners – three, white-painted, probably the ones they’d seen the day before – messing around a few miles inshore of them, and several times seaplanes flying low along the coast. Natural inclination might have been to use the small ‘attack’ periscope rather than the big one, but the advantage of its showing less feather in the millpond surface was more than offset by its having (a) no air-search facility – i.e. lenses not vertically tiltable, which in fact presented a considerable hazard, chances for instance of there being a Cant circling up there where it could see you and you couldn’t see it, wouldn’t know it was whistling-up destroyers, Mas-boats or whatever – and (b) no magnification, such as the big search ’scope had, which was extremely limiting. The best answer was ultra-cautious use of the big one, each time with a rapid sky-search first and the ensuing all-round surface sweep interrupted by frequent ‘dipping’. It made for very energetic watchkeeping – starting the procedure about every ten minutes, so it was virtually continuous – and absolutely essential, as Mike explained to them, on account of the possibility of a target’s sudden appearance from the west side of Cape San Vito. If one showed at all, it would be sudden, and asdics would give no warning – the land-mass blanking off one’s view of the San Vito – Trapani – Egadi islands area would be no less of a barrier to sound-waves.
Around midday the wind had been coming up a little, McLeod had reported; and when they were having lunch – sardines, cheese, biscuits, coffee – Jarvis put his head around the curtain: ‘Stand some good news, sir?’
‘Try me.’
‘White horses developing all over, sir.’
‘Ah. Three cheers.’
Thinking about it. Didn’t have to go and look at the chart to know that Ursa was currently equidistant from the Castellammare headland and Cape San Vito, eleven or twelve miles from each: so he could alter say twenty degrees to port, shave the distance off-cape a little and open up their periscope view of that crucial area a bit sooner.
‘Sub!’
Jarvis had stopped the periscope on its way up, Coldwell was sending it down again. Enquiring pink face there again beside the curtain.
‘Sir?’
‘Bring her to two-five-oh, Sub.’
‘Two-five-oh. Aye aye, sir …’
One o’clock, that alteration. By four, Cape San Vito was due south and less than five miles away; OOWs could get good fixes on the lighthouse and both left- and right-hand edges, and with a broken surface neither the ’scope nor Ursa herself would be all that visible to any overflying Cants. Seascape meanwhile open and empty from fine on the port bow to the nearest of the Egadi islands: Marettimo actually forty miles ahead, beyond visibility range, Trapani down-coast southwestward only half that far. Trapani being an E-boat and/or Mas-boat base and linked by a coastal railway that ran south to Marsala.
Off and on through Danvers’ afternoon watch and McLeod’s first dog there were sightings of patrolling Cants, and fishing-boats working both sides of San Vito, but the A/S schooners from Golfo di Castellammare must either have gone home or turned back eastward. Periscope watch was still a lot easier than it had been. No less intense: with the Egadi Channel to port and the strategic Marettimo corner right ahead, west by south, a wide expanse of slightly choppy Tyrrhenian Sea open to surveillance from those for’ard bearings clear around to the other quarter – you might have thought the chances of some worthwhile target showing up between tea-time and sundown were as good as they’d have been anywhere.
Damn-all, though. Empty sea, empty day drawing towards its close.
He’d finished The Moon is Down. McLeod, having galloped through his Edgar Wallace, had asked to borrow it. Mike now squaring up to the Scott Fitzgerald that Jennie had sent him and he had to tackle now so that in his next letter he could tell her how much he’d enjoyed it. In fact she’d lent him an earlier book by Fitzgerald, and he hadn’t got on with it all that well although she’d expected him to; and this one, he saw, was an unfinished novel, Fitzgerald having died in the course of writing it.
Give it a go, anyway.
At about seven, when they were still within a few miles of Cape San Vito, Jarvis picked up a pair of A/S trawlers on the bow to port, steaming north; they’d come into sight around the bulge of coastline above Trapani. They could have come out of Trapani or from further south; as they were heading now they’d be crossing Ursa’s track well beyond the point at which Mike intended turning north at about eight or eight-thirty.
Unless they were an advance guard of something else. Or might shortly alter to starboard to cut around San Vito – in which case he’d go deep, let them pass over. He told Jarvis, ‘Watch ’em. Any change, call me.’ In fact they passed ahead, their reciprocating engines audible on asdics and continuing north for some while before fading. Might acquire nuisance value later in the night, he suspected.
At eight-thirty he had Danvers bring her round to north, pretty well in the trawlers’ wakes. Bright, lively evening, more spindrift flying than there had been earlier, and the wind had backed to westerly. The box was still reasonably well up, after this slow, quiet day, and he put her up to slow speed on both motors so that when he surfaced her at nine-fifty she was ten miles northwest of Cape San Vito. Patrol routine then, rolling slightly with the wind abeam, diesels pumping generator power into her batteries for the next day’s exertions. Next day being Sunday – a more productive day than this had been, please God.
He was tucking into cold
pork – Cottenham had gone so far as to make apple sauce to go with it – when Lazenby came with the decode of a signal that had been repeated to Ursa for information, Shrimp telling Swordsman to shift to a new billet somewhere on ten degrees east. Mike gave it to Danvers to put on the chart – knowing it had to be somewhere in the region of Cagliari, and having noted that Gerahty was being routed north of Ustica, well clear of Ursa – of Unsung too, Melhuish if on schedule likely to be getting his box up in the QBB 255 approaches during the night. Mike had told Danvers to allow Swordsman twelve and a half knots surfaced and six dived, and the answers were that her new billet was between Capes Carbonara and Spartivento – pretty well where Melhuish had sunk his cruiser – and that she’d probably be there first light Monday.
Gib convoy on its way?
Swordsman having six bow tubes instead of four – maybe not having got in an attack on the Garibaldi, therefore six in the tubes plus six reloads – thus well prepared for the Wop surface deployments that were anticipated. While in leaving Ursa where she was, was Shrimp reckoning on her having her eight fish still – guessing that if Mike had got in an attack on the cruiser he’d have hit her and he, Shrimp, would have known about it? Actually plain common sense, Mike thought – what one might call Shrimp’s speciality. Crossing fingers – while requesting Jarvis to shove over the apple sauce – guessing the convoy most likely was on its way, and Ursa exactly where Shrimp wanted her – i.e. where she’d have a decent chance of worthwhile targets. He’d be shifting Ruck and Mottram, as like as not, while of the boats he’d had in the Bizerta–Cape Bon–Pantellaria–Hammamet southern periphery of the convoy’s route some at least would have been recalled, rearmed and revictualled and sent out again in the course of the past few days.
Or that might be happening now. If the convoy was only now entering the Med, say – escort including a battleship and a carrier or two joining it out of Gib, as Shrimp had indicated. Not that such heavyweights were likely to stay with the convoy even as far as this central basin. Destroyers and maybe a cruiser or two would quite likely come through to Malta, but air-cover would by that stage be from the island itself – from Luqua, Ta’ Qali, Hal Far.
‘Sir?’
Breaking out of his thoughts: focusing on Jarvis across the littered table. ‘Yes, Sub?’
‘Think shifting Swordsman to Cagliari might mean a convoy fnally?’
‘It might well.’
‘Wop fleet movements on the cards, then?’
He shrugged. ‘Say your prayers.’
Sunday forenoon prayers, for those so inclined, as in fact requested by several members of the ship’s company – notably Stoker PO Franklyn, who’d have liked a hymn or two as well as prayers, only no one else wanted to take it that far. Franklyn had a bass voice which he’d exercised more than once at concert parties, his favourite renditions being ‘Yours’ and ‘Trees’. Attendance in any case was voluntary, except for the men on watch in the control room, which was the obvious assembly point – after end of the compartment, beside the wireless office, leaving the area around the search periscope uncluttered. The muster was at eleven a. m., in McLeod’s watch, some watchkeepers joining in while still doing their jobs. Swathely on after ’planes for one, Walburton, Smithers and ERA Ellery as well. For Jarvis and Danvers the question of whether or not attendance was voluntary didn’t come into it, they were present simply as a matter of routine.
Mike finished, ‘– be with us all, evermore, Amen’ and asked McLeod, ‘Well?’
‘A/S schooners still bumbling around inshore, sir, and a Cant last seen flying north towards Ustica.’
Ursa currently a dozen miles north of Cape San Vito and steering northwest, patrolling much the same area she had yesterday – western half of the billet, approaches to the Isole Egadi. Course – unchanged in the past hour – 315 degrees, starboard motor slow grouped down and the other stopped. Prayers now finished, Mike paused at the chart, on which McLeod had put an 1100 fix. It was 1120 now. Mike told him, ‘Let’s come round to north, Jamie.’
‘Aye, sir.’ To Smithers, ‘Starboard ten.’
‘Starboard ten, sir …’
McLeod’s hand up to switch off the trimline telegraph: churchgoers departing both for’ard and aft had affected the trim, and he’d got it back in hand now. Needles on 28 feet exactly, bubble half a degree aft. The surface was choppy but down here it was absolutely still, the single motor at slow speed barely audible. Mike followed Danvers and Jarvis into the wardroom, with the words of the naval prayer he’d intoned a few minutes ago repeating themselves annoyingly in his consciousness – out of what was virtually lifetime familiarity. Be pleased to receive into thy almighty and most gracious protection the persons of us thy servants and the fleet in which we serve. Preserve us from the dangers of the sea, and from the violence of the enemy …
Well, they did get violent – when they thought they could get away with it. Could hardly be met with anything but counter-violence. When possible, with added interest. He heard Smithers reporting next-door, ‘Course north, sir’, and McLeod’s gruff acknowledgement. Hiss of the periscope rising then. Jarvis was at the table leafing through the torpedo log and progress book, and Danvers was turning in. Mike reached to the head of his own bunk for the Scott Fitzgerald. Couple of hours on this course, he thought, then spin a coin.
After lunch he’d altered back to 315 degrees, chatted with McLeod for a while then got his head down. Long-range fixes on San Vito and Gallo had put her well out, with plenty of elbow-room, and he thought he’d spend the night motoring due east across the northern part of the billet, midway between San Vito/Gallo and Ustica.
He’d been dreaming of Ann, who’d surprised him with the question, ‘So what do we do about it?’ Inference being that Melhuish knew about them and she was putting the ball squarely in Mike’s court, although the only way he could know would be if she’d told him. Then Danvers’ voice – not all that loud, but excited, raised in tone – ‘Captain in the control room!’ – with the effect of a stick in a beehive, not just his own instant transference but general upheaval, the big periscope halfway down and now checked, rising again, his hands crooked ready for it, swift assessment meanwhile being time 1550, depth 28 feet, course as he knew anyway 315, starboard motor slow ahead grouped down; CERA McIver bringing the ’scope to a halt as Danvers announced – controlled, level tone of voice – ‘Smoke on green three-oh, sir.’
Settling the ’scope’s annotated cross-bar sights on it. Darkish-grey smudge with a smear extending left to right on an horizon barely crinkled although the foreground and mid-field had as much white in it as light blue. For which thank God. Swivelling the right-hand grip upward into sky-search for a fast sweep overhead and all round, then an equally swift but thorough all-round surface check. Back on the smoke – bare toes stubbing against the iron rim of the periscope’s well – bare feet under crumpled khaki slacks, old checked shirt outside them. It was funnel-smoke, all right, but out of what … ? A movement of the fingers: ‘Up.’ McIver lifting the control-lever again, deckhead wire purring round its sheaves and the greased yellowish barrel of the ’scope slithering higher, Mike extending with it from a knees-bent position to his full height or near it. Stopped: at maximum extent, top glass something like three to four feet out of water. Focusing on and around the smoke again – and picking up another less dense streamer clear of it to the left. Which confirmed what had seemed a good bet right from the moment of Danvers’ summons – either ships in company, convoy or squadron, or one or more ships valuable enough to be escorted.
He folded the handles up. ‘Half ahead together. Diving stations. Forty feet.’ And through the sudden, fast flux of movement, to Smithers who as Red watch helmsman was staying put – same job at diving stations – ‘Starboard ten, steer three-four-oh.’ Ship’s head currently 315, the smoke had been on green 27, 340 would put her heading within a couple of degrees straight at it, with any luck into periscope visibility-range by the time he poked it up again. Dog i
mpatient to see rabbit now – and expecting to – when you’d seen smoke and you and its source were closing each other, it tended not to be long before you had a sight of mastheads, funnel-tops. Meanwhile the close, fast rush subsiding, familiar figures were where you’d have expected them to be – including McLeod at work on the trim, in this first minute or two coping with changes of both weights and depth. Needles in the gauges just settling on 40 feet – depth-change like the increase in speed being a precaution against losing trim even to the extent of breaking surface, buggering the whole damn thing.
Had been known to happen – though not to Ursa. Please God never would.
‘Thirty feet, Number One.’
‘Thirty, sir …’
Mike told Danvers – the rest of them too of course, but Danvers who was at the chart table ready to start a plot which when up and running would provide at least an approximation of target’s course and speed, ‘Still only smoke but another lot up close.’And McLeod, ‘Slow both motors when you can, Number One.’ Moving Danvers’ plotting diagram sheet off the chart, giving a moment’s thought to his own initial concept of the target’s likely course – whatever the hell the target was. Steering to pass around the Marettimo corner was obvious enough, but whether to hug the turn tightly or take it wide – destination Hammamet for instance as distinct from Bizerta – probably zigzagging, in any case, further to confuse the issue.
‘Thirty feet, sir.’
‘Make it twenty-eight. Slow both motors.’
‘Slow together. Twenty-eight feet.’
Jangle of the telegraph. Cox’n Swathely’s murmured echo of ‘Twenty-eight’; PO Tubby Hart, lips pursed, tilting his fore ’planes very slightly upward, just momentarily.
Submariner (2008) Page 12
