by Alan Evans
Then she blew up, the blaze erupting in a fountain of wreckage that soared higher than the masts and fell around her in the sea. Her stern sagged, she stopped and across the half-mile of sea came the whistling roar as she blew off steam.
McLeod stood at Smith’s shoulder and said, ‘My God!’ And, ‘She’s lowering boats.’
She was. One was in the sea already and men clambering down into it while another was swung out and hung in the davits. Smith ordered, ‘Cease fire!’
McLeod demurred, ‘She hasn’t struck, sir.’
Smith glared at him. ‘Cease firing!’
‘Sir!’ McLeod jerked back from that cold glower and stooped over the voice-pipe to the guns: ‘Check! Check! Check!’
There was an ear-ringing silence. Smith was aware that the German ensign still flew from the raider’s mast. That might mean defiance or fouled halyards or just that no one had been ordered to strike it. The raider fired no gun, her crew were leaving her and she was sinking. Smith would not continue to fire into her.
He asked, ‘Where are our boats?’
‘About a mile south of us, sir.’
‘Starboard twenty.’ To run down to them. Minutes later he saw them heading to meet the ship, the motor-boat with her engine running and towing the other boat. He had scarcely expected to see them again; they had not expected to see Audacity. He had thought she might survive and still escape but dared not envisage the damage she would suffer, outgunned as she was. Devising a plan based on surprise to neutralise that enemy advantage was one thing; making it work was another.
*
Audacity recovered her boats and started to work up to twelve knots. The lookouts reported smoke to the west and McLeod said, ‘That must be our escort, sir.’ Smith looked out to starboard where the raider still lay, a mile away. She had settled, was decidedly lower in the water. Some of her boats were still alongside but others had pulled clear of her. The Danish coastline was not far. The raider still flew her ensign but she was sinking, no doubt of it. Smith was glad he had stopped firing into her.
He turned and went into his cabin, morbidly curious to see what damage had been done by that one big six-inch shell. He stood by the door and looked from the hole in the starboard side where the shell had entered, the edges of the steel plate ragged and bent as if hacked by a giant tin-opener, to the bigger hole to port. There the shell had burst and all that side of his cabin had disappeared. His bunk had gone and the gold with it, blasted into the sea, cut out of his ship like a cancer.
He heard Ross behind him in the wheelhouse: ‘I thought you’d like to know, sir, that we haven’t lost a man. Pearson says there’s not even a bad wound.’
‘Thank you.’
That was the main thing. There would be an inquiry into the loss of the gold but it would have to be secret and he could not be held guilty. The verdict would be ‘loss by enemy action’. To hell with it. He was taking his ship and his crew home safe.
He heard Ross’s voice faintly, passing on the news to McLeod, the pair of them out on the wing of the bridge. Then McLeod’s voice loud, startled: ‘Here! She’s fired a gun!’
Smith turned quickly back into the wheelhouse. He heard no roar like an express train, knew nothing.
*
He lay in the corner of the wheelhouse, right under the screen. Ross was saying, ‘Don’t move him! Find where he’s bleeding! Careful!’
McLeod: ‘All right. Where’s Pearson? Get Pearson up here on the double!’
Ross answered, ‘I’ve sent for him. What’s that bloody Hun doing?’
‘Nothing. She’s laid over on her side. She got that one round off then rolled. She’ll fire no more. Just that one.’
Smith could see them now, blank-faced with shock, kneeling either side of him. Two yards away to the right stood the coxswain at the wheel, legs planted solidly against the lift and fall as Audacity steamed westward. The door of his cabin hung sagging on its hinges. He thought the shell must have burst in there, lightning striking twice in the same place. Not supposed to happen.
He was bleeding, could taste it where it ran down his face and into his mouth, could feel it under his hands where they rested limp on the gratings, saw it around his feet. He was cold. All this cruise it had been cold. Ice, fog, shoals. He was tired.
Pearson shoved in at the wheelhouse door, his satchel of dressings swinging from one hand, Elizabeth Ramsay following and Buckley bringing up the rear. Ross and McLeod scrambled to their feet out of the way, Pearson and the girl took their places. Buckley crouched at Smith’s feet.
The girl asked, ‘Can’t you take him down?’
‘Got to take a look at him first, ma’am.’ Pearson’s fingers were already busy.
Smith spoke to Elizabeth Ramsay: ‘Listen. I have a house. Use it. Buckley, you hear that? Ross?’ He paused for their muttered answers, then: ‘You’re witnesses.’ He was tired and closed his eyes.
Pearson’s voice said, ‘Right. Where’s that stretcher?’
‘Here.’ That was McLeod.
Smith said, ‘Buckley? I made a right balls of it this time. Look after her, for God’s sake.’
*
Ross searched for the lamp. The two destroyers, in line ahead, were closing rapidly with sterns tucked down and big white bow-waves. He framed the signal in his head: ‘Request doctor for serious wounded…’ while his mind grappled with the realisation that he commanded Audacity now. He found the lamp and went out to the bridge-wing.
*
David Cochrane Smith was not passed fit for duty until late in October of that year and was at the house in Norfolk at the time of the Armistice. Early in 1919 he was requested to leave the Navy and did so with the rank of captain. In April he sailed for Yokohama to take up new employment in Japan. Elizabeth, his wife for almost a year, did not go with him. She was expecting their first child.
If you enjoyed reading Audacity, you might be interested in Seek Out and Destroy, also by Alan Evans.
Extract from Seek Out and Destroy by Alan Evans
1. Seek Out and Destroy
HM Light Cruiser Dauntless eased her battered frame through the night at a cautious ten knots. Her captain, Commander David Cochrane Smith, stood on her torn bridge and thought the November darkness was kind to her, hiding the ravages of her recent action, but she could wear her scars with pride because she had fought her fight and won.
He was thirty years old, a middle-sized, lean man, seeming frail, but that was deceptive. His thin face was drawn with tiredness now, the pale blue eyes narrowed by continual strain. But that night Dauntless was bound for the dockyard at Alexandria, only hours away, and the survivors of her crew were looking forward to leave in Cairo. Smith shared this anticipation, and there was a girl in Cairo who would share his leave...
The signal yeoman broke into Smith’s reverie: ‘Escort’s signalling, sir! Making the challenge to somebody ahead!’
Smith saw the winking light off the starboard bow where a destroyer patrolled, a black shape under her smoke. A second cruised to port, the pair then shepherding Dauntless. Another light flickered in the darkness ahead and the yeoman read the signal: ‘It’s the destroyer Harrier, sir.’
Harrier was expected. Only hours before Rear Admiral Braddock had sent a wireless signal that he was sailing from his shore command in Alexandria to meet Dauntless. That had surprised Smith: Braddock was a grim, taciturn near-seventy and not the man to come bustling out to offer congratulations. A growled ‘well done’ from Braddock counted as fulsome praise.
Smith paced across the bridge, halted to watch Harrier appear out of the night, slender and swift. No plodding ten knots for her. She ripped towards Dauntless at better than twenty knots with her big bow-wave a silver flame in the darkness, tore past her to port then turned neatly, reducing speed, to slide into station off the starboard beam. Again the light winked from her bridge and the yeoman reported, ‘Admiral’s coming aboard, sir.’
‘Very good. Stop both.’ That last to the men a
t the engine room telegraphs. The destroyer’s motor-boat was already dropping down to the sea as the way came off Dauntless. Smith left the bridge to Ackroyd, the First Lieutenant, and went to meet Braddock as he came aboard, broadchested, his black beard streaked with grey. He saw the Admiral’s sweeping glance along the upper deck where the entire superstructure was twisted wreckage and not a gun survived, saw Braddock scowl. Dauntless had been a lovely ship and Braddock remembered her so. But then he turned on Smith and said abruptly, ‘I’ve got orders for you.’
‘Orders?’ Smith could not believe it. ‘Sir, with respect, Dauntless is in no condition —’
‘Not for Dauntless. For you. Ackroyd assumes command of this ship now. Tell somebody to pack your kit and he’s only got ten minutes. Where can we talk?’
Smith wondered numbly if he had misheard or misunderstood. He was tired out — could his mind or his ears be playing tricks? Leave Dauntless in ten minutes? Why?
Braddock grumbled, ‘Come on, man! We haven’t got all night. Is that Buckley?’
It was Leading-Seaman Buckley, hovering discreetly close by, a big shadow in the gloom. Smith told him, ‘Pack my kit. All you can find. You’ve got ten minutes.’
‘Aye, aye, sir!’
Smith turned to Braddock. ‘We can talk in the sea-cabin, sir.’
It was at the back of the bridge, a small steel cubicle holding a desk, a chair and a bunk, Braddock hung up his cap, took the chair and Smith sat on the bunk. Braddock dug a fat envelope out of his pocket and tossed it on to the desk. ‘Your orders are in there, but I’ll tell you what they are. Admiral Winter commands the British cruiser squadron in the Adriatic. The operation’s his idea and he’s asked for you.’
The Adriatic. Italy was Britain’s ally there and she faced the Austrians across the Adriatic, fought them in the Alps in the north. This was the beginning of November. Smith tried to remember what he knew of weather in the northern Adriatic. There would be snow in the mountains, of course, a cold wind, plenty of fog.
Braddock said, ‘You probably know the Austrian fleet is not as strong as the Italian so since the start of the war they’ve followed a policy of maintaining a fleet-in-being, staying in their bases either at Trieste or at Pola, just across the northern Adriatic from Venice, knowing that that ties up the Italians who have to keep a similar fleet-in-being in Brindisi and Taranto in the south just in case the Austrians come out. Obviously the Italians can’t blockade Pola any more than we could mount a blockade of the German High Seas Fleet. Any attempt at that would leave the blockading ships wide open to attack by U-boats. So, stalemate. But now —’ He paused, then asked, ‘Have you heard of a Kapitan-zur-See Erwin Voss?’
Heard of him? More than that, Smith had met the man. But what had Voss to do with him now?
‘He has the reputation of a daring and aggressive officer.’
The admiral nodded his grizzled head. ‘The Germans have sent him to the Austrians as an “adviser”. Winter believes that’s eye-wash and Voss is there to instil dash and aggression into the Austrians, to set the Adriatic alight. We’ve had several attacks of jitters over the years when it looked like the German battlecruiser Goeben might break out of the Dardanelles into the Mediterranean, and that was just one battlecruiser. The Austrians have half a dozen battleships, three of them newish dreadnoughts. If they start rampaging up and down the Adriatic and that long Italian coastline, then the fat will be in the fire! The Italians should settle them but God knows what damage they might do first.’
Smith could imagine it. A force of capital ships like that could sink whole convoys and be back in port before any pursuing battle squadron could come up with them.
Braddock said grimly, ‘You take the point. The Austrians have a battlecruiser, too. Salzburg. She’s big, new and fast. Voss is aboard her and, Winter believes, effectively commanding her. He’s also convinced that Voss, in Salzburg, will give a lead in aggressive action.’
Smith thought that sounded more than likely. Salzburg was a fine ship and Voss was a fighter. But where was this leading?
Braddock went on, ‘Catching Voss at sea will not be easy and beating him something else again. That’s where you come in.’ He paused a moment, then finished: ‘Your orders are to seek out and destroy Salzburg — in harbour.’
Smith stared at him. ‘In harbour?’
Braddock nodded. ‘Don’t ask me how. I don’t know. But something’s planned, I’m sure. Your orders come from Admiralty and you have an independent command. That was at Winter’s insistence, oddly enough.’ It was very unusual for a senior officer to insist on a junior being given an independent role in waters where he commanded. Braddock continued, ‘The operation is most secret and the senior officer, that’s Winter, of course, is instructed to give you all assistance possible in his judgment. In other words, whatever command you get will come from him. There’s a letter from Winter with the orders, promising his support. He doesn’t say how the job is to be done but I’m sure he has ideas. Any questions? Though I warn you, I’ve told you all I know.’
There was one. ‘You said he asked for me, sir. Why?’
Braddock shrugged heavy shoulders. ‘I’ve known Jack Winter for donkey’s years. We keep in touch. He knows my opinion of you.’
Smith said incautiously, ‘I’ve heard one or two of your comments myself.’
Braddock scowled. ‘That’s right. You’ll hear more of the same, if necessary. I told him about some of the scrapes you’ve got into and been damn lucky to get away with. At sea — and ashore.’
He was talking about the women. There had been affairs: one of them scandalous, but that was in the past. Smith started angrily, ‘Sir!’ But he stopped there, Braddock’s eye on him. Few men argued with Rear Admiral Braddock.
Braddock sniffed, then grinned. It made him look younger. ‘Cheer up! He’s a good man, one of the best and you’ll have a command.’ He reached for his cap. ‘I’m looking to have a sea command myself before long. I’ve set up an organisation in Alexandria for convoys that’s virtually running on its own under my second-in-command. Fact is, he can probably do the job better than I can. So I’m making urgent requests to their Lordships for a sea appointment. Jack Winter has that squadron and I’m only five years older — and a sight fitter; I hear he’s in poor health. There was a time a sea appointment would have been out of the question at my age but the longer the war goes on the more men they need.’
He stood up. ‘You’ll transfer to Harrier now and she’ll take you to Venice. That’s at Winter’s order. His squadron is based at Brindisi but for some reason he wants you in Venice and quick. You’ll take Buckley, I suppose?’
Smith was surprised by the question. He had unthinkably assumed that the big leading hand would go with him. ‘Yes, sir.’
A startled Ackroyd was told he now commanded Dauntless and Braddock would go with him to Alexandria. The motor-boat took Smith to Harrier, Buckley with him, carrying Smith’s valise and his own kit-bag. Buckley had packed that on his own initiative. Where Smith went...
Harrier spun away and hastened north-westward, bound for the Adriatic and Venice. Smith stood on her bridge beside Lieutenant Commander Bennett, her captain, and watched Dauntless fade into the night astern. He was leaving a ship and men he knew for an unknown command. He had lost his leave in Cairo. He was sorry about the girl and felt a twinge of conscience then. He was fond of her and he told himself she deserved better than himself and this treatment. But soon the thought of his orders and what lay ahead drove her from his mind. Seek out and destroy...
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