In the Line of Fire (A Donald Cameron Naval Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘What you are — boring.’

  ‘Now look ‘ere,’ Tomkins began belligerently. ‘Boring! No one calls me that an’ gets away with it, no one. You, you’re just a puffed up little bleedin’ poofter wot thinks ‘e can stamp over everyone’s ‘eads to a muckin’ officer’s billet… you know something, Mister bleedin’ Cameron, Your Lordship? You could say you’re bleedin’ oistin’ yourself to a commission over the bodies of the dead, couldn’t you, eh?’

  Cameron wanted nothing so much as to smash a fist into Tomkins’ unpleasant face, but that way lay First Lieutenant’s report and a CW rating had above all to keep his nose clean and not appear at Defaulters on serious charges, or any charge at all preferably. So he shrugged and took no notice; Tomkins continued his baiting but Leading-Seaman Farrow came back and it stopped.

  *

  Men who go down to the sea in ships are frequently believers in the Almighty without being what a landsman would call religious. Divine Service in barracks and in capital ships might well not have been attended at all if it were not a matter for compulsory parades. But something about the very fearfulness of nature and the sea itself tends to make a man believe in something greater than himself controlling it all. And miracles at sea are not entirely absent from the reckoning; God’s hand appears when most needed. Cameron had found this sense of the presence of a superior force among the trawlermen; and this morning, as dawn began slowly and reluctantly to break into something approaching day, the look of deliverance hove in sight from the eastward.

  She was seen first by the starboard lookout on the compass platform. ‘Ship fine on the starboard quarter, sir!’

  Seymour’s binoculars came up; he was half expecting a surface raider — perhaps the Scharnhorst or the Gneisenau, perhaps one of the German pocket-battleships (or as the BBC had rendered it in the case of the burning Graf Spee off Montevideo, German bottle-packetships).Thus his look was a long and careful one.

  He said, ‘I believe it’s the rescue tug.’ He turned to the Leading-Signalman. ‘She’s not calling — I doubt if she’s seen us.’ They were somewhat too low in the water to be seen from the tug’s range, while the Westward Bay, who was certainly big enough, had been out of sight for most of the night after the collision. ‘Call her up. Use the general call-sign.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  The general call-sign went out by lamp, and Seymour waited impatiently. The reply was just what he hoped to hear.

  RESCUE TUG FORCEFUL. ASSUME YOU ARE HMS CARMARTHEN. SECOND TUG WILL ARRIVE FOR WESTWARD BAY WITHIN TWELVE HOURS. DO YOU KNOW WESTWARD BAY’S CURRENT POSITION.

  Seymour almost threw his sou’wester into the air. ‘Answer: “she is somewhere astern of me. Congratulations on a good rendezvous”.’

  The signal went out; within minutes the word had gone round the ship that rescue was imminent. Seymour passed the order: ‘Prepare to tow aft,’ and the hands worked like demons to be ready to take the tug’s tow-line. Forceful was soon seen clearly, steaming fast towards them and sending up great gouts of water that were flung back over her blunt bows as she bit her stem into the sea. She had a pugnacious look that fitted her name — pugnacious and strong. She came up on Carmarthen’s lee quarter and began signalling again, this time to say she now had Westward Bay in view distantly on the horizon. The visibility was improving as the daylight increased, and the tug’s higher bridge gave her master a longer view. Seymour brought up his glasses but was as yet unable to see the Westward Bay. However, now that she had shown up and was available, he knew well enough what he had to do: she was the more valuable ship to the war effort, because of her military cargo. And he was the escort. The shepherd… and the shepherd didn’t leave the sheep to drown.

  He took a deep breath and called, ‘Yeoman!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Make to Forceful: “I shall await the arrival of the next tug. Your tow should be passed to Westward Bay”.’

  The signal was made and acknowledged; the tug hauled off at once, passing down Carmarthen’s side towards the listing merchant ship, butting through the seas, disappearing into the valleys and rising again to the crests. It was going to be the devil of a job for her to get a tow across to the merchantman, Seymour thought, and a continuing foul job to make the tow all the way home with seas such as they were experiencing… but his thoughts were bitter as hopes of rescue faded towards the west. And along his leaky decks the obscenities flew; heroics were all very well, but disappointment was cruel. They all had families to get home to. There was a grudging acceptance that the skipper had been right, but now a total despondency came down like a cloud over the destroyer. They couldn’t possibly make it back to the UK. One rescue tug had got through, but to expect another was asking for the moon. There were plenty of Jerries around, above as well as below the North Atlantic waves. This pessimism was to prove only too well founded: as in due course the tug, now with the Westward Bay under tow behind her, moved slowly past Carmarthen to the east, a lamp began flashing from her starboard bridge wing to be read off by the Leading-Signalman.

  He reported, grey-faced, to the Captain. ‘From Forceful, sir. Rescue tug Alacrity has broken wireless silence to report strong air attack. Last message indicated she was about to abandon.’

  Seymour nodded. ‘Acknowledge,’ he said. That was all; there was nothing else to say. The ship’s company watched in grim silence as the Westward Bay moved past, the towing wire with its rope spring lifting and dipping between the wave-crests; too much lifting and it would part, Seymour thought. A tow should remain submerged, but in seas like this it was asking a lot of it. Below on the iron-deck Stripey Tomkins lifted a fist and shook it, first towards the compass platform, then towards the passing Westward Bay from which a farewell signal was coming.

  ‘Bastards,’ he said savagely. ‘Bastards the lot of you!’

  ‘Shut your bloody gab,’ Leading-Seaman Farrow said, and turned to the rest of the hands standing by the guns and torpedo-tubes. ‘Poor sods’ll likely come under air attack soon enough,’ he said. ‘Let’s give ‘em a cheer, right?’

  Farrow led the cheers as the sou’westers were waved in the air. It was probably, certainly in fact, unheard aboard the Westward Bay; but Seymour heard it and it warmed his heart a little, and he waved his own sou’wester towards the departing vessels. They were all seamen together, after all. Farrow’s action and the response to it made him more proud than ever of his ship’s company.

  *

  The next day’s noon sight put Carmarthen some fifty miles nearer the Bloody Foreland; the eastward drift, however slow, was continuing, thanks to the wind. In Rosyth, the last reported information for the plot was that Carmarthen was lying in latitude 18 west, longitude 55 north. This was only an estimate and it was recognized that it could be inaccurate; and in any case it was out of date. Of recent events Rosyth knew nothing, and would have no further information until the tug Forceful was able to report in home waters, which would not be for some days since the tow could proceed only slowly. It was known that Alacrity had come under heavy air attack by the German FW 200s and had been forced to abandon. Any survivors would now be rolling about in the floats; and the ship she had been despatched to take in tow would now remain where she was unless and until another tug could be despatched. Currently, this ship was believed to be the Westward Bay; it was assumed that Carmarthen was already under tow of Forceful or soon would be always providing that the dead reckoning of the destroyer’s position was not too far out.

  The Staff Officer (Operations) was on the closed line to the Admiralty in Whitehall. He was making urgent representations that another tug be made available to bring in the crippled Westward Bay. There was no other tug capable of the job available in the Forth or in the Orkneys either; and the Clyde had been unable to help.

  ‘Sorry,’ the remote voice of Admiralty replied. ‘Awfully sorry, old chap, but we can’t help either. We’re over-stretched as it is.’

  ‘Portsmouth dockyard —’

&nbs
p; ‘No. Portsmouth has nothing available, nor has Devonport. Sorry.’ It was no use; SO(O) banged down the scramble line. He hadn’t had many hopes — for one thing, the whole Navy in home waters, give or take a few ships, had moved north into Scottish bases soon after the outbreak of war and the southern dockyards were virtually empty. If the Forth and the Clyde had nothing, then that was more or less that, but the formal request had had to be made. There was one more line that could be tried, and SO(O) tried it: he called the Admiral direct and outlined the situation.

  He said, ‘We have Nottingham available, sir.’

  ‘Nottingham? This isn’t a cruiser’s job!’

  SO(O) agreed, up to a point. ‘Not for the tow, sir, but she could provide anti-aircraft cover at least.’ Nottingham, a County Class cruiser of some ten thousand tons, had recently been converted to an anti-aircraft ship; just recommissioned as such, she was on working-up exercises from the Rosyth base. ‘First-class practice, sir,’ the Staff Officer urged.

  ‘Damn it, she’s working up! She’s not yet operational, Commander.’

  ‘That’s true, sir. But ack-ack cover could be absolutely vital to the Westward Bay’s survival. There’s the Carmarthen, too, presumably coming in under tow. We don’t know her latest state, but it’s a fair assumption she’s in a very bad way by now. Nottingham’s cover could make all the difference, sir… as you know, destroyers don’t make very good ack-ack ships. And it’s not as though we’d be taking Nottingham off other duties, seeing she has none at this moment.’

  The persuasive voice went on; Mary Anstey listened to it, hoping against hope that it would get through effectively to the Admiral. Although she hadn’t been long in Rosyth, just a matter of days, she had gathered that the Admiral was not easy to shift. He was an admiral who worked by the book — by King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions. That could mean that ships supposed to be working-up didn’t get operational orders. On the other hand the Admiral had once been a destroyer man himself; that had been his speciality, and he had advanced to command of a flotilla as Captain (D) before his promotion to the Flag List. That might weigh, which was why SO(O) was stressing Carmarthen’s predicament; Mary Anstey went on listening and hoping and found her heart going at a tremendous rate that seemed about to stop her breathing. Then SO(O) put the telephone down and caught the eye of a lieutenant-commander. ‘Orders for Nottingham,’ he said briskly. ‘She’s to prepare for sea immediately. Detailed orders will reach her within the next hour, by hand of officer from the Admiral.’

  Mary Anstey breathed again and realized that her eyes were wet. Off duty that afternoon, she was watching as Nottingham steamed outwards beneath the Forth Bridge.

  *

  The leaks continued through the sprung plates, but seemed to be coped with by the pumps and the baling-out efforts of the seamen, slopping’ about the wardroom flat. The ship was a sieve. In fact, according to Matthews who came to the compass platform to say so, the pumps were not coping adequately.

  ‘She’s lower in the water,’ he said. ‘Much longer, and we’ll submerge.’

  Seymour detected blame in the Engineer Officer’s tone, blame still for his action in flooding aft. Matthews sounded sourly vindicated. He went on as Seymour didn’t respond, ‘I reckon we may have sprung more bulkheads below — round the magazines, for instance — when we were bouncing off the Westward Bay. If so…’ He raised his arms eloquently.

  ‘If so,’ Seymour said, ‘there’s nothing we can do about it and you know it, Chief.’

  ‘Yes. More’s the pity.’ Matthews proceeded to underline, verbally, what Seymour had noted already in his manner. ‘If we’d never flooded aft —’

  ‘All right, Chief, that’s history. I could have been wrong. If I am, I’ll be told so by the Admiralty, don’t worry! In the meantime I stand by what I did and we all have to make the best of it. Understood?’

  ‘Understood,’ Matthews said ungraciously. ‘It’s just a bloody pity, that’s all.’ He turned away, the wind blowing out his oil-stained white overalls, which were soaked through after just a couple of minutes of the upper deck and compass platform. As he reached the ladder he was sharply called back.

  ‘Chief.’

  ‘Yes?’ Matthews turned.

  Seymour walked towards him and kept his voice low. ‘You and I, Chief… we’re the senior officers. Bridge and engine-room. But I’m the Captain. Let there be no mistake about that. Don’t let’s fall out, right? It wouldn’t be good for the ship — would it?’

  Matthews stared him in the face, sour and arrogant, then turned away without a word and clattered down the ladder. Seymour’s hands balled into fists and his grey, weary face suffused for a moment. He stared down at the departing figure of his Engineer Officer. Matthews vanished into the battered superstructure aft of the compass platform, making for the engine-room hatch to dry out. Seymour turned away, still angry, but in control of himself. He found his thoughts had come close to murder; in a captain, such thoughts could be dangerous. Dangerous to a hell of a lot of men.

  Damn Matthews. Damn him to hell.

  *

  By now the wardroom flat was no use for dossing down; it was much too wet. More than a foot of water slopped from side to side, pouring over the coamings of the cabins as the destroyer lurched and rolled. The galley flat was just about the only place left for men off watch and here, too, leaks were starting as the bulkhead separating the flat from the seamen’s mess began to show signs of strain. Leading-Seaman Farrow set men to plug the leaks; Cameron found himself working alongside Stripey Tomkins.

  ‘Sod the ship,’ Tomkins said savagely as he struck a thumb with a hammer. He put the thumb in his mouth and sucked away the pain, plus some blood which he spat out again. Then he said, ‘It’s all that Lavington.’

  ‘How come?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘Jonah.’

  Cameron laughed. ‘Bullshit!’

  ‘Bullshit, is it?’ Tomkins glowered. ‘My arse! Jonahs are real, and Lavington’s one — little ponce! Takin’ ‘ome a bloody murderer, it’s askin’ for trouble.’

  ‘You’ll just have to put up with it, Stripey.’

  ‘I don’t know so much. An’ don’t be bloody cheeky, tellin’ me I ‘ave to put up with it.’ Tomkins dripped on, sounding dangerous. Cameron knew that to some of the older seamen jonahs were indeed real. They could be made to take the blame for all manner of sea ills and misfortunes, and there was no doubt whatsoever that Lavington was generating a very nasty taste. Tomkins’ loudly expressed views could find a fruitful seed bed. Yet it was hard to see what anyone could do about this particular jonah. Lavington was safe in the engineers’ store, still under a sentry, and his daily exercise period was very well supervised. If anyone — say Tomkins — had the idea Lavington could be shifted overboard, then that person wouldn’t have a hope of getting away with it. But men like Stripey Tomkins were wily enough, up to all the dodges even though they had a fairly limited intelligence. Tomkins just might fancy he saw a way that he could manage. Tomkins was going to need watching. There was nothing over-fanciful about it; Cameron had heard of unpopular petty officers vanishing on dark and stormy nights and afterwards the whole ship’s company clammed up and knew nothing, hadn’t seen or heard a thing. He knew beyond any doubt that the majority of Carmarthen’s ratings would see a watery grave as being a far better end for Lavington.

  He worked on, wet through, cold, tired, hungry; they seemed to be making little progress with the plugging. The leaks continued, spurting icy water across the galley flat. Beyond the bulkhead were curious sounds: trapped mess stools and tables surging about and banging against the plates, ominous noises not unlike the ship breaking up. Farther down in the stokers’ messdeck the waterlogged, bloated corpses would still be floating unless they had drifted out past the broken collision bulkhead, drifted out to sea to find peace. Cameron forced his mind away from thoughts like that: all too soon, they might all be the same, drifting corpses…

  Beside him, Tomkins
dripped on about Lavington.

  *

  Far to the eastward, HMS Nottingham had cleared the Firth of Forth past the Bass Rock, altering northward off May Island for Duncansby Head and the passage of the stormy Pentland Firth for Cape Wrath. From Cape Wrath she would head westerly across the top of Northern Ireland to take her departure from the Bloody Foreland out across the Atlantic on her search for the Westward Bay and to watch out for Carmarthen believed to be under tow; there had still been no word in Rosyth or anywhere else that the Westward Bay was coming slowly in.

  Nottingham was steaming fast, her high decks riding nicely clear of the seas as she came up the east coast of Scotland. Her ship’s company were currently in two watches, with the anti-aircraft batteries manned for immediate action, action that could always be expected from the hostile French coast in German hands. Her Captain had informed all hands over the tannoy as to what their mission was; the eyes of the lookouts would be keen enough and the newly-fitted RDF aerials would be on constant search as well. The area where the Westward Bay was expected to be found would be well and truly quartered but the Captain’s hopes were not particularly high. There was far too much water around and if success came, it would come largely as the result of sheer luck.

  As Nottingham began to approach the Pentland Firth, it seemed that something of that luck was in fact already on the way. A signal was received in her W/T office, a signal from Rosyth: this signal reported that an aircraft of Coastal Command, searching an area out in the Atlantic from the west coast of Ireland, had sighted a vessel under tow and had made contact by light. The vessel under tow was the Westward Bay, the towing vessel was the Forceful. The tug had passed the last known position of Carmarthen drifting helpless in the westerly gale. So now the facts were known in Rosyth.

  Nottingham’s captain put a finger on the reported position on the chart. ‘She’ll have drifted somewhat,’ he said to his Navigating Officer, ‘But she’ll not be too far off. We shouldn’t have too much difficulty now.’