A Ship Must Die (1981)

by Reeman, Douglas

  He heard some of the watchkeepers murmuring between themselves and walked out into the sunlight again to study the oncoming cruiser.

  He saw the smoke fanning from her two funnels, the sea sweeping back from her stem in a great moustache of white foam. She was capable of thirty-two knots, according to Storch’s copy of Jane’s Fighting Ships.

  A powerful light blinked across the water like a diamond.

  ‘Heave to!’ Petty Officer Fackler peered at his captain uncertainly.

  ‘Stop engines.’

  Rietz glanced at Storch, wondering if he still remembered what they had been discussing only an hour or so ago. On the face of it he knew the young lieutenant was right. The second raider, the Wölfchen, had achieved real success in a matter of weeks. The big Australian cruiser Devonport must have seemed like a disaster to the enemy. Not a single spar or stick had been found. Rietz had wondered more than once what had happened to the survivors, if there were any. He thought of the other kills made by the second raider, the Argyll Clansman and the crippled Kios, and set them against the face he remembered of the man who commanded Salamander’s twin. It seemed unlikely.

  He had served with the other captain early in the war, in the sunny days when they had swept through the Baltic, the North Sea and deep into the South Atlantic. Fregattenkapitän Konrad Vogel, so beloved then by the war correspondents, with his flashing smile and jaunty beard, the tiger of the convoy routes.

  Perhaps he was the right man for this kind of work. Maybe the early days of respect for an enemy on the high seas were a hindrance.

  Storch had been hinting as much, although Rietz knew he was speaking out for his captain’s sake. He hated Vogel’s triumphs, his conceit, his cruelty.

  The strange thing was that the enemy still did not realize there were two radiers working in the same ocean. It had been worked out to perfection in Kiel by the Grand Admiral himself. A new system of grids and rendezvous points. Fewer signals to avoid detection, greater care to move well clear of each other, but not too much to avoid suspicion. Whereas Salamander had made the long and precarious voyage from Germany, up and through the Denmark Strait and then southwards through the Atlantic, Vogel’s Wölfchen had already been in Japan, fitting out under German supervision, when the plan had been decided.

  He thrust Vogel from his mind as he studied the Australian cruiser. She was steering diagonally towards the drifting raider, her three turrets angled round and no doubt loaded with armour-piercing shells.

  Storch said between his teeth, ‘The officer you captured, sir, he may be watching you.’ He sounded anxious.

  Rietz shook his head. ‘I had a beard then.’

  He tried to remember the man whose broad pendant now flew above the oncoming warship. Commodore Rodney Stagg. But he could recall only his size, his uncontrollable anger.

  He thought instead of the other man who was hunting him. Captain Blake of the light-cruiser Andromeda. Against the pair of them he and Vogel were well matched, when you considered it.

  A lookout called, ‘She’s preparing to lower a boat, sir!’

  Rietz examined his feelings. Why did he feel nothing? This was the moment. Once aboard, the enemy would know. Even alongside it would be too close for deception.

  He said quietly, ‘All guns stand by. Release the shutters over the torpedo tubes.’

  Storch plucked at the front of his shirt, his eyes on the cruiser as if mesmerized.

  He said, ‘Not long now, sir.’

  Rietz glanced at him. Poor Storch, he had not had much of a life. He had been about to marry a girl in Hamburg, but she had died in an air raid.

  Feet clattered through from the chartroom and Schoningen, the navigating officer, hurried towards him.

  ‘Sir! We have intercepted a signal to Fremantle and Andromeda. Unidentified ship reported. We also picked up something about an enemy aircraft down in the sea.’ He seemed to realize the nearness of the big cruiser and added in a strained voice, ‘Instructions, sir?’

  Rietz turned swiftly as the first lieutenant exclaimed, ‘They are hoisting their boat and the Walrus is preparing to come down alongside the ship!’

  ‘All guns standing by, sir! Torpedo tubes ready!’

  Rietz said softly, ‘Fingers crossed, everybody!’

  The light began to blink again, and only the squeak of the signalmen’s pencils broke the silence.

  ‘From HMAS Fremantle to Patricia. Proceed to Port Said as instructed. You will meet with northbound convoy and escort. You will remain with same until otherwise ordered.’

  In a strangled voice Storch said, ‘She’s almost stopped! My God, we could sink her right now, sir!’

  Rietz thrust his hands into his pockets. Throughout his command his men would be thinking like Storch. Their executioner was almost motionless as she prepared to recover the Walrus from the water. There would never be another chance like it. Fremantle looked as big as a block of flats and she must be held in a dozen sets of gunsights like a giant in a net.

  He said calmly, ‘Reply, thank you for your help.’ He looked at Storch’s confused features. ‘If we are near a convoy, why not do as the commodore suggests?’

  A messenger called, ‘The Fremantle’s radio is transmitting, sir!’

  Rietz looked at Storch again. ‘See? We are expected.’

  He turned to watch the Walrus rising up on its crane to the cruiser’s deck and noticed that the ship was already getting under way, curving away even as he watched.

  Storch exclaimed hoarsely, ‘The convoy, sir? The whole convoy?’

  Rietz reached out and gratefully accepted a cigar from Petty Officer Fackler.

  ‘You were just telling me to watch out for the Wölfchen’s successes against our modest victories, eh?’ He turned to the voice-pipes. ‘Resume course and speed. Revolutions for fourteen knots.’

  Storch said, ‘I am sorry, sir.’

  Rietz shrugged. ‘We need supplies. We have too many mouths to feed, so many leagues to steam. I did not choose the killing ground, Rudi.’ His eyes hardened as he watched the cruiser turning end on and increasing speed towards the horizon. ‘He did.’

  ‘Convoy in sight, sir!’ The petty officer stepped aside as Rietz levered himself from the throbbing plot table and turned towards the wheelhouse.

  It was the first time they had broken their admiral’s rules. Usually, the code would be flashed to both raiders together. To assume an already planned disguise, so that they would appear identical in the reports from survivors, if there were any.

  But with two cruisers verified in this vicinity it would have been foolish to ignore the advantages gained by the Swedish disguise, the fact she was known to be heading for Port Said. Only when the owners or agents sent a signal with instructions for her master would the alarm be raised. Unless Rietz could force the Swedish master to send a false signal. He decided against it immediately. There was always the chance the Swede had had time to plan for such a moment. In any case, losing his ship was enough humiliation for any man, Rietz thought.

  He walked out into the sunlight and raised his glasses.

  Storch said, ‘Seven vessels, sir, and two escorts. Small local convoy. Probably from Zanzibar. No other warships reported.’ He clenched his jaw as he levelled his own glasses over the screen. ‘Not much of an escort. The gunnery officer tells me the destroyer is an old one from the Great War and the other is a corvette.’

  Rietz considered it. A small convoy in two unmatched lines steaming across blue, untroubled waters. The Fremantle would have signalled the escort commander. It would all be a matter of timing.

  ‘Increase to fifteen knots, Rudi. Tell the gunnery officer I wish to engage from either beam simultaneously. The destroyer first. Torpedoes, full salvo. We will engage her to starboard.’

  He pictured their position on his big chart table, the officers and men grouped around it as they always did. They were known as the ‘Family’ by the rest of the ship’s company, exclusive in their special place abaft the
bridge, free from the boring weariness of painting and re-painting or creating new disguises.

  Fremantle would be many miles away by now. It was to be hoped that the commodore had not fallen on another supply ship. It was unlikely, but the men who commanded the raiders’ suppliers had a lot to worry about. Rather like running a grocer’s shop in the middle of an air bombardment.

  Where was Andromeda? he wondered. Intelligence had reported her clear of Port Elizabeth, so she was probably well to the south of their own position. One great ocean. Curiously enough, he did not think about Vogel’s Wölfchen at all.

  ‘Guns standing by, sir!’

  ‘Good.’

  Rietz watched the two lines of ships, the sudden stab of a signal lamp from the out-dated destroyer. The signalman was sending in careful, precise English, just for the Swedish master’s benefit. Patricia was to take station at the rear of the port column to make the lines even. Just as Rietz had anticipated. A tidy arrangement for the escort commander.

  ‘Acknowledge the signal.’

  Rietz glanced at the bridge team, the way some of them had their German naval caps stuck behind voice-pipes or lockers so that they could put them on when action was joined. It would not help much if you were killed.

  It was a very slow convoy, and in the ocean’s comparative calm the lean-hulled destroyer was rolling sickeningly as she sought to keep station on her charges. Two sizeable freighters, a coaster with a top-heavy deck cargo and what appeared to be a small tanker. The other three were masked by their consorts. The stubby corvette was the problem. She was at least two miles ahead of the convoy. With her tiny armament she presented no menace, but her radio was something else entirely. But it was a convoy, and to destroy it within days of entering harbour would create pandemonium and give Vogel a chance to avoid detection until he had refuelled.

  Rietz watched the destroyer narrowly. She was on the starboard bow now, her signal lamp flashing at another ship in the convoy which had probably edged out of her proper station.

  ‘Alter course, Rudi. Steer for the port line, astern of that freighter.’

  He walked to the rear of the bridge, still able to ignore the snap of orders, the muted stammer of morse from the radio room.

  He picked up the red handset and waited for the engineroom to answer.

  ‘Leichner? This is the captain. Full speed in about ten minutes. Everything, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’ The line went dead.

  Rietz moved to the bridge windows and peered down at the forward well-deck where some seamen were dragging themselves below the bulwark, heavy machine-guns and ammunition making their progress slow and painful. Somewhere deep in the hull a bell set up a short clamour, and Rietz could picture the torpedo tubes training on the bearings being passed down from the gunnery team.

  The destroyer was almost abeam, rolling from side to side, hating the slow progress, when built originally for speed and agility. Rietz studied her calmly. It was rare to be so close to an enemy. She was barely half a cable away. He glanced at his watch. They were probably having their midday meal. Cursing at the motion, the way all sailors did.

  The speaker intoned, ‘Aftermost guns will now bear, sir. Ready to fire.’

  Rietz made himself wait, counting the seconds to control his heart beats. Surely someone would notice how high his ship was in the water? The Salamander was the largest vessel in the convoy. Perhaps her neutral markings had stripped away her possible menace.

  ‘Stand by!’

  A seaman strolled with elaborate nonchalance to the foot of the foremast, and Rietz knew he was carrying the German ensign inside a roll of canvas.

  He glanced over at Storch, who was watching like an athlete under the starter’s pistol.

  Rietz nodded. ‘Now.’

  Bells jangled throughout the ship, and Rietz felt the deck shudder as the massive steel shutters fell open along either side of the hull and the big five-point-nine guns swung outboard.

  The bridge began to quiver as the chief engineer obeyed the telegraphs, and within ten seconds of the order three torpedoes leapt from their tubes, splashed gracelessly into the water and then speeded towards the destroyer, vicious and eager in their proper element.

  ‘Open fire!’

  Men were yelling and cursing, their cries suddenly lost and puny as the great guns crashed inboard on their springs, the smoke billowing over the rusty plates in a solid bank. Machine-guns hammered through the drifting fog, the tracer vivid and deadly as it swept across the destroyer and the ship immediately ahead of her.

  From the guns on the port side long orange tongues stabbed towards the nearest freighter as Salamander’s helm went over and she turned diagonally between the two lines of ships.

  Rietz blinked as a towering column, then another, burst up the side of the destroyer, followed instantly by a violent explosion and a jet of escaping steam. The third torpedo had missed its target, but the others were more than enough. The escort was swinging round, one funnel toppling overboard like cardboard while smoke and then searing flames burst through the fractured deck. Rietz saw figures running towards the gun positions, then being plucked aside as the tracer licked over them and scythed back again for anyone who had survived.

  Another explosion crashed against the raider’s bilge and Rietz saw the destroyer begin to capsize, her screws still racing as she was blasted apart by her magazines.

  Rietz moved his glasses to the other ships, his mouth bone-dry as he heard the old destroyer go into a plunge, her end made even more desperate by the hissing steam, the rumble of water pouring into her hull as the screws continued to drive her down.

  He heard his gunnery officer, Busch, rapping out bearings and targets as the individual weapons sought out the careering merchantmen. Two of the ships in convoy seemed to have collided and were soon ablaze as the starboard battery’s shells slammed into them, hurling sparks and fragments high above their mastheads.

  Someone was attempting to send a distress signal, but the transmission ended as more shells transformed the tanker into a blazing inferno, spilling burning fuel amongst the other vessels and screaming swimmers to add to the horror.

  The Salamander seemed to be hemmed in by blazing ships and blinded with smoke. The first anxiety had given way to a desperate madness, so that men yelled and cheered through the haze and din like souls in torment.

  One ship, a medium sized tramp steamer, apparently undamaged, had almost stopped.

  Rietz shouted, ‘Signal her captain to await our boarding party! Do not transmit! Do not scuttle!’

  A lookout, his face bleeding from a piece of wreckage blasted from one of the convoy, pointed wildly.

  ‘Sir! The enemy!’

  Rietz ran to the forepart of the bridge, his ears cringing to the crash and recoil of his guns.

  The lookout was dazed, almost incoherent. The enemy. To a raider, everyone was that.

  He heard Storch yell, ‘That ship has acknowledged, sir! She’s stopped lowering her boats!’

  Rietz could only stare through the smoke, past the chaos his guns had caused in so short a time, towards the small grey shape which was moving end on towards him. It was the corvette, made even smaller from this angle, her solitary gun already flashing from her forecastle as she pounded towards the stricken convoy.

  Rietz felt the hull lurch under him, heard a chorus of cries as a shell exploded somewhere between decks.

  Storch said incredulously, ‘By God, he’s attacking!’

  ‘Starboard guns, change target! Warship bearing Green one-five!’ Obediently the smoke-stained muzzles trained round even further until they were locked on the tiny, defiant warship. ‘Fire!’

  Salamander gave another jerk as a shell from the corvette exploded close to her waterline. Splinters clanged and whined through the hull, and Rietz heard someone shouting for stretcher-bearers.

  The corvette seemed to stop dead, as if she had hit a submerged reef. Then, as another salvo tore the sea apart in spra
y and flames she started to settle down by the bow, the gun abandoned as the sea surged aft towards the bridge.

  Rietz called, ‘Cease firing! Away all boats. Lieutenant Ruesch with boarders to that ship which is unharmed. The rest pick up survivors.’

  He gritted his teeth as the corvette dived and then seemed to break surface again like a sounding whale. But it was only her stern, blasted away by depth charges which had exploded as she had plunged to the bottom. Someone had failed to set some of the charges to ‘safe’. In the swiftness and ferocity of the attack it was not surprising.

  Rietz watched the widening pattern of oil, the bobbing pieces of flotsam and finally the dead fish, killed by the depth charges. He turned away as the other fragments appeared amongst the floating fish.

  ‘See what you can do, Rudi. We will keep under way until we know what is happening.’

  Men stumbled past him, eyes glazed as they left their weapons to lower boats, to receive any survivors brought aboard.

  But all Rietz could see was the little corvette hurrying towards him, her battle ensigns hoisted as she faced impossible odds. Foolishness? Supreme courage? They often went hand in hand.

  Rietz ran his gaze over the listing and burning victims of his attack. Both escorts gone, the oil tanker and the biggest freighter also sunk. The others, apart from the solitary freighter which awaited the boarding party like a guilty spectator, were either sinking or beyond aid.

  ‘Order them to abandon and take to their boats. As soon as they are alongside we will sink the ships by gunfire.’

  Moving now very slowly the raider edged past the smoking ships, her shadow covering the drifting corpses and flotsam like a cloak.

  Storch hurried back to the bridge, his eyes on the life-boats which were already being urged towards the Salamander’s side.

  He said, ‘That last shell from the corvette penetrated the medical store and killed the doctor, sir. Who will take care of the wounded from these ships?’

  Rietz eyed him dully. ‘And the Swedish ship carried no doctor either.’

  He raised his glasses to examine the nearest life-boats. The anxious faces, the wounded lying amongst their comrades, here and there a gesture of defiance towards the German motor boat which carried them like a sheepdog. More mouths to feed. Men to guard, but as Storch had already commented, no doctor to care for the injured and dying.