by David Black
‘Musgrave!’ A piercing yell.
The Stoker shot from the tiny galley and stood smartly to attention in the passageway. ‘Sir.’
‘You have fed these two officers breakfast.’ It was a statement, not a question.
‘Sir,’ said Musgrave.
‘Why did you not wake me for breakfast?’ The question asked without Rais even affording Musgrave any semblance of attention to what he might say, as he snapped out his folded shirt and began meticulously buttoning himself into it. Harry thinking, Submariners don’t usually get fully undressed while on patrol because clothes take too long to get into if you’re in a hurry, and that Wykham, a new boy, had the excuse that he didn’t know any better.
‘Why didn’t you offer me any breakfast, Musgrave?’ said Rais, now busy stepping into his trousers. ‘Eh? Speak up!’
‘I told him not to,’ said Harry, ‘Sir.’
Telling a barefaced lie; knowing Musgrave and Wykham would know it; not caring whether Rais, who’d all the time been just the span of two rulers and the width of a curtain away, knew it too; and thinking, No good sailor is going to get a bollocking for nothing, while I’m on deck.
Rais, now looking directly at Musgrave, began speaking to Harry. ‘And why would you do that, Mr Gilmour?’
And here it comes, said Harry to himself; knowing exactly what was going to happen next; the words that were going to be said, and the full sad, pathetic implications of what Rais was about to do: give one of his officers a dressing-down in front of a member of the crew. Another little morale booster to start the working day.
‘I assumed you’d want to . . .’ Harry was going to say, get as much sleep before we surface, Sir, but Rais interrupted him – in front of a Stoker.
‘You assumed, Mr Gilmour? You assumed?’
‘Sir.’
‘What am I tired of telling you about assuming, Mr Gilmour?’
Rais had never told him anything about assuming, good or bad. Harry was looking directly at him, his face a study in poker blankness, but he was wondering, What age are you? Harry had turned twenty-one a bare six months ago. Rais was what? Maybe twenty-five? Not much older, if at all. And he was talking like a pedantic schoolmaster, not the Commanding Officer of one of His Majesty’s fighting submarines on operational patrol in wartime.
‘Sir,’ said Harry.
‘Sir, what?’ said Rais through gritted teeth.
‘Sorry, Sir.’
‘Sorry? Sorry?’ and as he spoke, Rais’s gaze fell back upon Musgrave. ‘And why are you still standing there gawping, sailor?’ Rais, like all of them, knowing full well that no sailor, standing before his Commanding Officer, can move even an inch without being dismissed.
And that was when the control room messenger arrived. ‘Cap’n to the control room, Sir. First Lieutenant’s compliments.’
Grainger, on watch, standing on the other side of the aft wardroom partition must have heard it all, and bided his time before deciding to break it up. Harry didn’t have to stick his head around the door to know he was probably smirking to himself right now – that sneery, supercilious bloody smirk.
Oh, well, thought Harry to himself. If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined.
Chapter Seven
It was the wee small hours, and the night had barely a couple of hours to run before first light. They were close inshore off the eastern end of the island of Elba, between Corsica and the Tuscan coast, trimmed well down so that really only Umbrage’s conning tower was showing above the slight chop and anyone looking inshore from the sea would see only the shadow of the cliffs behind them. Occasionally, however, the wedge of a waning moon would appear through the cloud cover to dapple the surface of the offing so that any potential target passing to seaward would be cast in sharp relief.
Harry was on watch again, taking Grainger’s stint because the CO wanted him ‘rested’ for the next day’s stalk. Rais had made it clear, using his usual histrionics, that he was determined he wasn’t going to miss with his last torpedo, and that was why he wanted his boat under the tightest control when he eventually found a home for it – and that meant his First Lieutenant on the trim board, ‘at concert pitch and champing to go’, as he put it, in a stage whisper all the boat could hear.
Two lookouts were on the bridge with Harry, and it was bloody cold. Umbrage was just drawing enough electrical power to her main motors for steerage way, the rest of the amps from the diesels going into the batteries. Below their feet, Harry and the lookouts could feel the diesels burble away, and up here on the bridge, the noise of them sounded as though it could be heard all the way to Naples, a mere 250 miles over the south-eastern horizon. Harry wasn’t all that worried about Elba, even though the loom of its shore off the port beam felt so close you could almost touch it in the dark. No, it had looked like a deserted coast on the approach: not a light, not a glimmer of a settlement, nor even a single house had shown. Harry had the two young Able Seamen facing seaward, covering the starboard bow and quarter, while he kept an occasional eye to make sure nothing unexpected had decided to row out to them from the rock-strewn cliff base that from the surf looked as though he could hit it with a well-lobbed NAAFI scone.
Harry hadn’t minded at all being ordered up for another watch. It was quiet with the two young lookouts intent on their work, and far away from the oppressive tedium below. Even when Rais was asleep, his dead hand of command lay across the boat. Take Jack enjoying a gasper, for example. Most boats allowed smoking when on the surface. But even when Umbrage was on the surface, her conning tower hatches open and her diesels sucking in fresh air, no one was allowed to smoke. Or Jack’s tot? A right that was sanctified, and ancient, under Naval law. Even though Umbrage carried her full spirit ration, Captain Rais had ordered that no tots of rum were to be issued or consumed while Umbrage was at sea – for although regulations entitled Jack to his daily ration, it remained at the discretion of the Captain when he was allowed to drink it.
That was why, here, in the dead of night, there was at least some peace to be had without having to continually worry about which of Rais’s orders, directives or even whims you’d failed to second-guess this time. Even the ratings didn’t mind turning up early for their lookout duties, especially if Mr Gilmour was Officer of the Watch, because as everyone knew now, if you did, Mr Gilmour would let you crouch down behind the bridge fairing and have a quick gasper before you did the handover. Three minutes was all you got, but at least there was some bastard aboard who gave a fuck about how Jack was doing. He wasn’t a bad lad for a Wavy Navy wonder – or maybe it was because of it.
Then the cloud cover began to thin, and as the escaping slivers of moonlight began to dapple the sea, so the dark shape of a ship appeared. The lookout covering the starboard bow had spotted her first.
‘Ship, Sir! Fine on the starboard bow!’ he called, and Harry’s night glasses were on it. ‘Looks like a big one, Sir!’ said the lookout, as Harry called down the voice-pipe to the control room, ‘Captain to the bridge! Potential target, about ten points off the starboard bow! Diving Stations!’ and Harry hit the night alarm twice, sending Umbrage’s crew closing up for action. What that action would be, would be up to Rais, but from what Harry could see, at least Rais would have time to decide. Even with his not-so-good night vision Harry could already tell the target was some way off, right on Umbrage’s horizon, about five, maybe a bit more, miles away, and it wasn’t moving all that fast either.
Rais appeared on the bridge, announcing, ‘ASDIC says no HE’, as if Harry had called a false alarm. There was no ‘Where away?’ or any other inquiry as to what might have been spotted. Meanwhile, the target’s shape had been rapidly forming and Harry, never removing his eyes from his night glasses now knew why there was no HE. He also knew the lookout had been wrong: she wasn’t a big ship, the bulky shadow he had identified wasn’t superstructure, it was sails.
‘It’s a schooner, Sir,’ he told Rais. ‘A three-master, I think, running south on this north-easte
r. Probably about three-fifty, four hundred tons and heavily laden. I’d say she’s steering 135 degrees, but not making much more than six to eight knots, Sir.’
‘Well, Mr Gilmour, let’s not just “say”, shall we,’ said Rais, raising his glasses. ‘Let’s try for “is”, hmmn?’
The schooner, as her shape filled out looked quite stately, eating up the wind that must have been on one of her best sailing points: not a full tramontane, but strong enough and steady. She was a three-master, and was heading across the mouth of the deep inlet that formed the Mola Gulf, and led into the island harbour at Porto Azzuro. Harry had looked at the chart for the bay before coming on watch, and it was obvious to him what was happening. The schooner would run out on this tack to a point way to starboard of Umbrage, where, when she went over on to the opposite tack, she would have a straight run up into Porto Azzuro without a hand having to touch another sheet until she was ready to use her auxiliary engine to motor on to her berth, or drop anchor. Umbrage had only to heave to, and wait for the schooner to starboard her helm, and she’d come gliding right across their bows.
Rais called, ‘TBT to the bridge’ into the voice-pipe. The target-bearing transmitter. Harry had to do a double take. The TBT meant Rais was planning a surface torpedo attack. But no schooner, no matter how tasty a target she might be, would ever merit the expenditure of a torpedo. Torpedoes were too precious, too rare on Malta to waste on a mere sailing ship. Any spare ones that hadn’t arrived already on a submarine had to be lugged all the way from Gib or Alexandria, along sea lanes dominated by enemy aircraft and under constant threat from the Italian battlefleet. Blokes were dying to get torpedoes to Malta. Okay, some silly bugger CO might worry about folk thinking he wasn’t trying hard enough if he brought a torpedo back from patrol, but surely someone should be on hand to disabuse him, to point out that throwing a perfectly good torpedo away on such a relatively insignificant target as a schooner was unforgivable. He shuddered to think what Shrimp would say if he were standing on the bridge beside them right now.
As Harry looked on, a rating came up, and was passed up the TBT: a bulky device, with a casing like the end of a large mortar, that fitted over a vertical mounting on the bridge front, and on top an elaborate set of binocular sights you aimed with a pair of machine-gun handles, that had all the bearing bezels and a range-finding stadimeter built in. One of Umbrage’s Torpedo Gunner’s Mates followed it up. Harry couldn’t remember the lad’s name, but he and the other rating attached it with minimum fuss for such an awkward lump of steel. Rais ignored them. ‘Well done,’ said Harry, and the TGM touched his cap: ‘Sir.’ Then he and the rating slipped swiftly back into the tower.
The TBT delivered all the same range and bearing info that the instruments on the periscope did, ready to be dialled into the fruit machine below, so that all the ranges and angles could be calculated to ensure their single remaining torpedo, when fired, would indeed find a home.
And as Rais indeed seemed to be intending to use their last torpedo, here was the TBT to help him do it.
But there was worse to come. Rais ordered ‘Starboard, thirty’ down the voice-pipe, and Harry almost fell off the conning tower. Umbrage was turning away from the track Harry had calculated the schooner must surely follow, and Rais was pointing her bows out to sea. What was Rais thinking?
Then it dawned on Harry, what Rais was thinking. Rais had calculated the schooner was going to continue south on her present course, and not turn in for Porto Azzuro. Could he be right? He was the CO, he was supposed to be right, but what if he hadn’t been aware of the other possibility? Harry could see now what his CO intended: he was running out to sea to get on to a perfect ninety-degree track angle on a target that would be running sou’-south-east. But if Harry were right, they’d be going the wrong way when the schooner turned in for Porto Azzuro, and too far out to head her off again before she got into the bay. If Rais would only wait, however, until the target reached that point on the sea where, if she was intending to run into port, she must tack, then they would know. If she tacked, they would be in perfect position. If she didn’t tack, they would still be able to catch her up before first light.
Umbrage wasn’t exactly a greyhound on the surface, but this was a sailing vessel they were tracking; they’d outrun her eventually. No, this didn’t make sense. Harry decided to speak up. He wasn’t going to be like Grainger. He also knew that with Rais, it would be pointless trying to do it subtly, now orders had been given.
‘Sir,’ said Harry, ‘I believe the target intends to go over on to the port tack in the next few minutes.’ Harry kept his voice as low as possible, to at least give some show of not appearing to contradict his CO in front of the lookouts, in the middle of an attack. Harry, still talking, continued, ‘And that she is about to head into Porto Azzuro. If she does, and we continue on this course, Sir, I believe we will not be able to get back into an attacking position.’
They had one torpedo left. If Rais was determined to use it, and it was to count, they needed a sitting duck.
Harry and the lookouts all had their white roll-neck pullovers on; Harry, under his watch jacket also wore a preposterously long woollen muffler. The lookouts were huddled in old-fashioned North Atlantic duffel coats, because it really did get cold in the Med at this time of year. But if it had been cold before, the air on the bridge now became downright frigid.
‘Is that right, Mr Gilmour,’ said Rais; flat speech, his face fixed to his night glasses, trained on the target. ‘How interesting. And who do you think is going to win the next Grand National?’
Rais let his sarcasm hang in the space between them. Then he said, ‘Get ready to read off my bearings and range,’ so that Harry had to assume he was talking to him. Rais bent over and spoke into the voice-pipe: ‘Prepare tube four for a surface attack. Set the depth at six feet.’ Harry put up his glasses for one last look at the target, and as he did so the forward lookout sang out, ‘Target changing course, Sir! Turning towards.’
But as Harry looked at her, he could see the schooner was doing more than turning towards; she was turning inside them. She had been running on 135 degrees, as Harry had guessed, and Rais now had Umbrage on one hundred, charging to close the range and get ahead of where he thought his quarry was going to be, so when he got close to her, he could turn on to that ninety-degree track angle and fire his torpedo into her at an impossible-to-miss four or five hundred yards. It was going to be textbook.
Except the schooner was no longer on 135 degrees. As Harry watched, the schooner continued to come about; so that it was now obvious where she was heading. Into Porto Azzuro, as Harry had said. And that her turn would probably put her on a two-eighty heading. She was going to cut behind them, and a long way behind them too. Harry, standing less than two feet from Rais, lowered his glasses and watched as his CO followed through his own glasses, as his target escaped. You could almost feel the rage and fury burn off Rais’s diminutive figure, as he leaned out over the bridge’s fairing, keeping the retreating schooner in his night glasses. Then he snapped upright, and yelled down the conning tower hatch, so loud his voice was cracking, more in a shriek than a bellow, ‘Gun crew close up on the casing! Stand by for Gun Action!’ So loud had he been, he needed to take a breath before yelling again, ‘And get someone up here right now and get this fucking useless lump of iron off my bridge!’
Harry glanced at the two young lookouts, obviously trying to hide inside their duffel coats; their night glasses firmly stuck to their faces, desperately wishing not to be there and hoping not to be noticed. Harry assumed Rais’s ‘useless lump of iron’ was referring to the now redundant TBT – for there was no way he was going to get a torpedo attack in now – and he thought to himself, Now, that’s no way to address a perfectly good item of ship’s inventory.
Rais was at the voice-pipe now, firing down orders for Umbrage to reverse her course and begin the pursuit. Harry kept his eye on the schooner, tearing away with the brisk north-easterly on her po
rt beam, heeling her over and filling her gaff-rigged, fore-and-aft sails. He reckoned she must have been four hundred tons, so not that bad a target, and she was looking magnificent in the dancing moonlight. And he knew they were never going to catch her before she entered the mouth of Porto Azzuro’s bay, and whatever Italian shore defences might await them there.
It was a beautiful morning, and Harry was watching the dapple of the sunlight dancing on the underside of the undulating chop above. It was a view he never tired of – one of those magical little moments in your grim, grey routine, if you cranked the search periscope’s head vertical, so you could look through it as the periscope went up.
It was their first all-round look of the day and his little treat to himself had a practical aspect to it too: checking that there was just enough ruffle on the surface to make you invisible to any passing shagbat, even at periscope depth. There was, and as the ’scope broke surface, Harry did his little 360 dance around the control room as he quickly made sure there were no shagbats passing – crank the head horizontal, and around again: three fishing boats, all at least a mile away, but none of them coming this way.
‘All clear,’ he announced.
‘And still no HE, Sir,’ added Tuke from the ASDIC cubby.
The CO was at Harry’s elbow, hunched over the tiny fold-down chart table, looking at the approaches to Porto Azzuro, with a set of extended dividers in one hand, and a pencil in the other.
It was a new day, and with it another chance to bag the schooner. Their embarrassing night was over.
Embarrassing, uncomfortable and a waste of time. Rais, his torpedo attack thwarted, had fired off orders in all directions, but in no proper sequence; he’d had the gun crew come up too soon; the helm ordered over, too late. When the gunners had got on to the casing and been ready to open fire in double quick time – nothing for Rais to complain about in that department – they’d been so fast, there had been nothing for them to fire at. The schooner had still been astern, and tearing away in the opposite direction. So when Rais put Umbrage under helm, to turn and go after her, he managed to thoroughly drench them. And as he had bashed on in pursuit, it hadn’t got any better; the short waves coming over her bow, slap, slap into the gun crew’s faces, so that after half an hour of this, the gun crew were barely functional.
