by Tim Chant
“We just need to get through the night with as little damage as possible,” Baxter said.
Juneau convened his officers in the wardroom to talk about exactly that not long after darkness had completely fallen. They were close to Japanese harbours, but it would still take the enemy torpedo boats time to reach the area and find targets. Nonetheless, there was a palpable sense of urgency in the compartment.
“It is clear,” Juneau began, in a strong voice, “that this battle is lost.”
A morbid silence greeted this pronouncement. No one could disagree with the assessment, but it was still shocking to hear it stated so bluntly by the captain.
“We have also had no contact with anyone of flag rank, and no orders. While we may be able to find the auxiliaries tomorrow, my suspicion is that they will scatter under cover of darkness. Those with officers more competent than the Kamchatka’s.”
A murmur of amusement greeted that. The troublesome Kamchatka repair ship had strayed too close to the main battle and had been sunk almost as an afterthought by the Japanese battleships. While the loss of life was mourned, few would weep to see that ship’s passing.
“Our goal, therefore, is to get ourselves and any other ships we may fall in with to Vladivostok. We will make steam north east, to take ourselves away from the last reported positions of the Japanese fleet, then attempt to cut west and trust to the weather and luck to avoid anything heavier than us. Our main concern, however, are the enemy light units. While we are not as tempting a target as the bigger ships, we are still a target and if any stumble upon us we can expect to be attacked. This close to enemy ports in both the Home Islands and Korea, I think we can assume a rather larger number than we faced at Dogger Bank.”
This with a sardonic bow in Baxter’s direction. He rolled his eyes.
“Will we run with searchlights on, in case?” a young officer asked.
Juneau shook his head. “No, no I am in agreement with Nebogatov on this — that will only serve to attract them. We will remain cleared for action but will stand the men down to eat and rest — they have done very well indeed today, better than any captain deserves. As have you all.
“However, the respite will only be short and we must be ready to close up as soon as any enemy vessels are detected. I also intend to bolster the armaments of the pinnaces and set them to patrol as we steam. I would ask for volun…”
Baxter had his hand in the air before he could really think about it, a second before Koenig and three other officers raised theirs. Juneau smiled with genuine pleasure. “Very well. Mr Baxter, you shall have one. Sava shall take the other — I am sorry, Koenig, I need you aboard with me.”
Koenig made a valiant attempt not to look too crestfallen, and clapped Saveliy Romanovich on the shoulder.
The assembly broke up not long after that, but Juneau drew Baxter aside. “Are you sure about this?” he asked seriously. “You have done much aboard, but this is perhaps a step too far.”
He knew Juneau wasn’t asking about going into danger, although this certainly fit that description. By taking command of a vessel, even one as paltry as an armed steam pinnace, against allies of his home country, he was taking a direct and personal stake in the action in a way that running a battery of guns did not imply.
“We’re all on this journey, Captain Juneau — right to the end.” Baxter nodded to Juneau. “And I haven’t forgotten my promise about the others.”
CHAPTER 23
They put the pinnaces in the water not long after the conference finished. Miraculously, neither of them had been damaged by the enemy fire despite their prominent position amidships on the upper deck — well, nothing that the carpenter couldn’t make right with some plugs. Juneau had ordered two of the one-pounder rotary cannon dismounted and mounted behind the wheelhouse of each of the little vessels, giving them considerably more close-in firepower — which would be vital for this sort of work. An extra machine gun had gone into the bows as well.
“You’ll need to be careful firing the rotary gun,” the gunnery officer said dourly as he prepared to clamber back up the ladder into the cruiser. Baxter hadn’t got to know the man terribly well, but the bloodied bandage around his head, with his battered cap perched above, suggested he’d done his duty. “I won’t answer for stability or indeed the hull if you go firing everything continuously.”
Baxter nodded and saw him off before summoning his little crew to gather around. Unlike the officers, the bluejackets had been detailed for the job rather than being given the opportunity to volunteer, though he was pleased to see Vasily and most of the sailors who had gone on the ‘pleasure cruise’ with him and Ekaterina were aboard. He was also relieved and a little surprised to see young Tommy was nowhere in evidence. But then, he was more likely to stow away rather than present himself for duty.
They crowded into the stern of the boat, a circle of grimy tired faces, but ones which had fight left in them.
“If you’re looking for a stirring speech about duty and honour and dying for the Motherland, you’ve come to the wrong shop,” Baxter said, to a few answering grins. “My Russian’s not that good, it’s not my Motherland, and I’ve got no intention of dying here. So remember — keep your eyes sharp, as we’re not just looking for boats but torpedo tracks. Report any you see immediately. Don’t fire at anything unless I give the order, and when I do, give ’em hell.” He nodded sharply. “Carry on.”
The night was chaotic. The sounds of savage close-range combat sounded from all around — some only a few miles away but others almost to the horizon, showing just how scattered the Russian fleet had become. The muzzle flash of guns and darting searchlight beams illuminated the drifting banks of fog like a surreal, low-level thunderstorm.
The first few hours of the cold night were dull for the crew of the Yaroslavich and her little tenders. They chugged north and east, moving towards the invisible point on the map Juneau had picked for their attempt to run to safety. Everyone’s senses were strained to the limit, looking for a shadow moving the way it shouldn’t or for the tell-tale track of bubbles; the sound of steam pistons thumping in the night. They seemed to be cocooned in their own little shroud of darkness, though, more than three miles from the cruiser, and once the fear and tension of being separated from the bigger ship passed it started to feel almost … normal.
Baxter wasn’t usually someone to worry, to check and double-check every preparation, but as the night wore on he found himself time and again by the hastily-installed rack of flare guns, ensuring they were properly loaded with the pre-arranged signal colours and that the damp hadn’t got to them. They would be vital if any Japanese vessels did attack, but also dangerous to his own fragile little command as he’d be more or less signalling their position when he launched one.
There was nothing to salve that, though — the survival of the cruiser was all that mattered. Once he’d satisfied himself, he would walk a circuit of the twenty-foot-long craft, checking each of the watchmen on duty was awake and staring out into the darkness with them. At a quarter past the hour, he would stare to starboard, waiting for the brief flash of a light that would tell him the cruiser was still where she should be.
The routine and the gentle rocking of the boat began to lull all of them into a sense of security that was not warranted — so that when action came, it was almost unexpected. It was Vasily who spotted the sleek torpedo boats as they coasted by on low revolutions, intent on getting into position to launch without the noise giving them away.
“Enemy vessel,” Vasily whispered to Baxter, shaking his shoulder and pointing.
Baxter snapped out of the upright doze he’d fallen into, cursing himself. The Japanese boat was barely a hundred yards away, a shadow sliding across the water, and no doubt there were more beyond it. It was a sleek vessel, something over a hundred feet long but low to the water. Dangerous, designed for speed and manoeuvrability to stay alive rather than carrying any armour, its devastating but temperamental hitting power cont
ained within the prominent torpedo tubes.
It was certainly much bigger than their own vessel and more heavily armed — his job wasn’t to try to destroy the torpedo boats, though, just disrupt their attacks and warn the cruiser.
They were running without lights, and Vasily had used his head in not shouting a warning. Baxter nudged the helmsman and whispered a course change to bring them even closer to the barely-seen enemy vessel. He held his breath, judging the speed and distance, knowing he risked either losing their target in the foggy night or being spotted themselves. Instinct told him when the balance point had been reached. “Torpedo boat on the port side, forty yards — open fire!”
Vasily fired the three pounder almost at once, a long stab of fire that was dazzling in the darkness. The rotary cannon opened up a second later, a series of sharp cracks as the experienced gunner cranked the handle at a steady rate, firing off half the magazine. The bluejacket on the machine gun in the bows was considerably less restrained, spraying heavy bullets all over the ocean. The flare that Baxter sent up — red warning torpedo boats — was almost an afterthought, casting everything in a ghastly red light.
A moment later the Yaroslavich sent up illumination shells from the two six-inchers on his side, an almost festive array of lights that drifted gently over the ocean and picked out the Japanese boats in stark relief. They increased speed as soon as they were lit up; all but the one that had borne the brunt of the pinnace’s initial fire. Vasily’s shells had pocked its hull around the engine room while the rotary cannon had hit the bridge at least once. Their shells and bullets, which would have been harmless against even a destroyer, had the desired effect on the lightly-armoured target. He could see men running to their own Hotchkiss guns, though, and other weapons being trained round on to them.
“Come about and full steam ahead!” Baxter shouted into the wheelhouse. “Forward gun and machine gun, fire as you bear!”
Now there was a fine judgement to be made. They’d done their job, spotting and foiling the sneak attack. Their role now wasn’t too try to fight off the boats but to harass them, right up until the point the cruiser could engage with her secondary batteries — at which point, Baxter didn’t want to be anywhere near them.
The machine gunner was firing again, at a rate that would almost certainly eat through their ammunition before the night was over. The enemy was close enough that he could hear them shouting, close enough that he could make out words that meant nothing to him and cries of pain that meant even less.
The torpedo boat seemed still to be under command and under discipline, Japanese sailors dashing to one of the guns mounted in her stern despite the machine-gun fire peppering it.
“Get another round into it!” Baxter roared to Vasily over the burp of the rotary cannon firing. They could barely miss at that range, and after that all he could hear was groans of pain.
One of the other torpedo boats was firing back now, aiming for their muzzle flashes, and he resisted the urge to duck as a shell whistled low overhead — he had to set an example. “Yuri, get fire on that forward enemy gun! Fire at the muzzle flash!”
The Japanese weapon fired again, maybe something a little heavier than their own gun, and the shell landed close enough its waterspout doused the deck and soaked Baxter. One of his crew was screaming in pain, obviously caught by a shell splinter from the near miss. The machine gun was having the desired effect, though, and a second later Vasily managed to land a direct hit with the Hotchkiss, silencing the enemy weapon.
“Cease fire!” he shouted, then again, more loudly. “Save your ammunition, Goddammit!”
He ran into the bows, straining to see into the eerily lit night. The illumination shells made things only a bit lighter and cast everything in an odd, actinic light, but enough for him to track the enemy boats and guess when they would launch. It was instinct, more than anything else, that told him when the moment had come. Some combination of the noise the tubes made and the splash of the weapons going into the water, perhaps, or maybe just his own judgement of when he would have fired. He grabbed a flare gun from the second rack and sent a green flare into the sky.
Torpedoes port!
Another salvo of illumination shells went up, followed swiftly by the gunners reloading and discharging high explosives at the weaving torpedo boats as they attempted to withdraw. Juneau had obviously been alert for the signal and he put the cruiser hard to port, turning into the torpedo tracks, getting the bow across until they were running down the Yaroslavich’s starboard side. There was no devastating explosion, so Baxter assumed they’d managed to dodge everything or they’d got lucky again and any warheads that had hit were duds.
“Let them go!” Baxter shouted, as he saw Vasily starting to swing the main gun round to bear on the retreating torpedo boats. As much as he wanted to make sure they couldn’t return to harass the cruiser, their main weapons were spent and Baxter had to conserve ammunition. It was, after all, going to be a long night.
Dawn found the cruiser back on a westerly course. The fog that Koenig had been damning the previous morning was blown to tattered shreds scudding across the seascape. A few ships could be seen in the distance, hard to tell who’s at the range they were at. Often, they could only tell from the plumes of dirty black smoke that they were not alone on the sea.
Baxter’s eyes were grimy from lack of sleep and his almost constant vigil, staring out in the darkness, straining for any hint or glimpse of the sleek, darting torpedo boats or the larger and more dangerous destroyers.
“Do you think they’ll come again?” Vasily rumbled by his side. It was the first time the stolid Russian, to his recollection, had asked a direct question.
Baxter rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I doubt it — not the torpedo boats, anyway. It would be suicide, now that we can see them coming. The destroyers, though…” He brought his glasses up, the view wavering more due to fatigue than the choppy motion of the pinnace. He squinted, lowered the glasses from the aching sockets and rubbed his eyes before raising them again.
Something … something in the nearest bank of fog. A light breeze stirred the grey curtain, and he knew he had done what he had consistently chastised his Russian comrades for — underestimated the enemy. Almost fatally.
“Three torpedo boats on the port bow, five hundred yards — Yuri, Vasily, open fire!” Baxter’s heart was crashing in his chest, his brain racing. The enemy had got dangerously close to the cruiser by using the fog, skipping in across the rolling grey waves. “Yuri, Vasily, fire at will! Helm, come about and put our bow to the cruiser, full speed ahead.”
That would put them on an intercept course, increasing the accuracy of his gunners, but should also let the rotary cannon in the stern bear shortly. It also meant, of course, that he was charging straight into closing fire — almost as soon as he had that thought, the Japanese crews started returning fire.
He dashed back towards the wheelhouse just as the pinnace shuddered to a near miss that drove shell splinters into her hull and, from the screams, into one of his men. The angry chatter of the machine gun cut out suddenly — perhaps the screaming was Yuri — but Vasily maintained a steady fire. Baxter reached for a flare gun and realised the rack was gone, the side of the wheelhouse torn out by the near miss. He spun, tracking the half-seen boats in the dawn twilight. The cruiser would be alert by now, of course, even at two miles they would be able to hear the gunfire, particularly now that the rotary cannon had opened up as well. There was no sign of illumination shells or direct fire from the big ship, though.
He lunged into the wheelhouse, scrabbling for the flare gun that was part of the boat’s standard equipment. Seized on the polished wood grip, got his left hand on the brass tube and clicked a lever to break the weapon open. He stared down at the Cyrillic lettering on the base of the flare gun, then spun to the helmsman. “What colour!” he shouted in frantic Russian, knowing he couldn’t confuse the cruiser’s exhausted crew.
The bluejacket blinked, obviously un
used to his commander being able to speak the language. “The colour, man! I can’t read this godforsaken lettering!”
“Green, sir,” the fellow managed to stammer out, and Baxter only just cleared the little cabin before he fired the flare, knowing it was probably already too late.
It was light enough now that he could make out the big, stolid shape of the cruiser, her funnels belching smoke as she began her turn to avoid the torpedoes that had already launched, and he felt nothing but a cold lump in his guts as the white trails ran straight and true to their target. Vasily and the gunner on the rotary cannon were still blasting away, joined by the gunners on the cruiser. He could hear Yuri yelling at his loader, telling him to find more belts of ammunition for the machine gun, and a moment later a fluent stream of invective told him the Maxim machine gun was spent. Baxter had known that would happen at some point, and had done his best to curtail the trigger-happy gunner. He couldn’t bring himself to chastise his people for using up ammunition now, though — it didn’t matter anymore.
A cheer went up as a torpedo boat dropped away from the formation, smoke boiling from a ragged tear in its flimsy hull, but his eyes remained locked on the Russian cruiser. Somehow, Juneau had managed to get her bows towards the lethal weapons that rushed towards her, managing to dodge the first two. Baxter started breathing again, almost letting himself believe they had once more avoided calamity. Then an enormous plume of water rose in the cruiser’s stern and a moment later the pinnace lifted in the water, the shockwave of the underwater explosion battering the hull and throwing them from their feet. As he pulled himself onto his knees to stare at the ship, he knew her journey was over.
The Japanese seemed content to leave them alone as the lacklustre day finished breaking. The Yaroslavich was listing, but not too badly, and she was dead in the water. As Baxter had predicted just before the final assault, it was now too light for the torpedo boats and the big ships were busy elsewhere. He couldn’t see them, but he could hear the thump of heavy guns not too far away.