The Cruel Sea

by Nicholas Monsarrat

  12

  Once more, Vice-Admiral Sir Vincent Murray-Forbes sat at his desk in the Operations building overlooking the harbour. Now he was writing a report: it was one of hundreds of reports, on ships and men, which he was to write, month in and month out, until the end of the war: on ships destined to be sunk or to survive, on men marked for killing, or for honour at the King’s own hands. He did not know what lay in store for these ships or these men: it would not have made an atom of difference if he had been writing an epitaph on men due to be drowned tomorrow. He was concerned only with facts; and of these he had mustered a great many during the past three weeks.

  ‘HMS Compass Rose,’ he wrote, in an old-fashioned, somewhat laborious longhand, ‘completed her programme of training on February 2nd, 1940, and may be regarded as having passed out satisfactorily. The ship has been well worked up, and is clean and generally efficient. Further attention should be given (a) to firefighting, which was below the requisite standard of speed, and (b) to the drill for abandon ship, which did not go smoothly on the only occasion on which it was tested. But with these reservations, the organisation of HMS Compass Rose now meets the high standard necessary to a ship engaged in the exacting task of convoy escort.’

  He consulted a batch of reports from his staff. ‘Gunnery,’ he wrote, as a subheading, and underlined it. ‘The single four-inch gun which is the sole major armament of this class of ship will only be adequate if constant attention is given to gun drill and to ammunition supply. HMS Compass Rose did well in her various gun trials, and the night shoot was successful, both as regards the handling of the ship and the actual firing. Anti-aircraft shooting, conducted with a towed streamer target, was less successful: it is recommended that more provision be made for anti-aircraft gun control, possibly by loudspeaker operated from the bridge.’

  ‘Asdics,’ he went on, and underlined again. ‘On her arrival, HMS Compass Rose was inadequately trained in this branch, and the Anti-Submarine Control Officer and the asdic ratings were clearly in need of intensive practice. When this had been provided, her efficiency improved rapidly, and she developed an effective anti-submarine team. Communication between the bridge and the depth-charge parties aft is still inadequate in this class of vessel: attention is drawn to my No. 242/17/1/40, addressed to Admiral Superintending Contract-Built Ships (repeated to C.-in-C. W.A.) in which various improvements are suggested.’

  ‘Depth-Charge Organisation,’ he wrote. ‘Only constant practice will bring the depth-charge crews up to the high standard of efficiency necessary in this branch. Time tests of reloading and firing were generally disappointing, and it is emphasised that speed and accuracy may be vital here when the ship is in action.’

  He added three short subheadings: ‘Engine room Branch: satisfactory.’ ‘Telegraphy and Coding: adequate.’ ‘Signal Branch: excellent.’ Then he took a fresh sheet of paper.

  ‘HMS Compass Rose. Reports on Officers,’ wrote the Admiral, and referred again to his notes. ‘Lieutenant-Commander George Eastwood Ericson, R.N.R.: Commanding Officer. This officer exhibited a high standard of seamanship, and showed himself expert at ship handling. I judged him to be a conscientious and determined officer who, when he has gained more experience in this new class of ship, will extract everything possible out of his command. His relations with his subordinate officers appeared satisfactory, and it was clear that he inspired their confidence and would be followed by them without hesitation.’

  ‘Lieutenant James Bennett, R.A.N.V.R.: First Lieutenant and Anti-Submarine Control Officer,’ wrote the Admiral. ‘This officer has a remarkable self-confidence, and with more experience and application his executive capacity may come to match it. He tends to rely too much on his junior officers implementing his orders (and in some cases issuing them themselves). In the initial stages there were serious flaws in the internal organisation of HMS Compass Rose, doubtless due to this officer’s inexperience. A downright, forceful personality who should make a good First Lieutenant when he learns to set an example of self-discipline.’

  ‘Sub-Lieutenant Keith Laing Lockhart, R.N.V.R.: Gunnery and Navigation Officer,’ wrote the Admiral. ‘I was impressed by this officer’s competence, in novel surroundings and in a position of responsibility, when backed by very little practical experience. His gun’s crews were well worked up, and he seemed to inspire confidence in the ratings in his division. He should develop into a good type of officer, very useful in a ship of this class. He should pay more attention to the regulations governing dress for officers when on duty.’

  ‘Sub-Lieutenant Gordon Perceval D’Ewes Ferraby, R.N.V.R.: Depth-Charge Control and Correspondence Officer,’ wrote the Admiral. ‘This officer lacks both experience and self-confidence, and appeared hesitant in giving orders. There is no reason why he should not develop into a useful officer, but he must learn to trust his own judgement, and to give the ratings under his charge the impression that he knows what he wants from them. His department improved during the latter stages of HMS Compass Rose’s course of training.’

  The Admiral drew a thick line under his report, and blotted it neatly. Then he added, at the bottom: ‘Addressed, Commander-in-Chief, Western Approaches: copies to Flag-Officer-in-Charge, Glasgow: Admiralty (C.W. Branch): HMS Compass Rose.’ Then he sat back, and rang for his secretary.

  13

  Ericson, at ease in his cabin, read his copy of this report with some satisfaction and a good deal of amusement. The Admiral had come well up to standard, by way of farewell: it was a perfect picture of Number One, despite the limits of official phraseology, and he liked especially the crack about Lockhart and ‘dress regulations’ – Lockhart having mislaid his cap on one crucial occasion and greeted the Admiral with something between a wave and a bow. Then, as he folded the sheets of paper again, there was a knock on the door, and Leading-Signalman Wells came in, a sealed envelope in his hand.

  ‘Secret signal, sir,’ said Wells, in not quite his normal inexpressive voice. ‘The signal boat just brought it aboard.’

  Ericson ripped open the envelope, and read slowly and carefully. It was what he had been waiting for.

  ‘Being in all respects ready for sea,’ said the pink slip, ‘HMS Compass Rose will sail to join convoy A.K.14, leaving Liverpool (Bar Light Vessel) at 1200a 6th February, 1940. Senior officer of escort is in HMS Viperous. Acknowledge.’

  Ericson read it through again. Then: ‘Take this down,’ he said. ‘”To Commander-in-Chief, Western Approaches, from Compass Rose. Your 0939 stroke four stroke two acknowledged”. And send it off straight away.’

  So they went to war.

  PART TWO

  1940: Skirmishing

  1

  The war to which they went had hardly settled down, even in broad outline, to any recognisable pattern.

  The liner Athenia had been torpedoed and sunk, with the loss of 128 lives, on September 3rd, the first day of the war: the first U-boat sinking, to offset this ruthless stroke, was on September 14th. Thus, at the beginning, the pace was hot – forty ships were sunk during that first September, and two fine warships, Courageous and Royal Oak, both went to the bottom before the turn of the year; but the pace did not last. The casualties had been mostly independent ships which happened to be at sea when war was declared; like the Athenia, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time; but with the growth of the convoy system this chance ill-fortune could be avoided, and ships and shipping companies were quick to see that any effort to remain in convoy, instead of straggling behind or charging proudly ahead of the pedestrian field, was worth while.

  The U-boats were on the offensive – that was their role – but it was not a coordinated attack, nor even a very efficient one. Probably there were not more than a dozen of them at sea, at any one time, during this stage of the war, and so they hunted alone. They hung about off the coasts of Scotland and Ireland, and in the Bay of Biscay, on the lookout for stray ships which they could pick off at leisure; it was a series of individual forays – s
ometimes successful, sometimes a waste of time: the coordination and the control were to come later, and in the meantime the whole thing was unpredictable and rather amateurish. Britain was short of escorts, Germany was short of U-boats: the Atlantic was a very big ocean and, in winter weather, the finest hiding place in the world. It was indeed like a game of hide-and-seek, played by a few children in an enormous rambling garden, with the light sometimes fading and the grown-ups calling out directions intermittently. And if some of the children were vicious and cruel, and pinched you when you were discovered, that was nothing unexpected in a nursery world.

  Such was the battlefield of the Atlantic, when 1940 dawned. The danger was there, but the two sides were hardly engaged: the U-boats lurking always, but playing their luck instead of their skill. To join this untidy battle, Compass Rose sailed early in the year.

  2

  Their first convoy was a bloodless skirmish, as were many others in that momentary lull; but it was a useful foretaste of what was to come, as well as a proving of the ship in weather worse than they had yet met.

  The sun was out as they sailed down into Liverpool Bay, on that fine February morning, to meet their convoy: it had pierced the early mist, melted the frost of their cold night passage, dried out their clothes with a cheerful warmth. Ericson knew the port well – he had lived there for ten years, and had sailed in and out of it scores of times: he looked for the familiar landmarks with an affectionate eagerness. As usual the first sight of land was the tall Blackpool Tower, away to the north: then the Bar Light Vessel, riding uneasily in the jumble of tide-ripped water that marked the entrance to the River Mersey; and then, faintly glimpsed in the mist and smoke upriver, the twin spires of the Liver Building, in the heart of the city. Somewhere there, in a little house on the Birkenhead side, Grace was undoubtedly knitting . . . He had a moment’s pang that they should be so near to each other and yet be unable to meet; and then he forgot it altogether. Five miles ahead of them, their ships were coming out; they were led by a destroyer – an old V. and W. Class which must be Viperous – already giving them the ‘interrogative’ on her signal lamp.

  While Leading-Signalman Wells was replying, first making Compass Rose’s number and then taking down a long signal about the organisation of the convoy, Ericson studied the line of ships coming towards them. They were of all shapes and sizes: tankers, big freighters, small ships which would surely have been better off in the coasting trade than trying the hazards of an Atlantic passage. Some were deep-laden, some were in ballast and uncomfortably high out of the water: they steamed in single file from the narrow Mersey channel: their pendants flew bravely in the sunshine, they seemed almost glad to be putting to sea again . . . That could hardly be true, thought Ericson with a smile, remembering the tearful goodbyes, the hangovers, the feeling of ‘Oh-God-here-we-go-again’ which attended every sailing; but there was something about the file of ships – forty-six of them – which suggested a willingness to make the voyage, a tough confidence in the future.

  There were U-boats in the way of that voyage, of course – or so it was said, because most ships and most men in that convoy had yet to meet one: there was, at any rate, a threat to use U-boats. Thus, as well as being important for these ships to sail to Boston and New York and Halifax and Rio, it was essential, as a simple matter of principle as well, that they should get through. The Atlantic had never been specifically a British ocean; but it was even less a German one, and now was not the time for it to change its nationality.

  Ferraby, hanging about at the back of the bridge (it was not his watch) was more stirred by the sight of those ships than he had ever been before. He liked everything about this convoy: he liked its air of purpose as it cracked on speed after the cautious passage down channel: he liked individual ships – particularly the tough and shapely tankers: he liked the men on board who waved cheerfully to Compass Rose as she passed down the line towards the tail of the convoy. This sort of thing – this moment of significance and determination, this comradeship, this sea brotherhood – was what he had had in mind when, at the training establishment, he had volunteered for corvettes: there had been times when it had seemed impossible of attainment, when he was convinced that he was going to be fobbed off with a third-rate drama of pretence and frustration: now he knew that all his wishes were coming true.

  Here were the ships, assembling for their long uncertain voyage: here was Compass Rose, appointed to guard them: here was Ferraby himself, a watchkeeping officer – or practically so – charged specifically with a share of that guardianship. His pale face flushed, his expression set in a new mould of determination, Ferraby surveyed the convoy with pride and a feeling of absolute proprietorship. Our ships, he thought: our cargoes, our men . . . None would be surrendered, of this convoy or of any other, if it depended on any effort of his.

  Ferraby’s eyes were new, and took a good deal on trust: other eyes – Ericson’s among them – were not, and to them, it must be admitted, the convoy was somewhat more impressive than the escort, which reflected perfectly the pinched circumstances of the Royal Navy at this stage. To shepherd these forty-six ships through waters which were potentially the most treacherous in the world, there had been provided one fifteen-year-old destroyer, of a class which, though valiantly manned and valiantly driven, was really far too slight and slender for the Atlantic weather: two corvettes – one a pre-war edition of crude design, the other Compass Rose; a trawler, and a rescue tug which already, in the sheltered waters of Liverpool Bay, was bouncing about like a pea on a drum. Five warships – four and a half would be nearer the truth – to guard forty-six slow merchantmen was not a reassuring prospect for the experts on either side . . . But there it was: the best that could be done. And since there were no more ships to be had, something else would have to fill the gap: skill and luck must somehow bring about what a rational probability could not hope to effect.

  Compass Rose was kept busy all that afternoon. It meant a long day for the Captain, who had been on the bridge since first light; but certainly he could not leave it now, when there was really no one else who could be trusted to handle Compass Rose in close company with other ships. So he stayed on, wedged in a corner of the bridge, drinking successive cups of tea and giving endless helm orders, while they worked through the various tasks which Viperous had set them. First they had to see that all the ships had sailed, checking their names and numbers against the long list which had been signalled to them: then they had to round up the stragglers and coax them into a closer formation: then – most trying of all – they had to pass a verbal message over the loudhailer to each of the forty-six ships, and, since it concerned an important alteration of their course during the night, make absolutely sure in each case that the instructions had been understood.

  Over and over again they repeated that message: first the Captain, then Lockhart (who had the afternoon watch), then Leading-Signalman Wells, then the Captain again. Some ships were deaf, and needed endless repetitions: some were foreign, and had to summon a man from the depths of the stokehold to take the message: some were having their afternoon sleep, and doubtless thought the booming voice was all part of the same bad dream.

  ‘God Almighty!’ said Ericson at one point, when five minutes’ hailing of a big tanker had produced nothing more than a vague salute from a man in bowler hat on the bridge: ‘You’d think they wanted to get lost tonight. Try them again, sub.’

  ‘Hallo, Number Thirty-Two,’ Lockhart called wearily through the loudhailer. ‘Hallo, Number Thirty-Two. I have a message for you. Take it down, please.’

  The tanker ploughed on, while Compass Rose kept jaunty pace with her, like a Pekingese harbouring designs on a greyhound.

  ‘Can we use the siren, sir?’ asked Lockhart. ‘They don’t seem to hear the human voice.’

  ‘We’ll use the gun in a minute.’ Ericson grasped the wire and blew a prodigious blast on the siren. The man in the bowler hat walked to the wing of the bridge and stared at them.


  ‘Number Thirty-Two – I have a message for you!’ Lockhart called out swiftly. ‘Take it down, please.’

  The man on the tanker cupped his hand to his ear.

  ‘Oh God, the bastard’s deaf,’ said Lockhart despairingly, forgetting that the hailer was still switched on. The crisp comment boomed across the intervening thirty yards of water, and evidently found its mark: the man took his hand down and shook his fist at them instead.

  ‘You’ve hurt his feelings, sub,’ said the Captain.

  ‘Mistake, sir – sorry.’ Lockhart was indeed considerably taken aback by what he had done, and when next he spoke he tried to make amends by assuming a winning tone: through the loudhailer, it sounded revolting, like a dance band crooner wooing the customers. ‘Message for you, Number Thirty-Two. Important alteration of course. Please take it down.’

  In answer, the man on the tanker raised a megaphone and shouted to them. Faintly over the water came the words: ‘Don’t be so bloody rude. I’ll report you to the Board of Trade.’

  Then he went inside and shut the door of the bridge shelter firmly behind him. They had to wait until the change of the watch brought a new man to the bridge, before they could attract any further attention at all.