The Cruel Sea

by Nicholas Monsarrat

  ‘I think this is the end of it,’ said Ericson privately to Johnson, when they were discussing the fuel situation. ‘How much oil have you got in hand, Chief?’

  ‘About two hundred tons, sir. Say fourteen days’ steaming, at normal speed.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ll be moving very fast. We’re just hanging around, at the moment.’

  Johnson looked at him curiously. ‘How long for, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know, Chief. Till the bell strikes.’

  Saltash steamed her slow circle. There were no ships to be seen, there were no convoys in her area: it was just a stretch of grey, flat calm sea, with the gaunt rock in the middle, the horizon round them, the dull sky overhead. The radar screen was blank, the asdic probed an endless empty sea: Saltash turned ninety degrees to port every half-hour, and in between times traced an uneven zigzag course, in case anyone were watching them. We’ve done this before, thought Ericson – in this ship, and in Compass Rose as well: once when we were hove-to with a damaged merchantman, once when we did a box search for survivors, once when we were too early at a rendezvous. It had always been the same sort of exercise – waiting patiently, searching endlessly, keeping on the move in case of surprises. Now they waited, in the same way, but this time not knowing what it was they waited or searched for. They turned their ordained circles, first under a grey sky, then under a black, then under a grey again; they sweated out the successive watches, steaming at a steady ten knots and getting nowhere, doing what they were told and hoping the answer would come soon, before something went wrong, before this simple merry-go-round turned to wicked witchcraft, on the authentic Atlantic pattern.

  Ericson told no one what it was about, because he did not know himself, and there was therefore nothing to tell; there was just the bare signal log, which anyone could see, and the order ‘Remain on patrol’. In his private mind, he knew that they were waiting for the end of the war – but that was guesswork, not to be shared because it had no backing from authority. The signal log, the last explicit order from the Admiralty, was all they had to go on.

  Once Raikes, when he was Officer-of-the-Watch, said: ‘I hope they don’t try any tricks. It’s a rotten time to be killed.’

  Ericson frowned. ‘That hadn’t struck me,’ he said, somewhat coldly. ‘But it’ll be a rotten time for anyone who tries to kill us.’

  The expected signal came at dawn, on a dull calm morning which saw Saltash still circling the rock, still occasionally weaving a cunning variation of her course, still plodding along as ordered, and serving three meals a day, and remaining keyed up for any danger, any last attack.

  ‘Hostilities terminated,’ it said. ‘All U-boats have been ordered to surrender by German High Command. The surrender signal is a large black flag. You should take appropriate precautions against individual enterprise. The two U-boats which are presumed to be still in your immediate area should be escorted to Loch Ewe.’

  ‘Immediate area?’ said Ericson. ‘It’s a libel . . . We’ll wait for them to show up.’

  The beaten foe emerged.

  All over the broad Atlantic, wherever they had been working or lying hid, the U-boats surfaced, confessing the war’s end. A few of them, prompted by determination or struck by guilt, scuttled or destroyed themselves, or ran for shelter, not knowing that there was none; but mostly they did what they had been told to do, mostly they hoisted their black surrender flags, and said where they were, and waited for orders.

  They rose, dripping and silent, in the Irish Sea, and at the mouth of the Clyde, and off the Lizard in the English Channel, and at the top of the Minches where the tides raced: they rose near Iceland, where Compass Rose was sunk, and off the north-west tip of Ireland, and close to the Faroes, and on the Gibraltar run where the sunk ships lay so thick, and near St John’s and Halifax, and in the deep of the Atlantic, with three thousand fathoms of water beneath their keel.

  They surfaced in secret places, betraying themselves and their frustrated plans: they rose within sight of land, they rose far away in mortal waters where, on the map of the battle, the crosses that were sunken ships were etched so many and so close that the ink ran together. They surfaced above their handiwork, in hatred or in fear: sometimes snarling their continued rage, sometimes accepting thankfully a truce they had never offered to other ships, other sailors.

  They rose, and lay wherever they were on the battlefield, waiting for the victors to claim their victory.

  Two rose to Saltash, off Rockall.

  They saw them on the horizon: the two hard shapes topping the sea level stood out like squat battlements: they could only be U-boats – the hated and longed-for targets which were now part of the rubbish of defeat.

  ‘Two submarines in sight, sir,’ said the starboard lookout, stolidly submitting the most unusual report of the war; and Saltash began to speed towards the meeting, coming to Action Stations as she did so. ‘Keep her weaving, coxswain!’ Ericson called down to Barnard, and Saltash listed sharply as the wheel was put hard over, and the ship began to trace a swaying corkscrew pattern – the precaution Ericson had decided on, as soon as the present occasion arose. No desperate last-minute torpedoes for him . . . When they drew near, they saw that the two U-boats were side by side, and stationary: their black flags drooped at the masthead, their decks were crowded with men – as were Saltash’s own. Saltash swept round them, moving at twenty-two knots in a tight, high-speed circle, listing heavily, following the U-boats with all her guns; the frigate’s solid wash set the smaller craft rocking, and the men on the decks clung on as best they could, and occasionally shook their fists.

  ‘What do we say to them?’ said Ericson, who was clearly enjoying himself.

  ‘Herr Doktor Livingstone, I presume,’ said Lockhart.

  ‘How about a warning shot, sir?’ suggested Allingham hopefully.

  Ericson laughed. ‘I know your finger’s itching, Guns, but I don’t think there’s anything to warn them about.’ He considered. ‘Perhaps a depth-charge would be a good plan, though – not too near, not too far away – just close enough to shake them. I want them to behave properly on the way home. Tell Vincent the idea – one charge only. He can drop it whenever he’s ready.’

  The depth-charge exploded at about the same distance from Saltash as from the U-boats; there was thus no possibility of damaging the latter’s pressure hulls. But the single heavy charge, detonating with a crash somewhere near the surface of the sea, had a marked effect on all concerned. The mountain of water which shot upwards cast a dark shadow over the U-boats: the fine spray, falling slowly back, moved across them like a damp and drifting curtain. When it cleared, it was as if those on board had been through some sort of moral shower-bath as well: most of them raised their hands over their heads, there was some confused shouting on a querulous note, and a man climbed up the mast and spread out the black flag, so that it could be better seen.

  ‘They’ve got the idea,’ said Lockhart, who was watching through his binoculars.

  ‘Glad they can take a hint.’ Ericson picked up the loudhailer microphone, and spoke through it. ‘Can you understand English?’

  Affirmative waves and nods came from both U-boats.

  ‘University types,’ said Raikes.

  Ericson raised the hailer again. ‘That was a depth-charge,’ he said hardly. ‘I have nearly ninety more of them . . . You give no trouble, otherwise’ – he gestured ferociously – ‘donner und blitzen!’

  ‘Damned good, sir,’ said Lockhart. ‘Make ‘em sweat.’

  ‘Could you spell it, sir?’ asked the hard-pressed signalman whose duty it was to write out whatever messages left the bridge.

  ‘We are going to Loch Ewe in Scotland,’ continued Ericson, making it sound like a father’s unalterable curse. ‘What is your speed on the surface?’

  Faintly across the water came an answering hail: ‘Ten.’

  ‘It’ll take us about two days,’ said Ericson aside to Lockhart. ‘I think we’d better steam in line
abreast – I don’t want these bastards pointing themselves at me, however subdued they’re feeling . . .’ He spoke into the hailer once more. ‘Get your men below decks. Form up one on each side of me. The course is one-oh-five degrees – one hundred and five . . . Do you understand?’

  More waving, more acquiescent nods.

  ‘Off we go, then,’ said Ericson. ‘Do not alter your course for any reason. Do not signal to each other. Burn navigation lights at night. And don’t forget those depth-charges.’

  ‘Isn’t this a mistake, sir?’ asked Holt later that afternoon. He pointed to something on the signal log. ‘This signal addressed to the Admiralty. “I have collected two Ewe-boats” – spelt E-W-E.’

  ‘We’re taking them in to Loch Ewe,’ explained Ericson. ‘It’s a joke.’

  After a moment the midshipman said: ‘It’s a jolly good one, sir.’

  ‘All right, Mid,’ said Ericson, looking at him. ‘I won’t make any more.’

  But the curious convoy was not to have a quiet run home; their holiday mood suffered a last disturbance, and the jovial toughness which had prompted Ericson to give the U-boats the full benefit of Saltash’s wash, and then to shake them up with a depth-charge, was brought into action once more, this time with crude anger to back it up.

  It happened on the afternoon of the second day, when they were nearing the Butt of Lewis, the northernmost tip of the Outer Hebrides which marked the entrance to the Minches – the front drive to their home. The two U-boats had behaved themselves with perfect propriety during the past thirty hours: their courses could not have been straighter, their navigation lights at night had been models of brilliance. As a matter of precaution, however, Ericson had kept his asdic operators at work, though there seemed little chance that they would have anything to report; when in fact they did get a contact, and a strong one at that, dead ahead of Saltash, the resulting flurry cancelled the whole end-of-the war feeling at the first shrilling of the alarm bell.

  Ericson brought his ship immediately to Action Stations: whatever the echo was, he was taking no chances, and if it were in truth a U-boat which was disobeying the order to surface, it was either still fighting the war or else playing the fool. He felt in the mood to punish both those things . . . He signalled to his two prisoners: ‘Stop instantly, and stay where you are,’ and as the U-boats obeyed, and their way fell off, Saltash increased to ‘Full Ahead’ and went in, prepared to attack. Lockhart said: ‘It feels like a U-boat, sir, on the same course as us,’ and Ericson answered: ‘We’ll drop a pattern, Number One. They may not have heard the news.’

  The ‘Stand by to drop!’ warning had already gone to the depth-charge crews aft, when the U-boat rose a hundred yards ahead of them, breaking surface in a sluggish, take-it-or-leave-it manner which seemed designed to indicate that it was only doing so because it chose to.

  ‘Stop both!’ ordered Ericson. ‘Port twenty!’ Saltash, losing speed, came round in a circle under the U-boat’s quarter, while Ericson looked at the wet grey hull through his binoculars. ‘I suppose,’ he said grimly, ‘this is meant to show that they haven’t really been beaten. It would serve them right if—’

  He did not finish the sentence, but within his own mind he found that he was wrestling with a violent temptation. He wanted above all else to continue with the attack – the absence of the black surrender flag gave him legitimate excuse; he wanted to ram or to shoot it out, or to toss a depth-charge right alongside the target; he wanted to show them that the war was over and the U-boats defeated, and that a British frigate could send them to the bottom any time she felt like it. He wanted, at this last moment, to prove how easy it was, by increasing his total war score from three U-boats to four . . . He stood stock-still in the centre of his bridge, recalling an old anger – the way he had felt when the U-boat captain, down in his cabin, had started throwing his weight about. Bloody Germans . . . Now a man in a high-peaked cap appeared in the conning tower of the U-boat, looking about him with leisurely care, and then stared through his glasses at Saltash. Another man climbed up by his side and stood there, doing nothing in an unconcerned sort of way.

  ‘Still playing the fool,’ grunted Ericson. ‘Guns!’

  ‘Sir?’ said Allingham, from his place at the gun control microphone.

  ‘Fire a shot over his conning tower. As close as you like.’

  Allingham spoke his orders: B-gun roared: the shot fell with a great tawny spout of water, fifty yards beyond the U-boat.

  ‘That must have just about parted his hair,’ said Holt.

  It seemed that it might well be the last shot of the long war. The two men lost their air of indifference on the instant, and waved energetically; others began to climb alongside them into the conning tower, and then to overflow on to the foredeck. A black flag jerked upwards on the short ensign staff, and a signal lamp started to wink with frenzied speed.

  ‘Signal, sir,’ said Saltash’s yeoman presently. ‘”I will not fight you”.’

  ‘I don’t mind if you do,’ said Ericson, in prompt and stentorian tones over the hailer. He waited for an answer to the challenge, but none came. Some more men, leaving the conning tower, now ran along the deck of the U-boat, their hands high above their heads.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ said Ericson. And over the hailer crisply, finally: ‘Take station with the others, and follow me.’

  5

  So their battle ended, and so, all over the Atlantic, the fighting died – a strangely tame finish, after five and a half years of bitter struggle. There was no eleventh-hour, death-or-glory assault on shipping, no individual attempt at piracy after the surrender date: the vicious war petered out in bubbles, blown tanks, a sulky yielding, and the laconic order: ‘Follow me.’ But no anticlimax, no quiet end, could obscure the triumph and the pride inherent in this victory, with its huge cost – 30,000 seamen killed, 3,000 ships sent to the bottom in this one ocean – and its huge toll of 780 U-boats sunk, to even the balance.

  It would live in history, because of its length and its unremitting ferocity: it would live in men’s minds for what it did to themselves and to their friends, and to the ships they often loved. Above all, it would live in naval tradition, and become legend, because of its crucial service to an island at war, its price in sailors’ lives, and its golden prize – the uncut lifeline to the sustaining outer world.

  6

  Their U-boats had been taken under guard, by a trio of bristling motor gunboats which shot out of Loch Ewe and came snarling towards them at approximately forty knots. The newcomers had turned in a welter of foam and spray, loosed off a burst of machine gun fire for absolutely no reason at all, and then settled down ahead and astern of the prisoners, with the contented air of men who had done the whole thing themselves. Their only signal had been: ‘We have them.’

  Saltash, feeling as if she had been rescued in the nick of time, was free to go to her anchorage.

  The big frigate moved up the quiet sheltered waters of the loch towards the collection of shipping which lay at its head. It was past sunset, and cold: home from the sea, they were still muffled with strange caps and helmets, still duffle-coated, still stamping feet which were heavy with seaboots and thick grease wool stockings. A strange quiet lay over Saltash, though her decks were crowded: there must have been a hundred and fifty men on the upper deck, lining the rails or sitting inboard on ammunition lockers and hatches, but they watched in silence the calm water round them, the lovely hills still orange-tipped by the sun, the white cottages on the fringe of the loch, and the anchorage they were making for. It was the end of their day, and of the battle, but it was a subdued moment all the same: at such a time a man could not easily speak, he could best stand and stare.

  As they drew nearer to the ships ahead, they saw that with the exception of a corvette, an oiler, and some small craft, all the rest were U-boats – sixteen of them, moored in a compact group under the eye of a battered trawler.

  There was a murmur at that, and then sile
nce again. The men of Saltash edged slowly across to the port rail of their ship, and gazed down on the surrendered U-boats as they steamed past them. They saw that the U-boats were already empty grey shells – their crews taken off, their guns shrouded: they lay silent and useless – but they were still the enemy, still the things that Saltash and the others had fought and defeated. There was about them much to look at, much to note, but the single detail which drew every man’s eye was the big white ‘U’ on each conning tower. The captive letter, repellent symbol of a hated warfare, now summed up the whole struggle for them: they had been chasing that ‘U’ for years on end, and now here it was, fought to a standstill and safe under guard – U for unsuccessful, U for undone, U for everything that meant victory for one side, final defeat for the other.

  Saltash moved on past them: Ericson rang for ‘Dead Slow’: Raikes busied himself taking cross bearings from the shore. On the fo’c’sle, the windlass clanked and hissed as the first shackle of cable was run out: Allingham, standing in the eyes of the ship, faced the bridge and waited for the signal to let go the anchor.

  Raikes called out: ‘Coming on the bearing now, sir.’

  ‘Stop both!’ said Ericson. While Saltash drifted to a standstill, he glanced round him. It was a good anchorage, the best they could wish for – sheltered, no shallow water nearby, no other ships to crowd him if Saltash started swinging. And the U-boats were within sight . . .