Gone to Sea in a Bucket

by David Black

  The men rose from their paperwork, and McVeigh, gesturing to his ears, pointed for Harry to go aft into the motor room. Harry pushed through the spring-loaded doors to be greeted by two Leading Torpedomen bent over a stripped-down rheostat. McVeigh pushed through behind him, and, still having to yell, told the LTs, ‘Go to the galley. Scanlon’s got a brew on.’

  The two men tidied up their tools and slipped past, heading for’ard with a brief, ‘Aye aye, sir,’ and a salute. The doors were soundproofed and so rendered the noise level manageable.

  ‘The Skipper’s still on the bridge,’ said McVeigh, without preamble. ‘We should be picking up the gunboat in a couple of hours, then it’s straight up to Rosyth. Whether it’s to be met by a brass band or a firing squad remains to be seen. How are you?’

  ‘All right, sir,’ said Harry.

  McVeigh nodded, then said: ‘I don’t know what the Skipper’s intentions are ashore. I don’t know what he’s been sending under his “captain’s only” code, or what has been signalled back to him. Just that he’s said we sank a Jerry cruiser,’ and then he paused, with a quick smile. ‘We had a signal not long after we surfaced tonight, confirmation of the sinking from the Admiralty. You were right. It was the Graf von Zeithen.’

  Harry just smiled. He was getting better at keeping his mouth shut when there was nothing useful to say.

  McVeigh continued: ‘Well, where do we stand.’ It was a statement. ‘At the very least, Mr Sandeman is guilty of disobeying submarine Commanders’ standing operational orders by not immediately summoning the Skipper to the control room on sighting Jerry. It could be argued that I should’ve questioned the first Lieutenant’s decision. It could be argued that we conspired together. I don’t know whether the Skipper might want to take it that far though. Commander Bonalleck’s own self-interest might not be best served if he were to seek to over-dramatise events, if you get my drift. Obviously I can’t tell you what to say if there are any . . . repercussions, but neither the first Lieutenant nor I think there will be. Anyway, what I do want to make clear is that we, Sandy and I, whoever asks, we are going to tell it straight, except we’re not going to mention the booze. Lieutenant Sandeman’s position is that he believed the Skipper was ill. That it was plain to him on sighting the Jerry that it would need to be a snap attack and that speed was of the essence, and that was why he decided to execute the attack without delay. The log confirms the actual action lasted barely six minutes from start to finish, so we have that behind us.’ McVeigh paused to look away at something only he could see. ‘A lot can happen in six minutes . . . on a submarine.’ Then he looked back at Harry and smiled. ‘Thought I’d better tell you all that before we go ashore, we thought it best for you to know what we are going to say, just in case.’

  ‘Have you had this conversation with Mr Swann, sir?’ Harry asked.

  McVeigh gave him a long, level look. ‘Don’t be bloody foolish. Anyway, he wasn’t in the control room. Didn’t see anything or hear anything. Sub-Lieutenant Swann will say what he’s going to say, and I very much doubt anyone will be any the wiser for it.’

  Harry smiled. ‘Thank you for letting me know, sir. I don’t think I’ll have much to add, except to say that the Skipper had been looking rather off for a few days.’

  McVeigh snorted and gave a little rock of laughter. ‘Off!’ A pause, and another one of his appraising sideways looks. ‘You did all right back there, young Gilmour. For a first war patrol. Not many snotty little oiks just out of King Alfred get to blow the arse out of a German heavy cruiser on their first day out in long trousers. You should think about taking this lark up professionally.’

  ‘Thank you very much, sir,’ replied Harry, grinning.

  ‘Bill,’ said McVeigh, ‘but only when we’re among consenting adults. See you in the bar.’ As he got up, he gave Harry a punch on the shoulder. ‘I’ll get Scanlon to bring you lot back some java,’ he added as he unlatched the bulkhead door and let the deafening din back in. Then McVeigh’s hunched back lurched its way into the engine room.

  Harry never saw him again.

  The events of the minutes that followed would etch themselves on to Harry’s mind forever, super-real in their intensity; the moments before, by their banal normality, and the moments after by their harsh, intruding violence.

  After McVeigh had gone, Gault and Ted Padgett swung their way in through the motor room doors, clutching their paperwork. They were back here to agree the tallies and have Harry, as the officer, sign them off. The two LTs came back, too, to finish working on the rheostat. The swing doors, with their passably effectual soundproofing, were again swung shut and the noise diminished.

  As well as being quieter, the motor room was an altogether more spacious place than where the diesels lived, the only direct noise really from the machine whine of the propeller shafts for the most part enclosed by the electric motor housings, and the control armatures for turning the batteries’ electricity into shaft torque on the propellors.

  The paperwork was spread out and Gault’s dinky little pince-nez were placed delicately back on his nose so he could peer at the columns scribbled out on one of engine room’s cardboard bound ledgers.

  Ted Padgett, clutching the forms, said: ‘Shall we get this out the way?’

  ‘I’m sorry about this, Mr Padgett,’ said Harry. ‘It’s all very . . .’ But Harry was grinding to a halt under the warrant officer’s baleful stare.

  Gault, peering over his little spectacles, sighed audibly: ‘He’s new, Ted. The boy’s new.’

  Then turning to Harry, addressing him as if Padgett wasn’t there, Gault said: ‘Mr Padgett is old Andrew, Mr Gilmour. Once you’ve been in a blue suit long enough, you’ll understand what that means. There’s no need to apologise for bollocks like this to the likes of him. He knows the score, don’t you, Ted?’

  Padgett nodded. ‘Oh, you and me both, Mr Gault. It’s the navy. If you can’t take a joke you shouldn’t have joined, right?’

  ‘What joke would that be, gentlemen?’ Harry said, bridling. Ever since Redoubtable, Harry had sworn to himself that he wasn’t going to take these verbal smokescreens everyone in this bloody navy kept throwing up, making sure he knew exactly where he stood – on the outside.

  Gault sighed, sensing Harry’s mood. ‘Mr Gilmour, I think it’s time some things should be explained to you, if you will allow. Sir?’

  ‘From the beginning, if you please, Mr Gault,’ said Harry. ‘I’m on this boat, too.’

  ‘Indeed you are, sir. From the beginning. It will not have escaped your notice, sir, that in the Andrew, the Royal Navy, that is, we’re a very traditional bunch. Traditions within traditions even. And of course this lot, the trade, even though we’re a new branch to the service, real johnny-cum-latelys by naval standards, we’ve still had time enough to come up with our own. Different from the surface skimmers up there. Different because to start with, there’s a bit less of the “b-to-the-three” if you get my drift . . .’

  Harry looked puzzled.

  ‘“Bullshit baffles brains”,’ interjected Ted to be helpful.

  ‘And of course there’s a reason for that,’ continued Gault, still in reverie mode. ‘It’s all about discipline really. Us lot, the trade, the way things are. On submarines there isn’t any room for POs with nothing more to do but make sure able seamen aren’t doing nothing. We all have proper jobs on a boat and we all have to know how to do them. That means we have to bring our own discipline. It don’t work in the trade if you just look at life as a sort of search for opportunities to swing the lead, take it easy, bunk off. I’n’t that right, Ted?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Padgett with a nod. ‘Thing about the trade is, Mr Gilmour, unlike that lot upstairs, with us, if every man knows his job and does his duty exactly right, then there’s a good chance we’ll all live. If he don’t, then we don’t. It’s simple as that. You can’t arse about on a submarine, Mr Gilmour. Even a simple sin like tripping over yer own feet, something you havin’ been to off
icers’ school, sir, you’ll know all about,’ Ted Padgett and Jim Gault were grinning at each other so much so that Harry couldn’t hold back a sardonic nod of recognition. ‘Some halfwit fallin’ over his own feet and the next thing, the halfwit has grabbed a vent valve or dropped his wrench into the battery space, and before you can say “any more for Winnie More, before she pulls her drawers up”, we’re all sharing our tot with Davy Jones.’

  ‘We don’t like gormless people in a boat,’ added Gault.

  ‘Right, Jim. On a boat yer first job is to keep yer “gorm” about yer at all times.’ Padgett was laughing now, his sour countenance vanished.

  ‘And the officers are supposed to know that,’ added Gault. ‘That’s why the trade has a reputation for being a bit more easy-going than the proper navy. You’ll have heard it and you’ll hear it again. But only from those that don’t understand. There isn’t less discipline in the trade, Mr Gilmour. If anything, the discipline here is the hardest of all. Self-discipline. You look after yourself, your mates and your boat. At all times. And that’s why when Skippers come on all hard-horse like Commander Bonalleck just now, it doesn’t go down well, because it’s not necessary. Because when Commander Bonalleck and all officers like him, when they sees Ted here in his number ones, with that red picket fence of stripes up his arm,’ said Gault, referring to Warrant Officer Engineer Ted Padgett’s full dress uniform and the row of stripes that would be there on his left sleeve, denoting long service and good conduct, ‘that should tell them something . . .’

  ‘Twenty years of undetected crime,’ interjected a sombre Padgett.

  ‘Apart from that, Ted,’ said Gault with mock patience, but before he could go on Harry made his sally into the ongoing badinage.

  ‘I understand,’ was all he managed, but inside his head it was a different story.

  The message was simple . . . officers, even captains – especially captains – shouldn’t piss off their senior rates. And junior officers shouldn’t patronise those senior rates by apologising for it. He got that. But for Harry, the moment meant a lot more. It was one of those coming-of-age moments of the kind which engulfs every young tyro of adventurous spirit, who at last realises he is accepted into the company of men. And now it was Harry’s turn to feel the timeless visceral burn as he looked back into the faces of these two old sea dogs: Gault, old enough to be his father, and Ted Padgett even older; men who were now candidly regarding him as one of their number. In the trade.

  And McVeigh, not so much his words just now, but the fact that he’d spoken them at all. ‘Just so as you know . . .’, that was what he’d said. Including Harry in the affairs of the boat. One of the crew. Ship’s company, HMS Pelorus. At last.

  Harry felt so good that he even managed to stop himself from running off at the mouth in his gratitude and pride, but he was powerless to hold out against the grin trying to split his face. The spectre of Redoubtable was gone, along with all the impotence and humiliation of being a youth adrift in a man’s world. He had been in battle with these men and together they had prevailed. The welling of emotion that rose in Harry’s breast was such that right then he would have laid down his life for them, with a smile on his face.

  ‘He thinks we’re havin’ a laugh, Jim,’ said Padgett.

  ‘Nah he doesn’t. He understands, don’t you, Mr Gilmour?’

  ‘Understands what, Jim? If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined?’ asked Padgett, his mouth twitching with gleeful devilment.

  ‘Yeah, Ted. Isn’t that right, Mr Gilmour?’

  But Harry started laughing and couldn’t stop.

  There was a thumping on the swing doors, and when Harry scrambled over to pull them open, Able Seaman Scanlon was demanding entry with a can of tea, some biscuits and three mugs. He was laying out the fare, about to play mother, when they all felt the submarine heel to starboard, and their grins vanished.

  There was a yawning pause through which the heel increased, but no explanation filtered back to them from the control room or bridge. The engine room telegraph bell ripped through the diesel din. They looked up, all of them seeing the bridge ringing for ‘full astern’ on the port engine.

  Padgett jumped to his feet and immediately shot into the main engine room, Gault and Scanlon reached out to save the impromptu tea party set out on one of the electric motor casings. The heel increased rapidly. Whatever was happening on the bridge, Bonalleck was executing a sharp turn to port.

  Harry looked into Gault’s worried eyes for some explanation as the engine room telegraph rang again, full astern on both engines. The next thing they were all sprawled and rolling on the deckplates, in pitch black, and even the noise of the diesels was being drowned by terrible ripping, interrupted only by an explosion forward and then a blue flash, like an arc of lightning, going off in the room next door.

  ‘The fucking batteries!’ yelled Gault, as the hull lurched and bounced, and the tearing noise was replaced by a long metallic scraping that seemed to drag its way down the length of the starboard hull.

  The lurching threw Harry against steel; exactly what he couldn’t tell in the darkness. It dead-armed him on his right side and then it smashed into his left ribs, winding him and leaving him flat on his back on a deckplate several feet aft down the motor room from where he’d been sitting. Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped, so that Pelorus was left wallowing slightly, skewed and listing by the starboard bow.

  A light came on. One of the LTs had clambered to his feet and was fixing a small emergency lamp to the forward bulkhead. Gault had another, its light dancing through the gloom a swirling mist which fugged the air with burnt rubber and the terrible reek of burnt steel.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Shut all watertight doors!’ Harry heard someone shout from way down forward.

  He eased himself up on his good arm and peered into the swirling gloom. The doors into the main engine room were open and he could see that Gault had gone through. Scanlon was sitting propped up against one of the motors, and the two Leading Torpedomen were scrabbling about, opening storage spaces, looking for god knows what. He could hear shouts from deep in the boat, and another sound that chilled him, barely discernable above the engines, but there. The sound of rushing water.

  Pelorus lurched again and he felt her beginning to fall away from him, the bows going down. Harry pushed himself up and as he rose he could see Gault hurrying away forward. Behind him, several half-dressed figures appeared, Stokers coming from the engine room crew’s accommodation space. What the hell was happening? He turned again to see other men hurrying from for’ard, running up the slope of the deck past the imposing, confining flanks of the main diesels towards him, fear in the leading man’s eyes; and behind him, the rest pushing and bundling each other in their rush to get away.

  ‘Shut that bloody door!’

  A violent shout, was it Gault’s?

  The sound of rushing water was audible above the diesel thump now. And then, dimly, all the way through to the for’ard bulkhead door, behind the scrambling body of sailors, suddenly – my god! Harry could see it! Water bubbling over the combing.

  They were sinking. HMS Pelorus was sinking.

  For no reason he could fathom, Harry shot through the door between the motor room and the main engine room before the buffeting daisy chain of men reached and blocked it in their frenzy to get away. What did he intend to do? What could he do? The realisation that Pelorus was going down, with him in it, had stunned him beyond coherent thought. Maybe he was going to help Gault, but help him to do what?

  That’s when he saw Ted Padgett, wedged between the port main diesel and what looked like some kind of pump. One side of his face was bloody and something dark had caked the front of his overalls. The rest of Padgett’s face, normally pale, was sepulchre white, and his eyes, still partially open, had rolled back in his head. Harry dodged the leading sailor running up the deck, as he bent to shoot through the door. He yelled at the one following: ‘You! G
ive me a hand with Mr Padgett!’

  The young Able Seaman ignored him – a mistake. Harry’s hand shot out and grabbed the man as he, too, reached for the door to pull himself through. Harry dragged him back into the man behind and the whole train derailed and thudded into the still-revving diesels.

  ‘That wasn’t a request, son!’ This despite the fact that the AB probably had several years on Harry.

  But Harry was cut short by a leading stoker charging through the door the other way: ‘Out the fucking way! Out the fucking way!’

  The deck around the door instantly transformed into a scrum, with the Stoker and several of his chums, older and bigger, and obviously on a mission, not simply in flight. Harry, still gripping the AB, was brushed aside, almost falling on to the stricken Padgett.

  The leading stoker started yelling orders and gesticulating to a forest of levers. It took mere seconds for Harry to realise the Stoker was frantically trying to shut down the engines. Why was obvious to him now. Pelorus, her hull obviously ruptured somewhere for’ard, was going down. Until now, all the air the engines needed for combustion was coming down the conning tower. If that got cut off, the diesels would suck the air out of the boat and they’d all suffocate in seconds.

  The Stokers went into a frenetic choreography, the background of metallic bedlam, its quality of noise changing as the engines were first disengaged from the spinning prop shafts, ran free and then ran down, so the rushing water sounded like silence in the dark swirling chaos.

  The absence of noise seemed to create a breathing space for the tumbled mass of sailors, crushed together, vying for room among the now quiet, dwarfing machinery, a tiny eye in a storm where each man could take stock. The emergency lighting picked them out in silhouette; mythic, elemental creatures, moving dazed in the murk. Harry let go of the AB.