H.M.S Saracen (1965)

by Reeman, Douglas

  Richard Chesnaye braced his shoulders against a davit and allowed the cold spray to dash across his tingling cheeks. Astern the monitor’s wake hardly made a ripple, a condemnation of the painful ten knots which had been their speed since leaving England. Zig-zagging astern he could see the solitary destroyer escort rising and falling across the broken water, its fragile hull often completely hidden by clouds of bursting spray. For them it must have been much worse, he thought. To retain station on their charge the two destroyers had been made to crawl at a painstaking speed, their narrow decks and low hulls open for anything the sea could throw in their direction. One minute Chesnaye could see down the three narrow funnels, the next instant he could watch the water streaming free from the actual bilge keel as the little ship rolled like a mad thing. The second destroyer had retired with engine trouble one day out of harbour, but this one seemed doggedly determined to keep with them at all costs.

  Chesnaye shaded his eyes and looked upwards at the bridge which seemed black against the harsh grey light. He could see the pale blobs of faces where the lookouts peered through their glasses, and the machine-gunners who stood by their weapons in case a periscope should suddenly appear from the creaming wavecrests.

  Chesnaye bit his lip. It sounded simple enough. If a U-boat showed its periscope even for a second a wellaimed burst of fire could blind it, and force the hidden boat to the surface where it could be finished by gunfire. He looked towards the horizon and shuddered. It was small consolation to know that even U-boats were said to find this sort of weather difficult.

  Nearby he could hear his party of seamen talking quietly as they climbed in and out of the slung whaler, checking gear and killing time until the next ‘stand-easy’. In three days he had hardly got to know them at all. Just faces that were free and open with each other, yet when he spoke to them they froze into attentive masks. When he had been watching the hands at work on the upper deck he had wanted to intervene, if only to show them he was alive. But there was always a seasoned petty officer in the way, with a gruff, ‘Leave this to me, sir,’ or ‘We don’t do it like that in this ship, sir!’

  A big roller creamed broken and frustrated along the weather side, the spray sluicing across the bright planking itself. Droplets of spume clung to his trousers, and he was suddenly glad that he was not prone to seasickness like some of the others.

  Sub-Lieutenant Pringle had been much in evidence during the slow journey from the English Channel. Bitter, sarcastic and ever watchful for a mistake, he had approached Chesnaye the first day out, his face solemn, even sad.

  ‘That sea-chest of yours.’ He had rolled back on his heels like a boxer. ‘Not regulation, y’know?’

  He had then launched into a long dissertation about the importance of uniformity and discipline, and the necessity of making an example. Chesnaye had been surprised, almost shocked, to find that this first clash left him feeling neither angry nor resentful. Pringle’s attitude must be an act. Even his long speeches gave the impression of planning and careful rehearsing, so that Chesnaye felt vaguely embarrassed.

  He had mentioned this fact to Beaushears when they had shared a Middle Watch together, but the seasoned midshipman had seemed disinterested.

  ‘It’s the system, Dick. As necessary as it is futile!’ Then indifferently he had added, ‘You just put up with it until it’s your turn to be a Pringle!’

  Chesnaye half smiled to himself. Heaven forbid!

  A bugle shrilled, and as one of the seamen nearby stopped work and scampered towards the fo’c’sle for a quick smoke and a basin of tea, Chesnaye walked to the guard-rail and peered at the tilting horizon. Was it possible that they would ever reach the land mass of Europe again? It seemed impossible that hundreds of miles beyond that blue-grey line two giant armies were even now facing each other across the wire and sandbags of Flanders. Before the seamen returned to their half-hearted work hundreds of soldiers might be killed and wounded. Thousands more would perish the moment a new attack was planned.

  It was a good thing to be going to the Mediterranean. It was new, clean and fresh. At home even in England the excitement of war was stifled by the daily misery of casualty lists and scarecrow figures on crutches and sticks who thronged the railway stations or waited for ambulances. The men from the battlefront had all seemed cheerful enough. The worse the wounds, the higher the spirits.

  Chesnaye had mentioned this point to a nervous-looking subaltern he had met at Waterloo station. The youngster had stared at Chesnaye and then smiled coldly. ‘They know they can’t be sent back!’ With sudden fervour he had finished, ‘They’re safe now!’

  Out here it was different. The ship was uncomfortable at the moment, but soon that would change. His duties were arduous and complicated and it seemed impossible to please anyone, senior or junior, yet it felt good to belong, to be a part of this ponderous Goliath.

  He wondered if his mother had already written to him, and how life was proceeding in the quiet Surrey home. He tried not to think of his father. The memory of their last meeting affected him like nausea.

  Being away at training, he had seen little of Commander James Chesnaye. That last night at home, with the wind rattling the small latticed windows, he had forced himself to sit quite still, to watch and listen as his father rambled on about the Navy as it had been, as it should be. He lost count of the times the bottle had filled and refilled the glass at his father’s elbow, but the record was stark in the man’s slurred and aggrieved voice.

  His father. To his wife, his son, anyone who would listen, he told the self-same story. It had been a mistake, but not his own. When his ship, the sloop Kelpie, had ripped open her hull on a shoal off the Chinese mainland he, Commander James Chesnaye, the vessel’s captain, had been in his sea-cabin. The first lieutenant had been to blame. As the months and then years followed the court martial the blame spread. The helmsman had been unreliable, the navigating officer had borne a secret grudge, the charts had been incorrectly marked. And so it had gone on. Each time Richard Chesnaye had returned home from his cadets’ training ship he had found his mother older and more subdued, and his father more definite as to the root of the disaster which had cost the Navy a ship and him a career.

  This last short leave, which should have brought such promise to the home, was no better. Chesnaye, in his new midshipman’s uniform and his orders in his pocket, had been confronted with the final spectacle of misery and defeat. At the very commencement of war his father had gone to the Admiralty to accept even a small command without complaint. But the Admiralty had made no offer at all. There were no familiar faces to greet him, and the records when consulted were enough to finish his small spark of embittered confidence.

  As he watched the slow, mesmerising pitch of water alongside, Chesnaye wondered about the truth of his own thoughts. He had wanted to believe his father, but all the time there had been the slow nagging pain of doubt in his mind. Was that why his father was so outspoken? Was it because the Admiralty had released him as painlessly as they knew how, when in fact the ill-fated Kelpie’s captain had been too drunk to cope with a situation for which he had been trained for twenty years?

  Chesnaye thought of the tin chest which still stood in the gunroom. He had no intention of getting rid of it for Pringle or anyone else. As a boy he had watched that box arrive home from India, China, Malta and any one of the dozen stations where his father had served in the Navy. The scratched lid still bore the faint traces of the original owner’s name and rank. The box had become a symbol of something he still wanted to believe.

  His father had fallen silent towards the end of that last evening. His eyes had been red-rimmed as he had peered across the fire at his grave-faced son. Finally he had said, ‘Never trust anyone, Dick!’ For a moment he had been without anger, and as Chesnaye remembered that instant he could feel the emotion pricking at his eyes. ‘Never trust anyone. Or you’ll end up like me!’

  He felt a step on the deck beside him and looked up to see Pickles
watching him without expression.

  Chesnaye shook the cloak of gloom from his shoulders and forced a smile. It had been pitiful to see Pickles being hounded and bullied by Sub-Lieutenant Pringle. It was equally dangerous to show such feelings. Any sign of disapproval or resentment seemed to drive Pringle to greater lengths, but always against the luckless Pickles.

  ‘Hello, Keith, you look fed up?’ Chesnaye saw Pickles’ mouth turn down at the corners.

  ‘Hell, yes. I tell you, Dick, I’m about sick of this ship, and the Navy too!’

  Chesnaye looked back at the sea. Quietly he said: ‘Your turn will come, Keith. Try and stick it a bit longer. Very soon the ship’ll be too busy to allow Pringle much scope for his stupidity!’

  Unconsciously he had spoken the last words with quiet venom, so that Pickles stared at him with surprise. ‘I didn’t know you felt like that!’ His voice shook. ‘He’s made my life hell. I know I’m clumsy and not very good at my work, but I’m not the only one.’ He glanced furtively along the spray-dappled deck. ‘If you only knew the half of it.’

  Chesnaye said carefully, ‘If it were me I think I’d tell him to go to blazes!’

  Pickles forced a grin. ‘I believe you would too!’ Impetuously he caught Chesnaye’s sleeve. ‘I’m damned glad you’re aboard, Dick! You’re different from the others. I’m a scholarship boy and I’ve not been used to their sort before. Some of them are so vain,’ he floundered for the right words, ‘so false. They seem to be playing some sort of game, whereas all this is terribly important to me.’ He watched Chesnaye’s face guardedly. ‘My father has a shop in Bristol. It was hard to get me a cadetship.’

  Chesnaye looked away. Hard? It must have been almost impossible.

  Pickles continued, ‘I’m the first in our family, but I expect you come from a long naval line?’ When Chesnaye did not answer he added, ‘And your father, is he still in the Service?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  The look of shock on Pickles’ face matched the guilt which ran through Chesnaye’s heart as the lie dropped so easily from him. He felt angry and ashamed with himself. Why did I say that? Was it more honourable to have a dead father than a disgraced one?

  They stood in silence for a while and watched the breakers with unseeing eyes.

  Pickles said at length: ‘March will be over by the time we reach our destination, and the Dardanelles affair will be over. So I suppose we shall just turn round and waddle back to Portsmouth!’

  Chesnaye said quickly, ‘What was the bombardment like along the Belgian coast?’ Something had to be done to snap them both out of the feeling of depression which seemed to hang over them like a cloud.

  ‘Noisy.’ Pickles smiled at the simplicity of his answer. ‘The big fifteen-inchers pounded away about three dozen shells, and all we saw was a cloud of brown smoke beyond the woods.’ He shuddered. ‘When we ceased firing we heard the soldiers having a go. It went on and on. Rifles, millions of them, rattling away as if they’d never stop!’ He peered up at Chesnaye’s thoughtful face. ‘I don’t think I could stand that sort of war. It’s so personal, so filthy!’

  A sharp clack, clack, clack made them look up at the bridge, and Chesnaye was surprised to see the nearest searchlight flashing urgently, its bright blue beam dazzling even in the harsh daylight.

  ‘They’re signalling the destroyer!’ Pickles sounded mystified as he peered astern at the pitching escort. ‘That’s funny, we usually use semaphore for that sort of thing.’

  But Chesnaye remained stockstill, his lips moving soundlessly as he spelt out the signal. As he read the stacatto flashes he could feel his body chilling as if running with ice-water.

  ‘There is a mine drifting dead ahead of you!’ He spoke the completed signal aloud and then swung to peer at the destroyer’s distorted shape. Of course, from the Saracen’s high and reasonably steady bridge it would be possible to see a drifting mine. He stared until his eyes were running uncontrollably and he could only half see the other ship.

  A brief light flashed from the distant bridge, but whether it was an acknowledgement or the beginning of a question Chesnaye never knew. There was a bright orange flash from somewhere beneath the little ship’s pitching fo’c’sle and then a dull, flat explosion which rolled across the water like thunder. There was very little smoke, but in that instant the destroyer ploughed to a halt, paid off into a beam sea and began to capsize.

  Chesnaye blinked and heard Pickles give a small sob. How long was it? Ten seconds? Already the frail stern was rising clear of the waves, the tiny bright screws spinning in the air like those on a toy boat.

  The monitor seemed to shudder as the shock-wave punched her massive hull below the waterline, and then began to swing heavily towards the small, spray-dashed shape which rapidly grew smaller even as they watched. A bugle blared, and all at once the deserted decks were alive with running feet.

  Bosun’s mates urged the seamen along, their pipes twittering as they ran. ‘Away first and second whalers!’ The cry was taken up the full length of the ship before Chesnaye realised that he too was expected to act. His was the second whaler, and as he stumbled towards the quarter davits he could see the boat swinging clear over the water, while his five oarsmen and coxswain scrambled across the griping spar and fell into the narrow wooden hull. More cries and sharp orders, and he could see the whaler on the other side of the quarterdeck already starting to shoot down the ship’s side, the rope falls screaming through the blocks like live things.

  Rough hands pushed him up and over the spar, and as he fell at the coxswain’s feet he heard the cry, ‘Lower away!’ and then the monitor’s rail was above him, the waves suddenly near and frighteningly large. The boat hovered above the water while the Saracen still pushed herself ahead, then with the order ‘Slip!’ it was slipped from the falls and dropped with a sickening lurch on to the crest of a curling breaker, and immediately veered away from the parent ship on the end of its long boatrope.

  Chesnaye fought to regain his breath as the hull leapt and soared beneath his feet, the first shock and panic replaced by a feeling of numbed desperation. He heard himself shout: ‘Let go forrard! Out oars!’ and then there seemed another agonising pause while the men thrust their blades through the crutches and sat apparently glued in their places, their eyes fixed on his face. ‘Give way together!’ The men leaned towards him, the blades dipped, splashed at the uneven water and then sent the boat plunging into the next bank of whitecaps.

  The coxswain, a leading seaman named Tobias, shouted, ‘Head straight for the destroyer, sir?’

  Chesnaye bit his lip hard and tried to control his shaking limbs. He had sent the whaler on a straight course to nowhere, and he glanced quickly at Tobias to see if the man was showing contempt for his stupidity. But the beetle-browed seaman’s face was passive and grave,

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  The coxswain swung the tiller bar while Chesnaye regained his feet and tried to peer ahead across the tall, pointed white hoods. The wavecrests hid the horizon, and as the whaler dipped into each successive trough Chesnaye was conscious of the silence as the towering waves blotted out the other world, so that he was aware once more of panic, like a drowning man.

  Once when he looked astern he saw only the monitor’s tripod mast and upper bridge, as if the Saracen too was on her way to the bottom. It seemed impossible that this frail, madly pitching boat would ever regain the safety and security of its davits, or he the ordered world of the gunroom.

  Tobias shouted, ‘Put yer backs into it, you bastards!’ He began to count, his hoarse voice carrying above the hiss and roar of the water. ‘In-out! In-out!’ But to Chesnaye’s confused eyes it appeared as if the boat was motionless, no matter how much the men sweated and pulled on their oars. He could see the long tapering blades bending as they cut at the water, and felt the shiver and thrust of the boat’s bows as each wall of spray bounded over the seamen’s bent backs.

  Tobias barked, ‘Bows!’ The man nearest the stem sm
artly heaved his oar inside the boat and swung himself right into the bows, his shoulders hunched as if to take on the sea itself.

  Tobias said quietly, ‘We’re there, sir.’

  The oars moved more slowly as Tobias’s spatulate fingers beat their time on the tiller bar.

  Chesnaye did not know how the man knew they had arrived at the place where the destroyer had been mortally struck, but he felt no doubt. Instead he was conscious of a sense of horror and of loss.

  Cutting through the glassy side of a wave like a torpedo, a broken spar, its severed wood gleaming white in the grey water, loomed dangerously towards the wallowing boat. The bowman cursed, but with a deft thrust of his boathook pushed it clear. It drifted past, a tattered ensign, waterlogged like a shroud, trailing behind it.

  The men rowed carefully, their eyes unmoving as they waited for some sign or sound, but still nothing happened.

  Tobias spat suddenly over the gunwhale. ‘Must ’ave gone straight down. Them destroyers is pretty poor stuff. Tin an’ paint. Not much more!’

  Chesnaye swallowed hard. Like the bowman he had seen a single spread-eagled figure, its face and hands incredibly white, outlined momentarily against the tumbling water.

  Tobias said: ‘Leave ’im, sir. Let ’im be!’

  The sodden corpse was already sinking, dragged down by heavy sea-boots which such a short time ago had kept their owner warm. Chesnaye staggered and would have fallen but for Tobias’s grip on his arm. It had to happen sooner or later in war, but this had been quite different. A silent, faceless nobody, drifting and already forgotten.

  Tobias’s face was very close. ‘Take it easy, sir. There’ll be worse before this lot’s over!’