He forced himself to look across the screen as a dark shape with a towering white bow wave steamed down the Saracen’s beam. The trawler’s signal lamp flashed briefly, and then she was gone. Below his feet Chesnaye felt the deck vibrating again. The monitor stopped her yawing and began to gather way.
Lieutenant McGowan appeared at the bridge ladder. His loud, cutting greeting, ‘Morning Watchkeepers greet you all!’ faded away as he assessed the grimness of the little group around the Captain.
Chesnaye nodded curtly. ‘Carry on!’ Then he walked slowly to the sea-cabin and closed the door behind him.
McGowan spread his hands and peered at Norris. ‘What happened for God’s sake?’
Norris half sobbed: ‘Man overboard. The Captain left him to drown!’
Harbridge said, ‘I can see we’re going to get on fine, I don’t think!’
The watch changed, and McGowan stood looking at Erskine, who had still not moved. ‘Try to keep a sense of proportion, John.’ McGowan resisted the temptation to peer astern for the searching trawler. ‘It’s hard luck, but we’ll have to get over it.’
Erskine was staring at the closed door, his fists clenched. ‘I’ve met some in my time. But, by God, this one is a callous bastard!’
Beyond the door the man who had so easily smashed the calm of the Middle Watch sat on the edge of his bunk, his hands clasped across his stomach as he fought back the wave of nausea which threatened to engulf him.
Ten minutes earlier he had been wondering what opportunity would offer itself to enable him to start the new pattern. Now he had made that start, but the cost was tearing him in two.
* * * * *
Lieutenant Roger Fox stood back from the chart table to allow the Captain more light. He waited in silence as Chesnaye pored over the worn chart and watched as he traced the faint pencilled lines of the ship’s course, the neat cross bearings, times and distances which he knew were faultless.
Chesnaye straightened his back and stared thoughtfully across the open bridge to the straight silver line of the horizon. The first morning at sea was clear and bright, and the sun already hot across the steel plating and newly scrubbed gratings. The Forenoon Watch had just taken over, and he saw that Fox still had a trace of egg at the corner of his thin mouth.
‘Another six and a half days to Alexandria.’ Chesnaye was thinking aloud. He had been unable to sleep, and the hoped-for freshness of the new day still eluded him. ‘It’s a long way, Pilot.’
‘Hmm. Six knots is about the best she can manage nowadays.’ Fox shrugged. ‘Poor old cow!’
Chesnaye eyed him sharply. ‘You’ve not been used to slow passages?’
The Navigator grinned. ‘Hell no, sir. Running fresh fruit to catch the market was a quick man’s game!’
Chesnaye walked on to the bridge and immediately felt the sun across his shoulders. A round-faced sub-lieutenant was standing in the front of the bridge, his glasses trained straight across the bows. Chesnaye knew from the young man’s stiff and alert stance that he was only bluffing and was very conscious of his captain’s presence.
‘Good morning, Sub. You are Bouverie, I take it?’
The officer lowered his glasses and saluted. ‘Yes, sir.’
Chesnaye saw that upon closer inspection he was older than he had first appeared. That was the trouble with these Reserve officers. You could never judge age by rank. Bouverie’s boyish features were only a first impression. His eyes, squinting against the reflected glare, were steady and shrewd. His voice, too, was controlled and almost offhand.
Bouverie reported as an afterthought, ‘Course oh-nine-five, sir.’
‘Quite so.’
Chesnaye stepped on to the gratings and peered across the screen. On the port bow he could see the small trawler pushing through the flat water without effort, her spindly funnel trailing a fine wisp of greasy smoke.
Bouverie said quietly, ‘They picked up the body of our chap, sir.’
Chesnaye stiffened. He had already been told about the dead seaman, but he was conscious of the casual way Bouverie was introducing the subject.
‘Yes, I know.’
‘No lifebelt, sir.’ A small pause. ‘Hell of a way to die.’
‘It always is.’
Chesnaye walked to the tall wooden chair in the corner of the bridge. Ignoring Bouverie’s curious glance, he ran his hand across the well-worn arms, remembering in an instant the small hunched figure of Royston-Jones with his cap tilted across his birdlike face. The same chair. Like the small sea-cabin, a place for thought and contemplation.
‘I gather this is your first ship, sir?’ Bouverie spoke respectfully, but as if expecting an answer.
Chesnaye ignored the question. ‘How long have you been in the Service, Sub?’
‘One year, almost to a day, sir.’
‘And before that?’
‘I am a barrister, sir.’
Chesnaye smiled to himself. Am a barrister, he thought. Not was. That accounted for much in the man’s apparent ease and confidence. In the old Navy it had been so simple to get a man’s measure. Rank and family background had usually sufficed to weigh a man’s worth and prophesy his future. Provided there were no unfortunate interruptions, he added grimly.
‘Do you like this life?’
Bouverie looked at him with open surprise. ‘I really hadn’t thought, sir. But it is better than the Army, I suppose.’
Chesnaye sat down in the chair and took a deep breath. No, you could never tell from first appearances any more.
‘Aircraft bearing Red one-one-oh! Angle of sight two-oh!’
Chesnaye swivelled in his chair as Fox bounded across the bridge and stabbed at the red button below the screen. The gurgling scream of klaxons echoed below decks, followed immediately by the rush of feet as the men poured through hatches into the sunlight. Chesnaye had to grip the arms of the chair to control the rising edge of excitement which was making his heart pound so painfully. He knew it had to come, but out here in the bright sunlight and placid sea it did not seem right or even real.
He lifted his glasses and moved them slowly across the port quarter. Once as he searched for the intruders his glasses moved across the Saracen herself, so that some of his men’s faces sprang into gigantic focus, distorted and inhuman. He saw too the slim barrels of the Oerlikons already probing skywards and the short stubby ones of the two-pounder pompoms as the gunners whipped off the canvas screens.
Then he saw them. Tiny silver specks, apparently unmoving, like fragments of ice above the glittering water.
He heard Fox say, ‘Ship at Action Stations, sir!’
‘Very good, Pilot. Increase to maximum revolutions.’
The Yeoman of Signals, a bearded Scot named Laidlaw, peered round the steel lockers at the rear of the bridge. ‘Escort requests instructions, sir?’
‘Take up station in line ahead.’
He half listened to the clatter of the lamp as the signal flashed across the calm sea. There was no point in the trawler being impeded by the slower monitor. The enemy would be after the Saracen. The trawler could wait.
The mounting revolutions transmitted themselves through the tall chair, so that he imagined the ship was shivering. As he was doing. The sudden stark prospect of losing the Saracen had momentarily pushed everything else from his racing thoughts.
‘Six aircraft, sir! Dive-bombers!’
Chesnaye gritted his teeth and turned to watch McGowan, who with handset in fist was watching the aircraft through his glasses. His voice was sharp, edgy. ‘Stand by . . . short-range weapons!’ He looked across at Chesnaye, but did not seem to see him. In his mind’s eye he would be seeing his plan of anti-aircraft guns throughout the ship, each unit an individual weapon, every crew dependent upon its own ability and experience. In their huge turret the two big fifteen-inch guns still pointed imperiously across the blunt bows. They had no part in this type of warfare, and their size seemed to emphasise the ship’s unnatural element.
Chesn
aye watched the six small aircraft climbing higher and higher, their shapes drawing apart in the lenses of his glasses as they turned in a wide half-circle and swam across the pale blue sky. Higher and higher, and faster as they flashed along the monitor’s beam. Well out of effective range. Marking their target. Drawing ahead, until in a moment of near panic Chesnaye imagined they were going for the trawler, after all. He blinked as the sunlight lanced down the glasses and made his eyes stream. Of course, they were getting the sun behind them to blind the gunners. Also, most of the monitor’s A.A. guns were abaft the beam, they were taking the minimum risks.
‘They’re turning, sir!’ A nearby bridge lookout was shouting at the top of his voice, although Chesnaye was almost touching him.
Chesnaye said sharply, ‘Open fire when your guns bear!’
The first aircraft began to dive. Silhouetted against the sun like a black crucifix, it plunged steeply towards the labouring monitor. It seemed to be flying straight down the forestay, as if drawn inevitably to the bridge itself.
Again Chesnaye heard the unearthly scream as the bat-shaped bomber hurled itself into its dive. The sound he had heard in that Malta convoy. A prelude to death and destruction. But this time it was his ship. They were after Saracen!
In sudden anger he barked, ‘Starboard twenty!’
Shaking at her full speed of seven knots, the monitor wheeled heavily in obedience to the repeated order. The ship’s port side swung to face the screaming bomber, and in those frantic seconds opened up with everything she had. The bridge structure shook and vibrated as pompoms and Oerlikons and then the long four-inch guns joined in frantic chorus. All at once the narrowing distance between ship and bomber became pitted with brown shell-bursts, the empty sky savagely crossed with gay tracers.
Chesnaye forced himself to watch as the big bomb detached itself from the aircraft which now seemed to fill the sky itself.
He did not even recognise his own voice any more. ‘Midships!’
The bomb seemed to be falling very slowly, so that he had time to notice that the small trawler had joined in the fray, her puny guns lost in the roar of the Saracen’s own defences.
The dive-bomber, having released its load, pulled out of its nerve-tearing plunge, the scream changing to a throbbing roar as the pilot pulled his plane out and over the swinging ship. For another moment Chesnaye saw the spread of wings, the black crosses, even the leather-helmeted head of a man who was trying to kill him.
The tracers whipped across the trailing wings, but the bomber was past and already turning away.
The monitor shuddered, and a few shreds of salt spray dropped into the bridge. Chesnaye swallowed hard, his mouth dry. The bomb had missed, he had not even heard it explode.
‘Here comes the next one!’
Again the inferno of gunfire and savage bursts, the scream of that merciless siren, and then the roar of the bomb. Another miss. Chesnaye found that he was getting angrier with each attack.
‘The bombers are splitting up, sir!’ Bouverie sounded steady but different from the young man of ten minutes earlier.
‘Three aside.’ Chesnaye watched them with hatred. ‘I am going to swing the ship . . . now!’ In the same breath he barked. ‘Hard a-port!’
Leaning heavily the old ship began to pivot, the distant trawler swinging across the bows as if airborne. Instead of a semi-defenceless wedge, the diving pilots saw the lengthening shape of the Saracen swinging across their paths. As they dived she continued to swing, a wild surging froth beneath her fat stern as one engine was flung full astern to bring her about. Too late the airmen realised that their ponderous adversary was not just turning to avoid the next bomb. Before, she had side-stepped each attack and hit back as best she could. The airmen had split up to take care of this irritating manceuvre. One section to make the ship turn, the second section to catch her out. But this time the ship did not steady on course. With her protesting engines and rudder threatening to tear theselves adrift, and aided by her shallow draught, the Saracen curtsied round until every gun in the ship was brought to bear.
The first bomber staggered and fell sideways, its grace lost in an instant. Trailing black smoke, it dived over the heeling bridge and ricocheted across the water in a trail of fiery fragments. The leader of the second attack pressed on and down, he was committed, he could not reverse his engine. The tracers knitted and joined in a vortex of fire, so that the forepart of the aircraft seemed to disintegrate even as it plunged towards its target. With one blinding flash it vanished, while the clear water below was pockmarked with falling wreckage.
One bomb fell almost alongside the ship’s anti-torpedo bulge, a shattering detonation which would have stove in the hull of a light cruiser with little effort. Saracen shook herself and steamed unscathed through the falling spray, her guns still chattering defiance.
Then the sky was empty. As suddenly as they had arrived the survivors of the would-be assassins planed towards the horizon, their engines fading and futile.
‘Bring her round on course, Pilot!’ Chesnaye kept his face towards the sea. ‘Resume cruising speed, and fall out Action Stations.’
Fox’s voice was husky. ‘Aye, aye, sir!’
Chesnaye rubbed his palm along the screen. She had done it! Together they had shown them all, doubters and bloody Germans alike!
Erskine appeared at his elbow. His face was streaked with smoke from the guns he had been directing from aft. ‘No damage or casualties, sir.’
‘Good.’ Chesnaye turned to see the watchful surprise on Erskine’s features. ‘I thought the port Oerlikons were a little slow in coming to grips. Have a word with Guns about it, will you?’
‘I will, sir.’ Erskine seemed at a loss for words.
Chesnaye rubbed his hands. Two bombers shot down. Not bad.
Below on the signal bridge he heard an anonymous voice say: ‘Handled the old cow like a bleedin’ destroyer! I thought we’d bloody well ’ad it!’
Another voice, loud with obvious relief: ‘What’s the use, Ginger? No bastard’ll ever believe you when you tell ’em!’
Chesnaye smiled. His body felt weak and shaking, and he could taste the nearness of vomit at the back of his throat. But he smiled.
Fox stepped back from the voice-pipe and watched him narrowly. The other officers had been quick to voice their opinions of the new captain, but he had been slower to make up his mind. He had served with too many eccentric or difficult skippers to do otherwise. This one was in a class apart, he thought. He actually believed in this ship. Whereas for some of the others she was a penance or a steppingstone for something better, for Richard Chesnaye it was the ultimate reward. It was incredible, slightly unnerving. But as he watched Chesnaye’s hand moving almost lovingly along the bridge screen, Fox knew he was right.
* * * * *
John Erskine pushed the pile of opened letters away from him across the wardroom table and groped for a cigarette from the tin at his elbow. It was empty. He gave an exasperated sigh and looked over at Wickersley, who was apparently engrossed in one of the letters.
‘Cigarette, Doc? My duty-frees have run out.’
Wickersley pushed an unopened tin towards him without taking his eyes from the letter. Eventually he said, ‘Bloody amazing some of the things our people write to their wives.’
Erskine blew out a stream of smoke. ‘You’re supposed to be censoring those things, Doc. Not bloody well passing judgement!’
Wickersley looked up and grinned. ‘All the same, they do make me feel as if I’ve been living a very sheltered life!’
Somewhere beyond the wardroom a tannoy speaker crackled. ‘All the Starboard Watch! Starboard Watch to Defence Stations!’
Erskine glanced at the salt-streaked scuttle. Eight bells, evening drawing in, but still clear and bright. The horizon line mounted the scuttle, hovered motionless, and then receded with timeless conformity. The Port Watch would be coming from their stations to face greasy plates of bangers and beans, washed down with unsp
eakably sweetened tea. If they were very lucky the duty cooks would have skimmed the cockroaches off the surface beforehand.
In one corner of the wardroom Harbridge and Joslin, the Gunner, dozed in chairs like two Toby jugs, while at a writing desk Sub-Lieutenant Philpott, the Paymaster, was busy writing to his parents.
‘How are you getting on with the Old Man?’ Wickersley stamped the letter and reached for the cigarette tin.
‘All right.’ Erskine spoke guardedly. ‘Why?’
‘Oh, just wondered.’ The Doctor waved the smoke away from his face. ‘Seems quite a chap to me!’
Quite a chap. Erskine wondered how the Captain really did appear to one as uninvolved as the Doctor. ‘Yes. But I don’t feel I have his measure as yet.’
‘He’s got a lot on his mind.’
Haven’t we all? Erskine thought of the three days which had dragged remorselessly after the monitor’s wake. Two more bombing attacks. Constant vigilance, with the hands almost asleep at their posts. The ship’s company was working watch and watch. Four hours on, and four off, not allowing for the constant calls to Action Stations and the normal work which had to be carried out no matter what happened. Painting, scraping, repairs and endless maintenance, with tempers and nerves becoming frayed and torn with each turn of the screws. All the time the Captain seemed to be watching him. He never actually complained about the way Erskine was running the ship, but a hint here, a suggestion there, made him wonder just what standard Chesnaye had in mind. He seemed to make no allowance for the ship’s tiredness, her unsuitability, and the general pressures which were wearing down the whole Fleet, let alone this one old ship.
Wickersley was watching him. ‘His leg seems to bother him. I might ask if I can have a look at it some time.’
Erskine smiled in spite of his preoccupied thoughts. ‘You do that. He’ll have you for breakfast!’
‘He got it in the First World War, I gather. Odd really.’
‘What is? Quite a few blokes got cut up then!’
‘No, I mean it’s strange the way he looks.’ He eyed Erskine musingly. ‘He’s over ten years older than you, yet you look about the same age. Don’t you think that’s odd?’
H.M.S Saracen (1965) Page 20