H.M.S Saracen (1965)

by Reeman, Douglas

Fox glanced at his personal log. ‘Yes, sir. We would probably have sighted the convoy wing escort at eleven hundred.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘Bloody bad luck!’

  In a strange voice Chesnaye snapped: ‘Bring her about, Pilot. Lay off a new course to intercept.’ He hurried past the astonished Fox. ‘Bosun’s Mate! Get the First Lieutenant for me at once!’ His mind was in a complete whirl as he picked up the engine-room handset. ‘Captain speaking. Get me the Chief!’

  At that moment Erskine pushed his way into the charthouse his eyebrows raised questioningly as he saw Fox’s troubled face.

  Fox shrugged and gestures towards the signal pad. ‘Local convoy under cruiser attack. They’re requesting assistance.’

  Chesnaye’s voice came from the bridge, sharp and urgent, ‘Have you got that new course yet, Pilot?’

  Fox picked up his logbook and looked hard at Erskine. ‘I’m a seaman and that’s all.’ He turned slowly towards the open door. ‘You tell the Skipper what it’s all about. Frankly, I haven’t got the heart!’

  ‘What the hell are you saying?’ Erskine rubbed his wind-reddened face. ‘Why are we changing course?’

  Fox sighed deeply. ‘He thinks we should be there to give assistance. We would have been but for the bloody engines. I must say I’m not sorry, I don’t fancy mixing it with some brand-new cruisers, Wops or not!’

  He walked briskly on to the bridge, his solid body swaying easily to the ship’s heavy rolls. A moment later Erskine heard his voice, flat and calm once more. ‘Port fifteen. Steady. Steer oh-four-five.’

  Erskine swallowed hard and followed him into the wind. The ship was leaning heavily, her bows corkscrewing as she laboured round into the teeth of the gale.

  Chesnaye looked past him, his eyes distant, as if his mind was somewhere else. ‘Ah, John, here you are. The Chief has patched up the trouble at last. I am just ringing down for maximum revs.’ Suddenly his grey eyes focused directly on Erskine’s face. ‘The W/T office are letting me have a regular report of the situation. I—I can’t understand it. The convoy has called for air support, and nothing has happened!’

  Erskine looked away. ‘There isn’t any, sir. It’s been like that for months.’ He turned slightly to watch the disbelief change to helpless anger.

  Chesnaye waved his hand across the plunging white rollers. ‘But good God, man! This is an emergency! There are valuable ships out there! Ships and men!’

  You poor bastard, thought Erskine dully. ‘Every available aircraft is in the desert, or Greece. If you’re caught on your own, that’s just too bad!’

  ‘Signal, sir.’ Laidlaw, the Yeoman, had appeared on the bridge, his beard glistening with diamonds of spray. He faced Erskine as Chesnaye read through the lines of neat, pencilled information.

  Erskine watched Chesnaye’s lips moving as he read in silence. He noticed that the Captain’s hand was shaking. Erskine knew that this was a crucial moment, but for once he felt unable to cope with it. The shock and open despair on Chesnaye’s face robbed him of controlled thought.

  ‘They’re relying on us.’ The words were wrung from Chesnaye’s mouth. ‘The Second Inshore Squadron are on way to help the convoy. We are to engage the enemy until our cruisers arrive!’

  A telegraph jangled, and moments later the bridge began to throb and quiver in response to the revived engines.

  ‘We’ll not be in time, sir.’ Erskine hated himself as he saw the effect of his words. ‘They’ve a head start on us.’

  Fox called: ‘Signal, sir. Convoy’s scattering.’

  Sub-Lieutenant Bouverie, who until this moment had been watching in silence, said: ‘A bit too late, I imagine. These Italian cruisers are damn’ fast.’

  Chesnaye crumpled the signal flimsy into a ball, his eyes furious. ‘Hold your tongue! What the hell do you know about it?’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir. I just thought——’

  Chesnaye did not seem to hear him. ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like. Waiting for help. Seeing your friends die around you and not able to do anything!’

  ‘Maximum revolutions, sir!’

  Chesnaye nodded. ‘Have the main armament cleared for action.’

  Erskine wanted to leave the bridge. To get away from the suspense and the feeling of helplessness. The Captain had proved himself so capable, so brilliant at handling the ship under the air attacks, that it had never occurred to him he was totally unaware of the true situation which faced every British ship in the Mediterranean.

  He heard Chesnaye ask in a more controlled tone, ‘What escorts do they have?’

  ‘Two destroyers and an old sloop, sir.’ Fox was holding his logbook like a bible. ‘They can’t spare much else at present.’

  The big turret creaked slightly and the left gun dipped a few degrees. Within the massive steel hive the gunners were already testing the controls, preparing their cumbersome charges for battle. Not a stationary target ashore or a straggling collection of troops and installations, but the cream of the Duce’s navy. Thirty-knot cruisers, most likely, each one a floating arsenal.

  Chesnaye folded his hands across the screen and rested his chin on them. He could feel the hull’s convulsions and hear the clatter of feet on bridge ladders as messengers raced to and fro and men hurried to their stations. Behind him nobody spoke but to relay an order or to answer one of the voice-pipes.

  Damn them, he thought savagely. Bouverie with his immature and fatuous remarks. What did he know? They were not involved, so they did not care. One man was lost overboard because of his own carelessness and stupidity, and the ship almost went into mourning because their captain did not stop. In submarine-patrolled waters they had expected him to offer the ship as a sitting target. But now that hundreds of lives and precious ships were being smashed and killed beyond the horizon they just did not see reason for alarm or interest!

  What was worse was the way Erskine accepted the Navy’s new vulnerability. Chesnaye remembered his own feeling of loss and betrayal that morning off the Gallipoli Peninsula when the Saracen had moved in for her final bombardment. The supporting fleet gone. The sea empty. The men in the convoy must feel like that. Their only hope was the Saracen, and she was to be denied them.

  He pounded the screen with slow, desperate beats. Come on, old lady! Give me all you’ve got. Faster . . . faster!

  Only twenty miles to go, and but for the driving spray and gale they might even have been able to see something. But the sea was grey with anger, and the wind showed no sign of easing. Instead it hurled itself like a barricade across the ship’s thrusting stem, cutting away the speed under remorseless pressure.

  Fox looked across from the charthouse towards the Captain’s stooped shoulders. ‘No further signals, sir.’ He caught Erskine’s anxious stare. ‘I guess it’s all over,’ he added quietly.

  Erskine waited for Chesnaye to resume his old course and speed. There was nothing to be gained now. The small convoy must have been decimated, like others would be before this was all over. Chesnaye was only offering his own ship as a target and deck, nothing more.

  Two more hours dragged by. Hardly a man moved on the upper deck, and the voices of the men on watch were hushed and rare.

  The wind slackened, veered round and dropped away as if it had never been. The hazy clouds rolled aside and the sun moved in to greet them. Humid at first, and then with its old penetrating brilliance, so that the grey shadows fled from the sea and the wave crests gave way to deep swells of glittering blue and silver.

  Once the engine room asked permission to reduce speed, but Chesnaye said shortly, ‘Not yet.’

  Erskine could not take his eyes off him. He is waiting for something to happen, he thought uneasily.

  The watches changed. Men relieved went to their messes to eat, but without their usual noisy gaiety. Even the rum was issued without comment, and the men drank their watered tots with their eyes upwards towards the bridge, where the dark outline of the Captain’s head and shoulders stayed rigidly like a carving on the front
of a church.

  ‘Smoke, sir! Bearing Red two-zero!’

  Every glass was swivelled and then steadied to watch.

  Slowly, remorsefully, like a reaper in a field, the monitor pounded her way across the inviting water. Without a wind the sea parted to allow the Saracen easy access, as if eager for her to see the spoils.

  Chesnaye said at last, ‘Slow ahead.’

  From the corner of his eye he saw the seamen off watch lining the guard-rails, their faces turned towards the smoke.

  There was little of the ship to be seen. It had been a sizeable freighter, and it lay on its beam, only a fire-rusted shell to show where the hull had once been. The eddying bow wave from the monitor’s blunt stem pushed gently against the dying ship and made the littered surface of the water between the two vessels surge with sudden life.

  Chesnaye heard a man cry out, and saw a white flash as a hand pointed involuntarily at the flotsam of war.

  Broken planks and blackened hatch covers. A headless corpse trailing scarlet weed in the clear water, an unused life-jacket found, too late.

  The sinking freighter coughed deep in its shattered insides and plunged hissing into a maelstrom which mercifully sucked down some of the grisly relics also.

  Far on the port beam the little trawler was picking her way through more wreckage, like a terrier in a slaughterhouse.

  A patch of oil a mile wide parted next across the monitor’s bows. Then there was more debris, much of it human.

  Erskine felt sick. When he looked sideways at Chesnaye’s face he saw that it was impassive, almost expressionless.

  Chesnaye said quietly, ‘If only we had been here in time.’

  Then over his shoulder he said in a strange, cruel tone: ‘Well, Sub, what do you think of all this, eh? We were too late for these chaps; you were right!’

  A dead rating bobbed past the monitor’s anti-torpedo bulge, and a seaman on lookout said in a strangled voice: ‘God! One of our chaps!’

  The guard-rail quivered as the lines of watching men leaned to look at the lonely, passing figure. At last the disaster was no longer anonymous and indistinct. The corpse was in naval uniform. Even the red badges on its sleeve were clear and mocking.

  Chesnaye stood up, his feet thudding on the grating. ‘Bring her back to her old course, Pilot!’ He glanced only briefly at Erskine. ‘Make a signal to C.-in-C., John. Repeated Second Inshore Squadron.’ He looked up at the flapping commissioning pennant at the masthead. ‘Convoy. destroyed. No survivors.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir. Anything else?’

  Chesnaye was filling his pipe with short, angry thrusts. ‘There’s a lot I’d like to tell them at the Admiralty. But it will keep for the moment!’

  Erskine wanted to help, to make the Captain understand, and he tried to find the right words.

  Before he could speak Chesnaye said: ‘Get those gawping men off the upper deck, or find them something to do! Like a bloody circus!’

  Erskine was suddenly grateful for the bite in Chesnaye’s voice, even though they both knew it was merely acting.

  * * * * *

  Lieutenant Malcolm Norris stood high on the port gratings, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. From his lofty position he could just see over the Captain’s shoulder and beyond the screen where, transfixed between the two big guns, the monitor’s bows moved very slowly towards the long strip of land.

  He could see Erskine and some of the fo’c’sle party already moving around the cables, making a last check before entering harbour.

  He heard Fox say quietly: ‘Starboard ten. Midships.’ The Navigating Officer’s buttons rasped against metal as he bent over the compass and swung the pelorus on to another fix. ‘Steer one-seven-five.’

  Norris bit his lip. Fox was so calm, so ice cold when he was working. The halyards squeaked and a string of flags soared upwards to the yard. Through the shore haze, beyond the long, low-lying breakwater, a signal lamp blinked rapidly, and Norris heard Laidlaw goading his signalmen into further action.

  But as Officer of the Watch Norris had little to do. The Saracen was at last arriving in Alexandria and the Captain and Fox were conning the ship over the last half-mile.

  Norris felt the sweat running down his spine, but did not relax his vigilant position. It was like everything else he did. He did not dare drop his guard for a second. Speaking, thinking, passing orders, each action had to be vetted.

  He watched the busy harbour life opening up across the ship’s bows. Nodding buoys, weird Arab sailing craft poised like bats on their own reflections, an outward-bound sloop gathering way as it passed the harbour limit.

  As the sloop drew abeam the trill of pipes echoed across the flat water.

  The monitor’s tannoy barked: ‘Attention on the upper deck! Face to starboard and salute!’

  The bosun’s mates, already in a small line on the Saracen’s upper bridge, raised their pipes. C.P.O. Craig snapped, ‘Sound!’

  Again the twittering, shrill and ear-splitting as the senior ship returned the sloop’s mark of respect.

  Craig watched the other ship with slitted, critical eyes. ‘Carry on!’

  The yeoman called hoarsely: ‘Signal from Flag, sir!’ Anchor as ordered!’

  Chesnaye grunted, his eyes fixed on the shimmering anchorage. Like a pewter lake, he thought. Cruisers, destroyers and supply ships. Bobbing derricks, squealing cranes, dust and busy preparation.

  At the head of a line of moored cruisers was the Aureus, the flagship. Every glass would be watching the monitor’s approach. Every eye critical, perhaps amused. He heard the rasp in his voice as he ordered, ‘Slow ahead both!’

  He heard, too, Norris stammer as he repeated the order down the voice-pipe. He was obviously worried and strained. Like me, thought Chesnaye, with sudden bitterness. He wondered what Norris had thought about the shambles left by the Italian cruisers. Probably thinks I took the ship there just to frighten everybody.

  Somewhere deep in his brain a voice persisted. Why did you go there? You knew it was too late! Was it to prove something to yourself?

  ‘Time to take her round, sir!’ Fox’s voice startled him. A prickle of alarm made him stiffen in his chair.

  Dreaming again. Too tired. Can’t think clearly any more.

  ‘Very good. Port fifteen.’

  More shouted orders. ‘Port Watch fall in for entering harbour! First part forrard! Second part aft!’

  The decks blossomed with scampering figures, unfamiliar in correct uniform and without the well-used duffel-coats and balaclavas. Chesnaye’s aching mind began to drift again. There should have been a marine guard and band on the quarterdeck. It would have made all the difference.

  He gritted his teeth. Those days were gone. No marines. Just an old ship, with God-knows-what job ahead. ‘Midships!’

  ‘Coming on to bearing now, sir!’ Fox sounded alert.

  Chesnaye stood up and stepped on to the forward grating. The monitor moved slowly past a destroyer which glittered like a yacht from beneath its impeccable awnings. More piping, and tiny, antlike figures stiffening in salute.

  ‘Half a cable, sir!’

  ‘Stop engines!’ Chesnaye shielded his eyes and peered down at the fo’c’sle. Erskine was standing right in the bows, his face towards him across the length of the foredeck. A signalman stood at his side ready to break out the Jack on the staff the moment the anchor went plummeting down. The cable party stood in various stances, like athletes waiting for the gun. Eyes on the massive, treacherous cable and the brake which would halt its welcome sound.

  Still the monitor glided forward. Almost graceful in the clear water.

  ‘Coming up now, sir!’ Fox was busy checking bearings again.

  Chesnaye lifted his arm, and saw the rating with the big hammer brace himself above the slip, the only force now holding the anchor. Chesnaye felt elated but unsteady. It was a combination of exhaustion and over-eagerness, so that he felt he had to speak, to break the unbearable waiting. ‘The flagship
looks smart enough.’ He even forced himself to smile as he said it.

  Fox grunted. ‘The Flag Officer of the Second Inshore Squadron is rather particular!’ The air on the bridge was light-hearted, even gay.

  Suddenly Chesnaye realised that he had been so preoccupied during the last harrowing days he did not even know who his new senior officer was to be. Not that it mattered now. The time he had been apart from the Navy had cut all his old connections. ‘What is the Admiral’s name, Pilot?’

  Fox frowned, his gaze on the open water ahead of the bows. The Skipper was cutting it fine. From the corner of his eye he could see the empty tanker, high and ungainly, backing stern first across the narrowing anchorage. Absently he replied, ‘Vice-Admiral Beaushears, sir.’

  Chesnaye staggered as if struck a blow. It couldn’t be! Not now, out here? He looked round like a trapped animal, his mind reeling.

  Fox’s voice, controlled but sharp, cut into his tortured thoughts. ‘Let go, sir! Let go!’

  Almost in a trance Chesnaye dropped his arm, and from forrard came the sharp click, followed immediately by the rumble of cable as the anchor roared from its rust-streaked hawsepipe.

  Fox was now up on the grating, his eyes anxious. ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  Chesnaye swallowed hard and nodded. ‘Yes!’ Over his shoulder he called, ‘Slow astern together!’

  Norris, an imaginative man at any time, had watched the little drama mesmerised like a rabbit. He repeated the last order and heard the Coxswain’s voice answer him up the voice-pipe. Slowly the monitor moved astern, paying out her cable along the bottom of the anchorage. But Norris was unable to take his eyes from Chesnaye’s square shoulders and the anxious Fox at his side.

  Later in his cabin he would be able to think about it more clearly. Norris knew that something really big had happened. With this vital knowledge, once he had unravelled it, he would make those smug bastards in the wardroom really sit up and notice him!

  ‘Stop engines!’

  Norris watched as the stern-moving tanker floundered across the bows, its half-bared screw thrashing the water into a snow-white froth. Norris held his breath. He was quite sure Chesnaye had not even seen the other ship. But for Fox’s quick action there might even have been a collision.