H. M. S. Ulysses

by Alistair MacLean

  You fool, he told himself bitterly, savagely, oh you bloody old fool! He would never forgive himself, never, never, never! All along the line he had been out-thought, out-guessed and outmanoeuvred by the enemy. They had taken him for a ride, made an even bigger bloody fool out of him than his good Maker had ever intended. Radar! Of course, that was it! The blind assumption that German radar had remained the limited, elementary thing that Admiralty and Air Force Intelligence had reported it to be last year! Radar—and as good as the British. As good as the Ulysses’s— and everybody had believed that the Ulysses was incomparably the most efficient—indeed the only efficient—radar ship in the world. As good as our own—probably a damned sight better. But had the thought ever occurred to him? Tyndall writhed in sheer chagrin, in agony of spirit, and knew the bitter taste of self-loathing. And so, this morning, the pay-off: six ships, three hundred men gone to the bottom. May God forgive you, Tyndall, he thought dully, may God forgive you. You sent them there . . . Radar!

  Last night, for instance. When the Ulysses had been laying a false trail to the east, the German cruiser had obligingly tagged behind, the perfect foil to his, Tyndall’s genius. Tyndall groaned in mortification. He tagged behind, firing wildly, erratically each time the Ulysses had disappeared behind a smoke-screen. Had done so to conceal the efficiency of her radar, to conceal the fact that, during the first half-hour at least, she must have been tracking the escaping convoy as it disappeared to the NNW—a process made all the easier by the fact that he, Tyndall, had expressly forbidden the use of the zig-zag!

  And then, when the Ulysses had so brilliantly circled, first to the south and then to the north again, the enemy must have had her on his screen—constantly. And later, the biter bit with a vengeance, the faked enemy withdrawal to the south-east. Almost certainly, he, too, had circled to the north again, picked up the disappearing British cruiser on the edge of his screen, worked out her intersection course as a cross check on the convoy’s, and radioed ahead to the wolf-pack, positioning them almost to the foot.

  And now, finally, the last galling blow to whatever shattered remnants of his pride were left him. The enemy had opened fire at extreme range, but with extreme accuracy—a dead give-away to the fact that the firing was radar-controlled. And the only reason for it must be the enemy’s conviction that the Ulysses, by this time, must have come to the inevitable conclusion that the enemy was equipped with a highly sensitive radar transmitter. The inevitable conclusion! Tyndall had never even begun to suspect it. Slowly, oblivious to the pain, he pounded his fist on the edge of the windscreen. God, what a blind, crazily stupid fool he’d been! Six ships, three hundred men. Hundreds of tanks and planes, millions of gallons of fuel lost to Russia; how many more thousands of dead Russians, soldiers and civilians, did that represent? And the broken, sorrowing families, he thought incoherently, families throughout the breadth of Britain: the telegram boys cycling to the little houses in the Welsh valleys, along the wooded lanes of Surrey, to the lonely reek of the peat-fire, remote in the Western Isles, to the lime-washed cottages of Donegal and Antrim: the empty homes across the great reaches of the New World, from Newfoundland and Maine to the far slopes of the Pacific. These families would never know that it was he, Tyndall, who had so criminally squandered the lives of husbands, brothers, sons—and that was worse than no consolation at all.

  ‘Captain Vallery?’ Tyndall’s voice was only a husky whisper. Vallery crossed over, stood beside him, coughing painfully as the swirling fog caught nose and throat, lanciniated inflamed lungs. It was a measure of Tyndall’s distressed preoccupation that Vallery’s obvious suffering quite failed to register.

  ‘Ah, there you are. Captain, this enemy cruiser must be destroyed.’

  Vallery nodded heavily. ‘Yes, sir. How?’

  ‘How?’ Tyndall’s face, framed in the moisturebeaded hood of his duffel, was haggard and grey: but he managed to raise a ghost of a smile. ‘As well hung for a sheep . . . I propose to detach the escorts— including ourselves—and nail him.’ He stared out blindly into the fog, his mouth bitter. ‘A simple tactical exercise—maybe within even my limited compass.’ He broke off suddenly, stared over the side then ducked hurriedly: a shell had exploded in the water—a rare thing—only yards away, erupting spray showering down on the bridge.

  ‘We—the Stirling and ourselves—will take from the south,’ he continued, ‘soak up his fire and radar. Orr and his death-or-glory boys will approach from the north. In this fog, they’ll get very close before releasing their torpedoes. Conditions are all against a single ship—he shouldn’t have much chance.’

  ‘All the escorts,’ Vallery said blankly. ‘You propose to detach all the escorts?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I propose to do, Captain.’

  ‘But—but—perhaps that’s exactly what he wants,’ Vallery protested.

  ‘Suicide? A glorious death for the Fatherland? Don’t you believe it!’ Tyndall scoffed. ‘That sort of thing went out with Langesdorff and Middelmann.’

  ‘No, sir!’ Vallery was impatient. ‘He wants to pull us off, to leave the convoy uncovered.’

  ‘Well, what of it?’ Tyndall demanded. ‘Who’s going to find them in this lot?’ He waved an arm at the rolling, twisting fog-banks. ‘Dammit, man, if it weren’t for their fog-buoys, even our ships couldn’t see each other. So I’m damned sure no one else could either.’

  ‘No?’ Vallery countered swiftly. ‘How about another German cruiser fitted with radar? Or even another wolf-pack? Either could be in radio contact with our friend astern—and he’s got our course to the nearest minute!’

  ‘In radio contact? Surely to God our WT is monitoring all the time?’

  ‘Yes, sir. They are. But I’m told it’s not so easy on the VHF ranges.’

  Tyndall grunted non-committally, said nothing. He felt desperately tired and confused; he had neither the will nor the ability to pursue the argument further. But Vallery broke in on the silence, the vertical lines between his eyebrows etched deep with worry.

  ‘And why’s our friend sitting steadily on our tails, pumping the odd shell among us, unless he’s concentrating on driving us along a particular course? It reduces his chance of a hit by 90 per cent—and cuts out half his guns.’

  ‘Maybe he’s expecting us to reason like that, to see the obvious.’ Tyndall was forcing himself to think, to fight his way through a mental fog no less nebulous and confusing than the dank mist that swirled around him. ‘Perhaps he’s hoping to panic us into altering course—to the north, of course—where a U-pack may very well be.’

  ‘Possible, possible,’ Vallery conceded. ‘On the other hand, he may have gone a step further. Maybe he wants us to be too clever for our own good. Perhaps he expects us to see the obvious, to avoid it, to continue on our present course—and so do exactly what he wants us to do . . . He’s no fool, sir—we know that now.’

  What was it that Brooks had said to Starr back in Scapa, a lifetime ago? ‘That fine-drawn feeling . . . that exquisite agony . . . every cell in the brain stretched taut to breaking point, pushing you over the screaming edge of madness.’ Tyndall wondered dully how Brooks could have known, could have been so damnably accurate in his description. Anyway, he knew now, knew what it was to stand on the screaming edge . . . Tyndall appreciated dimly that he was at the limit. That aching, muzzy forehead where to think was to be a blind man wading through a sea of molasses. Vaguely he realized that this must be the first—or was it the last?—symptom of a nervous break- down . . . God only knew there had been plenty of them aboard the Ulysses during the past months . . . But he was still the Admiral . . . He must do something, say something.

  ‘It’s no good guessing, Dick,’ he said heavily. Vallery looked at him sharply—never before had old Giles called him anything but ‘Captain’ on the bridge. ‘And we’ve got to do something. We’ll leave the Vectra as a sop to our consciences. No more.’ He smiled wanly. ‘We must have at least two destroyers for the dirty work. Bentley�
� take this signal for WT “To all escort vessels and Commander Fletcher on the Cape Hatteras . . . ”’

  Within ten minutes, the four warships, boring south-east through the impenetrable wall of fog, had halved the distance that lay between them and the enemy. The Stirling, Viking and Sirrus were in constant radio communication with the Ulysses—they had to be for they travelled as blind men in an invidious world of grey and she was their eyes and their ears.

  ‘Radar—bridge. Radar—bridge.’ Automatically, every eye swung round, riveted on the loudspeaker. ‘Enemy altering course to south: increasing speed.’

  ‘Too late!’ Tyndall shouted hoarsely. His fists were clenched, his eyes alight with triumph. ‘He’s left it too late!’

  Vallery said nothing. The seconds ticked by, the Ulysses knifed her way through cold fog and icy sea. Suddenly, the loudspeaker called again.

  ‘Enemy 180° turn. Heading south-east. Speed 28 knots.’

  ‘28 knots? He’s on the run!’ Tyndall seemed to have gained a fresh lease on life. ‘Captain, I propose that the Sirrus and Ulysses proceed south-east at maximum speed, engage and slow the enemy. Ask WT to signal Orr. Ask Radar enemy’s course.’

  He broke off, waited impatiently for the answer.

  ‘Radar—bridge. Course 312. Steady on course. Repeat, steady on course.’

  ‘Steady on course,’ Tyndall echoed. ‘Captain, commence firing by radar. We have him, we have him!’ he cried exultantly. ‘He’s waited too long! We have him, Captain!’

  Again Vallery said nothing. Tyndall looked at him, half in perplexity, half in anger. ‘Well, don’t you agree?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’ Vallery shook his head doubtfully. ‘I don’t know at all. Why did he wait so long? Why didn’t he turn and run the minute we left the convoy?’

  ‘Too damn sure of himself!’ Tyndall growled.

  ‘Or too sure of something else,’ Vallery said slowly. ‘Maybe he wanted to make good and sure that we would follow him.’

  Tyndall growled again in exasperation, made to speak then lapsed into silence as the Ulysses shuddered from the recoil of ‘A’ turret. For a moment, the billowing fog on the fo’c’sle cleared, atomized by the intense heat and flash generated by the exploding cordite. In seconds, the grey shroud had fallen once more.

  Then, magically it was clear again. A heavy fogbank had rolled over them, and through a gap in the next they caught a glimpse of the Sirrus, dead on the beam, a monstrous bone in her teeth, scything to the south-east at something better than 34 knots. The Stirling and the Viking were already lost in the fog astern.

  ‘He’s too close,’ Tyndall snapped. ‘Why didn’t Bowden tell us? We can’t bracket the enemy this way. Signal the Sirrus: “Steam 317 five minutes.” Captain, same for us, five south, then back on course.’

  He had hardly sunk back in his chair, and the Ulysses, mist-shrouded again, was only beginning to answer her helm when the WT loudspeaker switched on.

  ‘WT—bridge. WT—bridge—’

  The twin 5.25s of ‘B’ turret roared in deafening unison, flame and smoke lancing out through the fog. Simultaneously, a tremendous crash and explosion heaved up the duckboards beneath the feet of the men in the bridge catapulting them all ways, into each other, into flesh-bruising, bonebreaking metal, into the dazed confusion of numbed minds and bodies fighting to reorientate themselves under the crippling handicap of stunning shock, of eardrums rended by the blast, of throat and nostrils stung by acrid fumes, of eyes blinded by dense black smoke. Throughout it all, the calm impersonal voice of the WT transmitter repeated its unintelligible message.

  Gradually the smoke cleared away. Tyndall pulled himself drunkenly to his feet by the rectifying arm of the binnacle: the explosion had blown him clean out of his chair into the centre of the compass platform. He shook his head, dazed, uncomprehending. Must be tougher than he’d imagined: all that way—and he couldn’t remember bouncing. And that wrist, now—that lay over at a damned funny angle. His own wrist, he realized with mild surprise. Funny, it didn’t hurt a bit. And Carpenter’s face there, rising up before him: the bandages were blown off, the gash received on the night of the great storm gaping wide again, the face masked with blood . . . That girl at Henley, the one he was always talking about—Tyndall wondered, inconsequently, what she would say if she saw him now . . . Why doesn’t the WT transmitter stop that insane yammering? . . . Suddenly his mind was clear.

  ‘My God! Oh, God!’ He stared in disbelief at the twisted duckboards, the fractured asphalt beneath his feet. He released his grip on the binnacle, lurched forward into the windscreen: his sense of balance had confirmed what his eyes had rejected: the whole compass platform tilted forward at an angle of 15 degrees.

  ‘What is it, Pilot?’ His voice was hoarse, strained, foreign even to himself. ‘In God’s name, what’s happened? A breech explosion in “B” turret?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Carpenter drew his forearm across his eyes: the kapok sleeve came away covered in blood. ‘A direct hit, sir—smack in the superstructure.’

  ‘He’s right, sir.’ Carrington had hoisted himself far over the windscreen, was peering down intently. Even at that moment, Tyndall marvelled at the man’s calmness, his almost inhuman control. ‘And a heavy one. It’s wrecked the for’ard pom-pom and there’s a hole the size of a door just below us . . . It must be pretty bad inside, sir.’

  Tyndall scarcely heard the last words. He was kneeling over Vallery, cradling his head in his one good arm. The Captain lay crumpled against the gate, barely conscious, his stertorous breathing interrupted by rasping convulsions as he choked on his own blood. His face was deathly white.

  ‘Get Brooks up here, Chrysler—the Surgeon-Commander, I mean!’ Tyndall shouted. ‘At once!’

  ‘WT—bridge. WT—bridge. Please acknowledge. Please acknowledge.’ The voice was hurried, less impersonal, anxiety evident even in its metallic anonymity.

  Chrysler replaced the receiver, looked worriedly at the Admiral.

  ‘Well?’ Tyndall demanded. ‘Is he on his way?’

  ‘No reply, sir.’ The boy hesitated. ‘I think the line’s gone.’

  ‘Hell’s teeth!’ Tyndall roared. ‘What are you doing standing there, then? Go and get him. Take over, Number One, will you? Bentley—have the Commander come to the bridge.’

  ‘WT—bridge. WT—bridge.’ Tyndall glared up at the speaker in exasperation, then froze into immobility as the voice went on. ‘We have been hit aft. Damage Control reports coding-room destroyed. Number 6 and 7 Radar Offices destroyed. Canteen wrecked. After control tower severely damaged.’

  ‘The After control tower!’ Tyndall swore, pulled off his gloves, wincing at the agony of his broken hand. Carefully, he pillowed Vallery’s head on the gloves, rose slowly to his feet. ‘The After Tower! And Turner’s there! I hope to God . . .’

  He broke off, made for the after end of the bridge at a stumbling run. Once there he steadied himself, his hand on the ladder rail, and peered apprehensively aft.

  At first he could see nothing, not even the after funnel and mainmast. The grey, writhing fog was too dense, too maddeningly opaque. Then suddenly, for a mere breath of time, an icy catspaw cleared away the mist, cleared away the dark, convoluted smoke-pall above the after superstructure. Tyndall’s hand tightened convulsively on the rail, the knuckles whitening to ivory.

  The after superstructure had disappeared. In its place was a crazy mass of jumbled twisted steel, with ‘X’ turret, normally invisible from the bridge, showing up clearly beyond, apparently unharmed. But the rest was gone—radar offices, coding-room, police office, canteen, probably most of the after galley. Nothing, nobody could have survived there. Miraculously, the truncated mainmast still stood, but immediately aft of it, perched crazily on top of this devil’s scrap-heap, the After Tower, fractured and grotesquely askew, lay over at an impossible angle of 60°, its range-finder gone. And Commander Turner had been in there . . . Tyndall swayed dangerously on top of the steel ladder, shook h
is head again to fight off the fog clamping down on his mind. There was a heavy, peculiarly dull ache just behind his forehead, and the fog seemed to be spreading from there . . . A lucky ship, they called the Ulysses. Twenty months on the worst run and in the worst waters in the world and never a scratch . . . But Tyndall had always known that some time, some place, her luck would run out.

  He heard hurried steps clattering up the steel ladder, forced his blurred eyes to focus themselves. He recognized the dark, lean face at once: it was Leading Signalman Davies, from the flag deck. His face was white, his breathing short and quick. He opened his mouth to speak, then checked himself, his eyes staring at the handrail.

  ‘Your hand, sir!’ He switched his startled gaze from the rail to Tyndall’s eyes. ‘Your hand! You’ve no gloves on, sir!’

  ‘No?’ Tyndall looked down as if faintly astonished he had a hand. ‘No, I haven’t, have I? Thank you, Davies.’ He pulled his hand off the smooth frozen steel, glanced incuriously at the raw, bleeding flesh. ‘It doesn’t matter. What is it, boy?’

  ‘The Fighter Direction Room, sir!’ Davies’s eyes were dark with remembered horror. ‘The shell exploded in there. It’s—it’s just gone, sir. And the Plot above . . . ’ He stopped short, his jerky voice lost in the crash of the guns of ‘A’ turret. Somehow it seemed strangely unnatural that the main armament still remained effective. ‘I’ve just come from the FDR and the Plot, sir,’ Davies continued, more calmly now. ‘They—well, they never had a chance.’

  ‘Including Commander Westcliffe?’ Dimly, Tyndall realised the futility of clutching at straws.