The Bismarck had a brief but spectacular career, the Tirpitz no career at all. It spent its war holed up in northern Norway, where it none the less performed the invaluable function of tying up major units of the British Home Fleet which feared that the giant battleship might slip its moorings in Alta Fjord and break out into the Atlantic. It was at those moorings that the Tirpitz was ultimately destroyed by ten-ton bombs from RAF Lancasters.
Although the British had a very considerable advantage in battleships, they were, individually, no match for those of the Germans, as was tragically proved when the Bismarck sank the battle-cruiser Hood, pride and darling of the Royal Navy, with a single salvo.
Underwater, the Germans used mines and submarines. Less than three months after the outbreak of war the Germans had come up with a rather unpleasant device—the magnetic mine. Unlike the standard type, which had to come into physical contact with a vessel before being activated, the magnetic mine was set off by the electrical current generated by the ship’s hull. Those mines could be laid by either ships or aircraft and in the first four days after their introduction no fewer than fifteen ships were sent to the bottom—the fact that they were nearly all neutrals seemed of no great concern to the Germans: magnetic mines are very clever devices but not clever enough to discriminate between a neutral and an enemy. The British managed to retrieve one intact, took it to pieces—not without considerable danger to those engaged in the dismantling—and came up with electronic counter-measures which enabled minesweepers to detonate the magnetic mine at a respectful distance.
Submarines, of course, were the most deadly enemies the Merchant Navy had to face. The toll taken in the first three and a half years of war was savage beyond belief. It wasn’t until the early summer of 1943 that the menace was brought under some form of control, but it wasn’t until the end of 1944—during the two years 1943-4 480 German submarines were destroyed—that those stealthy pursuers and silent killers ceased to be a factor of consequence.
It was inevitable that the U-boats should be selected as the target for hatred and their crews depicted, both during the war and subsequently, as cunning, treacherous and ice-cold murderers, fanatical Nazis to a man, who hunted down unsuspecting innocents, closed in unheard and unseen, destroyed their victims without mercy or compunction, then moved on again, still unheard and unseen. To a limited extent, this view was valid. The pattern for this belief was set on the very first day of the war when the liner Athenia was torpedoed. In no way could the Athenia have been mistaken for anything other than what it was: a peaceful passenger vessel crammed with civilians—men, women and children. This must have been known to the far from gallant Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp, commander of the German U-boat that sent the Athenia to the bottom. There is no record that Lemp was ever reprimanded for his action.
The same charge of ruthlessness, of course, could have been levelled against Allied submariners—to a lesser extent, admittedly, it is true, but that was only because they had a much more limited choice of targets.
The overall U-boat picture is false. Ruthless Nazis there may have been among the crews but they were a tiny minority: the men were motivated principally by an intense pride in the traditions of the Imperial German Navy. Certainly there were acts of brutality by individual U-boat commanders but there were also acts of humanity, gallantry and compassion. What was undeniable was the immense personal courage and spirit of self-sacrifice of those men. It has to be remembered that, out of a total of 40,000 U-boat submariners, 30,000 died, the most shocking casualty rate in the history of naval warfare. While the actions of those men are not to be condoned, the men themselves are not to be condemned. Ruthless they were—the nature of their job demanded it—but they were brave beyond belief.
Such then were the conditions in which the men of the Merchant Navy had to live and die: such, too, were their enemies, who sought, implacably, to destroy them. The odds against the health and lives of the merchantmen surviving, respectively, their living conditions and the attentions of the enemy were high indeed: theirs was a classic no-win situation. In the circumstances it was an astonishing and commonplace fact that men who had survived two or three torpedoings and sinkings would immediately, on their return to Britain, seek out another ship to take them to sea again. By definition, those men were noncombatants but their endurance, tenacity and determination—they would have laughed at words like gallantry and courage—matched those of the men who hunted them down.
ONE
Silently, undramatically, without any forewarning, as in any abrupt and unexpected power cut in a city, the lights aboard the San Andreas died in the hour before the dawn. Such blackouts were rare but not unknown and gave rise to no particular alarm as far as the handling and navigation of the vessel were concerned. On the bridge, the binnacle light that illuminated the compass, the chart light and the essential telephone line to the engine-room remained unaffected because, operating as they did on a lower voltage, they had their own separate generator. The overhead lights were on the main generator but this was of no consequence as those lights were switched off: the bridge, any bridge, was always darkened at night. The only item on the bridge that did fail was the Kent screen, an inset circular plate of glass directly ahead of the helmsman which spun at high speed and offered a clear view in all conditions. Third Officer Batesman, the officer of the watch, was unworried: to the best of his belief there were neither land nor ships within a hundred miles of him with the exception of the frigate HMS Andover. He had no idea where the frigate was and it didn’t matter: the frigate always knew where he was, for it was equipped with highly sophisticated radar.
In the operating theatre and recovery room it was a case of business as usual. Although the surrounding sea and sky were still dark as midnight, the hour was not early: in those high latitudes and at that time of year daylight, or what passed for daylight, arrived about 10.00 a.m. In those two rooms, the most important in a hospital ship, for that was what the San Andreas was, battery-powered lights came on automatically when the main power failed. Throughout the rest of the ship emergency lighting was provided by hand-hung nickel-cadmium lamps: a twist of the base of such a lamp provided at least a bare minimum of illumination.
What did give rise to concern was the complete failure of the upper deck lights. The hull of the San Andreas was painted white—more correctly, it had been white but time and the sleet, hail, snow and ice spicules of Arctic storms had eroded the original to something between a dingy off-white and an equally dingy light grey. A green band ran all the way around the hull. Very big red crosses had been painted on both her sides, as well as on the fore and after-decks. During night-time those red crosses were illuminated by powerful floodlights: at that time darkness accounted for twenty hours out of the twenty-four.
Opinion as to the value of those lights was fairly evenly divided. According to the Geneva Convention, those red crosses guaranteed immunity against enemy attacks, and as the San Andreas had so far been reassuringly immune those aboard her who had never been subjected to an enemy attack of any kind tended to believe in the validity of the Geneva Convention. But the crew members who had served aboard before her conversion from a Liberty cargo carrier to her present status regarded the Convention with a very leery eye. To sail at night lit up like a Christmas tree went against all the instincts of men who for years had been conditioned to believe, rightly, that to light a cigarette on the upper deck was to attract the attention of a wandering U-boat. They didn’t trust the lights. They didn’t trust the red crosses. Above all, they didn’t trust the U-boats. There was justification for their cynicism: other hospital boats, they knew, had been less fortunate than they had been but whether those attacks had been deliberate or accidental had never been established. There are no courts of law on the high seas and no independent witnesses. Either from reasons of delicacy or because they thought it pointless the crew never discussed the matter with those who lived in what they regarded as a fool’s paradise—the doctors, the s
isters, the nurses and the ward orderlies.
The starboard screen door on the bridge opened and a figure, torch in hand, entered. Batesman said: ‘Captain?’
‘Indeed. One of these days I’ll get to finish my breakfast in peace. Some lamps, will you, Third?’
Captain Bowen was of medium height, running to fat—‘well-built’ was his preferred term—with a cheerful white-bearded face and periwinkle-blue eyes. He was also well past retirement age but had never asked to retire and never been asked to: in both ships and men the Merchant Navy had suffered crippling losses and a new ship could be made in a tiny fraction of the time it took to make a new captain: there weren’t too many Captain Bowens left around.
The three emergency lamps didn’t give much more light than a similar number of candles would have done but it was enough to see just how quickly the Captain’s coat had been covered in snow in the brief seconds it had taken him to cover the distance from the saloon. He removed the coat, shook it out through the doorway and hurriedly closed the door.
‘Bloody generator having one of its fits again,’ Bowen said. He didn’t seem particularly upset about it, but then, no one had ever seen the Captain upset about anything. ‘Kent screen on the blink, of course. No odds. Useless anyway. Heavy snow, thirty knot wind and visibility zero.’ There was a certain satisfaction in Bowen’s voice and neither Batesman nor Hudson, the helmsman, had to ask why. All three belonged to the group of thought that had minimal belief in the Geneva Convention: no plane, ship or submarine could hope to locate them in those conditions. ‘Been through to the engine-room?’
‘I have not.’ Batesman spoke with some feeling and Bowen smiled. Chief Engineer Patterson, a north-easterner from the Newcastle area, had a high pride in his undoubted skill, a temper with a notoriously short fuse and a rooted aversion to being questioned about his activities by anyone as lowly as a third officer. ‘I’ll get the Chief, sir.’
He got the Chief. Bowen took the phone and said: ‘Ah, John. Not having much luck this trip, are we? Overload coil? Brushes? Fuse? Ah! The standby, then—I do hope we’re not out of fuel again.’ Captain Bowen spoke in tones of grave concern and Batesman smiled: every member of the crew, down even to the pantry-boy, knew that Chief Patterson was totally devoid of any sense of humour. Bowen’s reference to fuel referred to the occasion when, with Chief Patterson off duty, the main generator had failed and the young engineer in charge had forgotten to turn the cock on the fuel line to the auxiliary. Patterson’s comments were predictable. With a pained expression on his face, Bowen held the phone a foot from his ear until the crackling in the earpiece had ceased, spoke briefly again, then hung up and said diplomatically: ‘I think Chief Patterson is having rather more trouble than usual in locating electrical faults. Ten minutes, he says.’
Only two minutes later the phone rang.
‘Bad news, for a fiver.’ Bowen lifted the phone, listened briefly, then said: ‘You want a word with me, John? But you are having a word with me…Ah. I see. Very well.’ He hung up. ‘The Chief wants to show me something.’
Bowen did not, as Batesman might have assumed, go to the engine-room. He went, instead, to his cabin where he was joined within a minute by the Chief Engineer. A tall, lean man, with an unremarkable face and a permanent five o‘clock shadow, he was, like a number of men who are humourless and unaware of it, given to smiling at frequent intervals and usually at inappropriate moments. He was not, however, smiling at that particular moment. He produced three pieces of what appeared to be black carbon and arranged them on the Captain’s table until they formed an oblong shape.
‘What do you make of that, then?’
‘You know me, John, just a simple seaman. An armature brush for a dynamo or generator or whatever?’
‘Exactly.’ Patterson was much better at being grim than he was at smiling.
‘Hence the power failure?’
‘Nothing to do with the power failure. Overload coil thrown. Short somewhere. Jamieson’s taken a bridge-megger and gone off to locate it. Shouldn’t take him long to locate it.’
This Bowen was prepared to believe. Jamieson, the Second Engineer, was a very bright young man with the unusual distinction of being an A.M.I.E.E.—an Associate Member of the Instituteof Electrical Engineers. He said: ‘So this brush comes from the auxiliary generator; it’s broken, you seem unhappy about it, so I take it this is unusual.’
‘Unusual? It’s unknown. At least, I’ve never known of it. The brush is under constant spring-loaded pressure against the face of the armature. There is no way it could have broken in this particular fashion.’
‘Well, it did happen. First time for everything.’ Bowen touched the broken pieces with his finger. ‘A one-off job? Flaw in manufacture?’
Patterson didn’t answer. He dug into an overall pocket, brought out a small metal box, removed the lid and placed the box on the table beside the broken brush. The two brushes inside were identical in shape and size to the one that Patterson had reassembled. Bowen looked at them, pursed his lips, then looked at Patterson.
‘Spares?’ Patterson nodded. Bowen picked one up but only one half came away in his hand: the other half remained in the bottom of the box.
‘Our only two spares,’ Patterson said.
‘No point in examining the other?’
‘None. Both generators were examined and in good shape when we were in Halifax—and we’ve used the auxiliary twice since leaving there.’
‘One broken brush could be an extraordinary fluke. Three broken ones don’t even make for a ludicrous coincidence. Doesn’t even call for thoughtful chin-rubbing, John. We have an ill-intentioned crank in our midst.’
‘Crank! Saboteur, you mean.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose. At least, someone who is ill-disposed to us. Or towards the San Andreas. But saboteur? I wonder. Saboteurs go in for varied forms of wholesale destruction. Breaking three generator brushes can hardly be classified as wholesale destruction. And unless the character responsible is deranged he’s not going to send the San Andreas to the bottom—not with him inside it. Why, John, why?’
They were still sitting there, darkly pondering why, when a knock came at the door and Jamieson entered. Young, red-headed and with an ebullient and carefree attitude to life, he was being anything but ebullient and carefree at that moment: he had about him an air of gravity and anxiety, both quite alien to his nature.
‘Engine-room told me I’d find you here. I thought I should come at once.’
‘As the bearer of bad news,’ Captain Bowen said. ‘You have discovered two things: the location of the short and evidence of, shall we say, sabotage?’
‘How the hell—I’m sorry, sir, but how could you possibly—’
‘Tell him, John,’ Bowen said.
‘I don’t have to. Those broken brushes are enough. What did you find, Peter?’
‘For’ard. Carpenter’s shop. Lead cable passing through a bulkhead. Clips on either side seemed to have worked loose where it passed through the hole in the bulkhead.’
Bowen said: ‘Normal ship’s vibration, weather movement—doesn’t take much to chafe through soft lead.’
‘Lead’s tougher than you think, sir. In this case a pair of hands helped the normal chafing along. Not that that matters. Inside the lead sheathing the rubber round the power cable has been scorched away.’
‘Which one would expect in a short?’
‘Yes, sir. Only, I know the smell of electrically burnt rubber and it doesn’t smell like sulphur. Some bright lad had used an igniting match-head or heads to do the trick. I’ve left Ellis on the repair job. It’s simple and he should be about through now.’
‘Well, well. So it’s as easy as that to knock out a ship’s electrical power.’
‘Almost, sir. He’d one other little job to do. There’s a fuse-box just outside the carpenter’s shop and he removed the appropriate fuse before starting work. Then he returned to the fuse-box and shorted out the line—insulated pliers, di
tto screwdriver, almost anything would do—then replaced the fuse. If he’d replaced the fuse before shorting out the line it would have blown, leaving the rest of the electrical system intact. Theoretically, that is—on very rare occasions the fuse is not so obliging and doesn’t go.’ Jamieson smiled faintly. ‘Fact of the matter is, if I’d had a cold in the nose he might have got away with it.’
The phone rang. Captain Bowen lifted it and handed it over to Patterson who listened, said: ‘Sure. Now,’ and handed the phone back. ‘Engineroom. Power coming on.’
Perhaps half a minute passed, then Captain Bowen said mildly: ‘You know, I don’t think the power is coming on.’
Jamieson rose and Bowen said: ‘Where are you going?’
‘I don’t know, sir. Well, first of all to the engine-room to pick up Ellis and the bridge-megger and then I don’t know. It would seem that old Flannelfoot has more than one string to his bow.’
The phone rang again and Bowen, without answering, handed it over to Patterson, who listened briefly, said: ‘Thank you. Mr Jamieson is coming down,’ and handed the phone back. ‘Same again. I wonder how many places our friend has jinxed and is just waiting for the opportunity to activate them.’
Jamieson hesitated at the door. ‘Do we keep this to ourselves?’
‘We do not.’ Bowen was positive. ‘We broadcast it far and wide. Granted, Flannelfoot, as you call him, will be forewarned and forearmed, but the knowledge that a saboteur is at large will make everyone look at his neighbour and wonder what a saboteur looks like. If nothing else, it will make this lad a great deal more circumspect and, with any luck, may restrict his activities quite a bit.’ Jamieson nodded and left.
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