Floating Madhouse

by Floating Madhouse

  By two p.m. Madagascar was out of sight. Wind light from the northeast. The squadron gradually acquiring a recognizable formation. What it amounted to – or would amount to when it was completed – was the first division of battleships, the four Suvarovs, in line ahead in the van, then the transports with the destroyers on their flanks, and the second ironclad division – Oslyabya, Sissoy Veliky, Navarin, Nikolai I and Admiral Nachimov – followed by a still shifting pattern of cruisers and auxiliaries. The little that had been committed to paper by Rojhestvensky or his staff indicated that the ‘scouting division’ – Svetlana, Kuban, Terek and Ural – would at night take station ahead, with Zemchug and Izumrud on either beam, and although Ryazan’s, allotted position was here astern, she’d be detached to investigate any sightings of ‘suspicious’ vessels coming up astern or from anywhere abaft the beam. It seemed to both Michael and Zakharov that the ‘scouting division’ was really a screening force; and that much as one might admire Rojhestvensky’s strength, willpower, driving force and even fearlessness, his disposition of ships and divisions wasn’t all that impressive. Neither was the almost total lack of communication in regard to his intentions, aims and tactics. Even the sketchy orders for deployment for action: battleships in single line ahead with destroyers on either quarter, transports including Orel to fall back with auxiliaries as escorts ahead and on the beams, Ryazan as division leader with Oleg and Aurora to take station as scouting/striking force on disengaged side abeam of flagship. That last bit was all right in principle and pleased Zakharov well enough, and there was more stuff about Enqvist’s cruisers, but it was all vague – no detail for instance as to the actual methods of re-deployment, which would almost certainly lead to confusion amongst captains who weren’t privy to the thinking behind any of it – or much good at handling their ships either.

  At 0600 on the 18th orders were given for the destroyers to be taken in tow by the auxiliaries. The primary object was to save fuel: coaling the little destroyers at sea was virtually impossible. Passing the tows took an hour and a half, while all ships lay stopped, and soon after going ahead again – at about 0900, by which time the formation had gone to pot – the towing hawser of the Irtysh parted. Another stop: duration this time, one hour. By mid-forenoon then, having worked up to eight knots, the Sissoy Veliky’s steering engine broke down and she sheered out of the line. The squadron lay stopped for an hour, then went ahead again at five knots. Zakharov remarked quietly to Burmin, ‘And Nyebogatov’s bringing us really old ships. Thank God we are running away from him.’

  * * *

  Michael began keeping a diary at this stage. With no great amount of detail in it, only notes as memory-aids for use when he came to write his report of proceedings for the Admiralty. Until now it hadn’t seemed necessary, especially as the squadron’s movements were being tracked by the world’s newspapers as well as by the Royal Navy, but as one approached the periphery of the war zone the condition of ships and men might be expected to have some bearing on whatever was to follow.

  Typical entries were:

  March 19, forenoon: General Quarters: battle-damage exercises and gunnery training. To be a daily routine from now on. The gunnery exercise is for layers and trainers to familiarize themselves with the telescopic sights, and for control-position personnel to get the hang of the Barr & Strouds. For their benefit the Aurora, Donskoi, Zemchug, Izumrud, Dniepr and Rion are to manoeuvre on both sides of the battleship divisions, frequently altering course, speed and distance-off. No target practice is possible, since ammo replenishments didn’t come, but practice of this kind must be better than nothing. At least, that’s what we’re all saying.

  March 20: Only one stop – when destroyer Blestyashtchy’s tow parted. More rotten cordage probably. But a whole day without engine breakdowns! Distance made good over 24 hours (fixes from one’s own stars) 187 miles, giving average 7.8 knots.

  March 21: Coaling, using boats. Swell too pronounced for colliers to lie alongside. Always will be in this ocean. Coaling started 0545 and was halted by signal at 1600. Including the time spent rigging gear, squadron was stopped for 13½ hours.

  March 24: Various false alarms – false sightings.

  And so forth: sketchy record of an armada of dirty, unseaworthy ships fouling sky and sea in its slow crawl northeastward. They coaled again on the 28th with better results – taking only half the time to rig cranes and Temperleys and then achieving a much faster rate of intake. Coaling again 29th. On the 30th, crossing the Line, the wind came up force five from the northwest.

  April 5: At 0600, in my watch, Suvarov’s lookouts sighted Great Nicobar. Course then altered by 3 degrees to approach Malacca Straits between Great Nic and Rondo and Brasse islands. Entered straits soon after noon.

  You could smell the land, and both temperature and humidity rose considerably. A change in formation was ordered, for the passage of the strait, not only for the obvious reason – its narrowness – but also because of the same old fears of ambush by Japanese torpedo boats. Cruisers Zemchug and Izumrud became the vanguard, with the destroyers – under their own power now – close astern of them. Auxiliaries and transports were sandwiched in the middle in two columns with the battleship divisions on either side and cruisers also in two columns bringing up the rear. Michael, who’d been here before, guessed that the battleships and transports forming the thick midriff of the procession were going to have to thin themselves out fairly drastically when they got to the really narrow stretch lower down. Even up here in the funnel-shaped entrance, in the Sumatran inshore waters whole groves of fishermen’s stakes were proof that those weren’t so much shallows as mudflats; the shallows extended between here and there.

  Diary again…

  April 7: Calm, foggy night. Phony reports of torpedo boats, submarines, God knows what. Balloons even! The dangerous nervousness that led to the Dogger Bank fiasco. Passed the One Fathom Bank at 0200.

  April 8: Squadron got through the bottleneck between Malacca town and Pulan Rupat with a considerable squeeze and some temporary confusion. Facing even narrower waters 12 hours later though – the Singapore Strait, with Bulang Besar and then Batam Islands to starboard. At 1400 passing Raffles Island with the lighthouse on it. Singapore glittering in the sunlight, open to our view ahead and to port, and the ships ahead of us all listing by a degree or so to port from the weight of their companies all lining the rails on that side. Two British cruisers at anchor in the roads: Z asked me what they were and I was able to tell him Drake class – 14,000 tons, main armament of 9-inch plus ten or twelve 6-inch.

  Zakharov holding his glasses on them. Radzianko was conning the ship: alert particularly for those ahead suddenly slowing or even stopping, without signal – as had been known to happen often enough. In such narrow waters at this breakneck speed of almost nine knots you needed to react quickly: and what a place this would be for a thorough-going Second Squadron-type mêlée – under the eyes of thousands on shore and especially of those British cruisers. Their bridges and upperworks would be packed, dozens of telescopes and pairs of binoculars trained on the passing armada. Wireless operators would be filling the ether with stuttering Morse, giving the world its first news of the squadron since its departure from Madagascar.

  Zakharov muttered, with his glasses still on those cruisers, ‘What’s in their minds, I wonder.’

  ‘Astonishment, probably. I’d guess a modicum of admiration too. No small achievement to have brought a fleet of this size and shape this far. Especially with the coaling problem – which, of course, they all know about.’

  ‘Won’t they be laying bets? Ten to one on Togo?’

  ‘A bit of that, I dare say.’ You’d get enormous odds if you backed this lot, he thought. Training his glasses slowly right, taking in the whole exquisite panorama which they were fouling with their smoke – glittering blue water with a few sampans fishing inshore, rocky headlands, and the heatwaves shimmering. He stopped abruptly: ‘Small steamer coming out – steering to interc
ept—’

  ‘Yes.’ A glance round. ‘Yeoman—’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ Travkov pointed forward. ‘But they’ve seen him.’ A destroyer was moving out at twenty or twenty-five knots to intercept the would-be interceptor. No alert from the rearguard therefore necessary. Travkov had his telescope trained on the steamer – little tug-sized vessel with a high bridge and foc’sl. ‘Flying Russian colours, sir!’

  He was right. The mercantile ensign – three horizontal bars, white over blue over red, with some sort of badge in one corner.

  ‘What’s—’

  ‘Consular flag, sir. Bringing despatches, likely.’

  The destroyer was stopping for the consul, if that was who it was, to run alongside her. Or close alongside, for transfer of whatever this was. Despatches telegraphed from St Petersburg, perhaps.

  The Japanese consulate would be telegraphing Tokyo, no doubt of that.

  ‘Destroyer’s the Byedovy, sir.’ Travkov had made out her pendant numbers. Michael put his glasses back on her, saw her gathering way. Slim, black, two widely spaced funnels, the bridge (or ‘compass platform’) literally a platform with just a single rail around it, so that the three men on it were visible from head to foot – and in any kind of sea would surely be soaked from head to foot. She was returning towards the flagship. Byedovy meant ‘mischievous’; all the destroyers’ names were adjectives.

  ‘Fellow’s making for us now, sir!’

  Radzianko, pointing at the consul’s steamboat. Having been stopped for several minutes, lost that much ground, she hadn’t a hope of catching up enough to get anywhere near the flagship – which one might guess would have been the consular intention – but might on her present course make it to within hailing distance of the Ryazan here at the procession’s tail – if that was what was in the man’s mind.

  ‘No guns, no torpedo tube…’

  ‘Byedovy had a much closer look anyway. And he wasn’t worried.’

  ‘No. All right.’ Zakharov glanced astern at the hospital-ship: she was in station, as always. Back then to this consular craft, its tall funnel emitting perfect smoke-rings as it came puttering in on the beam. Zakharov moving over to that side, the bridge wing; Michman Egorov passed him the megaphone. The little steamboat had put her helm over now, was swinging parallel to Ryazan’s own course: there was someone with a megaphone in her bridge wing too. Tall man wearing a white topee – and having to hold on hard with his free hand, legs straddled, as the little ship bounced over the Second Squadron’s combined outspreading wakes.

  ‘Do you hear me?’

  Zakharov yelled back an affirmative. ‘Hear you well!’

  ‘Pass a message to Admiral Rojhestvensky, please?’

  ‘Certainly!’

  ‘I am the consul-general here. I’ve given despatches to that destroyer captain, also newspapers. But in case of mishap to them, here’s the gist of the latest important news. Ready?’

  ‘Yes.’ Glancing at Travkov, who had a pencil poised over his clipboard. Back to the consul-general then: ‘Go on!’

  ‘Mukden has fallen! Huge losses of men and material. Kuropatkin has resigned. Listen, now – most important – Japanese cruiser squadron, Admiral Kanimura, was here three days ago, is now we hear en route Northern Borneo; and a force of twenty-two Jap ironclads is said to be at Labuan. Finally – still hearing me? – Admiral Nyebogatov’s Third Squadron has left Djibouti to join with yours. Sorry to give the terrible news of Mukden, but you’ll change our country’s fortunes for us now, I’m sure. Good luck to you, and God’s blessing!’

  Zakharov waved again, and told Travkov, ‘By wireless to the admiral. Let me see your draft before you send it.’

  ‘Aye, sir!’

  ‘Gavril Ivan’ich – a word with you.’

  Michman Egorov: who was looking sick. His father the colonel of engineers might well have been in the thick of it at Mukden – where Kuropatkin had had his general headquarters. Very likely would have been; but might well not have been among the casualties. After all, he was on the staff, and if Kuropatkin had resigned he presumably was alive. Radzianko commented later in the chartroom – in the South China Sea by this time, course northeast by north, and the hook-nosed Tselinyev having relieved him at the binnacle – ‘So Mukden’s gone. They’ll be laying siege to Vladivostok next.’

  19

  ‘Four thousand five hundred miles, sir!’

  Radzianko to Zakharov – proudly, as if it were his achievement. April 14th, 1130; Ryazan had just anchored, in Kamranh Bay on the Cochin China Coast. Zakharov’s wooden face and hard eyes on Radzianko for a moment: ‘Is that the distance since weighing at Nossi-Bé?’

  ‘Just so, sir.’ Slightly ingratiating smile: but it was simply the way he did smile – was how it seemed to Michael, anyway. Seemed to most people, probably. If not ingratiating, self-satisfied. Some quality that irritated: irritation against which one had to guard. Self-conscious might be nearer the mark. Adding now, ‘Must be a record, wouldn’t you say, for a fleet of this size and composition?’

  Zakharov had turned away though, was talking to Chief Yeoman Travkov; Radzianko promptly transferring his gaze to Michael. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’

  In fact it was tragic that they were here at all. Although it had been their official destination, as ordered by St Petersburg in the despatches received off Singapore six days ago, and that particular item conveyed to the rest of them by general signal after Rojhestvensky had had time to digest his various instructions, most of which he would as usual keep to himself. When he’d sprung his surprise on the 12th, stopping to coal in the open sea only sixty miles short of this Kamranh place, it had been evident that he’d decided once again to defy his lords and masters – from that point, after coaling, striking off directly for Vladivostok, surprising not only the Naval General Staff but also Togo. The intention had been fairly obvious: why coal slowly and arduously at sea when you could do it far more quickly and easily a day or two later in harbour – if you’d intended going there?

  Or waiting for Nyebogatov either. The admiral’s resolve was in fact made all the plainer when in the course of coaling he’d initiated a succession of flag signals starting with Are boilers and machinery in good order for a long passage? and followed by the crucial Report exact tonnages of coal on board.

  In Ryazan’s wardroom, Murayev had commented, after downing a third jam-jar of kvass – he’d been humping sacks of coal around – ‘Making direct for Vladivostok, aren’t we?’

  Galikovsky had nodded cheerfully. ‘Does look like it.’

  Arkoleyev then, scratching his ginger head: ‘Best chance we’ve got – grab it, is what I say. Eh, Padre?’

  Myakishev looked startled: like a boy at the back of the classroom who hadn’t been attending. Spaniel’s eyes rolling upward to the deckhead: ‘Into thy hands, oh Lord…’

  ‘Catch Togo at his prayers, that’s the thing. By the time he’s off his knees – wham, we’re showing him forty clean pairs of heels!’

  ‘Hardly clean…’

  Burmin had come in then – arriving down from the bridge. He’d listened for a moment, then shaken his head.

  ‘Forget it. We’re going to Kamranh. The Alexander’s short by three hundred tons. Four hundred less than she’s been claiming in her morning reports lately.’

  When he was giving bad news, or discussing anything of which he disapproved, Burmin had a flat, take-it-or-leave-it way of speaking. He’d added, slamming the words down like dominoes, ‘That’s taking into account this top-up. But to embark another three hundred tons now, at sea – the devil, two or three days lying stopped here on Togo’s doorstep?’ He jerked a chair back, dumped himself on it. ‘Simply not possible!’

  How impossible was demonstrated early that afternoon when wireless signals were picked up that didn’t conform to any English or Russian code and were coming from a ship or ships that were approaching. An operator could tell that much at once because of the Doppler effect – frequency rising during approa
ch, falling when range was opening. This – or these – was clearly coming towards. Coaling had ceased, boats hosed-out and hoisted, and the squadron got under way, on course for this bay, ships hosing-down en route.

  Michael wrote in his diary that evening:

  Must be a terrible blow to Rojhestvensky. That might well have been his great chance and brought success – got us past Togo and into Vladivostok. Maybe a scrap on the way, maybe not. Chance lost through one small clerical error at some earlier stage resulting in its repetition in the Alexander’s morning reports – routine 0800 signals of fuel and fresh water remaining, number of hands sick and in cells, magazine temperatures and so on. Must have been wrong in all her reports since the last coaling at least, as any sudden discrepancy would have been noticed. For Rojhestvensky, who must be only too painfully aware of having only 4 sound battleships (more or less sound) in his squadron, there could be no question of leaving one behind: it must be bitterly disappointing.

  The hospital-ship is no longer with us, has been sent into Saigon to replenish stores and will rejoin later.

  April 13: Stopped at 0700 off the Pandaran Light. Destroyers sent into Kamranh to search for mines, and picket-boats to mark out the anchorage with buoys.

  April 14: 1100, entered Kamranh and anchored. Distance run from Nossi-Bé 4,560 miles, from Kronstadt 16,628. 4 colliers arrived from Saigon – summoned presumably by W/T so wireless silence thereby broken and our presence here known to the world including St P and Togo. Cruisers Zemchug and Izumrud stationed at entrance to this bay with searchlights beamed across it throughout the dark hours, destroyers patrolling outside and picket-boats inside. Battleships have rigged anti-torpedo nets.