‘I bet she’s ugly.’
The Clyde pilot chuckled. Buchanan too. Chalk told Calshot, ‘You’ll eat those words, when you set your bloodshot eyes on her.’
‘Sounds a bit too good to be true.’ Glancing at Buchanan. ‘Eh?’
‘Well.’ Chalk shook his head. ‘Another way of putting it is I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such luck… She’s flying up here this weekend, as it happens.’
‘No wonder he’s going round grinning like a Cheshire cat!’
Buchanan asked him, ‘Up here?’
‘To Glendarragh. The Cameron-Greens.’
‘Oh. Dymock’s—’
‘No – nothing to do with him. The C-Gs’ silver wedding anniversary – big hoolie, Suzie calls it… What was that?’
‘Number four tube checked.’ Calshot raised crossed fingers. ‘Two to go.’
* * *
This was only a matter of ‘going through the motions’ – because he’d checked the bottom pair of tubes only ten minutes earlier. Eddington reminded him as he crouched behind the rear door of number five, ‘We just done five and six, sir.’
‘True. I’m not that absent-minded. We’ve been told to do it again, that’s all.’ He moved the test-cock through the central position and over to the right, then brought it back to the centre where the holes were in line.
Nothing. Not a drip. He pushed the lever back to where it had been, and crabbed over to the last one.
‘That was number five checked, TI.’
‘Save me breath for five and six together, sir.’
‘Right. Waste of bloody time, I know. But – that’s life, isn’t it.’ He centred number six’s test-cock and added, ‘On the ocean wave, anyway. No doubt about this one either.’ He turned it back. ‘Tell ’em five and six are dry, TI.’
‘Control Room… All tubes checked and dry.’
‘And while we know they are, let’s have a look inside ’em.’ He edged back past Eddington, to get to the starboard side and number one again. Not bothering with the test-cock, he took hold of the rear-door operating lever, pushed it over and then hauled on it so that the heavy, circular door swung open. Glancing round: ‘Torch?’
‘Here, sir.’
He shone it into the dark and empty tube, holding the torch as far inside as he could reach but pulling his head back out of the smell of recently-applied bitumastic paint. There was no sign of any leakage at all. The torch’s beam glinted along the steel runners on each side of the tube on which a torpedo’s side-lugs would rest, when one was loaded. But there wasn’t even an eggcup-full of water, in this first one.
He swung its rear door shut, and pushed the locking lever over. ‘Number two, now…’
Same procedure, same result. And the same again with number three. Eddington queried as Searle moved over to number four, ‘What they hanging about for, sir, d’you reckon?’
‘Uh?’ There was a small amount of water in number four. Just a few pints. ‘Slight leakage in number four tube. Very slight. As well to know, though. Little leaks get to be big ones, if you leave ’em.’ The discovery justified this internal check: over which he’d been taking a chance, since it had not been ordered or authorized from the Control Room. He added, ‘Same as rabbits.’ Glancing round at Eddington. ‘Who’s hanging about?’
‘Well – thought we’d ’ve been filling the tubes as should’ve been full, like.’
‘We will be, too.’ The voice – from the port-side doorway, behind Searle – was that of Lieutenant (E) Wally Bristol. ‘Excuse us, TI?’
‘You’re welcome, sir.’
Bristol stepped over the door’s sill into the Tube Space. He had two Barlows’ men with him – Alec Rose, assistant foreman engineer; and Mr Hamilton, the Ship Manager. Rose was pale with curly brown hair, in his early thirties; Hamilton middle-aged and overweight, with glasses and a yellowish complexion. Whether or not this was his normal skin-colour was a matter for speculation: Trumpeter was still roller-coastering, and the slamming motion was more pronounced here in the bow than elsewhere. All three were holding on – to an overhead pipe, Hamilton to the edge of the watertight door, Bristol with one arm draped affectionately over the rear end of number two tube. He was crowding Searle, rather. But evidently he’d heard the leading torpedoman’s query about filling tubes: explaining to him, ‘They’re taking some out of “O” and “W” first – before filling a couple of these, see.’
Those were trimming or ‘compensating’ tanks. ‘O’ was amidships port and starboard, could be used also for correcting any small list, and ‘W’ was further aft.
‘You’ll hear from ’em soon enough, don’t worry. What’s the internal inspection for, Mike?’
‘While we know they’re empty, checking for any bowcap leaks. They tend to show up when she’s bashing around like this, don’t they? This one, for a start, needs attention.’ He leant back to give himself room to swing that rear door shut. ‘Seems to me it’s as well to know now rather than later.’ Throwing a glance over Rose and the pot-bellied Catchpole. ‘So our friends here can fix it before we leave ’em?’
Bristol turned his rubicund, smiley face to the Barlows’ men. ‘Can do?’
‘If that’s what it is.’ Rose nodded. ‘But we’d make sure first it didn’t come up from under.’
‘Couldn’t have. Drain’s shut tight.’
Clark’s murmur reached them from his position between the tubes: ‘Tight as a monkey’s arsehole.’
‘And that’s very tight.’ Searle had got himself into position to open the rear door of number five. Taking hold of the operating lever… ‘Bit stiff, this one.’ He shifted back a little, braced himself to exert more strength.
It was beginning to shift. Taking all his strength, though. Bristol, listening to something Hamilton was saying, wasn’t watching this. If he had been, he might have guessed at the cause of the resistance. Searle might have too – if he hadn’t been so certain the tube was empty. Grunting with the effort as he forced the bar over. The locking arrangement was of geared steel lugs which had to be turned to their full extent before the door could be swung back on its massive hinges. Last inch or two to go…
The sea flung it open. Clanging back – that and the implosion of sea as deafening as gunfire – flinging Searle back against the shut-and-clamped bulkhead door behind him, sea irrupting in tons per second, Searle semi-stunned but hearing a bedlam of shouts and screams over the roaring inrush – and the TI’s yell into his telephone: ‘Blow main ballast! Blow!’ There were men – or men’s limbs – in the port-side doorway, jamming it so it couldn’t be shut, then it was clear but being held open for others to come through. Searle had disappeared, gone floundering to get Clark out of the maze of piping where he’d been shouting that he was trapped. It was Rose holding the door open – for Hamilton, Bristol and Eddington: Hamilton who’d been knocked down and with whose dead-weight Bristol had been struggling, and Eddington who’d gone back in to help. Then before the TI could get to the door to drag it shut, its own weight took over – would need half a dozen strong men to shut it then against the force of gravity and in the rush of rising water. The submarine’s bow had tilted steeply down; she was going deeper – fast, nose-down – and incoming sea under rapidly increasing pressure was already slopping over the sill into the next compartment while four or five men struggled with that door. Eddington was dragging Hamilton’s bulk over the sill, and some of those at the door shifted to make way for him and lost their hold on it: it got away from them, swung back again, all the way back so that its latch engaged – locking it open, now. Water waist-high and pouring over, down into the Fore Ends bilges, at this stage. Crushing pressure… Wally Bristol the engineer, clawing his way out of the Tube Space where he’d tried to find Searle and Clark and failed – he’d have been drowned in there too if the door hadn’t resisted efforts to shut it – heard the TI’s scream of ‘Latch! Bloody latch!’ Addressed not to him but to others blocking the TI’s own efforts to get past them and
into the Tube Space to free the door. Bristol shouted ‘All right!’ and turned back, dragged himself down into the rising black flood. The lights went out about then, a few seconds before she hit the bottom.
Chapter 11
Chalk had heard the violent clang of that tube’s rear door crashing open and the first rush of air and sound as the sea burst in: then shouts, pressure rising in his eardrums and the telephone man’s urgent ‘TI says blow main ballast, sir!’ – and ‘Flooding through number five tube, bowcap’s open. Evacuating Tube Space—’ Pargeter’s orders came in a fairly normal tone: ‘Blow all main ballast. Group up, full ahead. Hard a-rise, fore ’planes. Get her bow up, Cox’n.’ She’d already been steeply bow-down, though, the slope of the deck steepening all the time: the last thing you’d want was speed through the water, Chalk had thought – until you had got her bow up, for God’s sake…
Buchanan had been behind him in the open doorway of the wireless office, and he’d had his own left arm hooked in there to stop himself sliding away for’ard. Things had been sliding… And the old Clyde pilot clinging to some fitting on the other side of the companionway: eyes wide and round, mouth slightly agape…
Guessing he might not be getting home to his tea? Or even tomorrow’s?
‘All main ballast blowing, sir.’
That was another thing: one’s own instinct would have been to blow only numbers one and two main ballast. To get her bow up. Then group up, full ahead, and blow the other tanks… Dymock and the outsize Portland flotilla captain had gone for’ard – Hughes then following them – slithering for’ard, grasping at solid fittings along the way.
He’d controlled his own inclination to follow them. But he had a fair idea of it, anyway: and as Buchanan had said, ‘too many cooks’… Rising pressure in the ears had been evidence enough that the sea was still pouring in. So none of them had managed to get to the bowcap operating lever. They’d have stood no chance at all of shutting a tube’s rear door against sea pressure, but the bowcap, operated by telemotor pressure, would have been another matter. Much too late now. Maybe they had tried.
Spilt milk, anyway, he’d told himself. Isolating the Tube Space was the best bet. Only bet. Spilt milk, for sure, and best to ignore the lingering mental close-up of those bowcap indicators with their pointers all aimed in different directions but number five’s on ‘Open’.
‘Depth here, pilot?’
Hervey had been ready for that question. He’d answered immediately: ‘Between twenty-three and twenty-five fathoms, sir.’
Hundred and forty, hundred and fifty feet…
‘Stop blowing five and six, Crowley.’
‘Stop blowing five and six.’ Going by the Outside ERA’s tone of voice this could have been a routine exercise, no danger or emergency at all. He was a Geordie, by the sound of him; Chalk had seen him in the Barlows’ yard a few times. ‘Five and six main ballast stopped blowing, sir.’
‘Stop both motors. Full astern together.’
‘Full astern together, sir!’ Jangle of the telegraph. There’d been a note of sharp alarm in that voice. Perhaps with some reason: it was at that moment that the lights had flickered and gone out, and a Scottish voice had grated, ‘My word, isn’a this a great day oot!’ Several men laughed, and the emergency lights came on. They were on localized circuits, Chalk had recalled from his studies of the plans, so the Tube Space and possibly the Fore Ends as well were probably still blacked-out. Thoughts in and out of his mind at this stage had been (a) who that might have been, with the sardonic humour – because he deserved a medal of some kind; (b) that unless the motors running astern now stopped her so that she’d virtually be hanging on her screws, she’d be hitting the bottom pretty soon; (c) that the depth of say 150 feet might make DSEA escapes difficult, but on the other hand – (d) – never mind DSEA, blowing and pumping would surely get her up, since there was such a lot of ballast in pretty well all her internal tanks – which could if necessary be pumped dry, to counter the weight of one or possibly two flooded compartments. And – last but by no means least – that if they hadn’t succeeded in isolating the Tube Space they’d better make damn sure of shutting off the Fore Ends. If the water came any further aft than that second watertight bulkhead it would flood down into the forward battery, and salt water mixed with electrolyte made chlorine gas.
Which killed. But then, so did deep water, if you gave it half a chance.
He’d glanced back over his shoulder at Buchanan, conscious of having rather neglected him in the last few minutes. Beginning to tell him – the staring eyes, clamped jaw, forehead glistening with sweat – ‘Don’t worry. Not as bad as—’
The jolt as she hit the bottom sent men and loose objects flying, and a tremor through her steel that lasted about half a minute. Cork chips rained from the deckhead: they were in the paint, supposed to absorb condensation. The weak emergency lighting had stayed on – miraculously… Depths – he’d craned round to focus on the nearer gauge, at the same time hearing Pargeter’s ‘Stop both. Stop blowing’ – the gauges showed 155 feet. 157. Slightly greater depth of water here than Hervey had reckoned, then. He looked at Buchanan again – aware that the angle was steepening, that if it got much worse you’d need ropes to get from one compartment to another – ‘I was saying, – nil desperandum. Lots of ballast in her that can be pumped out. Jacko’ll get her up all right.’
* * *
‘Levelling?’
Buchanan was right: the stern-up angle was decreasing. Had been doing so for some while, in fact. Chalk nodded. ‘Step in the right direction.’
It wasn’t, necessarily. As Buchanan could probably guess. His pale-brown eyes were on Chalk’s, probing for the truth.
Whatever that might be. Chalk thought, Spin a coin. Heads we do, tails we don’t. He smiled, adding mentally, As the actress said to the bishop. Being a passenger had its own problems, he was finding. If he’d been in Dymock’s place or Pargeter’s he’d have been telling himself that it was only a matter of time, that sooner or later you’d either get her up there, or get everyone out by DSEA, or there’d be some kind of rescue operation from the surface. If they could get a salvage ship and divers here fast enough. It would need to be fast, whatever you did, because the air with only her ship’s company on board would only last about thirty-six hours, whereas Trumpeter was carrying almost twice that number.
Anyway – he was not in Pargeter’s or Dymock’s shoes. He was a passenger. All the decisions had to be theirs. Rescue from the surface was the least likely eventuality, in point of fact.
Trumpeter had been on the bottom, anchored to it by her flooded and abandoned forepart, for about an hour. Main ballast had all been blown, the pumps were running on internal tanks, and so far this levelling was the only outcome.
Depthgauges showed 159 feet. The additional few feet would be accounted for by the fact that the stern and midships sections were deeper than they had been, through this levelling process. He didn’t see how pumping could be the cause of it. Unless his brain was already affected in some way. It would be later: carbon dioxide poisoning would do that… But sticking to the point – pumping couldn’t make her heavier: and her forepart wasn’t lifting, it was her afterpart sinking. So what the hell…
Tidal movement?
Might be. Might well. For tidal information, refer to Hervey.
Pargeter had expressed the intention of having another shot at pulling her out stern-first, once all the internal tanks were empty. He and the two four-stripers, and the commander from Portsmouth, also Hughes the Principle Overseer and Barlows’ man Joe Fairley were meanwhile in conclave in the wardroom. There’d been talk of trying to get a man out through the for’ard escape chamber into the flooded TSC and thence into the Tube Space, to shut the rear door of number five tube and then open the mainline suction valves so those compartments could be pumped out. Obviously you couldn’t pump them out without that rear door being shut. Nothing had been done about it yet. In theory it might be a realistic
proposition. The escape chamber could be entered through hatches from either the companionway immediately abaft number two watertight bulkhead or from the TSC, the Fore Ends; normal egress would be upward, through the hatch which, when the pressure in the chamber had been equalized with the outside sea pressure, could be opened from inside, but now with the for’ard compartments open to the sea it should be possible to exit horizontally in exactly the same way.
The snag, of course, was the pressure, which potentially would be killing. And there was no-one on board with experience of deep-diving, or working at any depth. The DSEA sets weren’t designed for it. They were provided as short-term oxygen-breathing equipment for men who’d be in the escape chamber for only a few minutes before they’d have the hatch open and float up to the surface.
Even then, they’d have to do it right: and be able to withstand the pressure for those few minutes. In the training tank at Blockhouse you learnt how to use the gear, and the escape chamber was identical, to those in Trumpeter, but with only fifteen feet of water in the tower above it you had no pressure to contend with as a major factor.
Soon after she’d hit the bottom a smoke candle had been fired from the underwater gun – in the After Ends, the stokers’ mess and steering-gear compartment – and an indicator-buoy had been released from its stowage in the casing. The release gear was internal, but the forward lot was inaccessible in the flooded TSC. One should be enough, anyway, to mark the submarine’s position for the guidance of surface rescuers. And the smoke-float would have alerted Ozzard to the fact that Trumpeter was in trouble. Otherwise, he’d have seen her finally get under at about 3 pm, and since Pargeter had signalled that he’d be diving for three hours it would be at least 6 pm before he’d begin to guess that something might have gone wrong.
It was human nature not to anticipate disaster: not to cry ‘Wolf!’ before it had you by a leg…
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