Down The Hatch

by John Winton

  “We don’t keep beer,” Derek said mournfully. “We haven’t got room for it.”

  “Can I have a glass of sherry, please, then?”

  “Sherry?”

  Dagwood began to search in the wine cupboard.

  “Sherry, sherry, sherry. We’ve got a bottle somewhere. Derek won one in a raffle.”

  “Have a horse’s neck, Mid,” said The Bodger kindly. “It’s brandy and ginger ale.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve never tried brandy, sir.”

  “How old are you, boy?”

  “Twenty, sir. Nearly twenty-one.”

  “Nearly twenty-one and you’ve never tried brandy,” said Dagwood.

  The wardroom gazed at the Midshipman as though he were an aborigine newly emerged from the remotest depths of the Matto Grosso.

  “Anyway, you’ve come just at the right time, Mid,” said The Bodger. “Always join a new submarine when the bar’s open. Softens the blow a bit. On both sides.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier, sir. I only heard about it as I was going into lunch. I didn’t get an appointment or anything. Someone just stopped me and told me.”

  Wilfred snorted. “Good heavens, you never get appointed to any submarine. You just think to yourself, I think I’ll relieve old Charlie in the good ship Venus. So you stand up at the bar inboard and when anyone asks you what your next job is you just say, I’m going to relieve old Charlie in the good ship Venus. You keep saying that and after a month or two a little man calls you into his office and tells you, in the strictest confidence, that your next job is to relieve old Charlie in the good ship Venus! “

  “Don’t you believe it, Mid,” said Dagwood. “If you do that you’ll find yourself in a boat day-running from the Outer Hebrides with a Quaker wardroom and a Captain S/M whose wife you insulted at the last Summer Ball! No, the answer is to get a monk’s habit and walk around the depot-ship, genuflecting every fifteen paces and chanting from S.G.M.s. . . .”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what S.G.M.s are, sir.”

  “S.G.M.s stands for Submarine General Memoranda. Equal to but under the Koran. Every night at sunset the duty submarine staff officer climbs up to the roof of the Admiral’s office and rings a bell whereupon all submariners all over the world turn and face Gosport while the chapter for the day is read out. My God, you’d better bone up on S.G.M.s, Mid. When a submariner is buried lie’s laid out like a Crusader with his sword in one hand and his copy of S.G.M.s in the other! “

  The Bodger saw the beginnings of panic in the Midshipman’s face.

  “Now that we’re all together for the first time,” he said firmly, “I want to make a few points about the way I intend to run things in this boat. I don’t intend to do this again. I hope this will be the last time I’m going to talk in this rather pompous manner. As you all know, I’ve just come back to this after rather a long absence. I’m out of practice and I look to you for your full support while I get my eye in again. My way will probably be quite different to the way you did it in your last boats. But different boats, different cap tallies and I expect you to back me up in whatever I’m doing. I shan’t hesitate to replace any officer who doesn’t. In return, you can be sure that I will back you up all the way. I think that’s enough for general matters. Now for particular things. Drinking. Your wine-bills are no concern of mine unless you choose to make them so. All of you, except the Midshipman, are sufficiently experienced to know when enough is enough. When I first joined submarines we weren’t allowed to drink down in the boat while we were alongside the depot-ship. We had to do all our drinking up in the depot-ship where Commander S/M could keep an eye on us. I’m not suggesting any such arrangement nor do I intend to set an arbitrary limit on how much or what you drink but you can be sure that I’ll come down like a ton of bricks on any officer I find drunk on duty. Now, smoking while dived. Various captains have various ideas on this. I’m going to try a new way and abolish the old ‘One All Round’ idea altogether. I’m going to allow smoking anywhere in the submarine while dived except in the control room, where there will be no smoking at all unless the submarine is on the surface. I don’t know how it will work but we’ll see as we go along. In the meantime, as I said earlier, I’ve got a bit of leeway to make up and I shall need all your support. We shall have the eyes of the whole Submarine branch on us the whole time, but I think with a bit of luck we should have a very good commission.”

  The wardroom picked up their glasses again. Fair enough, they said to themselves.

  2

  Wilfred leaned over the after end of Seahorse’s bridge, drew in a deep breath, and cupped his hands.

  “Midshipman! What’s happening down there? What’s the delay?”

  The Midshipman, very self-conscious in his brand-new yellow lifejacket, was still too new to have developed the submarine casing oflicer’s superb disregard for the oaths and exhortations hurled at him from the bridge. He looked up nervously.

  “Just coming in now, sir,” he said.

  “Well chop chop! We were supposed to be singled up five minutes ago.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” The Midshipman turned to the leading seaman in charge of the party on the after casing, a squat, swarthy man named Gorbles who wore a prophet’s beard and had been handling berthing wires on the casings of submarines for years.

  “Can we hurry it up please, Gorbles?”

  Leading Seaman Gorbles spat leisurely into the creek. “All ready now, sir.”

  The Midshipman relayed the news to the bridge and was rewarded by a furious scowl from Wilfred.

  “Don’t you worry about them up there, sir,” Leading Seaman Gorbles said, confidentially. “They got nothing better to do. You be like the Torpedo Awficer, sir. When they shouts at you, tell ’em to go and take a running poke at a rolling doughnut.”

  Seahorse was ready for sea. Everyone was now waiting for The Bodger who, true to the tradition of submarine captains, was standing on the jetty, brief-case in hand, delaying going aboard his ship until the last moment.

  An impressive committee had come to see The Bodger off, consisting of Captain S/M, Commander S/M, the duty staff officer, several heads of departments in the submarine depot, a few captains of other submarines, and a quartermaster with a bosun’s call waiting to pipe The Bodger over the side. “Sir Bedivere and friends,” said Dagwood, watching from the bridge.

  The Bodger knew exactly why he had such a large and high-powered audience, gathered like vultures, to see him off. They were all curious to see how the new boy would shape. The Bodger suspected that they had all come half-hoping to witness a startling display of ship-handling. The Bodger could even see the figure of the Admiral, watching from his office window.

  Commander S/M glanced at his watch. The other submarine captains assumed an expectant look. Captain S/M shook hands with The Bodger.

  “Good luck, Bodger. It’ll all come back to you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The Bodger sensed the same expectancy when he reached Seahorse’s bridge, where Wilfred, Gavin, Derek and Dagwood were waiting to report their departments ready for sea. The Bodger knew by their faces that they too were curious to see their new captain perform. Even the sailors busy taking in the gangplank, although they moved unconcernedly, were plainly conscious of a change of management. Down below, the control room watch devoutedly hoped that the new boss would not hit anything.

  “Right, Number One,” said The Bodger. “Let’s go.” Wilfred waved a nonchalant hand forward, and again aft. The breast ropes dropped. The Union Jack at the bows was struck. The Bodger seized his microphone.

  “Slow astern port. Slow ahead starboard.”

  The water whipped and frothed round the stern.

  “Port screw going astern starboard screw going ahead sir,” intoned the Signalman. When the ship was manoeuvring alongside, it was the Signalman’s duty to stand at the back of the bridge and report to the Captain the actual-- as opposed to the ordered--movement of the screws. It
was not a part of his profession that the Signalman took seriously; he had long been convinced that nobody listened to a word he said. “One of these days,” he frequently promised himself, “I’ll say, Both screws dropped off, sir, and I bet no bastard takes any --- notice.”

  Seahorse’s stern swung away from the jetty. The Bodger caught the swing and the submarine backed slowly out into the main harbour, the Signalman keeping up a steady monotone commentary. The committee on the jetty watched her go and then broke up, feeling vaguely cheated.

  The Bodger could not have picked a more testing occasion for his first day. It was a fine sunny spring morning and everyone who had any business on the river was afloat. A dockyard tug shot across Seahorse’s stern as The Bodger completed his turn. A ferry passed close down the starboard side as The Bodger was lining up his ship for the harbour entrance where, just outside on the western sand-bank, a dredger was lying half-way across the channel. A motor boat crammed with sightseers darted in front of Seahorse’s bows as she picked up speed. The Bodger could hear the guide’s voice over his loudspeaker.

  “. . . Here we have a bit of luck, ladies. Here we have H.M.S. Seahorse, the Navy’s latest submarine. You can see the ship’s company all wearing life jackets in case the submarine sinks. . .”

  Outside in the main channel, The Bodger twice had to slow down as sailing boats tacked across his bows.

  “All right for some,” said the Signalman bitterly, as he watched a yacht glide by. “Not like Jolly John, in Daddy’s yacht here.”

  By the time Seahorse cleared the outer buoy, The Bodger could feel sweat on his back, his legs were aching, and he realized with some surprise that his whole body had been fiercely tensed, with every muscle knotted, since Seahorse left her berth. When he came down from the bridge, leaving Gavin on watch, The Bodger felt as though he had run a Marathon.

  “Coffee, sir?” said the Steward, as The Bodger sat down.

  “That’s the most civilized suggestion I’ve heard today.”

  “Just coming up, sir.”

  The Steward was the ship’s company’s equivalent of Gavin Doyle. He was a dramatically good-looking young man with curly blond hair and a dimple on his chain. His face had a quality of innocence which, framed in a sailor’s uniform, made nine out of ten girls feel, as they expressed it in their letters, funny all over. The Steward’s private mail was the largest of any on board and was almost entirely composed of letters written on green, pink, or pale blue paper, perfumed, and with crinkled edges. They earned for the Steward the nickname of Mr Wonderful and gave the ship’s company, to whom Mr Wonderful passed most of his mail, some of their most enjoyable reading.

  “What’s the matter with that signalman?” The Bodger asked, as he stirred his coffee. “He keeps muttering and grumbling in the background like a sort of Greek chorus.”

  “He’s in love with a policewoman, sir,” said Dagwood. “He’s taken her out every leave for two years and last leave he tried to kiss her. Apparently she immediately seized him in a sort of judo grip and nearly broke his back!”

  The Chief Stoker appeared at the wardroom door. The Chief Stoker was a giant Irishman with a broad beaming red face. He weighed nearly eighteen stone and had a belly laugh which could tremble a glass of beer at ten paces. “Trim’s on, sir,” he said to Wilfred.

  “Thank you, Chief Stoker.”

  “That reminds me,” said The Bodger. “In future, I want the trim put on before we leave harbour. And go to diving stations and open up for diving as soon as we get outside. Mid, you’d better go with the First Lieutenant and see how to open up for diving.”

  Most of the machinery outside the engine room of the submarine was maintained by a tiny bald-headed man with huge projecting ears who was known by the traditional submarine title of the Outside Wrecker. The Outside Wrecker was a Lancastrian and leg-spinner for the ship’s cricket team. He had a poor idea of any officer’s knowledge, particularly non-technical officers, and when he walked through the submarine with Wilfred he leaped forward to check every valve and system himself, as though the First Lieutenant’s touch would infect the metal.

  “When yer openin’ oop fer divin’,” he told the Midshipman, “yer gettin’ the boat ready to dive. There’re certain things which moost be open and others which moost be shut. If yer miss one out, she won’t go down and if she does happen to go down, she won’t coom oop! “

  “I see,” said the Midshipman.

  “. . . And if yer in any bloody doubt whether to open or shut it, fer Chris-sakes leave it shut.”

  “I see.”

  There was still one thing puzzling the Midshipman. He ventured to ask the Outside Wrecker.

  “What’s the trim, please?”

  “It’s what the Jimmy makes a balls oop of,” said the Outside Wrecker cryptically and sidled off towards the artificers’ mess.

  The Midshipman decided to put the same question to the oracle himself.

  “Every time we go to sea,” said Wilfred, “I work out a little sum about how heavy the boat is and how much water to have in the tanks. I give the figures to the Chief Stoker and he makes sure the right amounts of water are in the right tanks. That’s what he means by ‘The trim’s on’.”

  When they got back to the wardroom, The Bodger said : “Mid, go up and relieve the Navigating Officer and dive the submarine when I tell you.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” One of the cardinal rules drummed into the Midshipman as an ordinary seaman had been: “Obey the order first, ask questions afterwards.”

  Gavin was surprised to see him.

  “Hello, old boy. Come up for a bit of freshers?”

  “No, actually I’ve come up to relieve you.”

  “Oh.” Gavin thought for a moment. “Oh, splendid. Well, let me see now. We’re a mile inside the diving area, steering one-nine-four, both telegraphs half head, four hundred revolutions. Patrol routine, ‘Q’ flooded, radar in the warmed-up state. Only one ship in sight, that’s that one, and she’s going away. O.K.?”

  The Midshipman, to whom the traditional catechism of the officer of the watch’s turnover was so much gibberish, swallowed and said: “Yes, but I’ve got to dive the submarine! “

  “Bully for you, boy. Don’t pull the plug until I get down there, will you?”

  “No, I won’t, I promise.”

  Gavin softened. “D’you know how to do it?”

  “I-I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  “It’s not all that difficult. When the Boss tells you to dive the boat, all you’ve got to do is tell the look-out to clear the bridge, shut the voice-pipe cock, take a quick look round to see if you haven’t missed anything and then climb into the hatch yourself. Just on your right you’ll find a little tit. That’s the diving klaxon. Press the tit twice. You must do it twice. If you only do it once nothing’ll happen. Then all you’ve got to do is shut the hatch before the cruel sea comes in. Got that?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Right. It’s all yours. Don’t look so worried, boy. You’ve got lots of time. This boat takes so long to dive you’ve got time to walk round the bridge and have a quick drag after the main vents open. Don’t forget, two presses on the tit.”

  “No. I mean . . . yes.”

  Gavin disappeared and the Midshipman was left in command. He looked about him as though he expected the gigantic bows of a liner to crash into the submarine at any minute. But, as Gavin had indicated, the horizon was almost empty. The Isle of Wight lay far astern. A fresh wind was blowing from the south-west. There was no swell, only short waves with plenty of white horses to hide the feather of a periscope. It was, though the Midshipman could not appreciate it, perfect submariner’s weather.

  “Nice day, sir, isn’t it?” the look-out remarked conversationally.

  The Midshipman noticed the look-out for the first time. He was a young sailor in a duffle coat and a woollen ski-cap on which “Ripper” was embroidered. He had a perky, Cockney face which suggested costermongers’ barrows
, programme sellers at Lords and jellied eels.

  “Yes it is,” said the Midshipman.

  “This your first submarine, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a hell-ship, sir,” said Ripper earnestly.

  “Is it?”

  “I should say so. It's. . . .”

  “Midshipman “ The Bodger’s voice crackled over the broadcast. “Dive off the klaxon!”

  While the Midshipman remained paralysed, Ripper leaped round the bridge, shut the voice-pipe cock, collected the binoculars and vanished inside the tower. All at once the Midshipman found himself alone, the last man on the bridge of a submarine about to dive. It was the loneliest moment of the Midshipman’s life.

  The klaxon button was where Gavin had described it. The Midshipman pressed it twice and far below, as though on a different planet, he heard its sound in the control room. At once, there was a roar of escaping air from outside the submarine, the engines stopped, and there was silence, in which the Midshipman could hear his breath rasping through his throat as he struggled with the top hatch.

  The hatch would not budge. In a frenzy the Midshipman seized the handle and pulled with all his strength. The hatch swung shut with a violence which knocked the Midshipman off balance. One of the clips removed his hat and dealt him a stunning blow on the head. He had not been prepared for the complete blackness when the daylight was shut out and he hung on the ladder, unable to see, dazed by the blow on the head, incapable of finding the clips and appalled by the thought of the sea by now rising steadily up the outside of the tower.

  “Here, sir.”

  The Midshipman felt Ripper’s hands guide him to the clips. He tightened them and slipped in the securing pins.

  The Bodger was already at the periscope when the Midshipman reached the bottom of the ladder.

  “Well done, Mid,” the Bodger said, without looking up. “Bloody good for the first time.”

  Standing at the bottom of the ladder, rubbing the bump on his head, the Midshipman experienced a soaring exaltation of his spirit; he felt, for the first time, a proper member of the ship’s company. The Midshipman in that moment, was unwittingly bitten by the submariner’s disease. It was an affliction which would remain with him all his life and would make him run to the rail whenever he saw a submarine pass by and stand a-tiptoe when they were named.