Convoy

by Dudley Pope

  He looked at his watch again. Two hours before dinner, and probably about the same amount of time before the raids started. The Germans would have to be asleep not to notice that the Gladstone and Queen’s Docks in Liverpool were packed with fully-laden ships. The Luftwaffe was probably alerted to stage a big raid, U-boats were no doubt soon to be warned once the convoy had sailed – they would not attack within 500 miles of the coast because of Coastal Command. He suddenly felt tired and decided to go to bed.

  It had taken two hours for the Marynal to get clear of the Queen’s Dock and out into the River Mersey, a process which at times seemed like trying to lead a willing but large elephant out of a small but sharply-angled maze. The tug had pushed and pulled; Captain Hobson had used the propeller skilfully and mercifully there was very little wind, just the grey of a chilly drizzle, mixing with smoke from fires still burning after the night’s bombing. The Mersey seemed to suck down the grey from the clouds and blend it with its own muddy brown water which contained more dead cats and dogs, contraceptives, soggy cardboard boxes and cabbage leaves than Yorke had previously seen in a waterway.

  She had anchored for a tide and Yorke, used to the Royal Navy, where there were always plenty of seamen available (because many extra were needed when a warship went into battle), was startled by how few men were needed. The third officer had been on the bridge with Captain Hobson and a cadet. Then Yorke had seen the chief officer, strolling up to the fo’c’sle, where he was joined by a man he later discovered was the carpenter. The second officer had gone aft to the poop.

  Captain Hobson had from time to time given orders to the cadet, who swung the indicator of the engine-room telegraph, and occasionally called a helm order to the quartermaster at the wheel. From inside the wheelhouse he could only see forward, and then through narrow horizontal slits in the blocks of armour-plated material which looked like grey-painted nut nougat and which were bolted on the front and sides of the wheelhouse, so he preferred to stand outside on one or other wing of the bridge, giving his orders quietly in his pleasant Yorkshire accent.

  Finally he had the ship stemming the tide, which was just beginning to ebb. One order stopped the propeller turning; then he picked up the telephone which linked him to the chief officer on the fo’c’sle. ‘Just about here, Mr Metcalfe; we’re in eight fathoms…’

  The chief officer waved to the carpenter, who turned the brake-wheel on the capstan and with a roar the chain started running out of the locker below as the anchor splashed into the river. The chief officer turned his head away from the cloud of rust and the carpenter spun the wheel again, so that the chain slowed down and eventually stopped.

  Finally the ship was satisfactorily anchored, but even lying out in the river motor launches brought out men – Customs officials, port officials, company officials. The marine superintendent came on board to say goodbye to Captain Hobson and meet the naval lieutenant travelling in the Marynal and, more important, he confirmed that there would be no more passengers: the remaining passenger cabin would be empty for the voyage.

  By late afternoon the Marynal was under way, surrounded by thirty-four other merchantmen. Each had her name board down – this, a large hinged plank usually fitted on either side of the bridge, was normally stowed folded up, hiding the name, but now, when the two frigates and three corvettes trying like sheepdogs to get the ships into convoy formation needed to be able to shout instructions (or threats) over the loudhailer, the name boards came in useful. Once the convoy was formed up the name boards would be folded again and each ship would be grey and anonymous, her name at bow and stern either removed or painted over.

  Finally seven ships were steaming abreast of each other on the northern side of Liverpool Bay, the leaders of the columns, and the rest of the ships beginning to manoeuvre to get into the right column. ‘The fact is,’ Hobson said to Yorke, ‘every master has spent his whole working life keeping his ship as far away as possible from any other vessel: in peacetime another ship close by means the risk of a collision. Now, in wartime, we’re expected to back and fill quite cheerfully yards from someone else like a pregnant woman scurrying through the Christmas sales looking for a bargain. You chaps are trained right from the start to operate in squadrons, or flotillas, or whatever you call them, so you don’t have patience with us old fogies.’

  ‘True enough,’ Yorke agreed, ‘but Johnny Gower has only an hour’s daylight left to get all these ships in position and steaming on the convoy course… If a U-boat sneaks in to attack with them scattered all over Liverpool Bay, it’d be Johnny’s neck on the block because there’s no way his escorts could do anything about it.’

  Hobson watched as the chief officer manoeuvred the Marynal to pass astern of a ship in the fourth column and begin the turn to get into the fifth column, the next astern of the Swedish ship. The Swede was the third in the column, the Marynal the fourth, and the fifth and last in the column was an ancient three-island coal-burner with a tall, thin funnel; now getting into position like an old dowager joining a funeral procession.

  Captain Hobson saw Yorke looking at her. ‘One of the “Starving Stevens” – a tramp in peacetime. The owners have a dozen or so ships and a long history of underpaying crews and cheating them out of their grub…the kind of owners that give shipping a bad name and the reason why the lads sometimes need a strong union. And that particular one, the Flintshire – she’s a “smoker”. The commodore’ll be calling her up every day and telling her to make less smoke.’ At that moment, as if to confirm it, her funnel erupted a stream of oily, black smoke which then curved astern and flattened out as the ship moved forward from under it.

  Yorke looked ahead at the commodore’s ship, leading the next column to port, but Hobson said: ‘They’ll leave her to smoke for today, just to give her stokers a chance to get their muscles back into trim. But you can bet her captain is on to his chief engineer already – the last time I was in convoy with her she smoked so badly the commodore ordered her to quit and she had to finish the trip on her own. Luckily we were bound for Freetown: if we’d been homeward bound she’d never have made it through the U-boats.’

  By now the Marynal was beginning to pitch as she met the swell waves rolling in across Liverpool Bay from the north-west, and the bow of each of the ships occasionally spurted a white moustache. The Marynal vibrated because like all motor ships she had a critical speed, a narrow band at which she vibrated. Most captains and chief engineers hurried through it but occasionally, like now, they were forced to stay in it. Down in the galley stewards would be cursing as all the crockery and pans rattled. He pictured the table laid in the saloon for dinner and the glasses and cutlery vibrating their way to the edges, and the stewards wondering how long it would go on, trying to decide whether or not to fit the battens round the edges, the fiddles that stopped objects sliding off in heavy weather.

  Hobson cursed and finally strode into the wheelhouse, picking up the telephone to the engine room. A minute or two later the Marynal’s speed dropped a knot or two and the vibration stopped. From now on all speed orders to the engine room would be given over the telephone; the big brass pillars of the engine room telegraphs on each wing of the bridge would not be used while she was in convoy. From now on it would be the ‘up two revolutions…down one…up four…’ about which the chief engineer had complained but which would keep the Marynal in position.

  Night fell and the ships all round the Marynal merged into the darkness. Yorke was thankful there would be no zigzagging until they were out in the Atlantic: as they headed north-west they were in effect going towards the narrow neck of a funnel, leaving the Isle of Man to starboard and due to pass the channel between Northern Ireland to port and Scotland only twenty miles or so to starboard – Scotland seeming here to be a series of peninsulas dangling down like fingers reaching out for Ireland – the Mull of Kintyre, and then the Mull of Oa. Not far away to the west a country was at peace: in Eire there wa
s no blackout, and no welcome, and the German Embassy was doing its normal business in Dublin. The bases in south-west Eire which could swing the balance in the Battle of the Atlantic were denied to the Royal Navy.

  Yorke felt lost: being in a ship at sea with no duties was disturbing, giving him a vague feeling that he had forgotten something but was not quite sure what. Nor was it being at sea in normal circumstances: instead of the steady whining of steam turbines there was the drumming of diesels, more like a heavy lorry or a charabanc coasting down a hill.

  He picked up a pair of binoculars and focused them on the Swedish ship, which was now just two hundred yards ahead. She had a good profile, a slight round in the bridge section giving a streamlined look, the funnel low and wide without seeming squat. All the accommodation was amidships, the fo’c’sle small and probably used only as storage for paint and rope. The poop was almost non-existent; being a neutral ship she carried no 4-inch gun there.

  She was pitching, her cruiser stern lifting slightly in seesaw unison as her bow dipped. At this slow speed her propellers – he remembered that like most of the rest she had twin screws – left a distinctive wake of even whorls on the surface of the water. The smoke from the funnel was almost imperceptible; a series of tiny pulses.

  Up to now a Swedish ship in an Allied convoy had been for him just a reference on a sheet of paper: the entry ‘(SW)’ after a ship’s name on a long list. There had been eleven such convoys and eleven such dockets, all locked up now in Uncle’s safe at the Citadel, along with a twelfth, a new one which Yorke had started, giving every detail he knew up to the time the Marynal sailed from the Queen’s Dock. If anything went wrong that docket would save his successor a lot of work.

  But what had seemed a certainty back in the Citadel, in the curiously tense atmosphere of the ASIU room, seemed rather remote out here at sea. Looking at it on paper and noting that a Swedish ship had been the only common factor in each of the convoys, it had seemed not just suspicious but halfway towards solving the mystery of the insider U-boat. Such a fine clue, such a brilliant deduction, he jeered at himself, that he did all he could to persuade Uncle to let him get to sea in the next convoy that had a Swedish ship, leaving Clare, and for that matter a whole lot of remedial exercises for his hand and arm, which was now becoming very painful, to find out precisely what was happening and put a stop to it.

  A sort of seagoing Sherlock Holmes, he sneered at himself, except that out here in the convoy, with a Swede just ahead, he was beginning to feel like the Toytown policeman on the BBC’s Children’s Hour. How could a Swedish ship sailing as number three in the fifth column possibly have anything to do with insider attacks by U-boats? If the ships were all sunk on the same bearings from the Swedish ships one could guess the Swedes were fitted with torpedo tubes. In fact all they had was the smug attitude of a neutral selling materials to both sides without even attempting any of the humanitarian work that Switzerland carried out. Yet one should be fair, he told himself; Sweden had the Russians on one side and the Germans on the other; she had seen two of the other nations in the original ‘Three Crowns’, Norway and Denmark, invaded by the Germans. Yet, yet…why was Sweden spared by the Germans? There could be no humanitarian reasons; having Sweden neutral gave Germany no advantage. She had to send her troops by the trainload through Sweden to occupy and garrison Northern Norway – indeed, the Free Norwegians regarded Sweden’s permission as the ultimate stab in the back. It could only be Sweden’s old and close friendship with Germany that saved her.

  Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter a damn out here; the convoy was under way in the proper formation; the three corvettes had managed to refuel and reammunition and join in time; it was getting damned cold as night fell, and there was absolutely no reason why he should stay on the bridge, particularly with a warm cabin and a pile of books and magazines waiting for him. And by now, with the door left open for so long, the smell of the O-Cedar might have gone away, and the Brasso, too. If the price of freedom was eternal vigilance, the price of a polish was an eternal odour, or so it seemed.

  Chapter Twelve

  Four days later Yorke stood with Captain Hobson in the Marynal’s chartroom on the after side of the bridge and looked down at the North Atlantic chart, eastern section, where Hobson had just pencilled a light X and the date and a time and then, taking the dividers, measured the distance back to Londonderry. ‘Just over five hundred miles,’ Hobson said. ‘We’re not making bad time, considering how the weather has deteriorated.’

  ‘We’re on our own now,’ Yorke said, and when he saw Hobson’s eyebrows rise questioningly added: ‘Well, we’re beyond the range of air cover. For the Sunderlands and Catalinas, anyway, because their maximum range is under 500 miles’ radius – less with these strong westerly winds up aloft. The Liberators can get out about 800 miles, but we’ve so few of them they concentrate on the incoming convoys. We’re in The Black Pit, as it’s known at the Admiralty.’

  ‘Using those Liberators to meet only incoming convoys seems daft,’ Hobson grumbled. ‘After all, we’re taking out supplies for the Eighth Army. We’re just as important.’

  ‘It seems different when you’re sitting in the Admiralty. The Government’s first priority is feeding the people in Britain. Don’t forget that even the weekly cheese ration is down to the size of a matchbox.’

  ‘Aye,’ Hobson said wearily, ‘you’ll have to bear with me. But the fact of the matter is we never see any bloody aircraft – except German ones – when we come back, so I don’t really believe the policy. Sounds to me more like propaganda.’

  ‘You see the German planes because they want to be seen,’ Yorke explained patiently. ‘But if you can see a Coastal Command aircraft it probably isn’t doing its job properly – any German U-boats searching on the surface for a convoy or making for a rendezvous will be miles away, and it’s out there that Coastal Command is looking.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Hobson conceded, ‘but you said yourself, we’re on our own now.’

  Yorke cursed to himself: his loose tongue meant a casual remark was now being given far too much importance. Yorke knew that to Hobson he represented the Admiralty in all its wit, wisdom and stupidity. Although the Yorkshireman had no certain idea why he was on board the Marynal, he was already beginning to notice that Yorke had a particular interest in the Swedish ship: one could look at the same ship with binoculars only so many times in a day before some wit asked if there was a beautiful Nordic blonde sunning herself naked on the poop. And the answer ‘I’m waiting for the sun to come out,’ would soon begin to wear thin.

  ‘Beyond air cover, yes,’ Yorke agreed.

  Yorke thought for a few moments and then made up his mind. There was no point in keeping it secret, although there was no need to tell too much, either. Yet the men seeing the Swede all the time, if not actually watching her any more than was necessary to keep in position astern of her, were the mate and cadet on watch on the bridge. And, for that matter, there was no reason why he shouldn’t have a DEMS gunner on the bridge as well…

  ‘It’s that Swede, isn’t it?’ Hobson commented. ‘Something funny about him?’

  Curious how foreign ships were usually called ‘him’. Still, no reason to deny it now. ‘We’re keeping an eye on the Swede, but we don’t know for sure he’s up to anything.’

  ‘They usually bring trouble,’ Hobson said, as if stating a well-known fact.

  ‘What sort of trouble?’ Yorke asked curiously.

  ‘Oh – people say there’s usually a Swede in the convoy when a German submarine attacks solo.’

  ‘Who are “people”?’

  Hobson shrugged his shoulders. ‘Other masters – you know, people. Last time I heard it was a few days ago in the bar at Euston Station when I met an old chum o’ mine commanding a tanker. He’d just come in with a convoy that had lost a lot of ships from this one U-boat that got inside.
Why, haven’t you heard this latest gossip about the Swedes?’

  Yorke nodded knowingly and Hobson winked. ‘Thought you had,’ he said. ‘You coming to the convoy conference, and wanting to sit behind the Swedish master, and then me finding the Marynal is stationed next astern of the Swedish ship – I guessed what was up.’

  Dismay, that was what he felt, and Yorke admitted it to himself as he rubbed his left arm, which was beginning to throb. Up to now it had just been a word, but now dismay was a definite feeling which he could describe in detail. Yorke with all the facts at his disposal – not to mention the resources of the ASIU, and indeed the Admiralty as well – had taken eleven dockets and several days to spot that there was always a Swede in a convoy attacked by an insider, but Merchant Navy masters had noticed it a long time ago – at least, when the attack was by a single U-boat. To them it was such a commonplace that they gossiped about it over a pint of mild and bitter in the bar at Euston Station. Gossip…for there was one thing about the Merchant Navy men: more than most people they were security-conscious; more than most people they knew it could be very easily their lives. So it was clear enough that the Swedish business was sufficiently commonplace now to be gossiped about… But the gossip had never reached the Admiralty.

  It said something for the trust the Merchant Navy had in the Royal Navy that someone like Captain Hobson was only too willing to accept that the Admiralty knew and was fighting it; giving the Royal Navy the credit for having a complex problem to solve, and also accepting that Lieutenant Yorke (and presumably various other Lieutenants Yorke) were now about to do something about it.

  Finally Yorke decided that if Captain Hobson had known (in company with many other masters) that the common denominator of each of the attacks (which neither Hobson nor his fellow captains realized was by an insider) had been a Swedish ship, he deserved to be told more. Then a moment later he realized that there was not much more to tell…