The Blooding of the Guns

by The Blooding of the Guns (retail) (epub)

  ‘Anyone done anything about coffee?’

  ‘Not yet, sir.’

  West had answered. David shook his head; he was reading a report about the forthcoming trial of Sir Roger Casement. Clark banged his fist on the sliding hatch to the wardroom pantry. It opened, and a young steward’s pale face was framed in the square of it.

  ‘Coffee in here, steward!’

  * * *

  One forty am, 31 May: Minotaur’s searchlight split the pre-dawn light as it winked out an order to the cruisers to spread into screening formation. Sunrise wouldn’t be until after three o’clock, but even now one could see two or more miles through the misty, salt-laden air,

  Sub-Lieutenant Denham was officer of the watch. David had just arrived on the bridge; Denham had sent his midshipman to shake the captain and at the same time had warned the engine-room that more power would be called for presently.

  Wilmott appeared from his sea-cabin alert and immaculately dressed. His short, jutting beard gave him a cocky, terrier look. ‘No executive signal yet?’

  ‘No sir.’ Denham said, ‘I’ve warned the engine-room.’

  Wilmott trained his glasses on the flagship. ‘Do we have a course to open on?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ David had worked it out on the Battenberg, Prince Louis’ invention that solved so instantly all kinds of station-keeping problems, the triangles of relative velocities. He’d given the course to Denham.

  Wilmott muttered, ‘You seem to have matters reasonably well in hand, Everard.’

  That was a compliment, presumably.

  ‘Executive signal, sir!’

  ‘Carry on, Denham.’

  The sub-lieutenant called down, ‘Port fifteen! One hundred and ten revolutions!’

  ‘Port fifteen, sir. Fifteen o’ port helm on, sir. One hundred an’ ten—’

  Bantry was sheering too sharply away to starboard.

  ‘Midships!’

  ‘Helm’s amidships, sir. One-one-oh revolutions on, sir.’

  Denham gave the quartermaster the new course to steer. The cruisers were dividing, fanning out to their new stations. They’d end up in line abreast with a gap of five miles between each pair of ships and the centre – Minotaur – ten miles ahead of the battle fleet. Another ten miles in front of Minotaur, Admiral Hood with his three battle cruisers screened by two light cruisers, Canterbury and Chester, spearheaded the advance.

  David, crouching at the binnacle, watched the line of bearing as the squadron spread. Wilmott stood a yard away, feet apart, hands pushed flatly into reefer pockets, chin belligerently thrust forward. Might it have been conscious, David wondered, the adoption of that Beatty-type stance?

  Wilmott spoke suddenly, gruffly.

  ‘We’ll meet no Huns this time, Pilot.’

  ‘Shan’t we, sir?’

  ‘Hipper’s scouting force may be out. But the Admiralty’s just wirelessed the C-in-C – Scheer’s flagship’s still in the Jade River. Flagship’d hardly be in port if the battle fleet were at sea, now would it?’

  * * *

  Hugh Everard stood with his back against the port for’ard corner of Nile’s fore bridge and listened to reports arriving by navyphone and voicepipe as the ship’s company closed up at their action stations and went through the routines of testing gear and communications.

  It was two forty-two am, and in thirty minutes the sun would rise – technically speaking – on this last day of May. Technically only, because it would not itself be visible through the mist and low cloud which obscured horizon and sky alike; but its growing brightness during the next half-hour would still produce the confusing, varying visibility which made it essential for ships to stand-to, on the alert against surprise attack.

  Nile’s fifteen-inch turrets had been trained out on the beams: A and X to starboard, B and Y to port. Brook, the gunnery lieutenant, was at his station in the control top, fifty feet above this platform, and he’d just reported that all quarters were closed up and circuits tested. Knox-Wilson, the torpedo lieutenant, had reported similarly from the torpedo control tower aft. Tom Crick, the commander, had been receiving reports on the closing of watertight doors and hatches and the readiness of his damage control parties, below decks. Lieutenant-Commander Rathbone, the battle-ship’s navigating officer, was all this time at the binnacle, where he’d taken over ten minutes ago from Mowbray, conning the ship as she kept up her anti-submarine zigzag astern of the others of her squadron on a mean course of south eighty-one degrees east.

  Almost due east, in fact. Beatty’s force had cleared the Forth Estuary by eleven last night, and had held this course at eighteen knots since then. Jellicoe had given Beatty a position some eighty miles off the Skaggerak which he was to reach by approximately two pm this afternoon, and then, failing a sight of the enemy, turn north to rendezvous with the main body of the Grand Fleet.

  Hugh stared down over his ship’s port side. The secondary armament, the six-inch batteries, had been trained outboard too; their barrels pointed menacingly towards the black-hulled torpedo craft which, in line ahead, steamed on the same course two thousand yards away. On this side were five destroyers of the first flotilla; to starboard four others were trailing their flotilla leader, the light cruiser Fearless. The destroyers were lifting and plunging heavily to the swell which Nile’s immensity merely thrust aside.

  ‘Lion signalling, sir!’

  Hugh turned and raised his binoculars, focusing on the distant, winking light. Beatty’s Lion and the five other battle cruisers were about five miles south-east; Beatty had the ninth, tenth and thirteenth destroyer flotillas with him, and three squadrons of light cruisers disposed in screening formation another eight miles ahead. The seaplane-carrier Engadine was up there with the cruisers, too; with them, or ahead of them.

  It wasn’t for Nile to acknowledge Beatty’s signal. Barham was this battle squadron’s flagship, and Admiral Evan-Thomas would take care of it. Hugh lowered his binoculars.

  ‘What’s it about, Chief Yeoman?’

  ‘Speed alteration, sir.’ Chief Petty Officer Peppard, the chief yeoman of signals, had his telescope at his eye. ‘Speed of the fleet nineteen and a half knots, sir!’

  ‘What revolutions will that call for, Rathbone?’

  The navigator’s round, yellowish face turned to him. ‘Two-three-oh, sir.’

  Hugh told Crick, ‘Warn the Engineer Commander, will you?’ He raised his glasses again. One could make out – just – grey smudges against an unclearly defined horizon: Beatty’s battle cruisers. Two groups of them, slightly separated, and the speed signal had been flashed from the right-hand group.

  ‘Executive signal for nineteen and a half knots, sir.’

  Sallis, that had been.

  ‘Carry on. Rathbone.’

  If you were slow on it, you’d drop astern of station, and then you’d need even more revs in order to close up again. Rathbone had passed the order to the quartermaster: he was watching Malaya, the next ahead, through narrowed eyes; to get inside the distance would be as bad as to fall astern of it. Hugh turned away, rested his eyes on the grey specks that were Beatty’s battle cruisers.

  * * *

  He was remembering how after the Falklands battle he’d met Jellicoe – who’d been persuaded to leave his Grand Fleet in other hands while he attended some conference or other, at the Admiralty. The small, quiet-mannered commander-in-chief had asked him some questions about the Falklands action then he’d put another: ‘What views, if any, Everard, have you formed on the subject of our enemy’s capabilities?’

  Hugh had mentally taken a deep breath. There were quarters in which it was not thought seemly to respect the Hun.

  ‘I think we should forget all we’ve been brought up to believe, sir, about our unquestionable superiority at sea. The Germans’ shooting is first class, and they’re as brave as lions.’

  Scharnhorst had sunk with her starboard batteries still firing. Gneisenau had fought on until all her guns were wrecked and she’d no steam i
n her boilers; then she’d blown herself up. Nearly all Leipzig’s crew had died with her fighting.

  ‘I’m inclined to agree with you. Everard.’ Jellicoe had nodded. ‘We must never for a moment underestimate them; and we must make our own shooting better than first class.’

  He and his battle squadrons had been working at that, ever since; doggedly, persistently; practice after practice, in all weathers, week in and week out.

  Had Beatty? Or did Beatty trust more to his ‘cavalry’s natural élan and dash’?

  Never underestimate them. He could still hear Jellicoe’s dry, emphatic tones. And the recollection triggered something else which had been lurking abrasively in the back of his mind…

  * * *

  ‘Captain, sir.’

  Tom Crick loomed beside him, bat-ears stark against a lightening sky. ‘Secure from action stations, sir?’

  ‘Yes, please. Secure.’

  But still thinking… The bugle-call was sounding as he moved aft, down the three port-side steps from monkeys’ island to the lower fore bridge. He pulled back the sliding door of the chartroom, and went in. The chart, spread over the long table which took up exactly half the space, had been marked by Rathbone with positions, courses and times which he’d obtained from Admiral Evan-Thomas’s staff before they’d sailed. There was the position off the south-western tip of Norway where Jellicoe intended to be at two thirty this afternoon: and here was the spot, a hundred miles south-east of that, which Beatty had been told to reach at roughly the same time – and then, failing at sight of an enemy, to turn northwards and link up with Jellicoe.

  The Grand Fleet was operating, as usual, right in the Germans’ back yard. Which corresponded with Jacky Fisher’s dictum, that Britain’s frontiers were the enemy’s coastlines. Hugh Everard frowned as he stared down at the chart and allowed the last few hours’ orders and signals to filter through his brain.

  It came to him, suddenly. That Admiralty signal telling Jellicoe that Scheer was still at Wilhelmshaven; it had stuck in his mind like a piece of grit, mentally indigestible, and now with time to think about it he knew why. Hadn’t there been an item in an Intelligence summary, at that time when he’d been kicking his heels in the Admiralty in London, about a German trick of transferring their C-in-C’s call-sign to the shore signal-station when he took his fleet to sea? So that a wireless bearing on the transmitter which was continuing to use that call-sign would seem to indicate that the flagship hadn’t moved?

  If the Admiralty had blundered – Scheer might be at sea now with the whole of the High Seas Fleet, while Jellicoe was being assured that he was still in port!

  Hugh leant on his elbows on the chart table, with his chin resting in his hands, and put his mind to it. If that was the situation, what difference might it make?

  The chartroom door slid back. Able Seaman Bates’s wide shoulders filled the gap. Hugh didn’t move, or look at him.

  ‘Captain, sir?’

  If Jellicoe realised Scheer might be at sea – and if the Germans had pulled that trick it would suggest some kind of trap was being laid – if Jellicoe knew it, wouldn’t he want to be closer to Beatty, close enough to move quickly to his support?

  ‘All right, sir?’

  ‘Eh?’ Hugh glanced round. ‘Oh. What is it, Bates?’

  ‘I’ve put some tongue sandwiches and a pot o’ coffee in your sea-cabin, sir. Case you was feelin’ peckish.’

  ‘Thank you, Bates.’

  There was a gleam in the monkeyish eyes.

  ‘Reckon we’ll get a bit of a scrap this time, sir?’ It was the fact that they were out with Beatty, of course, that was making everyone imagine this sweep might be different from all the others that had drawn blank. Beatty was supposed to be the fighter, the man who got to grips with Germans.

  Hugh shook his head, ‘Damned if I know.’ He stared down at the chart, and said again, more to himself than to his coxswain, ‘Damned if I know.’

  Chapter 4

  Bantry was starboard wing ship in an extended cruiser screen sixteen miles ahead of the battle fleet. She was steering south fifty degrees east at fifteen knots, which allowing for the anti-submarine zigzag was giving a speed-of-advance of fourteen. The smear on her port beam was the cruiser Black Prince.

  David had been working in his chartroom since lunchtime; he’d come up on the bridge for a look-around and a breath of air. Aubrey Steel had the watch; it was just after two pm, with a flat, grey sea and low cloud and a light south-east wind; there was nothing in sight except one attendant destroyer zigzagging astern like a dog on a lead, and that smudge in the north-east.

  She – Bantry – belonged to the First Cruiser Squadron now, and her consorts were Black Prince, Duke of Edinburgh, Defence – who was Sir Robert Arbuthnot’s flagship – and Warrior. Defence was in the centre of the fifty-mile spread of cruisers. Warrior, three miles astern of her, and Hampshire six miles astern of Minotaur, were link-ships for visual signalling purposes with the battle fleet And the battle fleet was now a huge concentration of power: six divisions of battleships, the divisions disposed abeam of each other and each consisting of four dreadnoughts in line ahead; a great square of armour and big guns. King George V leading Ajax, Centurion and Erin, Orion leading Monarch, Conqueror and Thunderer, Jellicoe’s flagship Iron Duke leading Royal Oak, Superb and Canada. On Jelljcoe’s starboard beam Benbow was followed by Bellerophon, Temeraire and Vanguard; then the Fifth Division with Colossus leading Collingwood, Neptune and St Vincent, and the Sixth comprising Marlborough, Revenge, Hercules and Agincourt. There had been sixteen battleships when he’d sailed from Scapa, and Admiral Jerram had joined him with the other eight this morning.

  Light cruisers formed an inner screen. And twenty miles ahead, Rear-Admiral the Honourable Horace Hood’s three battle cruisers were still the vanguard of the fleet.

  It was more than a fleet: it was an armada. To David Everard it all seemed rather pointless – so much effort, such vast expenditure of fuel and other energies, all in the vain hope of encountering an enemy who hadn’t left his anchorage. When it was known he hadn’t!

  David mooted this thought to Captain Wilmott, who’d just come back to the bridge after a snack lunch in his sea-cabin. Wilmott had seemed to be in a jolly mood: he’d cracked a joke with Steel, and now he’d commented to David in his brusque, clipped manner that the fleet was an hour astern of schedule.

  ‘Of course, having to stop to search those trawlers hasn’t helped.’

  Neutrals who might turn out to be disguised enemy scouts, had to be examined whenever they were met, and Jellicoe had slowed the whole fleet several times for this purpose. If he hadn’t the destroyers conducting the searches would have full power to catch up again, depleting fuel reserves which were never more than barely adequate.

  David suggested, ‘We could as well go home sir. Since Scheer’s not coming out?’

  Wilmott’s head turned slowly. One eyebrow rose. Then he looked away again, as if he wasn’t going to answer. Finally he growled, ‘Hipper may be at sea, mayn’t he? Scheer’s not the only Hun there is, is he?’

  ‘Of course not, sir.’

  David tried to make himself sound agreeable; afterwards, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. ‘But aren’t Sir David Beatty’s battle cruisers a match for Hipper’s?’

  Wilmott sighed. He made a thumb-print on the compass glass.

  ‘Here’s Beatty, Everard, close to the Hun bases. And here, let us say, might be Hipper, out ahead of him. D’you see?’ David nodded. Wilmott’s fingernails, he noticed, were jagged, as if he bit them.

  ‘We’d have him caught between our—’

  ‘God’s sake, man, d’you propose the Commander-in-Chief should leave the route northwards open to him? D’you think a Hun battle cruiser force should be let out into the Atlantic? What d’you imagine our blockade of the German ports is all about, for God’s sake? Why d’you think we sit in Scapa, of all places, month after month? To count sheep?’

  David’s
face burned and it embarrassed him acutely to know that he was blushing. In front of Steel and the snotty of the watch – Ackroyd – and the bridge messenger, duty signalman, captain’s coxswain…

  Wilmott had swung away from him.

  ‘Keep the lookouts on their toes Steel.’ His arm scythed, a gesture covering miles of grey, empty sea; grey-green with a dull shine on it from the steely, cloud-filtered light. David was taut, sweating with resentment of his captain’s unnecessary rudeness. He told himself as he moved out into the unoccupied port wing of the bridge, with his back to Wilmott that henceforth he’d remain correct in manner and as efficient as any navigator could be, but socially, Wilmott would not exist. His nerves were racked tight; he felt as he did when he thought about his family. He told himself to forget it – think about something else… the next leave, for instance: Ellaline Teriss in Broadway Jones – he’d see that – and The Bing Boys at the Alhambra, with George Robey in it. Pat Johnson, who was now Nick’s first lieutenant, had told him the other day that The Bing Boys had made him laugh his head off.

  ‘W/T signal, sir, urgent!’

  The yeoman, Petty Officer Sturgis, was taking it to Wilmott. Sturgis had come pounding up the ladder from the signal bridge like an elephant run amok. He looked dishevelled, as if he’d buttoned his jacket and stuck his cap on his small, round head on his way up. It was warm in the signals office, of course; they did sit around in shirt-sleeves, because they had the heat of the foremost funnel within a few feet of them. Wilmott had taken the clip-board from his yeoman’s hands. Perusing the top signal, he’d glanced up at him, then down again; a hand rose slowly to stroke his beard while he read the message for a second time. Flipping back, now, over signals that he must have been shown earlier… David, aware of the act that was being put on and of his own disdain for it, could hear Midshipman Ackroyd squeaking away, lecturing the wretched lookouts.