Wilmott glanced his way and beckoned. The zigzag bell rang: Steel told the quartermaster. ‘Port ten, steer south forty east!’
The quartermaster was repeating the order as David read the signal. It was from Galatea, flagship of the First Light Cruiser Squadron, which was part of Beatty’s scouting force, and it was addressed to Beatty – Flag Officer, Battle Cruiser Fleet – and to C-in-C. Time of Origin two twenty pm. It read:
Two cruisers, probably hostile, in sight bearing E.S.E. course unknown. My position Lat 56 degs 48’ N Long 5 degs 21’ E.
Wilmott called, ‘Midshipman Ackroyd. My compliments to the commander, and would he kindly join me on the compass platform.’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
Ackroyd scuttled away. Wilmott cocked a bushy eyebrow: ‘Still think we should “go home” Everard?’
* * *
At nineteen knots, Lanyard felt to Nick as if she were doing forty. It was like a bumpy, windy, exhilarating canter; noisy too, with the wind thundering on jolting steel and the crashing of the destroyer’s bow as she met and smashed through the ridges of the low swell. And there was the throbbing clatter of the ship herself driving forward, ploughing a broad white streak across leaden-tinted sea, stumbling, shaking herself like a dog and plunging on, an answering pendant cracking like a whip in the wind as it raced to her yardarm, acknowledging the preparatory order to turn north. Lanyard and the rest of the thirteenth flotilla, led by the light cruiser Champion, were grouped closely around Lion and the other three ships of the First Battle Cruiser Squadron. They were clustered so closely that, looking to his left as he clung to the port-side rail – this was the side of the destroyer’s bridge, all there was to it, just a single rail supported on corner stanchions and with a painted canvas screen lashed to it – Nick could see the cluster of gold-peaked caps on Lion’s high compass-platform. Sir David Beatty, and his staff… Astern of Lion pounded Princess Royal, Queen Mary and Tiger, the four great ships hemmed in by the two lines of destroyers, while the close, solid phalanx of grey steel hid from Lanyard, for the moment, the other battle cruiser squadron which, surrounded by destroyers of the ninth and tenth flotillas, thrashed eastward on the same course six thousand yards north-eastward.
Lieutenant Reynolds had the watch, and Mortimer, Lanyard’s captain, was also on the bridge. Nick stared up at the wildly fluttering answering pendant; looking down again, he found Mortimer watching him, half-smiling. Nick, still holding tight to the port-side rail, returned the stare and Mortimer shouted, his voice high and with a cutting edge to it to beat the bedlam of sound around them. ‘Think you’ll make a destroyer man, do you. Everard?’
As it happened, that was what he’d been thinking. If being a destroyer man involved this kind of thrill, this heady feeling of swift movement, exuberance – in a way, a kind of freedom – well, yes, why not? Mortimer was yelling down a voicepipe now. Nick took another look at Lion’s bridge; he knew how it would be up there. Ritual, deference, pomposity. Middle-rank officers murmuring, junior officers whispering; cold eyes staring down noses under gilded peaks…
When that signal at Lion’s yard came fluttering down, the battle cruisers would swing north and steer for the rendezvous with Jellicoe and the battle fleet. Beatty had already re-disposed his cruiser screen. The centre of it lay south-east from here, and it extended on a line north-east, south-west: so he’d have the screen astern of him, spread across twenty or thirty miles of sea between him and the German bases. And he’d put the Fifth Battle Squadron five miles on his port quarter, in other words north-west; when he swung his whole force to a course of north-by-east it would find itself in a V-formation with the battleships in the port wing. Beatty and his First Squadron behind in the V’s apex, and the Second Squadron on the starboard wing.
Mortimer had explained it to Nick ten minutes ago, down in the chartroom. He’d said, ‘Damn shame, no Huns this time. This is the limit of the sweep, you see… Never mind, young Everard – we’ll find ourselves a skirmish for you, one day!’
Nick wondered what he’d done to deserve such decent treatment. Did destroyer men become human beings at sea? Or might Mortimer be a friend of his uncle’s? He hadn’t mentioned him. Nor had Johnson. And most startling of all was what Johnson – supposedly brother David’s friend – had said earlier this morning, when they’d been on watch together. It was still difficult to believe… Nick’s eyes were on that flag-hoist above Beatty’s battle cruiser; suddenly he saw it jerk and begin its downward rush. He shouted, ‘Executive!’ He realised that Leading Signalman Garret had yelled it almost simultaneously. The answering pendant was falling like a shot bird. Nick grinned at Garret and the signalman wagged his head, a sort of wink. Reynolds was shouting down to the quartermaster, ‘Four hundred revolutions!’ Not full power, but not much short of it; the starboard-side destroyers had to race now to maintain their station on the outside of the turn. Noise rising, the rush of the wind increasing, Lion swinging, foreshortening as she went round. Reynolds yelling down the voicepipe. ‘Steer five degrees to port!’ Cutting the corner, Lanyard was thrashing forward like a racehorse, trembling with the effort or with eagerness. That was it, she did feel eager, and here on her bridge in the rush of air and spray Nick shared her keenness. A surprise, a revelation, almost!
‘What?’
He looked to his right. The Captain had his ear to the voicepipe from the chartroom. He looked, Nick thought, astounded. He’d turned his head to shout into the pipe again. ‘Bring it up here. Number One!’
The destroyer ahead of Lanyard – it was Nomad – suddenly looked too close. Reynolds saw it too; he’d called down for a cut in speed. Nick craned out, looking astern; Narborough seemed to be in perfect station. Mortimer shouted to Reynold,. ‘Galatea’s made an enemy report. Two Hun cruisers!’
‘Galatea?’
Mortimer pointed a bit north of east. He told Reynolds. ‘About fifteen miles away. Wing of the screen.’ Reynolds bent to the voicepipe. ‘Three-six-oh revolutions.’ Lanyard had just about regained her station. Mortimer snapped, ‘Too close. Come out a bit.’ He snatched the sheet of signal-pad from Johnson’s hand; when he’d read it, he looked round for Nick, and shouted above the noise of the wind and the ship’s motion, ‘May get that skirmish after all. Sub!’
Hun cruisers, fifteen miles away? There must be, Nick thought, six or even eight – yes, two squadrons – of our own light cruisers out there in the screen with Galatea. Widely spaced, but a lot closer to the enemy than this battle cruiser force was. If the German presence was as little as two cruisers, it would be dealt with long before Lanyard got a whiff of cordite…
A voicepipe squawked, ‘Bridge!’ It was tinny and remote. Johnson, who’d been on the point of leaving the bridge and was nearest to the pipe, answered it. ‘Bridge?’ He was listening to the rapid gabble, and Nick, staggering as the destroyer rolled – the swell was abeam, and it didn’t take much of a crosswise sea to roll a ship whose beam measurement was eight feet nine inches – shifting his feet and grabbing at the rail again, Nick saw it was the voicepipe from the wireless office, which was immediately below the bridge on the starboard side.
Johnson straightened. Mortimer, with an elbow crooked round one of the binnacle’s correcting-spheres, was watching him, waiting for the news.
‘Well?’
‘Galatea, sir.’ Johnson looked puzzled, as if he could hardly believe whatever it was they’d told him. ‘Two more signals to Lion and C-in-C. First one saying Engaging the enemy, and the other reports—’
‘Speak up, man!’
‘Other one says Large amount of smoke as though from a fleet bearing east-nor’-east, sir!’
‘Lion signalling, sir!’
Leading Signalman Garret’s shout had a cutting, penetrating quality. Bunting was rushing upwards to the flagship’s yardarm. Nick heard Johnson say, ‘Addressed to destroyers!’ At the same moment he recognised for himself that the top flag of the hoist was horizontally striped yellow-blue-yellow, the destroyer
flag. Garret already had Lanyard’s red-and-white answering pendant at the dip, meaning ‘Signal seen but not yet understood,’ and he was using a pair of binoculars one-handed to read that string of flags half a mile away. He was in profile, one hand on the halyards half-hitched on their cleat, and his lips were moving as if he was trying to read print, not flags. He muttered, to himself, ‘Destroyers take up position – as anti-submarine screen—’
Nick moved over to help him, flicked quickly through the pages of the signal manual. Garret should have had one of his three signalmen up here to help him, but there’d hardly have been room.
He’d got it. ‘– when course is altered to sou’-sou’-east!’
Garret sent the answering pendant whipping up to the yard: Signal understood. He turned, stared into Nick’s face, hissed, ‘We’re goin’ after ’em, sir! Fleet, that said!’ Nick stared back at those craggy features illuminated by a glow of joy. He felt it too. He was suddenly delirious with happiness. Every face in the destroyer’s bridge was either grinning broadly or tense with expectation, and Mortimer, her captain, suddenly waved his cap above his head and screamed like a banshee at the grey overlay of cloud – ‘Tally ho – o!’
* * *
Hugh Everard left young Lieutenant Lovelace at the binnacle and walked out to the starboard wing of Nile’s bridge to look back over her quarter at the battle cruisers, or rather, at the smoke that hid them.
‘Make anything of it. Chief Yeoman?’
Peppard had a telescope at his eye. He was about six feet away, on the lower level of the bridge and with his back against the handrail of the ladder that led down to it. The support helped him to keep steady while he concentrated on the difficult business of making out Lion’s signal.
Beatty’s last flag-hoist, forewarning the destroyers of a change of course to south-south-east, had been readable from Nile’s bridge, but a minute or two earlier Beatty had ordered all ships to raise steam for full speed; as the battle cruisers’ engineers drew their coal fires forward the funnel-smoke had thickened, blackened, so much so that from this five-mile range now one had only brief and partial glimpses of them.
‘Can’t read it at all, sir.’ The chief yeoman hadn’t given up, though. ’If they’d use a light—’
‘Keep your eye on it. It might clear.’ Hugh told Greenlaws, the midshipman of the watch. ‘Keep in touch with the wireless office. I want to know if anything even starts coming through.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ Greenlaws’ rather burly figure moved aft; the W/T room reported by telephone to the signals office, which was next to the chartroom at the back of the bridge. Hugh leant on the binnacle as Nile ploughed northwards astern of Malaya, Warspite, Valiant and the flagship Barham. Admiral Evan-Thomas in Barham would, he knew, be staring astern just as he had been, trying to guess Beatty’s intentions. If that signal had been an order to alter course to south-south-east, it might be addressed to the whole force or it could be intended only for the battle cruisers. One would hardly have expected that: but one was not supposed to guess an admiral’s intentions – he was supposed to control his squadrons, not confuse them!
Surely he’d realise his flags couldn’t be seen through smoke at this range? And therefore, if he wanted his signal to apply to this squadron, would have passed it by searchlight?
Nile, all thirty thousand tons of her, was as steady as u rock: as she forged on in Malaya’s broad, white wake. The battleships of this Queen Elizabeth class being entirely oil-fired, they weren’t fouling the sky as Beatty’s coal-burners were.
‘Signal’s hauled down sir!’
Whatever it had been…
Lovelace, the officer of the watch, was calling down a helm order, maintaining the ordered zigzag which had not as yet been cancelled. Commander Crick was on the bridge; and the navigator, Rathbone, was in the chartroom, trying to make some sense or lucid pattern out of the welter of enemy-report signals which had been intercepted by Nile’s tele-graphists. Hugh had alerted his officers to the possibility of an action developing, but there’d been no point in sending the ship’s company to their battle stations – not yet. And if Beatty allowed the squadron to continue steaming away from the enemy, most likely not at all.
‘Battle cruisers are hauling round to starboard, sir!’
He nodded, watching them. You could see, in gaps in the drifting smoke, the long, grey ships shortening as they turned; destroyers racing past them. You could see their smoke too, and the white of their bow-waves, but the general picture, from this distance and obscured as much of it was, was of a jumble of ships all going different ways. If one hadn’t known what was happening, it would have been impossible to make it out.
Did Beatty intend to leave his most powerful ships steaming northwards? Perhaps he did. His alteration of course to east-south-east, when the enemy had been reported to be somewhere roughly north-east, would be aimed at putting himself between that enemy and his escape-route southwards, south-eastwards. It wasn’t inconceivable that he wanted to leave the battleships out here, so that the Germans would find themselves between the two forces, hemmed in while Jellicoe bore down from the north? But it would have been a very strange, even dangerous – in fact highly dangerous decision. And remembering the Dogger Bank action, the confusion of misunderstood signals – might history be repeating itself here? Hugh wondered whether, if he’d been in Evan-Thomas’s place in Barham, he wouldn’t have assumed an error on Beatty’s part and led the battle squadron round after him without waiting for any orders.
‘Wireless signal, sir, Tiger to Lion. Tiger’s asking whether the alter-course signal should have been passed to Barham.’
Someone had woken up, at last.
Perhaps Tiger was supposed to have passed it on anyway? But the fact she hadn’t, and that she’d had to ask, suggested an element of confusion in the vice-admiral’s grasp of communications problems. Already the gap between the battle cruisers and the QE’s was more like nine miles than five. And Beatty would be cracking on at his ‘cavalry’s’ best gallop – twenty-eight knots, when these more heavily armoured battleships could only make twenty-five at most. So if there should be a significant enemy force over there, he’d be charging at it without the support he should have had and might badly need.
‘Lion has replied, affirmative, sir!’
And there it was. Dogger-Bank type manoeuvres!
‘Tiger is signalling by searchlight, sir.’
Hugh stared out at the flashing light. Closer, destroyers of the first flotilla thrashed white paths through the grey-green sea. Hugh saw Tom Crick watching them with a kind of hunger in his face. Crick’s heart was in destroyers, where he’d spent his younger days.
Barham – Evan-Thomas – would be answering that signal. It was completed now. Hugh had caught the signing-off letters ‘AR’. The chief yeoman called, ‘Flags from Barham sir: alter course in succession sou’-sou’-east, sir!’
‘I’ll take over, Lovelace.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ The young officer of the watch stepped aside. Peppard reported, ‘From Barham sir: speed twenty-five knots.’
Admiral Evan-Thomas wasn‘t wasting any more time, but he had to re-dispose his destroyers ready for what would be almost a sixteen-point turn. The swift black hulls were curving out to port and starboard, heeling almost on to their beam-ends as their helms were flung over and they wheeled like a cavalry squadron scattering and then re-forming; or like wasps disturbed and now settling again, settling in screening formation on the battleships’ starboard quarter where, when the big ships turned they’d be in the right place to screen them on the new course. Astern, the two battle cruiser squadrons, grey dots recently in two separate groups, had merged into one.
‘Executive signal, sir!’
‘Very good.’ Barham was sheering off to starboard. Her squat grey profile loomed, lengthening as she swung outwards, shortening as her swing continued and Valiant followed in the same white crescent of churned sea. Now Warspite’s move: Barham passing, steadyi
ng on the south-easterly course, destroyers falling into their positions round her…‘Port fifteen.’
‘Port fifteen, sir… Fifteen of port helm on, sir!’
Nile began to turn: six hundred and fifty feet of battleship leaning to the swing of it, her stem carving, slicing round inside Malaya’s track. ‘Ease to ten.’
‘Ease to ten, sir… Ten of—’
‘Midships!’
‘Midships, sir. Helm’s amidships—’
‘Steady!’ Now the quartermaster would keep her in the wake of the next-ahead. Hugh saw the speed signal drop from Barham’s yard, and he anticipated Peppard’s report of it.
‘Two hundred and eighty revolutions.’
Now at least they were pointing the right way; perhaps it might be possible to get some idea of what had been happening elsewhere. Hugh looked over towards Crick: ‘Tom. Take over for a minute, would you.’
In the chartroom, Rathbone had translated a whole wad of cryptic signals from the scouting forces into positions and courses on a plotting-diagram.
‘Galatea’s been hit, sir. Must be somewhere about here. She’s in action against a cruiser believed to be the Elbing. She got one hit below the bridge, but the shell didn’t explode.’
‘Be nice if all the Hun shells were that kind.’ Hugh pointed at the plot. ‘Explain the rest of it?’
‘Reports of enemy cruisers and destroyers here, here, and here, sir. Galatea had turned north-west, with Phaeton in close company and Inconstant and Cordelia not far off. She reported a few minutes ago that the enemy’s following her north-westward.’
The Blooding of the Guns Page 7