* * *
Captain Blackaby, struggling out of his cabinet into ‘X’ turret’s gunhouse, was blinded and half suffocated by smoke and the acrid reek of high explosive. A shell had come in through the turret roof. He’d heard and felt it and seen a great flattish disc of orange flame before his periscope had shattered. The range-finder was smashed too. In here men were choking, reeling about: some, dead or wounded, were still or writhing on the deck. He could hear questions being asked, men calling their friends’ names.
‘Cartwright! GM!’
He pushed someone out of his way, stumbled over a man crawling on hands and knees. Light seeped down from above, where the hole was. He found Cartwright; the petty officer was face-down, sprawled in a heap of blue serge and blood: Blackaby noticed how his boots still gleamed, and that there was no back to his head. It wasn’t necessary to turn him or look more closely to know that he was dead.
‘Captain Blackaby, sir?’
It was Dewar, the right gun’s number two. Blackaby told him, ‘Get the hatch open Dewar, let some air through.’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
It was already clearing, in fact, through the ordinary ventilation and assisted by the hole which the shell had made in the roof, in the centre plate of the sighting hood. It had burst there, detonating as it penetrated the steel armour; you could see that by the size of the hole and the way the edges of the steel were bent upwards. It occurred to Blackaby that if the shell had come right inside before its fuse fired it, things would have been a great deal worse. Men were picking themselves up ‒ those that could – and moving back towards their places at the guns; others were trying to help the wounded. Dewar had the hatch open, and the clearing air was helping stunned men to recover. Blackaby had been slightly dazed, but he was clearer now. He shouted, ‘Turret’s crew, number!’
That way, he got them sorted out. Five men, including the gunner’s mate, couldn’t answer. Of those, three were still alive. There were seven others wounded, two of whom said they could carry on. Blackaby got the spare crew up from below, and the men he didn’t need he detailed to get the wounded to the surgeons and the dead out on the quarter-deck. The second captain-of-turret was a young petty officer by the name of Davies.
‘Test loading gear, Davies.’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
Both cages were jammed. They freed the right one: the left was immovable. Luckily it had stuck in the ‘down’ position, where it wouldn’t interfere with hand-loading, and Davies sang out, ‘Left gun hand-loading in gunhouse!’
Cartwright had drilled them well. Number five had repeated the order to the magazine and shellroom; numbers six and eight of the shellroom came up into the working-chamber to become numbers nine and ten. Meanwhile five had got the main cage door off, and Petty Officer Davies had shut off pressure to the cage mechanism and slammed the door shut in the auxiliary trunk. Blackaby stood back, fingering his moustache, as the wounded were helped and carried out.
‘Surgeon’ll soon fix you up, you fellows. You’ll see, you’ll be as right as rain!’
‘Aye, sir!’ A sightsetter, who looked as if he’d been scalped, grinned at him: he was holding a scarlet, sodden wad of cotton-waste against his forehead. He said. ‘Don’t you worry about us, sir. We’ll be getting’ a whack o’ leave, we will!’ They all cheered; Blackaby told them. ‘By God, I could make Marines of you lot!’ His eyes shifted, to watch the men at work around the gun: except for the dead and wounded and that hole in the roof through which steely light probed into a swirl of still faintly yellowish vapour, this might have been a practice.
‘I want that right gun back in action, Davies!’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
Davies was a pale, fair-haired man with a Welsh lilt and a squinting eye: now he left the left gun’s hand-loading preparation to the spare left gun-captain, and shouted, ‘Right gun, load!’ The cage hissed up and the rammer slid across: projectile in, charge in, rammer clanking back. Dewar slammed the breech shut. The layer put his right arm up, and number three banged the interceptor shut.
‘Y’ turret fired, but the loaded and cocked right gun of ‘X’ turret remained inert.
Davies shouted, as was laid-down in the drill book. ‘Still! Misfire!’
Blackaby thought it was probably the director firing circuits that had failed: most likely they’d been cut. If so, protracted misfire procedures now would be a waste of time. And since in a moment the left gun would be ready, one would very soon know for certain. The left gun’s projectile had come up on the grab, the chain-hoist, and they’d eased it into its loading-tray: now the rammer did the rest, and the charge went in, and Blackaby saw number three on that side shut his interceptor.
‘Left gun ready!’
It didn’t fire, though, with the next salvo. Two of the spare hands were carrying Petty Officer Cartwright out. The back of the gunner’s mate’s head was a pulp of bone, brain and blood. The layer of the left gun shouted ‘Still! Misfire!’
Both interceptors were now broken; both guns loaded. Blackaby ordered. ‘Gunlayer firing, salvoes, right gun commencing!’
The fact the turret had no periscope or sights of any kind now didn’t matter. The layers would keep their pointers lined-up with director’s pointers, so the guns would remain on target, and they’d press their own triggers when they heard ‘Y’ turret fire.
The right gun fired, recoiled, ran out. Its crew were reloading as number three of the left gun shut its interceptor and reported ‘Left gun ready!’
‘X’ turret was back in business.
Blackaby went back into his cabinet, to report to the control top. Brook said, ‘Well done. Blacko. But we’ve nothing to shoot at, for the moment. All we can see is smoke… Damn sorry about Cartwright.’
‘Yes.’ The cabinet door opened ‒ from the outside ‒ and Blackaby saw the commander stooping, peering in at him. He hung up the navyphone.
‘Got yourselves to rights, eh, Soldier?’
‘Yessir. Chaps’ve done splendidly.’
‘Quite.’ Crick’s pink face beamed. ‘Bit of a lull now, too. I should stand ’em down, one gun’s crew at a time, if I were you. Give ’em a stand-easy while we’re quiet?’
‘Good idea, sir.’
Crick, his long frame bent double, withdrew. Blackaby got on the navyphone to Davies.
‘Petty Officer Davies. Five minutes’ stand-down for each gun’s crew alternately. And let Dewar play his blasted gramophone if he wants to.’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
Crick climbed out of the turret, and shut the hatch behind him. He moved aft around ‘Y’ turret, and banged with his heel on the lid of the hatch beside the capstan; the man inside it, at the top of the ladderway, knocked a retaining clip off and pushed the hatch up, and Crick eased himself down inside. The sailor had to lean out sideways on the ladder’s edge to give him room.
‘Thank you. Shut and clip it now. I’ll go back through the ship.’ He’d only come up from here a few minutes ago, when he’d had a message about Blackaby’s turret. At the bottom of the ladderway he turned aft, crossed the lobby which was lined each side with cabins ‒ including his own ‒ and passed through the bulkhead doorway to the captain’s lobby.
It was all fumes and stink. Charred paintwork, and the reek of burnt corticene; the resin under it ran like viscous, stinking glue. The captain’s day-cabin and sleeping-cabin had both been wrecked: there seemed to have been two hits by large-calibre shells, something like twelve-inch, and one of these had burst in the deck of the dining-cabin, opening a ten-foot diameter hole to the secretary’s clerks’ office immediately below, on the middle deck. The captain’s dining-table was charred, wet matchwood, but that cabin hadn’t suffered as badly as the others, since the blast had all gone downwards, apparently. The day- and sleeping-cabins had been transformed into one large room in which a herd of elephants might have run amok before someone set fire to it; and a third shell had burst outside the hull at the level of the main deck and ca
rved away most of the catwalk which ran around the ship’s stern. The fire brigade had got their hoses in this way, using what was left of the captain’s private balcony to stand on while they jetted water in from outside. It hadn’t been possible to get in at first the way Crick had just come
But it was all in hand now. Steam rose from fire-heated steel and paintwork, smoking rubbish and the gluey mess of corticene. Water from the hoses, a great deal of it, had flooded down through the holed deck into the offices below, and ‘Pay’ was down there cursing loudly and continuously while he and some of his writers tried to rescue ledgers and other saturated documents. But the emergency situation here was over now, and Crick had only returned to make sure of one thing: he asked the petty officer in charge of this number eight fire brigade, ‘Has Able Seaman Bates gone for’ard?’
He’d found Bates here, trying to rescue the captain’s personal possessions, and getting himself more or less cooked in the process. He’d ordered him for’ard; but the captain’s coxswain wasn’t a man who could be relied upon to obey orders with anything like alacrity – not unless the orders were issued personally by Hugh Everard.
Petty Officer Ainslie grinned, his teeth white in his blackened face. ‘Yessir. Picked up all ’e could lay ’is ’ands on, an’ ’opped it.’
‘Good.’ Crick glanced round the wreck of the captain’s quarters. Bates, he thought, was as loyal as a dog. ‘Nothing much more you can do here Ainslie.’
‘Just makin’ sure, sir. Some of the wood’s still smoulderin’ inside.’
Crick told him, ‘I’ll send the chief carpenter along to get those holes plugged.’ He meant the ones in the deckhead, the quarterdeck. But none of this was serious damage: the ship’s fighting efficiency had been hardly scratched, and so far as he’d been able to discover ‒ touch wood ‒ there was no damage at all below the waterline.
He walked for’ard, alternating between the main, middle and upper decks, as ladderways permitted. He’d seen to the damage on the starboard side, on his way aft; there’d been two fire brigades at work there, and he’d left the chief carpenter, Mr Wise, in charge. The after starboard six-inch gun casemate had been penetrated by a shell that burst inside and killed the entire gun’s crew: another shell from the same salvo had burst in the casemate lobby and wiped out almost all the starboard ammunition-supply numbers. That gun’s crew had been Marines. When he’d been there on his way aft they’d already got the wounded down to the after emergency operating room, and they’d been plugging cut fire-mains, trying to stop water pouring into the ventilation trunks; the trunks had to be kept open or men down below would suffocate. Apart from the broken fire-mains, tons of water had burst in from near-miss ‘shorts’ deluging into the shattered casemate.
On the port side, everything was intact and happy. Marines of the six-inch ammunition-supply parties were playing cards; a noisy game, which involved flinging the cards down and shouting at each other. A corporal asked him what was happening up top; he told them that everything was fine, that Nile had hit the enemy a couple of dozen times and the Huns had barely bruised her paintwork; that she’d come out of it fighting-fit, and now things were so quiet up there it was like being in church. The men cheered, and the cheer was taken up right through the casemates and the lobbies. Crick went on for’ard. There really were no problems; it was astonishing how lightly Nile had suffered. This had been the first test, she’d stood a real, hard hammering and sailed out smiling. Casualties were fairly heavy, but nothing like they might have been; and if Warspite had been saved, that would put a thousand plus-marks against these minuses.
There was still one area of damage he hadn’t checked. There’d been a hit up for’ard, on the starboard side, in the master-at-arms’ mess. But he went over to the port side first, and told Mr Wise to transfer his expertise to the damage aft as soon as he felt he could leave this lot to his henchmen. Wise seemed to be well on top of things now, and Crick moved on for’ard, taking the bo’sun, PO Harkmore, and Ordinary Seaman Thompson, his own messenger, along with him. He’d lent them to Mr Wise when he’d had his hands full there; now he led them past the ladderway which ran up to the bridge superstructure. There’d been some hits here too, around S3 and S4 casemates, but no real harm done, just smashed lights and so on ‒ round ‘B’ barbette and through the foc’slmen’s mess on the starboard side. Ahead of him, he could see the damage. The inboard bulkhead of the jaunty’s mess had been blown out, ripped. Jagged flanges of sheet-steel jutted towards the centre-line. The mess itself was a ruin, although the fire had been put out before it had taken a real hold. The bulkhead between this section and the ERAs’ mess for’ard of it was bulged and charred. But it was all in hand; number two fire brigade were clearing up, collecting debris, sweeping up broken glass, and a party of torpedomen under Mr Askell the warrant officer, were repairing cables on the deckhead. Amidships, the skylight over the sickbay had been shattered. Crick peered in, getting a bird’s-eye view of sickberth ratings attending to a queue of lightly wounded men. Some of them looked up and saw him, and there were the usual questions to which he gave the same answers – and again the men cheered.
The glass on the skylight for’ard of this one was intact. It was over the centre of the operating room. There was a man on the table and two on stretchers awaiting their turns: the one on the table was having a leg removed.
Over on the port side, the chief stokers’ mess and its pantry hadn’t suffered from the blast. And all the men here were exceptionally cheerful, probably because they’d been through an unusually brisk action and come out alive, fit to tell the tale… He turned to PO Harkmore.
‘Nothing to worry us here, Bo’sun. We’d better go and see how they’ve managed up top.’
‘Aye, sir.’ Harkmore was a big man; he’d reached the semi-finals in the Fleet heavyweight boxing competition up in Scapa, and Crick had thought he should have won it. If he, Tom Crick, had been the referee, Harkmore would have.
The bridge superstructure, when he’d last seen it, had been well ablaze from the shell which had burst in the captain’s sea-cabin. He went quickly up the ladder to the foc’sl deck, and then the next one to the shelter deck; one more climb brought him and his party to the level of the conning-tower.
The captain wasn’t in it. Rathbone was, and a midshipman and some signalmen, and the spare director’s crew, but everyone else had gone back up to monkey’s island, Rathbone said. Crick walked back the thirty-odd feet to the ladder and climbed again. The fire had spread, before they’d got it contained and stifled. The superstructure around him as he climbed the ladderways was black, distorted and stinking, but the two upper levels were undamaged. As he stepped on to the fore bridge, he saw Hugh Everard raise a cup to his lips as if he felt he needed it.
‘Bates, this stuff’s cold!’
Crick saw Hugh’s coxswain hurry forward.
‘Beg pardon, sir, that’s what I give you a ’alf-hour or more ago.’
‘Oh, is it.’ Hugh pushed the cup into his coxswain’s hand. ‘Get me some fresh, will you.’ He saw Crick. ‘How is it, Tom?’
‘Not at all bad, sir, considering ‒ except you personally seem to have no home left.’
‘So I hear.’ Hugh told him, ‘I’m taking Rathbone’s sea-cabin. He’ll doss in the chartroom.’
‘On the whole, sir, we’ve got off lightly.’
‘Good.’ The wild, zigzagging course had been intended to let Nile off lightly. Hugh trained his glasses on the other ships of Nile’s squadron. They were six or seven miles ahead but they’d be reducing speed as they formed astern of the battle fleet, and it wouldn’t take long to close up on them.
Hugh had a feeling that he’d done a worthwhile job. Warspite was on her own, north-westward from here, steaming west at slow speed. Badly hurt, obviously, but at least she was still afloat.
Hugh lowered his glasses, and turned to his second-in-command. A thought struck him: he shouted. ‘Bates!’
‘Sir?’
The coxs
wain’s voice had come from one deck down.
‘Bring a cup for the commander as well!’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
Hugh nodded to Tom Crick. ‘All right, Tom. Tell me how lightly.’
Chapter 8
Bantry was alone. The Germans who’d been battering her, and from whom perhaps she’d saved Nile, had gone ‒ eastwards. It was all mist there; grey, impenetrable.
Nile had gone, too. Bantry had been zigzagging haphazardly in the spreading drift of her own smoke-screen, and now that it had dissipated Nile was only one of several grey smudges in the hazy northern and north-eastern distance.
‘Hand me my glasses, Pilot.’
Wilmott was on his left, at the binnacle. He and David were alive, but the men in the bridge’s afterpart had been killed by blast or flash or both. Incredible; it seemed like a nightmare from which sooner or later one would wake up.
‘Damn you. Pilot! Give me my glasses!’
He snatched them up and passed them over.
‘Not that side, you fool!’
David turned and stared at him. Wilmott’s eyes glared back above a deathly-pale, strained face, a jutting beard with flecks of spit on it.
Looking downwards, David saw the reason for the not that side. Wilmott’s arm had been wrenched off at the shoulder. There were streamers of blood-soaked superfine cloth, and sort of ‒ strings, and…
David shut his eyes. He felt sick, and above all, out of touch, unreal. It felt as if there was madness in the air… Like a robot, he moved round behind his captain and placed the glasses in his left hand. Wilmott said without looking at him again, doubled sideways with his elbow hooked over the binnacle and bent to reach the glasses with his eyes. ‘Find out where Commander Clark is, and tell him I want to know what the state of things below is… Watch your steering, quartermaster!’
The Blooding of the Guns Page 18