The Blooding of the Guns

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

‘Aye aye, sir…’ The voice out of the copper tube sounded normal, steady. ‘She’s not answering too well, sir.’

  The telegraphs weren’t working either. Weren’t being responded to, anyway. None of the navyphones seemed to be alive. Since the final salvo had smashed down into her, there’d been two reports both by word of messenger; one from Pike, the engineer to the effect that the port engine-room was out of action, and then one from the commander to the effect that he’d ordered the evacuation of the maintopmen’s messdeck and that there were too many fires for all of them to be coped with adequately.

  All magazines had been flooded. The hands in the after steering compartment reported water rising steadily. They were trapped in there, and rescuers couldn’t get to it to help from outside.

  A voice bleated from a voicepipe: ‘Bridge!’ David located it: it was the one from the spotting top.

  ‘Bridge.’

  ‘Everard.’ It was Johnny West. ‘Tell the Captain that all electrical circuits seem to have failed. I can’t even contact the TS. And before communications went dead they told me the turrets’ hydraulic power’s failed. I want—’

  Wilmott had sharp ears, still. He snapped. ‘Tell him turrets can go into hand-training.’ West was saying. ‘‒ permission to abandon this spotting top and the director. I want to get the guns into local control and hand-training, and without communications I can’t do a bloody thing.’

  ‘Tell him yes!’

  ‘Johnny? Captain says yes. Come down.’

  ‘Pilot!’

  ‘Sir?’

  At this slow speed and on one engine, listing and down by the stern, Bantry was all shakes and rattles, metal groans. It felt to David as if he was standing on something that was about to fall apart. Wilmott was leaning sideways now against the binnacle, as if without its support he’d have had no balance. His whole right side was a sheet of blood, and he was standing in a pool of it. David wondered if it was possible to be in such a state and not feel pain. Might there be some brain-defeating mechanism in the nervous system, some switch that threw off? Wilmott was paler still now, absolutely white, and there was a weird light in his eyes, but he didn’t seem to be aware of the drastic nature of his injury. It added to the sense of unreality, the feeling that one would suddenly be released from all this, that it didn’t have to be taken seriously. David asked him. ‘Yes sir?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you to find the Commander?‘

  ‘I’ll go now, sir.’ He glanced round the bridge. He’d no idea where to start ‒ or even, really, where he was. Even the light was peculiar: milky, streaked with duller grey and a sort of khaki haze, while aft there, of course, there was only smoke… He heard his voice informing Wilmott, ‘I’ll get the surgeon up, sir. You can’t—’

  ‘Don’t tell me what I can or cannot do, Pilot. Just you do what I’ve ordered you to do.’ It sounded like some sort of game, or a children’s argument. ‘D’you understand me, Everard?’ David nodded. Presumably the man was numb, and couldn’t feel it. It made one ill just to look at him even at his face. He’s dead, and he doesn’t realise it…

  Then: Signal bridge: there’ll be men down there, and I’ll send them to find Clark. It was a voice speaking in his head, something he listened to from outside himself. He felt grateful to it; there didn’t seem to be any other kind of help around.

  ‘Everard!’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He was moving towards the after end of the bridge, to the ladder that would take him down to the signal bridge. He managed not to look at Wilmott again before he’d got past him. But he had to pass the yeoman here, and Midshipman Porter and the Marine bugler, and a signalman named Rouse; they’d all been standing here in the after part of the compass platform when that flash had shot up and enveloped it. He half-closed his eyes, so that he could see his way but not those things. Clothes all charred: if you brushed against them by accident they scattered like dust or dead leaves: and the bodies weren’t burnt – simply discoloured, horrible.

  He started down the starboard ladderway.

  ‘Where the devil are you going?’

  He looked up. The question seemed to cut through the surroundings, which were too appalling to be believed. There was enough beastliness here to fill a lifetime of nightmares. Commander Clark’s blue eyes blazed up at him.

  ‘I was coming to find you, sir. Captain wants a report on how things are below decks.’

  ‘He’s about to get one.’ Clark came up the ladder fast, pushing past David, hauling himself up with quick, powerful tugs of his short, thick arms. Stocky, balding, belligerent, he looked as if he’d been fighting Uhlans single-handed and unarmed and then been dunked in oily water. He stopped at the top of the ladder: feet apart, hands on hips, glaring at the corpses as if they were so many defaulters.

  ‘What the devil!’

  ‘They’re dead, sir.’

  ‘I didn’t think they were dancing a bloody hornpipe.’

  Clark swung to his right, took a few paces for’ard; his usual aggressive, strutting paces. When David took his eyes off the baked effigy which had been PO Sturgis, he became aware that the commander was standing with his fists on his hips again, facing a deserted bridge. ‘Well? Where is the Captain?’

  David moved up beside him. Wilmott was down beside the binnacle, on his back. His head dangled backwards over the low central step; his mouth was an open pink slit above the beard. His eyes were open too, staring upwards at the sky.

  Clark bent down, put a finger to an eyeball. Then he straightened.

  ’Right.’ He took a deep breath, and let it out again. The word and the breath signified his assumption of command. ‘Get Lieutenant West down from the spotting top.’

  David glanced aloft, and pointed. With his two-man crew following him. West was climbing down the rungs on the foremast. The third man ‒ boy, rather, it was little Ackroyd – was just emerging from the lubber’s hole in the base-plate of the top. David told Commander Clark, ‘None of the navyphones work, sir, and the engine-room don’t answer telegraphs. The quartermaster says steering’s difficult.’

  ‘That, Everard, is hardly surprising.’ Clark watched as the gunnery lieutenant ‒ who’d just become the executive officer ‒ climbed on the foremast into the after end of the bridge, and came for’ard.

  ‘Sir.’ West glanced down at Wilmott, and caught his breath. He looked at David, then back at Clark. He seemed to square his shoulders.

  ‘Listen. West. We’re going slow ahead on one screw, but the engine-room’s inaccessible, cut off by a fire which we don’t seem able to make much impression on. We’re badly holed, but we can’t get at the holes either, and even if we could we wouldn’t be able to stop them up because they’re too damn big. I estimate we’ve about a hundred dead and about as many wounded. And as you can see—’ he pointed aft ‒ ‘there is no chance whatsoever of this ship remaining afloat.’

  West nodded. Clark went on, ‘I want all the wounded fetched up on deck, and then I want all fit men employed making rafts. All the boats are smashed, of course ‒ or burnt. Now listen ‒ we should get some warning, because the main flooding’s through the starboard engine-room, and that’s the one that’s still going. When the water gets to a certain height it’ll stop it. Then we’ll know time’s nearly up. Understand?’

  ‘Might we not have a chance of getting her home, sir?’

  ‘No. Three hundred miles, in this state?’ Clark’s head jerked sideways in brusque dismissal of the hope. ‘If there was a chance in a thousand, I’d have a shot at it. But there isn’t and the best hope of finding assistance is to stay in this area.’

  ‘With respect, sir ‒ might she not float longer if we drew fires in the boiler-rooms, and shut off steam?’

  ‘I doubt if it’d make much odds, West. And if we were completely stopped it’d make us more vulnerable to any Hun that sneaks along. A submarine, for instance.’ West nodded. Clark looked at David. ‘Everard.’

  David was thinking that Clark was right; there must have been
as many as two or three hundred ships in this approximate vicinity ‒ say within fifty miles – and that was quite a concentration. As long as one had something fairly solid to hang on to, something that floated well ‒ surely if one could simply stay afloat, alive, sooner or later even a German would stop and—

  ‘Are you asleep, Everard?’

  ‘Sir?’

  Clark peered at him curiously. Johnny West was giving him the same look. The commander sighed, shook his head. ‘Go on down. West. Wounded up on deck, then rafts. And send young Scrimgeour up here.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’ West turned away towards the ladder. ‘You come and help me, Ackroyd.’

  ‘Sir!’ Piping treble… Clark frowned, shook his head, thinking something like ought to be at home, with his mother ‘Now, Everard. I want you to see to the destruction of confidential books and charts.’ He pointed to the back end of the compass platform. ‘You can organise a bonfire right there.’

  It was black and charred, skeletally gaunt where all the wood trimmings had been scorched away; there was only bare steel, blistered paintwork, and those hideous corpses.

  ‘Wait a minute.’

  Not that he’d moved yet. Perhaps this fellow thought he had. He stared into the commander’s blue eyes, wondering who he was, where he’d met him. The top half of Signalman Rowse’s face was white, unburnt, where he’d shielded his eyes by throwing up his hands. David could see Rowse’s face as if the image of it was over-printed on his vision as he stared at Clark. Clark said, ‘Before you start on the books, go down to the signal bridge and find a flag six and hoist it somewhere.’

  He looked up. He could see one or two halyards still up there, flapping loose. Perhaps one of them might be serviceable.

  ‘Flag six, sir?’

  ‘For God’s sake, man, snap out of it!’ Clark clapped his hands, for some reason, in front of David’s face. ‘What does flag six mean when it’s hoisted on its own?’

  He concentrated. Six… He could visualise it, all right. Half blue and half yellow… He nodded, as the answer came to him.

  ‘Am in danger of sinking from damage received in action, sir.’

  Clark nodded, angrily. ‘What’d you want ‒ congratulations?’

  David stared at him, wondering what he’d meant.

  ‘Go on man, move!’

  * * *

  Mr Pilkington, the torpedo gunner, stared up at Nick.

  ‘Spare a minute, can ye?’

  Nick had been chatting to Leading Seaman Hooper, the layer of the midships four-inch. Now that he was gunnery control officer, he had a lot to learn, and it was likely he’d pick up more useful information from an experienced gunlayer than he would from any drill book.

  He climbed down from the platform, to join Pilkington. Lanyard was doing about five knots, using only her starboard shaft, while Worsfold did something in one of the two boiler-rooms. Nick hadn’t heard all of it, when the commissioned engineer had come up to the bridge and explained to Mortimer what it was he wanted. Roughly, it was to drain one feed-tank so that his ERAs could mend or patch a leak in it; then he’d refill it from one of the reserve tanks. Mortimer had agreed reluctantly, under Worsfold’s threat that a stitch in time, now, might keep Lanyard in the battle, whereas otherwise she might well have to drop out with bigger trouble later.

  Down in the south-east, Jellicoe’s battle fleet was a grey haze topped by smoke. The fleet had altered course to south now, presumably ‒ so Mortimer had surmised, discussing it with Nick and Hastings – to impose its guns between the Germans and their escape-route south-eastwards.

  ‘The ’uns ’ve turned back agin, Sub.’

  Pilkington’s eyes were small and bright under the beetling brows. Since he had exceptionally short legs, he was several inches shorter than Nick.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Pilkington jerked his head towards the bridge. One of the gun’s crew, prone and dozing on the platform, rolled over and raised his head to listen; up there, the man’s head was on a level with their own as they stood on the upper deck below the gun.

  ‘We just picked up a signal from Southampton. Wireless signal. Enemy battle fleet steering east-sou’-bloody-east, it said.’ He pointed, ‘Bring ’em up agin Jelly agin, won’t it.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

  ‘There’s no per’aps, Sub.’ The gunner demonstrated with his hands. ‘Look. Scheer goin’ this way. Jelly strung out ’ere. Can’t ’elp fetchin’ up agin each other, eh?’

  ‘I’m glad our W/T’s all right now. That leading tel’s pretty good. What’s his name ‒ Williams’s?’

  ‘Garn!’ Pilkington screwed up his nose. ‘Don’t take much to rig a jury aerial. Like stringin’ a bloody washin’ line! You don’t want to go roun’ lettin’ these fellers think they’re bloody geniuses, you know. Sub!’

  ‘No. I won’t.’ Nick thought Pilkington was all right in small doses. ‘And thanks for the buzz. Let’s hope the chief has us fixed up in time.’ He turned away, to go back up on the platform. Pilkington’s hand clamped on his forearm.

  ‘Wasn’t that I want to talk to you about, Sub.’ The gunner scowled. ‘No ’urry, are yer?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Come aft ’ere a minute…’

  ‘All right.’ They walked aft together, past both sets of tubes and the distorted superstructure over the quarterdeck ladderway. The gunner halted facing the stern, staring critically at the lashed-down collision-mat covering the gashes in the deck. Beyond it, Lanyard’s wake seethed gently, like soapy water seeping from a drain. Quite a difference, Nick thought, from the boiling white cauldron which, an hour or so ago, had been piled higher than the stern itself.

  It felt strange that she should be alone now, and quiet. It also felt wrong; down there to the south, the outcome of a major battle was being decided. Or at least, if this little man was right about Southampton’s signal, about to be decided.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Listen. Am I right you didn’t let on to the Old Man about it bein’ you as got the tubes roun’ an’ all?’

  Nick thought about it.

  No, he hadn’t said anything about that. He remembered now. He’d felt it wasn’t necessary. And Mortimer had been firing questions at him, one after another hadn’t he. Also ‒ it was coming back now ‒ Mortimer had been critical or near-critical of Nick’s account of his movements aft here during that action and the explosion; and one’s natural tendency in such circumstances had always been to clam up, say as little as possible and then remove oneself from the presence of the criticiser as swiftly as possible.

  ‘That’s so – although I did have to tell him you’d fired, and that there was only one fish left because he asked me the direct question. Don’t imagine I was making your report for you because I wasn’t.’

  ‘I know you wasn’t, ol’ mate.’ The warrant officer nodded his rather large head. It might not have seemed as big as it did if the rest of him hadn’t been so small. But then again, he was not ‒ as Nick had thought, on first being introduced to him ‒ anything like a jockey, because if you’d sat him on a horse he’d have seemed quite tall. It was only his legs that the midwife must have taken reefs in.

  ‘Right.’ He nodded again. ‘But I mean you did it. You could ’a took the credit. An’ we scored, old chum, we bloody ’it the bugger!’

  ‘Let’s hope so. I suppose it’ll all come out, some day. Who fired which way at what time, and who got hit, and all that.’

  ‘Sub, listen.’ Mr Pilkington grasped his arm. ‘l’m tellin’ you. That fish bloody ’it. I seen it ’it.’

  ‘Well.’ Nick didn’t know what he was supposed to say or do. At the time. Pilkington had said he’d thought he’d seen a torpedo hit one of the enemy ships. Now he was swearing to it. But at least he’d let go of that arm now. ‘Well, good for you. Did you tell the Captain you scored?’

  ‘Course I did!’

  ‘Was he pleased?’

  ‘Christ Almighty, what d’you think?’
/>
  ‘Well, that’s fine, then. Splendid.’

  The gunner was staring at him.

  ’You’re a rum ’un, you are. Sub.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Thought you was a toffee-nosed young sod, when you first come aboard.’

  Nick laughed. It would be a bit of a lark, back at Mullbergh, going out to one of those awful parties, if one said to one’s giggly little tennis partner, ‘I know that at first I give the impression of being a toffee-nosed sod, but actually…’ He smiled at Pilkington. ‘I’m sorry about that. Probably shyness, first day on board, that sort of thing?’

  ‘You’re all right, Sub.’ Pilkington raised a hand and began to pick a back tooth with its forefinger. Whatever he’d been after, he’d got hold of: he was examining it, now.

  He’d flicked it away.

  ‘You want a bit of ’elp, or advice, or what, any time. Sub ‒ well, I bin in this Navy close on thirty bloody years, I oughter know a thing or two.’ He slapped Nick’s shoulder, suddenly. ‘You get problems, you come to me, I’ll see you right, old son.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll bear it in mind.’ Evidently Pilkington felt he’d done him some sort of favour. He certainly hadn’t intended to.

  He left the torpedo gunner beside the after searchlight platform, and went to finish his chat with the gunlayer, Hooper. The men of the four-inch’s crew were all mad keen to get back into the action: none of them had any doubts of it ending in a resounding British victory, and they wanted to be in at the kill. They’d seen that cannonade, when Jellicoe’s battle squadrons had hit Scheer so hard that the High Seas Fleet had had to turn about and escape into the mist, and it had convinced them all that if the Germans could be forced to stand and fight, they’d be annihilated. Nick agreed, of course.

  ‘But it’s a very difficult move to counter, isn’t it. What can a boxer do if his opponent just ducks under the ropes and legs it for home?’

  Hooper pursed his lips, and pushed his cap to the back of head. ‘If you ’ad a few squadrons the other side of ’im, sir?’

  Hugh Everard, when he’d told Nick and David about the turn-away tactic which Scheer had been practising in the Baltic had been thinking in terms of a fast destroyer flotilla which, when such a move seemed likely, could somehow slip out to the enemy’s disengaged side, so that the turning line would be enfiladed with torpedoes. But that sounded a lot easier than it would be to achieve in practice – or rather, in action. And Jellicoe’s view was that the only answer to it was time, and to keep between the enemy and his bases so that sooner or later he’d have to fight.