The Blooding of the Guns

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

  ‘Aye aye, sir. Petty Officer Toomey!’

  ‘Here, sir!’

  ‘Bosun’s Mate?’

  Toomey bellowed aft, ‘Bosun’s Mate, report for’ard!’ He edged past Clark and rattled down the ladder. ‘I’ll send him to you, sir.’ West called after him, ‘I want him to pipe all hands on deck. And send some men to the dressing-station, bring up the last of the wounded. Tell the Surgeon-Commander we’re about to abandon ship.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  ‘Listen to me, all of you.’ Clark, still clutching the handrail, struggled for breath as he turned to and fro, addressing the men on the foc’sl and those below him in the waist as well.

  ‘Listen… There’s no rush. We’ve time to do this in an orderly manner. All wounded men will be helped into the rafts. Unwounded men will stay out of ’em, and help tow ’em clear of the ship as soon as they’re filled. There are plenty of ships about ‒ or will be, by daylight ‒ so you can reckon on being picked up quite soon. Right then ‒ good luck to you all.’

  * * *

  Nick leant in a rear corner of Lanyard’s bridge listening to her thrumming, thumping clatter as she tore southwards through the dark. Not at full power: Worsfold had finished his repairs at about half-past eight, and he’d implored Mortimer not to use maximum revolutions unless action situations demanded it. Mortimer, who’d been getting more and more bad-tempered during the long delay, had been so relieved at getting his ship moving again that he’d accepted the recommendation.

  Worsfold had muttered as he passed Nick, behind the binnacle, ‘Wonders’ll never cease!’

  Mortimer had half-heard him.

  ‘What’s that, Chief?’

  ‘I said, “Now for a bit of peace”, sir.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘We’ve been at it pretty hard down there, sir.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Mortimer’s suspicion faded. ‘I dare say you have. Well done. Chief.’

  Worsfold had then winked at Nick and left the bridge. They’d been pushing south ever since at about three-quarters speed ‒ twenty-six knots ‒ which should bring them up astern of the Grand Fleet’s flotillas in an hour or not much more. The jury-rigged wireless aerial could receive, after a fashion, but not transmit: the telegraphists had picked up Jellicoe’s course-and-speed orders, and his order to the destroyers to take station five miles astern of the battle fleet, and that was all Mortimer had had to base his calculations on. Hastings had demurred, suggesting that they didn’t know which way the fleet had steered between the time they last saw it and the time – nine twenty, roughly ‒ Jellicoe had ordered the course to be changed to south. Mortimer had told him that it didn’t make much difference, a point or two this way or that: you couldn’t not come up astern of a fleet that size, with no less than four destroyer flotillas spread out astern of it.

  Nick had taken over on the bridge for about an hour before the boiler-room repair had been completed. Hastings had needed a break. And during that time, the dead had been buried. Each had been given a few prayers from the ‘Form for the Burial of the Dead at Sea’, the shrill pipe of a bosun’s call, and a volley from half a dozen rifles. The simplicity of the ceremony had emphasised its sadness. And the destroyer alone here in gathering dusk with the sea’s reflective quality fading under a slowly darkening sky: there had been an acute sense of solitude and loss…

  Alone on the bridge except for Garret and the helmsman and telegraphman down there below them. Nick had listened to Mortimer’s voice intoning the simple prayers, and to the high, thin wails of the pipe, the rattles of rifle-fire, the splashes. He’d felt a tightness in his throat, a depth of personal sorrow which astonished him.

  * * *

  He’d attended only one funeral in his life. His mother’s. Mary Everard had died in 1906 of pneumonia, which had grown out of a chill caught when she’d got soaking wet out hunting. Nick had been eleven, and he’d felt he was attending the funeral of a stranger. It had been so cold, so impersonal; he’d thought, that’s how she was… He remembered his father’s tall, black-clad figure and set, stern face; there’d been the same clothes, the same faces, everywhere Nick had looked. He’d hardly known his mother; she’d seen to her sons’ wellbeing in an efficient, supervisory manner, and he’d thought of her in that way ‒ as a kind of supervisor, or ‘higher authority’. The woman who’d mothered him had been ‘Old Nanny’; he knew what her real name had been, now, but he hadn’t then, and she’d died recently at Harrogate, where she’d gone to live in her retirement.

  David had been fourteen, and a cadet at Osborne, at the time of their mother’s funeral, and he’d attended it ‒ on orders from their father ‒ in his uniform. Nick had been surprised, and their father had been embarrassed, when David had started weeping. It had never occurred to Nick that either of them might be so affected. When they got back to the house, their father had sent for David, and he must have given him a ticking-off: David had been sniffling again when he’d come back upstairs to the schoolroom. He’d stopped in the doorway, and glared at his smaller brother out of reddened eyes: ‘You don’t care, do you!’

  ‘Care what?’

  ‘That she’s dead! You never loved her, like I—’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘There! You admit it! You little beast, you—’

  ‘I was trying to say I didn’t not like ‒ love her.’ He remembered being totally confused. He didn’t know how he’d felt about her, or even how he felt about her being dead

  Uncle Hugh had come up from London for the funeral. He’d got married only a few months before, and he’d brought his wife up with him. Nick remembered being sent down to the big drawing-room at Mullbergh, and introduced to her. She’d drawled some comment which he didn’t understand, and she’d shrugged, laughing at his embarrassment. He’d always hated that room.

  * * *

  ‘Starboard ten.’

  ‘Starboard ten, sir!’

  ‘Steady on sou’-west by south.’ He turned, met Garret’s eyes as they heard yet another rattle of shots and yet another splash. Garret muttered, ‘Must be the last. Poor devils.’

  ‘They may not be feeling poor, perhaps?’

  He’d just said it without thinking and immediately wished he hadn’t. Garret put the thing back in an easier perspective; he said, ‘I would be.’

  * * *

  An hour later: twenty-five sea-miles farther south. It was pitch dark now, and an empty sea. There’d been some signals which Lanyard had intercepted from light cruisers reporting sightings of the enemy; it seemed fairly plain that the Germans were to the westward or south-westward of Jellicoe’s southbound battle fleet.

  Mortimer had said, ‘He’s got ’em where he wants ’em. Given any sort of luck, he’ll have Scheer over a barrel in the morning!’

  * * *

  It was a satisfying thought that one was taking part in a major battle that was likely to end up as a major victory. Nick wondered where David was, whether his cruiser had been in action ‒ and if so, how he’d reacted to the experience. David would come out of it all right: not that anyone could ‘arrange’ what happened in a battle, but simply that David would take care he personally different come to grief. If his ship sank, he’d survive, in any situation… Like getting over tall hedges, out hunting ‒ David invariably picked his spot, and usually one that a few other riders had been over first, whereas he, Nick, tended to charge the obstacle at its nearest point ‒ and come off, yet again… He enjoyed it, but he usually managed to make an idiot of himself; he wasn’t the right shape for a horseman, as David was, with his length of leg, balance and slimness. David’s great disadvantage was his nervousness. He’d always been scared, even as a small boy. But according to their father, David was the horseman, the one who was mad keen on riding to hounds, who looked right on a horse. Nick had never heard his brother argue the point ‒ but he’d seen his hands shaking, seen the tremble of his lips. And David, the heir, had to do it well. Sir John Everard expected nothing less, from his elde
r son. Was that part of David’s trouble? It matched what Johnson had said about him the idea of his being scared of not succeeding – didn’t it?

  Nick frowned as he thought about it. The possibility of getting some insight that might help one to like ‒ or cease to dislike ‒ one’s own brother had obvious appeal, and this was why what Johnson had said had interested him so much. Then when one thought about it ‒ about, for instance, David’s concern for his own person, and in contrast, what he’d done to that wretched tart ‒ he had done it, and he’d tried to pretend he hadn’t, tried to suggest some other man might have been with her after he, David, had left her: he’d been desperate, almost grovelling in his attempts to persuade Nick to accept his denials, evasions. But Nick had just returned from the girl’s lodging, he’d seen her, heard her: now he saw his brother’s white face and frightened eyes, and it had been an effort to keep his fists at his sides.

  David had begged him to go to her address. The morning after: Nick had a bad hangover from the party ‒ a mutual friend’s bachelor night the eve of his wedding ‒ and David had something more than hangover. Nick hadn’t realised that; on his way to see the girl he’d construed that all that was wrong with his brother was an excess of alcohol the night before and a degree of shame at having spent what had been left of the night with a prostitute he’d picked up in the street. It had been in character, that David shouldn’t want to face her sober and in daylight, and Nick, on his way there in a cab, had felt no more than a familiar, mild contempt for him. It had been no more than that ‒ until the girl opened her door to his knock and he saw her bruised, smashed-up face.

  David had left his wallet, cigarette case and silver-topped cane in her room. Whatever had happened between them, he’d panicked and run away. The girl, with one eye completely closed and the other a slit in bruised flesh, stared at him through the partly-opened door. She shook her head: he saw her wince.

  ‘Not up to it, dear. See that, carn’ya?’

  He’d explained. He’d wanted to fetch a doctor.

  ‘Get one to ’im!’

  ‘Why, what d’you—’

  ‘Brain doctor… Is’n ’e ravin’ bloody mad?’

  There was quite a lot of money in David’s wallet. Nick emptied it on the chest-of-drawers. The girl almost didn’t take it. When he asked her why or how it had happened, she shrugged and turned away.

  ‘I laughed at him. Drunk, were’n ’e ‒ I mean, ’e could’n ‒ you know…’

  Nick handed David back an empty wallet. He told him. ‘You’ll find it’s empty. I gave her all you had.’

  ‘What?’

  Nick stared at him, seeing not only his brother but his father too. And he could have hit him, even then, before the excuses and denials had even started. David was thumbing angrily through the wallet; he muttered, ‘Damn near a whole month’s pay! For God’s sake, Nick—’

  ‘Leave God out of it!’ David seemed to be in shock. Nick said ‘You’re lucky the police aren’t looking for you. I suppose she thought they wouldn’t take her word for it…’

  Like father like son. Nick thought on Lanyard’s bridge as she thrust southwards through the night, perhaps they can’t help it. Perhaps it’s in the blood. In mine too, then?

  * * *

  ‘Everard?’

  Mortimer had his binoculars at his eyes. His back was resting against the binnacle. Nick moved up beside him.

  ‘Sir?’

  Hastings was over on the port side; looking past the captain, Nick could see him and his glasses silhouetted against the night sky. Heading into such wind as there was, and into the low, choppy sea which during the last hour it had begun to push up, Lanyard was thumping a bit now, smashing the small waves down but making quite a fuss about it. The damage she’d suffered had of course added to her rattles. He looked down and for’ard, saw her bow-wave gleaming white, fading into a vaguer lightness and finally merging, abaft the beam, into the surrounding blackness of the sea.

  Mortimer finally condescended to lower his binoculars and turn towards him.

  ‘Yes, now then. Not because we’re short-handed, Sub, but because I’m satisfied you’re reasonably sensible ‒ which to some extent compensates for the fact that you’re still wet behind the ears and haven’t been with us much more than half a dogwatch ‒ I’m declaring you competent to take charge of a watch at sea. When time permits you may type out a watchkeeping certificate, and I’ll sign it. Copy the wording from the screed I gave Hastings last year.’

  ‘Thank you very much, sir!’

  ‘Don’t let me down, that’s all.’

  Nick felt wonderful. It was like being let out of the nursery, or given the key of the door!

  He blinked: something had flashed, out there, a long way off.

  Mortimer had whipped up his binoculars: ‘What the—’

  Gunfire. There’d been that single flash, and then a lot of it, flickering to and fro out there on the horizon; now its sound reached them too. Nick heard movement behind him as someone else arrived in the bridge. Mortimer was conning Lanyard around two points to starboard, to steer straight for the action. Behind Nick, the torpedo gunner demanded in a stage whisper, ‘What’s that lot, then?’ Nobody was in a position to enlighten him. The gunfire was increasing, and the stabs of flame were yellowish, not red as they’d been in daylight. A searchlight beam ‒ no, several, a whole battery of them sprang out blinding white, held for a few seconds and then went out as suddenly as they’d come on.

  That flickering, ruddy-coloured point of light might be a ship on fire. The gunfire died away, and ceased altogether.

  Mortimer asked without lowering his glasses. ‘What is the state of the guns, Sub?’

  ‘Midships four-inch closed-up and ready, sir. The crew of the for’ard gun are resting under the midships gun-platform. The two crews are working watch-and-watch, and ammunition parties are at their stations but standing easy, sir.’

  ‘Have ’em all stand-to, please.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  ‘Mr Pilkington is that you?’

  ‘Yessir. After tube is closed-up, sir.’

  ‘Our last torpedo must not be wasted, Mr Pilkington.’

  ‘I’m countin’ it won’t be, sir.’

  Nick had alerted the guns’ crews, by voicepipe. He moved past Garret, to see what settings Blewitt had on the Barr and Stroud transmitter. ‘Put zero deflection. Blewitt. And range ‒ well, say two thousand yards.’ He thought any action in the dark would most likely be fought at fairly close quarters.

  ‘Oh-two-oh set, sir.’

  ‘Check that the guns have the same readings.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  ‘Everard.’ Mortimer told him. ‘If we meet any Huns, my first consideration will be to use that torpedo effectively. So I don’t want any guns blazing away without orders. The object will be to get in close and make as sure as possible of a torpedo hit. Make sure the gunlayers understand this.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir’

  It was all quiet, up ahead where that brief action had taken place. The fire, if that was what it had been, had gone out too, and it felt as if Lanyard was entirely alone in a great emptiness of night and sea. Mortimer said to Hastings. ‘Might have been ten miles away, could’ve been six or seven. Anyone’s guess.’

  ‘I’d have thought at least ten, sir.’

  And by the time Lanyard got down there, Nick thought, whoever it had been might well be another ten miles away in any direction at all… He went down to instruct the gunlayers. On his way back a few minutes later, abreast the whaler on the port side, he met Pilkington coming aft.

  ‘We’ll be stuck in agin soon, Sub. Got yer rubber weskit on?’

  But Lanyard was well astern of the fleet, and the Germans were down somewhere in the south-west; there seemed no reason for either fleet to turn north. The farther south Scheer went, the closer he’d be getting to his bases. With luck, Lanyard might come up astern of her flotilla and rejoin it, or tag on to one of the other flotil
las and locate the thirteenth at daylight. One felt that Jellicoe knew there’d be no night fighting; he’d so to speak appealed against the light and drawn stumps.

  Apart from which, things felt quiet…

  A few seconds later as he climbed up to the bridge, he heard Hastings shout, ‘Port bow, sir, more—’

  ‘I’m not blind, Pilot!’

  Nick, joining them quickly, saw the new outbreak of gunfire on the port bow. Mortimer said angrily, ‘It’s damnable, not knowing what’s going on…’

  Whatever it was, it was happening a long way off again, much too far for it to concern Lanyard in any immediate sense. There was more of it than last time, though. Searchlight beams and the flashes of explosions lit lightning glimpses of ships, miniaturised silver shapes behind blazing guns. Mortimer announced, ‘Light cruisers. God knows which is what.’ Keeping his glasses at his eyes, be performed a long knees-bend to the voicepipe.

  ‘Starboard ten!’

  ‘Starboard ten, sir!’

  Again he was aiming Lanyard towards the action; towards toy ships firing tiny guns, making sparks and pops instead of blinding flashes and the thunder of destruction. That was what one knew it was, but its remoteness and the impossi-bility of reaching it in time to play any part in it gave one a sense of detachment: men were being killed down there, but one couldn’t feel it…

  Mortimer repeated, ‘Light cruisers, wouldn’t you say?’ Hastings mumbled something. This action was taking place much farther east than the last one had. German scouting forces ‒ cruisers ‒ shadowing the Grand Fleet, perhaps, probing for information to pass on to Scheer, and running up against our own cruisers or destroyers?

  ‘Midships!’

  It was a much larger-scale action than the first. Gunfire was continuous; brilliant white and softer, yellowish flashes lit the clouds. Now to the left ‒ eastward ‒ there was a blaze of searchlights and more rapid shooting. Smoke, illuminated by sudden flashes from inside it, vanished as the flashes ceased, then reappeared as it rolled across the searchlights, dimming them. A ripple of gunfire came from farther to the right; the spread of the action was wider, as well as its pace being hotter, than the other one.