‘Sing out our heading every ten degrees, Quartermaster,’ I said without turning, eyes fixed on the blob that was Mallard.
‘Aye, aye, Sir,’ McRae answered phlegmatically behind me, then, almost immediately, started calling out the changing course bearings. ‘050, Sir ... 060 ...’
She was swinging really fast now so I called to McRae as I turned, ‘Ease the helm,’ to slow our head a bit. If Mallard wasn’t watching at precisely this moment, then I didn’t want to come round on her too quickly.
‘070, Sir,’ sang McRae, and I could hear the gyro clicking off the points as the lubberline on the card swung in its mounting. The Captain was still a silent, unmoving figure out on the wing.
Suddenly, as I turned back to the window and looked out again for the corvette, I started to get uneasy. Well, I’d been uneasy all the time—now I was plain scared. Mallard had apparently vanished. One minute she was there, steaming ahead and to starboard - now she was gone! Perhaps it was a trick of the half-light. It was getting dark very quickly and the sea seemed to heave sullenly like black, billowing glass.
God! Where the hell was she? I swung on Brannigan.
‘Short blasts, Fourth Mate. And keep on blowing till I tell you to stop!’ I yelled as I headed for the wheelhouse door. Then I saw we were still swinging too fast against the fuzzy grey shading of the horizon. Even if we’d been heading west instead of almost due east I would at least have had the blood-red crack of sky remaining to help me find that vanished escort.
‘MIDSHIPS the wheel!’ I threw over my shoulder as I went through the door itself, eyes clawing for the dark sea ahead.
Then I saw the Old Man running towards me and, with a sick feeling in my gut, I knew it was too late.
Things had happened so slowly at first that it was confusingly unbelievable that they could be piling one on top of another with such terrifying speed. I suddenly realised that the reason I couldn’t see the little Mallard was because she was already hidden from the bridge by the enormous flare of our bows. Already her officers and ratings would be staring up in disbelieving horror at the overhang of steel looming over them like a Damoclesian sword. They were dead men, yet they were still able to scream.
I know, because I heard them.
And Cyclops was screaming, too, as the gravel-throated siren shrieked too late from our funnel abaft the bridge.
*
Captain Evans and I—I have to include myself—had both been trapped into misjudging our true distance from Mallard as she sat out there on our bow. I found out later what had actually happened when he talked dazedly about it in his cabin.
At the start of our turn, as our high stem had started to bear round on them, they must have thought for a few crucial moments that we were only yawing through the inattention of our helmsman. Probably her First Lieutenant had been too sure of his right of way as the ‘Stand on’ ship to worry overmuch at that stage. Then, as they realised with what must have been incredulously dawning horror that we were actually turning into our sixty-degree leg alteration, her officers had acted in a way which should still have saved them. According to Evans, the white water had boiled under her counter as she went to Emergency Full Ahead while, at the same time - presumably in an attempt to kick her after-end away from our bows - she had suddenly leaned over under full starboard helm. Then, just as he thought everything was clear, the mysterious forces of water pressure had taken over.
Mallard was a little ship. She was so light that she didn’t so much sit in the water as on it. I suppose a plan view of the relative positions of the two ships just before the moment of impact would have shown Mallard—under full starboard helm and ahead power—pulling across our bows from left to right. Cyclops, on the other hand, had already started to slow her swing due to my order to ‘Ease the helm’ a few seconds previously. In that instant we were still roughly one cable, or six hundred feet, away from her. Both Evans and I later agreed that she had done the right thing in starboarding as that way, in theory, she should still have stayed ahead of us and eventually drawn out of the radius of our swing. But then, as I’ve already said, no doubt a Court of Law could have pronounced learned judgment, given time to debate, but would an officer have acted any differently with the shadow of twelve thousand tons of rushing, juggernauting steel looming over his tiny cockleshell?
The bulge of water beyond our forefoot had hit Mallard first at her stern. When a big ship is travelling at speed a mass of displaced water is pushed ahead of her, acting with Gargantuan force on any object in its path. Mallard was such an object, sitting light on the surface as she was. The racing, compacted mass of our bow wave had caught her—already under full starboard helm—and pushed her stern farther and farther round like a cork thrown into a weir. The effects were disastrous. Round had swept her bows, round, round, round until, still under full emergency power, she had practically been facing us stem to stem. Then the force of her own engines had driven her remorselessly back into our path ... right into the welter of rushing, roaring water under our razor forefoot.
It shouldn’t have happened. But then, theoretically, no collision at sea should. Collisions are invariably an accumulation of small, individually insignificant events which, if unnoticed, make up the formula for disaster. Like this one, where the corvette watchkeeper’s irritating elan had needled Evans into a disgruntled attitude towards his Royal Navy counterparts. Where Mallard’s inexplicable insistence on remaining so close off our bow had been further compounded by our misjudgment of her true distance in the waning light. Where the nebulous forces of water pressure, of ‘Interaction,’ had combined with the already exerted helm action to swing the escort’s bow through a fatally over-extended arc. Where ...
Oh, what the hell’s the point? Those dead, drowned Navy men didn’t care how it happened.
Yet, strangely, it was what occurred after the impact that I remember most of all.
*
I remember standing searching frantically in the half light for the vanished corvette. Then the Captain came running across the wing and, seizing my shoulder, literally dragged me away from the wheelhouse door to allow him passage. I heard him bellowing to the man at the wheel while a dazed, petrified Brannigan still clung desperately to the whistle lanyard.
‘Hard to PORT!’ Evans screamed, lunging for the engine room telegraphs. The brass handles flashed in the last rays of the dying sun as he swung them back and forward, then back again to ‘Full Astern.’ By this time I, too, had joined the confused terror of the wheelhouse as the wheel blurred under McRae’s spinning hands. We had just commenced to heel over when the shudder came from the bows, and the shrieking and tearing of wood and metal and men came sweeping back over the canvas dodgers.
Something else was shrieking too, with the agonized cries of a wounded monster, and I realised it was that bloody siren on our funnel, still operated by an almost zombie-like Fourth Mate. It was eerie, the way he kept on pulling and pulling at the lanyard. Suddenly I couldn’t stand it any longer and smashed his arm down violently, yelling that it was too goddamned late for that! Then I felt guilty at the look on his shocked features as I remembered I’d told him to keep on till I said to stop.
The bows seemed to ride up slightly as we cut into Mallard abaft her ridiculous little funnel, then the line of the horizon jumped as our full, ponderous weight took over and we sliced down, down and through her galley and mess decks. Our carnivorous forefoot smashed into her engine room, tons of water-streaming rusty steel impacting down on them from the collapsing deckhead being the very last sensation her engineers must have experienced as they stood before their polished brass wheels and gauges. Then on and on, crushing even further through her oil-filled double bottoms and keel until, in a few fleeting, devastating seconds, Cyclops had ripped the corvette completely in two, yet conceded only a barely perceptible jolt to mark her passing ...
The Captain ran past me again, face white as death, to the extreme starboard wing. I saw him leaning so far out over t
he sea that, for a sickeningly frightening moment, I thought he was going to overbalance and fall into the rushing black water below. Then he ripped his cap off and started beating the rail with it in an agony of frustration at our inability to repair the havoc we’d created. What made it even worse was that he wasn’t swearing or shouting—just smashing and smashing with the crumpling, braided cap; smashing down on the rail as though belabouring his own conscience through the medium of the ship.
We had begun to shudder violently ourselves now. Every window frame and loose object in the wheelhouse was chattering and jumping excitedly. It was the torque effect of our propellor shafts suddenly thrown under full astern power. They must have felt it too, down below, to have hit the engine controls so quickly ... Oh, Christ! The screws. They were still spinning and by now the shattered bulk of Mallard must be sliding slowly aft along our flank. If one of our churning phosphor-bronze propellors even touched her ... I threw myself at the telegraph and swung it desperately to ‘Stop Engines’ ... The jolting vibration ceased almost as soon as I took my hand away and the silence clamped down on the darkened wheelhouse with an almost physical grip.
Then McRae at the wheel said, ‘Wheel’s still hard to port, Mister Kent, Sir,’ in a shocked, quiet voice, and I shook myself free of the dazed horror that threatened to paralyse me. I saw them both - Brannigan and McRae - watching me dumbly and I knew I had to do something to break the sick tension.
‘Midships the wheel,’ I said, forcing my voice to remain as icy cold as I could. Then, to Brannigan, ‘Get down below ... Take the Carpenter and sound the forepeak. Sound the forra’d bilges too, then report back here.’
The Fourth Mate blinked, then nodded and almost ran from the bridge. I glanced at the clock—only a few seconds had actually passed since the start of the nightmare ... Where in God’s name was Athenian? She was still slamming up astern of us. Maybe they hadn’t seen anything to account for our crazy, gyrating course. Maybe she was still on a heading to bear down on us and anything that was left of the corvette. I ran out to the bridge wing and skidded to a halt.
Evans was already signalling to her. Thank heavens he’d not slipped into a dazed trance as a host of masters might have done in the appalling circumstances. Subconsciously I listened to the clicks of the shutter as he slowly, unpractisedly, spelt ATHENIAN ... U ... U ... U ... U ... the International Code warning—‘You are standing into danger’ ... KEEP WELL TO STARBOARD MY TRACK.
Then, suddenly, another noise. A bizarre, unfamiliar sound coming from somewhere below our feet. Where? What was it? The silence on the bridge still blanketed down, only broken by the purr of the muffled exhaust from our funnel, the laboured clicks of the Aldis in the Old Man’s hands, and the swish of the sea along our smooth hull ... and that noise.
A sort of soft whup! Whup! WHUP ...! Getting louder and louder as we slid quietly through the black water. A sound like the steady flagellation of an already dead corpse. Louder and louder ...
Then I knew what it was. I rushed to the rail and looked out and down, out over the green-painted sidelight screens and down into the sea below, and I saw it. I saw the ship we’d just murdered.
Or ... part of it.
I found myself staring down on the after part of Mallard. Slowly, ever so slowly, it was passing down the length of our towering sides. The impact of the collision must have slowed us more than I had at first estimated—that and the throbbing braking power of our engines during the short time they were full astern.
There was still the sound of engines, though ... Mallard’s engines. That was the noise I had heard—the slash of her still-spinning propellers, driving the half ship against our side in a futile attempt to bury herself into our inch-thick steel plating. Almost as a last, defiant gesture of mutual destruction.
My hands gripped the rail in front of me as I stared, frozen to the spot, while the eviscerated corpse of the corvette tried to push into us as, at the same time, she bumped and grated blindly aft, shedding bits and pieces of ship and fittings into the hungry sea between us.
I remember seeing her White Ensign still streaming proudly from her box-like counter, and watching men jumping from under it with an unspeakable, goddamned unbelievingly disciplined silence, into the oil-fouled water. I remember watching an elderly petty officer moving methodically among the rows of black canisters on the depth-charge racks, moving almost as if he wasn’t aware of the horror around him, sparing us not a glance as he bent over the ugly drums, each packed with three hundred pounds of high explosive, and calmly removed the primers from as many as he could before ...
Before ...? Oh, dear Jesus! Those DEPTH-CHARGES! I swung to find the Old Man beside me, staring down too, with a terrible look of sadness on his suddenly much older face. His eyes caught mine and held for a long moment, then I said simply, ‘Her charges, Captain?’
I saw the lined features age even more in those few seconds as we stood there over the cadaver of a dying ship. There was only one decision he could take—we both knew that—but I had to leave it to him to make. I didn’t have the courage to accept responsibility for an act I knew would make me die a little more for every day I had left to live.
We could save a lot of those silent, jumping, fresh-faced seamen if we stayed. Already I could see our own crowd down on the after-well duck urgently preparing ropes to drop down to the oil-blackened survivors. But with thousands of pounds of high explosive liable to detonate under our keel at any second, could we really have extended their hold on life for more than another few, precious moments? And what about our cargo forward? Had Braid risked that when the Commandant Joffre had leaned over on her crewmen?
At my side the drooping shoulders squared resolutely and, turning quickly away, Evans strode deliberately to the wheelhouse. Behind me I heard the sharp clang of the telegraphs moving over to ‘Full ahead,’ then, from the depths below, a muffled acknowledgement. The first rope snaked over into the water from our well deck as the placid water under our stern suddenly whorled into a surging white froth and, slowly at first, we started to forge ahead with the throbbing, whirring after part of Mallard still almost pleadingly forcing into our side.
I saw a young, black-faced kid in the water grab imploringly at the rope’s end and hang on with the terror of death strengthening his grip; I watched three of our blokes trying to stop a fourth merchant sailor from climbing over the side to help before they all fell back struggling and cursing to the deck; I saw the bobbing heads in the water staring up at us as we surged faster and faster away from them, then, as they realised we were leaving them to die alone, the white eyes and the red mouths screaming hate and filth at our anonymous bulk. I saw the boy seaman on the end of the rope still hanging on as the force of the water smashed him time and time again into our steel plates until, almost drowned and brutally battered, he fell away in the welter of white water under our stern.
I saw the old petty officer on Mallard’s after end look up momentarily from his crouch over the depth-charge primers as his half ship fell away astern. His arm went up briefly to the lowering sky, then he bent back down again to his self-imposed task. Was it a gesture of supplication ...? No. I closed my eyes in silent prayer as I realised he had been saluting us—a final absolution from a man who knew what war was all about ... A Royal Navyman!
And I knew, too late, there was no room for the contempt of differences between Us and Them.
*
Evans came to stand beside me again and, together, we watched numbly as the forepart of Mallard slid into view from the previous shield of our port side. We didn’t speak as the two halves of the little ship almost incredibly met again in our wake. For one unbelievable moment it looked, in the distorted half light, as though she was about to rise whole from the waiting sea; to resurrect her cloven hull and her already dead, trapped, mangled sailors.
Then suddenly, without warning, the stern section seemed to fall forward, the still whirring propellers bit hard into the water, and the whole after end—
with the old torpedoman still working under her White Ensign—drove down and down into the black depths below.
And, even yet, she wasn’t completely dead. I heard someone sobbing great gouts of indrawn breath until I realised that it was I who was crying, and then, fantastically, the bright stuttering beam of her Aldis blinked for the last time from the doomed forepart.
GOODBYE DO NOT STOP TO RESCUE SURVI ...!
... before shadowy white columns of water rose high in the air as the smashing blast of the explosions thundered across the water towards us. Time after time the flashes spread through the sea, first the milli-second of bright yellow incandescence from the depths, then a sudden contraction of the brilliance followed by those terrible mushrooms of atomised spray climbing higher and higher. Then another convulsion, and another and another, until the whole sea between us and the black horizon seemed to be tortured and ripped by the hellish firestorm. I caught a never-forgotten glimpse of Athenian, a long grey bulk on our starboard quarter, flickering and illuminated by that awesome light while, all the time, the explosions went on and on an' bloody ON!
... until, suddenly, the submarine holocaust ceased and the last mountain of spray fell back to the surface with an eerie, audible hiss, and everything was quiet again aboard Cyclops. It was completely dark now, with the pupils of our eyes contracted by the glare of Mallard’s funeral pyres, so we just stood there, staring blindly aft, for a very long time. We didn’t even move when the noise of a scuffle carried from the after well deck and a hysterical voice screamed, ‘Bugger you, Evans, you bloody murderin’ gutless bastard!’, then the sound of a man sobbing as he was forcibly led below.
Only eventually did the Old Man turn to me and I saw that his eyes were glinting with moisture. I drew myself up and bit my lip as we faced each other. In the wheelhouse the zig-zag clock dinged again, whereupon Evans squared his shoulders, lifted his chin.
A FLOCK OF SHIPS Page 12