A FLOCK OF SHIPS

by Callison, Brian

  The Old Man said again, ‘What in God’s name’s Bert intending to do?’

  I knew, because I knew Bert Samson. I knew that defiant, bloody-minded individualist like I knew my own father. So did Evans but maybe he was too reluctant to voice the futility of his peer's action. We didn’t speak again as we stood and watched the beautiful ship with the tension building to screaming point inside us. Watched as she vibrated with the agony of being forced up to full speed under wide open valves; watched as the rushing wall of water built steadily higher and higher under the great, knife bows. The bows? Was Bill Henderson still up there in the eyes of the ship, or had Bert had the compassion to call them aft, away from where they wouldn’t stand a dog’s chance if she hit? Suddenly I knew something else. I was never going to see Bill again. Drowned Eric would, though. Yeah, maybe big Eric Clint would, if there was a place where chief officers went when ...

  Larabee threw out an arm and shouted with a sort of taut excitement, not hushed and reverential as I’d have expected from a man witnessing the opening act of such a vast, Romanesque tragedy. ‘Look ...! They're calling her.’

  The lead U-boat was still in sight from where we lay, the signal light from her conning tower flickering rapidly and menacingly: STOP YOUR ENGINES IMMEDIATELY OR I FIRE ... STOP ... STOP ... STOP! Then, almost without pause, the big casing gun on the U-boat’s foredeck boomed viciously, the smash of the distant shot echoing reverberatingly round the black cliffs of the anchorage, causing a million cold-eyed seabirds to rise and wheel in squawking, fluttering protest.

  They must have been temporarily unnerved on the German’s deck because the first shell went wide of Athenian and I watched in terrified fascination as it literally skipped across the water towards us like a flat stone on a pond until, less than three cables from our starboard side, it detonated in a climbing fountain of yellow water that momentarily obscured the other combatants.

  Then, crazily, I heard a great cheer from aft and swivelled round in time to see Charlie Shell and the army gunners swarming up the ladders towards the lonely Phyllis, snout still pointing dejectedly astern. ‘Christ!’ I screamed at Evans. ‘They’ve taken that shot as a bloody excuse to fight.’

  The beefy red face grinned back at me savagely. ‘Well, Mister Kent? Do you want Bert Samson's crowd to corner all the glory on that war memorial, dammit?’

  I stared at him in bewilderment as he wiped the spray from his cheeks. Slowly I became aware of the madness that was growing around me. The Fourth Mate was taking his second turn to pulverise the teak rail of the bridge as he yelled in frustrated excitement, ‘What can I do to help for Chrissake ...? Oh, what the hell can I do to get back at the sods?’

  Our gun was traversing too, now. Veering round black and hungry as the fat little Bombardier crouched over the traverse handles with eyes glued to the sighting telescope. ‘On ...! On ...! ON ...!’ he was screaming while the ready-use ammo flashed in the sunlight as the soldiers worked feverishly behind the breech. A bony hand gripped my shoulder painfully and I was looking into Larabee’s eyes, gleaming with some inner emotion.

  ‘I’ll get a signal out now, Mate,’ he shouted, ‘before anyone can ...’

  And a tremendous explosion from across the water stopped the hysteria dead as we saw Athenian’s funnel sail slowly high into the air like an empty toilet roll, then plummet with terrible accuracy on to the figures round the gun on her poop. When the unrecognisable mass finally rolled over her stern to fall with a colossal gout of foam into the boiling water of her wake the men had gone, the gun had gone ... and our own fury had gone.

  Evans acted immediately and grabbed the megaphone from the rack, aiming it towards the poop. ‘Mister Shell ... you have not received orders to fire. You will clear the gun deck immediately, do you understand? Clear the gun area immediately!’

  He didn’t even wait to see if his orders were being obeyed, just turned back to me with that tired look on his face again and nodded sadly towards the still racing Athenian. ‘I’m sorry, John. I was wrong. It’s just ... Perhaps Bert out there sees his responsibilities in a different way to me.’

  Less than four cables between Athenian and the first submarine now. The end was very near. Suddenly I realised that Bert Samson had no intentions of running for it, he could never have hoped to manoeuvre round that deadly corner at the entrance at anything more than dead slow speed, controlled with the precision of a ballet dancer. Evans was right—no master was justified in throwing lives away so stupidly. Not unless ...?

  Three cables left and both U-boats firing rapidly by now. From where we watched the damage wasn’t easily apparent as we could only make out the after-end of her upper-works, but she was on fire forward somewhere, thick black smoke billowing aft over her bridge and super-structure and tumbling to the water to lie like some monstrous funeral shroud above the surface, hardly stirring with the complete absence of natural wind.

  I dragged the binoculars up to apprehensive eyes for a last look and saw the port wing of her bridge disintegrate into a spinning scatter of torn wood and steel plates, then another shell burst right in her foremasthead and the whole topmast keeled over to avalanche down on to her forward hatch covers. She wasn’t beautiful anymore, now. Just a hurtling, ravaged shape under the command of a little, stubborn, angry old man.

  ‘He's trying to ram,’ I muttered, almost to myself.

  Evans stood very still beside me and I could hear his heavy breathing even above the cacophony of gunfire. ‘You old bugger, Bert,’ he was whispering softly. ‘You’ll never make it. The bastards will slip out of your way before you can get there.’

  I shook my head. ‘They can’t turn all that far. Not with that shelf there, they can’t.’

  Almost on the lead boat now. Oh God! And I was right - the submerged shelf ran right along, almost parallel with the screening cliffs, leaving little room even for those slender cigar-shapes to take avoiding action. All the same, the Commander of the nearest sub must have had nerves of stressed steel as he conned his ship into the most advantageous position to meet the looming bulk of the crazily careering, burning British freighter. I watched as if hypnotized while the slim hull pointed almost straight at Athenian’s slicing bow, two vessels end to end, one carrying twelve hundred tons of high-explosive cargo, the other laden with some of the most devastating weapons in the world—torpedoes.

  Evans choked, ‘God, but he’ll never catch that boat - not while she stays on that heading. It’s too narrow a target, Mister. Bert’ll lose sight of her under the flare of the bow ...’

  I didn’t answer because the pain in my throat was too intense as I watched Athenian slowly breaking up into flaming, anonymous splinters. Maybe Bill was already dead, or crying with terror in some corner of the deck. Then I thought back to that old Petty Officer as he worked steadily over the depth-charges on the sinking Mallard’s after-part and I knew that, whatever else he was doing, Bill wasn’t hiding. He was of the same mould as Bert Samson and Evans and Charlie Shell back there.

  Then Athenian was right above the U-boat and we could see the gunnery ratings flinging themselves flat along her black, glistening casing, gripping desperately to the nearest handhold as they waited for the end while, high in her conning tower, a peaked white cap was inverted to judge the exact moment to act, to manoeuvre for salvation. Just waiting coolly for the critical few seconds when his ship would be hidden from Athenian’s bridge. My God, but that U-boat commander must have been one hell of a man.

  Then the moment came and the white cap bobbed sharply. A splurge of white behind the pointed stern and the submarine nosed slightly to port, then a quick helm correction to bring her exactly in line with Athenian’s axis again and her bow was rising swiftly, relentlessly, on the swollen belly of water surging ahead of the merchantman. Up, up, up rose the black cigar with men glued fly-like to her decks, then slipping farther to port, away from Athenian’s seeking stem ... and the huge, grey hull was slashing past with the white cap still staring unflinch
ingly up at the looming, torn bridge.

  Someone behind me drew a shuddering, sobbing breath while the eyepiece of my binoculars grew suddenly opaque as a trickle of sweat ran into it from my brow. By the time I’d fumbled to wipe it off, Evans was saying in a shocked voice. ‘They’re clear, John. They’re clear of Bert. The poor old devil’s missed.’

  But the most macabre incident of all occurred as I brought the glasses back to my eyes. While Athenian’s bridge was still sliding past the enemy submarine a diminutive figure appeared, leaning out over the still intact starboard wing. I saw Bert Samson—it could only have been Bert—either shake, or wave, a fist at the figure in the conning tower sixty feet below him, and then—with his own ratings still pinned to the deck in the attitudes of crucifixion—that calculating, white-capped man coolly raised an answering arm in a mockery of the Hitler salute. Then Athenian was past and the U-boat was left shaking herself viciously in the boiling water of her frustrated adversary’s wake.

  Still afloat.

  And still as lethal as ever.

  *

  As if to prove it her gunners scrambled to their feet and, almost before the stern of Athenian was clear, the foredeck gun slammed again and another column of dirty water rose, obscenely weed-flecked, from a point less than a cable’s length from our own bow while, at the same time, the one-pounder on the low platform at the rear of the German’s conning tower opened up with a monotonous pom-pom of fire. We could make out ripples of flame sparkling as the light shells burst haphazardly among the lifeboats and ventilators on the after end of Athenian’s centrecastle. Those U-boat men were as tough and methodical as automatons, and no more merciful.

  Evans muttered, ‘They're signalling again, damn their eyes.’

  The lamp blipped from the U-boat’s tower as casually as though Athenian, still less than two cables past her, had been of no more consequence than a railway train running through a suburban station. YOU PRESENT A CONVENIENT PROFILE FOR TORPEDOES CYCLOPS ... TAKE MY SHOT AS A WARNING ... ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR SURRENDER BY VISUAL MEANS ONLY ... IMMEDIATE.

  We blinked at each other in utter defeat while, all the time, the rumbling thunder of the disintegrating but still driving Athenian continued to drift across the green and blue water. Only God knew how many men were already dead aboard her ... Please make it stop now. And Bert? Was he torn to bloody tatters on his sacrosanct bridge, conscious only of failure in his last subborn moments of life? And Bill, my friend of so many years of roaming the seas - was he with big Eric yet ...? When, come to that, was that proud, once beautiful ship going to die herself? Fanned into howling fury by the wind of her last passage, those fires must be eating well down into her innards now, clawing for the tons of explosive in her belly ... When would she go ...?

  Evans called sickly, ‘Mister Brannigan - Acknowledge!’

  No one spoke as Brannigan slowly lifted the Aldis. He didn’t depress the trigger for a moment, just turned and looked appealingly at Evans—then the U-boat spat again and a second gout of water climbed in the air so close under our bow that tons of yellow putrescence smashed down on our foc’slehead to cascade back through the scuppers with a malevolent hiss into the iridescent sea below. Everyone ducked nervously except the Old Man. He just stood there gazing at his contemporary’s funeral pyre with a look of terrible weariness and grated harshly, ‘I said ACKNOWLEDGE, Mister Brannigan! Or do you want to kill more men just as bloody pointlessly?’

  The Aldis clacked sharply and I saw the white cap on the U-boat nod, then the boat surged forward towards us leaving a trail of bubbles astern while the big foredeck gun traversed on an unwavering line dead centre with our bridge. She was about half a mile from us when Evans suddenly grabbed the rail and pointed out past her to the now distant Athenian.

  ‘Look, Mister! She’s got the other Hun right under her bow ...!’

  Then everything was sick, hysterical excitement on the bridge again as we forgot about the closing menace to ourselves and watched the last act in the mammoth tragedy. Even through binoculars it was difficult to see for the pall of oily, dead smoke blanketing the far end of the anchorage, but I could just make out the blazing bulk of our sister as she fast approached the entrance through which we had so carefully manoeuvred. Then someone hit me on the shoulder and screamed in my ear, ‘The OTHER U-boat ...! Jesus, but she’s broadside on in the channel. Bert’s goin’ to stamp right over her ...’

  I peered desperately through the smoke. Yes - there she was ... the second submarine! They’d been waiting to cover the entrance as Athenian began her suicidal rush but then, when they saw the great ship running amok, the German commander had tried to turn his boat too late and too hurriedly. Now she was stuck fast with her bows dug into that underwater shelf and her whole length exposed to the approaching knife of Athenian’s cutwater, after nearly two miles of a run working up to maybe fifteen knots and still relentlessly increasing as her engineers remained grimly below, responsive only to the telegraphed commands that would never come from what must have been a blind skeleton of a bridge.

  Evans was sobbing as he gripped his Barr and Strouds so that the knuckles stood out bleached white against the brown skin of his hands. So was I; so was Brannigan. Maybe even Larabee was at that moment because he'd fallen strangely quiet after his earlier shout.

  Then the Old Man whispered, ‘I’ll give Sheila your love, Bert. You bloody-minded, mad old bugger!’

  ... and Athenian was climbing up and up, over the black hull below, driving on into the slender conning tower and forcing the whole length of the U-boat ahead of her like a mad dog with a bone in its teeth, unable to stop running to inevitable death.

  I saw the cigar hull rolling over and over as it was hurled beam on through the water by Athenian’s weight while the two ships, locked inextricably together now in a Herculean embrace, drove monstrously towards the beach at the far end of the inland sea. That beach all beautiful and golden, which I’d noticed as we first entered.

  Someone was screaming a flood of epithets from our after decks but I couldn’t take my eyes from the two convulsing ships as Athenian, driving under full power, finally pulverised her enemy into the shallows and kept on going up and over and on to the sparkling sand: blazing from end to end ... driving and tearing with the unholy shriek of tortured metal filling the whole island lake as she ripped the bottom right out of herself. Her mast toppled forward into the conflagration yet even then she kept on rearing unbelievably out of the blood-red water until we glimpsed the flashing, spinning discs of her great phosphor-bronze propellers carving twin canyons deep into the once pretty beach.

  Even the cold white cap in the remaining U-boat’s conning tower was turned to watch in fascinated horror as the deformity that had been our sister ship came finally to rest. The sounds of her breaking died away to a muted roar from the white-hot flames eating lower and lower into her holds while the black smoke stopped streaming aft and, instead, rose vertically sullen into the clear blue of the evening sky.

  And I knew for sure that Bill was dead, like Eric, and Bert Samson and all the rest of Athenian’s crowd. All fast cremating in a twelve-thousand ton oven.

  ... and that was the moment when she blew up.

  *

  The first explosion, forward of what had been her bridge structure, threw debris and giant pieces of ship high into the air; then a chain reaction followed as, hold by hold, Athenian disintegrated into a million flying, whirling fragments while detonation after detonation fused into one long, ear-smashing roar.

  I watched with curiously detached, almost clinical interest, as the whole of the midships centrecastle rose slowly two hundred feet into the air and fell back into the holocaust, breaking into great slabs of twisted steel. The surface of the lake rose in boiling splurges of foam for a mile towards us as hissing fragments ripped into it like semi-molten meteors.

  And then the blast.

  Cyclops heeled twenty degrees to port as the first shock waves hit us, fanning out across the anchor
age with supersonic speed. I felt her snub at the anchor cable before the invisible pressure, then we were swinging crazily with something booming against our exposed sides time and time again and the blast catching every unwary man to hurl him backwards, away from the rails, with contemptuous arrogance. High above the wheelhouse I glimpsed the teak-wood sides of the monkey island buckle, then whirl away to port, carrying Charlie Shell’s little white-painted submarine with them. Then I was lying flat on my back on the deck watching stupidly as our once irrepressible Fourth Mate took off over the prostrate forms of the Captain and Larabee and, screaming horribly, crashed head first through the plate-glass windows of the wheelhouse in a glittering cascade of razor-edged shards, still attached to the umbilical cord of the Aldis lead.

  I lay there whimpering hysterically and trying to dig with broken finger nails into the wooden decking, feeling the ship straining in agony against her cable while the continuing rumblings from the eviscerated Athenian kept on beating and beating at us with brain numbing force, until—suddenly—it was over.