by Alan Evans
Smith stooped over the voice pipe. “Gunner!”
“Sir!” The torpedo-gunner’s voice came from his position aft on the torpedo platform.
“We’ll engage to port.”
“Port! Aye, aye, sir!”
The look-outs on the German destroyers would have their eyes screwed against the rain and maybe, just maybe, shirking the job. But still they must see the whiff of flame from each of Sparrow’s three funnels. Smith stared briefly out to port and astern. Curtis and his CMB should be out there somewhere keeping station on Sparrow and he thought he saw the white flash of a bow-wave but could not be sure. Looking ahead he could see the lights on the shore now and Sparrow’s bow pointed at the southern end of them. He knew there were two destroyers anchored there and he believed a line of them stretched north, parallel with the lights and with a cable’s length between ships it could be a line a thousand yards long.
And then the lightning struck down at the sea. It stood a jagged, blue-white blaze for a second and it showed them in that camera-shutter glimpse the destroyers ahead, anchored in a long line across Sparrow’s course and stretching away — five, six of them! Then the lightning was gone and the night came down as the thunder cracked again and close now.
Six. But he had guessed right: a line of a thousand yards.
Sparrow charged down on them out of the night, making better than twenty knots and in the stokehold they were still furiously stoking the fires. The flames now licked long tongues from the tops of her funnels. A winking light pricked the darkness and that was a German challenge. For once, right on their own coast and under their own batteries they were uncertain whether another ship was friend or foe. Smith shouted up at the rating on the searchlight platform, “Now!” And at Sanders: “All guns commence!”
“All guns commence!” Sanders’s piercing yell came as the searchlight stabbed its beam across the night to dart about the surface of the sea then settle, glaring, on the second destroyer in the line. Smith could see the one ahead of her and the other astern as shadows outside the searchlight’s beam. The twelvepounder right alongside Smith on the bridge kicked, spat flame and roared. The smoke whipped past him and the killick’s yell came, “Load!” as the empty case bounced across the deck. The two six-pounders below the bridge, one on either side, opened up together, snapping quickly away, a sharper note to the slower slamming of the twelve-pounder. Sanders crouched over the torpedo-sight by the voice pipe running aft to the torpedo-gunner and he would be aiming at the third or fourth in the line. As they tore down on the line so the silhouettes of the ships foreshortened in the torpedo-sight but so would the gaps between them. A miss would be nearly impossible.
Sparrow was on a course to ram the leading destroyer that was racing up at them out of the night, but Smith held on until Sanders shouted, “Fire!” He saw the torpedo leap out from Sparrow’s side and plunge into the sea.
Then he ordered, shouting at Gow’s ear, “Port ten!” And: “Slow ahead!” He saw the wheel going over in Gow’s long fingers and the engine-room telegraphs worked but did not hear their clanging. Every gun in the ship except the six-pounder right aft was firing now and Sparrow was scoring hits on both the leading destroyer and the second in line that was still in the searchlight’s beam. The enemy destroyers were firing back, a ripple of flashes running down that long line of shadowy ships but they hadn’t had time to get the range and Sparrow was a flying figure half-hidden in the dark. Smith did not see a shell fall near them but that would not last. The destroyers would get their chance. He bawled at the rating above him: “Douse that light!” The beam was cut off, the carbons in the lamp glowed briefly and died. The searchlight was a finger that pointed both ways, would point out Sparrow to the enemy destroyers.
Sparrow’s head was coming around and he ordered, “Meet her! Steady! Steer that!”
Sparrow raced into the gap between the first and second destroyers though the way was coming off her rapidly now with the screws turning slow ahead. That was what Smith wanted. Speed, what Sparrow had of it, had served its turn. Now it was manoeuvrability and steadiness that was needed and as the thirtyknotter shot between the two big boats he ordered, “Port ten!” Sparrow’s head came around again. As she swung to point her stem to run down inshore of the destroyers’ line her way took her on, sliding sideways. The first of the tugs was suddenly close and from Sparrow’s bridge they were looking down on her deck and seeing the faces in her wheelhouse as the lightning struck down again. “Meet her! Steady on that!” Sparrow thrust away from the tug and left her astern. The turtle-back bow was riding steady now and the stem sent no spray flying. Sparrow was down below ten knots and her speed still falling.
Sanders stared miserably at Smith. “Torpedo must have missed, sir. Sorry.”
Smith shrugged. “You’ll get another chance.” Maybe. But it was cruel luck to miss that almost unbroken line of ships. Maybe the torpedo veered away or dived too deep or just didn’t damn well work. It happened.
And where was Curtis?
* * *
Curtis had been ordered to attack the centre of the line as Sparrow broke through at the head of it. He had held the CMB to port of Sparrow and astern of her until the searchlight’s beam stabbed out from her bridge. Then he thrust the throttle wide open and turned to shout at Johnson, “Attacking!” He saw young Midshipman Johnson nod where he crouched over the torpedoes then Curtis turned forward. The CMB had been cruising at twenty knots but now she had her stern tucked down and her bow was lifting. He saw Sparrow fire her torpedo and start to turn. Then the CMB slid up level with the old thirty-knotter seen as a shadow at the thin end of a searchlight beam, a shadow sprouting flame from her funnels — and from her guns. She trailed smoke from both. The CMB was abreast of her an instant then racing on. Rain battered against the screen and Curtis squinted against it, head half-turned as the CMB tore in at thirty knots and still accelerating.
He first saw them as shadows like clouds but a split second later they took shape as ships that lifted huge and clear out of the darkness, ships that were firing every gun they had and one or two of them at the CMB because Curtis saw the spouts of water as shells landed in the sea. He wanted one ship. He picked the one and eased the wheel over so that the stem, out of the sea and bouncing now as the CMB ripped across that calm sea, pointed at the bridge of the destroyer fourth in the line.
Steady.
Tracer like bright beads sliding at him out of the night, going over his head…
Steady…Now!
“Fire!”
He was ready to turn the wheel as soon as the torpedo took the water, to swing the CMB out of the torpedo’s track. He was ready for the kick of the hydraulic ram and to feel the plunge and lift as the torpedo was fired stern first out of the chute.
Johnson bawled, “Firing gear jammed!”
“Secure!” Curtis turned the wheel and the CMB swung away from the destroyer in a tight, wheeling curve and raced into the night. He eased the throttle back so the boat cruised again at around twenty knots and looked around to see Johnson and the torpedoman crouched over the firing gear. Curtis shouted, “What about it?” And: “You’ve got ten seconds!”
The torpedoman gave a wash-out sign with his hands. “No go, sir!”
“We’ll try the other tube!” Curtis turned his head, turned the boat and opened the throttle. Smith had been relying on him for a diversion. Jammed firing gear. Bloody luck!
* * *
Sparrow hauled away from the tug and Smith used the megaphone to bawl down the deck on the starboard, shoreward side: “Lighters first! Pass the word!” He saw McGraw, layer of the six-pounder in the waist lift a hand in acknowledgment then turn his head to bawl aft. There was no need to give any orders to the guns on the port side. The destroyers loomed close, a bare hundred yards away and asking to be hit.
As Sparrow hauled away from that first tug the shore opened up and Smith shouted up at the searchlight platform: “Expose!” He pointed. The searchlight crack
led into life as the carbons struck arc and the beam leapt out to sweep the shore. A second later it was joined by the searchlight aft and the two white fingers lit up the box-like lighters in the surf, showing the gun barrels protruding, the heads of the men already aboard, the troops still filing down the beach. The range was about eight hundred yards. Sparrow was only moving at seven or eight knots and she rode rock-steady now in that flat calm. She pushed down between the two lines, of anchored destroyers to seaward and anchored tugs inshore with the lighters eight hundred yards beyond the tugs. The lines were a couple of hundred yards apart and she ran down between them firing every gun including the Vickers machineguns. And the destroyers, because their own tugs were so close, held their fire.
McGraw shouted, “It’s like shooting clay-pipes in a bluidy fairground!”
The six-pounder was firing as fast as his loader could ram the projectile and close the breech. Sparrow fired at point-blank range into the helpless destroyers with the flash of discharge and then of burst seeming to come as one. The storm was right over them now. Over the hammering of the guns was the continual crack! and rumble of thunder, lightning stabbed again and again at the sea that hissed under the rain. Smith could see wreckage leaping skywards, holes suddenly punched in hulls, smoke swirling on the wind and flame that spurted, subsided, but grew again to breed more smoke. Sparrow scored hits on the destroyers but she utterly destroyed the lighters as she steamed down between the lines. The destroyers were built to fight, to take punishment, but the lighters were timber and built for one short sea passage in quiet waters. Even the little shells from the six-pounders smashed holes in them, tore through from bow to stern and set the timber smouldering. In seconds one of the petrol engines ignited and that lighter burned and they lay within arms-reach of one another. As Sparrow moved down the line, raking the lighters, Smith saw the troops in those ahead scrambling over the side and running up the beach. An officer with drawn sword stood on the beach trying to hold them but they ran clear of the line of fire that was reducing the fleet of lighters to matchwood. And like matchwood it was burning.
McGraw said, “Jesus! Did ye iver see the like o’ that?”
He laid the gun, blinked as a tug showed between Sparrow and the shore. The loader shouted, “Skipper said the boats!”
McGraw muttered, “Take her and the boats,” jerked the lanyard and bawled, “Load!” The shell tore through the tug’s funnel.
“Ready!”
McGraw’s eye went to the sight as the shore and the lighters showed again under the sweeping beams of the searchlights. The six-pounder jerked and recoiled.
Sparrow steamed down to the end of the line and as she reached it they saw the last tug trying to weigh anchor with the capstan hammering. The twelve-pounder fired into her on the water-line and below the funnel and she blew off steam. “Port ten! Douse the lights!” The searchlights’ beams snapped off. Smith’s voice was hoarse. “Mr. Sanders! I’m going back down the line! You’ll get a chance with the other tube! Engage to starboard!”
“Starboard! Aye, aye, sir.” Sanders bent to the voice pipe to tell the torpedo-gunner. “We’ll engage to starboard!”
Smith ordered, “Midships!…Starboard ten!” Sparrow had swung around past the stern of the last destroyer in the line and he saw that she had slipped and was moving, going astern to get clear of the line but her head swinging seawards. He shouted at Sanders and pointed and Sanders waved. The starboard helm brought Sparrow’s head turning towards the shore again so she was describing a tight circle. Sanders crouched over the torpedo sight. The destroyer that had way on her was over Sparrow’s starboard quarter…now coming abeam as Sparrow came around…
Sanders croaked, “Fire!” He sounded as hoarse as Smith felt.
The torpedo, Sparrow’s second and last plunged over the side into the sea and its track ran away into the night. The German boat was boxing the compass as she tried to turn on her heel and haul out of the line. Smith saw her steady then and ease forward, heading seaward and he thought: We’ll miss her! And: She won’t miss us. The destroyer was firing and there was a crash aft and they felt the jar of it through the deck and the blast that pushed at them. Splinters clanged off the funnel and whirred across the bridge.
Sanders reported, “Think it was the tubes, sir.” And a moment later: “Gunner doesn’t answer.” Another crash aft and Smith winced. That destroyer was firing her four-inch guns and Sparrow could not stand much of that. He saw Buckley still at the back of the bridge below the searchlight platform and beckoned him. As Sparrow’s stem pointed again at the gap between the lines of anchored destroyers and tugs he ordered, “Meet her…”
To Buckley: “Report the damage aft!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Smith told Gow, “Steer that!” But Gow knew already, was holding Sparrow on the line to take her back between tugs and destroyers, a line as if ruled in chalk on a board.
Sanders was squinting at his watch and now looked at Smith. “Missed again, sir.”
“Not surprised, the way she was shifting about to haul out of the line.”
The voice pipe from the torpedo-platform whistled and Smith bent to it. “Bridge!”
Buckley’s voice came up the pipe. “Gunner’s hurt bad, sir. They’re taking him below, an’ the crew of the six-pounder right aft, but the gun’s all right. I’ve got a feller here to load for me an’ I’ll work it with your permission, sir.”
“Carry on!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Smith straightened then ducked instinctively as another fourinch shell from the destroyer ripped over the masthead. He could see her, just, and she was turning her head from the sea so as to fire broadside at her target. The gap between the lines of destroyers and tugs offered some sort of brief sanctuary again but Sparrow had yet to reach it. Lightning played far down the line and showed others of the destroyers moving, one of the tugs swinging inshore from her bow anchor.
Still no sign of Curtis. He wondered if the CMB had taken an unlucky hit right at the start. One of those four-inch shells would blow the fragile little craft apart.
The CMB was up on the step and tearing in again towards the coast and the ships. Curtis prayed that the second torpedo would not jam. For a second he had Sparrow’s searchlights as a mark then they went out but now he could see the destroyers against the light of the fires that burned along the shore and he knew what the fires were. He saw he was heading for the tail of the line but held his course. There was a ship, a destroyer there, last of the line and she was hauling out of it, her silhouette foreshortening as her bow pointed towards him. All this seen over the bucking bow of the CMB through the spray that came back in two long, white wings as if she was nearly flying.
Curtis shouted again, “Attacking!”
The destroyer was still turning, presenting her side to him and as he looked past her bow, to port that is, he could make out another ship beyond her. Sparrow? Both of them flickered with muzzle-flashes, both of them firing hard. Sparrow seemed to be only creeping — was she disabled? He swore softly. But the German boat was leaping up at them and broadside now. He saw no water spouts but heard the rip of the shells overhead and knew they were firing over, the speed of the CMB cheating the layers. Then the lightning came again and a clap of thunder like the last trump that even drowned the roar of the engines. In that split-second, blue-white blaze he saw the destroyer and she was big ahead of him.
Close!
Nearly…
Now! “Fire!” And this time he felt the kick at the stern and his heart leapt with it. He turned to port to swing out of the torpedo’s track and away from the destroyer and the CMB hurtled out into the dark with the guns still vainly following her, shells falling now in her wake.
* * *
Smith saw the CMB in that frozen instant of light that showed the big destroyer and the now ragged line of the rest of them, the tugs, the burning lighters with the flames momentarily made pale, the tiny scurrying figures on the shore. He s
aw the CMB without Sanders’s high-pitched yell and out-thrust, pointing finger. She was racing in with her stem high and the rest of her almost hidden by the curtain of spray that glittered in the light. Then the night clamped down around them once more and their night vision was lost, though the burning lighters were still clear. Firing briefly ceased as the layers rubbed at their eyes and blinked away the wheeling stars.
The flame seemed hardly more than a muzzle-flash but it showed the climbing spout of water on the far side of the destroyer at the tail of the line and showed her lurch, then the thump of the explosion came shuddering across the sea and Lorimer shouted, “Got him! Oh, bloody good, Curtis!”
The explosion was followed an instant later by another. This time the flame could not be taken for a muzzle-flash. It soared out of the waist of the ship as if it would never cease climbing and with it went whirling debris and after it poured the smoke. This time Lorimer did not shout but gaped silently as the flame dwindled, the smoke spread and the destroyer rolled over on her side and showed her bottom.
A flash from the torpedo’s explosion igniting a magazine? Smith thought so. But the certainty was that she would sink in seconds.
He turned away. “Full ahead both!”
The rain became a deluge. They were back between the lines, running through that narrow neck of water and now some of the destroyers’ guns, tormented beyond bearing by this wisp of a ship that had fired on them with impunity, fired in return. They took the chance of hitting a tug, of firing on their own ships, and some of them did. But some of them hit Sparrow. This time Buckley pumped shell after shell at what remained of the lighters and into the tugs. McGraw found he had a different kettle of fish. His targets, the destroyers, loomed big as houses but these were firing back. He still fired the little six-pounder as fast as his sweating, swearing loader could feed it.
For long, mad minutes they were between the lines but then they came up on the last destroyer and she had slipped and was moving ahead. Smith shouted, “Starboard ten!” Sparrow swung to slide past the big boat’s stern and the open sea lay before her. Out of the night burst the CMB with both of her Vickers machine-guns manned and hammering away at the destroyers’ decks and bridges as she tore past them. She spun away from the line, the machine-guns fell silent and that tight turn brought her sweeping close to Sparrow before racing out into the darkness again.