by Alan Evans
‘Stop at nothing!’ Curtis understood all right. Smith watched him go, bitterly sorry and angry, and swore. He snapped, “Cast off…”
As Sparrow eased away from Marshall Marmont he saw Garrick climbing up to his open bridge. Yelled comments were tossed across the widening gap between the ships. The monitor looked fat and ugly where she now lay anchored fore and aft with her stern towards the invisible shore, her guns pointing seaward. Sparrow turned away from her as Smith ordered, “Starboard ten!…Meet her. Steer nor-west by west.”
“Nor-west by west, sir.”
“Revolutions for twenty knots.”
She turned away from Marshall Marmont and from the tug Lively Lady that was puffing north-eastwards towards neutral Dutch waters. The old thirty-knotter headed out to sea with the revolutions of her engines gradually increasing. The brownish vapour at the tops of her three funnels thickened into plumes of smoke she trailed behind her as her stern sank lower in the sea and the turtle-back curve of her bow lifted.
Smith said to Sanders, “Pass the word: I expect we’ll be in action within the hour.” That would only be confirmation. The rumour must have flown long ago.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The clock that Eleanor Hurst had set ticking when she translated ‘spring tide’ had not yet stopped. But soon it would.
For a time the CMB kept company abeam; for her twenty knots was just cruising. Then after ten or fifteen minutes she eased and slowed, stopped. The day was close on them now, the light growing. Smith watched her and lifted a hand as she fell astern of Sparrow and saw a hand lifted above her cockpit, waving. He turned away. When he looked again she was well astern and he had to search to find her. Without her bow wave and wash to mark her she was a slender splinter on the surface of the sea.
Sparrow ran on. Sanders had returned to the bridge and like Smith was using glasses to search the horizon to the south-west but that horizon was still a false one and close, limited by the light. The true horizon lay far beyond.
But still they searched as Sparrow ran out to sea and slowly the day came and the visibility lengthened until it was close to sunrise. Now the horizon was real enough but the heat and the storm had left a mist as the world steamed so a haze lay along that horizon. Then the tip of the sun showed and the first rays set the quiet sea to sparkling. And Sanders said, “Smoke on the beam, sir!”
“Seen,” Smith answered. He could just make out the stain of it above the haze and lowered the glasses to rest his eyes, rubbed at them. They were sore. He wished he had ordered Brodie to brew more tea; his mouth was dry. He said, “Port five.” Sparrow turned until her bow pointed at the distant smoke. “Meet her…steer that.”
Gow reported, “Steady — two-one-five, sir.”
Smith said quietly, “Just keep her head on that smoke.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
No one was sleeping now. The men stood to the guns. They were quiet, waiting, blinking tired eyes.
The clock was running down now and these last minutes passed with awful slowness. The smoke spread on the horizon. More than one ship. Of course. He swept the glasses around a quarter circle to seek Marshall Marmont but did not find her. Over half-an-hour’s steaming seaward had taken Sparrow twelve miles to the north-westward of her and she was hull-down over the horizon. Her control-top would be showing above that horizon but he could not see it because of the haze and the distance, it was just too small. The sun hurt his eyes.
They formed the three points of a triangle: the monitor inshore, Sparrow twelve miles to seaward and the battlecruiser steaming up to pass between them. She would be about ten or twelve miles from Sparrow and further from Marshall Marmont but still in range…
Sanders yelled, “Marshall Marmont’s just fired, sir!”
Smith answered again, “Seen.” He had also caught the wink of flame, the barest wisp of smoke. They would never bear the report above Sparrow’s engines nor see the burst over the horizon. He lowered the glasses. But whether those hells hit or fell short or over they would come as a nasty shock to the battlecruiser. She was under fire from the big guns of a ship she could not see; Marshall Marmont was making no smoke except from her guns and Smith and Sanders had seen that only because they were looking for it. And Marshall Marmont was still out of range of the battlecruiser’s twelve-inch guns.
Aboard the monitor Garrick would be sending the signal, “Am engaging enemy battlecruiser.” Giving her position, course and speed. Pakenham’s battlecruisers would be leaving the Firth of Forth, the Harwich force putting to sea and the destroyers of the Dover Patrol and the Dunkerque Squadron in hot pursuit of the battlecruiser. They would all be too late.
He ordered, “Full ahead both.” And: “Signalman! Get on the searchlight and start signalling westward as soon as I give the word. Anything you like as long as that battlecruiser can see it when she comes up.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” The signalman swung himself up on to the searchlight platform at the back of the bridge and trained the searchlight around to starboard.
Smith called up to him. “But keep a sharp look-out as well! If you see any ship I want to know!” There was always the chance of a miracle, that a British force was already at sea and closing them.
He told Gow, “Keep her head on that smoke now.”
Gow answered patiently, “Aye, aye, sir.”
Smith shut his mouth. That had been an unnecessary order.
From twenty knots Sparrow was steadily working up to her full speed of twenty-six. She trembled and racketed along with the pounding thrust of her engines. The bridge vibrated under their feet and the kettle that had held the tea for the twelve pounder’s crew danced across the gun-platform until the killick grabbed it, swearing, and jammed it in a corner of the screen. Smith looked back at the smoke pouring from the three funnels, then up at the ensigns that streamed spread flat on the wind with now and again a crack! like a pistol shot. There were two of them because early in the war the white ensign had been mistaken for the German so ships were ordered to hoist two to avoid a mistake but there could be no mistake today. Sparrow flew two because they were all she had. Smith would have flown a dozen if Sparrow had them.
He faced forward. Now they were counting the time in flying seconds. The sun was sucking up the haze and the ships came on out of it, for an instant only vague phantoms, but then clear and hard. There were two destroyers a mile apart leading the force then one by one the others came up, still hull-down over the horizon but their upperworks clear enough. Two more destroyers. And two more still just smoke and masts. And in the centre of the group of six destroyers that was her escort, the tripod mast of a battlecruiser…
In his mind he flicked through the pages of the silhouette book, comparing the remembered shapes with the dancing image in the lenses of the glasses until he found a match.
Sanders ventured, “I think, sir, she might be Siegfried.”
She might be any one of four German battlecruisers, seen at that distance and coming out of the haze, but — “That’s right.” Smith was certain. Eight twelve-inch guns and twelve 5.9-inch. Twenty-seven or — eight knots and twenty-seven thousand tons with a belt of armour a foot thick and more than a thousand men aboard.
Sanders said with reluctant admiration, “Got to admit it, sir, she’s a beauty.”
She was. Steaming at full speed, big, swift and powerful, yet graceful. Smith let the glasses hang on his chest and peered about him at the battered Sparrow. Less than four hundred tons, one twelve-pounder gun and fifty-odd dog-tired men. He lifted the glasses again and so saw the water-spouts rise out of the sea and to seaward of the battlecruiser.
Sanders yelled, “Marshall Marmont’s ranging on her!”
The shells had fallen four or five hundred yards over but that would be little consolation to Siegfried’s commander. Her guns were trained around to meet the distant threat but they did not fire. She was out of range. He would know the firing came from inshore because the salvo had roared over his head an
d maybe some eagle-eyed look-out in the control-top had picked up the tell-tale spurt of smoke and flame of the monitor’s firing, but he would be hard put to it, straining his eyes against that low sun. And Marshall Marmont was trailing no banner of smoke to lead the eye on.
But now Smith lowered the glasses fractionally, seeking and finding the leading destroyers. They were scouting a good mile or more ahead of Siegfried, the one to port turning towards the shore, a signal flying, obviously being sent to investigate the ship that was firing. He saw the one to starboard turning until she was head-on and pointing at Sparrow. He could guess her orders. He saw the smoke and flame from the four-inch on her foredeck and ordered, “Port five!”
“Port five, sir.”
“Midships!”
He shouted up at the signalman on the searchlight platform: “Now!” The light on its mounting was only feet from his head but he could barely hear the clacking of its shutter above the engines’ din and the roaring fans. He saw it blinking rapidly, longs and shorts and wondered briefly what obscenities or prayers the signalman was flashing at an unresponsive horizon.
He faced forward to see the shell fall to starboard and ordered, “Starboard five!…Midships!”
He saw the intercepting destroyer charging out at them and beyond her, Siegfried. Who must be able to see Sparrow signalling frantically to the west, wondering whether she was bluffing or was there really a supporting fleet out there that Sparrow could see but was beyond Siegfried’s horizon? And the little destroyer was attacking. Would she attack without a supporting fleet?
The bluff seemed to be working. Siegfried and the rest of her escort maintained their course, preferring the devil they knew to the devil they did not, arid not trying to haul out to seaward to get away from the big gun threat. That threat was emphasised as another salvo from Marshall Marmont plunged into the sea, short of Siegfried by three or four hundred yards. Still she did not fire, but soon she would be in range and Marshall Marmont and Garrick would feel the weight of those twelve-inch guns. They knew what they had to do. They would carry out his orders and he would answer for it. If he answered for anything.
All of it thought in a second.
That was Marshall Marmont’s fight.
This was Sparrow’s.
He took one final glance around from the twelve-pounder and its clustering crew, along the dented iron deck where Lorimer was shrieking orders at the crews of the six-pounders, right aft to the six-pounder on the juddering stern that bounced on a cushion of foam spreading into the boiling wake astern. He saw Buckley by that six-pounder, standing easily, patient. And McGraw on the other six-pounder aft on the starboard side. Then he turned to face the first of his enemies.
The German destroyer was a big boat and closing them at a combined speed of sixty knots because she was capable of thirtyfive and making it with a big white bow-wave. She carried fourinch guns with a range of ten thousand yards or more but headon like this she could only use the one in her bow that jetted flame now.
“Port five!”
“Port five, sir!”
“Meet her…steady!”
Sparrow swerved, deck heeling, all of them holding on, then steadied on the new course with the enemy boat fine on the starboard bow.
“All guns commence!”
The twelve-pounder slammed, shaking the already shuddering bridge and the starboard six-pounder barked right under the bridge. Smoke swirled and the cartridge case bounced on the deck as the breech was opened. A shell came down off the starboard bow and Smith turned Sparrow to starboard towards it. So Sparrow weaved erratically along the main course that still pointed her at the battlecruiser and the closing destroyer, that fired and fired again as the range closed and she came up bigger and bigger. Her firing was regular and rapid and accurate, only Sparrow’s jinking taking her clear as shell after shell plunged into the sea, sometimes close and sometimes near-misses and once a near-miss that burst right by the bridge and swept them with spray on top of the spray that Sparrow made as she charged down on the Squadron. Sparrow scored a hit on the destroyer’s bow and took one aft on an already mangled torpedo-tube.
The hit shook her. Smith heard yelling aft and one voice, high pitched, that was Lorimer’s and knew that the boy was leading a fire-fighting and damage control party. Lorimer sent a man running to report, “Knocked the tube about a bit more, but that’s all, sir.”
“Very good.”
But one bit was too many. “Starboard ten!…Midships!”
Sparrow swung away from her head-on charge at the German boat and turned broadside to her. Now the six-pounders cracked away and the German boat eased to starboard in her turn and all her guns fired at virtually point-blank range. Through the din Smith yelled, “Look out for torpedoes!” Because they would come. And they did. He saw them, two of them, leap from the side of the big destroyer and plunge into the sea. Seconds later he saw their tracks as Sanders shouted and pointed, as the guns slammed and recoiled and Sparrow was hit and hit again, hammer blows punching into her, punishment she could not take.
“Port ten!…Meet her!”
Gow had been waiting for it. Sparrow swerved and heeled again to turn inside of those twin tracks, to tear down past the torpedoes that raced away down her starboard side, and tore on, firing and being hit — and passing astern of the German boat.
A slamming, clanging explosion aft and Smith whirled to see the aftermost of the three funnels cut in half, the top half blasted away and going over the side, dragging Sparrow over, so for a second she steamed with the sea reaching up for her deck. Then she recovered. He stared forward, ordered, “Starboard five! Midships! Steer that!” Shouting it almost in Gow’s ear against the bedlam of pounding engines, bellowed orders and the crack! and slam! of the guns. Gow’s long face was twisted tight with concentration and his eyes were slitted as he glared ahead at Siegfried, Sparrow now steaming on a course to intercept her.
Smith shot a swift glance astern and glimpsed through Sparrow’s rolling smoke Buckley loading the six-pounder himself, his loader sprawled on the deck. And beyond was the enemy destroyer, heeled over in a tight turn, turning to chase Sparrow. All that smoke was not from the funnels, there was a fire aft, he saw Lorimer and two men dragging a hose. He faced forward. That destroyer had been intended to beat off Sparrow or destroy her and the little ship had been mauled but not stopped. Siegfried was only three or four miles away, signals flying from her yard and a light winking rapidly. But the other two destroyers to port of the battlecruiser had closed up, overhauled her and were now obeying those desperate signals, their shapes fore-shortening till they were bows-on and pointing at Sparrow.
They were firing and he staggered as Sparrow was hit again and the air around him was alive with droning, snarling splinters, something plucked at his arm and he saw the sleeve was ripped. Gow was on his knees, clawing back to his feet and standing on one leg, the foot of the other just balancing him. Sparrow wavered, then steadied as the cox’n’s big hands clamped on the wheel. His cap had gone and the grizzled hair had a monk’s bald patch that was streaked with blood. There were four men sprawled on the bridge, the signalman was one of them and the engine-room telegraphs were unmanned but the twelve-pounder still fired at the two destroyers as they came on. They roared down on Sparrow with deadly purpose. She could not be allowed within torpedo range of Siegfried so they came on with big white bow-waves and their forward four-inch guns firing rapidly and they were going to sink Sparrow. They were not going to fight her, engage her with guns or torpedoes though they were using the one and the other would come. They had no time for fighting because Sparrow was too close to the battlecruiser. The little ship that had seemed to pose no threat was now a real danger, could be mounting a torpedo attack on the giant the destroyers were there to protect. They had been ordered to get rid of her and they would run her down.
Smith knew it and that he could not stop it.
He looked just once more at the battlecruiser as she steamed on, saw that
her secondary armament was firing and realised the big 5.9’s were firing at Sparrow. The water-spouts alongside were huge now, but he also saw that Siegfried had been hit and had fires, so Marshall Marmont had hurt her. He turned to look at the course Siegfried was taking, at the quiet sea that lay ahead of her, sparkling with sunlight. Sparrow had to keep on a little longer. Just a little longer. And God help them all…
He put a hand on Gow’s shoulder. “Starboard five…meet her…Steady. Keep her head on that destroyer.”
“Aye, sir!”
Sparrow’s stem pointed at one of the oncoming destroyers. The other was fine on Sparrow’s starboard bow and about two cables astern of the first. Both of them were firing hard and Smith could feel them hitting. The crack and blast of the bursts were enough but he could feel the shock of each hit shudder through the ship and she was slowing like a fighter who had not been hit in a vital spot but had simply soaked up too much punishment, an accumulation of blows. Sanders clawed his way up a twisted ladder on to the bridge to bawl at Smith. “Holed four places — two on the water-line — the carpenter’s trying to plug ’em but we’re making water!”
Smith nodded but he was intent on the destroyers that filled his vision and claimed him totally. He heard Sanders say hoarsely, “God!” He had just seen the enemy within a thousand yards, bows high and sterns tucked right down and the smoke and flame of their guns flickering and blossoming. They were growing with every second, filling the eye and the mind so that the great mass of Siegfried faded into a moving backdrop as she slid along with a distant, silent grace. Only the destroyers existed.
But Siegfried had to be the target. She was not firing now because the destroyers were too close to Sparrow. Smith ordered “Port five…steer that.” So Sparrow’s bow edged away from the destroyers and she was on a course to meet Siegfried and the destroyers were on her starboard bow. And they turned so they were on a course to meet her before she could reach Siegfried or get within torpedo range of her. And they were still firing. Broadside to them like this, Sparrow should have been firing three or four guns but only the twelve-pounder banged away.