North Strike

by John Harris

  Yervy was on the wheel, with Campbell beside him staring at the sails, an uneasy expression on his face in the half light.

  ‘Koms vest vind,’ Yervy pointed out. ‘An’ dis ship too heavy.’

  Magnusson glanced at the barometer. ‘Storm on the way,’ he agreed.

  ‘Unless, of course,’ Campbell said coldly, ‘something crawled in there and died. It might well have, aboard this ship.’

  Oulu was lurching badly, whipping back at the end of each roll with a jerk that jarred the masts and made the rigging twang.

  ‘Come round,’ Magnusson ordered. ‘It’s either that or end up dismasted or broached to. Let her run before the wind till daylight.’

  ‘There’s going to be a great deal of tooth-sucking from Cockayne if we turn up off Falmouth again tomorrow,’ Campbell observed bitterly, as if he considered it a personal defeat.

  Yervy let the wheel spin and immediately the list grew less dangerous and the whipping rolls less violent, but the ship was still plunging into the sea in a way that took the bowsprit deep every time. By daylight they were running with as little canvas as possible but if the weather was going to continue it would be better to snug her down as far as possible. They furled the spanker and, with the Finns performing miracles of strength and gymnastics, managed to close-reef the mainsail, furl the foresail and upper topsail, and haul down the inner jib. By the time they had finished, the wind had dropped and there was a hint of sunshine through the rushing clouds.

  As they reached the Hebrides the wind came again, hitting the ship in a flurry of blinding rain, and before they had made everything ready to put her about she had swooped round and was heading at full speed in the wrong direction. With the wind still in the east, they beat to windward through the second night in a smoking sea that threw up clouds of spray on which the starboard navigation light shone in clusters of green diamonds, then the fore royal blew out and Magnusson kicked himself for trying to be too clever.

  ‘One thing, boy,’ Willie John said, staring upwards at his aerials, his hangdog face wet with spray. ‘Goin’ tae sea this way ye get plenty o’ fresh air.’

  The following day the sea was still rising and the ship was running heavily. Overhead, the sun struggled through the masses of torn cloud. The responsibility was like a leaden cloak on Magnusson’s shoulders but, curiously, he found he was enjoying himself, and he guessed it was being at sea in sail again. When ships like Oulu went – and there weren’t so many of them left now – there would be no more and that would be the end. He had a feeling that the war would see them off and was happy to be in at the death.

  The barometer was still dropping and they prepared for the bad weather that was clearly on its way. Fiddles were on the saloon table and the hawsepipes had been stopped with blocks of wood; lifelines were rigged, and wire safety nets set up to prevent anybody being washed overboard; while the sacks of grain in the hold were held in place with railway sleepers lashed with chains and secured with wooden wedges driven home with sledgehammers. More timbers were laid across the hatch covers and lashed down to ringbolts in the hatch coaming. Until the weather slackened there would be no using the big transmitter-receiver Willie John had installed in the hold.

  As they passed between the Faeroes and the Shetlands the wind blew harder and they had to fight to bring the ship on course. She drove headlong before the wind at a spanking pace, rolling until her lee rail scooped up great avalanches of green sea As she thundered along with the sun sparkling on the heaving water, towering waves flung themselves at her, but always she lifted and let them pass harmlessly beneath, and with each escape, Magnusson’s expression grew more confident.

  The evening sunshine made the scene breathtaking, tremendous waves, flecked by rainbows as the spray caught the light, striking the ship in shuddering blows to pour over the bulwark and soak the watch. The galley was washed out, and plates and bottles were broken. As she heeled over, they walked with wide legs, their ears full of the gurgle of water in the scuppers, the roaring of sails and the wailing of the rigging, all coming together in a satanic orchestration as they slid through the sea, stripped and gaunt as a skeleton.

  There had been far less problems than Magnusson had anticipated and no unexpected accidents except a split thumb belonging to one of the Finns.

  ‘You practised in surgery, boy?’ Willie John asked as Magnusson bound it up.

  ‘Read it up,’ Magnusson said. ‘The captain of Lawhill dumped a medical book on my lap and told me to get on with it. It seemed to work out.’

  Willie John indicated the Finn. He’ll probably die o’ lockjaw.’

  Magnusson shook his head. ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ he said. ‘When one of the apprentices in Priwall went down with appendicitis, he was operated on by the chief mate with the same knife he used to scrape teak and cut rope. The kid was still writing to me right up to the beginning of the war.’

  As they sighted the Lofotens, the blustery wind fell and, as they reached the islands and were approaching the coast of Norway itself, it slackened almost to nothing. The sun disappeared, the temperature dropped dramatically and there were patches of fog and mist that made Oulu look ghostly as it swirled about her spars and masts.

  They were nearing the Arctic Circle now. Flurries of sleet and snow kept arriving, and it was bitterly cold. Nobody seemed to have any dry clothing, and the forecastle was foetid with the odour of steaming jerseys and the rank smell of unwashed men. Everybody hung about the mess-room or the saloon, drinking coffee and fighting the inertia that came with tiredness.

  The BBC news gave nothing away. ‘All quiet in France’ became like a litany repeated again and again, and the dance music that followed made Magnusson feel homesick for Wren Dowsonby-Smith.

  ‘Should be there tomorrow.’ Campbell’s words, clipped and phlegmatic, broke in on his thoughts. He jabbed at the chart. ‘That’s where we’ll make our landfall. The island of Væröy.’

  ‘Unless, o’ course, ’tis a fly speck on the chart,’ Willie John observed cheerfully. ‘In which case, poy, we’ll probably run aground off Flakstadöy.’

  Campbell went red. ‘I don’t mistake fly specks for pencil marks!’ he snarled. ‘Why don’t you mind your own bloody business?’

  ‘Shut up, both of you,’ Magnusson snapped, wishing for the first time that Oulu was an honest-to-God naval ship and he could bring them both up before the captain. ‘This is no bloody place to be fighting with each other! We’ve got enough with the Germans. And while we’re at it, we’d better have the arms broken out. And now that the wind’s dropped and we’re in the lee of the land, let’s have the hatches opened up so that the telegraphists can get in there.’ He turned to Willie John. ‘Better keep a sharp radio watch from now on. I’ve got a feeling in my bones something’s going to happen.’

  Edging their way slowly eastwards just off the north Norwegian coast, it was difficult to fix their position exactly. Somehow the mist seemed to awe everybody and they spoke in whispers, as though moved by the silence. Through the damp they caught the smell of the land and the curious indefinable scent of approaching snow.

  ‘Tell the lookouts to keep their eyes open,’ Magnusson ordered, and he had hardly spoken when the man in the bows sang out.

  ‘Ship dead ahead sir. Looks like a small destroyer.’

  As the other vessel emerged from the fog they identified it as a Norwegian torpedo boat.

  ‘Flashing K, boy,’ Willie John said. ‘’Tis tellin’ us tae stop they are.’

  As the wind was spilled from the sails, Oulu slowed down gradually until she was lying silently in the lifting sea.

  ‘Warn all hands,’ Magnusson told Campbell. ‘They’re to remember for Christ’s sake that we’re Finnish. Nobody but the Finns, myself or yourself in conversation. And go round the ship to check there’s no sign of naval uniform or equipment.’

  As the Norwegian ship stopped opposite them, a boat was lowered and began to head towards them. The Norwegian officer who climbed a
board was a lieutenant-commander, a tall, red-haired, pale-eyed man wearing a suspicious look.

  Magnusson introduced himself. ‘First mate,’ he said.

  ‘Where’s your captain?’

  ‘He died. We buried him in the States. Burst appendix–’ Magnusson shrugged ‘–and akvavit. I have the ship.’

  ‘You speak Norwegian?’ the Norwegian asked.

  ‘A little,’ Magnusson said hesitantly. ‘Not much. We’re Finns.’

  ‘What’s your business?’

  ‘We’re heading for Narvik.’

  ‘Why?’

  Magnusson trotted out the story Cockayne had provided. ‘We were for Falmouth with a cargo of grain. It was for English mills but we thought it’d be of more use to Finland. We’re taking it to Mariehamn and they can sort it out there. We have gale damage to repair, then we propose to go south through the Leads to the Skaggerak and home.’

  ‘I’ll need to see your papers.’ The Norwegian gestured. ‘We have to be careful. The British and the Germans are up to all sorts of tricks and we don’t want to get involved in their war.’

  In the saloon, he sat down at the table and began to examine the ship’s books. Quietly, Magnusson placed a glass of whisky alongside him.

  ‘Bought in New York,’ he said.

  Outside the cabin, he could hear Yervy, Worinen and Astermann chattering away and he guessed that Campbell had stationed them there to give the appearance of genuineness.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he suggested, but the Norwegian looked up.

  ‘No need,’ he said. ‘Everything seems in order. Watch yourself in Vestfjord. There’s a lot of traffic there and this sort of weather isn’t the thing to be caught in, with a ship that manoeuvres as indifferently as a sailing ship.’

  Six

  They lay in the entrance to Vestfjord in the darkness, on a clear frosty night with the aurora hanging in the sky like a brilliant curtain whose folds gently wavered and danced. The gap in the land was well lit but Magnusson elected to wait until daylight, and the ship became silent in a quiet sea except for the occasional shout from one of the Finns on the forecastle head. ‘Klara lanternor! Lights are bright!’

  At first light next morning they moved into the fjord and, taking on the pilot, ran the blue-crossed white flag of Finland up to the gaff. It was bitterly cold and the ropes of the running gear had become half-frozen and jammed in the blocks so that it required an almost superhuman effort to move them. As the sun came out the ship lay directly across its path and seemed on fire, her sails agleam and golden. In contrast, her dark hull seemed shabby, the rust streaks like the honourable scars of a long voyage.

  As they moved down the fjord, the mountainous coast of Norway unfolded in magnificent vistas of spotless white. The snow came even to the water’s edge and, against a background of the sort of scenery that would have done justice to a Christmas card, great flocks of eider duck rose from the water.

  The pilot was inclined to leave everything to Magnusson. He wasn’t a sailing ship man and could only indicate the channel, but the fjord was still about ten miles wide, fringed by rocky, sparsely populated islands. As it began to narrow into Ofotfjord, which was only half as wide, huddles of small fishing villages, mere groups of twenty to fifty wooden houses clustered around a church, appeared along the edges of the subsidiary fjords.

  Near the village of Djupvik, two converted Norwegian trawlers, Michael Sars and Kelt, on outpost duty, signalled them to stop. A launch was already heading towards them and, as the Norwegian naval officer appeared over the side, Magnusson introduced himself once more with the story of the captain’s death in the States.

  There was no difficulty. The Norwegian Navy had obviously picked up the sightings put out by Cockayne, and the Norwegian officer was not only helpful but sympathetic.

  ‘The war is going well for Finland at the moment,’ he said. ‘They are still throwing back the Russians with heavy losses.’

  ‘But they have bombed Helsinki,’ Magnusson pointed out.

  The Norwegian shrugged. ‘The Mannerheim Line holds,’ he said, ‘and your president has appealed to the world for assistance. It’s said that Britain wants to send a token force.’

  ‘And both Norway and Sweden have refused to allow it passage,’ Magnusson said.

  The Norwegian officer shrugged again. Handing back the papers and manifests, he saluted. ‘What use is a token force anyway?’ he said. ‘The Russians have too many men.’

  The entrance to the fjord had contained ice but the passage was clear now all the way up to the port which they approached slowly with the wind, close to the northern shore until they were directly opposite the town, a circle of houses and buildings along the waterside under the steep wooded slopes of the hills. There was a concrete pier where the ore ships loaded, and an electrified railway line, which brought the ore from Gällivare in Sweden. At this point the fjord split up into four long fingers thrusting into a mountainous coast.

  ‘Makes land communication difficult,’ the pilot said. ‘You have to go all the way round. But we have ferries and that makes it easier. Do you need dockyard facilities?’

  ‘Nez,’ Magnusson said. ‘We do what we want without that. We have no money to pay, anyway.’

  ‘I see. They’ll place you at the entrance to Herjangsfjord, I expect. You’ll find plenty of water. You’ll be right opposite the town, out of the way of the ferries but within reach of the launches. I’ll radio the harbourmaster’s office to keep a look-out for your signals.’

  There were ships of all nationalities lying off the Ore Pier, and Magnusson saw British and German vessels close beside each other. As they edged slowly down the fjord, they were met by a harbour official in a launch who directed them to the entrance to Herjangsfjord about a mile from where the iron ore railway curved round from Narvik, and they dropped anchor alongside a modern four-masted steel barque flying a German flag.

  Just beyond the German was another sailing vessel, a full-rigged ship over two hundred feet long, painted white with a sweeping bowsprit covered with scrollwork round her figurehead. But she was bald-headed, her topmasts missing, her yards a-cockbill, her running rigging neglected. At her stern she carried the emblazoned white and red flag of Poland.

  There were a few birds about as they took in the headsails and they rose in a cloud as the Finns went up the standing rigging. Campbell was on the forecastle head waiting for the order to let go the anchor.

  ‘Ned med rodret!’

  As Yervy put the helm down, the foretopmast staysail halyard was cast off its pin and the down-haul manned, the men rushing along the deck as it shrilled down the stay. Oulu came up, the main topsails aback, and gradually drifted astern.

  ‘Låt gå babords ankaret! Let go the port anchor!’

  Campbell hit the pin securing the chain stop and there was a tremendous roar as the anchor crashed into the water and the cable roared out of the chain lockers. As the ship swung, Yervy stared at the land.

  ‘Vestfjord is de arsehole of de vorld,’ he said flatly. ‘And Narvik is right up it.’

  From where they lay they could see heavy ore trains moving slowly through the centre of the town, and the buildings of the business district spreading towards the mountains. Most of the houses were small two-storey affairs, though there were bigger ones in the better residential district along the low-forested ridge on the edge of the peninsula. The air smelled cold and tangy with salt and an odour of seaweed mixed with tar, and it was filled with the cries of seagulls wheeling and diving for fish.

  ‘Do we go ashore here, boy?’ Willie John asked.

  ‘No,’ Magnusson said.

  ‘Fock notting to see anyway,’ Yervy added.

  As the pilot launch came alongside and the pilot prepared to board it, Magnusson indicated the barque.

  ‘What’s the German ship?’

  ‘Cuxhaven. She was built at Wessermunde as the Hildegaarde Hahn in 1926. She was a nitrate carrier but then she became a training ship and
was renamed Cuxhaven. She’s a nitrate carrier again now.’

  The German ship was clearly very modern, her four masts and the flying bridge running aft to her poop making her eminently suitable for training ship work.

  ‘Big,’ Magnusson said, studying her through his binoculars. ‘Over three hundred feet long, I’d say, and over three thousand tons.’ He indicated the Polish ship just beyond. ‘And her?’

  The Norwegian shrugged. ‘Kosciuszko. She came in here on 28 August, last year. She ran into a gale off the Faeroes and was carried north. She lost three of her cadets overboard and was dismasted. She was trying to make repairs to get home to Gdynia, but then, of course, the Germans went into Poland and she’s been here ever since.’

  Magnusson said nothing but his eyes narrowed as he remembered what Cockayne had told him about the Polish ship and Cuxhaven. He had seen a few Polish sailors from escaped warships in Portsmouth, rootless men with tragic faces and hard eyes, determined to die for their country because honour was all they had left after their defeat. ‘What are they going to do?’ he asked.

  The Norwegian’s shoulders moved. ‘What can they do? There’s no Polish Consul any more and they can get no help. The Germans say she’s theirs now but the Poles swear they’ll never let them have her. They can only take her by force.’

  The men aboard the other ships were as interested in Oulu as Oulu was in them and they could see themselves being studied through binoculars.

  ‘Yon German job hass got a lot o’ radio aerials aboard her,’ Willie John pointed out.

  ‘She’s also got a very large crew,’ Campbell said, studying the crowded decks. ‘It’s a wonder they don’t elbow each other overboard.’

  As they waited, the harbourmaster’s launch arrived. The harbourmaster was a reserve naval officer called Vinje who seemed suspicious and, under the thin excuse of being interested, demanded to see the ship. His eyes were everywhere and Magnusson suspected he was looking for radio aerials.