North Strike

by John Harris

  ‘And get ourselves blown to smithereens for our trouble?’ Magnusson said. ‘For Christ’s sake, talk sense! It’s believed she mounts guns. All we’ve got are a few small arms in the hold and a crew of Finns who aren’t even involved in the war with the Germans.’

  He stared at the entrance to the fjord and the dark curved bulk of the German ship, then swung round to the man at the wheel. ‘Bring her about, helmsman. Get the canvas off, Campbell. There’s more than one way of killing a cat.’

  As the canvas came off, Oulu slowed.

  ‘Let go the starboard anchor!’

  The German ship was already frantically flashing morse at them as the ship swung, blocking the entrance. Campbell was staring towards her, his mouth twisted in a grim smile, his eyes gleaming with triumph and elation at the prospect of action.

  ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,’ Willie John said solemnly.

  Campbell’s head jerked round. ‘What’s that?’ he said, only half-hearing.

  ‘It means, boy, that it iss sweet an’ fittin’ tae die for yer homeland. And it iss also a load of balls! It isnae sweet an’ it isnae fittin’, and it willnae make much bloody difference tae the war.’

  Campbell’s eyes glinted. ‘You’re a novice,’ he said. ‘A mere bloody novice, motivated by nothing else but self.’

  ‘Dry up,’ Magnusson said. ‘What about that aerial?’

  ‘’Tis finished just,’ Willie John growled. ‘But we cannae send from this position, boy. They’ll pick us up straightaway an’ blow us oot o’ the water.’

  ‘If we bottle them up, what will it matter?’ Campbell said.

  ‘We can’t bottle them up,’ Magnusson said. ‘Not here. Not even if we were sunk. The water here’s Christ knows how many fathoms deep.’

  Campbell looked startled. ‘The wreckage in the entrance would stop them!’

  ‘She’s three times our length and ten times our weight. She’d brush it aside without even noticing it.’

  Turning, his eyes glowing with rage, Campbell stared again towards the bulky shape of the German ship in the entrance to Vassafjord. The rain was falling in a thin veil of blue-grey between them, blurring its shape and making wavery lines of its masts and rigging.

  Then his anger burst out of him in a broken-voiced shout.

  ‘There are three hundred Allied sailors aboard her! We should lay alongside her!’

  ‘And do what, for God’s sake?’ Magnusson snapped. ‘For Christ’s sake, clear your bloody head of glory and think sense! The thing to do is force her out and leave her to the fleet. She’s gone in there to keep out of sight but you can bet your bottom dollar, with us blocking her exit, the one thing she’ll decide is that it’s safer at sea. And when she’s gone, we can signal her course and position. Answer them, Willie John.’

  Campbell’s mouth opened and shut as if he were about to protest but instead he turned and stared once more at the German vessel in the shadow of the land. She was flashing them again.

  ‘They’re askin’ what ship we are,’ Willie John said.

  ‘Give him our name: Oulu, of Mariehamn. Nothing else.’

  The signal lamp clattered and the German ship began to flash once more, the pinpoint of light piercing the greyness of the early morning.

  ‘He says,’ Campbell translated coldly, ‘that we are blocking his exit.’

  ‘I thought that’d worry ’em. Give ’em the same again: Oulu, of Mariehamn. Then tell them we have trouble. Just that. No more. Campbell, get the Finns up the mast and make it look as if we have trouble. That buntline block did plenty of damage. See that it looks as if it did.’

  As he’d half expected, with the constant reiteration of their name, the Germans in the fjord were growing impatient, and they saw a launch leave the side of the ship, bouncing in the lifting seas and clinging to the shelter of the land. The German officer who scrambled on board was soaked with spray and very angry.

  ‘Get your ship out of our way,’ he exploded.

  Magnusson looked blank. ‘We are Finnish,’ he said in English.

  The German switched languages. ‘You are blocking our exit,’ he snapped.

  Magnusson looked stupid. ‘We have trouble.’

  ‘We wish to leave.’

  Magnusson shrugged and grinned. ‘We think you are sheltering like us,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Perhaps you would like a whisky?’

  The German officer’s face grew dark. ‘If you don’t move your ship,’ he said, ‘we shall ram her.’

  ‘We have trouble,’ Magnusson persisted. ‘We have lost the fore upper topsail. We have a man with a broken wrist.’ He laid a hand on the German’s arm. ‘Are you sure you will not take a whisky?’

  The German officer brushed him aside and wrenched at the pistol he wore at his waist. ‘Get this ship moving,’ he repeated. ‘Or I’ll shoot!’

  Magnusson gaped at the pistol, still affecting stupidity. ‘We are not at war with Germany,’ he said indignantly.

  ‘Get it moving!’

  ‘You have no right to threaten us! We are a neutral ship.’

  It was only when the German began to look apoplectic, and Magnusson felt he was in real danger of being shot, that he gave way. Glancing towards the fjord, he saw that the water round Altmark’s stern was already being lashed to foam by the movement of her propellers. She was swinging, and if they didn’t move soon they could well be rammed.

  ‘Get the canvas on,’ he ordered. ‘Stand by the anchor.’

  As the ship swung, there were yells from the German launch alongside, now in danger of being swamped, and the officer began to dance with rage. The explanations and argument that followed took another ten minutes, the German growing more and more nervous, the light on Altmark flashing unanswered. Campbell had already worked out their position and Willie John, his message coded, was standing by the open hatchway that led to the hold, smoking a cigarette and looking even more stupid than usual.

  Altmark, Magnusson noticed, had stopped her propellers again, clearly deciding that ramming was best avoided if possible. She was facing the entrance now, however, and as Oulu finally began to move very slowly across the entrance to the fjord, the German officer shoved his pistol away and clambered over the side. Altmark was under way again even before the entrance was clear. As she edged past, her wing bridge only feet from Oulu’s lower yards, they could see furious faces on the bridge and uniformed men shouting insults at them. Magnusson enjoyed himself shouting them back.

  The German ship – bulky, big and black – stopped only long enough to pick up her boat then she began to head south, ahead of Oulu.

  ‘Give us time to get clear,’ Magnusson said to Willie John. ‘Then get a message off. Campbell, give him her course. In the meantime, we’d better vanish. I wouldn’t want them to put a German destroyer on our tail.’

  In thickening weather, they headed west and south, widening the distance between them and the fleeing German ship. Within an hour, Willie John had got his message off and appeared on deck bright-eyed and cock-a-hoop.

  ‘’Tis gone just,’ he said. ‘They acknowledged.’

  The day was spent on tenterhooks; then the following morning Willie John appeared in Magnusson’s cabin, red-faced with triumph and looking drunk.

  ‘’Tis spotted by a coastal command aircraft she’s been,’ he crowed. ‘Off Bergen. She’s bolted intae Jøsingfjord wi’ two Norwegian gunboats in attendance. We’re gettin’ destroyer signals. ’Tis a big diplomatic scene goin’ on with the Norwegians sayin’ she hass neither contraband nor prisoners aboard and the Navy wantin’ tae take her in for examination.’

  Campbell’s face was thin and bleak with longing. ‘I wish I were with ’em,’ he said.

  Bodø on Saltfjord was not unlike Narvik. A picturesque town of parallel wooden streets which had grown inland from the little harbour which was its livelihood, it contained only four thousand people. As they lay down the fjord at anchor, they saw more German shipping and a lot of activity at the German co
nsulate.

  The whole ship was on edge for news of Altmark but the Norwegian radio was saying nothing. When the harbour-master appeared to inspect the ship’s papers, he brought with him two Norwegian sailors and a petty officer and seemed considerably more suspicious than his Narvik counterpart. He first inspected the holds, where Willie John had his radios well hidden, and this was followed by an intense examination of the log and the ship’s books. The Norwegian’s sharp eyes missed nothing. ‘You have been to New York?’ he said.

  ‘Yah.’ Magnusson nodded.

  ‘Like it?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Cargo?’

  ‘Jamaica rum. American wheat. I think Finland has more need for them than England.’

  ‘Where’s the wheat come from?’

  ‘I dunno. Oklahoma. Somewhere like that.’

  The Norwegian was writing industriously. ‘How do you spell “Oklahoma”?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I see your papers are signed by Sven Aanrud, in Mariehamn. I know him.’

  Magnusson’s heart sank. The last thing he wanted were chatty reminiscences about people he’d never met.

  ‘Old friend,’ the Norwegian said. ‘I used to go into Helsinki a lot and I met him there. I didn’t know he’d moved to Mariehamn. Any radio on board?’

  ‘Only for the weather forecast.’

  ‘Any photographic apparatus?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s a war on, in case you hadn’t noticed. Both sides are anxious to find out as much about us as they can.’

  ‘No. I’ve got no photographic apparatus.’

  ‘Any passengers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Crew?’

  Magnusson spread the crew list on the table. ‘All Finns. They want to go home.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Magnusson.’

  The Norwegian didn’t seem entirely satisfied, but Campbell kept the Finns well in evidence and in the end the Norwegian disappeared over the side, frowning heavily but unable to find anything suspicious.

  ‘The buggers suspect we radioed Altmark’s position,’ Magnusson said.

  ‘And we did, boy,’ Willie John chirruped. ‘Did we not just?’

  The reason for the intensity of the search became obvious that evening when they learned from a triumphant BBC announcement that Altmark had been boarded by the crew of the destroyer, Cossack. A hand-to-hand struggle had followed and after several Germans had been killed, the rest had fled ashore. Graf Spee’s prisoners had been found battened down below decks and released to the cry of ‘The Navy’s here!’

  Tuning in to Berlin they found the Germans raving with fury, mouthing oaths at British pirates and swearing to take it out on the British prisoners they held, while a great deal was made of Norway’s permitting of the incident in Norwegian waters.

  ‘Propaganda, boy,’ Willie John said drily. ‘Tae inflame public opinion. They dinnae mention the three hundred British prisoners battened down below.’

  The Norwegian radio was curiously subdued because the Norwegian Navy had examined Altmark on more than one occasion and had sworn there were no prisoners aboard. They seemed to prefer merely to call the action a ‘grave violation of Norwegian neutrality’, demand the return of the prisoners with reparations, and hurriedly let the matter drop.

  On board Oulu the pleasure at the news of the rescue was tempered by an awareness of growing danger. Magnusson began to see their project as something more than merely a half-baked idea thought up by Admiral Cockayne to irritate him. There was no doubt that their appearance outside Vassafjord had forced Altmark to sea from her hiding place, and that without it she might have escaped the searching British destroyers. He’d gone into the adventure thinking it a bit of a lark – after all, sailing ships! – but it was no lark. For the first time, he began to understand what Annie Egge had meant. They hadn’t cared enough, and a bit of good old-fashioned naval discipline in the future would probably do no harm. He resolved to have a go at it but then he stopped dead; good old-fashioned naval discipline was the one thing that would send the Finns over the side faster than a panicking rat up a drain.

  It was now quite clear the Norwegians suspected Oulu of being involved in the Altmark affair and equally obvious that their interest was being pushed by German consular officials ashore.

  Magnusson wished he could contact the British consul for help but he knew that was the last thing he dared do. He would also have felt happier if he could have left Bodø and headed for Trondheim, but he had a strong suspicion by now that when the time came and the signal was received he might well find that the Norwegians were playing a waiting game and, prodded by the Germans, would produce a variety of reasons to keep them where they were. The Norwegians were in no position to dispute things with their prickly and powerful neighbours, and the German record was too dubious to take chances. Even if they were allowed to leave, there was a strong possibility that they’d now be watched every bit of the way and, once they left the Leads at Kristiansund, would be stopped by a German destroyer whose officers would be a great deal more ruthless and a lot more meticulous in their search for a hidden radio.

  The stopping of Altmark had changed everything. For the first time Magnusson was beginning to feel enthusiasm for the job and almost wished they could put back to Narvik so he could say so to Annie Egge. The pleasure in her face would have made it all worthwhile and would have wiped out the distaste she felt at their earlier lack of enthusiasm.

  Suddenly, however, it also began to seem a good idea either to slip across the North Sea to Rosyth while there was still time, or to make plans to scuttle Oulu and beat a hasty retreat across Norway into Sweden. But Bodø was not Narvik and there was no direct rail link with the border. There wasn’t even one with Narvik. To reach Sweden they would either have to sail back to Narvik – which could well be dangerous – or reach the railway at Lønsdal forty miles to the south, take the train to Trondheim and another from there to the Swedish frontier.

  He was just wondering if he couldn’t slip away unnoticed, when he saw the harbourmaster’s launch approaching. The Norwegian’s face was expressionless.

  ‘How are your repairs going, Captain?’ he asked.

  ‘Slowly,’ Magnusson said. ‘I hope it won’t be too long. Things have changed.’

  ‘Sailing ships,’ the Norwegian said flatly, ‘never change.’ He studied his fingernails. ‘What about your crew? Don’t they find all this delay galling? I heard you had to put into Narvik too.’

  Magnusson shrugged. ‘We shall probably have to put into a lot of other places as well,’ he said. ‘But if we reach Mariehamn, then we shall have done what we are attempting to do.’

  The Norwegian gave a cold smile. ‘I shall have to muster and count your crew before you leave,’ he said. ‘Too many ships have been leaving men behind lately.’

  It wasn’t difficult to recognise what was taking place. The game of official pretence had started. There would be problems over the crews, somebody would decide that stores they had bought had not been paid for, fresh incidents would be devised, and time would be wasted. The Port Health Authorities would insist on checking the galley and discover the ship needed evacuating and delousing. Something would be missing when they needed it and an application would have to be made to the Ministry of the Interior. As a last resort, the Norwegians would wait for one of the crew to go ashore and arrest him, with or without reason, for being drunk and an international incident would be staged. At a pinch, one would even be manufactured round some key figure like one of the officers or the bosun, and a major case drummed up. It wasn’t hard to think of ways to hold a ship in port.

  It seemed to Magnusson to point to only one thing. The Germans were intent on some sort of action in Norway, and it seemed imperative that they should put to sea and radio the information.

  When the code letter was received, however, as he’d half expected, the harbourmaster decided that Oulu’s crew
was incomplete and that Magnusson needed another three men.

  ‘According to my information,’ the harbourmaster said, ‘you are about to sail with three men short. There’s also–’ he gave a little shrug ‘–a small question of a bill from one of the town’s chandlers.’

  Magnusson scowled. ‘I’ve bought nothing from anyone.’

  ‘They say you have. It will take a few days to sort this out, you understand?’

  The problem of the crew members was sorted out within three days and the chandlers discovered they had debited the wrong ship with goods, but permission to leave was still not granted.

  ‘The war in Finland has started to go badly for you,’ the harbourmaster pointed out. ‘The Russian offensive on the Karelian Isthmus has brought their forces close to Viipuri and the Finns have evacuated Kovisto. I’m afraid the Russian attacks are wearing down the gallant resistance of your countrymen and the war is coming to an end. My government thinks the Russians might well sweep into Sweden and eventually into Norway, and insists that all Finnish ships be detained until it’s discovered just exactly what’s going to happen.’

  Nine

  The harbourmaster’s prophecy proved to be correct. As February changed to March, the Finnish war ended.

  The news set the forecastle by the ears. The Finns accused the British of not giving sufficient help, and the British said they’d offered but that the Norwegians and Swedes had refused passage. It ended up in a fistfight, with a black eye for Able Seaman Myers and a cut lip for Astermann. Magnusson decided if they didn’t leave soon there was going to be trouble with his crew.

  The harbourmaster remained apologetic.

  ‘Other Finnish ships are moving,’ Magnusson fumed. ‘We’ve had reports of them.’

  The harbourmaster refused to budge. ‘My instructions regarding your ship are quite clear,’ he said. ‘Until I receive instructions from Oslo I cannot change them.’

  ‘May I see your instructions?’

  The Norwegian frowned. ‘It’s not the policy of Norwegian officials to allow government documents to be perused by non-nationals.’ He smiled and gestured. ‘Of course, you could always approach the Finnish consul. Perhaps he will do something to help.’