First Command

by Richard Freeman

  Roberts shouted ‘Pull! Pull! Pull!’

  They pulled. Nothing.

  ‘Cable’s caught,’ yelled Roberts.

  ‘I’ll go down the line and take a look,’ roared Higgins.

  With his lifeline attached to Beverton’s cable, Higgins crawled down the deck, feeling the cable inch by inch. The sea washed over him, the ship’s roll pitched him first one way and then the other, but he held the cable with a vice-like grip and dug the toes of his boots into the deck.

  Inch by inch he went. Then his left hand touched something: the stub of a ripped-off stanchion, with Beverton’s line firmly wrapped around it. Firmly indeed. The line was taut as a bow string at the Battle of Agincourt. There were two men hanging on one end and Roberts and Johnson pulling on the other. Grabbing the line firmly with his right hand, Higgins tried to pull the rope up off the top of the stanchion stub. Not a hope, he thought. Then he remembered his pocket knife. It was in his right pocket, but his right hand was gripping the cable, which was all there was between staying on deck and joining Beverton. He passed his left hand under his body and tried to turn it to reach down into the pocket. The wet and twisted pocket had become a sealed-off pouch. Slowly, a tug at a time, Higgins pulled at the pocket to turn it inside out. Roberts and Johnson watched fearfully as the seconds ticked by. Every moment counted if they were to get Beverton back alive. And then, with one final jerk, Higgins’s pocket plopped out and surrendered the knife. With the knife closed, he eased one end of its body under the rope and tried to lever it up off the stump. Still nothing. By now near the end of his strength, he tried one last time. The knife shot out of his hand and flew into the sea as the rope leapt off the stanchion. For a brief moment Beverton had been lifted up by a wave and his weight relieved from the line.

  Johnson and Higgins felt the change in the line’s tension and suddenly realised that it was moving.

  ‘Bloody good job there’s two us – we’ve got three of them on the line now!’ said Roberts.

  First to come in was Higgins, wetter than ever and with a lacerated left hand, but otherwise able-bodied. He joined the others on the line and the three men began to pull. Their hands were numb with cold, the line both rough to the skin, yet slippery from the drenching rain and sea. Their boots slipped on the deck as the ship rolled from side to side. But their pulling had no result. Was Beverton caught on something? There was no way of telling. All they could do was to tug, and tug they did. Slowly the rope came in, inch by inch.

  ‘We’re winning,’ yelled Roberts against the wind.

  ‘But where the ‘eck’s Beverton?’ shouted Johnson.

  ‘There!’ cried Higgins.

  A black, lifeless mass was just showing above the shattered gunwale. The men summoned up almost their last strength to pull Beverton up over the edge until he was sprawled motionless on the deck. The final ten feet or so seemed easy after the titanic efforts of the last few minutes. Soon Beverton lay at the feet of the three seamen. The injured seaman was gone.

  ‘Is he dead?’ asked Johnson.

  ‘Don’t know,’ replied Higgins, ‘Better get some help.’

  Roberts re-attached himself to the main lifeline and fought his way back to the bridge.

  ‘Beverton went overboard, sir. We’ve got him back, but looks like ‘e’s done for. There’s a man overboard as well.’

  ‘Get Mr Beverton below to the wardroom,’ ordered Steadfast.

  ‘Ross, get the doc to the wardroom double-quick.’

  ‘And the man overboard?’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do for him in this storm. No one could survive it.’

  It took five minutes for the men to drag the motionless Beverton along the pitching deck and down the ladder. They heaved the insensible, dripping mass up onto the wardroom table. Dr Kendrick stooped over him and began his examination.

  ‘His pulse is gone,’ he quietly reported.

  Chapter 7 – The End of a Hard Night

  The doctor tore off Beverton’s sodden clothes and put the heel of his right hand on the midshipman’s chest with his fingers over the heart and began rhythmically compressing it. Thirty compressions. Then a slow breath into Beverton’s mouth – too fast and the air would go into the stomach. Beverton’s chest rose slightly. Then a second breath. And back to the pumping. Kendrick must have known that the situation was desperate but no one could tell from his calm, professional actions. He seemed in control.

  Phillips – who ought to have been back on other duties – stood helplessly watching, as did Johnson, Higgins and Roberts. Each minute seemed like an hour, yet Kendrick kept on. Every so often he stopped and checked for signs of life. The fifth check. Dr Kendrick felt Beverton’s neck. He turned to his audience:

  ‘He’s going to make it, lads. Ask Gibbs to come and we’ll get him warmed up and put to bed.’

  Looking after Beverton would be good experience for Gibbs, thought Kendrick. As a new sick berth attendant, Gibbs was rather lacking in practical experience. He had left school just a few months ago and the only certificate that he had was from the St John’s Ambulance. Naturally he was sent for training as a naval sick berth attendant. It was now just two weeks since he completed his 10-week emergency training course. Beverton would be his first real patient at sea.

  ***

  When Gardiner took over on the bridge, Steadfast dozed lightly in his sea cabin for a couple of hours as the storm continued to rage. He needed to rest, but his mind would not let him. How far he had come in just twelve months. It was the man overboard that set him thinking. He remembered the first time that Lieutenant Commander Thomas Lomax had ordered South Riding to steam on, leaving screaming, shouting, bobbing heads in the Atlantic. He recalled with shame how he had remonstrated with Lomax – he had come very near to using the word ‘murderer’. Lomax had given him a sharp lecture on the need for a captain to suppress his personal feelings and think of his higher duties. Steadfast had never told a soul about his quarrel with Lomax, and sincerely hoped that Lomax too had kept quiet. Now he had ordered his own ship to steam on, leaving a man to his fate. He was a harder, tougher commander now.

  ***

  During the following day the storm gradually abated and a sense of calm and normality returned to Defiant. The storm damage to the ship was largely superficial so the officers and men instinctively fell back into the routines of the convoy. The still heavy sea below and the dense cloud above held the enemy at bay. The convoy kept up a steady 7-knots through a wild sea. Steadfast looked forward to having a chance to get at the Germans. Meanwhile, Gardiner brooded on the wild commander he was now serving. In all those years in the RNVR he had always seen the Navy as the first and last defender of Britain’s liberty. Never had he seen it as an aggressive force – after all, you can’t conquer other countries with a Navy – that was a job for an army. Now confronted with an aggressive commander he found himself unsettled and anxious. Who was right – him or Steadfast?

  Paris was also reflecting on the events of that night. He had never imagined a storm such as this one, nor realised how difficult it was to navigate a ship at night in a storm. And when he saw the lifeless young Beverton being carried into the wardroom, the full horrors of the power of the sea showed him a new side to naval life. He had often wondered how he would face up to an air or torpedo attack. Now he had found a new enemy: the sea itself. Paris tried to catch a bit of sleep but, riddled with self-doubt, he was not at ease with himself.

  Surprisingly, the one man who had come through that first terrible night with optimistic confidence was Ross. Despite the collision, he was exhilarated by the way that he had handled the ship after the collision and his intrepid watch on the bridge in the storm. His actions, he thought, had been in full naval tradition: bold, resolute and, as he now erroneously recalled, fearless.

  So, as the second night fell, Steadfast and Ross felt ready for anything that Jerry or the sea could throw at them. But Paris and Gardiner feared they were faltering after just one day of this
horrendous convoy. What, wondered the two men, could possibly come next?

  Chapter 8 – Steadfast Is Deceived

  The answer came that night. By 11.00 pm the weather was thick, the cloud low and dense. All that Steadfast could see from the bridge was an empty blackness. Out there, on station he hoped, were the sluggish colliers and the trudging tramps. The only sign of life on the Defiant was the glow of the binnacle light and the low rumbling of the engines below. Perhaps tonight will be a dull one, he thought, broken only by cocoa deliveries and watch changes. But there was still the risk of E-boats, and the men were jittery. The boats favoured a winter’s night, and the light mist was ideal for their surprise attacks. An E-boat commander knew the tides and currents inside out. And the boats’ 40-knots against the convoy’s seven or so gave them near impunity from capture. Steadfast recalled that in September 1940 Heinz Birnbacher’s flotilla had sunk four coasters in a single convoy. The boats would be out there somewhere, tied up to the British channel buoys to await the moment of attack. Steadfast relished the opportunity to do battle with them. Even better if Korvettenkapitän Wendorff was out there leading his flotilla.

  The commander looked at his watch: midnight – the E-boat’s habitual hour of attack. He mused on the futility of politicians’ attempts to limit war. These boats were only here because of the Versailles Treaty. That treaty had restricted German warship building, but had left them free to develop small craft. When tonight’s first torpedo came, it would be a present from Versailles, delivered by one of the most deadly war vessels ever invented. Their round wooden hulls kept them stable in the roughest seas and they could pass over magnetic minefields with impunity. As for their famed speed, their three Daimler-Benz diesel engines delivered 6000 horse power. That speed was further enhanced by their twin Lürssen rudders aside the main rudder, which kept their wake low. Although they had 20 mm cannons, the real killing power of these boats was in their two torpedo tubes and the four torpedoes that they carried. But they had to fire two torpedoes at a time – one port and the other starboard. (A single torpedo launch would set the E-boat spinning round.) So that gave each boat just two chances of a hit before having to flee. Or two chances before Steadfast could attack without reply.

  One more thing worried Steadfast: the British motor launch ML145. He shuddered as he remembered his near sinking of one on his last ship. She was a long way off, in rain and mist – just a grey and white blur. They had had no notice of British launches in the area so he confirmed the order to fire. They must have fired a couple of hundred rounds before a lookout shouted ‘She’s one of ours.’ Had the gunners’ aim been better, he would have been up before a Court Martial. ‘No mistakes tonight,’ he said to himself.

  ‘Number One, see how Gervass is getting on,’ ordered Steadfast.

  Gardiner went off to the radio room, where Gervass Vanderloop, the Headache operator, his headphones pressed to his ears, was hunched over his receiver, tweaking one knob after another. Gervass had been at his post for several hours, his radio tuned to the carrier wave frequency of the E-boat walkie-talkie radios. Those Germans were great chatterers, even when on a raid. And when they weren’t talking they left their radios on so that their tell-tale carrier unwittingly betrayed their presence to the British.

  ‘Anything up tonight, Gervass?’ asked Gardiner.

  ‘Not sure. A few carrier waves; some talk about weather. But the signals are weak. I don’t think they’re close.’

  ‘Maybe they’re still looking for us. Keep listening. And report to the bridge every fifteen minutes.’

  Gardiner returned to the bridge.

  ‘Well?’ asked Steadfast.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. Gervass says the signals are weak.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense. Jerry must know where we are – more or less. OK, maybe the E-boats are still searching, but they can’t be far away.’

  Back in the radio cabin, Gervass heard some new voices. His two years in Germany as a sales representative for a Dutch food processing machinery manufacturer had honed his listening skills to perfection:

  ‘Udo, here. Are you there Friedrich?’

  ‘Friedrich here.’

  ‘We are at the buoy three miles ahead of the convoy. Where are you?’

  ‘We are at the next buoy ahead.’

  ‘Come here – not too quickly – avoid any noise. Attack at 0015.’

  Gervass called the bridge: ‘E-boats ahead – they’re rendezvousing at the next channel buoy.’

  ‘Bosun: pipe action stations.’

  A press of a button and the clanging alarm rang through the ship from stem to stern. Lumps uncurled from under blankets; oilskins and coats bounced into life. No time for stretching and yawning. Feet were shoved into boots, sweaters rammed over heads. Clutching their coats and oilskins, men tore down corridors, through doors, up ladders, across flats to arrive at their stations. They ran like automatons, no sound but thundering feet and clanking doors. Within a minute or two the 4-inch, 2-pound Oerlikon guns were manned, as were the two torpedo tubes and the depth charge throwers.

  Defiant was now ready to see off all comers. Her aldis lamp flickered a warning up and down the convoy and ships began to zigzag in the darkness.

  At exactly fifteen minutes past midnight Steadfast saw rockets in the night sky a few miles behind Defiant’s position.

  ‘Rockets at starboard 120,’ called a lookout.

  ‘Starboard 120, helmsman,’ ordered Steadfast.

  ‘Meet her.’

  ‘Are you sure they’ll be an E-boat when we get there, sir?’

  ‘Of course. What do you mean?’

  ‘Looks a bit suspicious to me, sir. Just some rockets and no other action. They haven’t fired a single shot since then.’

  ‘Not trying to avoid action are you, Number One?’

  ‘No, sir. I just don’t think we’re going to find Jerry anywhere near those rockets.’

  Gardiner was just about to explain to Steadfast that the Germans were a bit more subtle than Steadfast was, when they reached the area where the rockets had been seen.

  ‘All quiet here, sir,’ remarked Gardiner.

  ‘Thank you, Number One, I can see that.’

  Steadfast had fallen for the E-boat commanders’ trick of setting off rockets to draw the escort to the wrong side of the convoy. Gardiner had been sure of this from the start, but he knew that Steadfast would not listen to an RNVR man. He had to learn for himself the wiles of the enemy.

  ‘Course one-eight-oh. Full ahead, chief,’ Steadfast quietly ordered, hiding his humiliation.

  Chapter 9 – Steadfast’s Triumph

  Defiant had returned to moving with the convoy when a collier on the east side signalled, ‘We are under attack by E-boats’. Almost simultaneously several convoy ships opened fire.

  ‘We’ve been had, sir,’ said Gardiner, secretly triumphant at Steadfast’s misjudgement. ‘The rockets were a decoy to draw us away from the main attack.’

  ‘But we couldn’t have known,’ retorted Steadfast, unwilling to be included under ‘we’.

  ‘Well what else do you call it when we’ve been lured to the wrong side of the convoy?’ retorted Gardiner, annoyed that his commander had taken no notice of his earlier hints.

  If Steadfast noticed the tetchiness of his Number One, he didn’t show it as he calmly ordered, ‘Course oh-nine-oh, Quartermaster. Full ahead, Chief.’

  Defiant was now racing to the other side of the convoy, which was lit up like a son et lumière display by the gun flashes, star shell and a flaming ship. She tore through the slowly zigzagging convoy, the spray from her bow shimmering under the star shell above, her wake angrily gushing out behind her. As she neared the attack zone, Steadfast could see two colliers listing, one of which was on fire. Boats and Carley floats were in the water.

  Now Steadfast could see just how he had been deceived. The presence of the bulk of the E-boat flotilla was clear from the naval gunners on the merchant ships firing away in an easterl
y direction. No doubt about it: the E-boats were still there – still ready to launch more deadly torpedoes.

  As Defiant reached the line of the ships under attack, Steadfast gave the order to slow engines.

  ‘Fire at will,’ he called.

  The gunners scanned the sea for any sign of a craft – they couldn’t rely on the director now since there could be half a dozen small targets within range. Tired eyes gazed across the lively dark sea. Now the sea was dimly lit by the flickering light of the burning collier. Now star shells illuminated the scene with the ghostly light of a macabre stage set. The colliers seemed too small to be hit, yet the weary gunners were searching for something far smaller. There was not a seaman on Defiant whose life was not at that moment in trepidation. All but the newest recruits had seen enough E-boat attacks to know the routine by heart: an explosion in the dark, a rocket flare from the stricken ship, the grinding, whining roar of the escaping E-boat and then the faint cries of drowning men coming out of the darkness. No man ever got used to these terrifying night hours. Many a man broke under the strain.

  Up in the radio cabin Gervass could hear several E-boat commanders shrieking out orders to attack particular vessels, but it was hard to make sense of their exchanges since he could not know which ships the Germans were referring to.

  The first sign that Defiant had of the continued presence of the E-boats was a collier turning away from an approaching torpedo. Steadfast could see her rapid manoeuvring as her naval gunners furiously pumped 4-inch shells into the dark sea. Suddenly the roar of the E-boat’s powerful engines was gone. Had it been hit? Or had it cut its motors to lie idle before the next attack?

  But the boat – or perhaps a different one – had another collier in its sights. The first that its master knew was when he heard a roar like the sound of a whining circular saw slicing through a tough piece of wood. A lookout cried, ‘Torpedoes’ and the master saw the shimmering phosphorescent streaks in the water coming straight for his ship. They were fast – perhaps 25-knots. He gave the order to turn but before the ship had begun to respond she was rocked by the smash of a torpedo into her stern. A plume of water towered over the ship, flames shot out from under the ripped open deck. And there was no sign of the attacker other than the departing roar of engines.