First Command

by Richard Freeman

  ‘Get Phillips,’ shouted one of the two men.

  A short while later Phillips knocked on the wardroom door.

  ‘Sir, bit of trouble below,’ he reported to Steadfast.

  ‘What sort of trouble?’

  ‘It’s Elton, sir. Seems he’s being going out with Oakshaw’s sister. Oakshaw said something to upset Elton, and Elton set on him with a knife.’

  ‘Is Oakshaw hurt?’

  ‘No, sir. Two men grabbed Elton. They’ve got him now.’

  ‘Lock him up him. I’ll deal with him tomorrow.’

  Steadfast turned from this irritating incident – sailors were always quarrelling – to the troubles of the convoy and his search for the enemy. By morning he had forgotten about Elton – a lapse that was to have serious consequences.

  ***

  Later, on the bridge, Steadfast and Ross continued the self-congratulatory mood of the dinner conversation.

  ‘Only one more night,’ said Ross.

  ‘Yes, tomorrow we should have this rabble safely in the Thames. Then they can fend for themselves,’ replied Steadfast.

  ‘We’ve put up a good show.’

  ‘Not bad,’ responded Steadfast. On the downside he was returning minus who knows how many ships and with a seriously damaged stern. Also, Beverton had somehow ended up in the water. But he reckoned the admiral would overlook all this when he heard about the two E-boats. And, by the time Rawlinson had explained how he had lost most of his convoy, Steadfast’s return in the joint role of Commodore and Senior Officer Escort should prove a triumph.

  Feeling more than pleased about his command Steadfast looked out into the darkness over the swelling sea. He could just make out the lighter patches where a mist hung a few feet above the water, but the patches were well spaced out. If the mist thickened, they would have to drop a knot or two. The thought of slowing down the convoy sent a shiver down his spine.

  ‘120 revolutions, Chief.’

  ‘Course one-seven-oh, Helmsman.’

  ‘We should be passing the northbound convoy any time now,’ said Ross.

  Steadfast was dreading this moment. He would be powerless to control or direct the merchantmen as they passed in the night. Two convoys of forty or more ships in total, only yards apart in the darkness and without lights, trapped between sandbanks on one side and a minefield on the other. Many masters were not up to this kind of work. They had spent their lives plodding up and down a near empty sea, never having to think about collisions or navigation. Now, stuck in the convoys, they were unable to adapt. The evidence was there for all to see: all the way up and down the convoy route were the green buoys marking the wrecks. True, some were from enemy action, but most were ‘accidents’. He was glad that he had spent the day tightening up the convoy.

  Meanwhile, all Steadfast could do was to wait as the merchantmen entered the most perilous part of their passage.

  Chapter 15 – The Tragedy on the Buttercup

  George Pickering, master of the Buttercup, sank back into his chair on the bridge, let out a long, deep sigh, and settled down to chew on his pipe. What a day it had been, he thought. Pickering was sixty years old, a short, thick-set, hardened seaman with a skin as tough as parchment and as dark as a pickled walnut. His eyes, narrowed by the years of staring across the sea, still had a sparkle about them, but his heavy movements betrayed the strain of his more than forty years on colliers. A lifetime of working for ship owners had left him resigned to life’s vicissitudes, but tonight he was beginning to feel that he had had enough. After years of frugal living on land and hard living at sea, there was a tidy sum in his Newcastle Penny Bank account. More and more he found himself daydreaming of his allotment and the prizes he hoped to win at next year’s county show. Although not unduly competitive, he was riled by only getting a second prize for his leeks this year. Next year he was determined on first prizes for leeks, carrots and onions.

  ‘Hello, Chief. Up for a spot of air?’

  ‘Yes. To tell the truth, I can’t settle tonight. Not after today’s shenanigans,’ replied Gilroy McIntyre. Much the same age as Pickering, the Chief had no life beyond his engine room. He treated machinery like a friend – or sometimes like an unruly child – always expecting the best from his engines in return for the loving care of his skilful hands.

  ‘I know what you mean. I’m a bit edgy myself.’

  ‘Still, only another eight hours or so and we’ll be home. My, am I looking forward to one of my wife’s meat pies! Of course, what with the rationing, I don’t ask her where she got the meat from.’

  ‘We all have to look after number one these days. Best not to ask questions. Before the wife died she did a good Scotch pie.’

  ‘Bad without her?’

  ‘Aye. And it’s worse with Angus being out in the desert. I hardly dare open the papers when there’s news from Egypt.’

  They fell silent as the Buttercup lumbered through the waves, low in the water with her heavy black cargo. Gilroy thought about the life he once had when he worked on the big liners, with their magnificent modern engines. He had given it up when Gladys became ill. They had had such a wonderful life until those last few years. First she went, then Angus was called up and now the war had dumped him in this filthy collier with engines that belonged on the scrap heap. Some days he wondered which was worse: the cold empty house in Wapping or the sweltering hellhole below.

  ‘Not you as well, Sparks?’ exclaimed Pickering.

  ‘As well as what?’

  ‘As us two that can’t settle tonight.’

  ‘Me neither. It’s the thought of getting home to see Marjorie.’

  ‘Oh, ho!’

  Jack Brownlow didn’t spend much time on the bridge or anywhere else except his cabin and the wireless room. He was the only youngster on the ship, and the only one who knew how to work the radio. He had learnt Morse code for a Scout’s badge when he was at school, so when the war came he nagged his father into paying £30 a term for the Marconi Radio Officer course. His second class Post Master General ticket meant Marconi now paid him £8 a week. That was riches to Jack, who felt he was having a rather good war. Or, to be more precise, he and his girlfriend Marjorie were having a good war. They had met at the Regal Ballroom. Both mad about ballroom dancing, they were hoping to dance together for prizes soon. In fact, his friends said, Brownlow was having a very good war. As Pickering remarked to McIntyre, ‘Young Brownlow thinks he’s immortal. The young never think the bomb’s got their name on it.’

  ***

  McIntyre and Brownlow went below and Pickering took over the wheel from a seaman. He could think there as well as anywhere. Besides, they would be passing the northbound convoy soon. It was best to have a really experienced man at the wheel.

  ‘Bloody mist,’ complained Pickering, struggling to keep Buttercup in line with the Patience ahead of him. As he stared into the darkness he had a strange feeling that something was not right. Patience seemed too big, too dark.

  Patience also seemed to be rather noisy tonight. Was something wrong with her? He strained his ears but could make no sense of the strange sound. Not to worry. Just keep to 7-knots and keep in line.

  Pickering settled back into his relaxed homeward-bound mode, feeling quietly satisfied with Buttercup’s run on this convoy. He’d seen the planes that day and heard a lot of AA, but nothing near enough to worry about. Clapped out as Buttercup was, she had kept her 7-knots with disdainful disregard for Jerry and his antics.

  He was jolted into action by the sound of churning water and the sensation of a massive looming shape in the darkness. It couldn’t be Patience – she was too far ahead. But the mass was growing larger and was coming towards Buttercup. It seemed to be towering over him as if it was about to fall from the sky. He pressed the alarm and yelled, ‘Ship on starboard bow!’

  It was a straying oiler from the northbound convoy – all 8,000 tons of her.

  Now Pickering could make out white streaks of foam at her bow, contrasting
with the shapeless mass towering out of the water. He slammed the rudder over hard to port.

  ‘Damn road hog! Well over the ruddy channel marker,’ he muttered to himself.

  But the mass of metal was still coming towards Buttercup, pounding and churning through the black sea, quite oblivious to the presence of Pickering’s ship. Within seconds Pickering realised his evasion moves had failed. Collision was inevitable.

  A surge of blind terror swept through the seaman as the Buttercup lurched sideways at the moment of impact. Instinctively he held on to the wheel and was saved from being hurled across the wheelhouse. He froze as his ears were lacerated by a long, loud screeching noise and a sound of straining metal as if a gigantic dentist’s drill were ripping open the side of the ship. On and on went the stomach-churning rasping cacophony as the oiler ground into Buttercup’s beam, tearing, biting, grinding. Pickering looked aft to see gunnels and guardrails twisting off under the relentless forward juggernaut of the oiler. Bits of the deck were being rolled up like the lid of an opened sardine tin. The oiler dug deeper and deeper as she passed at an angle down the side of Buttercup. A boat exploded into a thousand splinters and disappeared on the wind. Sparks flew from the play of metal on metal.

  The first smash had brought men rushing up from below. They stared in horror as the oiler ground her way down Buttercup’s side. Those men who had come up on the starboard side, fled the approaching monster. In the chaos a seaman tripped over a hosepipe and fell flat on the deck. The man behind him came down on top of him.

  ‘Panickers,’ hissed Pickering.

  One of the newer arrivals, not yet inured to the hazards of convoy life, stood on the deck screaming and sobbing. The bosun grabbed him by the arm and tried to drag him below, but he froze to the spot in inconsolable terror.

  Meanwhile, the northbound oiler, oblivious of the Buttercup, trudged past her and disappeared into the night.

  Below, the cook had been thrown off his stool by the impact. The sickening sound of the heavy smash and the screeching metal had shaken every bone in his bulky frame, and a wave of icy fear ran through his body.

  Pickering passed the wheel to a seaman – ‘Just keep your eye on Patience’ – and went aft to inspect the damage.

  Not mortal, he thought, as he eyed the wrenched off stubs of the guardrails and the crumpled deck. It had been a glancing blow and Buttercup had taken it well. She looked a mess, but there was no reason to worry further tonight.

  His sanguine thoughts were broken by the arrival of the Chief on deck.

  ‘Plates are sprung, sir.’

  ‘Badly?’

  ‘Don’t know yet, but there’s water coming in.’

  ‘Will they hold?’

  ‘Hope so.’

  ‘Well, get the pumps going and drop to 5-knots.’

  Pickering returned to the bridge and cursed the night. At 5-knots they might miss the tide tomorrow and be stuck outside Tilbury for the next high tide. That was all extra cost to the owner – and cost was the only thing owners ever cared about.

  Now Buttercup began to slowly slip behind the body of the convoy until an hour or so later she came level with the Keswick which was marking its rear. The hint of a grey dawn was breaking in the east, giving just enough light for Pickering to locate the corvette and guide Buttercup to within hailing distance. Picking up his megaphone he raised her bridge.

  ‘We’re stuck at 5-knots. Plates springing. We’ll follow.’

  ‘Good luck. You’re on your own now,’ came the reply from the Keswick.

  As the corvette’s stern disappeared into the half-dawn Pickering felt the loneliness of this moment. One wounded collier in a vast and hostile sea.

  Roberts came back to the bridge.

  ‘She’s a tough one is our Buttercup,’ he remarked in an attempt to show his lack of concern at their predicament.

  Pickering, also reluctant to show any concern, responded: ‘Yes. Remember that storm of ’38?’

  ‘That was a bad’un, that was. Hatches torn off and the waves crashing over. Couldn’t see the deck most of the time. Never thought we’d get through that one.’

  ‘We nearly didn’t.’

  ‘Aye. But this time it’s no more than a few weeping rivets.’

  As Pickering and Roberts sought to outdo each other with their uneasy reassurances, Buttercup seemed to stumble. Pickering called down to the chief.

  ‘Everything OK, chief?’

  ‘Not quite, sir. Shaft’s running hot.’

  ‘What revolutions can you get?’

  ‘Don’t rightly know, sir. Looks iffy.’

  ‘Keep on it. We can’t hang around here.’

  Pickering was now seriously worried. The convoy would soon be far ahead. Buttercup was faltering in a vast, empty sea, but still within Jerry’s hunting patch. If she ground to a halt they would have to radio for a tug – that would mean hours of playing the sitting duck in the middle of a war zone. With the arrival of daylight, reconnaissance planes could appear at any moment. His thoughts were interrupted by a wrenching, creaking sound from below. The voice pipe called.

  ‘Yes, Chief.’

  ‘The plates are giving, sir. I’m not sure the pumps can take it.’

  ‘Can you keep up 3-knots?’

  ‘So far, yes.’

  ‘We need them.’

  ‘Bosun, go below and report back on the plates.’

  Several minutes passed. Pickering was calculating and recalculating. They were now about 50 nautical miles from Tilbury. At 8-knots they would be there in six or so hours. At 3-knots… that would be sixteen hours and the tide would be out. But he’d never failed to bring a ship home. He wasn’t going to let this be the first.

  At this moment the Bosun reappeared on the bridge.

  ‘Looks bad, sir. There’s rivets near to popping all along the starboard side.’

  ‘Make up a shoring party and get to work.’

  A dubious Bosun replied as firmly as he could, ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ and disappeared. He’d seen the plates, he’d seen how long and deep the damaged area was. They’d need to be carrying a forest of timber and have days of time to shore up that lot. But Roberts, like Pickering, had never failed to bring a ship home.

  The shoring party gathered saws, hammers and nails and went below. In places the hull of the ship was dripping like a thawing hillside in spring. In other places rivulets of water were pouring into the hold and the lower rooms of the ship. Roberts picked out the worst leaks and put teams of two and three men to work on each. They didn’t need telling how little time they had, nor the enormity of the task they faced. They worked furiously, exchanging only the few words necessary to coordinate their activity. One by one lengths of timber turned into props, which were rammed between the plates and any available fixture. Measure, cut, ram, hammer home… then secure with cross struts… On they went for an hour or so.

  Roberts, who was working alongside the men, was keeping an eye on their progress. Some of the worst leaks had already been stopped, or at least reduced to a tolerable flow. A few more hours and the ship would, he hoped, be stabilised.

  And then Roberts noticed it: the list. Buttercup had a list of ten or so degrees – far worse than when they had begun the shoring up. Somewhere there was an unseeable, unstoppable and lethal leak.

  ‘Keep at it lads. I’ll just have a word with the master.’

  Pickering did not appear to be surprised to see Roberts. Indeed, he knew why Roberts was there.’

  ‘The list?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Can you beat it?’

  ‘No, sir. It’s not from the plates we can see – it’s somewhere else – probably behind the coal.’

  ‘You mean you can’t stop it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’ll see. We’re still afloat and we are still doing 3-knots. Keep up the shoring.’

  ***

  Half an hour later Pickering was surprised by a call of ‘Ahoy there!’ In his predicament he had not not
iced the patrol ship coming up aft on his starboard bow.

  ‘Need a tow?’

  ‘That or a miracle,’ shouted Pickering.

  ‘Miracles not on offer today. Get ready to throw us a line,’ came the trawler’s response.

  ‘Jones, Swinbrook, get a line ready forward.’

  The Yorkshire Princess edged round the bows of the Buttercup. Swinbrook threw the coiled line across, where a waiting seaman caught it. It took fifteen minutes for Jones and Swinbrook to attach a heavy cable to the line and get it over to the trawler.

  ‘All set?’ called the trawler.

  ‘All set,’ replied Pickering.

  The trawler edged forward to take up the slack and then began to increase speed to 3-knots, aided by Buttercup who was still running her own engines.

  Pickering, reluctant to hand the wheel over at this critical time, kept an anxious eye on the cable. A sharp jerk was all that was needed for it to part and leave Buttercup alone once more.

  He was also anxiously watching the list. It had grown to fifteen degrees while the tow was fixed up. He looked again. Twenty degrees!

  ‘My God, she can’t do it!’ he muttered to himself.

  Grabbing the megaphone he called up the trawler.

  ‘How long to the nearest landing?’

  ‘An hour or so, if you’re desperate. Two hours if you want Harwich.’

  ‘Desperate, please.’

  Buttercup only had to hold for an hour – that sounded better than sixty minutes.

  For the next twenty minutes Pickering watched as Buttercup’s list grew and grew… twenty five, thirty five. He pressed the alarm.

  ‘Prepare to abandon ship.’

  ‘Jones, Swinbrook, let go the cable!’

  Men raced from below, clattering up the ladders to face the steeply sloping decks. Able seaman Johnson, a non-swimmer, panicked and threw himself onto the deck, failed to find a handhold, and slid down the wet plates to disappear into the sea.