First Command

by Richard Freeman

  Owens clambered into the shaft, feeling like a criminal.

  Rogers held Milner upright as long as he could, slapping his face and shouting ‘Come on Milner! You can make it!’ No response came.

  As the water rose towards Rogers’s chin, he kissed Milner on the forehead and gently let him slide into the water. With tears in his eyes, he grasped the first rung of the scuttle ladder.

  Rogers, dripping with water and in a shocked state, climbed up to report to the bridge.

  ‘How’s the shoring up going?’ asked Steadfast.

  ‘Too late. We’re flooded aft – should be OK if the door holds. But Milner’s gone, sir. Couldn’t make it out aft.’

  ‘Too bad.’

  ***

  Rogers turned to leave the bridge. As he reached the ladder the ship was lifted bodily by a gigantic explosion forward. Steadfast was knocked sideways, hit his head on the binnacle and fell stunned to the deck. Ross was thrown across the bridge and Rogers lost his footing, slid sideways and disappeared. A good part of the bow had been shorn off with the explosion of the forward magazine – a delayed response to the mine’s first point of impact on the ship.

  When Steadfast came round he saw Ross clinging to the bridge rail as if his life depended on it.

  For the moment the ship was suspended in a terrified silence.

  Chapter 17 – The End of Defiant

  ‘Cole, go forward and check the damage,’ ordered Steadfast.

  Cole tore down ladders and rushed along corridors to the forward stores area. He was ankle-deep in water long before he had reached the cable locker. Not much further ahead he could see a mangled watertight door, drunkenly hanging on one hinge and twisted back. Flames were licking round its edges – flames from an intense and deadly fire.

  He rushed back to the bridge to communicate the fatal news. ‘Fire in the forward magazine, sir. Watertight door’s blown as well – nothing to keep the fire back.’

  ‘How long can we stay afloat?’

  ‘Don’t rightly know, sir. Depends.’

  ‘On what.’

  ‘On putting out the fire and just hoping there ain’t a big hole forward that we can’t get at.’

  ‘Very well, Cole, resume course.’

  Cole once more noticed Steadfast’s unflappable style of command. After all, he thought, Steadfast must have realised that an explosion like that would have caused substantial damage forward – for now masked by the fire. But for how long? No one, not even Steadfast could imagine that Defiant was going to survive for more than an hour or two.

  ‘Engine room, half ahead,’ called Steadfast calmly.

  Defiant settled back into the convoy. She only needed to keep 7-knots. Injured as she was, her engines were undamaged and were still able to force her mangled bow through the light sea without difficulty. But the smoke billowing from the forward magazine area hinted of the danger she was in. Above, puffy cumulus congestus clouds were dotted round the blue sky. Below the grey sea was at last calm. Steadfast watched the convoy and admired its reasonably tight formation. He’d done a good job of herding it back into shape. There was no reason to suspect that anything would disturb these last few hours to parting off Sheerness – other than Defiant’s bow, of course.

  What is the difference between putting on a brave face and plain delusion? Few on Defiant would have cared to answer that question that afternoon. The ship was in a worse shape than any vessel still in the convoy. There was water coming in fore and aft, a few men lost and some wounded below. For now Steadfast was treating all this damage as just proud battle scars. If he could only bring Defiant back to port, all would be well.

  ‘List ten degrees, sir.’

  ‘Very good, Number One. Keep an eye on it.’

  Ten degrees wasn’t much in a calm sea and so near to port, thought Steadfast. When he was a lieutenant on HMS Staffordshire they’d crawled into Malta with a twenty-five degree list and a large part of the superstructure shot away. Defiant would be alright as long as she wasn’t asked to do any sharp turns – the Admiralty’s endless piling of new gadgets up top was making the destroyers a bit top-heavy nowadays.

  Steadfast was not the only one who was thinking about the list. Down below it was just about the only topic of conversation. Phillips had been boring his fellow seamen with his ‘new captain’ ever since Steadfast had set foot on the gangway. The state of the ship only led him to more and more portentous declarations:

  ‘See, not just a new captain, but one who doesn’t know when ‘e’s beat. Look at that.’

  Phillips pointed to a tumbler of water on the mess room table, vividly showing the list as if it were a builder’s level.

  ‘Half-a-crown the glass falls off the table before the captain declares “Abandon ship”.’

  ‘Done,’ cried Signalman Roberts, ’e’s a stubborn bastard, but not that suicidal.’

  ***

  Half an hour later the tumbler fell to the deck and Roberts forfeited his half-a-crown. Meanwhile the firefighters were losing their battle with the forward fire, which was gradually crawling aft along the ship. To add to Defiant’s troubles, the list was continuing to grow.

  On the bridge no money had been placed on the list, but Gardiner and Steadfast were both preoccupied with the state of the vessel. The commander was willing to do almost anything to keep Defiant with the convoy, but Gardiner was in a more realistic mood.

  ‘Time to go, sir?’ asked Number One, ‘no one will get off the starboard side now, and port is getting tricky.’

  Secretly cursing his luck, Steadfast turned to the Coxswain: ‘Pipe abandon ship, Mr Coxswain.’

  The order rang out over the ship. Roberts was not the only man to have been discussing this call for the last half hour. Most of the crew had been listening for it ever since the list had passed fifteen degrees.

  Just at the moment that Phillips had piped the order, the ship gave a strange lurch and seemed to settle lower aft. It was the signal for pandemonium.

  Most of the men panicked and, hardly had the last echoes of the order died away than many were in the water, swimming frantically away from the ship. Others just froze, neither daring to jump nor searching for the survival gear. One young seaman had collapsed on deck, screaming and crying with terror, resisting all attempts of his mates to get him to leave the ship.

  Only a few were disciplined enough to remember the abandon ship routine. One man was slashing away with a knife at the bindings on a Carley float. The last binding went and, holding the line tightly, he grabbed the raft and threw it over the side. Others fell upon lengths of timber, whaleboat gear and other floatable objects, and cast them into the sea. Scrambling nets were thrown down the ship’s side and lifebuoys with heaving lines attached were hurled into the sea. Some men clambered down the nets, others more or less walked off the sinking ship onto the rafts. Soon the port side of ship was a mass of bobbing heads, waving arms and drifting rafts.

  Ralph Metcalfe, a cook, dropped down into the sea and swam uneasily to the nearest raft. As he reached it, he heard yells of, ‘We’re full!’ He grabbed a lifeline attached to the raft and hung on tight. Stoker Herbert Palmer was not far behind him. Hearing the cry, he began to swim in a slow circle around the raft – he was more likely to be rescued near a raft than alone on the wider sea.

  Defiant had a good few non-swimmers and others who simply feared leaving the solidity of the ship. They stood, lined up along the side and watched as some of the rafts, not yet full, paddled away. ‘Wait for us… bastards!’ A faint call of, ‘Jump!’ came from one raft as it continued to move away to avoid being sucked down by the vortex of the ship’s sinking.

  Steadfast and his officers were still on board Defiant. Seeing the chaos on deck and in the sea, the commander ordered Gardiner to take charge of the men on deck. Then he ordered Paris and Beverton to each commandeer a raft and start organising the collection of the men.

  Amidst the panic and chaos, some men had kept their heads and remembered their r
outines. The Chief had heard nothing from Steadfast, so he opened the safety valves – he didn’t fancy being the one who ended the ship by blowing up her boilers.

  Phillip’s mind was also concentrated on the abandon ship routine. He found a bunch of keys in the Boatswain’s cabin and went off to the safe. He tried one key after another until finally the door clicked open. He collected all the confidential papers, books and cash, locked the empty safe, and went to the nearest fuel tank access, and dropped the papers in. The cash went into his pocket. Maybe it could stay there, he thought. He chuckled at his locking the safe. If the ship didn’t go down, some poor German might spend hours trying to open it, only to find it empty.

  Some men kept their heads enough to rescue precious items. Petty Officer Dennis Kellaway snatched his ditty box before running up to the deck. One look at the cold water and the chaos of boats, floats and men was enough for him to jettison the box. First, though, he opened it, took out his wife’s photo and stuffed the picture in a pocket. Then he reluctantly dropped the box and plunged into the cold mêlée below.

  For some, the prospect of the freezing sea was beyond imagining. Ordinary seaman Eric Sullivan sat on the steeply sloping deck, screaming and crying loudly. When Sick Berth Attendant Leslie Carpenter and Leading Wireman Clarence Horton tried to help him, he seemed not to notice their presence. On and on he gibbered and cried, shaking uncontrollably. They tried to lift him towards the gunwale, but he simply grabbed a railing and held on with a vice-like grip. Nothing would move him. They turned away and slid down the deck to face the peril that Sullivan could not accept.

  Leading Seaman Warren Armstrong and Able Seaman Wilbert Parsons had gone straight to their post at the davits of the port boat when the call came to abandon ship. They had practised this so many times but now came the test when seconds counted while all around them were men facing death. They quickly cut the inboard mooring ropes and hauled the boat up out of its chocks – a task made easier by the absence of the guardrails that had been lost in the storm. The two strong men – this was a job for only the toughest of the sailors – winched the davits outboard until the boat hung clear of the ship. On an exercise they would have taken the boat down to deck level and let the men board her before dropping down to the sea. As the Defiant listed ever more, there was no time for such gentilities. Armstrong and Parsons leapt into the boat and lowered it by the falls. There was no one in the boat to fend off the Defiant, so they did their best, each standing on one leg and shoving off with the other. Years of training showed as the boat remained level and dipped gently into the sea. The two men looked at each other and exchanged modest nods of mutual satisfaction.

  ‘That’ll show the lieutenant,’ said Parsons.

  Filling the boat was another matter.

  Freed from the falls the boat now rose and fell on the sea. One minute it was bumping into the ship’s side; the next the sea was sucking it away to leave a perilous gap. A safe jump from the deck above required careful timing. The first man to go heeded Parson’s ‘Jump!’ and landed plumb in the middle of the boat. Gervass came to the edge of the ship. Parsons shouted, ‘Now!’ Gervass started forward as if to obey the shout, hesitated, teetered back, then jumped. His hesitation had been just long enough for the sea to suck the boat away. He fell into the gap between boat and sea, smashing his shoulder on the boat’s gunwale. Next came the portly chief steward. Not agile on his feet at the best of times, he could neither find the courage to jump nor the quickness to go at the right moment. So many times he forced his stocky frame forwards, and so many times he pulled back. When he finally went he had lost all control. The boat was rushing back towards the ship and crushed him between boat and ship.

  What should have been an orderly loading of the boat turned into a frantic effort to heave men out of the water. First came the uninjured, who could help themselves over the side. Then came the delicate task of pulling in the injured Gervass. Of Peters, there was no sign.

  Parsons and Armstrong then rowed around, picking up survivors still in the water. Soon the boat was dangerously overloaded.

  In the chaos of Defiant’s end, some men escaped by chance, some with difficulty. Others perished in the doomed ship.

  George Barton was in his wireless cabin when the magazine went up. He stepped out on hearing the massive explosion and saw some smoke and flames but no other serious damage. He returned to his messages. Reception was bad that day and Barton was tired from the labours of last night. He put his headphones on, opened a code book and began to work on his next message. Perhaps it was the fumes from below, perhaps plain exhaustion, but when the first flames began to reach the wireless cabin, Barton was already slumped over his desk.

  Ordinary seaman Alfred Davies first noticed the fire around the wireless cabin. It seemed to burst from underneath with little warning, quickly engulfing the room. He seized a hose and pointed its powerful jet on the base of the flames. Suddenly he felt the flow weaken. With a gurgle and a spatter the flow dropped to a trickle. The pump had failed. Barton and his cabin roared to extinction.

  Stoker 1st class James Summers was on his way up top when he heard cries from a cook. He was trapped in a small store room. The door was jammed and he was shouting through a small scuttle in the door. Summers ran to help. He tore at the door, kicked it, shook the handle… nothing would move it. Beneath him the water was rising, while his lungs were filling with ever denser smoke. He gave one last pull on the door, but still it would not move. Summers thrust his hand through the scuttle and shook the cook’s hand, ‘Best of luck, Ralph.’ Then he fled up to the main deck, tears running down his face.

  ***

  With most of the men off the ship, a quiet calm descended on the scene. The Defiant, still listing twenty-five degrees, sat in the water, apparently scorning the predictions of her imminent sinking. The overloaded boat was dipping up and down in the choppy sea and two crammed rafts were idly drifting. The only sounds came from the rise and fall of the sea, the cries and moans of injured men, and the calls of men searching out their mates. A few lifeless bodies drifted with the swell. From time to time the muffled tolling of a distant buoy rang out like the toll of a funeral bell.

  But it was the smell that the men were to remember. Fuel oil lay in a thick layer on the water. Its vapour filled men’s nostrils, its acrid chemicals scoured their lungs and stung their throats. Their eyes itched and smarted, their mouths were raw and their stomachs wretched. Oil had become their enemy as much as had the sea.

  Nor did it take long for the piercing, numbing cold to penetrate the men’s bodies. Those clinging to ropes had to force life into frozen hands.

  Whitehead could hear his best friend Sullivan calling in the dark. They had enlisted together after school and been in the Navy since 1937. It was only on the Defiant that they found themselves reunited. Thoughts of their endless football games on the waste patch behind the scrap metal yard in Goddard Street flooded into his head. He called back, ‘Hang on, Eric, I’m coming.’ He set off in the direction of the cry, trying to keep his head above the oil-covered water, and pushing his way through the debris from the ship. When he reached the area where he thought Eric was, there was no sign of him. Nor did he hear another cry from his friend.

  All that the survivors could do was to wait. Sparks must have sent out an SOS call, they all said, but the wait seemed an eternity in this hostile sea. Anyway, they were still in the swept channel. Something would come by soon.

  Steadfast was still on the bridge and Gardiner on the deck as the last man went over the side. Steadfast had watched the crew’s chaotic abandoning of the ship with growing dismay. His first impression three days ago had been right: they were an undisciplined lot. If only he had had more time to put some order and routine into the ship. But there was no more time. Her end was near, as was his first command.

  He reached for his lifejacket and put it over his head and blew into the valve. The jacket remained as flat as yesterday’s party balloon. He took the jack
et off and inspected it. Several sizeable gashes from flying splinters had rendered it unusable. He looked around the bridge for a spare. Not a jacket in sight. ‘Damn! My bloody fault for complaining so much about keeping the ship tidy.’ There was no time to search for another jacket. He snatched a sorbo cushion and shoved it under his coat. Not a very dignified way to leave the ship, he thought.

  Steadfast knew that now he had to leave, but only as the last man.

  ‘Number One, would you leave now, please.’

  ‘But, sir…’

  ‘There’s nothing more you can do.’

  Gardiner clambered down the netting and slipped into the freezing water.

  It was time for a last check for survivors. Steadfast went down below and searched as far as the water permitted – which was not very far. Then he checked all the cabins and gun enclosures. No one. All that remained was for him to slide the few feet down into the sea. Without a backward glance he swam to the nearest life raft and reached for a line.

  Chapter 18 - Rescue

  There had been no SOS from Sparks, but the Yeoman Signaller’s aldis lamp had passed the distress call down the convoy until it reached Lieutenant Commander Waldridge on the Keswick. How many survivors were in the water he did not know, but Waldridge couldn’t even risk going to find out. The Keswick was all the protection that the convoy had left. He reported the apparent sinking back to the coastal forces.

  Over one hundred men had gone over the side of Defiant and now they were variously spread out in the boat, on rafts, clinging to rafts or floating around them. Steadfast was in the water and swam from raft to raft to reassure his men that help would soon arrive. But he knew that some men were already beyond help. Several had severe burns with large areas of skin peeling away. The burns victims seemed to have passed the first stage of searing pain and were now in deep shock: grey, motionless and shivering. Some were weakly calling for water.

  Elsewhere he could see men with gashed heads, smashed arms and chest wounds. He knew that hidden below the dark water there would be smashed legs and broken pelvises.