by Alan Evans
It was the French battleship but closer and running something like a mile ahead of Maroc was a much smaller vessel. Smith thought that would be the American Sub-chaser, S.C. 101, the battleship’s solitary escort. Doubtless she had gone scouting ahead when they heard the gunfire and mist still shrouded the sea, her captain making the most of the two- or three-knot advantage in speed that his little craft had over Maroc.
Smith said, “Yeoman! Make to Maroc: ‘Enemy bears north-west four miles’.”
The searchlight on the platform above the bridge clattered its shutter, blinking out the signal but before it was done Smith saw it was superfluous. And Jameson said, “Walküre’s shifted her fire, sir! She’s firing on Maroc!”
Maroc was already turning, presenting her side to the enemy. A column of water-spouts rose short of her and as she steamed clear flame winked from the turrets fore and aft in her. Smith swung the glasses, searching for Walküre, found her shivering in the lenses then still as he held them on her. Walküre was turning.
He ordered, “Port ten!”
“Ten of port wheel on, sir!”
Walküre had turned eastward again. She had held Dauntless almost in her grip but now she faced Maroc with her four 12-inch guns she dared not fight on. The balance had tipped the other way and now the odds were loaded against Walküre. Smith wondered how her captain must feel, first of all to have got this far unseen, only for Dauntless to blunder on to him? And then to turn under cover of the mist and almost catch the cruiser at point-blank range, but not quite. Smith appreciated that manoeuvre, its cunning and quick execution, the use of the mist to achieve surprise, and knew that only his own order to turn had saved Dauntless ... “Meet her. Steer oh-six-oh.” And: “Revolutions for fifteen knots.”
“Course is oh-six-oh, sir!”
Now Dauntless was following Walküre but sedately, the range opening between them as Walküre pulled away. Her after-turrets still fired at Maroc and the French battleship had turned in pursuit, was returning the fire. It was a long-range duel between the big ships even to start with and it became still longer as the range opened. Both ships achieved some near-misses and aboard Dauntless they watched and hoped that Maroc would not be hit but would hit Walküre. The first wish was granted but not the other.
The sub-chaser had fallen back to patrol abeam of Maroc and one salvo from Walküre fell around the cockle-shell craft. Smith held his breath then saw her pushing out of the smoke and spray. He said, “Make to the chaser: Walküre flying Turkish colours. Understand U.S.A. not at war with Turkey’.”
Inside a minute the signal yeoman gave him the answer. “From the chaser, sir: ‘Submit your last signal should be addressed to Walküre.’”
Smith laughed with the rest of them on the bridge. Whoever commanded the chaser had a cool head and a sense of humour. He asked, “Who is her captain?”
Henderson had already checked the list. “Lieutenant Petersen. That’s with an ‘e’, s-e-n, sir.” Smith nodded and Henderson added, “Suppose he’s Norwegian by origin.”
If he imagined a tall blond Viking, he was wrong.
*
Harry Petersen was dark and blue-chinned, short and broad. An ex-mate, he had been commissioned to command a submarine-chaser when the United States came into the war. He stood in the cramped wheelhouse of his little command now and scowled at the smoke that marked Walküre, hull-down over the horizon. She was no longer firing and Maroc’s guns fell silent, the long barrels lowering gently from their high elevation of maximum range.
Young Ensign Cleeve on the deck below turned to look up at Petersen, whom he worshipped, and laughed. “Well, it sure was exciting while it lasted. Goodbye Walküre.”
Petersen took the stubby pipe from his mouth, tamped down the smouldering tobacco with a horny forefinger and clamped his teeth around the stem again, sucked thoughtfully. “We might see her again.”
It was a procession now, Dauntless shadowing Walküre while Maroc and the chaser tried vainly to keep up. Blackbird was there, too, but three or four miles astern of Dauntless and hardly faster than the French battleship now. Petersen knew only one ship could keep up with Walküre and that was Dauntless. So he muttered, “Watch yourself,” and he was talking to the slim light cruiser, because Walküre would not tamely submit to being shadowed.
*
Ackroyd, filthy with soot and grime, came briefly to the bridge to report to Smith in person. “Fire’s out, sir. The shell didn’t penetrate, exploded on impact but the gun and its crew are a total loss.”
He did not go into details and Smith could imagine the scene of carnage around the 6-inch gun after a direct hit from one of those big shells. But it might have been worse. Suppose that shell had torn through the bare inch of steel that was all that armoured the deck and exploded below, leaving Dauntless a crippled hulk? Suppose an entire salvo —
He tried to black out the pictures from his mind because he had seen them all too often in reality during recent actions. And the loss of the gun crew was bad enough; he had known the men personally, as he knew every man aboard Dauntless and Blackbird. In the ear-ringing silence after the guns’ firing he experienced the too-familiar reaction. The excitement, the detached concentration that gripped him when in action, these were past now and the coldness crept in on him.
Jameson said, “Blackbird reports she’s making water but her pumps are coping and she’s making repairs, can steam fifteen knots.”
Smith nodded. Blackbird was three or four miles astern. Again he was uneasy about Pearce. Why had the man been so slow to react? He jammed his hands into his pockets, clenched tight out of sight. He saw Buckley at the back of the bridge, caught his knowing look before the big man could wipe it from his face and told him, deliberately casual: “See if you can get us some tea, please.”
He swung up into his chair behind the bridge screen. “Resume normal working.” This would be a long shadowing operation, he was certain. “But tell the masthead look-outs they’re to report if Walküre makes any change in course or speed.” That was only a reminder to keep the look-outs on their toes; they would report changes anyway. He could see Walküre, just a speck under her smoke, safely out of range, but from the look-out platform high above the bridge they would see her better. She was far enough ahead so he ordered an increase in speed. “Revolutions for twenty knots.” There would be changes of course and speed, he was certain of that. Dauntless with her advantage of speed could comfortably shadow Walküre like this indefinitely, but her captain had already shown he would not just accept that. They had to watch Walküre.
Through the morning the shadowing went on as Walküre ran eastward at around twenty knots. To the south lay Cyprus and to the north Turkey but both of them were hidden below the rim of the sea and the two ships ran down the middle of the hundred-mile-wide channel that lay between. First Maroc and the chaser were dropped, slipping down below the horizon. Blackbird, making better than her hoped-for fifteen knots was still steadily left astern, became only a smudge of smoke and then that too was gone. There was only Dauntless and Walküre tearing through the big seas. But soon the weather moderated, the wind easing, the sea falling away to a long swell and Blackbird wirelessed that she had worked up to twenty knots.
It was close to noon when the report came down from the masthead: “Enemy turning south.”
Smith saw her turn to starboard and she continued to turn until she was roaring back along her own wake. He ordered, “Starboard ten!”
Dauntless came around to show her stern to Walküre and for minutes the ships raced westward with the long gap still between them. Then Walküre turned once more, headed eastward again and Dauntless copied her neatly, the two ships almost turning together as if manoeuvring under a common command.
The pursuit went on. The sun was overhead now, glittering on the sea so it hurt the eyes. The German ship was tiny with distance and blurred by smoke and heat shimmer that made it tremble in the lenses of the glasses. Smith felt relaxed, able to smile easily
and there was a moment of wry humour when Cherrett brought a wireless signal and Smith read it.
He said, “It seems that report of Walküre being sighted off Crete was a mistake. It turned out to be Agamemnon.” She was a British pre-Dreadnought battleship.
Ackroyd snorted, “She don’t look anything like Walküre!”
Smith said straight-faced, “Maybe we saw Walküre a bit closer than they did.”
Ackroyd said into the laughter, “Too bloody true! This is close enough for me.”
But much later the bridge was quiet when Henderson emerged from the chartroom to say, “She could turn any time now, sir.”
He meant that Walküre had steamed past Cyprus and now could turn south towards Deir el Belah, Port Said and the convoy routes. They watched Smith because that would call for a decision from him. The night would cloak Walküre long before she reached any of those destinations and he dared not lose her thus. But he had anticipated this moment and only nodded acknowledgment of Henderson’s words and said, “She won’t turn. She’s headed for Alexandretta.”
There was silence on the bridge, then Ackroyd asked, “What would she want there?”
Smith shook his head. He didn’t know. There was nothing at Alexandretta for Walküre. A scattering of small shipping lay at the head of the Gulf by the port itself, one of them the big German freighter, Friedrichsburg, and she had swung to her anchor there since the start of the war in 1914. He said, “She was headed eastward when we ran into her. If she was bound for Port Said or the convoy routes, why should she go northabout around Cyprus?”
Ackroyd hazarded, “Maybe she was intending an attack on Cyprus and changed her mind when we turned up with Maroc.”
Smith did not believe it. Walküre had not broken out just to bombard the island. But what was she up to?
Walküre held on to the eastward and when the coast of Turkey was sighted off the port bow it was certain she was bound for Alexandretta. Ackroyd and Henderson looked at Smith, still sitting easily in the chair, and exchanged glances of puzzled respect behind his back. Midshipman Bright eyed his captain as if he had foreseen Walküre’s destination by second sight. She finally altered course but only to edge in towards the coast and Ackroyd said, “She’s holding close to the northern shore.” That was the Gulf of Alexandretta before them now, twenty miles wide. Thinking of the minefields Ackroyd added, “Of course.”
Smith nodded and ordered, “Revolutions for ten knots.”
Walküre was on a course to take her through the gap in the Turkish minefields that closed the mouth of the Gulf, hard by the northern shore, running under the protecting muzzles of the batteries there. Smith got down from the chair, stretched and leaned his arms on the screen to set the glasses to his eyes again. He watched the big cruiser haul away as Dauntless reduced speed, to shrink and finally disappear into the distance of the Gulf. It was twenty-five miles from the mouth to the head of it where lay the small port of Alexandretta itself.
He lowered the glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “Starboard five.” Dauntless started on a steady patrol across the entrance to the cleared channel. Walküre’s captain knew his way through those minefields but Smith did not. Besides, he was not going to fight Ackroyd’s ‘pocket-sized battleship’ anywhere, let alone in the constricted waters of the Gulf. That would be suicide.
Ackroyd said, “Well, she’s safe now.” He scowled into the Gulf.
Smith answered grimly, “We’ll see about that. Where’s Blackbird?”
“Twenty miles astern of us. She should be up in an hour or so.”
*
It was an hour before Blackbird heaved up over the horizon under a pall of smoke as her stokers laboured at the furnaces to keep her engines pounding. Meanwhile the signals had gone out telling the Allied navies that Walküre was trapped in the Gulf of Alexandretta and Dauntless held the door. Smith watched Blackbird come on with the huge hole torn in her hull just above the waterline. It was well for her that the sea had moderated at noon. In the heavy weather of the morning she had shipped water through that hole despite the hastily-rigged patch clapped on it. She could make her twenty knots only in fine weather and that was not good enough in a consort for a fast light cruiser like Dauntless. That hole had to be mended soon and he must have another talk with Pearce, who must pull himself together or —
He put Pearce from his mind, turned instead to what he had to do now. He knew Blackbird had had plenty of bombs left. So they would try ...
He ordered, “Make to Blackbird: ‘Prepare to launch two seaplanes.’”
Smith wanted to see Walküre, where she lay, whether she was anchored or still shifting about the Gulf. He needed the information for the future and the near future at that, because something would have to be done about Walküre; she could not be left as a threat, another German warship constantly to be guarded.
Another point: only twenty-four hours before Dauntless and Blackbird had been on a mission that would have brought them to this Gulf anyway. The Afrika Legion. That mission had been postponed but not abandoned.
“Blackbird acknowledges, sir.” That was Ackroyd.
“Tell Pearce that one of them is to reconnoitre the railway from Adana to the Bagcha tunnel. I’ll fly in the other up the gulf as observer and we’ll carry bombs.”
He walked out to the wing of the bridge as the signal was hoisted, broke out. He did not need the glasses to see that one seaplane had already been pushed out of the hangar on its trolley; Blackbird was close now.
Ackroyd appeared at his shoulder. “Wireless from Maroc, sir.” He handed the flimsy to Smith. Maroc estimated her arrival at the Gulf at 1900 hours. Ackroyd added cheerfully, “That’ll turn the key in the lock.”
That it would. Maroc might be slow but Walküre’s captain would not be bold or mad enough to steam out into the fire from the old French battleship’s 12-inch guns.
Ackroyd said, “Surely Walküre must have known she’d be bottled up in here. Or did she hope to get this far without being spotted?”
Smith pointed out, “She nearly did.”
Ackroyd blinked as he took it in, that if Dauntless had been an hour later at the rendezvous she would have steamed west in accordance with her orders because Walküre would already have passed and been on her way eastward to Alexandretta. A scouting aircraft from Cyprus might have found her, but only might.
Smith handed the flimsy back to Ackroyd. “Call away my boat.”
The gig headed for Blackbird. She was stopped now, one seaplane in the water, tethered by lines and boomed off from the ship’s side by the long poles. He could see the four sixty-five-pound bombs slung horizontally under the fuselage.
That was his. “Pull for the Short.”
The gig’s head shifted around. Looking between the men who tugged at the oars, Smith could see Flight Lieutenant Rogers in the plane’s pilot’s cockpit. He was a thin gangling young man, known to his brother fliers as ‘Captain Webb’, named after the famous Channel swimmer, because Rogers had only too often crashed in the sea and had himself to swim for it. Beyond him, aboard Blackbird, a second seaplane had been wheeled out of the hangar and was now hoisted from its trolley, pilot and observer already aboard. Delilah. He recognised Hamilton back from the sick bay, sitting in the observer’s cockpit, then he dragged on his helmet and his thatch of red hair was hidden. Cole was the pilot. Of course. Delilah was his darling and he and Hamilton were a team.
“Oars!” The gig slipped up to the Short and bow grabbed for and caught a strut, hauled the gig in alongside a boxy float, the sea breaking over it.
Smith stepped across the thwarts and over the side of the gig with a steadying hand clutching the strut. Rogers reached down a long arm from the pilot’s cockpit, a flying helmet in the outstretched hand and Smith snatched it, slung his cap into the boat and waved it away, yelling, “Lose that and I’ll stop your grog for the rest o’ the war!” He saw them laughing as he hauled himself up into the cockpit and the gig sheered away.
He h
ad to lift the map and sketchpad from the seat. The Lewis banged at the back of his head and he shoved it away as he plumped down into the cockpit. Rogers reached up and slipped the toggle release when Smith had settled himself in. The Short’s Maori engine fired, climbed from its growling tickover to a snarl and then a thunder as they ran across the sea. The vibration eased to a thrumming, the flying spray was gone, they were airborne and climbing, tilting on one wing as Rogers turned the Short and headed her for the Gulf of Alexandretta.
Rogers kept climbing, a slow climb, as the lumbering Short hauled slowly up into the blue and the Gulf opened out before them. All three sides of the long box of the Gulf were backed by mountains, to east and south the shore was thickly wooded and to the north clothed in brush. Smith glanced out to his left and behind and saw Delilah, a barely-moving speck inching towards the crags and Adana. Then he turned his attention ahead.
They were half way up the Gulf now and right ahead was the little town of Payas with its old castle and the sun catching a dome and a minaret. Down in the right-hand corner of the Gulf was the port of Alexandretta but the tiny harbour there was unimportant. Smith’s chart aboard Dauntless had showed thirty fathoms all up the Gulf except for close inshore so Walküre had plenty of room to manoeuvre and anchor ...
There she was! He leaned forward and thumped Rogers’s shoulder, pointed and Rogers nodded. Walküre lay near the head of the Gulf at anchor, smoke only wisping from her two funnels, and close by her lay the big freighter Friedrichsburg, which had been trapped here from the early days of the war. The picture of still ships on a glassy blue surface tilted on its side as Rogers banked the Short and turned towards Walküre. He was not wasting any time. They had climbed to a thousand feet or so and circling about would only lose them what little element of surprise, if any, was on their side.
The nose of the Short dipped as Rogers put her into a shallow dive. Smith rose in his seat to see the better, braced against the wind that tore at him, searching Walküre for signs of damage. He thought he saw where she might have been hit forward, between the fore-turret and the stem, but he could not be sure till they were closer.