by John Wingate
Peter sighed contentedly. Wish all these convoys were like this, he thought, as he stretched his legs which were stiff with the inaction and the cold, even though he was wearing his sheepskin boots.
A prolonged roar rumbled from ahead, reverberating across the stillness, and Peter’s head jerked upwards as he glued the binoculars to his eyes. A dull glow flickered from somewhere ahead. Then, as he peered, a shattering explosion from the head of the starboard column split the brooding silence. Another followed in quick succession. In the port column a huge spout of water leaped upwards.
“Mines! We’ve run into our own minefield,” Peter gasped.
Men had already appeared from below and were manning their guns, but before Peter could press the Night Alarm buzzer, a shock hit the hull of the little Chaser as another ship blew up in the port column, only half a mile distant. A searing orange flame drenched the sky as Peter focused his glasses on the spot, but there was nothing to be seen; nothing but a frothing, heaving mass of water.
“My God!” he whispered. “How horrible!”
There was nothing left, nothing.
“Stop both engines!” Peter shouted down the voicepipe.
The little ship lost way and glided gently to a stop. Peter dashed to the chart table and ran his eye over the thin pencil line that represented his ship’s position.
“We’re in the swept channel,” he argued, “… strange!”
The truth suddenly hit him. Athelstan had been hoodwinked. The ships which she had challenged had, in fact, been enemy mine-laying destroyers. They had laid their ‘eggs’ ahead of the convoy and had streaked, like sinister assassins, back to France.
Urgently the loudspeaker crackled again.
“All ships, repeat all ships, act independently, and proceed via swept channel to Portsmouth. Enemy have laid mines. Chaser 25 recover survivors. Acknowledge.”
“Pretty obvious,” Peter snapped, as he reached for the W/T transmitter. “Message received,” he said.
The remaining ships of the convoy were already growing smaller as the distance widened, black smoke now pouring from their funnels as the convoy desperately forged ahead to clear the danger area. Then he noticed that the last ship in the starboard column had started to haul out of line to port.
She’s trying to pick up survivors, thought Peter. He moved to the voicepipe.
“Full ahead both!”
The little ship tremored as she gathered way and the pulse from her diesels pounded in the Engine Room so that the ship shook.
This ought to trigger off any remaining mines, Peter thought anxiously. I’m sitting on top of a minefield and they may be ‘acoustics’. Not a pleasant thought this, as diesel ships were the most vulnerable.
The Chaser closed the obstinate collier which was now two hundred yards on her starboard beam and Peter picked up the microphone of the loudhailer.
“Get back into position, please. Get back into station,” he ordered.
“Blooming well get out of my way, I’m picking up survivors!” a Geordie voice yelled back across the water. Peter hesitated as he once more picked up the microphone but as he did so, an explosion like the crack of doom rent the air and a searing sheet of heat sent him reeling against the compass. His head spun as the shock struck the sides of the little Chaser, so that she listed suddenly from the impact.
A curtain of red and green flames leaped skywards, roaring into the night. Peter staggered and clutched the bridge-side, as into his consciousness was indelibly stencilled a sight he would never forget. The bows of the collier had disappeared and where they once had been a seething mass of debris and foam boiled and hissed. The ship’s funnel leaned drunkenly for’d. Her stern was cocked out of the water, so that her propellers still threshed the air with slow beats, while the screams of dying men wailed through the night.
“Help me! For God’s sake, save us!” came a desperate cry across the water from a stricken man in the port column as he flailed the water.
“Hard-a-port, full ahead together! Steer for that man in the water, Coxswain.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the deep voice answered.
“Might as well save him, Number One, this other ship’s a goner!” Peter yelled. “Stand by to pick him up, port side-to.” As the Chaser closed on the pathetic figure struggling in the water, the desperate cries of other drowning men drifted across the waters from all sides.
“Stop both, stand by to recover!” but, as the Chaser went full astern to halt alongside the dark head bobbing in the oily sea, the man disappeared with only a ripple marking his grave.
Sickened, Peter turned away.
“Two men, starboard beam, sir,” yelled the starboard lookout, pointing with outstretched arm.
“Hard-a-starboard, slow ahead together!” and the Chaser slid alongside another group of struggling men.
“Catch this line and come alongside the scrambling net,” yelled a voice on the fo’c’sle. A heaving-line snaked through the air to plop across the struggling men who grabbed it, gasping and spluttering. Gently, slowly they were pulled alongside and strong hands snatched them from the hungry waters.
“Look at that, sir!” the starboard lookout yelled.
Peter’s head jerked.
The stern of the doomed ship was barely a hundred yards away hanging poised between sky and water and looming some fifty feet in the air. She was settling fast, ready for her final plunge.
From the port quarter of the looming transom, a man hung head downwards, caught by his feet in the bight of a rope. He was swinging to and fro with the slow motion of the swell and trying frantically to clutch the rope and heave himself upwards to get back to the slanting deck. His body jerked like a marionette on a string. A terrifying silence gripped the scene, as men watched the pitiful struggles of the doomed man. Gasping sobs floated across the diminishing space of water that separated the two wallowing ships.
“I can’t let this happen, even if she takes us with her,” Peter whispered as he leapt for the voicepipe.
“Slow ahead port, hard-a-starboard!”
The Chaser slid in under the counter of the towering transom. The dark mass hung above the little ship’s fo’c’sle, blacking out the sky. Slowly, foot by foot, the Chaser’s bow edged nearer. Peter crouched low over the voicepipe, conning her with every ounce of skill and concentration he possessed.
“Midships, slow astern together.”
So close were they, that he could hear the swishing gurgle of water as it lapped along the stern of the merchant ship and he could plainly see the rusty rudder jammed to port. The black mass hung and plunged in the swell fifteen, ten feet above the Chaser’s bows.
“She’s going, sir!” yelled a voice from the fo’c’sle.
“Grab him, go on, grab him! Cut the rope!” Peter shouted.
He could bear to look no longer but waited for the rending crash as the ship plunged down upon them.
Frantic hands grappled for the dangling body. Stretching over the guard rails, they clutched and reached again.
“Knife! No! Cut, cut!” was all Peter could hear from his helpless position on the bridge. A dull gleam glimmered on the fo’c’sle.
“Astern! Go astern, sir,” screamed a man from the fo’c’sle.
Peter glanced over the bridge. A crumpled figure sprawled across the guard rails.
“Full astern together!” Peter yelled down the voicepipe. His knuckles showed white in the pale moonlight. The engines coughed into life. The huge mass plunged and slid downwards, towards the Chaser’s fo’c’sle.
The Chaser quivered as she gathered sternway; faster, faster, she glided and pulled away. Metal screeched as it tore apart, but as suddenly the sickening sound ceased. The little ship shook herself and leapt astern as she came free, like a cork from a bottle.
“Stop both!”
The Chaser lost way, as her company watched the death throes of the collier. Already nothing but the counter remained. For a moment it hung there, her ‘Red Duster’ hangin
g limp but proud in the still night. Then, with a rush, she went. The water boiled for an instant, debris shooting to the surface, and she was gone.
The port lookout, a young seaman of eighteen, was vomiting over the side. It was all Peter could do not to keep him company, but, mercifully, more urgent problems demanded his immediate concentration.
Apart from the pathetic flotsam which marked the watery resting place of these brave ships, the silver ocean stretched before him. They were now alone, dependent upon themselves. They drifted upon the surface of the treacherous minefield and there would be little hope for them if they touched off a mine now.
Peter checked his doubtful position on the chart.
“Slow ahead together,” he ordered.
The Chaser gingerly slid over the placid sea for another five miles. Not until Beachy Head was abeam to starboard, gleaming and white in the moonlight, did Peter relax and send the men below. Somehow, when floating on top of a gunpowder keg, it felt better to stay up on deck, because the cramped quarters of a mess deck were depressing and coffin-like.
It was now four o’clock in the morning and already the first steely light of dawn streaked the eastern horizon.
“Fall out action stations. Go to cruising stations, Number One.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Orders for the morning?”
Peter shook his sleep-hungry head and suppressed a yawn.
“E.T.A. Portsmouth, 0730, Number One. We’ll have breakfast off the Nab Tower, weather and Huns permitting. Good night, Number One, or rather, good morning!”
Jamie turned for the bridge ladder.
“… and, Number One…”
“Yes, sir?”
“I would like to see the man we took off. I’ll see him later on.”
“Yes, sir.”
“… and, Number One…”
“Yes, sir?”
“Thank you, and well done.”
“Good night, sir.”
“Good morning!”
The Nab Tower jutted like a beckoning finger from the sea off Culver Cliff. The Chaser curved round and chugged up to Portsmouth Harbour. In the entrance she turned hard-a-port and glided up Haslar Creek, past the empty Submarine Base.
“Thank Heaven I don’t serve in those things,” Peter joked to his First Lieutenant.
Jamie was staring through his glasses.
“The ambulance is waiting, sir.”
On the jetty at the end of the creek, the red-crossed ambulance stood waiting for its usual guests.
The Chaser came neatly alongside and the injured men were gently put ashore in stretchers. Peter looked down from the bridge. On the fo’c’sle his weary men waited to shove off.
“Cast off for’d!”
Ten minutes later the little ship moored inside the basin of the Submarine Base, the Chasers’ operational headquarters.
As Peter reached the upper deck, he met his First Lieutenant who was looking extraordinarily embarrassed.
“Well, what is it, Number One? I am going below to get my head down,” snapped Peter irritably, as waves of tiredness flowed over him. He was untoggling his duffel coat and peeling off his clothes and could not reach his bunk quickly enough.
“I am afraid I have made a frightful bog of it, sir. We have still got the man you took off on board,” Jamie added nervously. “He requests to see you.”
“Confound it, Number One, he should have gone ashore with the others. There’s nothing the matter with him.”
“That’s the point, sir; he wants to stay with us.”
“For crying out loud, Number One, it’s time you woke up! I can’t possibly see him. Send him ashore.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“All right.”
Peter started for’d for his cabin hatch. He paused, scratching his head. “I’ve never refused to see a man yet,” he murmured to himself. He took a pace backwards. “I’ll see him now, Number One,” he added wearily. “Send the Coxswain up with him.”
On the quarterdeck of this little ship a strange scene was now enacted — one which Peter did not know was to affect the course of his whole life. A group of four men mustered around the depth charges as the Coxswain, an elderly man, started the proceedings by reading from a scrap of paper.
“Able Seaman Hawkins, sir. Requests to see the Captain privately.”
The young Captain lifted his head to search the face of the requestman who stood before him. The seaman was not dressed as requestmen usually are. He had no cap. His blond hair was matted, covered with oil and grime, and he was unshaven. He was barefooted and he wore a dirty duffel coat. A man in his early thirties, his face was humorously lined, but it was not soft. Deep wrinkles creased the corners of his steady blue eyes which met fearlessly those of Sinclair.
“Well, what is it?” Peter snapped.
Able Seaman Hawkins was no orator. He shifted his feet and coughed, “Well, sir, it’s like this ’ere, sir…”
The First Lieutenant grunted. He looked at his watch impatiently.
“Yes?” Peter asked.
“Well, sir — it’s … well, sir.”
“For Pete’s sake, get on with it, man! What do you want to say?”
The man made an enormous effort and then the flood broke.
“It’s not right for me, sir, to see you like this, I know, sir. But I’m bloomin’ grateful for what you did, sir. You risked the ship an’ all, sir, and…”
“Yes, yes, go on,” said Peter, embarrassed.
“… I want to stay with you, sir, and join your perishin’ little ship.”
Peter coughed and tried to suppress a smile.
“There, sir, I’ve said it. Some’ow it’s difficult to say these things. But I do want to stay with you, sir, if you’ll ’ave me. You see, it’s ’ard to explain, but I could be a good ’and to you, sir.”
A lump had come into Peter’s throat. He looked across the creek on this beautiful, crisp morning and then turned to his First Lieutenant.
“Are we down on seamen’s rate in the complement, First Lieutenant?”
Number One hesitated warily, while he looked at the dishevelled seaman.
“Yes, sir, we are two short.”
Peter paused.
“It’s irregular, you know, Able Seaman Hawkins, and not catered for in King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions.”
“Yes, sir. I know, sir.”
There was a long pause.
“But I will see what I can do. Stand over this request, Coxswain. Meanwhile, kit up this rating and let him go for’d.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Stand over! About turn, double march!”
The traditional ceremony was over. The incongruous figure turned about and shuffled for’d in his bare feet, followed by a puzzled Coxswain.
Peter turned to his First Lieutenant.
“I’ll keep this man, Number One. Fix it!”
“Yes, sir. I hope he turns out all right,” Jamie replied doubtfully.
Peter looked at him.
“I have a hunch we shall see more of him. Thank you for making such a bog of it, after all, Number One. That’s the way to get promotion!”
“Yes, sir,” Jamie smiled ruefully.
Peter wearily strolled for’d to his cabin, a faint smile on his lips.
Able Seaman William Hawkins had joined the ship’s company of Chaser 25.
CHAPTER 2
No Quarter!
The incident that was to alter two men’s lives took place on the following night. Chaser 25 returned to Portsmouth for a night’s leave, and at four-thirty that evening fifteen unrecognisably smart men marched ashore in Gosport.
For those men left on board, there was to be no leave during this spell in port because they had to man the guns and deal with any possible damage. It was Peter’s turn for shore-going, as Jamie and he had made a rule between themselves that one of them should always go ashore, because otherwise their minds became stale with nothing to relax the tension. Even wandering ashore during the bl
itzes afforded a change of scene, for one could always meet a friend in Alverstoke and go fire-fighting after the first incendiary raid. Peter left Jamie and strolled ashore by himself, khaki gas mask slung over his left shoulder.
As he strolled through the blackout, the sirens wailed to announce the first wave of enemy bombers and, almost before he could decide what to do, the first bombs were striking Gosport and white flashes flickered along the dark outline of the roofs. Steel-blue pencils of light swung into the night sky, as the searchlights probed helplessly. Already the air was thick with smoke and dust from the devastation of the first wave. Over Portsmouth, the angry flames were reflected in the clouds of billowing smoke, so that the whole horizon pulsed crimson.
“Might as well go fire-fighting,” Peter decided as he turned back towards Gosport. “Looks like being a busy night.”
The empty streets narrowed as the dingy tenement houses huddled together, almost as if for comfort on such a wicked night and as he walked on, the second wave of bombers winged low over the streets. He heard the drone, looked upwards and saw three Heinkel 113’s caught in a searchlight cone.
How wicked those black crosses look! Peter thought as he lengthened his stride.
Another formation followed closely on the tails of the first wave. Peter heard the ‘whee-ee!’ of the bombs and then the sticks exploded a few hundred yards ahead. A white glare gleamed before him, and then suddenly the remnants of the houses flickered into orange flames as the incendiaries danced into points of vivid light.
As Peter ran towards the stricken houses, the crackling of the flames formed a background to the screams of the trapped women and children. He vaulted the battered fence of the last house in the row.
One wall was sagging dangerously, and the roof toppled drunkenly outwards. From the windows of the top floor a yellow glow flickered. The curtains were strips of fire and, from above, Peter heard the cries of a child, lonely and afraid. He charged the front door which gave to the weight of his strong shoulders. A wall of smoke and heat hit him as he staggered inwards, so that he choked and gasped for air. He dashed blindly forward until his feet stumbled against the wooden stairs.