by John Wingate
“Yes, sir. The engines make an infernal din,” replied Peter, and continued, “I don’t like this starboard quarter, sir — visibility is very low over there.”
“Yes, I know, Sub, but we must press on,” the Captain replied, gazing out to port.
Peter picked up his glasses and shifted his body round to starboard to start yet another sweep from aft. The wind from their own speed gently soughed past his head, the quiet swishing and gurgling of the water lapping along the swirling casing. It was so peaceful, so still. He shifted his weight to the other foot to readjust his binoculars and as he did so, he was aware of more phosphorescent trails far out to starboard.
These eels, he thought, confound them! — and then he froze where he stood. These two trails seemed broader than the others. They were dead straight and approaching on a steady bearing. Then he saw a third, equidistant from the rest.
His heart leapt, his hand outstretched to starboard.
“Torpedoes, green nine-oh, sir!” he cried.
Instinctively, he yelled down the voicepipe, “Hard-a-port!”
The Captain sprang to Peter’s side.
“Fish!” he muttered. “Dive! Dive! Dive!” — and his hand shot out to press the diving klaxon.
Peter’s eyes were mesmerised by the steady line of bubbles, now only a few hundred feet away. It seemed an eternity before Rugged started swinging to port. Slowly the jumping wire started to traverse the horizon line … slowly … so slowly…
“Oh God!” Peter whispered. “Will she never move?”
Then suddenly she started to swing swiftly to port, turning her stern towards the tracks, in order to comb them. Faster! Faster! But now the hideously bubbling tracks seemed to be on top of them. The lookouts jumped down the hatch, faces deathly pale and the sea hissed around the conning tower as she plummeted downwards.
Mesmerised, Peter stood transfixed. Closer … and closer! At any moment a sheet of flame would blast them to eternity. The first track ploughed remorselessly onwards and passed slowly up the port side. The second one would have them then! But it, too, slid slowly up the starboard side, whispering with a sibilant gurgle.
“Steady!” yelled Joe down the voicepipe to the helmsman and then he saw Peter standing there, eyes fastened on the tracks.
“What the devil are you doing here, Sub? Get below!” he yelled.
Peter sprang to life. As he dropped down the hatch, he saw the third track, and then water splashed down upon him, as he heard the upper lid shut with a bang!
“First clip on!” the Captain shouted. “One hundred and twenty feet. Full ahead together, steer two-three-oh. Shut off for depth-charging!”
In the Control Room, the sound of Number One’s orders rose above the clatter of operating valves. Men were still rushing to their stations, changing places silently and quickly. The whine of the main motors rose shrilly above the ordered confusion, as the telegraphs clanged their urgent summons to the Motor Room.
Still no pulverising explosion! The torpedoes must have run past them by now.
“Blow Q!” Number One’s voice jerked across the pregnant tension.
The roar of the escaping air, which vented inboard, reverberated throughout the boat, filling it with an acrid, stale stench.
“Sixty feet, sir.”
Down, down, she plunged steeply, gaining momentum at every second. Eighty — ninety feet.
“Shut main ballast Kingstons,” ordered Number One quietly. “Pump on ‘O’.”
One hundred — hundred and ten — hundred and twenty — hundred and twenty-five feet. The pointers started to slow their rate of descent, while the boat began to level out again.
“H.E. closing, red one-four-oh, sir,” sang out the black-haired Elliott from his Asdic corner.
“Group down, stop port,” ordered the Captain calmly, now standing astride near the canvas trunking. “Open main vents.”
Thunk! The vents opened above their heads. When the boat had shut off from depth-charging, all the bulkhead doors had banged shut, so that each compartment was now a small world on its own.
“Port ten.”
“Port ten, sir,” repeated the helmsman slowly, swinging over his wheel.
The drumming of the E-boat’s fast-running engines quickly increased up their port side.
“Hold your hats on!” grinned Joe.
Waiting was the worst part of this business — but still no depth charges. Nothing but the clattering and tinkling of the E-boat’s progress as it flashed overhead, quickly decreasing when it had passed over them.
And then it came! A sharp crack! crack! as two charges split the sea asunder, but well clear on their port side.
“Rotten shots!” murmured the Captain. “We’ll go right round and give them the slip.”
Hickey leaned over the chart, and indicated Rugged’s position to the Captain. “Another hour at ‘slow one’, sir, and then I reckon we can turn up to the northward around the island.”
“Thank you, Pilot, we’ll do that. I’m glad that this isn’t the Trapani First Eleven — those boys are good! But no doubt they will be after us soon.”
They were on the doorstep of the crack Italian destroyer flotilla, based upon Trapani to deal with the British submarines. Highly skilled and extremely efficient, the First Eleven were much respected by our submariners.
Still showering depth charges in all directions, and sore at losing their quarry, the hunting E-boats gradually dropped astern. Fainter and fainter came the jarring shocks from the exploding charges.
An hour later, Rugged surfaced two miles north-west of the island of Marittimo. This jagged rock, rearing menacingly from the placid depths, stood in sharp contrast against a moon-kissed sky. The moon hung like a tiny lantern above them, but the low haze still drifted in long, trailing wisps of greyness along the foreshore, hiding the bases of the mountains.
To Peter, now on watch again on the bridge, it did not seem four hours since he had stood transfixed by the terrifying sight of the hungry torpedo tracks.
An hour and a half before dawn, the clammy wet and the cold of approaching fog chilled his tired body. Joe stood by him for a while, staring into the opaqueness, with visibility now down to about half a mile. Sweeping his glasses along the landward horizon, Peter stiffened.
Surely the murkiness seemed thicker just there? Yes! He wiped his eyes. He searched again.
“U-boat, sir, red two-oh! We’re about sixty degrees on her starboard bow,” he yelled excitedly.
Joe’s body hurled itself at the voicepipe.
“Night alarm! Stand by all tubes!”
Once again, tired men hauled themselves to their stations. Tubes were brought to the ready and, within half a minute, the report “all tubes ready!” was passed up the voicepipe.
“Blowed if I can see her, Sub! Are you absolutely sure? Point with your hand.”
Peter, peering intently through his glasses, could just see the outline of a submarine drawing slowly across the torpedo sights.
“There, sir!” — his arm indicating the bearing.
The Captain strained his eyes along Peter’s outstretched arm.
“Yes, I think I can see her. You’ll have to fire, Sub. Starboard ten.”
The Captain quickly set the torpedo sight with his estimations of the target’s course and speed.
Straining his eyes hard, Peter could only just see the ghostly shape. It was more of a shadow than a definite outline and as Rugged swung slowly past the target again, Peter steadied the ship and waited for the sights to come on the target.
“Lay off ten degrees, Sub. Fire when your sights come on!”
“I can only just see her, sir. Stand by!”
“Stand by!” the Captain repeated down the voicepipe.
Peter was trembling with excitement while Joe, calm but swearing under his breath, waited impatiently by him, every moment an agony of suspense.
“Fire one!” yelled Peter, as the shadowy shape slid slowly across the sights.
> Joe waited two seconds. “Fire two,” he shouted. A further pause.
“Fire three! … Fire four!”
The jolt of torpedoes spilling out into the night shivered the boat.
“Down lookouts!”
An interminable wait for the explosion.
If I miss, Peter thought, I shall never be believed.
The ghostly apparition slowly vanished into the murkiness.
“Port twenty,” the Captain snapped, his eyes meeting Peter’s across the bridge.
Peter felt himself flushing with shame, and looked the other way just as a distant orange flash, followed by an intense golden glow which suffused the greyness of the dawn, burst upon their consciousness. After a slight pause, an ear-splitting rumble shook the eastern horizon.
“Well done, Sub!” shouted the Captain, beaming all over his face. “Dive, dive, dive!”
Rugged slowly disappeared into the greyness, leaving only a threshing swirl to mark her lethal whereabouts.
Six hours later, Rugged was at periscope depth and in position off Cape St. Vito. To the eastward, the familiar precipice rose vertically from the black depths like the blade of a knife. At five-mile intervals, a semicircle of submarines lay in wait for the Italian battle fleet. Two miles from the Cape, Reliant lay dived. Next to her, Arkwright in Restless, Rugged’s easterly next-door neighbour. Then Rugged, Rapid and, at the western extremity, Renegade.
The Captain was at the periscope, checking their position. He had left Elliott, the Asdic operator, crouching over his set in the far corner of the Control Room.
“Make the challenge on a bearing from red six-oh to red one-two-oh.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
With his left hand, Elliott, an open-faced man from Norfolk, slowly turned the black knob, step by step. With his right, he transmitted a letter in Morse code. He then listened intently. He repeated these actions until he reached red one-oh-five, when his back stiffened. All eyes fastened upon him, for it was always fascinating to feel that there were friends in contact with them, within a few miles. Somehow, the depths seemed more hospitable.
“Red one-oh-five, submarine making ‘Q’ for Queenie, sir,” Elliott reported.
Joe, hands thrust into the pockets of his khaki shorts and leaning with his back against the Fruit Machine, shifted his legs and nodded.
“That’s Rapid. Make the same on the starboard side, between green eight-oh and one-one-oh.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” replied Elliott, a faint smile of pride on his raw-boned face.
Twiddling the black knob quickly, he went around to the other side, and started transmitting step by step, pausing only to listen for reply, while the Captain, with a faintly bored expression, shifted his weight to the other foot and waited for the answer to his challenge.
Slowly Elliott swept through the whole sector.
“They must be asleep in Restless. Try again, Leading Seaman Elliott. This time, increase your arc to green four-oh and green one-four-oh.”
Deliberately, precisely, Elliott swept and transmitted.
“No reply, sir.”
Joe uncrossed his gangling legs and heaved himself upright. He scratched the side of his head and came over to Elliott’s Asdic cabinet.
“Try again,” he said quietly, leaning over the man.
Once more there was no reply.
“Humph! — odd,” growled Joe. “Let’s go a bit nearer their billet and see if that will wake them up. Starboard ten.”
Twenty minutes later, now on the edge of her billet, Rugged resumed her course.
“Try again.”
Elliott repeated his drill, his body stiffening as he reached green eight-oh.
“Green eight-oh, sir. Submarine transmitting letter ‘Y’ for ‘Yorker’.”
“Thank you, check the transmission.”
Elliott bent low over the dimly lit instrument, his right hand adjusting his headphones.
“Checked, sir. Submarine transmitting ‘Y’ for ‘Yorker’.”
“Odd! That’s Reliance’s letter.”
Joe’s face was thoughtful, a slight pucker tracing a deep line between his jutting eyebrows.
Elliott crouched, still waiting.
“Submarine transmitting challenge, sir.”
“Make the reply,” ordered Joe wearily.
On the ebonite key, Elliott slowly and deliberately tapped the letter ‘F’. He listened intently as three ‘R’s came back to him from the depths.
“Reply acknowledged, sir,” he reported, half turning on his wooden seat to meet the questioning eyes of his Captain.
“Strange, very strange,” muttered Joe as he crossed over to the chart table. He was worried. A horrible suspicion, a wrenching doubt tore his mind. Swiftly the news swept through the boat.
Restless was missing from her station.
CHAPTER 8
Tragedy
The major campaign of the North African landings has now passed into history.
The enormous Allied convoys assembled off the North African coast on the same day that Rugged took up her position off Cape St. Vito. At the western half of the North African continent, the ambitious plan to link up with the British Eighth Army on the other side now rolled into action.
To the five British submarines lurking off Cape St. Vito, Operation ‘Torch’ was a disappointment, only Reliance and Rugged being presented with targets.
In the early hours of the morning following the African landings, an Italian cruiser and six destroyers swept round the Cape. Inshore of Rugged, Reliance scored one hit on the stern of the cruiser, which promptly tried to turn back to safer waters. Rugged took up the action where Reliance, saturated by the depth-charging from the counter-attacking destroyers, had left off. It was a most nerve-racking attack in glassy calm conditions for Rugged, in trying to sink the cruiser and to finish the job Reliance had started, sank an escorting destroyer which crossed the torpedo tracks at the wrong moment.
Two days later, tired but jubilant, Rugged was recalled from patrol, with only one torpedo remaining and was the first to enter Lazaretto harbour, under the protective walls of Malta.
As she turned in a wide sweep to come alongside the catamarans, the lonely figure of the Captain of the flotilla could be seen waiting to welcome them back from patrol. Joe Croxton was surprised when he did not receive the familiar wave for he had sunk a U-boat and a destroyer, as the flapping Jolly Roger plainly indicated.
Joe looked down from the conning tower upon the white-clad bulk of his Captain standing astride upon the pontoon. The venerated figure smiled quizzically up at him.
“Well done, Joe,” he said.
There was something in the way in which he said it, however, that set Joe’s heart racing and, looking carefully at him again, Joe detected an unaccustomed air of sadness, a resignation in the stoop of the broad shoulders.
Wearily, Joe swung himself over the edge of the conning tower and dropped down to the casing with a clatter, to walk off the bouncing plank which served as a ‘brow’.
“Well, Joe, come and have a drink,” greeted Captain ‘S’, and turning, they both walked slowly ashore over the thin line of bobbing pontoons.
Twenty minutes later, as Peter was collecting his gear to go ashore, a messenger, cap tucked under his arm, coughed discreetly and spoke to him.
“Captain’s compliments, sir, and would you report to Captain ‘S’ as soon as possible?”
Overhearing the message, Number One looked up towards Peter.
“You lucky old devil, Sub! That’ll be about the U-boat,” he grinned.
“Much more likely to be a rocket — I’m more used to them,” Peter replied, brushing his hair and buckling the clips on his shorts. Giving them a hitch, he hurried out of the Ward Room, clambered his way through the litter and confusion of men hungry to get ashore, and clattered up the fore-hatch ladder.
“Good to get ashore again!” he muttered to himself, as his feet touched the Maltese sandstone, his eyes blinking and
dazzled by the unaccustomed brightness. However hard he tried to control it, his heart had started to thump faster, so that he could hear his pulse pounding in his eardrums. He hated interviews with Senior Officers, feeling as if he were reporting outside the headmaster’s study again. But this was a pleasant visit, he told himself; for, after all, there were not many Sub-Lieutenants who had sunk a U-boat, and he did feel rather proud of it in his secret moments.
The large white door with its rusty hinges barred his way. “Captain ‘S’, Tenth Submarine Flotilla”, the white-lettered nameplate proudly announced. To one side was the open window of Captain ‘S’’s cabin and the low drone of conversation drifted through the aperture.
“Here goes,” sighed Peter, taking off his cap and squashing it under his left arm. He knocked softly.
“Come in!”
After the dazzling whiteness outside, Peter was surprised by the darkness of the bare sandstone room. For the rest of his days, Peter never forgot this scene.
A bottle and glasses stood on a table in the middle of the room. A green mat failed dismally to lend comfort to the cold, flagstoned floor. A white chest of drawers, hairbrush and comb neatly in the middle of its shining surface, furnished the far wall, while two wicker chairs were drawn up by the open window. A doorless opening led through to the small bedroom. The only lighting, as throughout the whole base, seemed to be an Admiralty-pattern candle, stuck by its own grease on to the upturned lid of an empty tobacco tin which stood squarely between the brush and comb on the chest of drawers.
Captain ‘S’ smiled at Peter, motioning him to join them. Joe stood next to him and each held an empty glass in his hand.
“Gin, Sub?”
“Thank you, sir.”
Slowly Captain ‘S’ poured them a drink. Peter could have cut the silence with a knife. He took a gulp and was thankful to feel the unaccustomed warmth flow through him.