Even though he wasn’t running the Wolf Rock, he could make his weight felt.
Harrison sighed: continence was not easy. When the ship had passed down the Firth of Clyde under a heavy sky and was bringing up the Pladda Light and the great rock of Ailsa Craig on her starboard bow, the order came from the bridge to secure the anchors for sea. When the ready-use anchor had been lifted from the waterline and hoisted to the hawse-pipe, when the slips had been secured and the bottle-screws drawn tight, Harrison left the fo’c’sle and reported to Captain Champney.
‘Fo’c’sle secured for sea, sir.’
‘Thank you, Harrison. I’m remaining on the bridge at least until we’ve rendezvoused with the carriers.’
That was as expected. Harrison asked, ‘Boat drill, sir?’
‘Yes, please. I was about to give the order. Exercise abandon ship stations — and see to it that those Wrens are fully instructed.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Harrison turned away and clattered down the ladder. As he reached the boat deck Champney gestured to Logan, Second Officer, whose bridge watch it was, and a button was pressed in the wheelhouse. The alarm rattlers, sounding boat stations, blared throughout the ship and men began turning out from below carrying cork lifejackets. Most of them, expectant of the routine exercise, had already dressed in a variety of warm clothing. With them came the WRNS contingent, warned in advance by First Officer Jean Forrest. They assembled at their allotted stations and Harrison, moving from group to group with the ship’s third officer and the bosun, carried out the Master’s instructions carefully. The set of lifejackets round the chest was of paramount importance.
By dawn the rendezvous with the carriers had been made, the huge dark shapes coming down on the convoy from the north and taking up their positions astern of the merchant ships and ahead of the Flag moving along in rear. The concourse of ships, not yet taking up the zigzag pattern that would help to protect them against enemy submarines when farther out, proceeded on course to leave Malin Head in County Donegal behind them. It would be from Malin Head that the convoy would take its final departure from the British Isles.
IV
The routeing orders had followed the usual procedure for ships bound in wartime for the Strait of Gibraltar: first of all they would steam well out into the North Atlantic until they were beyond the range of the German bombers based in Occupied France; then they would turn south, and finally, when well down towards the South Atlantic, east for Cape St Vincent and the entry to the Mediterranean — or mare nostrum as Signor Mussolini presumptuously called it. Kemp was taking a look at the chart when a message came from the ship’s radio room, manned now by naval telegraphists on the Commodore’s staff as well as by the Wolf Rock’s own Marconi operators. The message was brought to Kemp by his assistant, Sub-Lieutenant Finnegan.
Finnegan said, ‘Starting early, sir.’ He handed over a naval message form, the brief Admiralty cypher broken down into plain language. Kemp read it, frowning. The signal was addressed to the Flag, repeated Commodore; and it indicated that a U-boat group was believed to have left the occupied port of Brest and was heading into the North Atlantic. The pack’s course could cross that of the convoy.
That was all. Kemp said, ‘Too much to expect that the Admiralty could give a more precise indication of their damn course and speed, I suppose!’
‘Crystal balls, sir —’
‘All right, Finnegan. Frankly, it doesn’t add much, does it? The U-boats are always out, it’s nothing new.’
‘Any action, sir?’
‘Not from me! The Admiral may decide to alter course, I suppose. We’ll just have to wait for him to react.’ Kemp left the chart room and walked out to the port wing of the bridge where, in an increasing wind, Captain Champney was standing looking back towards the last of the land and the waves battering against the great mass of the Bloody Foreland and, closer, the heaving hulls and flight decks of the aircraft-carriers with the massive 16-inch turrets of the Nelson astern. Kemp passed the message form over and Champney grunted. His response was much the same as Kemp’s had been. In wartime, you got used to such signals. Intelligence was often wrong; you made a mental note and carried on until such time as the intelligence grew more precise or the Asdics of the naval escort came up with an echo from beneath the sea.
Within the next five minutes a signalling projector began winking from the Nelson’s flag deck. Aboard the Commodore’s ship the signalman of the watch read it off and reported to Kemp.
‘From the Flag to Commodore repeated escort commanders, sir, convoy will maintain course and speed. Follow zigzag commencing on the executive.’
‘Acknowledge,’ Kemp said. ‘Then make to all merchant ships, zig-zag pattern as indicated in NCS orders will be followed on the executive signal from the Flag.’
The executive came quickly, the hoisting close-up of a pennant flying at the dip from the starboard upper yard of the Nelson. Kemp watched with interest and some trepidation as the merchant ships, each with its own handling characteristics, began the turn to starboard on the first leg of the zigzag. At such moments collisions could occur, although by this stage of the war the merchant shipmasters had become more accustomed to sailing in convoy. This time there were the usual hair-raising moments but on the whole the initial manoeuvre was expeditiously carried out. For some fifteen minutes the convoy would maintain the course and then alter to another leg; and so it would go on throughout most of the voyage.
Below in her cabin First Officer Forrest felt the list of the ship as course was altered, heard the chatter of the telemotor steering gear as the helm was put over for what seemed like a long time. Fear struck, imagination taking hold: the ship was moving away from a U-boat attack...but if that had been the case, then surely there would have been a warning from the bridge? Of course there would: she remained in her bunk but sat up and stretched out towards the cork lifejacket hanging on a hook behind her door. As she did so there was a knock; she went back beneath the bedclothes.
‘Who is it?’ she called.
‘Botley, ma’am. Tea up, as they say.’
‘Oh...come in.’ Botley was the Captain’s steward; he had presented himself when she had embarked, telling her that he was to be looking after her as well as Captain Champney and the Commodore. Botley entered, a tray balanced on the palm of his hand.
‘Good morning, ma’am.’
‘Good morning, Botley.’
‘Comfortable night, ma’am?’
‘Yes, thank you. Are we...is everything all right?’
‘All right, ma’am?’ Botley looked surprised. ‘Course it is, ma’am. Was you worried, like?’
‘We seemed to alter course just now.’
‘The zigzag, ma’am. And something of a near miss. Possible collision, but nothing to fret about, we’re still afloat.’
‘I see. Thank you, Botley.’
The steward placed the tea tray on a shelf by Jean Forrest’s bunk. ‘Anything else you want, any time, just ring, ma’am.’
‘Thank you,’ she said again. Botley took a quick look around the cabin as though establishing likely female requirements in his mind, then left. Jean Forrest drank the tea and shuddered: it was very strong and made with condensed milk — filthy! She was forced to leave it. Botley would need instruction in making tea. In the meantime Botley was reporting on WRNS officers to the ship’s chief steward, Jock Campbell.
‘The boss one...proper bleedin’ virginal. Sheet right up to ‘er chin, hiding the scrag I reckon. Toffee-nosed with it. The other two, they’re not so bad. Smiled, would you believe it?’ Botley paused. ‘Got any tips, have you, Chief?’
‘What sort o’ tips?’
‘How to tidy up a lady’s boodwar.’ Botley had come to sea with the war, had never attended upon the Master’s wife. Campbell on the other hand had been a bedroom steward in the liners, years before.
He said, ‘Main thing’s tact. Things you don’t notice, women’s things. Knickers and that. Not that you’re likely to see
any. When they do leave knickers around, it’s an invitation and you don’t look the romantic sort.’ He added with a wink, ‘No offence, eh?’
‘Oh, bollocks,’ Botley said. Short and fat, too much gut, no hair and a squint. Each look in the mirror was torture. No, he wouldn’t expect to find any knickers if Campbell was right. Botley went on his way, humming a tune. Never mind what he looked like, he had a wife at home and he was basically a cheery soul and if you couldn’t get the odd popsie there was always booze when you got to port somewhere. It was a hymn tune that he hummed but the words were not those of any verses in the hymn book. There was a fantasy in his mind: if the Jerries made an attack at night there would be some interesting sights, twenty-odd wrens in nighties. Sometimes, the sea life held its compensations.
Botley went out on deck to take a look at the heaving sea. Glancing aft, he saw the ship’s surgeon, old Dr O’Dwyer, puking his guts up over the side. Botley tut-tutted: the quack wasn’t doing his first voyage to sea, far from it; the puke was due to the night before. Botley had become accustomed to ship’s surgeons, anyway to Dr O’Dwyer, since the Wolf Rock had been fitted out with passenger cabins — Board of Trade, or rather, now, Ministry of War Transport regulations required a ship carrying more than twelve passengers to have a doctor on Articles. Dr O’Dwyer had been dredged up from some scrapheap or other to fulfill the requirements and had been glad enough to have the chance once again of imbibing duty free whisky. Rumour had it that the doc had been given the bum’s rush from a liner company in pre-war days after throwing up over the feet of the chairman of the line at a sailing-night cocktail party in Tilbury.
Botley studied the sea again. It was grey and nasty and heaving; not rough enough to send the U-boats deep and give the convoy a degree of safety. It was, in fact, good U-boat weather; just rough enough to hide the feather of spray that would show up the presence of a periscope. Botley gave a sudden shiver: they had a long way to go and most of it bloody dangerous, especially until they got to Port Said and the Suez Canal.
Even after that: the Jerries were everywhere, and if not the Jerries then the Japs, coming out across the Bay of Bengal from Burma to be a nasty threat to the waters around the naval base of Trincomalee. And all those troops in the liners: prime targets which, come to think of it, was probably why the girls hadn’t been aboard the liners. Too risky. Same with the escort: more prime targets. The Wolf Rock was perhaps regarded as the safest bet even though she carried the Convoy Commodore. In that thought lay a little hope, and Botley cheered up, pulled his yellow duster from a pocket of his blue serge trousers, and went through the watertight door into the officers’ quarters just as Jean Forrest began emerging from her cabin. She nipped back in and banged the door shut.
Botley grinned to himself he’d seen a dressing-gown and fancied he’d frustrated a visit to the lavatory. He had just reached the Captain’s pantry when there was a racket from the telemotor steering gear and the Wolf Rock heeled over sharply, much more sharply than would have been the case with a mere shift as per zigzag.
THREE
I
It had been Yeoman of Signals Lambert who had spotted it — the trained eye of a long-serving signalman beating the lookouts to it. He could be wrong but he reported immediately.
‘Periscope on the starboard beam, sir!’
All the officers on the bridge trained their binoculars on the bearing. They saw nothing. Kemp said, ‘So soon?’ They were scarcely away from the land. Then he picked it up: drawing a little aft now, slap in the middle of the convoy and nothing reported from the escort: that tell-tale feather of water, almost impossible to be sure in the breaking seas, could have been anything really.
Then Champney saw something else. ‘Torpedo trail, or I’m damn sure it is!’
It was impossible to be sure in fact, but Kemp didn’t hesitate. ‘Hard-a-port, Captain!’ They had to turn away, present the smaller target of their stern to the oncoming torpedo if that was what it was. ‘Yeoman, make the warning to all ships, masthead light.’ Over the harsh noise of the action alarm Kemp heard Champney passing the order to close all watertight doors and Finnegan shouting down to the guns’ crews as they manned their weapons. Then at last the reports came, a little late, from the Naval escort: the Asdics had picked up the echo, just the one. The U-boat, Kemp thought, must have been right down deep and had come up fast in a lucky spot. He awaited the outcome helplessly: the turn away was all that could have been done. He let out a long sigh of relief as the track of the tin fish was seen — just — passing close down his port side, passing harmlessly towards the land, away now from the convoy. By this time the destroyers of the escort were reacting, signals flying from Captain (D) in the flotilla leader and the ships moving in at high speed, water gushing back along their decks, towards where the periscope trail had been seen. By now there was nothing: the U-boat would presumably have gone deep again after loosing off her fish, but how many had she fired?
Kemp got some of the answer within the next few seconds. There was a sudden mighty explosion from farther down the Commodore’s column, and a great sheet of flame, blue, orange, white, crimson, a terrible firework display in the makings of the North Atlantic storm. Kemp looked astern in horror as the Wolf Rock under Champney’s direction resumed her place in the column. Debris was rising into the sky, whirling bodies, pieces of wood that fell, slowly as it seemed, back towards where the water swirled over a vanished ship.
At Kemp’s side Finnegan said, ‘S.s. Luton Town, sir. Armaments.’
‘Poor sods!’
‘They won’t have known much, sir.’ Finnegan paused. ‘Survivors, sir?’
‘Don’t be bloody naive, Finnegan.’
Sub-Lieutenant Finnegan didn’t respond. Was it naive, to have a thought for someone who might, just might, have lived? He didn’t reckon so. However, he did see Kemp’s point. Kemp was no mean, cold bastard who would willingly leave any man to die if there was anything he could do about it. You didn’t delay the convoy for the picking up of hypothetical handfuls of survivors, you didn’t hazard other valuable ships or the lives of thousands of troops and seamen. You took the larger view; you had to. The winning of the war, and more pointedly at this moment the winning of the long-running battle of the North Atlantic, was paramount.
There were more explosions, but not this time of ships — the destroyers were mounting their depth-charge attacks. The repercussions of the deep explosions could be felt throughout the plates of the Wolf Rock, the great spouts of water were seen to rise again and again and fall back in crescendoes of foam. But the attack was abortive; the destroyers dropped behind the convoy, which with their so much greater speed they would easily overtake, to carry on searching and depth charging but when they came back to rejoin the report was a dejected one: the lone Jerry, a brave man admittedly, had got away with it.
‘Murderers,’ Kemp said, his face grim.
‘Not the first time, sir.’
‘Don’t state the obvious, Finnegan.’
‘Sorry, sir. I guess I just thought—’
‘Can it, laddie. Or in English, shut up.’
Finnegan looked sideways at the Commodore’s weather-beaten face. Square, solid, dependable, tough. But often toughness was only skin deep. Kemp didn’t like death, didn’t like seeing seamen blasted into shreds of bloody flesh. None of them did, of course; but Old Man Kemp, as Finnegan thought of him, always seemed to take it personally, blame himself for some dereliction of duty, some lack of alertness, though God alone knew what else any commodore could do. A commodore’s broad gold band of rank didn’t make its wearer superhuman although often enough it seemed expected of him.
Kemp put a hand on his assistant’s shoulder, a kindly gesture to take the sting out of the rebuke. ‘Send down for Petty Officer Ramm. Those guns’ crews were too damn slow to close up.’
II
Petty Officer Ramm came down from the bridge after getting an ear-bashing from the Commodore in person. Ramm didn’t like being to
ld off; it wasn’t consistent with his dignity as a gunner’s mate. Gunners’ mates were something special. Kemp hadn’t held back, though he had walked into the bridge wing and spoken quietly so that the reprimand wasn’t obvious to the guns’ crews. Well, it wouldn’t happen again. Ramm moved aft from the bridge ladder, arms swinging, shoulders back and a nasty glint in his eye.
‘You, Leading Seaman Nelson.’
‘Yes, GI?’
Ramm looked his number two up and down. Stripey Nelson, so called on account of his three good-conduct badges. ‘Next time the alarm goes, move yourself, right? Just because your bloody namesake’s in company, doesn’t mean you can sit back and bask in glory.’ Ramm rose and fell on the balls of his feet. ‘Slow to close up, Commodore says. Gets the ‘ands fell in and we’ll have some gunnery practice, put some dynamite under their lousy fat backsides, all right?’
‘All right, GI.’ Leading Seaman Nelson, fat himself and never very fast, lumbered away to pass the order. It was probably true that they’d been a bit slow, but that often happened at the start of a convoy; the fleshpots of the shore had to be overcome and the gunnery ratings aboard the Wolf Rock were no great shakes. None of them were active service, by which Stripey Nelson meant they weren’t on long-service RN engagements; nor were they pensioners of the Royal Fleet Reserve, which both he and Ramm were, nor was this lot composed of the normal hostilities-only ratings of the fleet: they were DEMS, which stood for Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship ratings with little more than a smattering of gunnery knowledge, a ham-fisted bunch — at any rate, the Wolf Rock’s lot were. Moaners, too, but the moaning stopped when Petty Officer Ramm marched along to where Stripey Nelson had assembled them.
‘Right, you lot, any more sotto voce remarks about my ancestry and you’ll wish you’d never been bloody born. And any more slackness and you’ll be on the bridge and in the Commodore’s Report.’ Ramm paused, his eye travelling along the guns’ crews. ‘Now. We shall exercise closing up on the action alarm, and we shall bloody exercise it until I’m satisfied you’ve all moved your arses as fast as is humanly possible and more so.’ He nodded at Stripey Nelson. ‘Right, Leading Seaman Nelson. Dismiss. And stand by for a blast on me whistle. That constitutes the alarm, all right? In the meantime, get below as if you was sitting in the mess deck dreaming of ‘ome.’
Convoy East (A John Mason Kemp Thriller) Page 3