Convoy South

by Philip McCutchan

  Convoy South

  Philip McCutchan

  © Philip McCutchan 1988

  Philip McCutchan has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1988 by George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  I

  II

  III

  TWO

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  THREE

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  FOUR

  I

  II

  III

  FIVE

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  SIX

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  SEVEN

  I

  II

  III

  EIGHT

  I

  II

  III

  NINE

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  TEN

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  ELEVEN

  I

  II

  III

  TWELVE

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  THIRTEEN

  I

  II

  III

  FOURTEEN

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  FIFTEEN

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  SIXTEEN

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  SEVENTEEN

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  EIGHTEEN

  I

  II

  III

  Extract from Convoy of War by Philip McCutchan

  ONE

  I

  By now the convoy was well to the westward of Cape Leeuwin, having taken its departure some days before from that so often stormy promontory to the east of which lay the Great Australian Bight, where the waters of the Southern Ocean ran clear from the Antarctic wastes. The ships had made a little northing so as to come free so far as possible of the westerlies that blew without cease around the bottom of the world, blustering past Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, below Australia and New Zealand, to fetch up once again off the pitch of the Horn. On the early part of this voyage the ships had met exceptionally bad weather — though not entirely unexpected in the Australian mid-winter of July, when the Bight became a grim waste of mountainous waves and flung spume that lay like heavy mist over the waters; a time of damp cold and an atmosphere of gloom, depressing in the extreme.

  But now, clear of Australian waters, the weather was moderating.

  Commodore John Mason Kemp, on the bridge of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary oiler Coverdale, chosen as the Commodore’s ship on account of her reserve speed and manoeuvrability, lifted his binoculars to the horizons all around. It was a blue morning, with white horses curling from the wave crests, the ships still steaming into the fringe of a strong westerly but with the rain gone and the feel of better weather ahead. Kemp studied the escorts: ahead of the convoy, one on either bow, were two destroyers of the Royal Australian Navy, Timor and Ayers; away astern was one more destroyer, HMAS Bass, acting as rearguard and ready to chivvy any stragglers. Leading the whole convoy, ahead of the Commodore’s ship, was the senior officer of the escort in the cruiser Rhondda.

  Kemp paced the bridge, then came to rest beside his assistant, a young sub-lieutenant of the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve. ‘Fresh, Cutler. Fresh but no more than that. It’ll warm up soon.’

  ‘Yes, sir, Com—’ Cutler, a United States citizen, in fact, who had been anxious to join in the War in advance of the rest of his countrymen, bit off the rest of the form of address. Kemp didn’t like being addressed as both sir and Commodore, but Cutler had found the habit hard to drop. ‘Sooner the better, I guess.’

  ‘You may change your mind once we’re into the South Atlantic and coming up to the tropics.’

  Kemp felt unusually tired: the long-drawn war at sea had become a strain in itself when you had reached middle age…and now that wasn’t all. For many days and nights Kemp had had the extra worry, the personal anxiety as a result of news that had reached him in Sydney of a sinking, a convoy escort in the Mediterranean. Until he was given further news the anxiety would continue; but he was doing his best to thrust it down and not let it show.

  The sun was up now and Kemp was grateful for the touch of physical comfort. Warmth stole slowly into his bones, penetrating the oilskin that he hadn’t yet discarded. Probably it wouldn’t be long now before the dress-of-the-day signal was made from the Rhondda: time soon to shift into lighter clothing, Number Thirteens — white shirts and shorts — for the underlying temperature was tending high if until now overlaid by the filthy weather, the wet and the wind: the deadly cold of the Bight was far behind them.

  But when the signal came it was not concerned with anything so mundane as dress: it was the signal that had been half expected ever since the convoy had cleared away from the Australian coast. The big signalling projector sprang into life from the Rhondda’s flag deck; Kemp’s convoy signalman, Leading Signalman Goodenough, was beaten to the acknowledgement by the Coverdale’s own signalman, Gannock, ex-yeoman of signals RN and anxious to let wartime ratings know he hadn’t lost his speed in his old age. He reported to the master, Captain Dempsey.

  ‘From senior officer, sir, addressed escort repeated Commodore. “Radar indicates vessels twelve miles bearing 315 degrees. No identification, am investigating. Remainder of escort will maintain course and speed.”’

  ‘Thank you, Cannock.’ Dempsey caught Kemp’s eye. ‘This is it, Commodore.’

  Kemp gave a tight grin and rubbed the weariness from his eyes with a sunburned hand. ‘An open mind for now, Captain, but I’ll ask you to go to first degree of readiness. Cutler?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Make to all ships in convoy, assume first degree, maintain course and speed but stand by for immediate orders.’

  As the message was passed by light from the Coverdale, the officers on the bridge saw the cruiser alter to starboard and increase her own speed, coming up to her maximum, butting her stem into the sea so that an immense white bow wave curled back to mingle with her streaming wake. Within the next ten minutes the further signal had come, read off this time by Leading Signalman Goodenough.

  ‘Commerce raider, sir, believed to be Kormoran. Rhondda’s engaging.’ Goodenough added, ‘Senior officer’s hoisting battle ensigns, sir.’

  A moment later the Rhondda’s 6-inch turrets opened in flashes of distant flame and heavy belches of smoke. Kemp turned to Dempsey. ‘The bag, Captain. That’s the first priority.’

  ‘Taken care of,’ Dempsey said. ‘Ready for ditching the moment you give the word.’ As he finished speaking a bright flash was seen below the Rhondda’s bridge superstructure, then another higher up, and the cruiser’s foremast crashed down on the searchlight platform aft. Kormoran, it seemed, could have got the first blow in.

  II

  Just three weeks earlier, Commodore Mason Kemp had brought another convoy into Sydney, loaded chiefly with heavy machinery and war material — armoured military vehicles, artillery, ammunition — to aid Australia’s def
ence against a possible invasion by the Japanese armies. After the devastation of Pearl Harbor, which to Thomas B. Cutler’s guilty relief had brought the United States into the War, it was thought possible that the Japanese were ready for an all-out assault against what was left of the British Empire. As he brought his ship in past Sydney Heads, Commodore Kemp was not yet aware of extraordinary decisions already being formulated in the minds of the Chiefs of Staff on both sides of the North Atlantic far, far away that were to send him to sea again within so short a time taking a division of troops away from Australia’s defence to be landed across the world in USA and thence UK; neither that weird quirk of the high command’s mind, nor its ultimate purpose, had interfered with Kemp’s simple pleasure in once again taking a ship into Port Jackson harbour to secure alongside at Circular Quay as he had done countless times in the happy days of peacetime sailoring. Kemp was Royal Naval Reserve, one of the professional naval reservists who had earned their qualifications in the Merchant Service and in time of war put them at the disposal of the Admiralty to serve in HM ships and shore establishments or, as in his case, as commodores of convoys.

  Kemp had served the Mediterranean-Australia Line for most of his career to date, from junior fourth officer to master; and for all that time Sydney had been his turn-round port at the Australian end of the run. Tilbury and Sydney, each as familiar to him as his cottage in Meopham in Kent — Tilbury and Sydney, and in between Gibraltar, Malta, Port Said, Suez, Aden, Colombo, Fremantle, Adelaide, Melbourne, all as regular as clockwork. The Australian arrival in Gage Roads, Fremantle after the fancy dress ball customarily held the night before…the Australian port forms, the P2s, customs, sales tax, prices going up in the bars and ship’s shop, Australian accents as the coastal passengers embarked, the start of the break-up of shipboard friendships and romances…it had been a way of life utterly unknown to shoresiders and it had all ended abruptly with the outbreak of the War in September 1939 when Kemp had brought the Mediterranean-Australia Line’s Ardara into Tilbury to find himself bidden to attend the Admiralty for appointment to the naval service. From then on it had been unending convoy duty, across the North Atlantic time and again, or northward bound to Russian ports with vital cargoes to be used against Hitler’s invading armies, Nazi legions as ruthless as the hordes of Attila the Hun; or eastwards through the Gibraltar Strait to bring succour to beseiged Malta, and on again to Alexandria or Port Said to take reinforcements to the British Army ready to extend across North Africa from Egypt.

  It was a very different story from the glitter of liner life, from the bugles that called the first-class passengers to the saloon in their evening dress, from hot, balmy days when crossing the Indian Ocean, sultry moonlit nights, port arrivals in the haze of early dawn…passengers, some of them very wealthy, many of them good company for a master at his table in the first-class saloon, some of them odious, but all of them suitably impressed by the brassbound autonomy of a shipmaster aboard his own command.

  That day of entry three weeks before, Kemp had watched the familiar landmarks slide past as he had come inward of Sydney Heads: North Harbour away to starboard, running down to Manly Beach where sun-bronzed Australians had swum under the care of the lifeguards and the shark barrier; past Obelisk Bay and the Military Reserve, into the West Channel for Port Jackson, Watson’s Bay coming up on his port side…Bradley Head, Rose Bay and Shark Island…Darling Point and then Garden Island, the naval base where now there were lean grey warships in greater quantity than the last time Kemp had seen Sydney. Dead ahead the great harbour bridge, with streams of traffic crossing; before the bridge, the turn to port to come alongside Circular Quay, the busy harbour tugs pushing the ship in.

  Then, as the ship’s master rang down Finished with Engines and the shore gangway was put in place, an act of courtesy: Commodore Kemp found a visitor waiting when he went below to his cabin a few minutes later: Hugh MacAndrew, Mediterranean-Australia Lines’ General Manager in Australia.

  ‘Well, John. I got the word you were bringing this convoy in. Welcome home! It’s nice to see you…been a long while. Notice any changes, do you?’

  Kemp grinned as they shook hands. ‘Not so many small boats cluttering up the entry channel. Not so many gawpers on the quay. All the company colours gone. More warships.’

  ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ MacAndrew winked. ‘Go on, say it: do we have that bloody idiotic phrase out here as well? Answer: yes, we do. Excuse for every bloody balls-up, every shortage, not that we have that many shortages.’ The General Manager’s expression altered. ‘What sort of a war have you had, John?’

  ‘So-so,’ Kemp answered non-committally. ‘Care for a gin?’

  ‘Not got any Vickers yet, have you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kemp said. ‘I brought a bottle ashore from the Ardara in Tilbury…back in ‘39. Sheer nostalgia. I promised myself I’d open it the first time I came back to Sydney.’

  ‘Well, good on you, John! I’ll have a case sent aboard your homeward ship. How’s the missus, and the children?’

  ‘All well — or I hope they are. The boys…they’re both at sea now themselves.’

  ‘You don’t say? Well, I reckon time passes.’ As Kemp rang for his steward and the Vickers’ gin, MacAndrew went on, ‘You had a grandmother, right? Pretty old by now, eh?’

  ‘Not so far off a hundred. A bit of a strain on Mary. When they get to that age, they tend to complain.’ Kemp, stretched out now in an easy chair, found home thoughts crowding. What he would give to have his family around him again, to have the boys as they were as children, with no anxieties for their safety to disturb the mind of a convoy commodore at sea. His thoughts drifted back: families were never allowed to travel in the same ship, but a couple of years before the war Kemp had booked passages for them aboard another of the company’s ships at a time when his own ship would be cruising out of Sydney and he would have time to see a good deal of them between cruises. That was when MacAndrew had met them; it had been a very happy time, a wonderful holiday to look back on. It could never come again now the boys were grown up.

  Kemp’s steward poured the gin: both men took it with plain water. There wasn’t time even for a toast before the Commodore had another visitor: a lieutenant of the RANVR. Commodore Kemp was requested to attend at Naval HQ immediately.

  III

  A staff car had been waiting: Kemp was driven from Circular Quay, along Macquarie Street and down towards the Domain and Woolloomooloo, parts he had known well as a junior officer in the Line. You always took precautions in that part of Sydney, in fact, if you were wise, you used taxis to and from any ship berthed at Woolloomooloo. Along the roofs of the houses bordering the street, the sandbaggers lurked. A swing of a bag on the end of a rope had put many a seaman out for the count, and when he recovered, if indeed he did, he found his money gone. Sydney Town, as the old-time square-rigged seamen had known it, could still be a place of danger; but now the peacetime dangers had been overlaid by the larger dangers of the War. At Woolloomooloo a picquet-boat had been waiting, and Kemp was transferred to this, together with the young lieutenant, and taken across the water to Garden Island where once again he saw the many warships at the berths, cruisers and destroyers and some small craft. Some of them were from the British Navy, others were Australian or from New Zealand. Kemp was taken into Naval HQ, where a Rear-Admiral of the Australian Navy was awaiting him. There were no delays: Kemp sensed urgency, and the welcome was brief.

  ‘Ah, Kemp. You’re known out here, of course. Glad to have you. Sorry it’s not going to be for long. All right, Glover.’ The Rear-Admiral waved a hand at the lieutenant, who came to attention and left the room. ‘No peace for convoy commodores, Kemp.’

  ‘You mean another convoy’s forming up, sir?’

  ‘Correct, but it won’t be sailing immediately. That’s all I can say for now, except that something big is in the air and there’s a very heavy security shield. I was told to give you your orders personally — your immediate or
ders, that is.’ The Rear-Admiral paused, looked for a moment out of a large window, across Port Jackson harbour towards Kurraba Point. Kemp followed his gaze: the sun was high and the water was sparkling as he remembered it over so many years. A couple of large tankers were lying at anchor off Kurraba Point itself, one of them wearing the Blue Ensign with the fouled anchor in the fly, the ensign of the Royal Fleet Auxiliaries. The Rear-Admiral began speaking again. ‘You’re for Canberra, Kemp.’

  ‘Canberra? A far cry from the sea and convoys!’

  ‘You won’t be there long. You’ll pick up orders, that’s all. You’ll go incognito. Plain clothes. Got any with you?’

  ‘No, sir, I —’

  ‘Didn’t think you would have. I’ve made arrangements — you’ll have to make do whether or not they fit. I’ll see to it that your gear’s removed from your present ship and taken aboard your next. You’ll leave for Canberra the moment you’re shifted into plain clothes. There’s a train in…’ The Rear-Admiral looked at his wrist watch. ‘…one hour and ten minutes precisely.’ He added, ‘On arrival you’ll report to the offices of the Military Board.’ He banged at a bell on his desk and at once the lieutenant reappeared. ‘Commodore Kemp’s ready to change his identity,’ he said. He held out a hand to Kemp as he got to his feet. ‘The best of luck, Commodore, and I’m sorry to be delivering you to the bloody pongoes, my word! Thank God we’ve got a navy.’

  TWO

  I

  It hadn’t been difficult to guess that the next convoy was to be a troop lift; and movements of troops always had a high security classification. But where to? There were already Australian and New Zealand armies in the field in North Africa. Tobruk, Derna, Benghazi, Mersa Matruh, in and out and in again as the fortunes of the war swayed this way and that, and Kemp believed that an Australian brigade had in fact recently been withdrawn on replacement by Polish and British units. Lieutenant-General Sir Leslie Morshead had commanded in the Tobruk area — a territorial soldier of distinction and until called up for the War, Hugh MacAndrew’s opposite number in a rival shipping company. Morshead had been the Orient Line’s General Manager in Australia, one up for the sea services. Kemp, as he was driven across Sydney in a plain car, recalled the Rear-Admiral’s comment about pongoes, and grinned to himself. With exceptions, the pongo mind tended towards rigidity, or so seamen liked to make out.