Convoy South

by Philip McCutchan

  Dempsey lifted an arm to Rattray, who was on the port-side flying bridge.

  Rattray gave a nod, and waited, feeling excitement mount.

  Dempsey, also, waited: the U-boat was already starting to close the Coverdale, coming up towards the oiler’s starboard side. Cramm was right for’ard in the eyes of the ship. The Germans who had taken over the after 3-inch were still at their station but their attention was on the U-boat. To Dempsey they had the appearance of dogs straining at the leash.

  Three minutes later, Evans appeared on deck, moving fast, shouting. ‘Smoke from the after cofferdam, sir!’ As he spoke, a rising trail was seen, spiralling out from the engineer’s alleyway to waft for’ard over the tank tops.

  Dempsey looked towards the U-boat. It was now within six cables’ lengths, moving up fast, still to starboard, a nice clear surface target. Dempsey lifted his voice in a carrying shout.

  ‘Mr Peel, there is fire in the after cofferdam. Swing out the boats — prepare to abandon ship!’

  From the corner of his eye he saw the Nazis, the after gun’s crew, drop down fast to the flying bridge and go for’ard at the double; and saw Rattray and some of his gunnery rates move the other way. Within thirty seconds Rattray had his gun in action.

  II

  Evans had already had his orders from Captain Dempsey: as soon as he had made his report of fire in the cofferdam he had gone back into the alleyway and collected his engine-room hands, waiting by the air-lock. He gestured them to get below, going down after them and putting the engines to full ahead after he’d called the bridge. Once again the Coverdale began her movement through the water. Petty Officer Rattray, eyes blazing, lips moving in a succession of oaths, had his gun well and truly laid on the approaching U-boat: point of aim, the base of the conning tower. The range was nicely close. His second shot had taken out the U-boat’s casing-mounted gun; two minutes later a shell sped over the conning tower itself, smashing through the machine gun and the man behind it. Rattray grinned savagely as his loading number rammed home the next shell and the breech closed. In the water between the oiler and the U-boat were bobbing heads, making it as fast as possible for security: many of the Nazis had jumped the gun as it were, not waiting either for Cramm’s order or for the Coverdale’s boats to be got away. Dempsey was now at the seaboat’s davits, passing his own orders to his crew. The word hadn’t got round them all, and to those not in the know the fire was real. By this time Cramm had ticked over and the remainder of his men, clustered by the bows, were firing towards the seamen on the master’s deck where the seaboat was being lowered for embarkation. Dodging bullets, Dempsey got his men into cover aft of the bulkhead outside the officers’ quarters. On the bridge Kemp, at first bewildered but getting the point fast, also dodged bullets as he gave the helm orders to close the U-boat.

  Peel asked, ‘D’you intend to ram, sir?’

  ‘I’ll try it. But the first thing is to present as small a target as possible — don’t forget the torpedoes.’

  As the ship’s head came round Rattray fired once again before shifting his bearing. He’d been close before, very close: he was a first-class gunners’ mate. This time he was right on target. The shell exploded slap on the base of the conning tower, there was a brilliant flash, the conning tower sagged and toppled, and a large hole opened in the fore casing. Kemp, watching through his binoculars, saw that the shell had split the casing down the port side. The U-boat was taking water fast and developing a pronounced list to port. It was just a matter of time. As Rattray scored another hit Kemp took a deep breath and spoke to the third officer.

  ‘Telegraphs to slow ahead, Mr Peel. Wheel amidships.’

  ‘Slow ahead, sir, wheel amidships.’ The orders went to the helmsman and the starting platform. Kemp moved to the voice-pipe and called the acting chief engineer.

  ‘All over, Mr Evans. I’m moving in for survivors — that’s all.’ Then he remembered Cramm and his armed Nazis in the fore part of the ship. As he did so he saw movement by his side: Leading Signalman Goodenough was making for the ladder to monkey’s island, where the close range weapons stood idle. A moment later Kemp heard Goodenough’s shout.

  ‘All right, you bastards. Guns over the side — or else!’

  III

  It had been something of a miracle, Kemp thought two weeks later as the masthead lookout reported the landfall off the Virginia Capes. Full speed all the way, no more alarms or excursions, no escort until after some days the Coverdale’s speed had enabled her to overtake the convoy. There had been astonishment in the Rear-Admiral’s welcoming signal: a ship and her company had returned from the dead. There had been no more enemy attacks; but the Coverdale had her wounds to lick nevertheless, the wounds of the closing stages of the shipboard battle for final control, for the Nazis had not given up easily. Third Officer Peel had died in the sub-machine-gun fire; so had Dempsey, down by the seaboat’s falls, a sad reward for his initiative. Light enough casualties, perhaps, for the recapture of a ship, the sinking of one of Hitler’s U-boats and the taking prisoner of Cramm and a number of German seamen, now under lock and key and one of their own guns held by a British naval sentry. Light enough in number, but each man a human loss, someone who would go home no more…

  The convoy moved towards the outer approaches to Chesapeake Bay: the pilot boats came out, signals were exchanged with them and, as the ship came closer in, with the US Naval Operating Base of Norfolk, Virginia. There were unanswered questions: had that prickly Australian in the High Commission at Cape Town been a traitor, a spy for Hitler — or merely an enemy of Brigadier Hennessy and his ideas of keeping the Australian troops back for the defence of the homeland? And what about Hennessy himself, what about that bag now gone for ever beneath the waters of the South Atlantic? Kemp had a feeling he might not have heard the last of that.

  And Dempsey? Why had Dempsey not taken him into his confidence in regard to his plans for re-taking his ship? Kemp had worried a good deal over that. He saw two possible answers: one, Dempsey had had some sort of idea, a misconceived one in fact, that if Kemp was seen by the Nazis not to be taking an active role himself, then things might go easier for Kemp’s son in German hands. Two — and the more likely — Dempsey had believed that when it came to the crunch Kemp might not have jeopardized his own son, might have played for safety. If he’d thought that, then he’d been wrong. But Kemp could see the point: Dempsey wouldn’t have wanted to risk any personal reservations leading to an abort.

  In any case, the truth would never be known now.

  Kemp breathed deeply of the land: it was a bright, fresh day, with clouds moving before an offshore breeze, and America could be smelled, a welcome smell of journey’s end as the convoy came between the arms of the land, between Cape Henry and Cape Charles. Away ahead an old stern-wheeler moved across Chesapeake Bay from Norfolk to Newport News. Had it not been for the big troopships, the warships and the guns, it could almost have been the Mississippi in the eighties or nineties.

  Porter was at his side. ‘Coffee, sir? Before the pilot, sir. Captain Dempsey, he always liked coffee before the pilot come aboard.’ There was something like an appeal in his voice: he wanted things to be the same, as if Dempsey was there still.

  ‘Captain Dempsey said he often did his own pilotage, Porter.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But not in a strange port. Didn’t take foolish risks, sir. Not Captain Dempsey.’

  Kemp felt himself rebuked. He said, ‘All right, Porter. Thank you.’ The steward had already brought the coffee on a tray; it would have been churlish to refuse. Kemp drank; Porter went below.

  Chief Steward Lugg was on deck, watching the land as it slid past. He said, ‘Mail should be aboard soon. Maybe a photo of my grand-daughter. Never thought I’d ever see that, not till the war was over anyway. There’s a lot to thank Kemp and the Old Man for!

  ‘That’s right,’ Porter agreed. He was thinking of Beryl, who would no longer be alone in her pregnancy. Funny, the way things turned out in w
ar, the way things could change. There ought to be a letter for him as well. Rattray, also looking out at the land, knew there would be at least one for him, the almost daily moan from home with Ma Bates’ illnesses in detail. There were some things that didn’t change no matter what, not until death intervened. Sometimes Rattray felt he would peg out before Ma Bates and that wouldn’t be fair…

  Below on the starting platform acting Chief Engineer Evans followed the pointers of the telegraphs as the bridge signalled slow ahead: the ship would be beginning her approach to the berth now. Journey’s end…Evans gave a sigh of relief and mopped at his face with his handful of cotton-waste: he believed he’d acquitted himself all right and next time the telegraphs were rung to stand by for the outward passage he would no longer be doing his first trip as chief and things would be that much easier. He hoped he’d have earned his father-in-law’s approval at last, that now he would be regarded as a professional ship’s engineer.

  Kemp, on the bridge as the Coverdale moved alongside, braced himself mentally for the rush of shore officials, both naval and civilian, who would inundate the Commodore’s ship the moment the lines were secured and the gangways rigged. Perhaps there would be official news of his son, perhaps Cramm had lied…not, if you looked at it one way, a happy thought. Now he couldn’t wait to get home; but there was still the North Atlantic in between.

  One more convoy, less its losses, safely in. One more of life’s chapters over and done with, never to be exactly repeated no matter how many more convoys. Kemp was dog tired but many people would be claiming his attention before he could find sleep. There would be reports to write, one of them being a commendation for Petty Officer Rattray; others for Captain Dempsey and young Cutler and Leading Seaman Sinker, posthumously. Uselessly, really; it wouldn’t bring any of them back. Somewhere, somebody would be missing them. And God damn this war.

  If you enjoyed reading Convoy South, you might be interested in Convoy of War by Philip McCutchan, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Convoy of War by Philip McCutchan

  ONE

  The weather was cold, very unseasonable for early August, but the North Atlantic was as ever unpredictable. The Commodore, on the bridge of the former Mediterranean-Australia liner Ardara, wore his bridge coat, the shoulder-straps carrying the thick gold bar surmounted by the crossed-triangle ‘curl’ of the Royal Naval Reserve, hands clasped behind a broad back as he scanned the convoy, watching the ships astern and on either beam. They formed a great spread of bottoms mainly in ballast out of UK ports for a troop and war materials pick-up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, currently on the starboard leg of the zig-zag and some of them having trouble with their station-keeping.

  The Commodore glanced aside as the Ardara’s master, Captain Arthur Hampton, joined him at the bridge screen. ‘Damn big target,’ he remarked.

  ‘It is, sir. We’ve been lucky — so far.’

  Mason Kemp grinned. ‘Don’t tempt fate! Homeward bound ... that’s when it’s more likely to come, when we’re laden. I doubt if we’ll be having much luck then, somehow. That’s the way things go.’

  Hampton nodded and turned away from the Commodore to pace his wide bridge wing. This OB convoy, which would turn into an HX convoy on the homeward route from Halifax, was the biggest ocean lift in terms both of ship numbers and the size of many individual ships that he had so far sailed in — no less than five liners, average 23,000 tons displacement apiece, liners that in pre-war days had sailed to Australia and South Africa, India and South America and the Far East; four deep-draught tankers of around 17,000 tons which would detach once the convoy was past 40 degrees west longitude to head for Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico to take on their potentially lethal liquid cargoes; a dozen sizeable dry-cargo vessels on hire contracts from such companies as the Port Line, Clan Line, Union Castle and British India, together with eighteen smaller ships, tramps in peacetime mostly, that would load to their marks in Halifax with all manner of humdrum cargoes that would help to sustain life in war-torn, besieged Britain. The Battle of the Atlantic had begun only three months before; none of the men who sailed beneath leaden skies this particular morning had any notion of how long that battle against U-boats and aircraft and surface raiders was destined to last, no idea of the scale of the sinkings that were to come.

  They had all, or nearly all, been in action before; some of them in the last lot, the 1914–18 war, as well as since September 1939. It was little more than a year since the period of the phoney war had ended with the threat of invasion following Dunkirk, and then the airborne Battle of Britain, but the months of continual sea-keeping had taken their toll of men and men’s endurance and they felt as though they had been at war for a decade. Peace forgotten, war had already become a way of life. Not for the merchant ships alone: the men of the warship escorts had done their share and more, the destroyers and corvettes, always too few in number and driven to the limit, bringing biting cold and wet and extreme discomfort to their ships’ companies as so often in the winter storms they rode gigantic waves that could make life aboard even the Queen Mary into a time of desolation. The North Atlantic could be hell, far worse than the Bay of Biscay, worse than the Great Australian Bight where the storm roared straight up from the southern ice or the westerlies bellowed round the globe in the High South latitudes. And always there was the potential threat of the lurking U-boats of Grand-Admiral Donitz and, when the ships were within their range, the Nazi air armadas, the reconnaissance Focke-Wulfs and the bombers.

  The escort apart, the best defence of the convoys was the zig-zag. The point was always made by the officers of the Naval Control Service and it had been made this time at the convoy conference held before the bigger ships joining from the Clyde had left the Tail o’ the Bank off Greenock. All masters of the Clyde contingent had attended, along with the Commodore of the convoy and the commanding officers of the naval escorts. So vital was the OB that additional escorts had been provided: four heavy cruisers and an old, slow, rusty battleship, a mixed blessing whose fifteen-inch guns might well be effective enough if the convoy should come under attack from a surface raider, a German pocket-battleship perhaps, but which the Commodore fancied would tend only to slow the convoy’s advance into safer waters beyond forty west.

  Commodore Mason Kemp lifted an eyebrow at Hampton as the latter’s pacing brought him close again. ‘I’m going below,’ he said. He rasped at his chin, and yawned. He had been almost all night on the bridge as the ships from the Clyde, having made the rendezvous with those out of Liverpool, moved away from the Bloody Foreland at Ireland’s north-western tip. ‘Shave, if nothing else! You know the orders, Captain: I’m to be called immediately if anything happens. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes in any case. Where’s that assistant of mine?’ He looked around, saw the RNVR lieutenant in the wheelhouse, and lifted his voice. ‘Williams!’

  A lanky figure emerged from the wheelhouse, clad in a duffel-coat, balaclava, thick woollen scarf and gloves. ‘Here, sir.’

  Commodore Mason Kemp grunted: there was a gleam of humour in his eye as he remarked, ‘Warm life for some. Where’s your normal sartorial elegance, Williams?’

  ‘Sorry, sir — ’

  ‘Oh, don’t apologize, it’s not vital.’ Kemp stretched. ‘You can go below when I return to the bridge — ’ He broke off as a shout came from the signalman of the watch. ‘What’s that, MacCord?’

  ‘Destroyer leader, sir, reports contact starboard. Submarine, sir.’

  Kemp caught Hampton’s eye. The long business of the convoy’s defence had begun already. ‘Sound action stations,’ he said.

  ***

  On the outbreak of war nearly two years earlier Captain Kemp, as he had then been, had brought his ship along the English Channel from Brixham, where he had embarked the pilot, to the Downs and Tilbury, homeward bound from Sydney. Soon after the ship had berthed in the basin the chairman of the line had come aboard and had been taken to the master’s day cabin. He said, ‘We�
��re going to lose you, John. I’m more than sorry, I need hardly say.’

  ‘Lose me?’

  ‘Yes. You’re RNR. And this has come for you.’ The chairman handed over a buff envelope marked ON HIS MAJESTY’S SERVICE, with the Admiralty crest embossed on the flap. It was addressed to Captain J. Mason Kemp, RD, RNR.

  Kemp said, ‘Not unexpected, Sir Edward. But what’ll they do with a captain RNR? They won’t give me one of their battle-wagons, I’ll bet!’ He held the envelope in the air, quizzically, as though keeping himself deliberately in suspense.

  The chairman said, ‘I understand the Admiralty’s bringing in the convoy system — right from the start this time. Carrying on where they left off in ’18.’

  ‘Commodore of convoys?’

  That’s my guess, John.’

  Kemp slit the envelope, using an ivory paperknife from his desk. The guess had been a good one. That afternoon Commodore Kemp left the liner to report to the Admiralty and then to proceed on a fortnight’s leave before taking up his war appointment. The liner was the Ardara. Leaving the ship with much nostalgia for a life that had come to a sudden end, it never occurred to the Commodore that within two years, after many convoys, he would once again be upon her bridge. He went home, home being an olde-worlde cottage in Meopham in Kent, and broke the news to his wife.