The Lion at Sea

by Max Hennessy

  As he was brooding on it, a head appeared round the wardroom door. It was the navigator, a breezy young man called Fanshawe who was built like a house-side and had once played rugby for England. ‘Hope you’ve not made any plans, Maguire,’ he said.

  Kelly turned. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Leave’s cancelled. Everything’s changed. We’re going to Kiel as part of a banzai party for the German naval review. You’d better survey your uniform, and if you can afford it buy full dress and a ball gown. I’ve got the order here – “Whilst in German waters, uniform will be worn ashore; for the purposes of sport, flannels will be permitted, but it is hoped that officers will see that the latter are of an immaculate nature.”’

  They sailed for Kiel in a dense fog. Off the Jutland coast they had a harmless and entertaining dodging match with a group of German fishing smacks and that afternoon rehearsed cheering ship for when the Kaiser appeared. Rounding the Skaw, at the northern tip of Denmark, they made passage for the Belt and arrived at the northern limit of Kiel Bay at dusk two days later.

  Kelly was on watch as they anchored and Fanshawe indicated the sky. ‘Believe in omens?’ he asked.

  Above their heads was a cloud – shaped like a snake, its head erect and about to strike.

  ‘Looking directly towards England,’ Fanshawe pointed out, and as he spoke the sun set, tingeing the cloud with red.

  ‘And that,’ he added portentously, ‘is probably blood.’

  The stay in Kiel was a round of official receptions, banquets and dances, with visits from German officers stiff as ramrods who could not understand that in the British Navy men off duty did not behave to each other in the wardroom as they did on the quarter deck. For the official functions, Clarendon’s officers had almost to live in full dress, a costume not designed for modern life, especially in summer, and while the talk was all the time of peace, always in the background there was the knowledge that war might be near.

  The whole of German society seemed to be in Kiel in a kaleidoscope of ships and yachts, and eventually the Kaiser himself appeared through the canal, the bows of his yacht, Hohenzollern, breaking the silk ribbons across the entrance to the new locks.

  ‘Well,’ Fanshawe said thoughtfully as they watched, ‘with the new locks and the bends in the canal widened, their largest dreadnoughts can now pass directly into the North Sea. If that doesn’t make the Kaiser more cocky than he is now, nothing will.’

  As the assembled ships’ companies cheered mechanically, the Kaiser stood at the salute in admiral’s uniform on a stage built over the yacht’s upper bridge, his withered arm carefully hidden. Fanshawe’s nose wrinkled.

  ‘Bloody poseur,’ he commented.

  The imperial yacht was followed by every kind of craft possible, from racing-eights to pleasure steamers, and one boat was swamped and a few loyal Germans drowned before Hohenzollern came to anchor, to be surrounded immediately by police boats to keep the enthusiasm at bay.

  ‘We do it much better at Spithead,’ Fanshawe said with lofty disapproval.

  There were night clubs ashore and willing girls of Russian and Austrian nationality who caused Kelly’s loyalty to Charley to slip a little and the increasingly fragile memory of the girl in New York to disappear like a puff of smoke. Sports were also held for the sailors and it was noticeable that the British were defeated at almost everything, much to the disgust of the lower deck.

  ‘The bastards had preliminary contests before we arrived,’ the Master-at-Arms told Kelly. ‘Their teams are the pick of thirty thousand men.’

  German orchestras played for them and they learned German patriotic songs like ‘Was Blasen die Trompeten?’ and ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’ and were told that there couldn’t possibly be any war between their nations, because ethnically they were almost brothers and it was only the dirty French who were the troublemakers. To seal the friendship, the German submarine depot gave a dance, a very private dance, it was explained, where everyone would be in mess undress, and the Kaiser’s severe displeasure was being risked because they were going to dance ragtime and be allowed to sit out, without chaperones, in the rose garden of a café chantant which had been taken over for the evening.

  By this time, with a dinner and a ball ashore almost every evening, Kelly’s eyes were hanging out on his cheeks and he had been looking forward to sleep. But this seemed to be a chance worth taking and those German girls who wore French-cut clothes were very attractive. Among them was a willowy countess from Mainz who went by the nickname of the Ice Maiden, because of her striking beauty, pale skin, blue eyes and white-blonde hair. She had a reputation for frigidness, it seemed, and with the experience of New York behind him and a few sparkling Moselles inside to work up a mood of over-confidence, Kelly set out to destroy it. The result startled him. Within an hour, he had left the café chantant and was alone with her at a night club where they consumed enormous quantities of caviar and champagne cup called bola, Kelly nagged all the time by a guilty feeling that he wasn’t playing fair with Charley.

  That the Ice Maiden wasn’t as frigid as her reputation was proved beyond doubt when he found himself outside her apartment as dawn was breaking. Without a word, she pulled him inside, and was throwing her clothes across the room and reaching with her lips for his mouth and with long cool fingers for his shirt even before he’d managed to slam the door behind them. All his life, Kelly had worked on the principle that you could touch anything anywhere on a girl that was not covered with clothing but that the rest was verboten; but since New York all the rules had gone by the board, and shedding clothes right and left, he grabbed her hand and ran for the bedroom.

  Two hours later, shakily aware how little he knew about sex, he was anxiously wondering what the next erotic item in the programme would be, when she started up with a yelp, clutching the sheet to her ample bosom.

  ‘My husband,’ she shrieked. ‘He returns this morning from Brussels!’

  Kelly had just made his escape to the end of the street when he saw a cab appear at the other end and draw up at the apartment block, and he returned thankfully to the ship ready to foreswear all official functions for the rest of the visit.

  ‘Good time?’ Fanshawe asked blandly as they sipped coffee in the mess.

  ‘Too good.’

  ‘Wonder what it is about you.’ Fanshawe eyed Kelly curiously. ‘Only got to blink those long red lashes of yours and they fall in droves at your feet. What’s the technique?’

  ‘No technique,’ Kelly said. ‘Just enthusiasm. Seafaring’s no profession for a man who believes in personal chastity.’

  Fanshawe pulled a face. ‘Well, it’s true one’s away from women so long at times one feels like a wolf howling at the moon. But be careful, young Maguire. Seamen are notoriously sentimental. Every ship has its quota of three-badge men and elderly officers who ought to know better, who’ve been caught by some cheap little tart for no other reason than that they’ve been too long nourishing sentimental dreams at sea in the long nights and fallen for the first woman who crossed their bows.

  Feigning a stomach disorder, Kelly remained on board for the next twenty-four hours, but when a note appeared for him from the Ice Maiden to say that her husband had gone on to Berlin and that she planned to appear at a tea dance the following afternoon, he threw caution to the winds, and set off full of excitement, wondering what the evening might hold.

  As it happened, it held nothing. He had barely got his arms round her when a German dressed in some sort of official uniform appeared and a moment later the manager climbed on to the rostrum, stopped the band and made an announcement in German. His face was grave and immediately the Germans started whispering among themselves.

  ‘What’s he say?’

  Fanshawe translated. ‘The Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s been assassinated in Sarajevo,’ he announced.

  ‘Who’s the Archduke Franz Ferdi
nand when he’s at home? where the hell’s Sarajevo?’

  ‘The Archduke was the heir to the Austrian throne and Sarajevo’s in Serbia.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Fanshawe shrugged. ‘It means war, old boy. I was talking to the navigator of Hohenzollern last night – chap called Erich Raeder – and he said the Germans were scared stiff of an unexpected incident like this setting off a war between us. This time it’s not like Agadir.’

  Kelly frowned. At the time of Agadir, he’d been concerned only with keeping his nose clean to avoid the attentions of the sub-lieutenant of the gunroom, but even so he’d been well aware of the intensity of the crisis. The Germans had sent a gunboat to protect their interests in French North Africa and all the alarm bells in Europe had started to quiver. The crisis, had been defused in the end but it had been a clear pointer to German attitudes and the deep and violent passions of resentment coursing beneath the glittering uniforms that thronged the Kaiser’s palaces.

  The dancing had stopped and people were reaching for their coats.

  ‘You will have to return to your ship,’ the Ice Maiden said, and he saw that her face looked bleak and worried.

  ‘Surely there isn’t that much hurry?’

  She sighed. ‘I think you will find there is,’ she said. ‘This is a black day for Germany. The Archduke represented German influence in the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the Emperor had even promised him recognition for his morganatic wife. All the work of fifteen years is gone.’

  Four

  That evening, soon after they were aboard, a despatch boat came into the anchorage and shot past the ship’s stern. She had been to fetch the Kaiser from where he’d been taking part in a sailing race. He was seated aft, his appearance quite the opposite of when they’d seen him going to sea in the morning. He’d left on the yacht, Meteor, with a large party and, as the ship had passed close astern of Clarendon he had seemed to be in excellent spirits. Now he was alone, his staff grouped behind him at a distance, while he sat staring silently ahead, his chin supported by one hand. That evening they heard he’d left for Berlin.

  The news had clearly brought the review week to an abrupt end, and as the British ships sailed for home through the Kiel Canal, they noticed they were being energetically photographed from all angles from the suspension bridges, while zeppelins hovered above them in the sky like huge cigars, taking more pictures.

  The swan song of the old navy came in a last review at Spithead for which Clarendon received a new commanding officer, Captain the Lord Charles Everley, a small gloomy man with sad eyes and the pendulous jowls of a bloodhound.

  ‘Looks as if he’s been struck by lightning,’ Kelly said. ‘Who is he? And where did he come from?’

  ‘China Station.’ Fanshawe always knew the details. ‘Asked for a posting home. First wife died four years ago. Got a daughter twenty years old who’s a bit of a problem. Got married again before he went out and hasn’t seen his new wife much since. Perhaps he needs to.’

  Even now, Home Rule for Ireland seemed of far greater importance than the possibility of war and Kelly stared at the assembled ships, feeling old and cynical and doubtful. The Navy hadn’t had a real war for over a hundred years, and men who had entered as cadets had retired as admirals without ever hearing a shot fired in anger, and he wondered how many senior officers there still were like his father.

  With the possibility of war in the offing there had been an unexpected spate of letters from home but none of them had seemed to Kelly to contain much hope for the Navy. Admiral Maguire had always set great store by ceremony and even now he seemed to be considering the ritual of being at war rather than the hard facts of death or defeat. ‘The Navy,’ he had written, ‘will see the thing through if it comes to a conflict. We have always known how to behave and have always been the envy of the rest of the world.’

  Remembering what he’d seen of the Germans at Kiel, Kelly had an uneasy feeling that it was that very envy which had brought the present crisis to its climax, and that behaviour – high-nosed, haughty and self-satisfied – which might well bring the sort of result no one was expecting.

  Suddenly the world seemed on the verge of a catastrophe just when it appeared to be at its most brilliant. Two mighty European systems, hostile to each other, faced each other in glittering and clanking panoply so that every word, every whisper, counted in the mounting crisis. There was a strange temper in the air that even Kelly was aware of. Every great nation had made its preparations and knew whom its enemy would be, and, rather than have fleet manoeuvres in the North Sea, Churchill had decided instead to have a practice mobilisation, calling out the whole of the Fleet reserve. Twenty thousand men had reported and all the Third Fleet ships had coaled and raised steam for the review. As they left Spithead and dispersed for a two-day series of exercises, it took more than six hours for the enormous armada to pass before the royal yacht; though the exercises, Kelly noticed, bore little resemblance to war and still seemed more concerned with a sort of ceremonial dance arranged for ships. When they vanished to ports around Britain to give summer leave and demobilise the reservists, Clarendon went to Portland.

  The news that greeted them was grave. The Ice Maiden had been right. Instead of blowing away, the crisis seemed to have gathered strength and there was a rumour that Austria was not satisfied with the Serbian acceptance of the ultimatum she’d presented and was demanding satisfaction for the assassination of the heir to the throne.

  ‘If it does come to war and the French are in,’ Kelly said, then we’ll be in. With the whole of the French Fleet in the Mediterranean, they’ve only a few cruisers left to guard the Atlantic coast and we’d never allow the Germans to come down the Channel and bombard their ports within gunshot of our ships.’

  On the Sunday, he went ashore with Fanshawe for a lobster tea and a discussion about their forthcoming leave. They were well aware of the sidelong glances they attracted. Naval men always possessed a mystique which did not emerge from the military. There was something about a sailor, and they possessed skills and knowledge that were never wholly understood by landsmen. To them the sea wasn’t the terrifying thing it was to shorebound people, so that they carried out their duties with an air of confidence and superiority that was the stamp of a centuries-old tradition, and the style they acquired in the performing of them was present in every man in the fleet, from the youngest cadet to the oldest and saltiest admiral.

  They spent a pleasant afternoon, aware of the admiration they evoked, but as they walked back to the landing stage, they saw two battleships, Lord Nelson and Agamemnon, steaming into the bay.

  ‘That’s odd,’ Kelly said. ‘They sailed this morning for Portsmouth to give leave.’

  Buying a local paper at the landing stage, they read stories of increasing trouble in the Balkans, and next day the demobilisation of reservists was stopped. The newspaper headlines were larger than the previous day and orders arrived to coal as quickly as possible. A thousand tons of coal were tossed down on to the upper deck by automatic chutes and they were left to get it into the bunkers as well as they could.

  The winches rattled away half the night, the whole ship enveloped in a fog of dust which encrusted on perspiring skins, and the next morning, as they received orders to be prepared to sail the following day, officers and men were recalled from shore by patrols and notices thrown on the screens of cinemas. The following morning they weighed anchor with the rest of the fleet.

  ‘Scapa Flow for orders,’ Fanshawe said.

  The ships turned, squadron by squadron, gigantic steel castles moving across a misty sea, eighteen miles of warships running at high speed, the early morning light picking up the colours of the flag hoists fluttering at the yardarm and catching the curves of the ship’s upperworks and turrets and the great rifled barrels of the guns. Kelly sniffed the air, conscious of the smell of salt on the wind and the s
ubtle quality of the light on the water, an awareness he put down to his perception being heightened by the crisis and the possibility of death not far away in the future.

  For the first hour they steamed in a westerly direction then, out of sight of land, altered course sixteen points and stood up-channel towards Dover. Soon afterwards, a signal was received indicating that strained relations existed between Britain and Germany, and all hands prepared the ship for war, fusing lyddite shell and placing warheads on the torpedoes. There was a strange feeling of finality as the work proceeded, and Kelly recognised that he was about to enter a new phase in his life when people like his father and Mrs Upfold weren’t going to matter any more.

  During the morning, they painted out the white recognition bands round the funnels and the commander took Kelly round the quarter deck with a knife, with which they solemnly stripped down the canvas pipe-clayed coverings that had been made so immaculate for Kiel. As the crude iron of the berthing rail stanchions appeared, the face of the petty officer who accompanied them grew grave. ‘We never went as far as this before,’ he observed gloomily. ‘Not even over Agadir.’

  During the afternoon, a large French battleship dashed past at twenty knots, cleared for action and heading for Brest, and at dusk they went to night defence stations as the fleet ran at high speed and in absolute blackness through the Narrow Seas.

  Shortly afterwards, Clarendon altered course away from the rest of the fleet, heading towards Dover. A merchant ship loomed up out of the darkness and an angry voice yelled ‘Where’s your bloody glims?’ then, almost immediately, Dover’s searchlights picked them up. The signalling light clattered and, as an answering flash came from the shore, the anchor splashed down.

  The night was strangely tense. Everybody in the ship knew what was in the wind but none of them knew what war could mean. Nobody had been in a sea battle and only a few of the older men had seen action ashore during the Boer War. Unable to sleep, Kelly tossed restlessly in his bunk and fell asleep just before dawn, only to be wakened by Fanshawe’s hand on his shoulder.