The Lion at Sea

by Max Hennessy

  ‘Come and look at this, Maguire! You might not get the opportunity again for a long time at this range.’

  Stumbling on deck, Kelly screwed his eyes up against the light. Not far away a three-funnelled cruiser that he identified at once as German was scuttling past for the broad waters of the northern horizon.

  ‘Caught with his trousers down west of Land’s End,’ Fanshawe said. ‘He’s taking a bit of a chance trying to nip through the Channel with war in the offing.’

  The German disappeared at high speed and coaling started again, all ships topping up their bunkers. That evening censorship came into force.

  The next days were spent stripping ships of panelling and furniture to reduce the amount of woodwork on board. The seamen slung chairs and tables and even pianos over the side into the lighters with great glee, clearly thoroughly enjoying smashing up the officers’ property. The frenzy finally reached masochistic proportions with the removal of cutters, whalers and skiffs to the shore, but, since Kelly’s position, in the event of abandoning ship, was with fifteen others in a whaler that would take no more than ten in a flat calm, getting rid of the boats didn’t seem to make much difference.

  Later in the morning, there was a rush to get private belongings on the quay, and Kelly was ordered off the ship, staggering under a collection of diaries, last wills and testaments, family documents, silver and other valuables, all to be despatched home.

  ‘My box goes to my house,’ the captain told him. ‘Together with my tin case and the silver cup I got for shooting. Better take a taxi.’

  The address was in the best part of the town and the door was opened by a girl in a pink peignoir. Her feet were in bedroom slippers and she looked as though she hadn’t been up long.

  ‘Those Captain Everley’s things?’ she asked.

  ‘They are indeed. The very same.’

  She gave Kelly a broad grin. ‘Wheel ’em in,’ she said.

  She was pretty and forthright, even if too heavily made up, and Kelly decided she was Everley’s daughter – and by the look of her a handful.

  ‘Better have a drink while you’re at it,’ she suggested. ‘Can’t send the Navy away without a reward, can we? What’ll it be? Whisky?’

  Despite his protests, she poured enormous drinks for them both and sat alongside him on the settee, smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Which one are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Which one what?’

  ‘Which officer?’

  ‘I’m Maguire. Kelly Maguire.’

  She smiled, ‘You’ve got a bit of a reputation, I hear.’

  ‘Have I? What sort?’

  ‘With the ladies.’ She leaned closer. ‘Why did you decide to go to sea? It’s not much of a life for a man when he gets married, is it?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Come to that, it’s not much of a life for a woman. I used to like to touch a sailor’s collar for luck, but I’ve come to the conclusion that luck’s what a woman needs a lot of when she fancies a sailor.’

  For a naval captain’s daughter, she seemed a very odd number indeed, and Kelly began to wonder if instead she were just the housekeeper or a maid, or perhaps some poor relation who looked after the place when the family were abroad.

  ‘No need to move away,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not doing.’

  She smiled. ‘I’m glad. I’ve always found the Navy lives up to its reputation.’

  ‘What reputation’s that?’

  ‘For being quick on the uptake.’ She was pressing against him now and seemed to be inviting him to put down his glass and grab her. Carefully he placed it on the table beside him. After all, he decided, captain’s daughters – or relations, or whatever they happened to be – were only human. So, for that matter, were naval lieutenants who couldn’t get home.

  The girl was eyeing him speculatively. ‘You married?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Girl friend?’

  ‘Not so’s you’d notice.’ Kelly mentally begged Charley’s forgiveness. Temptation was sometimes too much for a man.

  ‘Have another drink?’

  ‘I’ve had two.’

  ‘You know what they say: “There’s cider down the eiderdown.” You can kiss me if you like.’

  Kelly eyed her cautiously. ‘Do you always kiss naval officers when they arrive with the captain’s goods and chattels?’ he asked.

  She chuckled. ‘I try,’ she said. ‘It’s surprising how well they respond.’

  With the peignoir open at the front and a couple of whiskies inside him, Kelly could see why.

  ‘How about the captain? What does he have to say?’

  She smiled archly. ‘He doesn’t know.’ She settled against him and lifted her face. ‘No need to hurry off,’ she said.

  A small voice sounded a warning. ‘What about Mrs Captain?’ Kelly asked cautiously.

  She smiled and grabbed for him. ‘No need to worry about her,’ she said. ‘I’m Mrs Captain.’

  Outside on the pavement two minutes later, Kelly drew a deep relieved breath. Captain’s daughters were fair game but captain’s wives were dynamite, and Captain Everley seemed to have one of the most explosive kind. No wonder he looked as he did. The poor bugger was one of Fanshawe’s frustrated three-badge men and elderly officers who’d been caught by a tart.

  The harbour was full of ships’ boats by the time he returned, and more were being added. The evening paper seemed to be more full of cricket than war, because Hobbs had made the highest score of his career, but the last Germans were still heading for the quays, trying to get back home across the Channel before it was too late, their womenfolk sniffling, the children crying as though they sensed disaster, and the last reservists were beginning to come into the depots. They arrived on bicycles and on foot, some of them men who’d clearly prospered, others only too eager to be back where they could get three square meals a day.

  Occasionally, a taut-faced woman with a child appeared, and occasionally a Territorial, in ill-fitting khaki and none too sober, going off to join his unit, his friends urging him to give the Germans hell or keep his head well down, or both. Standing on the jetty, Kelly was aware that the air was thick with rumours. Spies were said to have been shot already, and butchers behind the town to have killed off so many animals for rations they’d sunk down exhausted in the sea of blood they had themselves created.

  A sub-lieutenant in a sporting check suit and a brown bowler hat appeared.

  ‘On my way to join Lion,’ he announced. ‘I’ve come straight from Goodwood and I haven’t the faintest idea where my uniform is.’

  Kelly returned on board, certain by now that war was just over the horizon. Fanshawe met him. ‘The Germans have demanded free passage for their troops through Belgium,’ he said. ‘And the Belgians have refused, and appealed to us to uphold their neutrality. I gather we’ve presented an ultimatum to the Kaiser. That means we’re in, because they won’t draw back now.’

  On the quarter deck, Captain Everley was complaining to the Commander about the officer of the watch. In the panic, he had recalled the liberty boat too soon because of a signal that all ships’ boats had to be out of the water by 8 p.m., and had left the captain’s steward on the quay.

  ‘There are twelve hundred lieutenants on the Navy List,’ Everley was saying in his gloomy voice. ‘That makes ’em two a penny. But in the course of God knows how long at sea, I’ve only met one good steward – mine – and he’s been left ashore.’

  The captain’s secretary refused to give anything away, despite the fact that they all knew war was probably only hours away, and the next day everything that remained of a combustible nature which could be done without followed the boats and the woodwork ashore.

  ‘Are we to strip the cabins, sir?’ Kelly asked. ‘
I’ve heard that Raleigh’s removing the corticene from the messdeck.’

  ‘Raleigh’s a blood-and-iron ship,’ the First Lieutenant said. ‘We’ll leave the corticene.’ He gave a sudden smile. ‘We might even get a few comfortable armchairs back on board, in fact, so that later we don’t have to have a whip round to purchase some more.’

  More ships turned up and the long summer afternoon of August 4th, 1914, was spent waiting for the British ultimatum to expire. A signal had already been received, stating that it was due to terminate at midnight and in the early evening another signal arrived: ‘Admiralty to all ships. The war telegram will be issued at midnight authorising you to commence hostilities against Germany.’

  With its receipt the panic stopped. There was a strange calm everywhere now. All the decisions had been taken and now they could only wait.

  ‘Ours not to reason why,’ Fanshawe said. ‘Ours but to do and die.’

  ‘Forty-eight hours from now,’ Kelly pointed out, ‘we’ll probably be dying like billy-o.’

  He was keeping the first watch, from eight to midnight. It was hot and all the scuttles were wide open. But everybody seemed restless and the ship was humming with life.

  The auxiliary machinery was whining and the ventilating fans provided background noise to the sound of a train squealing in the dock station and the marine sentry rattling his rifle butt on the concrete by the gangway. Cooking smells from the officers’ galley added flavour to the smell of oil, steam and that curious extra acrid odour that was peculiar to marine machinery. From ashore he could hear the sound of the crowds coming on the still air. The streets were full, as though everyone was uneasy and waiting like the Fleet, and faintly he heard the low tones of God Save The King as some group in an access of patriotic emotion began to sing. Then he heard the chimes of a church clock coming over the water and turned to Fanshawe who had relieved him.

  ‘That’s it, then! We’re in!’

  When he came on watch again at 4 a.m., Fanshawe said in matter-of-fact tones, ‘We had a signal at 1.27 a.m., ordering us to commence hostile acts against Germany.’

  ‘And did we?’

  ‘Any moment now.’

  As Fanshawe disappeared, Kelly found himself staring at the increasing light on the eastern horizon, suddenly confused by doubt. Was he as brave as he thought he was? Naval warfare was no longer a question of two ships lying alongside each other so that their crews could indulge in hand-to-hand fighting. These days, it was a matter of hurling huge quantities of high explosive across miles of sea, to wrench and tear at steel plating as if it were cardboard. A shell striking armour plate disintegrated in a flash into hundreds of red-hot, jagged splinters of steel that could tear a man in half.

  Was he courageous enough to face the sights he’d undoubtedly have to face? Naval officers were trained to be a body of brave, self-sacrificing and intensely loyal officers, he’d often been told. But there was a great deal of difference between the word, which came from a book of rules, and the deed, which came from a man’s guts, his heart and his breeding. He wasn’t sure that he fitted all the requirements that were demanded of him and time alone would tell him if he were. What was worse, he’d noticed often that these same officers he was supposed to emulate, despite their undoubted courage and incontestable loyalty, had never had their critical faculties encouraged, so that none of them appeared to question anything, except within the rigid framework of that guide to the wise and law for the foolish, King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions. He could only hope that not only would he be brave but that he would also behave with intelligence.

  As he went off watch, the ship was alive with men, their faces grave, working for the first time as if they knew that life itself now depended on how well their jobs were done. He pushed through them towards his cabin and, almost instinctively, took out the picture of Charley that she’d given him on his last leave, and stuck it in the corner of the mirror. He had no idea why he did it. She was still only a child from the point of view of experience and knowledge but somehow the gesture indicated the curious loyalty that had always existed between them, and in his mind’s eye he had a glimpse of her praying for him. Without thinking, he knelt by his bunk.

  ‘Let me conduct myself well, Lord,’ he asked.

  He rose to his feet, faintly shamefaced, because he hadn’t got down on his knees outside church since he’d been a small boy. But the gesture had been instinctive and he sensed that it was right.

  Let me conduct myself well, he thought again. That was all he could ask.

  Within hours the war had started for him.

  Five

  While they were at breakfast, a signal arrived detaching Clarendon to Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt’s command at Harwich, and the wardroom cleared at once.

  ‘Pipe hands to prepare for sea!’

  Pipes twittered and the master-at-arms and ship’s corporals went through the messes which immediately became a seething mass of running men. The sky was dark grey like the side of a battleship, with a lighter sword-stroke of pearl low on the horizon in the east. Beyond the muzzles of the forward turret Kelly could see the bustling activity of the cable party and an officer silhouetted against the guard rail. A bell jangled.

  ‘Engine room standing by!’

  There was already excitement in the air. The war had only just begun and they still had no idea what to expect.

  ‘Pipe all hands for leaving harbour!’ The First Lieutenant glanced at his watch. ‘My respects to the captain. Tell him it’s ten minutes to slipping.’

  The deck began to quiver and smoke began to curl down from the funnel in a dark plume like an ostrich feather in a woman’s hat. Everley appeared and placed himself in the centre of the bridge.

  ‘Special sea duty men closed up, sir. Ship ready for sea.’

  ‘Very well. Sound off.’

  A bugle shrilled and there was the spatter of running feet.

  ‘Signal from ashore, sir! Proceed!’

  Everley gave a small frown and Kelly wondered what he was thinking about. Why hadn’t he gone ashore himself to see his wife? Or did he, perhaps, prefer not to? God forbid, he thought, that I should end up like him, pretending, lying to myself. Thinking of Charley, he felt he never would.

  Everley had moved to the front of the bridge now and was staring towards the bows. Suddenly his hangdog face seemed alive. Perhaps the poor devil preferred to be at sea. Perhaps at sea he felt safe. Perhaps at sea he didn’t have to look at his wife and realise what a mistake he’d made. As Fanshawe had said, the Navy was full of sad people like Everley, swept away by their emotions after serving too long in some torrid Far East port. The China Station where he’d come from was notorious as the graveyard of reputations, and men were always being sent home ruined by drink, speculative gambling, or women. Perhaps Everley was one.

  One eye to port, Everley leaned on the bridge rail. At least, whatever else he’d lost, he’d not lost his touch. He made no gestures, just words spoken against a background hum from the ship’s generators, the occasional clatter of feet in the distance and low murmurs from the men on the deck waiting for him to give his orders.

  ‘Slow ahead together,’ he said quietly.

  Bells jangled and the quivering that ran through the deck increased.

  ‘Slip!’

  A harsh flurry of orders came from the forecastle with the rasping clatter of the wire. ‘All gone forrard, sir!’

  Everley peered over the bridge coaming. ‘Watch her head, quartermaster. Half ahead port.’ There was a pause. ‘Slow ahead together.’

  The white cliffs behind them began to swing and the oil-black water alongside slipped astern, littered with sagging armchairs, abandoned possessions, and the peacetime straw hats they’d worn ashore.

  ‘Forecastle secured for sea, sir!’

  ‘Very good. Fall out
the hands and stand by to exercise action stations. I want every one checked.’ Everley permitted himself a small frosty smile. ‘After all, it is the first day of the war.’

  As they turned west, heading towards the Outer Gabbard Light in the approaches to the Thames, the W/T office began to pick up signals from other ships and there was a stream of messages to the bridge.

  ‘I think the war’s started,’ Everley said with an unexpected cheerfulness, as if all his life he’d been waiting for this moment.

  Fanshawe leaned across to Kelly. ‘Tyrwhitt’s out, and itching to draw the first blood of the war,’ he whispered. ‘Third Destroyer Flotilla’s making a sweep towards Holland.’

  The sea was calm and the seamen moved about their duties quietly and efficiently. During the morning, the ship increased speed and the word was passed round that the destroyers were already being led into action by the light cruiser, Amphion. Immediately the air became electric.

  ‘That was quick,’ Kelly said. ‘What is it? High Seas Fleet come out?’

  ‘Nothing quite so important,’ Fanshawe said, ‘We’ve picked up a signal that a suspicious-looking steamer’s been seen throwing things overboard in the mouth of the Thames. The destroyers are searching for her and now, it seems, so are we, because they might be mines.’

  At 10.30, they sighted Amphion through the haze, accompanied by the sleek shapes of several destroyers, one of which immediately swung round to challenge them. Recognising Clarendon, she took up a position alongside.

  ‘Steamer identified as Königin Luise seen laying mines,’ she flashed across the grey water. ‘Position west of longitude three east.’

  Shortly afterwards, they came up on a converging course with other destroyers, and in the distance saw a small grey steamer heading eastwards at full speed, smoke pouring from her funnels. With Clarendon close behind and hauling up fast, the destroyers began to fire. Then Clarendon’s guns barked; the crash as the forward battery opened up seemed to be the signal for the start of their new life, and they caught their first whiff of cordite fumes in wartime.