Patrol to the Golden Horn

by Patrol to the Golden Horn (epub)

  A mass of pipes continued on both sides and overhead: trim line, LP air-line, brass handwheels on the connections from the air-line to the tanks … Stores and gear filled any empty spaces. Some of the crew messed in here; the long mess table was slung up on chains under the deckhead, and could be let down when it was needed. Hobday stopped at the last bulkhead before the stern compartment, the after ends, and peered through. At the far end on the centre-line was the rear door of the stern tube. Emergency hand-steering gear was in the starboard after corner; and hand-operating gear for the after hydroplanes. Most of the off-watch crewmen slept in the after ends. A stoker sorting spanners glanced round from his crouched position beside a tool locker; Jake murmured, ‘Stoker Peel’. He knew that ‘Twister’ Peel’s diving-stations job was to watch the packing of the shaft bearings and help with the stern tube. Another man — a torpedoman – was squatting, writing in a notebook – diary, perhaps – writing slowly and laboriously, licking the pencil-lead between words. His name was – oh, damn it all…

  He’d stood up. He was the after endsman and he had a report to make. He had a name too, but—

  ‘After WRT full, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ Hobday cocked an eyebrow at Jake: and the name was on the tip of his tongue, but … Then the torpedoman reached out, hooking his hands over bunches of piping, exercising his muscles by swinging to and fro like a monkey in a cage: there were tattoos all over his arms. Tattoos triggered memory.

  ‘Smith.’

  ‘Cap’n comin’ aboard, sir!’

  Agnew, the Boy Telegraphist. Crabb must have sent him with the message. Sharp-faced like a weasel: pale: sixteen years old.

  ‘Thank you, Agnew.’ Hobday started for’ard, squeezing past individuals and through groups of men, to the control room, and up the ladder into the conning tower with its thick glass ports, up again into the bridge and the brilliant sunshine. Jake, arriving close behind him, saw CPO Crabb at the wheel with the portable magnetic compass in its bracket in front of him. The signalman, Ellery, was at the after end of the bridge with his Aldis lamp ready, its cable trailing down through the hatch. Everard was back there too. Jake climbed over and down to the catwalk and for’ard along the casing; Wishart was halfway down the brow and Robins, strutting in front of him, looking irritatingly self-important. Jake checked that Morton had singled up the hemp breasts so that casting off would be quick and simple, and that the cruiser’s first lieutenant had had a topping-lift rigged, with steadying lines to the end of the gangway, ready to haul it clear. He heard Hobday call down the bridge voicepipe, ‘Stand by telegraphs and main motors. Group down.’ Only the electric motors could be used for harbour manoeuvring, because the gas engines couldn’t be put astern. Robins arrived on the casing, and Jake allowed him a perfunctory salute. Wishart got a proper one.

  ‘All set, pilot?’

  ‘Top line, sir.’

  Hobday saluted the captain as he arrived in the bridge.

  ‘Ready for sea, sir.’

  ‘Splendid.’ His easy manner made it seem like a personal favour he was acknowledging. ‘Let go everything, then – as the bishop proposed to the actress.’ He saw Nick Everard, and nodded to him. ‘All right there? Looking forward to it?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Let go for’ard! Let go aft!’

  The brow swung off the casing, and the ropes fell away from the submarine’s bow and stern; they went snaking, wriggling up into the cruiser’s waist. Jake took his stance up for’ard, where the casing narrowed and the hydroplanes stood out like fins, and Morton and the other hands of the casing party fell in on his left. He heard Wishart’s voice back there on the bridge: ‘Starboard ten, cox’n’, and then, muffled by the voice-pipe as he put his face down to it, ‘Slow ahead starboard.’ A touch of motor and a little port rudder, to swing her stern out… ‘Stop starboard. Midships. Slow astern together.’ Above them, on the cruiser’s quarterdeck, Commander Gillman bawled, ‘Three cheers for HM Submarine E.57! Hip, hip …’

  * * *

  Reaper, on Terrapin's bridge and with binoculars at his eyes, heard the waves of cheering and saw a layer of white rising and falling above the heads of the men on Harwich’s decks as they waved their caps. Shifting the aim of his glasses he saw that the submarine had stopped her motors; you could tell, although she still had stern way on, by the fact that the white surge which her screws had flung up as she went astern had begun to melt, the blue surface to mend itself around her. She was swinging slowly, bringing her bow round towards Grafton Point.

  She was moving ahead again now. There was a smoke-haze above her after casing, and a powerful churning of the sea astern; the racket of her diesel engines reached his ears. And Terrapin could push on too. Reaper had wanted to see both the submarines on their way before he left Imbros himself, but now Truman could take his ship down south-westward to the main fleet base, Mudros, to refuel, and come back this way tomorrow and on into the Gulf of Xeros. At the eastern end of it, off the north shore of the Gallipoli peninsula, they’d be within a few miles of the Marmara, across the peninsula’s thin neck.

  He looked round at Truman.

  ‘Whenever you’re ready, then.’

  The cable was already shortened in; all that was necessary was to pull the hook out of the sand and wind it up. Truman climbed ponderously on to the step that surrounded the binnacle; he told Harriman, ‘Weigh.’

  ‘Weigh anchor!’

  Granger’s ‘Aye aye’ floated up to them; the cable began to clank home as the capstan dragged it dripping from the sea. Two men with a hose angled down over the ship’s side were cleaning the chain off as it rose. Truman looked round for his signalman.

  ‘Mayne – make to E.57, Au revoir. Best of luck.’

  He glanced at Reaper for approval, but the commander was busy with his binoculars. Harriman, observing Granger’s signals from the foc’sl, reported, ‘Cable’s up and down, sir.’

  ‘Very good.’ The lamp was clacking away, and from the submarine’s bridge a light winked acknowledgement of each word. At the same time, E.57 was piping Harwich, she’d backed away clear of her during the cheering interlude, and now as she went ahead she was saluting the senior ship. Presently she’d pass Terrapin at a distance of about half a cable, a hundred yards or so. The signalman, pushing his Aldis lamp back into its bracket on the side of the bridge, reported, ‘Message passed, sir.’ But now a light was flashing again from the submarine: flashing ‘A’s, the calling-up sign. Mayne snatched up the lamp again. Reaper, joining Truman on the binnacle step, took off his cap and began to wave it: Wishart and his first lieutenant – one tall and bulky, the other slight and short – were easily identifiable as they waved back. Further aft, another less distinguishable figure waved: Reaper put his glasses up again, and saw that it was Nick Everard. He waved again: and had to stop, lower his arm and stand to attention when he heard the pipe and saw Wishart at the salute. He hadn’t known that Wishart was junior to Truman in seniority as a lieutenant-commander. Now Terrapin was returning the compliment … Just as it all ended, Granger hailed from the foc’sl, ‘Clear anchor!’

  He hadn’t reported it aweigh. Presumably the clarity of the water made it visible from the surface at the same time as it broke out of the seabed.

  ‘Half ahead together. Starboard fifteen.’

  ‘Starboard fifteen, sir.’ The telegraphs clanged as the bridge messenger slammed their handles over. ‘Both telegraphs at half ahead, sir.’

  ‘Fifteen o’ starboard wheel on, sir!’

  ‘One-four-oh revolutions.’

  Leading Signalman Mayne reported, ‘From E.57, sir: Why not meet us at the Horn?’

  Reaper smiled. He heard Truman ordering, ‘Midships. Steer north ten west.’

  Round the top of the island, then south. About sixty miles to go; then a hundred miles back and into the gulf. Flat calm, bags of speed and time in hand … Truman suggested quietly, ‘Rather early in the day for cheers, was it not?’

  Reaper knew what he
meant. You cheered ships into harbour sometimes after successful operations, but not usually when they set out. It had been Gillman’s suggestion, though, and Captain Usherwood had agreed to it. Reaper said, ‘It’s the devil of a job they’re taking on, you know.’

  ‘The straits?’

  ‘Yes.’ He settled the glasses at his eyes again. ‘And what’s in ’em.’ He shrugged. ‘We’ve nothing to go on, that’s the snag of it. It’s blind man’s buff.’ He nodded towards the submarine. ‘As all of them know full well.’

  E.57 was some way off now, with her diesels pushing her along at about six knots and the sea washing streaky-white over the bulges of her saddle-tanks, spreading in a broad, lacy track astern. She had a solitary, vulnerable look about her; he thought perhaps submarines always did have, at times such as this and to outsiders watching them, but it was disturbing to realise that tonight, when this ship would be safe and comfortable alongside an oiler in Mudros harbour, that one there would be groping blind through minefields, scraping under nets … He murmured, still with his eyes on her, ‘Louve must have got through to the Marmara all right.’

  Truman asked him in a tone that could almost have held reproof, ‘Do you have positive information on that score, sir?’

  Truman wasn’t his sort of man, and Reaper wasn’t looking forward to the social side of life in Terrapin. The fellow had too keen a sense of his own importance. Reaper told him, ‘No. But when the Turks sink a submarine they always make a song and dance about it. They’d have told the world, by now.’

  Chapter 3

  There was a scattering of white on the surface, a light breeze on the bow as the submarine ploughed southeastward now, one diesel charging and the other driving her towards the spot where she’d dive for the run-in to the straits. Off to port, that distant haze of land was Cape Helles with the heights of Karethia and Achi Baba further back, vague as mist against the sky; where the land faded was the gap they’d soon be steering for and entering, and to the right of that were the ridges of hills on the nearer, Asiatic coast, ridges that slid down to the Plain of Troy.

  Much closer — 3,000 yards on the starboard bow — was Mavro Island. They’d come in a wide circle around the British minefields.

  Hobday lowered his glasses as Wishart heaved himself out of the hatch and joined him. E.57 was just about in the position to dive. A few minutes ago Jake Cameron had been up here taking bearings; then the signalman, Ellery, had come up to unship the portable compass. Steering was from the control room now, with the bridge wheel disconnected. Wishart said, ‘No loafing, this time. You can do it. Wait one minute, then pull the plug and we’ll see how long it takes.’

  He’d spoken quietly so the lookout wouldn’t hear him and be ready for it. After a spell of inaction even the best ship’s company needed to be sharpened up a bit. Wishart went below again; when Hobday dived her, he’d be watching points down there.

  The bridge was nothing but a platform now. Before they’d checked the trim with a slow-time, carefully-controlled dive off Kephalo, the canvas screens had been unlashed from the bridge rails, the wires unrove and the stanchions unshipped, all of it carried below and stowed for’ard in the tube space. The wireless mast and its aerial and the ensign staff had been removed too. Then the engines had been stopped, and she’d wallowed, losing way, and Wishart had flooded her down by filling one pair of main ballast tanks at a time, so that she’d eased her way into the sea as gingerly as a flapper dithering off a beach. But this time, with only numbers 3 and 4 main ballast not already full of water, she’d make her plunge in seconds; and she wouldn’t be coming to the surface again – please God – until she was through the straits and in the Marmara.

  That one minute had passed. Hobday glanced round at the lookout – Rowbottom, a torpedoman. Placid, heavy-boned, slow-moving. He’d better not move slowly now… He was gazing out over the beam, eastwards towards the loom of land, blinking patiently into his binoculars. Hobday stooped, putting his mouth close above the voicepipe, and shouted, ‘Dive, dive, dive!’

  Turning his head, he glimpsed Rowbottom more or less in mid-air as the man seemed to take off, flash across several feet of bridge, and fall into the open hatch. In the same space of time Hobday had shut the voicepipe cock and leapt into the hatch on top of him. His thumb stabbed at the button of the hooter: the engine noise had died and he heard the vents in the tops of the main ballast crash open and a roar of escaping air as the sea rushed up into numbers 3 and 4. A rain of spray was falling as he dragged the lid down over his head; then he was forcing the clips on, engaging the links and pushing the levers over, using both hands to do it. He climbed down through the lower hatch into the control room, and Ellery shut and clipped that lower one as soon as he was off the ladder.

  No sign of Wishart. He heard Cameron tell the coxswain, ‘Forty feet’, and Crabb, on the after ’planes, repeated the order. Cameron told his first lieutenant, ‘Captain said I was to catch a trim at forty. He’s gone aft.’

  Giving them all a bit of practice, and having a bit of a snoop around meanwhile. Jake Cameron, glancing round as the hands settled into their places, met Nick Everard’s eyes: just a pair of eyes and part of a face glimpsed through a lot of general movement. He was back watching the trim now. Crabb reported, ‘Forty feet, sir. Touch ’eavy aft, sir.’

  ‘Yes.’ He did nothing to compensate for it, though. Being at forty feet instead of twenty made the boat heavier; when they came back to periscope depth again she’d be in trim. Also, her fore-and-aft balance would have been thrown out by Wishart having gone aft. One man’s weight could make a surprising amount of difference when it moved more than a few feet. Hobday muttered in Jake’s ear, ‘Main vents’. Jake glanced at the panel: he snapped, ‘Shut main vents!’ and McVeigh’s hands moved fast up the row of steel levers, slamming them back into line; the thuds of closing tank-tops ran like drumbeats down the boat’s length. It was a crime to leave main vents open once the boat was dived, and many first lieutenants would have made a fuss about it. Jake nodded to him. ‘Thanks.’

  Wishart was back, though. ‘Hundred and fifty feet. You carry on, pilot.’

  ‘Hundred and fifty, cox’n.’

  CPO Crabb and Leading Seaman Morton angled their ’planes to take her down. Jake said over his shoulder, ‘Pump on the buoyancy tank.’ ERA Knight opened the tank’s suction and vent, and McVeigh started the pump motor. The buoyancy tank was a small one amidships, useful for minor adjustments to the boat’s weight because it had no fore-and-aft movement. The trim had to be adjusted now because as she went deeper her hull would be compressed by the pressure of the sea; she’d thus displace a smaller volume of water and, in accordance with the principle of Archimedes, become heavier.

  ‘Hundred and fifty feet, sir.’

  ‘Very good.’ Trim seemed about right; he had the tank shut off. He saw Burtenshaw leaning in the doorway of the silent cabinet; the dreaded Robins was presumably inside it. Nick Everard was on a chair pushed hard back against the wardroom bunks; he looked like a prisoner, Jake thought – trapped, and alert for a chance to make a break for it.

  Hum of the motors. Warm, oily atmosphere. It would get a damn sight warmer before they reached the Marmara. Wishart cocked an eyebrow at his first lieutenant: ‘Check for leaks while we’re deep, Number One?’ He told the helmsman, ‘Port ten.’

  ‘Port ten, sir.’ Roost, the gunlayer, was helmsman at diving stations. He spun the wheel, and Wishart added, ‘Steer oh-five-oh.’

  That was the course to enter the Dardanelles – which about a million years ago had been a river and was no wider than a decent-sized one now.

  Steering by gyro. The gyro wheel itself was inside a steel-mesh casing right against the steering pedestal. If Roost stuck his elbows out as he pushed the helm around he’d crack one on the conning-tower ladder and the other on the corner of the auxiliary switch-board. If you had a cat in an E-class submarine you wouldn’t swing it round.

  Having rudder on affected the boat’s tr
im, and Morton had put some dive on the fore ’planes to counteract the bow’s tendency to rise. Now Roost was easing the wheel off.

  ‘Course oh-five-oh, sir.’

  Wishart said, ‘When the first lieutenant’s finished his inspection we’ll go to watch diving. What’s our distance to the Kum Kale mines, pilot?’

  ‘Six point one miles, sir.’ He’d laid the tracks off on the chart and he had the courses and distances in his head.

  ‘Three hours, then.’

  A slow approach would conserve the battery’s power – which was essential, with forty-five miles of straits ahead of them. It wasn’t only a question of the distance to be covered under water; there’d almost certainly be some tricky bits on the way through – nets to break through, for instance – and to get out of difficult situations you needed, usually, at least spasms of full power on the motors. You had to save up, as it were, for the times when there’d be no option but to use the batteries to their limit.

  Hobday had been right for’ard; now he passed through again on his way aft. He told Wishart, as he squeezed between Knight and Ellery, ‘Dry as a bone so far.’

  Morton murmured out of the corner of his mouth to Crabb, ‘More ’n I am.’ Sweat was running down his big, smooth face. ‘Lover-boy Mort’, they called him; something to do with a girl in Gibraltar, Hobday had said. Might she not have minded his tendency to stream with sweat? Only the 4th ERA, Bradshaw, was his equal at it, and his name to his friends was ‘Polecat’. A wiry, very hairy man. He was at the port after end of the control room; his responsibilities at diving stations were number 3 external vent, the port ballast pump and the port main-line flooding valve.