by Alan Evans
Moehle interjected drily but in good humour, “I had noticed.”
The other officers laughed, Kurt Larsen among them, and the pilot held up a hand in apology: “Sorry! However, the mechanics have had to admit defeat. She will not fly again until we reach a workshop in Germany.”
Moehle nodded, “So we must manage without the seaplane, useful though she has been, but you will not have to wait too long for that workshop. The engineers tell me we must return to Germany soon for dockyard work on our engines. We meet our oil tanker tomorrow and will refuel from her and transfer these latest prisoners to her. I think they may not be too comfortable because the captain of the oiler complains that his accommodation for prisoners is already crowded. But that is good news, a sign of our success.”
He was referring to the crews of the five ships previously sunk and the officers applauded. Then Moehle went on, “But we have some accommodation of our own for prisoners. Before returning to Germany I propose making one final sweep along the coast of Brazil and off the estuary of the River Plate. Those are busy shipping lanes, particularly off the Plate, with British ships sailing from Buenos Aires and Montevideo. We should find rich pickings.”
He was cheered by the wardroom, Kurt applauding with the rest, but then he remembered the captain of the Greenleaf, now in that prisoners’ ‘accommodation’, one of the locked cabins below. He had warned: “Somebody will get off a signal and then the Navy will hunt you down.”
Some two hundred miles away Kapitän zur See Hans Langsdorff was making a similar speech to the officers of Graf Spee, stating his intention to make a last big killing among the shipping out of Buenos Aires and Montevideo before sailing for home. His ship had just sunk the SS Doric Star.
Commodore Harwood had four ships in his squadron patrolling off the coast of South America. Two of them, both cruisers mounting eight-inch guns, returned to the Falklands on 9 December. Cumberland was to undertake a badly needed self-refit at Port Stanley while Exeter was under orders to sail north to join Harwood off the estuary of the River Plate. There he was flying his flag in Ajax, one of the six-inch gun cruisers, with the other, Achilles, in company.
He had received a report of a signal from the Doric Star beginning ‘RRR’, indicating an attack by a surface raider. The signal said she was being gunned by a pocket battleship and gave her position. The raider might have sailed in any direction from there but Harwood calculated that if she headed for the estuary of the River Plate she would be there on or about 13 December. He had therefore ordered the concentration of the three cruisers.
When Exeter sailed for the Plate she had Hurst and Donovan aboard her.
Chapter Eight – Raider!
Smith stepped out onto the deck of the SS Whitby, out of Southampton and bound for Montevideo, in the last of the night. There was a hint of greyness along the horizon to port but no sign of the first flush of dawn as yet. To starboard but some forty miles distant lay the coast of Brazil.
He wore an old sports jacket over a thick sweater, his hands were jammed in the pockets of his trousers and his shoulders hunched. He had woken and been unable to sleep again, plagued by thoughts of his daughter and son. He was travelling further from the first with every turn of the Whitby’s propellers and God only knew if or when he would see the second. The boy, young man rather, was in Ajax and somewhere off the coast of South America, but that was a huge area.
Smith swung onto the ladder to the bridge and began to climb. The Admiralty had told him this appointment to join the office of the Naval Attaché in Montevideo was for a limited period, to give him a half-year of relative stability after the years of secret operations. Smith did not believe it. He had a lurking suspicion he was being sent to free a younger man for a command: his command, that had been promised to him over the years. He was being shunted off out of the way. What was the name some of the young officers had for people like him, veterans of another war brought back for this one? Dug-out. That was it. And Admiralty thought he was a dug-out.
The watch-keeping officer on Whitby’s bridge was a young man, Maltby, the Second Mate. He grinned at Smith, who had a standing invitation from the ship’s master to visit the bridge whenever he wished. “G’morning, sir.”
Smith grunted an answer, despondent, bitter, and Maltby thought, The gentlemen of the Royal Navy are a little liverish this morning. He left the slight, frail-seeming officer alone.
Smith prowled restlessly about the bridge, glanced at the course steered by the quartermaster then moved aft to the table at the back of the bridge and studied the chart there. They were off the coast of Brazil and some nine hundred miles north of the estuary of the River Plate, where lay Montevideo. There were rivers and ports between, though none of them visited by the Whitby, and Smith’s finger traced them. Some parts of this coast were densely inhabited, modern cities rising by the sea, but others were empty, sparsely peopled. It was a huge continent.
He straightened, thinking that he should not visit his own preoccupations on others, and walked forward to stand by Maltby and say drily, “Good morning, again. Pity you can’t choose which passenger comes to the bridge this early.”
Maltby accepted the oblique apology and the inference, welcomed Smith’s sudden grin. The Mate laughed, “I can’t imagine the Doctor up here now. She’s a strange girl. Hardly stirs from her cabin and I haven’t heard her say more than a dozen words.”
All they knew of Véronique Duclos was that she had only recently qualified as a Doctor of Medicine in Paris and was on her way to visit her parents. Her father was a minor diplomat in the French mission at Montevideo. Maltby’s words had summed up Smith’s impression of her. He agreed, “Mademoiselle Duclos is a quiet girl.” Though he made the mental reservation that still waters could run deep. He added, “And dedicated to her profession. When we were in Charleston she spent most of her time looking around the local hospitals.”
Whitby had been held up in the dockyard in South Carolina for over a week making repairs to her propeller shaft. The French girl had been disappointed at the delay: “I could have travelled on the Formose. I came in this ship to reach Montevideo sooner.” But then she shrugged it off. Whitby was cheaper than the liner.
Smith and Maltby stood in companionable silence for a minute, then the Mate asked, “Have you sailed this coast before?”
“The other side,” Smith answered, “the west coast, off Chile.” In Thunder in 1917 he had fought two enemy cruisers to a bloody finish. “A long time ago.”
“It’s pretty quiet around here—” Maltby reached out to tap his knuckles on a varnished rail, “—touch wood. No U-boat sinkings. Yet. Nor any surface raiders. Those German pocket battleships and cruisers are hunting off the coast of Africa.”
And that was when the look-out on the port wing of the bridge called, “Ship coming up astern of us, sir! Maybe a mile or so away. Can’t make out much of her but she’s closing fast.”
Maltby and Smith joined him, quickly crossing the bridge, Maltby lifting his own binoculars that hung from their strap against his chest. He peered through them at the ship that Smith saw only as a furred silhouette in the night, and muttered, “I don’t know. Looks like she might be …” He hesitated, then unslung the glasses and passed them to Smith, asked, “What do you make of her, sir?”
Smith focused the lenses and now the silhouette came up sharp, still too distant to be positive, but — He said, “From what I can see of her, and the speed she seems to be making, she could be a warship.”
Maltby chewed his lip a moment, then turned to a voice-pipe: “I’m going to call the skipper.”
Captain Hesketh climbed to the bridge in a dressing-gown pulled on over pyjamas, carpet slippers on his feet. He scowled through Maltby’s glasses and rumbled agreement, “She’s a warship. Only a half-mile astern of us now and a big bone in her teeth.” They could see with the naked eye the white bow wave thrown up by her speed. “But she’s probably a neutral, Yankee or Brazilian, or one of Harwood’s squadron.”
&nbs
p; Smith thought, Ajax? And was his son aboard her, looking towards him now? That was an odd feeling …
He watched the ship come up, closing the gap between her and the Whitby, until she was just astern. She was still edging in towards the merchantman. Hesketh complained, “What does she think she’s doing? She’ll hit us if she comes any nearer. She’s damn near alongside now.”
The warship was only a cable’s length, two hundred yards away now. Colour meant nothing in this pre-dawn light. She was the size of one of Harwood’s cruisers but the lay-out of her turrets on the hull, her single funnel … Smith said, “She’s not British.”
Hesketh spun around to stare at him, “What?”
And Maltby said quickly, “She’s signalling.” The light flickered from the superstructure of the cruiser and Maltby read: “Stop — or — I — fire. Do — not — use — wireless.”
Hesketh swore, “She’s a bloody Jerry! Get down and send off a raider signal!” He stumped across the bridge as Maltby dropped down the ladder to the wireless room below. The quartermaster glanced up from the compass at his captain as Hesketh came to stand at his side. Hesketh told him, “Hard astarboard! We might get away from him while it’s still dark.”
Smith doubted it. He watched the raider as the quartermaster spun the wheel, putting the helm hard over. A light stuttered again from the cruiser’s bridge and Smith read: “Stop — or—” Then the helm order took effect and Whitby’s bow began to swing away from the cruiser. The glass exploded from the side and front of the bridge and Smith threw himself down on the deck. It was only as he lay there, heart thumping, that the thinking part of his mind caught up with his animal reaction. He realised that a burst of machine-gun fire had swept the bridge.
The firing had ceased now and he lifted his head. The quartermaster lay dead and Hesketh beside him, their blood staining the deck. The wheel turned idly with no hand on it. The port look-out also lay on his back, still except for his head lolling with the motion of the ship. His counterpart out on the starboard wing had also gone down but his face showed, eyes wide in shock staring at Smith.
The wheel drew Smith. He crawled across to it, climbed to his feet though staying crouched and seized the spokes. He saw that Whitby was still in the turn though starting to straighten out of it. The raider had come around to keep station alongside. He saw the lick of flame from her upper-works and the machine-gun fire crashed and whined about him as he dropped to the deck again. But he kept his grip on the spokes of the wheel and spun it.
The firing checked again and again he lifted to his knees. Whitby’s bow was coming around now, going back to her original course and the cruiser was matching her turn. Smith saw Maltby climb onto the bridge and heard him say, ‘“Sparks’ is sending that signal.”
Smith shouted to him, “Get down!” That was too late. The bow had swung past that original course and still edged around, was swinging towards the raider. The machine-gun fired and this time was joined by a quick-firing gun, Smith thought it was an anti-aircraft Oerlikon or Bofors and it banged viciously, faster than a heartbeat. Maltby’s heart was stopped as the machine-gun fire punched him across the bridge. This time there was no pause in the firing. The shells from the anti-aircraft gun slammed into the superstructure below the bridge while bullets ripped into the timber of the bridge screen above Smith’s head. He lay flattened to the deck but he still held the wheel, hard over.
He felt the collision. It came as a shudder through the ship’s frame, transmitted through the deck planking, as Whitby seemed to check for an instant then went on. Smith let go of the wheel and put his hands over his head as the splinters rained down. The anti-aircraft gun was joined by another weapon, bigger and heavier, firing at a slower rate and he felt the shock as the shells from that one tore into the hull. Then the engines stopped and he heard the hiss and roar as they blew off steam. Seconds later the firing ceased. His ears rang and all he could hear for a while was the whistle of escaping steam.
He lay still for a minute or so. Then he was climbing cautiously to his feet, eyes seeking the raider, when Buckley pounded up the ladder to the bridge. He checked at sight of Smith and said, “Oh, my God!” Then he came on, seized Smith by the shoulders and asked, “Are you hurt, sir?”
Smith answered curtly, “Of course not!” He felt breathless now and knew his hands were starting to shake from reaction. He shrugged out of Buckley’s grasp and shoved past him. He caught that look on Buckley’s face that he had seen a long time ago in another war, a look that was part disbelief, part exasperation. Then he was out on the port wing of the bridge, calling back over his shoulder, “See to that look-out!” And looking along the deck of Whitby, then over to the raider.
There was light now for dawn was not far off. The flush on the eastern horizon showed that the sun would soon be up. The cruiser stood etched against that blood-red background. She had also stopped but had drawn ahead so her stern was barely a hundred yards from Whitby’s bow. Smith did not look at her stern. He could see her fore part better with every second as the light grew and there was no mistaking where the merchantman had struck her. The buckled plates showed on the waterline and near her stern. The damage stretched for ten to twenty feet.
Buckley said behind him, “You dented her good and proper. I’d just got on deck when we hit her. The shock put me on my back and it heeled that bastard over before we rubbed off her and away. Her skipper won’t repair that at sea; he’ll need a dockyard.” Buckley’s tone held satisfaction. He went on, “Look-out’s all right, sir, just shook up a bit. And she’s sending a boat, sir.”
The raider was; Smith had seen the pinnace, crowded with men in white tropical suits, and armed with carbines, sweep away from the cruiser’s side. His gaze came down to the deck below and he saw men there. They lined the rail and stared across at the cruiser. Some, those about to come on watch, were fully dressed but most wore the few clothes they had grabbed when the shelling started. And there was one tall young woman, her dark hair hanging loose on her shoulders.
Smith stepped to the head of the ladder to call down to her, “Mamzelle Duclos!” She spun around to stare up at him through the big, horn-rimmed spectacles and clutched the thick woollen dressing-gown about her. Smith advised her, “You should get dressed and pack a case. Try to take everything you’ll really need but only as much as you can carry.” There would be no porters.
She asked, dark eyes wide and startled, still confused by this dawn attack, “Will we have to leave the ship?” Her English was good, though the French accent was strong.
“I believe so.” He watched her hurry away below.
Buckley said, “Another ship closing us, sir. Looks like she’s sailing in company with that cruiser.”
An oil tanker, big as Whitby, was within a mile and coming on towards them. Smith thought that Buckley was right and this oiler was a tender for the cruiser. Then he saw that Gillard, the First Mate, was now on deck and organising a ladder to be hung over the side for the raider’s boat now closing the ship.
The pinnace swung in against Whitby’s side and an officer in the boat’s sternsheets worked his way forward to the foot of the ladder and began to climb it. He wore whites with the silver braid and single star of an Oberleutnant zur See on his shoulder, a pistol in a holster on his belt. As he stepped onto the deck he saluted then looked around him. “Where is the captain?”
He addressed Gillard, but Smith answered from the bridge above: “The captain’s dead. You killed him.”
The officer’s head went back and he stared up at Smith. Recognition was immediate and mutual; Kurt Larsen showed it, eyes narrowing and his hand going to his pistol, but Smith remained impassive. Kurt’s men were coming over the rail now and gathering around him. He called out orders to them but with one eye always on Smith, then beckoned two of the men to follow him and climbed the ladder to the bridge.
He demanded of Smith, “You are?”
“I am a naval officer.” Smith gave his name and rank.
He was given five minutes to throw some kit together then he was hustled down into the pinnace. He was soon followed by Buckley and an apprehensive Véronique Duclos. The girl had dressed in trousers and a blouse. She carried a small suitcase. Whitby’s boats had been lowered by her crew and the men, Gillard and the other officers among them, had gone down into them. Now they started to pull towards the oil tanker, stopped a few hundred yards away. Smith could read her name now, painted on her bow: Lemvig. Danish? Probably she was posing as a neutral when not in company with the cruiser.
But now he shouted up at the young officer on the deck above, “Why is this girl with us? She is a non-combatant and should be with the ship’s company in the oiler!”
Kurt Larsen glanced over the side and told him, “The lady goes with you.” He did not argue, nor explain. He knew the master of the Lemvig for a hard man; the prisoners aboard her, once in Germany, would remain prisoners for the rest of the war. But Kurt believed that his captain, Moehle, would transfer the French girl to a neutral ship at the first opportunity.
Ten minutes later his men poured down into the pinnace, several of them carrying sacks containing the ship’s papers and any others they could find. Kurt descended last of all, took his place in the sternsheets and the pinnace headed towards the cruiser. Smith sat in the waist, already separated from Buckley and Véronique a few feet away, all three of them surrounded by Kurt Larsen’s armed men. Smith watched the Whitby being left behind and heard the muffled explosions of the scuttling charges the boarding party had set in her hull. The ship lurched, listed and began to settle.
He turned to look inboard and met Véronique’s worried gaze, Buckley’s scowl. The big leading hand was not taking kindly to being a prisoner of war while the French girl did not yet appreciate that she was. Smith was not entitled to the meagre privileges of a prisoner of war. The young Oberleutnant zur See would take care of that.