The Navy meanwhile got on with its own business. The battlefleet for instance was at sea from the 21st to the 23rd, in support of a dummy convoy from Malta that was simulating an assault on Tripoli with the aim of drawing Luftwaffe strength away from the land-battle in the east. Sea conditions weren’t too good, and for the first twenty-four hours Currie felt the effects – as those prone to seasickness did tend to, after long periods in harbour or protracted spells of fine weather. He’d recovered by the second day, though, and on his way to the bridge to take over a forenoon watch as Air Defence Officer, ran into Fallon, his squash adversary – in white engineer’s overalls with the regulation Mae West over them, up for a breather from the great ship’s cavernous steel bowels. Fallon asked him: ‘Going on watch?’ A glance down at his feet. ‘Where’re the seaboots, then?’
Currie laughed. He’d told him the story – in Simone’s, one evening after squash. How in his first ship, a cruiser based on Scapa Flow in the hard winter of 1939, he’d been very much a new-boy – even an oddity, the one and only R.N.V.R. officer in a wardroom of regulars, and viewed by most of them with either disdain or amusement. In those days there were still a few pairs of the old type of seaboots around – high, and made of thick, hard leather. They’d told him he had to wear a pair of these on watch, and he vividly remembered the embarrassment – and pain – of having to walk the length of the cruiser’s upper deck to get to the bridge, in these antique boots that were far too high for the length of his legs; having to adopt the rolling gait of some latter-day Long John Silver simply to avoid castration.
He’d added, to Fallon: ‘The oilskins were all pretty damn long too. Like a bride’s train, almost.’
They weren’t long in harbour, after that trip. The day after they got back to Alex, two enemy convoys were reported to be at sea en route to Benghazi. Cruisers and destroyers put out immediately from both Alexandria and Malta to intercept, and later in the day Admiral Cunningham sailed with his battlefleet in support of those lighter forces. This was on the 24th. The fleet left Alexandria at 1600, and Currie was deputed to help in his off-watch hours with a group of senior Army and R.A.F. officers who’d been invited along as a public-relations exercise, to see how the Navy worked. But the first air attack came in soon after daylight on the 25th, and attacks continued throughout the forenoon and early afternoon; the ship was at action stations and the guests for their own safety were confined below decks. It was reported that there was a certain amount of disgruntlement. By midafternoon, however, with the skies clear and nothing on the radar, QE’s second-in-command went down and invited the visitors to come up on deck. Currie was off-watch at that time, and joined them on the quarterdeck, where the whole group strolled up and down between the battleship’s broad stern and the great jutting barrels of ‘Y’ gunhouse, enjoying the fresh air and markedly improved weather – blue sky, more or less flat sea.
Enjoying, too, the impressive sight of battleships in line astern, massive ships in their camouflage paint, ensigns whipping in the breeze, powerful foc’s’ls dipping to the long swells, effortlessly tossing about fifty tons of solid water aside in each upward lunge; and the escort of eight destroyers spread in a wide arc ahead and on the bows. Here in the centre the flagship Queen Elizabeth was leading, with Barham next astern, then Valiant. The whole fleet was zigzagging – a precaution against submarine attack – turning in unison at set intervals this way and that according to a pattern selected from the zigzag manual.
‘Yes.’ Beside Currie at the port after rail a brigadier who until now had hardly said a word nodded as he gazed astern. ‘Yes, indeed. Beautiful. Quite beautiful.’ He cocked an eyebrow towards Currie. ‘Do they actually pay you to do this sort of thing?’
Helms were over to port at that moment. 35,000 tons of battlewagon carving her ponderous way round to a new leg of the zigzag. Currie nodded to the brigadier, smiled.
‘Well, sir—’
He heard the first torpedo hit. Whipped round…
Barham. A pillar of sea the colour of dishwater had shot up on her port side, roughly amidships. She was under helm – they all were – turning that way – to port. Second explosion – third…
Queen Elizabeth had reversed her rudder, was steadying from the turn and would shortly begin a swing to starboard. Astern of the stricken Barham, Valiant was continuing round to port. Barham losing way, slewed across QE’s wake, Valiant sweeping out around her. Barham already had a heavy list to port. Currie was to remember afterwards telling himself this couldn’t be true, couldn’t be happening, was too frightful to be accepted at face-value While men elsewhere in QE – on her bridge and gunnery control positions and elsewhere on her upper or bridge decks – saw a U-boat’s conning-tower break surface on the port quarter: it was only visible for a few seconds before it was hidden behind Valiant, but it transpired later that it passed right down Valiant’s side so close to her that her secondary armament of four-fives on that side couldn’t be depressed enough to have any chance of hitting. The U-boat had obviously lost trim, immediately after firing. Currie’s eyes were fixed on Barham, anyway, and so were those of the horror-struck soldiers and airmen. That huge ship on her side – she’d gone over to port, from this angle it was her exposed and streaming hull they were seeing, and there were men sliding and scrabbling down it into the froth of sea: from this distance one did not see that on their way down they were ripping their bodies open on the heavily barnacled steel.
‘This is – bloody nightmare…’
An R.A.F. group captain – in shock, his head shaking. Currie had glanced at him, looked back at Barham in the second in which she blew up. A noise like a clap of thunder that came rolling across the sea: then there was nothing but black smoke. Close to QE’s port quarter the sea leapt as an entire six-inch gun splashed in. Splashes everywhere as other bits fell. The smoke was clearing: four minutes had passed since the first torpedo struck, and – she’d gone. 35,000 tons of her – on its way to the bottom. Destroyers were there within minutes, dropping their boats to pick up survivors, but in the final count 862 officers and men had gone down in her.
Ark Royal: and now Barham.
While in the desert this same day – 25 November – Rommel seized the tactical initiative and broke through to the Egyptian frontier.
* * *
‘Down periscope. Half ahead together. Forty feet. Ship’s head?’
‘Oh-nine-oh, sir.’
‘Steer oh-eight-five.’ He glanced towards the chart-table. ‘Oh-eight-five all right, pilot?’
‘Spot-on, sir.’
Spot-on for their exit eastward between the islets of Tripiti and Strongili. Needing to get out fairly smartly now. The crash of a torpedo-hit still echoed in his skull: visual memory still there too – the sight of a Navigatore-class destroyer with her forepart already under water as far back as her bridge and foremost funnel, stern still lifting as her angle steepened. He’d stepped back from the small attack periscope at that point, invited Forbes and then the coxswain and the outside E.R.A. to take a quick look. The destroyer had been vertical in the water by the time C.RO. Willis had had his sight of her, and had been on her way down when Halliday took his place. Mitcheson had done the job with one fish, out of the stern tube; the Italian had been at anchor, all the torpedo had been called upon to do was run straight.
He’d used the stern tube partly because they were in confined waters here and it left Spartan pointing the right way for an immediate withdrawal. To starboard as they’d begun the move out had been the entrance to Partheni Bay, and to port a wider exit northward into the Lipsos channel. Which he could have used – it was the way he’d come in here – but he was fairly sure there’d be MAS-boats in the far end of Partheni Bay and that they’d be out here pretty damn fast, and the Lipsos channel was the obvious way out for him to have taken. There were a lot of MAS-boats around, numerous aircraft too – Savoias mostly – and in recent days they’d all been very much on the go. Leros was indeed, as he’d expected, some
what ‘sensitive’.
‘Course oh-eight-five, sir.’
‘Forty feet, sir.’
‘Slow together.’
He’d brought Spartan in here not for that destroyer but for a 6- or 7000-ton transport which the destroyer had been escorting. The two of them had shown up yesterday afternoon. Spartan had then been seven miles south-west of Port Lago, and McKendrick who’d had the first dog watch had seen smoke in the northwest. It had been a very good sighting – at about maximum range, and there’d been very little smoke – in fact for considerable periods there’d been none at all. McKendrick had just happened to have the ’scope up at a moment when there had been some. But there again, a less active or keen-eyed O.O.W. wouldn’t have had a smell of it – and that destroyer would still have been lying peacefully at anchor.
As it had turned out, there’d been no hope of getting into any kind of attacking position before dark, and with the intensity of anti-submarine activity which they’d seen since arrival off this island Mitcheson wasn’t taking any such risks as surfacing before it was really dark. But he’d guessed the transport might be on its way into Partheni Bay – which in any case he’d had every intention of investigating before the end of the patrol; she’d been on course for the Lipsos channel, and unless she’d been making for Lipsos itself there weren’t any other likely destinations. Except an exceedingly small island called Pharmako, whose one claim to fame was that in 77 BC Julius Caesar was held for ransom there by pirates. Julius was twenty-two at the time, and was so appreciative of the pirates’ kindness to him during his period of detention that when later he rounded them up and sentenced them to crucifixion he granted them the favour of having their throats cut first.
Anyway, the transport wouldn’t have been going there; and beyond Pharmako was only the coast of neutral Turkey.
There was a short-cut from the west, which he could have taken, to reach Partheni Bay. Studying the chart during the night, though, while Spartan zigzagged around on constantly changing courses with a standing charge replenishing the battery, he’d decided it would make sense to take the longer route, via the Ipsos channel. The shorter, more direct way – the Pharios channel – would be navigationally tricky, submerged, and might well be mined. It was the sort of channel they would mine: partly because it could be done so economically. Whereas the Lipsos route, which the transport and its escort had seemed to be heading for, presumably was clear.
He’d dived before dawn and brought Spartan in from the west, turning south round the eastern bulge of Arkhangelos Island. About a mile due south from there was the half-mile wide entrance to Partheni Bay, and as the submarine crept towards it at periscope depth in the milky-soft light of early morning, and the near-end of the Pharios channel opened up to his periscope view of it, there had been the destroyer, lying to an anchor.
There’d been nothing but fishing-boats in the accessible, wider reaches of the bay itself. But the chart showed that at its southeastern extremity, a good mile inland, it turned sharply northeastward into what must obviously be a beautifully secure, virtually landlocked anchorage, and the transport was probably tucked up in there, he guessed. He’d hoped that a ship of that size might have been further out, where he might have been able to get at her. But he certainly wasn’t going to try going right inside. The risks simply didn’t warrant it – wouldn’t have even for a much more important target, and even if there hadn’t been a destroyer which he’d have had to get past on his way out. This was another aspect of the situation – that a 2000-ton destroyer was a perfectly good target anyway.
So he’d sunk it.
Eight-thirty now. At forty feet, Spartan was as steady as rock. No indications of any hunt yet, either: nothing close enough to be audible on Asdics anyway. He’d just met the H.S.D.’s rather vacant gaze, cocked an eyebrow, and Rowntree had emerged from whatever far-away world he lived in in these quiet periods, had shaken his head. Asdics were in the passive mode, of course – listening, not transmitting.
‘Soon as we’re out past these islands, Number One – watch diving, and breakfast.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ Forbes wagged his head. ‘Getting a bit peckish, I admit.’
Nods, all round. E.R.A. Halliday, gazing thoughtfully at the bank of H.P. master blows, licked his lips. He and his young wife, Teasdale happened to know, had a small son, in Huddersfield; he might have been seeing the boy in his mind’s eye, his reaction to a promise of sustenance.
‘How far to that point, Pilot?’
‘About – a mile, sir. Log says we’re making about two knots. So half an hour, or—’
A jolt – like a soft impact. Scraping noise from for’ard, then, starboard side. Metal on metal. Heads turn that way: expressions suddenly wooden, in the reflex of self-control. Nobody looking at anyone else more than they need to. Or moving… Mitcheson has snapped ‘Stop both!’
Another jolt…
‘Both motors stopped, sir.’
MacKay, the helmsman, is pushing his wheel anticlockwise. ‘Sir, she’s—’
‘Somethin’ up ’ere, sir.’ Lockwood, having trouble with the fore ’planes. It’s taking a lot of strength to shift them, to counter a slight bow-up angle which she didn’t have before. Mackay finishes – ‘carrying starboard wheel, like.’ Lockwood grunts, glancing to his left at the coxswain, ‘Bugger’s stuck, ’swain.’
‘Slow astern together.’ Mitcheson adds, ‘Shut off for depthcharging.’ Watertight doors between compartments will be shut and clipped now: McKendrick goes for’ard to join the torpedomen before the compartments are thus isolated from each other. Matt Bennett’s already aft with his stokers and E.R.A.s.
‘Both motors slow astern, sir.’
There’ve been reports coming in over the telephone – via Piltmore, on the stool beside MacKay; Forbes tells Mitcheson, ‘Boat’s shut off for depthcharging, sir.’
The scraping has only lasted a few seconds, but it starts again now. Mitcheson tells MacKay: ‘Put on ten degrees of starboard wheel.’
His first thought, at that impact, was of a net. That was what it felt like, impact on some resilient or absorbent object. But although you might have believed it if you’d been in that other, much narrower channel, here it was – well, improbable.
‘Ten o’ starboard wheel on, sir.’
Forbes murmurs – through the ladder, about six inches between himself and Mitcheson – ‘Mine-wire, sir?’
He nods. ‘Half astern both.’
‘Half astern both, sir.’
The motors’ note rises. Not much – she’s still grouped down – but you can hear it, feel the slight vibration. They’re all waiting, listening.
Lockwood’s control-wheel jerks in his hands.
Twang…
‘Slow together.’
Mine wires have mines at their top ends. Teasdale’s thinking – visualizing the one out there still very close and probably swinging about a bit after being jerked around as it has been – that with stern-way on her now and starboard wheel, her forepart has pulled away to port. So the wire had snagged the starboard fore ’plane, the skipper’d got it right and it had now unsnagged.
That one had. But mines weren’t sown singly, for God’s sake.
‘Stop together. Midships. Ship’s head?’
‘Oh-seven-two, sir. Wheel’s amidships, sir.’
‘Both motors stopped, sir.’
The needle’s creeping around the deep-water depthgauge. It’s between the two big shallow-water gauges which are shut off now, one of the ‘shut off for depthcharging’ procedures. Not that anyone’s expecting to be depthcharged. But mines… Hardly the lesser of two evils.
Teasdale’s sketching one in pencil. A cartoon mine, with a face. He whispers to himself: Never mine…
‘Slow ahead port. Port twenty.’
From the west, a long way off, the deep crump and then the follow-up reverberations of a depthcharge. Speak of the devil… But evidently they’re hunting now, back there astern: must have first sat
isfied themselves that they’ve picked up all or any swimmers.
Only one charge, though and dropped on God knows what.
Another. Two more. So distant that they’re irrelevant to this situation here. MAS-boats, probably, dropping charges on rocks or fish. The only relevance is that one is not attracted to any idea of turning back that way – or north, even towards Lipsos. If they have a couple of MAS-boats on it now, in an hour’s time there’ll be a swarm of them – and experience of the last few days suggests their listening gear isn’t at all bad.
‘Port motor slow ahead, sir.’
‘Ease to ten degrees of wheel.’
Turn her too sharply, you might side-swipe that thing, catch it on the after ’plane now.
‘All right on one screw, Number One?’
‘Getting back up all right, sir.’
Forty-one feet on the gauges. The fore ’planes control is working normally again. ‘Ship’s head?’
‘Oh-six-one, sir.’
‘Midships. Steer oh-six-oh. I’m using the port motor only, you’ll be carrying port wheel, MacKay. Rowntree – start transmitting. Search from red oh-five to green four-five. Should pick ’em up, shouldn’t it?’
‘Mines, sir – don’t know about cables.’
‘Course oh-six-oh, sir.’
‘Stop port. I’ll settle for mines or cables, Rowntree.’ He gets a snigger for that. Tension does make it easier to raise a laugh. ‘Hold her as best you can, Number One, while we see what’s what. Plenty of water here, pilot, is there?’
‘Twenty-two fathoms, sir.’
‘We’ll go to fifty feet anyway, Number One. In her own time – eh?’
‘Fifty feet.’ The coxswain’s growl, acknowledging. Slitted eyes on the depthgauge. When Willis neglects to trim his beard, you begin to notice the sprinkling of grey in it. Those would be the bits he trimmed, no doubt. Needles slipping around the dial again – slowly – as the boat loses way and the hydroplanes lose their influence. The mines themselves have to be above us, Mitcheson’s thinking. Visualizing them: like a bed of long-stemmed flowers, their roots the anchoring weights on the seabed and their heads the buoyant explosive globes, tethered at whatever depth below the surface the length of wire dictates. They might of course have been set at varying depths: one had to hope it wouldn’t vary all that much.
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