Submariner (2008)

by Fullerton, Alexander

  Red watch lookouts took over at four, Mike sent Danvers down at a quarter-past and the lookouts ten minutes later: had the bridge to himself then, Ursa at the point where her 055-degree track intersected with the Italians’ theoretical 278.

  There was a slight greying in the clouded eastern sky, but no discernible horizon as yet. Wind about force 3, west-northwest. The overcast was, as he’d guessed, making a considerable difference – no good reason to dive, as things still were; if there was going to be anything to see you’d see it a lot better – and sooner – from up here, fifteen feet above the surface, than you would through a periscope only a couple of feet above it.

  Hardly likely to meet them at this point of intersection anyway. Might, by sheer fluke, but much more likely in a couple of hours, or say mid-forenoon. He called down, ‘Starboard ten.’

  ‘Starboard ten, sir!’ Then ‘Ten of starboard wheel on.’ Smithers, gunlayer. Mike told him, ‘Steer oh-nine-eight.’

  Straightening, as that order was repeated, glasses up again while the ten-degree angle of rudder hauled her round. Wind right astern then, stink of diesel in it. Smithers reporting after a few seconds, ‘Course oh-nine-eight, sir.’

  ‘First Lieutenant on the voice-pipe.’

  McLeod’s voice: ‘Sir?’

  ‘Might stay up a bit longer, Number One. How’s the box?’

  ‘Close to right up, sir.’

  ‘So stop engines, slow together grouped down, close up asdics, all-round listening watch.’

  Diesels’ racket faltering, dying away. Motors weren’t audible from up here, only the tremor in her steel, butting motion as she drove through the low black foam-flecked ridges, and the sound of the sea flooding aft along her sides and over the pressure-hull inside the casing, thumping around the tower’s base. Glasses half up again: but aware suddenly that that broad pre-dawn flush was already something to take notice of – acquiring colour too, enough of it already in the sky to be staining this surrounding whiteness pink.

  ‘Bridge?’

  He stooped to it, and McLeod told him asdics weren’t getting anything.

  ‘Keep listening.’

  Ahead there, what had been a band of colour was now a mass of it – the overhead brightening too although there were clouds still jet-black against it. Dramatic enough, but nothing in it of the kind one had been praying for in the past few hours. And dazzle-effect increasing, so best not goof at it. Best in fact take her down – the enemy having their own submarines, for which one wasn’t keen to make oneself a target, in silhouette against that fast-spreading brilliance. He called down, ‘Open one and six main vents’, shut the cock on the voice-pipe and slid into the hatch, dragging the lid shut over his head and jamming the clips on as the sea flooded up around the tower.

  6

  Daylight now, sunrise colours faded, the sun itself no longer blinding as it climbed behind ribs of cloud. Nothing of any greater interest visible either in the overhead or seascape, the whole circle of horizon hard-edged, unbroken – no destroyers’ or cruisers’ funnel-smoke, masts or fighting-tops. Damn-all. But OK, long day ahead … He pushed the ’scope’s handles up and stepped back, ERA Ellery doing his customary knees-bend in depressing the lever that sent it down into its well: soft thump as it stopped, then only the ticking of the log, the port motor’s low thrum at slow grouped down, men’s quiet movements on the ’planes, helm, asdics. Red watch, this. McLeod OOW, currently attending to the trim, Fraser on asdics, headphones on his yellow head, Ellery tall, bony-faced, at the panel of vents and blows, Coxswain CPO Swathely on after ’planes and AB Smithers on the for’ard ones, Smithers as always chewing gum. Walburton, signalman, on the wheel, Torpedoman Barnet on telegraphs. Needles in the depth-gauges at 28 feet and as steady as you’d want them, although McLeod was still fiddling at the order instrument. At slow ahead grouped down on only one motor, speed through the water something like two knots, you did need to have the trim about as good as you could get it. After diving he’d blown ‘Q’then vented the trapped HP air outboard – to sea – not wanting to build up pressure in the boat, and taking advantage of the then poor light up top – large bubbles breaking into a fairly placid surface being very much a giveaway otherwise, if there’d been eyes up there to see it. Aircraft passing anywhere near, for instance. But since then he’d been making minor adjustments via the trimline.

  Mike said, ‘I’ll leave you to it, Jamie.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  Bacon frying. Unmistakable, and mouth-watering. Mike adding as McLeod moved towards the periscope and Ellery brought it shimmering up, ‘Might well be the odd shagbat around, by the way.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ Surface-brightness glittering in his eyes as he began to circle. One of the others would no doubt be relieving him presently for his breakfast. Mike pausing at the chart, thinking that air patrols were definitely on the cards – reconnaissance ahead of the cruiser for one thing, but also if they’d picked up Swordsman’s enemy report. Wouldn’t have needed to know anything of its content, only that a signal had been passed at that time and in that vicinity: especially if Swordsman had made her presence known, had got in an attack for instance. If they had picked it up they’d know or guess that a submarine had made it, with the obvious intention of alerting others.

  Air-search would be their answer to it. Likely type of ‘shagbat’ being the Cant seaplane. But surface craft out of Palermo too. Thinking about that, pencilling-in DR positions along this 098-degree track, he noted that at midday Ursa’d be within five miles of Shrimp’s reference position for this patrol: right on station, despite the cruiser business.

  Shrimp back there in Lazaretto no doubt keenly awaiting news of a cruiser sunk.

  Tonight, perhaps, the pleasure of sending him that signal?

  Meanwhile though, no hurry. Hence the crawl. Conserving battery power for action that might come anywhere along this track, any time. You’d have Cape Gallo abeam at 1900, be off the Palermo gulf when the light was fading, and still have juice in the box. Dived attacks did tend to squander the amps, with bursts of underwater speed often necessary.

  He spent another minute, on an afterthought and somewhat grudgingly, checking on where the Garibaldi might be by this time if she’d been heading directly to Cagliari from Messina. And the answer was, at twenty-five knots, at 0530 here – out in the middle, well over halfway, with about seventy-five miles to go. Would be in or entering Cagliari therefore – if that was the way they’d gone – in say three hours’ time.

  Unthinkable. Distinctly possible though it was.

  Danvers was at the wardroom table, glancing through a copy of Good Morning, a mini-newspaper /entertainment sheet produced for submarine crews by the Daily Mirror. Copies were numbered, not dated, and the most popular item in it was the Jane strip-cartoon. You took a batch with you on patrol and the coxswain distributed them each morning to the various messes. Danvers put it aside: the table was already set for breakfast.

  ‘Morning, sir. Bacon and eggs again, would you believe it!’

  ‘Well, the fragrance does suggest it.’ A nod towards Jarvis’s recumbent form. ‘He’s not snoring. Make sure he’s breathing?’

  After breakfasting he settled on his bunk, thinking to get some rest while things were quiet – in the hope of being busy later. Thinking about the Garibaldi docking in Cagliari though: it wasn’t easy to put out of mind. Not that there was any reason to start thinking one had made the wrong decision, only that the possibility continued to exist, would until or unless one ran into them – or ran them to earth in Palermo. Might get a sight of the cruiser’s foretop and twin cowled funnels over the surrounding breakwater, for instance – from somewhere near the top end of the swept channel, in high power, with the periscope right up?

  ‘Captain in the control room!’

  Alarm call from Danvers, and Mike virtually already there, having in transition become awake enough to realise this was now the afternoon. He’d slept during the forenoon, lunched, read Steinbeck for
a while, dozed again: while here and now Danvers had started the periscope down, Mike’s arrival checking this so McIver had stopped it and had it shooting up again, Danvers explaining ‘More A/S schooners, sir, a pair of ’em off Cape Gallo steering west.’ More because there’d been some this morning – early, in Danvers’ eight-to-ten watch. He was saying, ‘As they’re going now they’ll pass abeam, but not by far.’

  ‘The one right ahead of us wouldn’t, Pilot.’

  Snort of surprise from Danvers – that there was a third he hadn’t seen. Mike admitting, ‘Still mostly hull-down, not all that conspicuous.’ Changing to air-search in case there was anything up there that mightn’t have been in sight a minute earlier. Fast all-round search, finding nothing other than broken cloud, then a more careful one and finally back on the three white-painted schooners – wondering why the Italians painted them like that, making them so conspicuous. Maybe so they could recognise each other? For the benefit of shore signal stations, more likely. In any case, better skirt around them. They weren’t exactly deadly – had guns on them, of course, certainly machine-guns, hydrophones rather than asdics, and didn’t have the speed to have any use for depth-charges. The pair this morning had been to the east of Cape San Vito, in the ten-mile-wide Golfo di Castellamare, well south of Ursa’s track, might have come out of Castellamare itself – it was a dockyard port, ship-builders and repairers. Mike had taken a look at the schooners, checked they didn’t have a Cant working with them, told Danvers to be sparing in his use of the periscope and gone back to his bunk, dozed until it had been time for corned beef and pickles, chutney etc.

  He sent the ’scope down, moved to the chart, decided that a course alteration of just eight degrees would do the trick. Time now, 1510.

  The schooners could be making a sweep ahead of the cruiser’s exit from Palermo. Alternatively might not have anything to do with it. This kind of anti-submarine activity wasn’t in any way unusual; especially in an area like this one, where submarines might be expected – the Egadi Channel, Marettimo corner, much-used route for convoys to the Western Desert – Bizerta, Tripoli, wherever. And they could make quite a nuisance of themselves, those schooners, especially in combination with air patrols, E-boats, whatever.

  He told Danvers, ‘Bring her to oh-nine-oh. Let me know of any change. When we’re past and clear, come back oh-nine-eight.’

  Past seven now, and at the chart again. Jarvis, whose watch this was, had put on a 1900 fix by land bearings, and Mike had come through to see where they were and how things might go in the next few hours. Ursa’s position being seven and a half miles NNE of Cape Gallo. The precise extent of Palermo’s defensive minefields being one consideration: Danvers had inked them on in accordance with information disseminated by Admiralty, but it had caught Mike’s eye that for up to about five miles around that headland there was no more than two hundred feet of water; it would surely have made sense to have mined it, at least the stretch along its eastern seaboard above Palermo itself. Hardly believable that they hadn’t, in fact: the field as they’d declared it covered quite a large area outside it in any case, in much deeper water.

  Mines where they had declared them – however long ago but surely renewed /replaced since then – then the swept channel looping out northeastward, further mine-belts to the east of that as far as a minor promontory named on the chart as Cape Zafferano.

  Could be a trap there inside Gallo, he thought. Unwary Anglo seeking to nobble Wop vessel in swept channel by firing from allegedly unmined inshore water that’s as likely as not stiff with the bloody things?

  Pull the other one, signore.

  Tonight in any case one had to (a) assume the cruiser was in the harbour, and (b) be prepared for it to come sneaking out some time around sunset in order to make its run to Cagliari during the hours of darkness. Visualising that exit: escorting destroyers emerging first, maybe pinging around a bit as a precaution against ambush, the Garibaldi then pounding out, destroyers taking station ahead and all under port helm, settling on say 330 degrees for a few miles before altering to 280.

  How best to cope with this? Which although speculative was realistic; if they were coming out, that was near enough how they’d set about it. So – give them room to clear the channel and form up on something like 330, then 280, Ursa biding her time in what one might call a stand-off position from which to close in for as near as possible a beam shot on either of those courses. At first sight a little tricky, but probably achievable through knowing from the start that a 50-degree alteration was to be expected, and near enough when. He’d aim to get in his attack either well before or very soon after they’d made the turn.

  After. Definitely, after. Accepting, incidentally, that it might be too late then for a dived attack. Surface and close in fast, trimmed right down. Alternatively, if attacking dived and the light went, fire by asdics. One did always have that option. No change of course or speed meanwhile: another two hours like this, and at 2100 you’d be – here. Alter then, he thought, to – say, 045. Opening the range a bit, giving oneself more room for manoeuvre – for surfacing, if that was how it turned out – and guessing at 2130 as the time they’d make their move. Dusk in the offing then, sure, but recalling how last night in very similar conditions the light had seemed to be lasting almost for ever then suddenly went to pot. Might reckon on having it until nine-forty or fifty, no later?

  Two long hours later, 2100, the light was still good enough to check the boat’s position by periscope bearings of Cape Gallo’s right-hand edge and the centre of a smoke-haze over Palermo. After sundown, might become a light-haze, he guessed. Some local phenomenon. Not calling this a fix, anyway, only a check, but reassuring in that it matched the charted DR position. He told Danvers, ‘Bring her to oh-four-five.’

  ‘Oh-four-five, sir.’ To Llewellyn on the wheel then, ‘Port ten.’

  ‘Port ten, sir!’

  As if delighted to be doing something other than keeping her head on 098, as they’d been doing ever since the deviation around those schooners. Mike told Knox – telegraphist, but volunteer part-time unqualified asdic operator – ‘Listen, a minute.’ Knox wore a beard – real one, glossy brown, not just the few days’ stubble Mike and most others had to show – also had the tattoo of a red heart with a blue letter ‘C’ in it on his forearm. About which there was some anecdote or other. Oh – that he’d genuinely forgotten the name, what the ‘C’ stood for. Caroline, Cynthia, Clarice, Clementine? Rival claimants presumably not discouraged – wouldn’t be more than one at any one time? Easing the headset off one ear, and Mike telling him, ‘We’ve had Palermo on the beam, due south. Now altering course northeast, putting it on about green 135. If our cruiser’s in there, she might break out around sunset – next hour or so, I’m guessing. So carry on listening all round but with particular attention to that sector – green 130 to 140, right?’

  ‘Turbines, would that be, sir?’

  ‘Fast turbines, all of ’em. Cruiser, two destroyers, probably working up to twenty-five knots.’

  ‘Course oh-four-five, sir.’

  Knox had the headset back on, had trained to that bearing and was fingering the knob a degree or two this way and that, eyes narrowed in concentration. The set in this listening-out mode was no more than a directional hydrophone, its operator’s skill lying primarily in the recognition and interpretation of sounds received.

  Warmth, quiet, general fug. Own nerves a little taut: really did want this cruiser. Meeting CERA McIver’s scowl: ‘All right, Chief?’

  ‘Reckon the fuckers’ll come out, sir?’

  ‘Can’t even be sure they’re in there. But if they are …’ A shrug, hand raised with fingers crossed.

  ‘Aye …’

  He’d drifted through to the wardroom, where an hour or so ago they’d enjoyed a supper of cold tongue and tomatoes, both canned, getting that over early in the hope of having their hands full later. McLeod and Jarvis were both at the table, McLeod reading Edgar Wallace, Jarvis scribbli
ng in what looked like a diary. Diaries were verboten, so it couldn’t be, had to be his memoirs.

  McLeod said, ‘No activity as yet.’

  ‘Nearer dark’s the more likely time.’

  Jarvis nodded: ‘That’s your Wop for you, all right.’

  ‘On the other hand they may be whooping it up in Cagliari. Could have been there since noon or earlier.’

  ‘But –’ McLeod – ‘to have covered both alternatives we’d have had to be in two places at once, and either way –’

  ‘Captain in the control room!’ Adding – Danvers continuing, in more or less one utterance as Mike shot through – ‘Knox reports fast turbine HE on green 138, sir.’

  Bearing of the Palermo exit channel, near enough. Mike said, ‘Diving stations.’ A feeling of having guessed right, after all. Relief tinged with surprise, oddly enough. Adding as the rush began, ‘Well done, Knox.’ McLeod was at the trim, ordering half ahead both motors – ensuring sufficient power to maintain control of her during the wholesale shifting of body-weights. Hands closing up swiftly and quietly, looking pleased about it as they always did. Action being what they were here for, worked for, wanted, put up with the hazards and fairly considerable discomfort for. Although Fraser the HSD, in headphones still warm from Knox’s ears, was looking uncertain as he minutely adjusted the set’s bearing, eyes beady on the compass dial while most of the concentration was through his ears. Coxswain and PO Tubby Hart on hydroplanes, AB Smithers at the wheel, Telegraphist Martin on a stool in that corner as telephone link to the fore ends and tube space. Newcomb at motor-room telegraphs, and of course Ellery at the panel – knees-bending to bring the periscope up, Mike having glanced his way with a small movement of both hands. CERA McIver standing back out of it at the moment but ready to play his part if that was the way things went. All in all, in the space available – Danvers taking up some of it at the chart table, Jarvis too, at the Fruit Machine – if you’d had a ship’s cat it wouldn’t have been easy to swing it round. Mike at the periscope meanwhile completing a quick check on the overhead – sky darkened by cloud but also streaked here and there with colour. He pushed the handles up: having shown as little periscope as possible for as short a time as possible, bearing in mind that at these increased revs it would have been feathering.