by Alan Evans
The guard-boat lay at anchor on the eastern side of the marked channel, the buoys in a widespread line running away into the Gulf. She was a twenty-year-old torpedo-boat, like a small destroyer, half the length of Audacity, low and narrow, her deck barely six feet above the waterline. Her two funnels showed only threads of smoke from banked fires; she would be keeping a sufficient head of steam to be able to get under way and manoeuvre if she had to. But she probably swung to her anchor there for weeks on end.
Smith thought that, because of her immobility, it was likely she would be carrying less than her sea-going complement of twenty-four or -five men. She mounted a single four-pounder gun forward of the small, open bridge.
Audacity plugged towards her slowly, reduced to seven knots and slowing still. The tug and her tow, steaming on about five miles ahead now, were just visible through glasses. Smith stood in the wheelhouse with McLeod and edged his glasses down until the guard-boat leapt into focus. She lay a scant half-mile over the bow and a light now blinked from her bridge. He could see the two men there clearly, the officer and his signalman working the lamp, their heads and shoulders showing above the canvas dodger around the bridge. As Smith watched, three men gathered around the gun forward of the bridge and its barrel swung until it pointed at him.
McLeod was at the wheelhouse door, lifting the signal-lamp in readiness for his reply to the guard-boat’s bridge: ‘Usual challenge, asking who we are, telling us to stop.’ Blasé-sounding, but he wiped his sweating hands one by one on the front of his jacket. He could understand German if it wasn’t too quick or complicated and could get ready the sort of signals he’d likely have to send. But if the guard-boat sprang something on him that he couldn’t get the hang of, then they’d be in real trouble.
Smith kept the glasses at his eyes. ‘Answer.’ He heard the clacking of the lamp, already knew the message he’d told McLeod to send, limpingly, as a merchantman would: ‘Anna Schmidt out of Kotka with timber for Riga, ordered to load cargo and join convoy for Hango.’
He hoped it sounded plausible. The main body of Von Goltz’s troops had landed at Hango, eighty miles west of Helsinki. The captain of the guard-boat would know that—but a German merchantman would not, would just be following orders.
The shutter of the lamp was silent a moment as McLeod paused in sending, letting the captain of the guard-boat think about this evidence that the Anna Schmidt was genuine. Then he went on: ‘Have German and Swedish newspapers. Will pass to you on line. News from the Western Front is good.’ For the Germans, maybe it was; probably by this time the divisions transferred from the Russian Front were having their effect.
There was a man at Audacity’s side bent over a convincing-looking bundle of papers, knotting a line around them. Another just aft of the bridge was hanging out clothes to dry. Wilberforce emerged from the wardroom, a merchantman’s saloon, and shook imaginary crumbs from a table-cloth. A cook came out of the galley and threw a bucketful of slops over the side then stood leaning on the rail, pipe in mouth, watching the guard-boat. The German captain had glasses at his eyes, would see all these signs of normality and the ensign of the German mercantile marine flapping from the jackstaff on Audacity’s poop; she was less than a quarter-mile from him now.
The lamp winked from the destroyer’s bridge in reply and McLeod read with relief: ‘Keep clear of my paint.’ He laughed. ‘I know that one; seen it before!’
It seemed the Anna Schmidt had been accepted. The guard-boat’s captain could not see the man lying on the deck by the staff, clutching the other ensigns ready to hoist, nor the two machine-gunners kneeling in the bow with the Lewis guns in their hands. The bulwark hid Ross with his boarding-party crouching forward of the bridge and the other men on the port side with fenders. The motor-boat—Smith could hear the putter of its engine—had been lowered and kept pace off Audacity’s starboard quarter, out of sight of the guard-boat, a petty officer and a dozen men aboard.
Danby and a furious Gallagher were below, ordered there by Smith, because there was no task here that he would entrust to the untried Danby, and Gallagher would be too important when—or if—the Camel was recovered.
The guard-boat lay off the port bow and less than a cable’s length away. ‘Port ten!’ Audacity’s bow edged around and Smith called softly, ‘Steady… steer that.’ Her stem pointed at the guard-boat. ‘Stop engines.’ The telegraph rang down to the engine room, the slow thumping of the engines ceased, and Audacity slid on with the way on her.
The man forward of the bridge stood upright, the bundle of newspapers in his hand, poised as if ready to throw. The officer over on the guard-boat’s bridge would be watching that bundle. Smith was prepared to bet that other ships had come alongside the guard-boat before now to pass over papers to men hungry for news from home. But when that German skipper saw how close Audacity was steering—
Smith saw the man’s mouth open to yell, his arm out-flung as he pointed at Audacity.
Now!
Smith stepped out of the wheelhouse and lifted the megaphone to bawl at the machine-gunners: ‘Fire!’ He saw flame at the muzzle of the guard-boat’s gun,
staggered as something smashed howling through the wheelhouse, saw the jagged hole punched in the screen where he had stood. The Lewis guns hammered, sweeping the guard-boat’s deck, and the men on it scrambled for cover. The heads disappeared from the bridge, and the gun stood abandoned on its mounting.
Audacity loomed over the old destroyer, so that the machine-gunners had to depress the guns nearly vertical to hit her. Smith bawled, ‘Slow astern!’ Then to the gunners in the bow, ‘Cease fire!’ And: ‘Get those fenders over!’
The fenders, huge mattresses of rope, were swung over the bulwark to thump against Audacity’s port side and hang there from the lines. The Lewis guns were silent though still trained on the guard-boat. Audacity slipped through the last few yards of sea that separated them, her screws turning again but now in reverse, slowing her. ‘Stop her!’ She slammed against the guard-boat, the shock cushioned by the fenders dangling between, but heeling her over as Ross and his men got to their feet. The tall figure of the first lieutenant led the way, jumping down the six feet or so to the guard-boat’s iron deck, sprawling on hands and knees then getting up and running aft, pistol in hand. The others followed, all but two who hesitated as Audacity swung away again and a gap appeared between the two ships. One of them jumped but fell short into that widening strip of churned foam. ‘Get a line to that man!’ Smith shouted.
The motor-boat swept around Audacity’s stern, bumping in her wake, and curved in to slide alongside the guard-boat, her men swarming aboard. Men of the first boarding-party were already on her bridge but there was no sign of Ross. The gap between the two ships continued to widen. From the corner of his eye Smith glimpsed a figure diving from the deck aft of Audacity’s bridge, saw him hit the water: it was Gallagher.
‘Sir!’ That was Ross, standing in the guard-boat’s bridge, bawling through a funnel of his hands. ‘Found their Sparks lying in the wireless office. Out cold. I think he must have been knocked flat when we bumped her and got laid out! Couldn’t have sent a signal!’
Smith waved acknowledgment and took a breath. So that was all right. But—he leaned over the rail beside McLeod and saw that the navigator had organised a party to rescue the man in the sea. They had lines over the side and now Gallagher grabbed the bowline on one of them, worked it over the arms of the spluttering man he was holding up.
Smith straightened. Audacity had drifted astern and there was a gap of twenty yards or so between her and the guard-boat. Men crowded the German’s waist now, prisoners under guard.
Smith shouted through the megaphone: ‘Mr. Ross! How long?’
Ross sounded cheerful: ‘Soon as you like, sir. We’ve got all her crew: one officer, one chief P.O.—sixteen all told.’
As Smith had guessed, not a full sea-going crew. ‘Casualties?’
‘None, sir. Only their Sparks and he’s awake now and
nursing a sore head.’
Smith gave thanks for that, recalling the Lewis guns sweeping the iron deck; some men had been very lucky.
The party at the side hauled the man in, spewing sea-water, and Gallagher was clambering up at the end of a line. Smith called across to Ross, ‘I’m coming alongside. Stand by to transfer those prisoners. I’ll send over two of those scuttling charges. Use them.’
‘Aye, aye, sir!’
So Audacity’s bow was laid alongside that of the guard-boat and lines passed to secure her there while the prisoners clambered aboard, preceded by some of Ross’s boarding-party and followed by the others. They stood under the muzzles of rifles in a tight-packed crowd below the fo’c’sle. Buckley passed the scuttling charges over to Ross in a canvas sack and the first lieutenant disappeared through a hatch abaft the guard-boat’s bridge. Smith had laid the two ships bow alongside bow so that Audacity’s midships would not be covered and the motor-boat was able to come alongside, be hooked on and hauled up to the davits, then swung inboard.
Ross appeared on the guard-boat’s deck, empty-handed, cast off the lines and climbed aboard Audacity.
‘Charges set, sir.’
‘Very good. Lock those prisoners away under guard.’ Smith entered the wheelhouse, stepping around Wilberforce who was busily sweeping up splinters of wood from the hole the shell had smashed through the screen and muttering resentfully under his breath. Smith ignored him and ordered, ‘Slow ahead.’ By a miracle the glass in the windows of the wheelhouse had not been broken. He chided himself for not seeing that the windows were lowered before the action, then snapped, ‘Didn’t anyone have the sense to make those windows safe?’
No one answered but there were withdrawn expressions on the faces of McLeod and the bridge-staff. Smith could guess why: it had been a quickly prepared but neatly planned operation in which—save for that one man falling over the side—everything had gone like clockwork. Yet now Smith was carping over one very minor detail. In fact, he was impatient to be away. They had lost enough time. There was a little over an hour before sunset and the tug was now only a streak of smoke on the horizon.
The guard-boat lay astern now as Audacity swung away. ‘Full ahead.’ And to McLeod: ‘All officers on the bridge in fifteen minutes, please, and get Bennett up here.’ There was work for the carpenter: the shell had come in through the bridge screen and smashed its way out through the deckhead. The damage must be made good.
The two explosions were muffled and a minute apart.
Smith went out to the wing when he heard the first, was watching the guard-boat when the second came. He thought he saw the old destroyer shudder though that might have been a trick of the light. But when Ross came to the bridge ten minutes later he reported with satisfaction, ‘She’s over on her beam ends and going down.’
They had forced the gate and Audacity was loose in the Gulf of Riga.
10—Night Action
Smith gave his orders to his officers. They sat about his cabin while he leaned against the desk. Ross had come straight from putting the prisoners under guard, still dirty from worming about in the belly of the guard-boat, planting the scuttling charges. Gallagher was towelling his hair but wore dry clothes borrowed from McLeod. The navigator sat by the door, one ear cocked for any call from the wheelhouse. Danby, typically, had tucked himself unobtrusively into a corner.
Smith said, ‘We’ll be up with the tug inside the hour. I intend to call on her to stop then go alongside and Mr. McLeod will lead the boarding-party this time because there may be need of his German. I want to know if the tug carries the crew of the Anna—and if not, what happened to them. Whether she sent a warning signal before we took her. And I believe the cargo is still aboard the Anna, in her hold, and I want that confirmed. Understood?’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Gallagher asked, ‘What about the Camel, sir?’ Naturally he was eager, wanting his precious plane. Both were precious in Smith’s eyes and he had blasted the flight commander for risking his life diving over the side to save the seaman—if they ever got the Camel it would still be useless without its pilot. ‘I’d foreseen such a possibility,’ Smith had told him angrily, ‘and posted lifesavers at the side for exactly that purpose!’
Gallagher had answered simply, ‘I didn’t think of that at the time, sir. I just saw the man in the sea and went in after him.’ There was no doubt he was brave.
Now Smith said, ‘As soon as McLeod has secured the tug I will put you aboard to inspect the Camel, and, if it seems sound, see to its transfer. Take any of your own men you’ll have use for. Are any of them seamen?’ Because transferring the Camel would be a task for men used to working afloat.
Gallagher combed his thick, still damp hair with his fingers. ‘A few regular Navy, the P.O. for one, but the rest’—he shrugged—‘a trip in a pleasure-boat off Southend is about all they’ve seen. Some never went to sea till they were drafted across the Channel to France.’ They were ‘hostiles’, signed on in the Royal Naval Air Service for ‘the duration of hostilities’, as mechanics, riggers or armourers. Gallagher said, ‘But I can find what I want among ‘em.’
Smith nodded, pushed up from the desk, and smiled around at them. ‘I think there’s time for a meal for all hands, Mr. Ross. See to it.’
He wondered if there were prisoners aboard the tug. He would know by nightfall. And then? He wanted the gold and they all wanted the Camel for the desperate gamble that might get them out of this trap that was the Baltic.
*
Ross came out of the wheelhouse to stand at Smith’s shoulder. ‘She’s less than a mile ahead now, sir.’
Smith nodded. Audacity had worked up to fifteen knots, hammering after the tug at twice her speed. Beyond the tug, a low, black line on the horizon marked a headland. Once around it the course for the port of Riga was southeast, a turn to starboard of nearly ninety degrees. The tug held a course close inshore, her master probably knowing these waters well and heading to cut the corner by passing close off the headland. The sun was down and the sky to starboard lit red by the afterglow of its setting. There lay the shore, a muffled dark edging above the pale line where the sea washed it in foam.
‘Smoke—red two-oh!’
Smith swung to focus on this new factor, the dark smear off the port bow that marked a ship, probably coming up from Riga, but still hull-down, ten miles or more to the south. He acknowledged the report: ‘Seen.’
Audacity closed rapidly on the tug and would soon be abeam of her. The Russian fishing-boat nodded rhythmically at the end of the curved line of the tow. The fuselage of the Camel was lashed squatting on the deck, its detached wings standing beside and propped between wooden supports. There was no one to be seen aboard the Anna and Smith thought that the prisoners—if there were prisoners—must be aboard the tug. He had expected that but he swore softly under his breath because it could make his task more difficult. There was a man standing aft in the tug, peering back at Audacity, and another leaned out of her wheelhouse. Her master perhaps, his curiosity aroused by this ship overhauling him? But clearly only his curiosity, not his suspicion, because no one had been sent forward to man the six-pounder in the bow.
The crew of the twelve-pounder on Audacity’s fo’c’sle lay on the deck there, hidden from the sight of anyone aboard the tug. They were ready to man the gun but had orders not to load: it was a bluff. McLeod crouched on the deck forward of the bridge with his dozen or so men armed with rifles, his face turned up to Smith.
The lookout reported again: ‘That smoke off the port bow, sir. It looks to be more than one ship, maybe two or three or more.’
Smith swung to the smoke again, saw the spread of it now but only grunted agreement and returned to the tug, almost abeam and a cable’s length away. One thing at a time. ‘Starboard ten!’
‘Starboard ten, sir… ten of starboard wheel on.’
Audacity’s bow turned on to a course that would take her across the bow of the tug and Smith ordered quiet
ly, ‘Ease to five… steady… steer that. Eight knots.’
There was a sudden commotion aboard the tug. Men appeared on her deck, her master ducked inside the wheelhouse then emerged again with a megaphone and his voice boomed brassily, angrily across the narrowing gap between the two ships. McLeod called, ‘He’s asking if we’re drunk or mad, sir! Says we have to haul clear!’
Smith ordered, ‘Port twenty!’ And Audacity swung back so she ran close alongside the tug. ‘Tell him to stop or we’ll sink him.’ He lifted a hand in signal. As McLeod rose to his feet and bellowed back at the tug the forward twelve-pounder swung up from its hiding-place in Audacity’s bow and its crew trained it around to lay it on the tug—which began to turn away.
‘Starboard ten!’ Then Smith snapped at the two men with the Lewis guns on the bridge-wing: ‘Mount ‘em!’
They swung the guns up on to the rail, cocked them. The tug had steadied on a course headed for the shore, her deck was deserted and her master gone to cover inside the wheelhouse, although he must know that would give him no protection against the shells of the twelve-pounder; he had stared into its muzzle. Smith accepted that he was dealing with a brave man. He could not order the twelve-pounder to fire because of the prisoners who might be aboard the tug. Even though her master did not know that, the bluff had failed.
He ordered, ‘Sweep her deck from stem to stern.’
The Lewis guns hammered in irregular short bursts, their muzzle-flames red in the dusk. Smith could see them hitting, splinters flying all along the tug’s deck and glass bursting from the windows of the wheelhouse, but the tug held to her course. He told the Lewis gunners, ‘Keep it up. Point of aim her wheelhouse, and low. Whoever’s steering her is lying on the deck.’ Or the wheel was lashed and men lay dead around it.