by Alan Evans
But the E-boat struck first and a gun hammered rapidly out in the night, the muzzle flashes making one wavering flame. Phillips barked into the P.A. microphone, his voice echoing out of the speakers, and the four-inch slammed close under the bridge, then the rapid banging of the port-side Oerlikons. The first round from the four-inch was starshell, aimed to burst ahead of and above the E-boat but its blue-white, shivering glare gave Ward only a glimpse of the stern of the enemy. She had turned and was tearing out to run up the outside of the port column.
She was gone, and Boston headed after her.
“Midships!” Ward straightened from the pipe. The guns had ceased firing, their target lost in the night and the blaze of the starshell blinding them all. But it had shown up the enemy and now everybody knew roughly where he was. All the ships in the convoy were aware that an E-boat was attacking from astern and from the inshore side. They would be looking—
There was a second long lick of yellow flame out on Boston’s starboard bow, stamped on the vision for a second, then gone. The port column of the convoy lay there and the muzzle-flash looked to be a half-mile up it. A good long way, but the E-boat could easily be there by now.
Ward ordered, “Starboard twenty.”
“Starboard twenty…twenty of starboard wheel on, sir.”
Boston was heeling to run up outside the port column on the trail of the E-boat. “Meet her…steer that.” Guns were firing all along the port column now. Every ship mounted a twelve-pounder aft for her own defence, Lewis guns as well. He saw that some of the ships in the starboard column were also firing. At what? Another E-boat out there? Boston was steadily working up speed. Now there was tracer from the Lewis guns on the ships ahead, stitching looping lines of light across the night, converging lines that marked just about where the E-boat must be—unless they were all shooting at shadows. But a yell came up from the four-inch and Phillips bawled in reply, “Commence!”
So the layer of the gun on the fo’c’sle had the target in the layer’s telescope mounted on the gun. The four-inch fired out over the bow but Ward closed his eyes before the flash and opened them afterwards, not blinded. He lifted the glasses that hung on his chest. He did not see the shell fall but there on the starboard beam were the black boxes of ships against the skyline, sliding slowly aft one by one as Boston head-reached on them. Then, looking forward again, he saw it, a distant, white ribbon of wake running up to a blur of moving, thicker darkness that had white wings to it. That would be the sea flying back in spray from the German’s bow.
Ward told Phillips, but loud enough for all on the bridge to hear, “She’s fine on the starboard bow. Seen?”
“Seen, sir!” Phillips bawled down at the gun, “Bearing green five! One thousand!”
Ward thought the E-boat was closer than that but the barrel of the gun swung fractionally, the layer searching, then steadied. He closed his eyes again a split second before the flash could blind him, felt the concussion of air from the gun’s firing, lifted the glasses and looked out again. He found the white furrow and bent his knees to call into the voicepipe, “Starboard ten!” He still stared through the glasses.
“Starboard ten…ten of starboard wheel on, sir.”
Boston heeled under helm and Ward watched the curve in the white furrow ahead: the E-boat was turning towards the convoy. To fire torpedoes? If so, then they would know about it soon enough.
Krueger said, “They’ve stopped firing in the starboard column.”
So they had lost whatever they had seen, if they had in fact seen anything. This E-boat was still closing the convoy, well within torpedo range but not faltering. Did she have torpedoes? Or had she been laying mines and simply decided to shoot up the convoy as a bonus? Boston’s guns were now pointed at the convoy and Ward ordered, “Check firing!” An error in setting the range might drop a shell on one of their own ships. That was not the way to make friends.
Phillips bawled, “Check! Check! Check!”
It was time to cancel Boston’s turn to starboard. But—Ward said, “She’s going through.” He switched his eyes from the E-boat, sought and found instead the ships ahead of her in the port column. He waited, then: “Meet her.”
“Meet her, sir.”
“Steady. Steer that.” Ward straightened, knees flexing to balance him as Boston rocked back to an even keel. He looked again for the E-boat but did not find it. “Where the hell has it gone?”
Krueger answered, “Ten on the port bow.”
Ward looked out on the bearing, caught just a glimpse of white water and the flying, low black silhouette, then the guns of the port column opened up again and the tracers flew in at the E-boat. He saw her firing then, prickling with flashes. She was tearing in on the column of ships ahead of her—and so was Boston, about a thousand yards further south. Ward lowered the glasses. “Tell the port-side Oerlikons to be ready.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” answered Phillips.
Ward gave all his attention to the ships seen over his bow. They were steaming at eight knots and, as near as he could estimate it, about a cable’s length between each ship and the next. Two hundred yards sounded a big enough gap but it could easily dwindle. In the darkness, split by gunflashes, threaded by tracer, and under the stress of a sudden attack, a ship could easily veer off course and another could close up on it. The gap might still be big enough if you hit it exactly right. If you did not—
Krueger called, “She’s gone through!”
Ward let his glasses hang on their strap as the firing and the tracers ceased. The gunners aboard the ships of the port column would be desperately swinging their pieces round to meet this new threat from starboard.
Silence on the bridge. The ships that had been just silhouettes in the middle distance were now right ahead and rushing up at Boston out of the night. There was an old ‘three-island’ tramp, the wells between the fo’c’sle, super-structure and poop stacked with some form of deck cargo. The gun on her poop was swinging around. Astern of her was the long, flat-iron hull of the Missouri Star, low in the sea with the oil in her, superstructure set right aft.
Christ! They’d closed up! Either the tramp had lost way or the tanker had made up on her. The gap between was less than a cable, terrifyingly less. Ward ordered, “Port ten!” He wasn’t turning back now.
“Port ten!…ten of port wheel on, sir!”
Boston heeled but only briefly. Ward said, “Meet her…steer that.” Now her bow pointed at the superstructure of the tramp and Boston seemed set to ram her. The neck of sea that separated them shrank with every second and the hull of the ship ahead inched agonisingly slowly forward across Boston’s closing bow. Ward watched that inching progress, the shrinking gap between them and the other gap between tramp and tanker. The crew of the four-inch gaped at the poop of the ship coming at them, then back to peer up at Ward on the bridge.
The stern of the tramp loomed over them and Boston swept past so close that on the bridge they saw the gunners on the tramp’s poop standing frozen. To starboard the bow of the Missouri Star charged in as Boston’s three hundred and fifteen feet of hull slipped through the chink in the port column. Just. The Torpedo Gunner, standing right aft by the 12-pounder in Boston, watched the fat bow of the tanker run in on him then slide past Boston’s stern like a great slamming steel door.
The bridge came to life as the port look-out shouted, “Boat! Red seven-oh!”
In the channel between the two columns of the convoy they saw the E-boat. Her cannon marked her as she fired at the ships of the port column. Once inside the convoy she had turned to race south so now she was broad on Boston’s port bow, a bare five hundred yards away and coming on at thirty knots or more. In the night, and seen bows-on, she looked like the end of a black pencil in the V of silver spray thrown up by her stem.
The port side Oerlikons opened fire, their rapid hammering seeming laboured against the background ripping of the machine-guns. The E-boat skidded around and her foreshortened silhouette lengthened as she
ran away across the channel. The fire of the Oerlikons followed, the 4-inch slammed and the flames from the E-boat’s cannon were joined by another flame, vertical but bent on the wind by the speed of her. She did not stop or alter course, but ran on, tearing between two ships of the starboard column.
Phillips shouted exultantly, “Hit her!”
She was on fire, no doubt of that. Ward ordered, “Star-board ten!” to turn Boston south and head back between the ships to her station at the tail of the convoy. Her guns were silent now but those of the starboard column were firing. As Boston turned Ward watched the E-boat. Her cannons had ceased firing but she was pursued by tracer, then that also stopped and there was only the trailing tongue of flame to show her position. Seconds later that, too, disappeared into the outer darkness.
Ward ordered, “Midships…steer that.”
The R.D.F. reported, “Contact bearing oh-eight-oh! Going away. Looks like that E-boat, sir.”
Huw Phillips grumbled, “Lot of bloody good that is! It’s when they’re coming in we want to know, not when they’re going out!” Then, brightening: “Hey! Didn’t we give that bastard a shock when we nipped through the convoy and jumped out on top of him!”
Charlie Barnwell, the yeoman, muttered, “Not as big a shock as it gave me.”
There was a shifting of all of them on the bridge as the tension eased and Joe Krueger said, “I’ll take a walk around.” He left the bridge.
Ward got up in his chair. His mouth was dry and he called, “Bosun’s mate!”
“Sir?”
“See if you can get some coffee up here, please.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
The bosun’s mate brought up the coffee, Ward’s in his stein. It was hot and strong and he sipped it gratefully. Joe Krueger returned to the bridge, claimed a steaming mug and cradled it in his gloved hands. Ward asked, “Any problems?”
Joe shook his head, “All O.K. , sir.” He swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “There was some crowding in the heads when you took us through the convoy.”
Ward shrugged. “It probably looked a lot more dangerous than it really was.”
Krueger knew very well how dangerous it had been and mentally lifted his hat. If Ward had not got it exactly right and the tanker had charged into Boston the old four-stacker would have been cut in half and gone down like a stone, and most of her crew with her. Besides which the Missouri Star would have been holed, and would probably have sunk also. He said, “They’re getting around to liking it now. It’s a hell of a story to be able to tell when you’re safe ashore in some pub.” He paused a moment, thinking about it, then: “But if it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d prefer you didn’t do it again.”
Ward thought, Not if I can bloody help it. Aloud he said, “I’ll bear your advice in mind, Number One.”
Boston ranged out to the starboard column, inspecting, returned to her station then swung out to port to edge up along the outside of the convoy. All was quiet again. There was the faint pinging of the Asdic and a soft chinking and rattling as the bosun’s mate collected the empty mugs. The look-out reported a light off the port bow and Mason, the navigator, took a bearing to it. That was the next buoy in the series marking the inshore limits of the swept passage.
It would be starting to get light soon; time now to look forward to that, and to breakfast. The galley stoves would be working in this moderate sea so it would be a cooked meal. There had been a forecast of bad weather but it had held off so far. This was still good E-boat weather—
There came a rumbling explosion from ahead in the convoy and a leaping tower of flame that soared and was gone in the blink of an eye.
Instantly Ward was at the voicepipe: “Full ahead both!”
“Full ahead—”
The second explosion came with a monstrous flame that climbed and did not subside but widened at its base. Krueger shouted, “The tanker!”
Boston was closing the Missouri Star rapidly: she was stopped and already settling, ablaze along her entire length. Ward asked himself: Torpedoed from inshore? The less likely alternatives were that an E-boat had got into the middle of the convoy or that the torpedoes had carried from outside the starboard column. With the glasses he swept the darkness ahead and inshore, then returned to the tanker. It filled his vision, the hull barely visible just beneath the flames and smoke that hid derricks and superstructure, flames that lit the sea for a quarter mile around.
At that moment the E-boat ran through the edge of the circle of light. She was moving fast and heading south, and passed between the blazing Missouri Star and Boston, a bare cable’s length from the destroyer’s bridge. The German’s guns were firing at the coaster astern of the tanker as it swerved to pass the sinking ship. Ward saw the heads of the men on the open bridge of the boat and the gunners at the cannons. He also saw quite clearly the insignia painted on the side of the bridge abaft the bow-mounted torpedo-tubes: a skull and crossbones.
Boston’s starboard Oerlikons were firing. Ward ordered, “Stop starboard! Hard astarboard!” Stopping one screw would bring Boston around more quickly, not in an attempt to chase the E-boat because he knew that was hopeless, but to give the Oerlikons a few more precious seconds before they lost that elusive target. He had to look out for the ships swinging out of the port column of the convoy to pass the tanker, and for the Fairmile motor-launches that would be hurrying up to look for survivors—
Krueger said savagely, “Did you see it? That was Dirty Bill! The bastard!”
“I saw it.” The look-outs had been yelling since the boat first showed. Ward pointed at the light inshore. “He was lying the other side of the buoy.” Lying in ambush, hearing the noise of gunfire from the south as the first E-boat attacked, waiting patiently for the convoy and the last hour of the night when men were tiring, their concentration strained and their reactions slowed. Watching the convoy pass, knowing that the escort destroyers would probably be at the head and the tail of it, picking his target. Casting off from the buoy and moving slowly ahead with his engines throttled back to a low rumble, closing unhurriedly to make a perfect kill.
Ward said into the voicepipe, “Midships. Half ahead both.” Then he raised his head and his voice to order, “Stop the chatter!”
His command cut through the angry muttering of the others, silenced it. The Oerlikons were also silent, the E-boat gone into the darkness. Ward took Boston wheeling back to her station at the rear of the convoy that had now passed north of the burning tanker and the Missouri Star fell astern, one of the launches still circling her in the faint hope that there might be survivors.
There was a scowling quiet on the bridge, resentment against odds that were so loaded against them. Long hours of darkness…two destroyers guarding more than thirty ships…Ward thought ruefully that the oil had come three thousand miles only to be lost on this last homeward stretch. And the men? The men with the guts to sail aboard a floating bomb like the Missouri Star, how many of them had died? How many other ships were lost this night, off this coast or out in the Atlantic?
And how many more would be lost if Tirpitz came out?
He shivered in the dawn chill. The sun was just under the rim of the world and its blood-red glow washed across the heavy bellies of the clouds.
There was the glow of a false dawn behind him from the still blazing tanker.
There were only seven weeks left in which to mount CHARIOT.
*
The weather deteriorated rapidly that day and it was blowing a full gale when they turned up the hands of the morning watch on 9th February. Their hammocks swung in a close-packed line a foot above the tables in the dim-lit, thunderous cavern of the mess-deck and the breaking of the seas on the fo’c’sle two decks above sounded like the beating of a great drum. The deck under the hammocks was awash, a foot deep in water that surged forward and aft, starboard to port as Boston pitched and rolled. It was an evil-smelling gruel because the working of the ship in these heavy seas leaked fuel oil out of the tanks and in
to the mess-deck. Scraps of food, dropped clothing, books and caps floated in the greasy scum.
The men worked themselves out of their blankets. They had turned in ‘all standing’, duffel coats and oilskins wrapped around their legs for warmth. They squirmed like contortionists in the hammocks, the deck-head close above, dragging on first their coats, then their oilskins and finally their seaboots that hung from the hammock hooks.
They grabbed the rails above their heads and swung their bodies down out of the hammocks until they stood on the deck with the seawater washing around them. The bulky, misshapen, steadily cursing figures held on to tables, stanchions, anything secure as they worked their way hand-over-hand along the mess-deck.
The first man up the ladder opened the hatch, the wind howled around it and the sea fell in. It cascaded over the first man then down over the others following him. They climbed out on to the upper deck just abaft the bridge, clamped gloved hands on the life-lines and waded through the seas sweeping the deck, headed for their stations.
Ward watched them from the bridge. The light was growing and he could identify some of the muffled figures by the way they moved. There was no sun, just a dull grey light between leaden sky and mountainous seas. And all they got for it, he thought, was an extra sixpence a day ‘hard lying’ and the pride of being able to boast when ashore, “Small ships, me!”
He turned to face forward. The convoy ahead was being tossed about like paper boats while Boston rose and fell with the sickening speed of a mad lift, so that first he was looking down on the ship just ahead and then he was peering up at a wall of water towering above him. Boston did not always lift enough: too often the waves broke and fell on her fo’c’sle, tons of seawater hammering down with force enough to send a shudder right through her. It was weather like this that had been known to smash the bridges in these old four-stackers and kill the men on them.
The yeoman shouted against the wind, “Empire Journey’s signalling, sir!” Then he read out the stuttering flashes from the freighter: “Will-we-make-Forth-by-end-of-war?”